A Once Crowded Sky (43 page)

“Can I tell you something?” Felix asks again.

“Wait, one sec. Let me finish this.”

“I think they’re going to come back.”

“Let me finish, Doc.” Herc puts his big paw on Felix’s knee and gives him a squish. “C’mon, you’ve got to hear this one. You’ll love it.”

“There was a heart—”

“He would’ve killed her, Doc. He was killing every girl he slept with ’cause he thought they were all cuckolding bitches. And she volunteered to be next, and she told him this story, and he wanted to hear the end of it, but it kept going, stories inside stories inside more stories, never ending, so he couldn’t kill her. She told stories, and she lived!”

Felix waits a second before starting. He watches Herc’s eyes start to tear. “I had a heart once,” Felix begins. “I—Pen’d come to me, and his wife, her heart—”

“To that girl!” Herc hikes his glass up again. “To Arabia, who always had another story!” He pulls the glass close to his face. “After The Blue . . . I don’t know what happened to her. Her story. I don’t know how it ended.” He drinks down some more. “Who knows?” he mumbles from inside the mug.

Felix circles his fingers around a ring of wet left behind from his own glass. He’s been meaning to tell somebody, but it’s a secret and he shouldn’t tell anybody. He shouldn’t have said anything at all; it was so stupid to let it slip out, but his mouth, he can barely feel it, his mouth, and where his tongue is and where his lips are and how slippery they are, so that words glide over them, spilling out with the drip-drop of brown.

“Can I tell you about a heart?” Felix asks. “It’s a good one.”

Seeming to be choking on a gulp, Herc waves him off. “I mean I know how her one story ended. Well, I heard it two ways. I guess they were screwing while she was talking, and she had kids from him. And one day, in one version, she tells him that she’s been telling him all these stories and maybe he’s learned something from it, about mercy and love. And he says, yeah, he’s learned his lesson and knows mercy and love and loves her and the kids, and so he doesn’t kill her. It’s a very happy ending.”

“See, Herc, Pen’d come to me, and there was this heart, Ultimate’s heart or Pen’s heart, and they needed some . . . doctor . . . they needed—”

Herc slams his glass on the table and turns to Felix, crouching his
large frame over him. Felix scratches at his eyelid. He shouldn’t have told him, even this much. It’s too much. It’s better left unsaid. It’ll make everyone upset, and he shouldn’t say anything. That’s why it’s a secret; Pen’d told him to make it a secret.

Herc tugs on his beard and holds his mouth open without speaking.

“I’m sorry,” Felix says. “I wanted—”

A proud burp rips from Herc’s throat before he talks again. “There was another ending though. Where the guy she was talking to and screwing just gets tired of all the stories, and on the last day he just tells her he doesn’t want to hear any more of it. And she says, yeah, well, I’ve got three of your kids so now you can’t kill me. And so he doesn’t, and that’s the other ending.”

Both men sit quietly after that, maybe waiting for one of them to say something. Eventually, they turn back to the bar and pick up their drinks and clink them together before slurping down another round and ordering another.

“I don’t know which is true,” Herc finally says. “But she made it. She lived. The stories saved her either way. And then gone. All gone. It all just went away and kept going.”

Felix isn’t sure if Herc’s talking about the woman or the stories or whatever else, and he doesn’t think to ask or doesn’t want to or both. It’s been another long day, and tomorrow’ll be another one. Watching her up there, Anna, alone, crying. His wife cried sometimes. And his daughter. And he’d cried when he’d buried them too. He cried right into this glass and then sank the tears and the brown altogether down into him, rushing down to the empty circle at his center.

Anna has Pen’s metal heart. Felix had put it there because Pen asked him to. And he knew Pen wasn’t perfect, that Pen had run when it was best to stay. But sometimes it’s okay to run. Isn’t that what Prophetier’d taught them? Sometimes it’s better to be drunk with your family than sober without them. Or drunk without them.

So when Pen asked him to come back, just come back for one more surgery, sober up and do this last thing because Felix used to be great, The Surgeon of Speed, Felix said yes, and he’d sobered up for a day and done the surgery and held off all the demons that come to him when the liquid stops pouring.

Anna has Pen’s heart now, thumping and pumping inside her,
spraying little bits of Ultimate into her system. He’d watched it happen when he had her open on the table, the miracle of it, the slivered shards of metal swimming in her veins, electrifying her inside and out. It healed her, and it’ll make her stronger, stronger than anyone, strong enough maybe to make the sacrifice Pen didn’t. It brought her back, and everyone ought to come back.

It’s a hell of a story: a tale of redemption and loss and twisted metal straightened in the flow of red. It’s the myth of the ending that won’t ever come, the powers that creep into the lost places of all the lost lives.

And he wanted to tell Herc this even though he wasn’t supposed to. Not that Herc deserved to know or’d done anything special, but things were bad, and it was a good story, and it should be told, but Felix doesn’t tell it; and instead they go on, jostling back and forth, drinks sipped and slipped, pouring over edges everywhere.

Felix keeps the story inside him, and he likes it there, it glows a little, burns against the moisture that pours in, boiling it, melting it, transforming it into a thin steam that rises again, beats back against his lips, bounces lightly on his tongue demanding to be told, until he closes his mouth and lets it worm back down into him, a myth untold, circling back down to become its own fuel to fend off the pour, keeping a few things solid.

At the end of the evening, after the girl bartender who looks as old as his daughter should be kicks them out and she’s screaming about something and they’re laughing about something, they go out to the curb, and it’s raining, and they both aim their mouths upward to gather the falling driblets, let them pool in their mouths and slosh between their teeth and gums. There’s so much; it goes on forever, and it never fills them.

“There was something,” Herc says, spitting onto the pavement below. “You were saying something before about something. What were you saying?”

Felix gargles the water in his mouth and lets more come in. He’s got nothing to say; he’s too wet, soaked through. They all come back. He’ll wait until then, when all the brown and all the water leaks out of him, when he’s dry, and they all come back, and he greets them, hugs them close, shows them what he’s learned, that he’s dry now, all dry—he’ll start the story then.

“I remember,” Herc says. “I remember I wanted to tell you something,
a secret. Like my mom. Like her story about Zeus and the rape and the gods. I don’t think anyone raped her. Or, I don’t know, maybe someone did, but Zeus—who believes that bullshit, right? Anyway, never met the guy, so maybe it was nothing then. Just something she told people. But what the hell, right? I’m still here, right? I kept going, and I had powers, and I’m still here.”

His mouth overflowing, Felix smiles at the bigger man and waits for them to come back. They’ll come back soon. They have to. It repeats in his head, and it has a beat to it like the heart in his hand, in her chest, pumping metal through blood. They all come back. They all come back. This guy’s too drunk now anyway; he’ll tell the story later. There’ll be time later. They all come back. They all come back. Water pours from the sky, glancing off his face, nose, eyes, before heading down. They all come back. They all come back.

“You hear that! I don’t care anymore! I’m still here! I’m still here!” Herc continues to shout into the melted night.

Devil Girl #84

DG sips at her wine and measures the man sitting across from her, comparing him to the boy. “You’ve done bad things, Soldier. Kind of very bad things.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Pen, Prophetier, stopping the powers. That’s, y’know, not good.”

Soldier grunts, juts his chin out.

“Y’know people saw you, right? Everyone’s looking for you.”

Soldier squints under the bright light of the place. All the lamps’re out, but there’s enough afternoon sun left to fill the Devil’s house.

“I’m leaving,” Soldier says. “I came to say good-bye.”

“Oh, give me a freaking break.”

“I’m done.”

“You? You’re running away? The Soldier of Freedom? Can you imagine?” She imitates his drawl. “Another battle lost. What cost? What cost?” She laughs.

“I’m leaving. I won’t see you again.”

“C’mon now.” DG wipes the hair from her eyes. “Seriously, we’ll find a way out. We always do.”

“It’s like you said, I’ve done some bad things. I can’t see any good coming of me being around now. I’m sorry.”

“We can fix this.”

“No, I did it. I killed the boy. It’s not getting fixed.”

“Oh, don’t be so blah! What’ve I been telling you since the very tippy-top of things?” She lifts her glass, rests her lips in the wine. “Everyone comes back.” She takes a long sip.

Soldier doesn’t reply, and they sit for a few moments in silence. DG picks at a stain on her red dress, scraping off some forgotten yellow with her nail. She’d worn it for him. She’d always worn it for him.

“I think I ought to go,” he says.

“Wait, just wait.”

“I ought to go.” He slips his hand across the table, toward her own. A few inches from her fingers, he stops and holds back, taps his thumb on the wood a few times.

“Do you want me to forgive you?” she asks.

“No.” Soldier stands.

“I will, y’know, if you want.”

“No. I don’t want any of that.”

DG rubs her finger over a red nail. She tries to smile. “Can I at least tell you something?”

“I think I ought to go.”

“I probably told you this. I mean, I know I probably told you this, but still, I like my boyfriend, Runt. I really like him.” DG looks down and tucks a few threads of red hair behind her ear.

Soldier wraps his fingers over the back of his chair.

“I never had a boyfriend before,” she says, looking up. “Because I was the Devil or whatever. Before I would’ve gone on forever, right? And we’d still be meeting in those icky kind of places. You and me with all that. But now I have an end. Out there. Like
way
out there. Now, I just sort of stop.” DG makes a
pop
noise. “So I have to like grow and stuff. Pick up new lessons or whatever. I can’t go on forever. I end. So I’ve got to change—I’ve got to actually fall in love and get married and have kids so that Runt and his kids can be there when I die or whatever.”

DG puts her hands on the table, stares at her painted nails, remembers the millions that bowed before her, burned before her, all of them
begging for release. She’d painted her nails for them too; because she wanted to look pretty just to be mean.

“Look,” Soldier says, “I wasn’t—”

“I’m going to die now, Soldier,” DG says. “Since The Blue. So now I get Runt. Like for real. Get it, Soldier? Do you get it, kind of?”

He opens his mouth, licks his lips, and shuts his mouth again. God, she used to yell at him for licking his lips. It only dries them and gets you to lick them more.

“Do you fucking get it, Soldier?”

“You shouldn’t swear.”

“Ugh. My God! You were easier when you were smaller.” DG stands up and crosses the gap between them. She takes Soldier’s hand in her own, lets his crust run along her silk. She speaks in a soft voice. “I forgive you. That’s what I mean. I forgive you.”

He doesn’t move, and she leans into him, embracing him, feeling the strength he has left hesitate and then tug her close. He’s much taller, but his legs are weak, and he puts his weight on her, lets his head fall to her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“We all thought you were over. In that field. It was Pen’s story, right? It wasn’t yours. You were supposed to go away.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“But you didn’t.” She’s whispering now. “You came back. And then what? You killed Prophetier. You killed Pen, for God’s sake. And it’s all over. And then what? What comes then? When do you end, Soldier? When do you die?”

They hold each other close and for a while, and she feels his cold nose push into her neck, and it tickles a little, just as it used to tickle a little when he was a little boy, half-asleep from the stories, pushing his face into her neck, seeking warmth and rest.

When he finally talks, his lips graze her skin. “Thank you. I should’ve said it before. Thank you.” He breaks the hug and lightly pushes her away. Soldier picks his cane up off the floor and leans on it, preparing to go.

DG wipes her wet eye. “Ultimate’s dead, okay? Pen’s dead. He’s dead. But you’re not. Runt’s not. I’m not. Not yet.”

The Soldier of Freedom pulls a white kerchief from his pocket and
hands it to her. There’s a moment’s silence as she cleans her face, trying not to smear any mascara so she doesn’t look all crappy. When she’s done, she hands it back to him: her arm outstretched, her elbow arched, the kerchief pinched between thumb and forefinger, hanging neatly; and he grips it with his big hand, crumpling it into his fist.