Hart & Boot & Other Stories (25 page)

Or maybe he was just trying to turn this miracle into some kind of theatrical romance.

“You look really beautiful when you talk about movies,” he said.

“You’re sweet, Mr. Nickels.”

***

Pete came the next three nights, a few minutes later each time, as the door appeared for shorter periods of time. Ally talked to him about movies, incredulous at the bizarre gaps in his knowledge—“You’ve never heard of Sara Hansen? She’s one of the greatest directors of all time!” (Pete wondered if she’d died young in his world, or never been born at all.) Ally had a fondness for bad science fiction movies, especially the many Ed Wood films starring Bela Lugosi, who had lived many years longer in Ally’s world, rather than dying during the filming of
Plan 9 from Outer Space
. She liked good sci-fi movies, too, especially Ron Howard’s
Ender’s Game
. Pete regretted that he’d never see any of those films, beyond the snippets she showed him to illustrate her points, and he regretted even more that he’d soon be unable to see Ally at all, when the shop ceased to appear, as seemed inevitable. She understood character arcs, the use of color, the underappreciated skills of silent film actors, the bizarre audacity of pre-Hayes-Code-era films, the perils of voiceover, why an extended single-camera continuous scene was worth becoming rapturous about, why the animation of Ray Harryhausen was in some ways infinitely more satisfying than the slickest CGI. She was his
people
.

“Why do you like movies so much?” he asked on that third night, over a meal of Szechwan shrimp, her leaning on her side of the counter, he on his.

She chewed, thinking. “Somebody described the experience of reading great fiction as being caught up in a vivid, continuous dream. Someone else said comics were the perfect medium, because they’re words and pictures, and you can do
anything
with words and pictures. I think movies are the most immediate and immersive form of fiction, and they do comics one better. People say movies are passive, or that the best movie isn’t as good as the best book, and I say they’re not watching the right movies, or else they’re not watching them
right
. My life doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I’m hungry and lonely and cold a lot of the time. My parents are shit, I can’t afford tuition for next semester, I don’t know what I want to do when I graduate anyway. But when I see a great film, I feel like I understand life a little better, and when I see a not-so-great film, it at least makes me forget the shitty parts of my life for a couple of hours. Movies taught me to be brave, to be romantic, to stand up for myself, to not be treacherous, and those were all things my parents never taught me. Movies showed me there was more to the world than chores and whippings when I didn’t do the chores good enough. I didn’t have church or loving parents, but I had
movies
, cheap matinees when I cut school, videos after I worked and saved up enough to buy a TV and player of my own. I didn’t have a mentor, but I had Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Jimmy Stewart in
It’s a Wonderful Life
. Sometimes, sure, movies are a way to hide from life, but shit, sometimes you need to hide from life, to see a better life on the screen, or a life that makes your life not seem so bad. Movies taught me not to settle for less.” She took a swig from her water bottle. “That’s why I love movies.”

“Wow,” Pete said. “That’s... wow.”

“So,” she said, looking at him oddly. “Why do you pretend to like movies?”

Pete frowned. “What? Pretend?”

“Hey, it’s okay. You came in and said you were a big movie buff, but you don’t even know who Sara Hansen is, you’ve never seen
Jason and the Argonauts
, you talk about actors starring in movies they didn’t appear in... I mean, I figured you liked me, you didn’t know how else to flirt with me or something, but I
like
you, and if you want to ask me out, you can, you don’t have to be a movie trivia expert to impress me.”

“I
do
like you,” Pete said. “But I
love
movies. I really do.”

“Pete... you thought Clark Gable was in
Gone with the Wind
.” She shrugged. “Need I say more?”

Pete looked at the clock. He had fifteen minutes. “Wait here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He ran home. The run was getting easier. Maybe exercise wasn’t such a bad idea. He filled a backpack with books from his reference shelves—
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies
, the
AFI Film Guide
, the previous year’s
Video and DVD Guide
, others—then ran back. Panting, he set the heavy bag on the counter. “Books,” he gasped. “Read,” gasp. “See you,” gasp, “tomorrow.”

“Okay, Pete,” Ally said, raising her eyebrow in that way she had. “Whatever you say.”

Pete lurched out of the store, still breathing hard, and when he turned to look back, the door had already disappeared. It wasn’t even 10:00 yet. Time was running out, and even though Ally would soon leave his life forever, he couldn’t let her think he was ignorant about their shared passion. The books might not be enough to convince her. Tomorrow, he’d show her something more.

***

Pete went in as soon as the door appeared, at nearly 9:30. Ally didn’t waste time with pleasantries. She slammed down his copy of the
AFI Desk Reference
and said, “What the
hell
is going on?”

Pete took the bag off his shoulder, opened it, and withdrew his slim silver laptop, along with a CD wallet full of DVDs. “
Gone with the Wind
,” he said, inserting a disc into the laptop, calling up the DVD controls, and fast forwarding to the first scene with Clark Gable.

Ally stared at the LCD screen, and Pete watched the reflected colors move against her face. Gable’s voice, though tinny through the small speakers, was resonant as always.

Pete closed the laptop gently. “I
do
know movies,” he said. “Just not exactly the same ones you do.”

“This, those books,
you
... you’re from another world. It’s like... like...”

“Something out of the
Twilight Zone
, I know. But actually,
you’re
from another world. Every night, for an hour or so—less, lately—the door to Impossible Dreams appears on my street.

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Come on,” he said, and held out his hand. She took it, and he led her out the door. “Look,” he said, gesturing to the bakery next door, the gift shop on the other side, the bike repair place across the street.”

Ally sagged back against the door, half-retreating back inside the shop. “This isn’t right. This isn’t what’s supposed to be here.”

“Go on back in,” he said. “The store has been appearing later and vanishing sooner every night, and I’d hate for you to get stranded here.”

“Why is this happening?” Ally said, still holding his hand.

“I don’t know,” Pete said. “Maybe there’s no reason. Maybe in a movie there would be, but...”

“Some movies reassure us that life makes sense,” Ally said. “And some movies remind us that life doesn’t make any sense at all.” She exhaled roughly. “And some things don’t have anything to do with movies.”

“Bite your tongue,” Pete said. “Listen, keep the laptop. The battery should run for a couple of hours. There’s a spare in the bag, all charged up, which should be good for a couple more hours. Watching movies really sucks up the power, I’m afraid. I don’t know if you’ll be able to find an adapter to charge the laptop in your world—the standards are different. But you can see a couple of movies at least. I gave you all my favorite DVDs, great stuff by Hayao Miyazaki, Beat Takeshi, Wes Anderson, some classics... take your pick.”

“Pete...”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It’s been great talking to you these past few nights.” He tried to think of what he’d say if this was the last scene in a movie, his
Casablanca
farewell moment, and a dozen appropriate quotes sprang to mind. He dismissed all of them. “I’m going to miss you, Ally.”

“Thank you, Pete,” she said, and went, reluctantly, back into Impossible Dreams. She looked at him from the other side of the glass, and he raised his hand to wave just as the door disappeared.

***

Pete didn’t let himself go back the next night, because he knew the temptation to go into the store would be too great, and it might only be open for ten minutes this time. But after pacing around his living room for hours, he finally went out after 10:00 and walked to the place the store had been, thinking maybe she’d left a note, wishing for some closure, some final-reel gesture, a rose on the doorstep, something.

But there was nothing, no door, no note, no rose, and Pete sat on the sidewalk, wishing he’d thought to photograph Ally, wondering which movies she’d decided to watch, and what she’d thought of them.

“Hey, Mr. Nickels.”

Pete looked up. Ally stood there, wearing a red coat, his laptop bag hanging from her shoulder. She sat down beside him. “I didn’t think you’d show, and I did
not
relish the prospect of wandering in a strange city all night with only fifty dollars in nickels to keep me warm. Some of the street names are the same as where I’m from, but not enough of them for me to figure out where you lived.”

“Ally! What are you doing here?”

“You gave me those
books
,” she said, “and they all talk about
Citizen Kane
by Orson Welles, how it transformed cinema.” She punched him gently in the shoulder. “But you didn’t give me the DVD!”

“But... Everyone’s seen
Citizen Kane
!”

“Not where I’m from. The print was destroyed. Hearst knew the movie was based on his life, and he made a deal with the studio, the guards looked the other way, and someone destroyed the film. Welles had to start over from nothing, and he made
Jason and the Argonauts
instead. But you’ve got
Citizen Kane
! How could I
not
come see it?”

“But Ally... you might not be able to go back.”

She laughed, then leaned her head on his shoulder. “I don’t plan to go back. There’s nothing for me there.”

Pete felt a fist of panic clench in his chest. “This isn’t a movie,” he said.

“No,” Ally said. “It’s better than that. It’s my life.”

“I just don’t know—”

Ally patted his leg. “Relax, Pete. I’m not asking you to take me in. Unlike Blanche DuBois—played by Jessica Tandy, not Vivien Leigh, where I’m from—I don’t depend on the kindness of strangers. I ran away from home when I was fifteen, and never looked back. I’ve started from nothing before, with no friends or prospects or ID, and I can do it again.”

“You’re not starting from nothing,” Pete said, putting his arm around her. “Definitely not.” The lights weren’t going to come up, the curtain wasn’t coming down; this wasn’t the end of a movie. For once, Pete liked his life better than the vivid continuous dream of the screen. “Come on. Let’s go watch
Citizen Kane
.”

They stood and walked together. “Just out of curiosity,” he said. “Which movies did you watch on the laptop?”

“Oh, none of them. I thought it would be more fun watching them with you.”

Pete laughed. “Ally, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “You sound like you’re quoting something,” she said, “but I don’t know what.”

“We’ve got a lot of watching to do,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot of
everything
to do,” Ally replied.

Lachrymose and the Golden Egg

The woman in the wood was fair-skinned, white-gowned, and altogether lovely, but I didn’t let her beauty lull me. In the Forest of Intangibles, things are seldom what they seem. That might be the fundamental truth of doing Vision, of coming to this place—you’re lying on a couch somewhere, dying, but in your mind you live life richly in peril and beauty.

The woman stepped from the shadows onto that winding, redwood-crowded path, close enough for me to see the iridescence of her eyes and to smell the roses on her breath, which made me suspicious, because what kind of woman eats roses? She looked fuzzy, like a soft-focus photograph. She had red hair. They often do.

“Foul temptress?” I said, stepping back, clanking in my armor. A suit of plate mail often appears when I’m startled. I wished the armor away and replaced it with soft green leggings and a deerskin shirt. “Wily seductress?”

“Damsel in distress.” She leaned against a tree, hands clasped before her.

I clutched my stick and looked around. “Immediate distress, or general distress?” I worried about ogres, or killbots. They often menace damsels, and when the wind’s wrong, you can’t smell them coming, neither rotten meat nor engine oil. It’s hard to hurt an ogre or a killbot with a staff, but I’m useless with a sword. I used a blade on my first few outings, but after chopping off my feet six times, I switched to a stick.

“General distress. I seek an artifact. If I do not find it, I will die.”

“What sort of artifact?” I’d just finished a war, so a quest sounded fun. “A heavy one, I bet, and you need me to carry it for you.”

She glared, straightening. Her image sharpened. Women here come in two varieties: Princess Beautiful and Hag Ugly. Only hair color and the number of warts vary. My damsel fell into the first category.

“I seek the golden egg. I am
quite
capable of carrying it myself. I hoped to enlist your aid as a warrior.”

“Rogue warrior and occasional thief, actually,” I said. “My name is Lachrymose.”

She covered her mouth in surprise. “Lachrymose!
The
Lachrymose?”

I bowed. “None other. And I will gladly join you, my fair—”

***

“Get up, Larry!” my sister Franny said, slapping my face. Back to the real world, I blinked and groaned. She put down the hypodermic she’d just used to inject me with anti-Vision, neutralizing my drug, my therapy, my escape.

“What? I just started a new thread!”

“You’ve been under for two days. It’s almost time for your appointment.” She took the IV needle from my elbow.

I covered my eyes. The dingy walls, the pebbly plaster, and the misshapen hook-rugs depressed me after the glories of the Forest of Intangibles. “I can miss it this time. I’ll go next week.”

“You’re nearabout out of money,” she said.

My stomach rumbled. I uncovered my eyes. Franny handed me a tube of vitamin-packed protein mush. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go. What’ve you been doing?”

“Nothing.” Franny’s in her twenties, but she can pass for fifteen, and she gave me an innocent blue-eyed look. “Sitting around. Anything interesting happen this outing?”

“There’s always something interesting. You should try it.”

She shook her head. “No thanks. I value my brain cells.”

“I defeated the Barbarian Chieftain of the Plains of Squalor. His people call me ‘He Who Lacks Remorse.’ I had just met up with a sexy damsel when you woke me.”

She giggled. “I looked up ‘lachrymose’ in the dictionary this weekend. It means ‘weepy.’ ‘Given to shedding tears.’ Lachrymose, rogue crybaby.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know what it means. I must’ve read it years ago, without knowing what it meant, and my subconscious thought it would make a good name. It doesn’t mean weepy when I’m out, though. It’s just my name, striking fear into the hearts and all that.”

She ignored me. “Eat your mush and get to your appointment on time, or I’ll get fired.”

“I won’t fire you.”

“They randomly monitor us, you know. Dr. Hammond can dismiss me, get my license revoked, and you couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” I stood, unkinking my muscles. “I shouldn’t have given you this job.”

“No other nurse would let you go out on Vision so much.”

“True. I guess I’ll keep you.” I did a few jumping jacks, then started jogging in place.

“What’s this?” Franny said. She lifted a long wooden staff, like a dowel, from the corner.

I stopped jogging. “A quarterstaff. How’d it get here? I use one when I’m out, it’s Lachrymose’s weapon.” I took it, feeling the heft. I’d never held one before, really.

“Are there gaps in your memory?” Franny asked, suddenly nurse-professional.

I laughed, uneasy, and looked at the floor. “Don’t know. Can’t remember. I guess so, since I don’t remember getting this.” I leaned the stick in the corner.

“I don’t remember seeing it before,” she said.

I shrugged. “I’ll get a regenerative shot today, grow some new brain cells. Don’t worry.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do so much Vision,” she said. “The deterioration wouldn’t happen so fast if you didn’t compound it—”

I held up my hand. I didn’t say anything, but she stopped talking. I got my jacket and left for the clinic. I could sense Franny watching me with worried eyes.

***

“How’s the leech business, Doc?” I asked.

Dr. Montressor laughed dutifully and hung the blood bag on a hook. He gave me a rubber ball to squeeze while my blood (worth more, per ounce, than gold) dripped out.

“Relax,” he said. “You always get so tense.” He went to his desk and sat down. “We lost two producers over the weekend, so the market rate’s gone up. You’ll get a bigger check than usual.”

“Great news,” I said, fake-smiling. I don’t know why he tells me when another producer dies. Reminders of impending death can’t be good for my mental health.

“You won’t last much longer yourself if you keep using Vision,” he said.

Doc’s built like a side of beef, only flabbier. He probably played football when the world was young. Now he runs the Hammond’s Disease Research Institute, a Very Important Man. He’d never let Vision or any other pollutant into his bloodstream. But he doesn’t need to escape reality like we producers do.

“I don’t have much longer either way,” I said. “I’m thirty-three.” In five or six more years, Hammond’s would get to my involuntary functions, and I’d forget how to breathe. Not something I liked to think about. “How goes the quest for a cure?”

“We’re making progress.” He wrote something on a clipboard.

“How about the synthetic Serum?”

“Lots of promising work being done.”

The usual answers. Some say the Institute isn’t looking for a cure at all, or that they’ve found one and won’t release it until they can synthesize the Serum. I don’t know. Doc’s not friendly, but I can’t believe he’d watch us die just to keep the Serum supply coming.

“Tell me—”

“Let me ask the questions. Have you had any symptoms?”

I thought about the mysterious quarterstaff. “Forgetting stuff, maybe, losing time. I’m not sure.”

He grunted. “The Vision does that. Memory loss is only a symptom in late-stage Hammond’s. You might have hallucinations at this point, but anything else is due to Vision. You should stop using it. People depend on you.”

“People depend on the Serum.” I wiggled the tube in my arm. “Other people have Hammond’s, they’re churning out super-antibodies. Let them stay sober.” I looked away. Normally I’m easygoing, but finding the quarterstaff made me edgy. I hadn’t suffered any symptoms before, of Hammond’s disease
or
Vision killing my brain cells. I thought I’d adjusted years ago to the idea of dying young, but maybe I just avoided thinking about it. Going out on Vision helps you avoid thinking about things. “Stop bugging me. Vision gets me through.”

“Your entire life is ruled by chemicals, Larry. The one we get from your blood, that saves lives, and the one you shoot into your arm, to help hide you from life. It’s funny.”

“Yeah, hilarious. I should take my show on the road.”

Doc withdrew the needle and put the blood bag in his silver refrigeration unit. They do something to the blood, extract the Serum from it, and send it to save the world. The Serum cures Parkinson’s disease and, with regular administration, stops epilepsy. It halts a dozen different cancers and speeds up human metabolism. They’re still finding uses for it.

My jacked-up immune system works almost flawlessly. I don’t get colds or infections or anything. Just Hammond’s disease, gradually turning my gray matter to mush. Having Hammond’s is like finding the fountain of youth and realizing it’s running through lead pipes, poisoned.

I took my money and walked home, ready for another Vision-shot.
That’s
the wonder drug if you ask me, and it comes from Colombian laboratories, not some guy’s bloodstream. It doesn’t keep me alive, but it keeps me from wanting to die.

***

Back in the Forest, with the damsel. The background wavered for a moment, then came into focus. I’ve used Vision for a long time, and believing in the world comes naturally. Vision induces a prolonged dream state, but the dreams are lucid and more vivid than opium fantasies. I can exercise some control over the environment, but not much. My subconscious crafts the world. I read fantasy and horror stories to get material, but sometimes unexpected stuff rises from memory-depths I can’t consciously access.

“—lady, in your quest,” I finished.

“There are many travails ahead, Lachrymose.”

“I have a stout stick and a strong heart. Let’s begin.” She nodded, and we walked. “Why do you require the egg? Are you under a curse only its touch can cure? Will you be killed by a bad fairy if you don’t find it?”

“No, no. The golden egg bestows immortality, and without that, I will surely die.”

I stopped twirling my stick. “What do you mean?”

Patiently, as if explaining to a child, “If I do not obtain immortality, my life is forfeit, for eventually I will die.”

“But not anytime soon. So you aren’t a damsel in distress after all.”

“Not
immediate
distress, no.”

So. A very forward-thinking damsel.

A day later, after a few typical altercations with monsters and brigands, we came to a castle. Normally reality doesn’t intrude when I’m on an outing (Lachrymose the Rogue acts in the moment), but I wished I could achieve immortality as easily in the real world as I could here.

“This is the home of Montrose, the evil Ninja King,” she said.

I tried not to giggle. This wasn’t the first time my subconscious had mixed together incompatible elements. Once I’d fought dinosaurs and aliens in the same outing, and another time I’d battled Electrified Robots and the Slime God, working together for my destruction. Now I faced a Ninja King in a black gothic castle. “He has the egg?”

“Yes, but surely hidden away.”

“Then we’ll have to find it.” I twirled my staff.

“You will have to kill him first. And, having the golden egg, he may be immortal.”

“We’ll figure it out.” I went to the massive iron doors and banged on them with my quarterstaff. The door rang like a gong. “Montrose! Let us in, villain, and face your death!” I waited.

The doors didn’t open, but a black, hairy man jumped from a high window. He landed in a crouch and grinned at me, yellow teeth in a furred face. He snarled, half-gorilla, half-werewolf. He whipped out a wickedly sharp katana. He wore a red headband, and his eyes wept pus.

“Montrose!” I shouted, lifting my staff to a defensive position.

“No,” my damsel said. “That is Griffonious, the Ninja King’s bodyguard and chief lieutenant.”

The big ape came at me with his sword, and I whipped my staff down across his—

***

“Your timing sucks!” I shouted at Franny when I woke.

“Wasn’t me.” She didn’t look up from her magazine. “It wore off naturally. I think your new supplier cut this batch with something, you were only under for about thirty hours.”

I buy Vision in unusually (illegally) strong doses, and I’d hooked up with a new dealer for this batch. It was sufficiently strong, cutting out bleed-through from the real world, but it lasted only half as long as usual. I’d have to go back to my old supplier.

“Were you about to get lucky with your damsel?”

“No. I was fighting a ninja were-gorilla.”

“Mmm. You hear about this ‘Applied Psychomechanics’ stuff?”

“No.”

She flipped to a page in her magazine. “Some researchers think Hammond’s disease activates latent psychic powers. That people who have the disease or use the Serum can be telepathic, telekinetic, stuff like that.”

“Jesus. I’ve got enough trouble inside my own head. Why would I want to see into someone else’s?”