Under Cover of Darkness (35 page)

And with that thought, in that moment, he accepted what a secret part of him had known for some time—that he was totally, utterly tired of his world, the world he had built and in which he ruled.

The only fear King had ever known had been of finding a game he couldn't win. He had never expected to become bored by the game. But it had happened.

Well, then he needed a new game.

No. He needed the
right
game.

His reflection, steel-gray eyes under steel-gray hair, stared back but offered no answers. Brooding on his dark epiphany, he gazed at the street below, not focusing on any detail, just letting the patterns of people and traffic skitter across his eyes like a kaleidoscope of random intents. He was about to turn away when a flash of light caught his attention.

On the sidewalk across the street, a man sat against the building, a hat set out in front of him. A street person—one of the army of the homeless that posted its soldiers at every corner of the downtown core.

A street person who was on fire.

King rubbed his eyes. No, not on fire, but glowing. Glowing so brightly that he obliterated surrounding details of the building and passersby.

And no one hurrying past paid him the slightest notice.

Seized by a sudden impulse, King grabbed his suit jacket and took the elevator to street level.

The day was already hot and humid, the air sticky and stinking with exhaust fumes, something he hadn't noticed going from the cool comfort of his house to car to office. He loosened his silk tie and undid the top button of his tailored shirt as he crossed the street. Scanning the far side for the glowing man, King found him now standing. No sign of the strange light remained.

King reached the opposite sidewalk and stopped. This is ridiculous, he thought. He began to turn away, to return to his air-conditioned office and suddenly unwanted life, when he stopped again.

The man was now staring at him. And smiling.

Taken aback but curious again, King walked over. The man wore tattered clothes of competing colors of dirt and held a short-brimmed cloth hat in surprisingly clean hands. His long hair was pure white, combed and untangled. His face was lined, but as clean as his hands. Black eyes, bright and sharp, stared narrowly from above a hooked nose and under snowy eyebrows. He continued to smile at King.

“Do I know you?” King asked, uncomfortable to be conversing with someone so far beneath his own station.

The man didn't answer. Instead, he raised his left hand in a fist in front of King's face. King stepped back, thinking that the man was threatening him. But the beggar simply stood there, fist poised. The back of his raised hand bore a tattoo—a red rectangle within a black one. The red was deep and bright, so shiny that it looked wet, like a patch of blood.

Staring at the tattoo, King felt a tingle of familiarity, mixed with fear. He swallowed. Get a grip, he thought. “I asked you if you know me,” he repeated.

Still not answering, the man lowered his hand and turned to stare up University Avenue.

Angered at a street person ignoring him, King started to turn away when a sound made him stop. Notes, a tune, a song. Yes, a song. He scanned the passersby, expecting to find a headset dangling from nearby ears, volume cranked to maximum. To his surprise, the song didn't change in intensity, no matter what direction he turned. He became aware then of a deep bass pounding, a dancelike rhythm slowly rising out of the pavement and trembling up his legs.

A swirl of color and movement caught his eye. He turned.

And she appeared.

The Dancer.

He called her the Dancer the moment he saw her, and the moment he saw her, he knew that she was mad. Or
he
was. She spun into view around the nearest corner, then froze for a second, en pointe as in ballet, arms raised in two graceful arcs. Then she leaped, landing to waltz through the crowd as if the sidewalk were a ballroom and each scurrying commuter her partner. And with each pirouette, madness whirled around her like dead leaves caught in a forgotten winter wind.

She wore only a diaphanous gown of some strange material that changed color and shape as she whirled, sometimes concealing, sometimes revealing, sometimes seeming to disappear completely. The body it revealed was slim and lithe, with firm breasts, long arms and legs, with hair as red as rusted metal, and skin so fair and pale it seemed to glow.

He realized then that the Dancer
was
glowing, just as the old beggar had been. The glow enveloped her in a cocoon of light. In that cocoon, King caught fractured glimpses of a dark moonlit world that was not the bland sun-bright cityscape in which he now stood.

And as with the old man, no one but King seemed to notice the Dancer. People shuffled by like the undead, blinking at the sun finally rising over the towers, newspapers clutched like amulets, briefcases hanging like manacles, coffee sucked from cups as if it were their life blood. At some level, they were aware of her, as they'd move aside for her, always in step somehow, but they paid her no more attention than if she were a puddle to avoid.

Remembering the strange old man, King turned. He was gone. King caught a flash of white hair farther down the street, but then it was lost in the crowd.

And lost in the face of the Dancer as she stopped before King, a face that swept the crowds and traffic and buildings from his eyes and mind, not by its beauty, for he couldn't call her beautiful, but by its strangeness. Skin too pale, hair too red, mouth too wide. And green eyes that wandered over him as if searching for something.

But when she smiled at him with those eyes and that mouth, a hope and a fear reached inside him and twisted in opposite directions. A hope that she was real, that somehow she held the key to a door to a new life. And a fear that she
was
mad, that he was trapped in a life he suddenly hated and could never . . .

“. . . escape,” he whispered, before realizing it.

She laughed, a thing of cold breezes rustling barren trees on winter nights. “You wish to escape me?” she asked, smiling up at him. “So soon?” Her glow was gone, and she now wore a plain green cotton shift and white low-heeled shoes.

“No . . . no,” King stammered. “Not you. My life.” Embarrassed, he held out his hand. “My name is Alexander King.”

In reply, the Dancer turned and spun back up the street. King stood dazed for a second, then hurried to catch up. He found that he had to almost trot to stay beside her.

“So you wish to escape life?” she asked, spinning as they went, still ignored by everyone but King. “Do you seek death, then?”

“No. I . . . I wish to escape
my
life. My world.” Despite the crush of commuters, he felt as if he were alone with this strange woman. They reached the corner of University and King Street.

“Then you seek another world?” she asked, whirling around him as they waited for the traffic light.

He grimaced. “I'm not sure. Yes. Something new. Different.”

The light changed. The Dancer crossed, weaving through the crowd, sometimes even hooking the arm of someone she passed and spinning around with them as if in a square dance.

And still no one paid her any notice.

King followed her to the stairs leading down to the subway. She seemed to float down the steps, while King, feeling quite dazed, almost slipped hurrying to catch her. Waltzing up to the ticket booth, she raised her arms, spun twice, then leaped gracefully over the turnstiles. The staffer in the booth paid her no attention. Swearing, King dug into his pocket for change. By the time he'd paid and reached the subway platform, the Dancer was boarding a northbound train. He jumped on just as the doors closed.

Apparently indifferent to whether he had followed, the Dancer wove through the crowded car, each swaying step melding with the rattling rhythm of the train. Despite the number of people standing, she found an empty seat at the rear.

King jostled his way to the back and sat down beside her. The train's air conditioning was losing the battle against the heat and humidity, and the air was heavy with the stink of commuter sweat and boredom. But here in the closeness, he could smell her scent—delicate, bittersweet, reminiscent of a night-blooming flower he couldn't recall. He started to ask her name, but then stopped, suddenly not wanting to know, not wanting something as elemental as this creature to be labeled with the mundane. To him, she would remain the Dancer.

“This city has a song,” she said suddenly.

He stared at her. She
was
mad, totally disconnected from reality. He should get off at the next stop and go back.

But back to what? King himself
wanted
to disconnect from his own reality, to find a new one. He wanted the Dancer to be real, so he didn't have to return to his old life.

The train pulled into the next station, Osgoode. He sighed. He stayed.

As the train left Osgoode, he turned back to her. Her smile froze him for a second. God, she
was
beautiful. How could he have thought otherwise before? He felt a tightening in his crotch. Well, another reason to stay.

“Fine, you've dragged me this far,” he said. “I'll play a bit longer. What song?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Can't you hear it? It's deafening to me.”

Mad. He shook his head in reply.

She stared at the passengers. “A million broken hearts beat its rhythm. Whispered lies, unheeded cries scribble its lyrics on walls, their meaning lost in the babble, in the magnitude of the choir. Melody . . . No.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “No. There is no melody.”

She watched the dark tunnel walls flashing by the car's window. “And in a minor key.” She smiled. “Yes. Definitely a minor key.”

The train pulled into the next station, St. Patrick. People shuffled off, jostling with those getting on. The train pulled out again. The Dancer stared at the passengers. So did King. A different crowd now, but with the same air of futility.

“Do you hear it now?” she asked again. “The song?”

Still King didn't reply. He had no answers for this odd creature. He had hoped that she would provide
him
with answers—that, in all her strangeness,
she
was the answer.

Finally, he replied with a question, the only question that seemed to matter.

“Can you help me?” he asked, embarrassed by the desperation in his voice.

In reply, she raised a hand, palm toward her face. King stared at the mark on the back of her hand, the same mark the old man had carried—a blood-red rectangle within a larger black one.

“Find the Red Door,” she whispered.

As King stared at the symbol, the words “the Red Door” resonated in some secret chamber in his memory, and a cold dread grew in his gut, dread of the place the words were taking him.

The train slowed. The Dancer rose in one flowing movement, no superfluous motion, her body seemingly freed from gravity and inertia, oblivious to the lurching of the subway. King remained seated, gripped by the sudden terror spawned by the symbol on her hand. Unable even to speak, he watched her walk to the door.

The train stopped.

Finally, King forced a word out. “How?” he rasped.

She turned back, surprise on her face, as if she'd already forgotten him.

“Listen for the song,” she said. “At the end of day, follow the song.” The doors opened, and with one last look back, she was gone.

Finally shaking free of his fear, King jumped up, but the doors had closed, and the train was moving again. His face pressed to the window, he caught a glimpse of the Dancer alone on a dark empty platform, gazing after him sadly. Then his car entered the tunnel, and he was left with nothing but the memory of her face, her smell, and their strange conversation.

And of the terror of the red symbol that was slowly fading like a nightmare retreating before the dawn, replaced by a fear that he'd never see the Dancer again.

He jumped off at the next stop, Queen's Park, ran across the platform and onto a southbound train that was just leaving. The train seemed to crawl along as he prayed that he'd catch the Dancer before she disappeared.

The train pulled into the next station. King jumped off. And froze, staring at the station name on the pale green tiled walls.

St. Patrick.

The Dancer had left him at the stop after St. Patrick. King had got off at the next stop, Queen's Park, and taken a train south one stop to this station.

Two stops northbound, one stop southbound.

He shook his head. Impossible. He must have missed a stop coming south, lost in his thoughts.

King didn't travel the subway much, avoiding mixing with the masses, so perhaps his memory of the stations was wrong. A nearby pillar displayed the subway map. Finding St. Andrew where they had entered, he ran a finger up the University line. St. Andrew, then Osgoode, St. Patrick—and Queen's Park.

King swallowed. The Dancer had left him at a station that didn't exist.

He stood staring at the sign. Trains came and left. People pushed by him. He ignored them. For the second time that day, King felt afraid.

An urge to flee overwhelmed him. A southbound train pulled in. Near panic, he shoved his way inside. He sat down heavily, legs shaking, heart pounding, as the train pulled out.

His pride saved him. What if one of his people saw him? Or a competitor? With the same iron will that had built his empire, King forced calm on himself.

He leaned back, his fear slowly dying with each rattle of the rushing train. By the time he got off at St. Andrew, his terror had faded to a pale ghost that finally vanished completely in the sunlight and commonplace bustle on the street, leaving him with only anger at his display of fear.