Live.
The damned gypsy seemed to be laughing now.The now.Then wondered why. Then, suddenly, he hurt too much to wonder about anything. The face vanished in a haze of bright lights and pain.
For as long I remember
I've hated those red lights
And hotel rooms with plaster walls
And loud and lonely nights.
"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"
Csucskari the Gypsy hung back and let Madam Moria go up to see what the flashing lights meant. There were two police cars and an ambulance in the alley,and he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.stomach. When Madam Moria returned after an interminable five minutes, the look on her lined face matched this feeling.
"Well?"
"He was in an accident. He is alive, and they are bringing him to a hospital. I don't know-"
She was interrupted by a siren. The ambulance turned around in the alley and sped away, Csucskari watched as it went by, spitting gravel, leaving a ringing in his ears. The ringing faded very slowly. Very slowly. He fancied he could hear, behind it, the ring of the zils of a tambourine. He listened, and it was still there. He looked at Madam Moria, and saw from the look on her face that she heard it, too. He started to speak but she held a hand up and motioned him to follow. He did so, the tap-tapping of her canes blending with the rhythm still faintly thrumming in his ears.
That old river keeps on rolling
And Old Hannah won't go down.
I can't give back what I ain't taken.
I won't give up if I ain't found.
"HIDE MY TRACK"
Timothy stared into his bathroom mirror, willing Her to him. He thought of how beautiful She had been the first time he saw Her, tried to focus his mind on how Her eyes had warmed him. He tried to see Her in the mirror, but the glass stayed cold, hard to his fingers when he pressed his hand flat against it. All it showed him was on his own face, pale, his hair disheveled. Timmy hated the way he looked, so mussed and sickly. "Poor little Timmy," his mom would have said, and put him to bed and brought him a dish of warm milk spooned over soda crackerscrackers. Sheave scolded him, sadly, for getting into such a fight, and then she'd have called the police and complained about those neighborhood hooligans intimidating her son. But then his dad would have come home, and told him to get his ass out of bed and stop being such a sissy, why the hell don't you ever stand up for yourself, you little pussy.
He slapped the mirror, flat-handed, and the force of the slap rattled the medicine cabinet and started the cut on his stomach trickling blood again. He snatched a handful of Kleenex and dabbed up the trickle before it could make another mess. He shook the last six Band-aids from the box and applied them in a row over the slash, gritting his teeth and whimpering softly.
He moved slowly as he walked back to his dresser.dresser.Hearound the room. In spite of everything that had happened to him, and in spite of all the human filth around him, his room was clean. The old brown carpet was bare in places, and unraveling everywhere, but it was clean. The windows were clean,the white curtains were clean, his dresser was not only clean, but the top was clear, because everything was in its place. When you let things pile up and get messy, then you get dirty, and then you're just an animal, and he was far from being an animal. He was more than a man, so he had the cleanest room anyone could have.
He made it to the dresser and opened the second drawer, the tee shirt drawer, and looked through the carefully folded stack to find an older one. He almost wished he had one of those colored ones, black or dark blue, that wouldn't show the blood stains so much. But no, nothing looked as clean and nice as afresh white tee shirt. He tried to put one on, but couldn't lift his arms.
He buttoned on a blue cotton-polyester shirt, and then almost cried at how much it hurt to tuck it in evenly. He went back to the mirror then, to stare, to comb his hair, to stare again, calling to Her as She had taught him. She didn't answer.
He had to show Her. He went to the dresser,moved the careful stack of tee shirts again, and took out the gun, feeling the weight in his hand. He'd have to show Her, just like he'd showed his dad and mom.He tmom.He once of the look on his dad's face when Timothy had said, "I'll show you who's a pussy,"and pulled the trigger. But then he remembered his mom, and how she'd turned on him, how she'd screamed and run to the telephone, and started saying, "Hello, police, hello, police," and kept right on screaming it, even after he'd shot her twice. She'd turned her back on him. Just like the Lady.
No. No, She wouldn't, he'd show Her, he'd takeout the old lady, and then he'd go after the Gypsy man, and She'd see. She'd be so proud. She wouldn't tease him and call him Little Timmy, She'd put Her long slender hands against his face and call him Her big, strong man, yes, and She'd kiss him with those full red lips, kiss the knife marks on his stomach,too…
He stood still for a moment, thinking about that,letting it stir him, and then took his jacket from its hook in the closet. The gun felt nice in the pocket, he could hold it as he walked, pass people on the street,knowing that, if he wanted to, he could do for them but good. He shut off the lights and locked his door carefully and then walked slowly down the hallway,gun in his hidden hand as smooth and cold as mirror glass.
Watch the storm clouds,
they're telling me to run
I hear the wind say to hide;
A thousand accusations
of all the things I've done,
Are after me demanding I be tried.
"LANNAM SIDHE"
He pried his eyelids open a crack. White. White sheets,white walls, white noise, all overlaid with soft shadows.shadows. Evenht that came in the small window of the door was a friendless white. And the smell. As if all the smells in the world had been killed, and their remains scrubbed up with alcohol and bleach. A fine place to die. Then they could scrub him up with alcohol and bleach. And the damn gypsies could walk home.
The Coachman let his eyes fall shut. He could feel the bandage tight around his stomach, was aware of every stitch in his thigh. No. He wasn't going to die. Dying would have been too easy; nothing had been that easy since he'd found the gypsies in the first place. Or they'd found him. Which was it? It hardly mattered. And now the Owl's words came back to him. Tekata, tekata, tekata, like a fine matched team trotting, like his own heart beating. He pulled his eyes open again. Whatever they'd given him for pain dragged at him, promising the warmth and softness of sleep. But the insistent rhythm of a tambourine pulled against it, sat him up in his bed.
The rest of the world was quiet. Someone had forgotten a television set in the comer, and its screen showed nothing as it whispered white. Its bluish light lit men sleeping or pain-drugged to stillness, shone on a few flat empty beds. The Coachman shivered as he pushed the thin blankets aside and swung his legs stiffly over the edge of the bed. The cold floor bit his bare feet. Would his clothes be in that drawer?
They weren't, and he remembered then, how they had cut them off him, the bright scissors s nicking along and against his flesh. He longed to crawl back into bed,but he forced himself to step softly down the ward until he came to a sleeping man about his height and build.Nobuild. No ask, he excused himself, for it wouldn't belong before men in ties with clipboards came, to question him, over and over and over. So far he had told no one anything, not even a name. He had pretended to be too drunk, too dazed, too much in shock to talk. Very little of it had been pretense. But morning would come soon,and with it questions he had no time to answer.