Death's Excellent Vacation (13 page)

He shook his head, even pursing his lips as if disappointed by my pedestrian line of thinking. “Not a vampire, not a werewolf, not a zombie. We’re not at all like those people, though we have no objection to them. In fact, they can be quite useful. But we don’t drink blood or howl at the moon. Nothing so colorful. We simply observe. We are researchers, like yourself. When all this is gone, there must be some record.”

Even now, I still clung to the notion—or perhaps the hope—that this was all an elaborate joke. “You—you’re a researcher,” I said. My voice had gone flat. “A researcher who’s lived for hundreds of years. And of all the places in the world where you might go—of all the fascinating,
important
places where you might go—you’ve chosen to spend thirteen years in an office at LifeSpan Books?”

He appeared delighted by the question. “Isn’t it wonderful?” he cried. “As I mentioned, our relationship with time is not quite linear in the way you might be thinking. But these past thirteen years have been a wonderful break.”

“A break?”

“Don’t you see? I’m on vacation! All of this is just another Renaissance fair to me!” He sighed fondly. “But it’s time to be getting back.”

“Getting back. To your research job.”

“Actually, Jeff, I’m no longer in research.”

“No?”

“No. I’m in recruiting. And we’re all terribly impressed with you. With your application. And so soon after Miss Rossmire! Do you know Miss Rossmire, by the way? I’m sure you’ll like her.”

I lurched to my feet. “You—you’re impressed with me? But all those red checks. All those missing citations. All that—”

“Just a formality during the apprentice period. Nothing to worry about now. I’m really quite charming when you get to know me, as you’ll discover in the fullness of time.” He extended his hand. “What do you say?”

I simply stared at him.

“Do you need some time to think about it? Of course you’re perfectly welcome to stay here and carry on as before. I will be moving on, and there will be no further obstacles to your advancement. Should you elect to remain, however, I should perhaps mention that matters will not proceed as you might wish.” He leaned up against the window, resting his head against his forearm. “If you and I part company tonight, you will continue here for another twelve years. It’s all a bit conventional, I’m afraid. After four years you move into a small town house in Shirlington, telling yourself that you need space for an office in which to write your novel. Two years later you fall behind on the mortgage, and your new girlfriend—Cheryl, from copyediting—seizes upon the opening to move in with you, in the interests of sharing expenses. What had been a casual, halfhearted romance on your part now becomes fraught with the expectation of marriage. You resist for two more years, finally bowing to the inevitable two days before Cheryl’s thirtieth birthday. Within three years you begin an affair with a woman you meet at Gilpin Books, which becomes public just as your wife discovers a lump in her left breast. Her bravery and fortitude as she battles with cancer is thrown into brilliant relief by your disgrace; she is a martyr in the eyes of everyone you have ever known. Though you tend to your dying wife with saintly devotion, it is too late for redemption. At her funeral fourteen months later you sob inconsolably and no one makes a move to comfort you, not even Kate and Brian. In time you turn to drink, and after many warnings and probation periods, you finally lose your job at LifeSpan. For a while you cobble together a living of freelance writing and editing, but the loneliness weighs heavily. One rainy night, driving home from a strip club in the District, you slam your car into the base of the
Appomattox
statue at the corner of Washington and Duke. You are not hurt—indeed, in your drunken state you find the accident to be the very last word in hilarity. You climb out of your car, spread your arms to the heavens, and roar with laughter as the rain drenches your face. At that moment, you are struck and killed by a dairy van.”

I couldn’t speak. He reached past me for the list of missing citations on my desk.

“I don’t understand,” I said at last. “Why is it—how do you—”

“Don’t you see?” He spread the page across his knee and erased the last of the red check marks, brushing away the crumbs with a flick of his hand. “It just is. You’ll see. It just is.”

EVERYTHING started to happen very quickly then, but I found time for a final piece of business. Before we left, I slipped a note and a five-dollar bill under the door of Kate’s office:

Aeternum vale. Farewell forever. Next time, the nachos are on me.

A. Lee Martinez has published six novels, most of which involve either monsters or armchair metaphysics. Usually both. He has a reputation as a “humorous fantasy” writer that he’s not always comfortable with, but as long as the checks keep coming, he’ll keep cashing them. If you see him on the street, please, don’t call him zany. His first name is Alex, but he sometimes goes by Lee (presumably) to confuse and beguile his many enemies.

THE box held horrors beyond imagining, papers inscribed with hopeless-ness and pain. All men faced it on a daily basis, praying to whatever gods might be, cruel and indifferent to the suffering of mortals, that it would not be the end that they found when they reached into its darkened interior. That ever-present box, haunting every house, every apartment, every place where civilized men dwelt, reminding all that they were not masters of their fate, that no matter how much a man might want to deny it, the universe demanded its pound of flesh and would never be satisfied, would never stop sucking the life from a man, would feed on misery and sweat and blood until a man’s death. Sometimes, even beyond that.

Philip, like all civilized men, had learned to live with the box. Even become somewhat expectant of its demands. Lately, though, he’d realized just how much it had enslaved him. How he trudged to it every morning and bowed before it like a puppet without a will of his own. But even knowing that didn’t free him from its tyranny.

So this morning, like always, he walked to the box, that maddening box, and reached into its shadowy depths and withdrew its unholy commandments.

“Shit,” he groaned. “Bills.”

He slammed the mailbox shut ruefully. He thought about getting an ax and chopping the damned thing down. But you couldn’t kill the thing. The box wasn’t the beast, not even the head of the beast. It was just a tentacle, reaching out from the great unknown, from that horrible place where credit card bills, junk mail, and despair were spawned.

A chill wind swept up from the ocean below. The clouds parted to allow a glimpse of sunshine. But it was only a glimpse before the sky became that endless broiling gray.

Philip ran inside. Vance was making breakfast. The smell of eggs and bacon was the first encouraging moment of the day.

“It’s the last of the eggs,” said Vance, ruining the moment. “Anything good in the mail?”

Philip grunted, unable to articulate in words what Vance already knew. It was easier for Vance, though. He’d just come along with Philip on this venture, but it was Philip who’d thought of it.

Why the hell did he think anyone would want to visit a bed-and-breakfast in this chilly cultural wasteland? There were areas in New England, plenty of them, with quaintness to spare, with color-changing leaves and folksy folks full of folksy homespun wisdom accompanied by folksy accents.

And then there was Clam Bay. Cold even when sunny, gloomy even during the four weeks of “summer,” trees without leaves all year long, and full of weird people. And not in the quirky way. No, these were just weird. Quiet, not unfriendly, but wary of strangers. And anyone whose family hadn’t lived in the town for at least five generations was a stranger. It didn’t help any that Philip’s great-great-grandfather had been one of Clam Bay’s citizens. And that the house Philip had inherited had been a literal ruin until he’d invested thousands of dollars into fixing it up in hopes of attracting tourists. He was still an outsider.

It was kind of hard to hide. Not just because everyone in Clam Bay had a tendency to wear gray, shuffle slowly as if dragging themselves reluctantly across the land, and speak in a slow, halting, decidedly non-quaint, nonfolksy way. They also looked alike. It was a small gene pool in this town, and it hadn’t really worked out that well for any of the citizens of Clam Bay.

Also, the clamming was lousy in Clam Bay.

Philip and Vance ate breakfast in near silence. There was no need to remark on their growing pile of bills and the lack of tourists. Without looking at the budget, Philip estimated they had another four months before the all-consuming debt . . . well . . . consumed them.

The bell attached to the front door jingled. Philip and Vance jumped up and ran to greet the visitor. Their hopes were dashed by the sight of the Clam Bay constable.

“Hello,” said Philip halfheartedly.

The constable nodded and tipped his gray hat. “Mornin’, fellas. I’m afraid we have us a slight little problem here.”

Philip tried to place the accent. It wasn’t New Englandish. Not quite. Clam Bay had its own special dialect. It really was a world of itself. Too bad it wasn’t in the charming Old World way, but the creepy, skin-crawling fashion. But for all their creepiness, the folks of Clam Bay hadn’t done anything to Philip or Vance.

And now there was a problem.

The constable led them outside and pointed to a hanging sign posted by the road. “Want to tell me about this?”

Vance said, “I found it in the attic. Thought it looked Old World. Kind of cool.”

The icy wind made the sign swing. The constable steadied it. “We’d like you to take it down, if you could.”

“Why?”

The constable made a snorting noise and spat up a wad of green phlegm. “We just would rather if you did.”

“Excuse me,” said Vance, “but this isn’t a police state, is it? We can have anything we want on our house, can’t we?”

The constable frowned. It wasn’t easy to detect, because the citizens of Clam Bay had mouths bent downward naturally. “Ehyah. It’s just, well, we don’t like to think about it. About the old town name, huh.” He worked his jaw as if testing to see if it still functioned properly.

“You can barely read it,” said Vance.

“It’s a memory,” said the Constable. “A bad memory that we would rather forget.”

He gazed out toward the ocean with a strange combination of yearning and dread. Nobody swam in Clam Bay’s waters. They were too cold. But sometimes, Philip would catch a citizen or two standing on the beach. Always with that same unsettling expression.

“We’ll take it down,” said Philip. “No problem.”

The constable nodded. “Ehyah.” He rubbed his face. “Ehyah.” He shuffled away, never taking his eyes off the sea.

“Why’d you agree to that?” asked Vance. “It’s a free country.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Philip. “Who really cares? We gotta live here, right? At least for another few months.”

“It’s censorship. It’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, yeah. You can fight the good fight when we go back to New York.”

Grumbling, Vance wrestled with the sign, stubbornly trying to uproot it with his bare hands.

CLAM Bay’s general store was large on the outside. But on the inside, it was half empty. The weird thing was that instead of splitting the store down the middle with empty aisles on one side and filled aisles on the other, the arrangement was seemingly random. There was the canned goods aisle, an empty aisle, the cereal aisle, produce, another two empty aisles, frozen foods, one more empty aisle, ethnic foods (which amounted to tortillas and taco shells), several more empty aisles, and at the very end, farthest from the entrance, the meat aisle. Even weirder, the lighting of the store was a murky twilight that refused to venture into the empty aisles, leaving them shadowy regions of darkness. Sometimes, Philip thought he saw something lurking in the aisle between frozen and ethnic. Not exactly saw, but sensed.

There was nobody ever in the store. He was sure that people shopped here. They had to. It was the only place to get groceries. But he never saw anyone other than the raggedy guy by the cash register. So Philip wasn’t really paying attention when he nearly plowed into the woman as he turned into the aisle.

They jumped simultaneously.

“Oh, jeez. I’m sorry,” he said.

She smiled. It’d been a while since he’d seen a smile like that. And she wasn’t wearing standard Clam Bay gray or black. No, she had on a blue sweater and some tan slacks, and Philip realized how cheery tan could be in these circumstances.

“Don’t worry about it. I should’ve been looking. It’s just . . . well, I’m just not used to seeing anyone else here.” She extended her hand. “I’m Angela.”

“Hi, I’m—”

“Philip,” she interrupted.

“Have we met?”

“Oh, no. I just arrived in town yesterday. But the village is buzzing with gossip about the two”—she made air quotes—“ ‘big-city fellows’ who moved into the Bay.”

He had a hard time imagining Clam Bay buzzing. The cashier was sitting slouched by the front of the store, motionless, staring out the window.

Angela moved past him and headed toward the register. He hadn’t finished his shopping, but he followed her. “So what brings you to Clam Bay?” he asked.

“Just visiting my mother.”

That surprised him. She didn’t have the look of someone born here. She wasn’t gorgeous. Or even especially attractive. In a different place, she might even be on the pretty side of plain. But here, in this place, she was a knockout. How the gene pool worked that one out, he couldn’t figure.

“I was adopted,” she said. “That’s what you were thinking, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, was it that obvious?”

“No, but it’s the first thought any outsider should probably have. So how about you?” she asked. “Why did you and your”—she broke out the air quotes again—“ ‘life partner’ decide to move to Clam Bay?”

“Not really a good reason for it, I guess. Just bad judgment on . . . Wait. What did you call us?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She blushed. “Was that the wrong term? I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You think . . . Uh, we’re not gay.”

She laughed. “Oh, it’s all right. Nobody here cares about something like that. We’re pretty tolerant of alternative lifestyles.”

“We’re not gay,” he said with a little more force than intended. “We’re just friends.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Girlfriends?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Confirmed bachelors?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Not confirmed,” he replied.

“So two single guys from the big city move to our little town and open a bed-and-breakfast. But you’re not gay.”

“We’re just friends,” he said.

“Right. Because straight men open bed-and-breakfasts all the time.”

“These straight men did.”

“Straight men named Philip and Vance.”

He wanted to argue, but he was suddenly beginning to question it himself. The thought was so distracting that he barely noticed when she ended the conversation and bid him farewell.

VANCE took the news of their “big-city fellows” status better than Philip. Probably because it turned out that he actually was gay.

“You’re what?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure,” said Vance, “but I’d say it’s seventy-thirty for it.”

“But I’ve seen you with women.”

“That would be the thirty part of the equation,” said Vance as he sipped his coffee.

“Oh my God. That’s why you agreed to do this with me. You think I’m gay, too!”

Vance chuckled. “Dude, you’re not gay.”

“I know I’m not, but do you know I’m not?”

“I’d say ninety-two-eight on the straight side,” said Vance.

“How the hell—”

“They’ve made some terrific advances in gaydar, dude.”

Philip laid his head on the table and thought about it for a while. “So eight percent gay?”

“Remember that week you went around humming ‘Hello, Dolly’?”

“That’s worth eight percent?”

“That, and the fact that
you
did want to open a bed-and-breakfast. Even I had my doubts when I first heard you mention the idea.”

“Bed-and-breakfasts are not an innately gay enterprise,” countered Philip.

“Fair enough,” said Vance. “But I wouldn’t lay odds on many single straight guys who start these things up.”

“But—”

“I don’t make the rules, dude. I just get them from the website.”

“So if you don’t think I’m gay, why did you agree to do this with me?”

“For the reason I originally said,” replied Vance. “I’d just lost my job, had nothing holding me in the city, and it sounded like something to do.”

“And that’s it?”

Vance shook his head. “Philly, I love you, buddy. I do. But you’re not my type.”

“I’m not?”

“What? Are you insulted?”

Philip was pondering that when the front door jingled. He didn’t know how he still managed to get excited at the sound. It never meant a tourist looking for a room. It had been raining for the last few hours, a slick, frozen rain that made the roads hard to travel. So maybe someone had to stop, and the Nook was the only place convenient. It was a long shot, but he peeked out into the foyer with a smidgen of hope.

It was Angela. Although she wasn’t a tourist, she wasn’t an unwelcome sight. He introduced Vance.

“This is my
friend
Vance,” he said, hitting the
friend
part hard. “My good
friend
Vance.”

Angela and Vance exchanged smirking glances. And he could see their point. Hitting
friend
too hard was a double-edged sword. It could be trouble.

“Don’t mind him,” said Vance. “He’s just discovering he’s homophobic, but otherwise, he’s a good guy.”

They gave her a quick tour. The rain started coming down harder, judging by the increasing beat on the roof. Lightning flashed, too. Lightning without thunder. Philip couldn’t remember hearing thunder once in Clam Bay, even in the heaviest storm.

“You guys did a great job. I hardly recognize the place,” remarked Angela when they completed the journey and ended at the kitchen. “Love the decorating.”

“That was mostly Vance,” said Philip. “I’m more of the carpentry and plumbing guy.”

“Yes, and I’m in charge of flower arranging and doilies,” said Vance with a perfectly straight face.

She reached out and put her hand on Philip’s. “I believe you.”

He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Actually, I believe Vance. We had a talk when you were making the espressos.” She took a drink of hers. “You make a great espresso, by the way.”

Things were looking up in Clam Bay just then.