The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (25 page)

He put his small hands over his face and laughed a lovely, naughty-kid’s laugh. “Are you mad at me?”

“Not at all. What
is
your name?”

“John Cray.” He kept his hand in front of his face.

“Are you telling me the truth this time?”

The hands dropped. He looked indignant. “Yes, John Cray. That’s my name!”

Waking, I looked across the bed and saw a book lying on the pillow a few inches away. Too nervous, I hadn’t read anything before falling asleep the night before. Grabbing the book, I tried to read the title through foggy, morning eyes:
I’m Coming to Get You.

It was a large-format children’s book with little text but lots of pictures. I read it. A monster from another planet comes to earth to eat a little boy. The story had a funny, sweet ending I would have loved if I’d read it in a different context. But I didn’t own any children’s books. And I hadn’t read this one in bed last night.
I’m Coming to Get You.

When I’d finished, I put the book down and looked out of the window. What could I do? Call the police and report a nonexistent “Bruce Beetz” who was terrorizing me? Pay him off for an accident he was partially responsible for? Wait for his next crazy move? What was his way of “eating (my) fucking face”?

The phone book. John Cray! Everything that had happened in the last twelve hours was so cuckoo, why not look in the phone book for the name of a little boy in a black and white dream?

There were two John Crays and one J. Cray listed. It was early Sunday morning. Time enough to track them all down and see.

I picked up the phone and dialled the first. The voice that answered was obviously black and not who I was looking for, but I wanted to hear him say more than just, “No,” so—

“Is this John Crayon?”

“
Crayon?
No, John Cray, lady. John Tyrone
Cray.
What kinda name is that, Crayon? You think this is ‘Sesame Street’? You got yourself a wrong number, Big Bird.” He laughed and hung up.

The next Cray number in the book was answered by a brittle-voiced old woman who said her husband, John, had died six months ago.

I dialled “J. Cray”, not expecting much. Another woman’s voice answered.

“May I speak with John Cray, please?”

“He’s not here now. Would you like to leave a message?”

“No, I’ll call later.” I smiled and hung up.

After puttering around the apartment for some hours, I went out to eat at my favourite restaurant.

Sunday brunch at Chez Uovo is a nice way to spend seven dollars. Go there a few times and soon they’re greeting you like one of the gang and giving you free dessert if one of their fine pies is fresh out of the oven, or you’re looking sad.

I liked to sit by the window and watch the silent sidewalk traffic outside. Since it was mid-afternoon, the place was half empty. Almost as soon as I sat down at my customary table, Walter, the head waiter, came over and put a drink down in front of me.

“What’s this?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you, Anthea. You’re just supposed to drink it and be surprised.”

I looked at the drink and smiled. It was a
kir,
but hooked on the side of the glass was a wedge of lime: my favourite drink in the world, although very few knew that. The last person I’d told was my old boyfriend, Victor Dixon. Was
he
here?

“Who sent this, Walter?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you that either, but I will. The guy at the bar in the great Gaultier jacket.”

I looked up and saw a man at the bar, his back turned to me. He had dark hair and wore a cranberry-red jacket with black Cyrillic letters across the bottom. It was show-offy but wonderful too. Victor Dixon never wore snazzy clothes.

“Who is he, Walter?”

“I don’t know. He just ordered the drink and said you’d like it. Gave me five bucks to make it. Toodle-oo.” Walter sauntered away, whistling the song “Love Is in the Air”.

Who was he? How did he know about my secret, loved drink? All the time I kept waiting for him to turn around, I felt a hot sexy stone of expectation in my stomach. But he didn’t turn and didn’t turn. Finally I got a little annoyed waiting. He was mysterious and this was sexy, but I don’t like long games, so I went back to looking out of the window.

“May I join you?”

I turned and, taken aback by his sudden closeness, saw only the straight black hair and aviator sunglasses. No, he had a good chin too. A strong, square chin.

“How did you know I like
kir
with lime?”

He took off the sunglasses. It was Bruce Beetz.

“I know a lot about you, Anthea. You keep your diaphragm in a purple plastic case in the night table next to the bed. Eat only ‘Bumblebee’ brand tuna, and you snore just a little when you sleep. Want to know anything else? Your father’s name is Corkie. Corkie Powell. Mother’s dead, one brother and two sisters. I know a lot about you, Anthea.”

“Why?”

He smiled, shrugged. “I have to know things about my people.”

“Why am I one of your people, John?”

He stopped smiling. It was my turn.

“That’s your name, isn’t it? John Cray.”

“How’d you know that?”

My hand was shaking in my lap. I tightened it hard, then relaxed. “I dreamed you. I don’t know if you came out of my dream, or went into it.”

He stood up. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Where’s your white hair, John Cray? Did it go away with Bruce Beetz?”

He stuck his finger out at me. “I studied you! I know a lot about you, Anthea!”

I shrugged, smiled. “So our accident wasn’t so accidental?”

He cut the air with his finger. “We don’t make mistakes. We’re always right with the people we choose!”

“Maybe I’m not people.”

Walter watched Cray leave, then came over.

“That was a fast romance. What’d you tell him, Anthea, you got AIDS?”

I drank the last of that
kir
and held up the glass for another. “Something like that. Did you ever see him before, Walter?”

“Nope. But he’s certainly a good-looking guy.”

“You mean good-looking woman.”

Walter looked truly surprised. “No! I am a
champion
at guessing who’s who these days. You cannot tell me that was a woman, Anthea.”

I nodded and pushed my glass at him. “It was a woman. She works hard at
not
being one, but her chin’s a giveaway. It’s too soft.”

“Your ‘John Cray’ is really Joanne Cray. She lives with another lez named Petra Hackett. Probably the one on the bicycle that night. They got set-up situations like that that they’ve used before. Both of them are old actresses who didn’t make it. So now the two of them got a good business terrifying people into doing whatever they want. It’s a profitable approach these days.”

“Terrify like how?”

He crossed his legs and took another of my cigarettes. “Like you name it. Big Push mostly.”

“What’s ‘Big Push’?”

“Blackmail. I heard they kidnapped a kid once, but that’s only hearsay. They specialize in scaring people into doing things. Like what they tried with you.” He laughed and sat back in his chair. “Jesus, if they only knew who they were fucking with, huh?”

I straightened my skirt and pushed hair back over my ear. “What else?”

He looked at the pad on his knee. “Neither of them has a record because they got so many disguises. Most people think they’re men! They also change cities all the time; move around a lot. But they got a good reputation.”

“Are they for us? Are you sure?”

“They are absolutely for us. No question about it.”

I nodded he could go. He got right up. “Can I do anything else for you, Ms Powell?” He was always eager to do more; one of his few nice qualities. Otherwise just another snoopy little rat who worked for me when I’d let him.

“No, thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

He bowed, hat in hand, and left.

I sat back in my chair and looked out of the window. I wanted to see for myself before I took them in. Other people’s opinions aren’t always my own. I liked the car in the tub and the book on the bed, but those might have been only inspired moments—like the tenor who once reaches high C but then spends the rest of his career trying unsuccessfully to do it again. True inspiration isn’t luck—it’s genius. Only geniuses got in.

So I watched them. Bruce Beetz/John/Joanne Cray liked sexy stuff. Pick up people in a bar as a man, take them home either alone or to Peter (Petra), then pull some stunt there that was both hot and embarrassing to the unsuspecting victim. Simple stuff—take some photographs, then a few days later threaten to wave them around like the Libyan flag if the person didn’t do what they asked.

More interesting, however, was that the girls didn’t always want money or the more obvious things. Sometimes it was simple humiliation. They made a snooty woman walk naked through a shopping mall and get arrested for indecent exposure. One poor man had to make an obvious pass at his son, thus ruining a lifelong, wonderful relationship in a few hellish moments.

One afternoon, sitting in my car outside their apartment building, I fell asleep and dreamed again of the child and the mysterious city. Only this time there were two children—John Cray and Peter Hackett. Both held my hands and we walked happily through the anonymous, uninteresting streets.

“How much longer is it, Anthea?”

“Soon, John. A few more blocks, I think.”

“And I get to come too?”

“Sure. John asked and I said yes.”

John looked at Peter and walked around me to put his arm around his friend.

“Anthea always keeps her word.” The two of them looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

I know I am not a good storyteller. I could be, but it doesn’t interest me. I purposely leave things out or ignore others if they don’t interest me. I tell jokes terribly.

Anyway, this voice bores me. I am not Anthea Powell, although her fear and weakness interest me (and always incite others). I have used her often when I come here on my ... trips, used her like I do my shitty detective, to do the dirty work, the snooping, the setting up, the trapping.

Are you confused? Good! Stick with me a while longer and you’ll know everything. I could have held all this till the end. But I want you frowning now, knowing something is very wrong with your parachute even before actually pulling the cord and praying it opens. PS. It won’t.

I watched them for weeks. Both women were very good at telling the world things don’t make sense and cruelty often comes in new colours. It is a talent, but there are more and more people who have it these days. Only the wrong survive ... Maybe it’s like Hollywood in the Thirties—a lot of beautiful women dyed their hair like Jean Harlow and sat around Schwab’s waiting to be discovered, but very few of them ever got in the movies.

When I’d seen enough, I killed Petra Hackett. She wasn’t as good at it as her lover, and there really was only space for one. I killed her in their apartment while Joanne was away for the weekend.

When she returned on Sunday night, she found the table set with all their silver and linen and best crystal. I’d made a five-course dinner centred around a twenty-five-pound turkey. Petra sat in her chair in a mauve silk dress with the perfectly cooked, still-smoking turkey stuck over her head.

But Joanne passed the test with flying colours! She walked in and very coolly looked at the ruin of her life. I came out of the kitchen wearing a chef’s cap and carrying the mince pie.

“Are you hungry? There’s so much food.”

She looked at me. “She’s dead?”

“Choked on a Fiat.” I pointed to my neck. “A little white one got stuck in her throat. Same sort of thing that killed Tennessee Williams. Remember?”

“Who are you?”

“Anthea! One of your victims, Joanne!”

She smiled sadly. “I didn’t do such good research this time, did I?”

I clapped my hands to my face. Mock dismay. “No, just the opposite! You hit the jackpot this time. That’s why you did what you did, all along. You two were looking for me! Want to come see?”

Coyly she asked, “Something I want to see? I’ve been looking for
you
? That’s funny.”

“Absolutely. Come, I’ll show you.” I reached over and took her hand. It was warm and dry. I led us out of the apartment and down the stairs to the front door. “You really have no idea where we’re going?”

She shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m not sure.”

“We’re almost there anyway. It’s just around the corner.”

Once outside again, I felt the hand shrink in my own until it was the size of a child’s. I looked down at the little girl with the white hair and squeezed her nice hand.

“What about Petra, Anthea? You said she could come too.”

“Well, sometimes you have to lie about things. I thought she could, but she can’t. Are you angry?”

She shook her head. “Naah, she’s a jerk. How much longer?”

“Two minutes.”

In almost exactly two minutes we were there. We went into the building and down some stairs to the basement door. I opened it with a key and we walked into an almost totally black room.

“I can’t see, Anthea!”

“Don’t worry, honey. I know where I’m going.”

I led us across the room with one hand out in front of me so as not to bump into anything. Almost at the far wall, I touched the ladder. “We’re here.”

I pulled her around and put her small hands on the first rung. “Just start to climb. It’s twenty-five steps up. Real easy.”

She started up. I went right behind her, just in case. Halfway there, you could smell something very sweet and sugary, almost sickening in its heaviness.

“Smells like cake.”

“Just keep going, honey. We’re almost there.”

“I’m there! I can feel the top.”

“Take a piece and taste it. It’s your favourite.”

“Chocolate! It’s chocolate cake, Anthea!”

“That’s right, Joanne. Now push through it. Everyone’s waiting for you.”

I heard a soft
smooshing
sound and then there was a blast of white light from above. Lots of voices cheering.

The girl had climbed to the top of the ladder. I went up behind her, into the light. People cheered. “Hooray, Joanne!”