Vassa in the Night (26 page)

“Just try,” Babs hisses. “Sinister is keeping
it
company. Make a nuisance of yourself again, imp, and he'll twist its yapping little head right off. Then he'll get to work crackling its twiggy limbs to splinters. And then … I'm certain we'll think of something else equally agreeable. I'd say that your morals and disposition are about to show startling improvement. You'll bring an entirely new level of dedication to your work, won't you,
Vassa
?”

Hearing her say it in that tone almost convinces me that it
is
only half a name, a label suited only to a hopelessly incomplete person. My neck aches at the mention of snapping Erg's, and as she goes on rattling off threats strange fibrous masses of pain start to nest inside my arms and legs. It takes all my strength to keep from crying Erg's name, over and over again.

Picnic has wandered over to the magazine rack. He seems to be perusing the horoscopes in the back of some fashion magazine with total absorption. Babs spares him a brief scowl. Pangolin is sitting on the yellow floor, clawed toes curling as he tries to balance a dozen sticks of gum in a single straight tower. Could I possibly have rescued anyone more useless?

“Ugh,” Babs says, “the mess of it. Out now and what a bother it would be to stuff them back. Well, I snapped up something more valuable, imp, so it seems you got the worse of the trade. So, what do you say? Is the mouthy little toaster suddenly shy of words?”

Babs arches her eyebrows and waits for my reply. I stand there brooding, looking for some alternative to improving my morals and disposition the way she said. There doesn't seem to be one.

“Okay,” I say in a long exhalation. “Okay, I'll do whatever you tell me, Babs. Just don't hurt her.” It's like I'm a doll myself and Babs pulled the cord in my back, knowing exactly what words would come out of me.

“
Her,
” Babs says, savoring the sound of it. “
Her.
A poppet, a bobbin, a crunchy fortune cookie made to hold a slip of human soul. Oh, you'll do a good deal for me, Vassa. And I'd say our new arrangement will last as long as you do. That'll show Bea, won't it? Why, if she insists on throwing her toys at me, I might decide to keep them.”

And she pulls the jar out of her pocket, just long enough to rub it in. I see Erg wrapped up in Sinister's fingers as if he were some kind of flabby boa constrictor, her blue eyes staring over the top and her miniscule black Mary Janes protruding from under his thumb. They're both sealed up in an empty jar of strawberry marshmallow butter, imperfectly cleaned, so that pink smears hide just a bit of the awfulness inside: Erg crushed and gagged by sick dead flesh. A memory of Sinister's grotesque strength comes back to me, a sensory echo of the way my throat ached as he hauled on my hair.

Even though the rest of her is stifled, I can see Erg's eyes. Azure and flat and confrontational. Paint that might as well be poison, since there's so much hurt in them. I can tell at a glance that she knows everything I've been thinking, all the cruel accusations against her that roiled through my heart. She doesn't have to talk to tell me that; the bitterness in her gaze is more than enough.

She knew all along what would happen. Erg always knows far too much for anyone's good.

She knew, and she sacrificed herself to help me—because I asked her to.

Who the hell am I that I should stand here breathing in a human body, wearing a face like a flag for a nation of spoiled, glossy idiots? If you look at the face and the body, you'd probably assume there was someone inside them, maybe even someone you'd like to know. But by betraying Erg I've made myself empty.

 

INTERLUDE IN SEA

LATE AUTUMN, TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO

Bea leaned on the railing looking out at an ocean colored graphite by the November haze, a bagel and cold coffee clutched in her hands. The Rockaway boardwalk streaked for miles in both directions, backed by an elevated train and then ranks of forbidding apartment buildings. On the beach below, Hindu women in flowing scarlet threw flowers into the ocean. When they noticed Bea they shrank away instinctively, glancing at her over their shoulders and muttering. They didn't know what Bea was, only that there was something about her that they didn't like at all. Superficially she was only an aging woman with a sagging camel coat, goose-pimpled bare legs sticking out of hot pink sheepskin boots, and a beret covered in absurd crochet flowers. Just another shabby immigrant grandmother, but one somehow haloed in unnerving power.

Slow footsteps tapped up beside her but she didn't look, not even when a bony hand caressed her shoulder.

“Bea,” a voice implored. The sea rushed up and then folded into itself with a sigh. A gull circled, gawking wistfully at the untouched bagel in Bea's hand. “Can't we come to understand each other once again? Must you really take this little complication in such an unforgiving spirit? Bea, love, listen…”

“Don't
love
me,” Bea snapped. “Don't like me while you're at it, if you would be so kind.
Love
you're dribbling at me, and after all you've done? I'll slap the word straight back down your rotten throat.”

“It's not as if you'd left us much choice.” Babs's tone had already altered, turning smug and haughty. Her lips puckered in a complacent smile, but Bea glanced over in time to note the shifty discomfort in her eyes. “You think we should trust you? Too many conflicts of interest you've been coddling to your bosom, Bea. Too many words gone astray to those bitty friends of yours. You've told me yourself that you feel
indebted
to those creatures.
Grateful
to them, and solely because a pair of them let you tag along when they fled from St. Petersburg—as if they didn't have plenty reasons of their own to want someone with your abilities along for the ride! You might as well feel grateful to a baked potato. They aren't our kind of people, are they? But there you are with your pretty goddaughter, no less, in art school, and
what
were those drawings in her senior show? How has she met so many persons of quality, I ask, if not with your help?”

“Ah, but Zinnie's show was only a month ago,” Bea sneered. “You'd been hard at work for years before that to worm me from my store. There are only so many franchises to go around, and you weren't best pleased to be left out of the game, were you? Who was it that called the board together to discuss my
conflicts of interest,
Babs? The sneaking, the conniving, the playing on my loyalty so I wouldn't blink my eyes and see the cold truth when I opened them again! Ah, Babs, how I tried to defend you when the rumors first drifted my way!
Don't say such things of her,
I told them.
Not Babs. I won't hear another word.
It's bitter to bite my old tongue now, and taste a fool.”

“I did you no harm, Bea,” Babs insisted. “Not a thing but what was best for you. You'd be torn between your feelings for them and for us. No rigor, no cleanliness of mind. I straightened matters up so you could be at peace. You think we haven't heard reports of your chatter about a
different economic model
? You think we can't sort what that means? A full dozen franchises we have now, Bea, and the owners of every last one have come around to accepting my wise proposals for a sounder and more profitable future. Oh, but you're not much of a team player, are you? You want to leave those creatures intact. It won't do.” Her smirk pinched for a moment. “And will those little persons you romp with be showing you their loyalty now? Will they be dearer friends to you than—”

Bea waved her coffee dismissively. “You sit at my register now, Babs,” she said, “but the keys will add up your heart. You know it. You live inside my walls, and the day will come when they will turn themselves inside out to shake you to the ground. Everything I've held in my hands will remember me, so all you touch will know you for what you are.”

Babs stared at her. Her eye was just going gray and it tried to leap from her face, to roll forward in attack, but she hadn't yet mastered the skill of sending it out and it only seemed to bubble. Bea's nostrils pinched in contempt.

“Are you saying that you mean to send your bits and pieces with their pitchforks to seek your revenge for you?” Babs hissed at last. “Or conjure up the teakettles to assault me? That's not the world we're in now,
love.
I'm a respectable woman of business, and you've fallen down to being a soggy old nobody. Ah, but you think you can come after me anyway? Is that what you're saying?”

“
Come after you,
Babs? I'm saying no such thing.” Bea finally smiled. “I'm saying I won't have to.”

 

CHAPTER 17

It's still midday with a glowing haze filming the sky: a hot, grayish cast to the view beyond the windows. It's not time for my shift yet but Babs brusquely orders me to take over the register anyway, and of course I do without a murmur. Babs has hinted pretty hard that she won't be letting me leave tomorrow after all, even assuming I make it that long—and I could never go without Erg anyway. So like Babs said, this will have to be home enough.

The funny thing is that she seems to have lost interest in Picnic and Pangolin, ignoring them as they shuffle around her store examining the screws that hold the shelves together and peering into the refrigerators. Picnic even buys a charcoal-colored soda called Professor Pepper's Sippable Shadow. Ringing him up scares the daylights out of me, but this time it all goes smoothly and the money stays put in the register. A few bills twitch lackadaisically, but that's it. Pangolin wanders over and beams at me as if this was the happiest day of his life; things might be going just fine for him, I guess.

“So aren't you guys in a hurry to clear out of here? You know, escape? Before Babs decides to do something worse to you?”

A fly buzzes past Picnic, now idly slurping his Shadow and gawking out the window. He catches it with a flick of his hand and wads it up, the tiny carcass dropping to the floor.

Babs appears to be busy restocking, though as far as I can tell we haven't sold much since I've been here. Somebody must have fixed the broken speakers: that song is back, with the whispered croon and the notes raining down. But this time I can make out the lyrics, and they don't seem to be the same ones I remember.
Centralized breathing, tuned to your shoe,
the singer sighs,
oh how the candle in knots.
Picnic amuses himself by drizzling a bit of his soda onto the linoleum then takes another gulp with a satisfied snuffling.
Please don't believe that the shadow dropped far, or who-oo will you find if you open the stars?

“Ah,” Pangolin says languidly, and I jump a little. I guess my mind was drifting off with that song. “No, no, that isn't necessary. We can remove ourselves at our convenience, you see. We've served up our papers like so many tasty roast beetles, and now our principal occupation is to wait for the inevitable unfolding of events.”

Now that he mentions it, he's not clutching his file anymore.

“So you mean you didn't need my help at all?” My voice spikes, high and furious. “Do you really not understand what happened? Babs caught my friend because I went in after
you
. And now you and Babs are both acting like you don't give a damn about each other. I don't—”

Pangolin flourishes a paw, cutting me off. “I did think I was careful to elucidate matters for you, miss. Certainly we never could have managed without your kind assistance. No one else ever would have sought us out; we could have expected to stay in those uncomfortable environs for quite … some time. Several centuries, perhaps. But as I informed you there has been
significant
progress, and Miss Yagg is unlikely to concern herself with our whereabouts henceforth. That is, the movement in the case has been, one might say, redirected. Picnic and I are no longer relevant to her concerns.”