The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (24 page)

I would stand at my window with the lights out, pick up my binoculars with one hand, the telephone receiver with the other, and call. To see her face when she knew who it was! Often she’d hang right up. Or I’d hang up, just in case she was having the line tapped. One can’t be too careful. I watched her cry. I watched her throw the receiver down and shake. I watched her cover her head and fall to the floor, scared as a human being can be.

The astonishing thing was she didn’t tell me about the calls until a month after I’d begun them. What courage she had. I was outraged. Call the police! Who does this pervert think he is! I had many good suggestions. She was calmed and heartened by what I told her to do. She was sure one of my ideas would work.

But they couldn’t because I knew what they were and was always watching. When she put the whistle to her mouth and blew as hard as she could into the receiver, I snatched the phone from my ear and laughed. When she had blown herself out, I put my whistle in and tooting, broke her eardrum. Things like that.

I’d call in the middle of the night and tell her terrible things. Then she would call me minutes later and say I’m so so sorry, but he called again and please talk to me.

Talk? I would rush over and hold her in my arms, the best man she ever had. Peter Pan, lover, no fair-weather friend here! Sometimes the phone rang when I was there but she would never answer. I would, and twice pretended it was
him.
Cursed and screamed, “The police are after you, you fucking creep!”

What I would have done next I have no idea, because one night in April I called, watched her walk by the telephone and jump out the window. Zoom! What a surprise.

Not much more to tell you. Here’s a hint—maybe I’m someone you already know. Maybe not. Maybe I’m looking at you right now. Have you ever thought about how many people look at you that you don’t even see in a lifetime?

Soon,

Your Tired Angel

T
HE MOST FRIGHTENING SOUND
in the world is your own heart beating. No one likes to talk about that, but it is true. In the midst of deep fear, it’s a secret beast pounding a giant fist on some inner door, demanding to get out.

A few minutes before the accident, I saw a line of graffiti written on a wall. In scragged white letters a foot high, it said “THE DEAD LOVE YOU.” What did that mean? What kind of citizen would think it important enough to paint on a wall in the middle of the city? Easy enough to dismiss as a stunt, or a message to the world from a Grateful Dead fan, but I sensed it was something more.

My name is Anthea Powell. I am a semi-successful career woman in her mid-thirties. My holdings include a few valuable stocks, a small condominium, and a bad heart condition. I’ve listened to my heart beat for most of my adult life with both fear and fascination. It is my engine and constant reminder. I do not want the dead to love me, yet.

I was in a hurry to get across town. If you ask me why now, I can only answer, “Because.”
Because
I thought I had to get there, because the clock in my car is always fast ... Because I had to keep my appointment in Samarra. I knew the intersection, even knew the stoplight as a slow one. It was red when I got there, red when the white Fiat pulled up behind me. There was nothing else to do, so I looked in the mirror and saw the car, the man driving. He was wearing sunglasses, which made me smile because it was nine at night. Was he smiling too? I don’t remember.

As the light changed, a bicycle came zooming by on my left side. At the same time, the Fiat sped up and tried to pass me on the right.

The bike was so close I was sure I’d hit it. The only thing to do was swerve right, into the car.

Maybe I was wrong and wasn’t
so
close to the bike. Maybe a lot of things. I smacked the Fiat and simultaneously heard a metallic crunch and loud “boom”: my right front tyre blowing.

Feeling a car accident happen around you is a bitter, hopeless thing. As it’s occurring you’re shocked, but already beginning to regret all that comes afterwards.

Punching the brakes, I swerved hard to get away, but that was only reflex.

Stopped, I watched the bicycle rider weave fast away up the street. I wanted to wring his neck. I wanted it to be thirty seconds ago so I could do it right this time. I wanted to run away and have a healthy car again.

A car door slammed. “Goddamn it!” an angry voice shouted.

The driver still had his sunglasses on, but the lower part of his face told all: a furiously moving mouth. He was very blond and flapping his arms up and down.

I opened the door and started to get out, but a sudden arrhythmia of my heart grabbed hold and for a moment I was frozen there, scared eyes closed.

“Lady, are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Could you just wait a minute?” Unconsciously I’d put both hands over my heart. I felt like a piece of paper being torn in half.

“Wait?
Listen, lady, you just about took off the front end of my
car.
What am I going to wait for?”

“I have a bad heart.”

“I have a bad
car
!”

The sound of a siren came up quickly from behind and was on us in an instant.

For really the first time I looked up at the other driver. He’d taken the sunglasses off and only then did I understand why he wore them: he was an albino. Yellow hair on the edge of silver, transparent white eyebrows, pink skin. I don’t know if he had the pink albino eyes. It was too dark to see them clearly.

What astounded me was how all of that human whiteness seemed to glow, pushing him forward from the evening dark around us. A phosphorescent toy or nightlight, glowing.

“OK, what’s the problem?” The policeman was big and burly, with a voice like a trailer-truck shifting gears.

“The problem is she ran into my fucking car.”

“Watch your mouth, Ace. There’s a lady present.”

I looked at the cop and tried to smile thanks. My heart had gone back into its silence, so I got slowly out of the car and stood between the two men.

“I was pulling out from the light when a man on a bicycle cut me off. I swerved to avoid him.”

“Swerved right into me, you mean.”

“That’s true.”

“Fuckin’ A it’s true!”

The policeman gave him a dour look and wrote a few things down on a big pad he took from a breast pocket. Everything on him was large: the pad, the pen, the gun that sat brown and shiny on his wide hip.

“And what were
you
doing, passing on the right?”

“She was going too slow. I had to get by.”

“She wasn’t
going
at all—she was trying to avoid the bicycle. You were wrong being there. That’s why she hit you and that’s what I’m going to put in my report.”

The albino’s mouth opened once, then closed tightly. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s absolute bullshit! How do you know what she’s saying is true?”

“Because I got witnesses for one, and because I don’t hear you denying any of it!”

“Where’s these witnesses?”

The cop pointed to a group of people standing around his car, talking to his partner.

“They all say you pulled out too fast and tried to pass her on the right. Dangerous move, you know. Illegal, too. Means you’re not going to have much of a case if this goes to court.”

“I don’t believe you’re fucking telling me this!”

“I don’t like your attitude, Whitey. Let’s see your driver’s licence.”

The other reached into his pocket and brought out a beautiful red leather wallet. I saw a large decal on it for
Midnight,
that abominable horror film that is so popular these days.

“Now
this
is interesting! You realize it’s three months past due? You got an invalid driver’s licence and a probable reckless driving charge looking at you, Bruce. Bruce ... Beetz? That’s a hell of a name. You want to complain some more, Bruce Beetz?” The policeman winked at me. The albino saw it and his face looked like he’d swallowed a piece of pain.

As soon as I got home I drew a bath; my second of the evening. Baths are a secret love and constant indulgence. Like my hero Blanche Dubois, whenever something goes wrong, I turn on the tap. Hot, hot ... as hot as possible. The doctors all say the shock isn’t good for my heart, but it’s one of the few times I say that’s too damned bad. I keep thinking my heart has a mind of its own, anyway. Since it knows it’s living inside me, it should be used to being dropped into cooking water whenever something makes its owner nervous.

I poured in a lovely big dollop of coconut oil bubblebath. Watching it swirl pearl and creamy through the water, I forgot a while about my crunched car and the angry man with the white hair. The angry white man with the white car.

After hanging my clothes up, I gratefully stepped into the smoking bubbles and got comfortable. A few heavy blinks later, I was sound asleep.

I dreamed I was in an unknown city, grey and sad enough on first sight and smell to be something Eastern, most probably Communist. Sofia or Prague, a foreign city in the truest sense of the word. A city of quiet, and anonymous pain. I had never been there, that was sure.

More surprising was my companion. Tightly holding my hand was a little boy I didn’t know: an albino dressed in blue jeans and a blue blazer, red sneakers and a red St Louis Cardinals baseball cap.

“What’s your name?”

“Bruce Beetz.”

“How old are you?”

“Seven.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

He frowned. “You’re supposed to be taking me home.”

“Where is that?”

He started to cry. I squeezed his hand and tried to smile reassuringly. But I really had no idea where we were or who he was, besides being the little-boy version of the man whose car I’d just hit.

The whole dream was so strange and ludicrous that I woke up laughing. I often fall asleep in the tub and haven’t drowned yet, but waking with a giggle is
not
me. I looked around the room with tired, hot eyes, refocusing on what I’d lost to sleep. Nothing had changed around me. Then I looked in the tub. Floating there among the white bubbles was a little white plastic car—a Fiat Uno, just like Bruce Beetz’s. Without touching it, I could see the front bumper had been carefully bent into the same twist as that of its big, real brother.

Terror.

A heart that shakes you like a tree in a storm warns that whatever word you hold on your tongue may be your last. So, savour it and know it is the right one before you use it.

Terror.

The toy car terrified me. It was impossible, funny, the worst kind of threat. Had the white man actually come into my bathroom while I was sleeping and put it in my bath? Put it there when I was dreaming of holding his young hand in that strange and distant city?

Worse, was he still in my apartment?

Single women must take care of themselves these days. I keep two guns in my apartment, paranoid as that sounds. One under the bathtub, one behind my bed. They’re licensed and I have practised with them enough so that I know how to shoot someone if it is necessary.

Making sure the door was closed (it
had
been before I got into the tub), I dried myself quickly and slid my jeans and T-shirt on. The gun under the bathtub is a thirty-eight and heavy in the hand. It is always loaded.

Cocking it, I crossed the room and opened the door. My heart was again banging on my chest’s door.

I walked on tiptoes through the apartment. No one was there.

I think I expected that, but it was wonderful knowing for sure. I looked in every hiding place, closet, under my bed ... before saying, “OK.”

When I was in the bathroom again a shiver went up my back like a cold fingernail. The albino had been in that room when I was
asleep.
Close enough to reach over and drop a toy car into my bathwater.

Even his seeing me naked wasn’t as disturbing somehow as the idea of a white, white hand touching and getting wet from the water I was lying in.

The phone rang.

I picked up the extension next to the sink.

“Anthea Powell?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“A dead white Fiat. You remember? The guy you hit? The car in your tub? Me.”

I still had the gun in my hand. I put it against the receiver, as if it might help.

“What do you want? What were you doing in my house?”

“You fucked up my car, Anthea. I’m collecting for that.”

“What do you
want
from me?”

“What’s mine. You owe me a lot of money.”

“Then find out how much it’ll cost to fix. Tell me and we’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t want it fixed. I want a new one,
Anthea.
Buy me a new car and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I dented your front end.”

“I want a new car, Anthea.”

“Don’t threaten me,
Bruce.
I remember your name. Don’t forget I can call the police and tell them about this. Threatening phone calls, breaking into people’s houses ... It wouldn’t be hard finding you. I don’t think there are too many albinos in town named Bruce Beetz!”

He laughed. “Brucey! You think that’s my name? He’s
dead,
honey. That driver’s licence I showed? It lapsed three months ago because old Bruce ‘lapsed’ too then. I took it off his body and had it changed a little. He died in a car accident. Strange coincidence, huh?

“Do what I say, Anthea, or I’ll eat your fucking face.” He hung up.

I didn’t sleep much that night. What dreams I had were all in black and white and took place in the new, unknown city. Young Bruce Beetz and I walked the De Chiricolit streets—snow white, or cut in half by punishing, unforgiving shadows that scythed things into either light or darkness and nothing in-between.

Nothing special happened and there was very little conversation. But I remember we were more comfortable with each other because I seemed to know where I was going. The boy sensed that and didn’t whine or cry when I lost my way or got confused.

“What’s your real name? You lied before; it’s not Bruce ...”