Valiant (4 page)

“Come on. We need to celebrate finding you,” Lolli said, jumping to her feet. “You and the cat.”

Still eating, Lolli jogged down the street. They crossed over several blocks, Lolli in the lead, until they came to an old guy rolling his own cigarettes on the steps of an apartment building. A filthy bag filled with other bags sat beside him. His arms were as thin as sticks and his face was as wrinkled as a raisin, but he kissed Lolli on the cheek and said hello to Val very politely. Lolli gave him a couple of cigarettes and a crumpled wad of bills, and he stood up and crossed the street.

“What’s wrong with him?” Val whispered to Dave. “Why’s he so skinny?”

“Just cracked out,” Dave said.

A few minutes later, he came back with a bottle of cherry brandy in a brown paper bag.

Dave rummaged up an almost-empty cola bottle from his messenger bag and filled that with the liquor. “So the cops don’t stop us,” he said. “I hate cops.”

Val took a swig from the bottle and felt the alcohol burn all the way down her throat. The three of them passed it back and forth as they walked down West Third. Lolli stopped in front of a table covered in beaded earrings hanging from plastic trees that jangled whenever a car went past. She fingered a bracelet made with tiny silver bells. Val walked to the next table, where incense was stacked in bundles and samples burned on an abalone tray.

“What have we here?” asked the man behind the counter. He had skin the color of polished mahogany and smelled of sandalwood.

Val smiled mildly and turned back toward Lolli.

“Tell your friends to take more care whom they serve.” The incense man’s eyes were dark and glittered like a lizard’s. “It’s always the messengers who are the first to know the customer’s displeasure.”

“Right,” Val said, stepping away from the table. Lolli skipped up, bells jangling around her wrist. Dave was trying to make the cat lick brandy out of the soda cap.

“That guy was really weird,” Val said. When she looked back, out of the corner of her eye, for just a moment, the incense man seemed to have long spines jutting up from his back like a hedgehog.

Val reached for the bottle.

They walked aimlessly until they came to a triangle-shaped median of asphalt, lined on both sides with park benches, presumably for suits to eat their lunch in warmer weather and suck in the humid air and car exhaust. They sat, letting the cat down to investigate the flattened remains of a pigeon. There, they passed the brandy back and forth until Val’s tongue felt numb and her teeth tingled and her head swam.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Lolli asked.

Val thought about that for a moment. “I guess I’d like to.”

“What about other things?” Lolli mewed, rubbing her fingers together to call the cat over. It paid no attention.

Val laughed. “What things? I mean, I don’t believe in vampires or werewolves or zombies or anything like that.”

“What about faeries?”

“Faeries like…?”

Dave chuckled. “Like monsters.”

“No,” Val said, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Want to know a secret?” Lolli asked.

Val leaned in close and nodded. Of course she did.

“We know where there’s a tunnel with a monster in it,” Lolli half-whispered. “A faerie. We know where the faeries live.”

“What?” Val wasn’t sure she’d heard Lolli right.

“Lolli,” Dave warned, but his voice sounded a little slurred, “shut up. Luis would be raging if he heard you.”

“You can’t tell me what to say.” Lolli wrapped her arms around herself, digging her nails into her skin. She tossed back her hair. “Who would believe her anyway? I bet she doesn’t even believe me.”

“Are you guys serious?” Val asked. Drunk as she was, it almost seemed possible. Val tried to think back to the fairy tales she liked to re-read, the ones she’d collected since she was a little kid. There weren’t very many faeries in them. At least not what she thought of as faeries. There were godmothers, ogres, trolls, and little men that bargained their services for children, then railed at the discovery of their true names. She thought of faeries in video games, but they were elves, and she wasn’t sure if elves were faeries at all.

“Tell her,” Lolli said to Dave.

“So how come you get to order me around?” Dave asked, but Lolli just punched him in the arm and laughed.

“Fine. Fine.” Dave nodded. “My brother and I used to do some urban exploring. You know what that is?”

“Breaking into places you’re not supposed to be,” Val said. She had a cousin who went out to Weird NJ sites and posted photos of them on his Web site. “Mostly old places, right? Like abandoned buildings?”

“Yeah. There’re all kinds of things in this city that most people can’t see,” Dave said.

“Right,” said Val. “White alligators. Mole people. Anacondas.”

Lolli got up and retrieved the cat from where it was scratching at the dead bird. She held it on her lap and petted it hard. “I thought that you could handle it.”

“How come you know about this stuff that no one else does?” Val was trying to be polite.

“Because Luis has the second sight,” Lolli said. “He can see them.”

“Can
you
see them?” Val asked Dave.

“Only when they let me.” He looked at Lolli for a long moment. “I’m freezing.”

“Come back with us,” Lolli said, turning to Val.

“Luis won’t like it.” Dave turned his boot as if he were squashing a bug.

“We like her. That’s all that matters.”

“Where are we going back to?” Val asked. She shivered. Even though she was warm from the liquor drowsing through her veins, her breath gusted in the air and her hands alternated between icy and hot when she pressed them under her shirt and against her skin.

“You’ll see,” said Lolli.

They walked for a while and then ducked down into a subway station. Lollipop stepped through the turnstile with a swipe of her card, then passed it back through the bars to Dave. She looked at Val. “Coming?”

Val nodded.

“Stand in front of me,” Dave said, waiting.

She walked up to the turnstile. He swiped, then pressed himself against her, pushing them both through at once. His body was corded muscle against her back and she smelled smoke and unwashed clothes. Val laughed and staggered a little.

“I’ll tell you something else you don’t know,” Lolli said, holding up several cards. “These are toothpick MetroCards. You break off toothpicks real little and then you jam them in the machine. People pay, but they don’t get their cards. It’s like a lobster trap. You come back later and see what you caught.”

“Oh,” Val said, her head swimming with brandy and confusion. She wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t.

Lollipop and Sketchy Dave walked to the far end of the subway platform, but instead of stopping at the end and waiting for the train, Dave jumped down into the well where the tracks ran. A few people waiting for the train glanced over and then quickly looked away, but most of them didn’t even seem to notice. Lolli followed Dave awkwardly, moving so that she was sitting on the edge and then letting him half lift her down. She held on to the now-squirming kitten.

“Where are you going?” Val asked, but they were already disappearing into the dark. As Val jumped down onto the litter-strewn concrete after them, she thought how insane it was to follow two people she didn’t know into the bowels of the subway, but instead of being afraid, she felt glad. She would make all her own decisions now, even if they were ruinous ones. It was the same pleasurable feeling as tearing a piece of paper into tiny, tiny pieces.

“Be careful not to touch the third rail or you’ll fry,” Dave’s voice called from somewhere ahead.

Third rail? She looked down nervously. The middle one. It had to be the middle one. “What if a train comes?” Val asked.

“See those niches?” Lolli called. “Just flatten yourself into one of those.”

Val looked back at the concrete of the subway platform, much too high to climb. Ahead, there was darkness, studded only with tiny lamps that seemed to give off little real light. Rustling noises seemed too close, and she thought she felt tiny paws run over one sneaker. She felt the panic she had been waiting for this whole time. It swallowed her up. She stopped, so gripped by fear that she couldn’t move.

“Let’s go.” Lolli’s voice came from the gloom. “Keep up.”

Val heard the distant rattle of a train but couldn’t tell how far away it was or even what track it was on. She ran to catch up to Lolli and Dave. She had never been afraid of the dark, but this was different. The darkness here was devouring, thick. It seemed like a living thing, breathing through its own pipes, heaving gusts of stench into the tunnel around her.

The smell of filth and wetness was oppressive. Her ears strained for the steps of the other two. She kept her eyes on the lights, as though they were a breadcrumb trail, leading her out of danger.

A train rushed by on the other side of the tracks, the sudden brightness and furious noise stunning her. She felt the pull of the air, as though everything in the tunnels was being drawn toward it. If it had been on her side, she would have never had time to jump for the niche.

“Here.” The voice was close, surprisingly close. She couldn’t be sure whether it belonged to Lolli or to Dave.

Val realized she was standing next to a platform. It looked like the station they’d left, except here the tiled walls were covered in graffiti. Mattresses were piled on the concrete shelf, heaped with blankets, throw pillows, and couch cushions—most of them in some variation of mustard yellow. Candle stubs flickered dimly, some jammed in the sharp mouths of beer cans, others in tall glass jars decorated with the Virgin Mary’s face on the label. A boy with his hair braided thickly back from his face sat near a hibachi grill in the back corner of the station. One of his eyes was clouded over, whitish and strange, and steel piercings puckered his dark skin. His ears were bright with rings, some thick as worms, and a bar stuck out from either cheek, as though to highlight his cheekbones. His nose was pierced through one nostril and a hoop threaded his lower lip. As he stood, Val saw that he wore a puffy black jacket over baggy and ripped jeans. Sketchy Dave started up a makeshift ladder of wood planking.

Val turned all the way around. One of the walls was decorated with spray paint that read “for never and ever.”

“She’s impressed,” Lolli said. Her voice echoed in the tunnel.

Dave snorted and walked over to the fire. He took out flattened cigarette butts from his messenger bag and dropped them into one of the chipped mugs, then stacked cans of peaches and coffee.

The boy with the piercings lit up one of the butts and took a deep drag. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Val,” Val said before Lolli could answer. Val shifted her weight, uncomfortably aware that she didn’t know the way back.

“She’s my new friend,” Lollipop said, settling down in a nest of blankets.

The pierced boy scowled. “What’s with her hair? She some kind of cancer patient?”

“I cut it,” Val said. For some reason that made both the pierced boy and Sketchy Dave laugh. Lolli looked pleased with her.

“If you didn’t guess, this is Luis,” Lolli said.

“Don’t enough people find their own way down here without you two playing tour guide?” Luis demanded, but no one answered him, so perhaps his question was merely talking.

Exhaustion was starting to creep over Val. She settled down on a mattress and pulled a blanket over her head. Lolli was saying something, but the combination of brandy, ebbing fear, and exhaustion was overwhelming. She could always go home later, tomorrow, in a few days. Whenever. As long as it wasn’t now.

As she dozed off, Lolli’s cat climbed over her, jumping at shadows. She reached out her hand to it, sinking her fingers into the short, soft fur. It was a tiny thing, really, but already crazy.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves.

A
NNE
S
EXTON
, “H
ER
K
IND
”

Muscles clenching, Val vaulted out of sleep into being fully awake, her heart beating hard against her chest. She nearly cried out before she remembered where she was. She guessed it was afternoon, although it was still dark in the tunnels; the only light came from the guttering candles. On the other mattress, Lollipop was curled up with her back against Luis. He had one arm thrown over her. Sketchy Dave was on her other side, swaddled up in a dirty blanket, head bent toward Lolli the way the branch of a tree grows toward the sun.

Val buried her head deeper in the comforter, even though it smelled vaguely of cat piss. She felt groggy but better rested.

Lying there, she remembered looking through college catalogues a couple of weeks earlier with Tom. He’d been talking about Kansas, which had a good writing program and wasn’t crazy expensive. “And look,” he’d said, “they have a girls’ lacrosse team,” as if maybe they’d be together after high school. She’d smiled and kissed him while she was still smiling. She’d liked kissing him; he always seemed to know just how to kiss back. Thinking about it made her feel aching and dumb and betrayed.

She wanted to go back to sleep but she couldn’t, so she just stayed still until she had to pee badly enough to go and squat, wide-legged, over the stinking bucket she found in one corner. She tugged down her jeans and underwear, trying to balance on the balls of her feet, while she pulled the crotch of her clothes as far away from her body as she could. She tried to tell herself that it was the same as when you were driving down a highway and there was no rest stop, so you had to go in the woods. There was no toilet paper and no leaves, so she did a little hopping dance that she hoped would shake herself dry.

Making her way back, she saw Sketchy Dave starting to stir and hoped that she hadn’t woken him up. She tucked her legs back into the blanket, now noticing that the vivid odors of the platform combined into a smell she couldn’t identify. Light streamed down from a grate in the street above, illuminating black, grime-streaked iron beams.

“Hey, you slept for almost fourteen hours,” he said, turning on his side and stretching. He was shirtless, and even in the gloom she could see what looked like a bullet wound in the center of his chest. It pulled the rest of his skin toward it, a sinking pool that drew everything to his heart.

Dave moved over to the hibachi and kindled it with matches and balls of newspaper. Then he set a pot on top, shaking grounds out of a tin and pouring water from a plastic gallon milk jug.

She must have stared at him for too long, because he looked up with a grin. “Want some? It’s cowboy coffee. No milk, but there’s plenty of sugar if you want it.”

Nodding, she bundled the blankets around her. He strained her a steaming cup and she held it gratefully, using it first to warm her hands and then her cheeks. She ran her fingers absently over her scalp. She felt thin stubble, like fine sandpaper.

“You might as well come scrounging with me,” Sketchy Dave said, looking over at the mattress with something like longing. “Luis and Lolli’ll sleep forever if you let ’em.”

“How come you’re up?” she asked, and took a sip from the mug. The coffee was bitter, but Val found it satisfying to drink, flavored with smoke and nothing else. Grounds floated on the surface, making a black film.

He shrugged. “I’m the junkman. Gotta go see what the suits throw out.”

She nodded.

“It’s a skill, like those pigs that can smell out truffles. You either got it or you don’t. One time I found a Rolex watch in with some junk mail and burned toast. It was like someone tossed everything on the kitchen table right into the garbage without looking at it.”

Despite what Dave had said about them sleeping in, Lolli groaned and slid out from under Luis’s arm. Her eyes were still mostly closed and she had a dirty kimono-style dressing gown thrown over yesterday’s clothes. She looked beautiful in a way that Val never would, lush and hard all at the same time.

Lolli gave Luis a shove. He grunted and rolled over, propping himself up on his elbows. There was a flicker of movement along the wall and the cat strolled out, butting its head against Luis’s hand.

“She likes you, see?” Lolli said.

“Aren’t you worried about rats getting her?” Val asked. “She’s kind of little.”

“Not really,” Luis said darkly.

“Come on, you just named her last night.” Lolli picked the cat up and dumped her on her own lap.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Polly and Lolli.”

“Polyhymnia,” said Luis.

Val leaned forward. “What does Poly-whatever mean?”

Dave poured another cup for Luis. “Polyhymnia’s some kind of Greek Muse. I don’t know which one. Ask him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Luis said, lighting a cigarette stub.

Sketchy Dave shrugged, as if apologizing for knowing as much as he did. “Our mom used to be a librarian.”

Val didn’t really know what a Muse was, except for a dim recollection of studying the
Odyssey
in ninth grade. “What’s your mom now?”

“Dead,” said Luis. “Our dad shot her.”

Val caught her breath and was about to stammer out an apology, but Sketchy Dave spoke first.

“I thought maybe I’d be a librarian, too.” Dave looked at Luis. “The library is a good place to think. Kind of like down here.” He turned back to Val. “Did you know I was the first one to find this spot?”

Val shook her head.

“Scrounged it. I’m the prince of refuse, the lord of litter.”

Lolli laughed and Dave’s smile broadened. He seemed more pleased by his joke now that he knew Lolli liked it.

“You didn’t want to be a librarian,” Luis said, shaking his head.

“Luis knows all about mythology.” Lolli took a sip of coffee. “Like Hermes. Tell her about Hermes.”

“He’s a psychopomp.” Luis gave Val a dark look, as if daring her to ask what that meant. “He travels between the world of the living and the world of the dead. A courier, kind of. That’s what Lolli wants me to say. But forget that for a minute; you asked about rats getting Polly. What do you know about rats?”

Val shook her head. “Not much. I think one stepped over my foot on my way in here.”

Lolli snorted and even Dave smiled, but Luis’s face was intense. His voice had a ritual quality, as though he’d said this many times before. “Rats get poisoned, shot, trapped, beaten, just like street people, just like
people,
just like us. Everybody hates rats. People hate the way they move, the way they hop, they hate the sound of their paws skittering all over the floor. Rats’re always the villains.”

Val looked into the shadows. Luis seemed to be waiting for her to react, but she didn’t know what the right response was. She wasn’t even sure she knew what he was really talking about.

He went on. “But they’re strong. They got teeth that are tougher than iron. They can gnaw through anything—wood beams, plaster walls, copper pipes—anything but steel.”

“Or diamond,” Lolli said with a smirk. She didn’t seem at all unnerved by his speech.

Luis barely paused to acknowledge Lolli had spoken. His eyes stayed on Val. “People used to fight them in pits here in the city. Fight them against ferrets, against dogs, against people. That’s how tough they are.”

Dave smiled, as if all this made sense to him.

“They’re smart, too. You ever see a rat on the subway? Sometimes they get on a car at one platform and detrain at the next stop. They’re taking a ride.”

“I’ve never seen that,” Lolli scoffed.

“I don’t care if you ever saw it or not.” Luis looked at Dave, who’d stopped nodding. Then he turned to Val. “I can sing rats’ praises morning, noon, and night and it won’t change the way you feel about them, will it? But what if I told you that there were things out there that think of you like you think of rats?”

“What things?” Val asked, remembering what Lolli had said the night before. “Do you mean fa—” Lolli sunk her nails into Val’s arm.

Luis looked at her for a long time. “Another thing about rats. They’re
neophobic.
You know what that means?”

Val shook her head.

“They don’t trust new things,” said Luis, unsmiling. “And neither should we.” Then he got up, chucking his stub of a cigarette out onto the tracks, and walked up the steps and out of the station.

What an asshole.
Val picked at a loose thread on her pants, pulling at it, unraveling the fabric.
I should go home,
she thought. But she didn’t go anywhere.

“Don’t worry about him,” Lolli said. “Just because he can see things we can’t, he thinks he’s better than us.” She watched until Luis was out of sight and then picked up a small lunchbox with a pink cat on it. Opening the latch, she took out and unrolled a T-shirt to spread out the contents: a syringe, an antique silver-plated spoon with some of the silver worn off, a pair of flesh-toned pantyhose, several tiny press-and-seal baggies containing an amber powder that glimmered a faint blue in the dim light. Lolli shouldered off one sleeve of her dressing gown and Val could see black marks on the inside of her elbow, like the skin there was charred.

“Chill out, Lolli,” Sketchy Dave said. “Not in front of her. Not this.”

Lolli reclined against a pile of pillows and bags. “I like needles. I like the feeling of the steel under my skin.” She looked at Val. “You can get a little buzz off shooting up water. You can even shoot up vodka. Goes right into your bloodstream. Makes you drunker cheaper.”

Val rubbed her arm. “It can’t be too much worse than you scratching me.” She should have been horrified, but the ritual of it fascinated her, the way all the tools were laid out on the dirty shirt, waiting to be used in turn. It made her think of something, but she wasn’t quite sure what.

“I’m sorry about your arm! He was in such a mood, I didn’t want him to get started about the faeries.” Lolli made a face as she cooked the powder with a little water over the hibachi. It bubbled on the spoon. The sweet smell, like burnt sugar, filled Val’s nose. Lolli sucked it up through the needle, then tapped the bubbles to the top, pushing them out with a squirt of liquid. Tying off her upper arm with pantyhose, Lolli inserted the tip slowly into one of the black marks on her arm.

“Now I’m a magician,” Lolli said.

It came to Val then that what she was reminded of was her mother putting on makeup—laying out the tools and then using them one by one. First foundation, then powder, eye shadow, eyeliner, blush, all done with the same calm ceremony. The fusion of the images unnerved her.

“You shouldn’t do that in front of her,” Dave repeated, signaling in Val’s direction with a bob of his chin.

“She doesn’t mind. Do you, Val?”

Val didn’t know what she thought. She’d never seen anyone give themselves a shot like that, professional as a doctor.

“She’s not supposed to see,” Dave said. Val watched him get up to pace the platform. He stopped under a mosaic of tiles spelling out “WORTH.” Behind him, she thought she saw the darkness change its shape, spreading like ink dropped into water. Dave seemed to see it, too. His eyes widened. “Don’t do this, Lolli.”

The gloom seemed to be coalescing into indistinct shapes that made the hair stand up on Val’s arms. Blurry horns, mouths crowded with teeth, and claws as long as branches formed and then dissipated.

“What’s the matter? You scared?” Lolli sneered at Dave before turning back to Val. “He’s afraid of his own shadow. That’s why we call him Sketchy.”

Val said nothing, still staring at the moving darkness.

“Come on,” Dave said to Val, moving unsteadily toward the stairs. “Let’s go scrounge.”

Lolli pouted exaggeratedly. “No way. I found her. She’s my new friend and I want her to stay here and play with me.”

Play with her? Val didn’t know what Lolli meant, but she didn’t like the sound of it. Right then, Val wanted nothing more than to get out of the claustrophobic tunnels and away from the shifting shade. Her heart beat so fast that she feared it would spring out of her chest like the bird in a cuckoo clock. “I have to get some air.” She stood up.

“Stay,” Lolli said lazily. Her hair seemed bluer than it had a moment ago, shot through with aquamarine highlights, and the air flickered around her the way it did over a street in the hot sun. “You won’t believe how much fun you’ll have.”

“Let’s go,” Dave said.

“Why do you always have to be so boring?” Lolli rolled her eyes and lit her cigarette off of the fire. A good half of it went up in flames, and she dragged on it anyway. Her voice was slow, slurred, but her gaze, even from drowsy eyes, was severe.

Dave started up the yellow maintenance stairs and Val followed him quickly, filled with an uncertain dread. At the top, Dave pushed up the grating and they stepped out onto the sidewalk. As she emerged into the bright, late-afternoon sunlight, she realized that she’d left her backpack on the platform with her return ticket still inside of it. She half-turned back to the grate and then hesitated. She wanted the bag, but Lolli had been acting so strange…everything had gone so strange. But maybe even the smell of the drug could make shadows move? She ran through a health-class list of substances to avoid—heroin, PCP, angel dust, cocaine, crystal meth, special K. She didn’t know much about any of them. No one she knew did anything more than smoke weed or drink.