War for the Oaks (3 page)

"Yeah, yeah. So start a band I can drum in."

"You could play for anybody."

"I don't want to play for
anybody
. You do that, you end up working with bums like Stuart."

With a lurch and a rumble of drumheads, they pulled in the driveway of Chester's. Even in the dark, its bits of Tudor architecture were unconvincing. The bar rush that hit every all-night restaurant was in full force; they had to wait for a table. When they got one, they ordered coffee and tea.

"So, are you going to start a band?"

Eddi slumped in her seat. "Oh God, Carla. It's such a crappy way to make a living. You work and work, and you end up playing cover tunes in the Dew Drop Inn where all the guys slow-dance with their hands in their girlfriends' back pockets."

"So you don't do that kind of band."

"What kind do you do?"

Their order arrived, and Carla dunked a tea bag with great concentration. "Originals," she said at last. "Absolutely new, on-the-edge stuff. Very high class. Only play the
good
venues."

Eddi stared at her. "Maybe I should just go over to Control Data and apply for a job as Chairman of the Board."

Carla looked out the window. "Listen. You don't become a bar band and work your way up from there. There
is
no up from there. It's a dead end. All you can become is the world's best bar band."

Eddi sighed. "I don't want a new band. I want to be a normal person."

Carla's dark eyes were very wide. "Oh," she said.

"Hey," Eddi smiled limply, "it's not like you to miss a straight line."

"Too easy," Carla said with a shrug. Then she shook her head and made her black hair fly, and seemed to shake off her sorrow as well. "Give it time. You don't remember how awful it is being normal."

"Not as awful as being in InKline Plain."

"Oh, worse," said Carla solemnly. "They make you sit at a desk all day and eat vending machine donuts, and your butt gets humongous."

"Now that," Eddi said, "is a job I can handle."

"If you work hard, you get promoted to brownies." Carla set her cup down. "Come on, let's roll."

Outside, the wind was blowing. It had none of the rough-sided cold of winter in it; it was damp, with a spoor of wildness that seemed to race through Eddi's blood. It made her want to run, yell, do any foolish thing. . . .

"You okay?" Carla's voice broke into her mood. "If you don't get in the car, I'm gonna leave without you."

Eddi took pleasure in the dash to the car, the way the wind tugged on her hair. "Roll the windows down."

"Are you bats? We'll freeze."

Eddi rolled down her own, but it wasn't enough. As they drove toward the city, the early spring madness drained away. The wagon's rattles and squeaks, its smell of cigarette butts and old vinyl and burnt oil, took its place. By the time they'd reached the edge of downtown, Eddi felt weary in every muscle and bone.

What should she do now? What
could
she do? It sounded fine to tell Carla that she wanted to be normal for once, but Eddi had never been suited to a normal life. Once she had taken a job as a security guard, patrolling an abandoned factory from four until midnight. Each night her imagination had tenanted the shadows with burglars and arsonists. At the end of a week the shadows were full, and she quit. She typed too slowly—did everything with her hands too slowly, in fact, except play the guitar.

As for a normal love affair, it wasn't impossible. She was reasonably intelligent. She was attractive, though not beautiful: blond and grayeyed with strong features and clear skin; and she was small and slender and knew how to choose her clothes. But she wasn't sure where to find men who weren't—well, musicians.

"Mighty quiet," Carla said, as if she already knew why.

"I'm . . . I guess I'm beginning to realize the consequences of everything."

"Mmm. You going to chicken out?"

"No. But . . . would you call me tomorrow? Around two-ish? I figure I'll call Stu at one and tell him."

"And you'll need someone to tell you you're gonna be okay."

Eddi smiled sheepishly. "You must have done this yourself."

"Everybody has to, at least once. Don't beat yourself over the head for it."

The light was red at Washington and Hennepin, the corner where Carla would begin negotiating the rat's nest of one-way streets that led to Eddi's apartment. "Let me off here," she said suddenly.

"Wha—why?"

"I want to walk. It's a nice night."

Carla was shocked. "It's freezing. And you'll get murdered."

"You've been living around the lakes too long. You think any place with buildings more than three stories high is full of addicts."

"And I'm right. Anyway, what about your axe and stuff?"

It was true; she couldn't haul her guitar and amplifier fourteen blocks. She was settling back in the passenger seat when Carla spoke again.

"I know, I know. 'Carla, would you mind taking them to your place and carrying them all the way up the back stairs, then carrying them back down tomorrow when you come over to keep me from being miserable 'cause I broke up with my boyfriend?' Sure, Ed, what're friends for?"

Eddi giggled. "If you'd quit going to Mass, you'd make a great Jewish mother." She leaned over and hugged her.

"Jeez, will you get out of here? The light's changed twice already!" After Eddi had bounced out and slammed the door, Carla shouted through the half-open window, "I'll call at two!"

"Thank you!" Eddi yelled back, and waved as the station wagon rumbled and clanked away from the curb. The gold-and-gray flank of the library rose before her, and she followed it to the Nicollet Mall.

Whatever had tugged at her in the restaurant parking lot refused to be summoned back now. Eddi shook her head and started down the mall, and hoped that the effort would blow her melancholy away. The rhythm of her steps reminded her of a dozen different songs at once,
and she hummed one softly to herself. It was Kate Bush, she realized, "Cloudbusting," and she sang it as she walked.

Then she saw the figure standing by the bus shelter across the street.

By the shape, it was a man—a man's broad-brimmed hat and long, fitted coat. He didn't move, didn't seem even to turn his head to watch her, but she had a sudden wild understanding of the idea of a bullet with one's name on it. This figure had her name on him.

You must be feeling mighty low, girl
, she scolded herself,
if you think that every poor idiot who's missed his bus is lying in wait for you
. Still, the man seemed naggingly
present
, and almost familiar. And three in the morning was an odd hour to wait for a bus in a town where the buses quit running at half past midnight.

Her pace was steady as she crossed the empty street. Behind her, she heard his steps begin.
It's not fair
, she raged as she sped up.
I don't need this, not tonight
. She thought she heard a low laugh behind her, half the block away. Her stride lost some of its purpose and took on an edge of panic.

South of the power company offices, Eddi turned and headed for Hennepin Avenue. If there were still people on any street in Minneapolis, they would be on Hennepin. A police cruiser might even come by. . . .

The footsteps behind her had stopped.
There, see? Poor bastard was just walking down Nicollet. I'll be fine now
—

A black, waist-high shape slunk out of the alley in front of her. Its bared teeth glittered as it snarled; its eyes glowed red. It was a huge black dog, stalking stiff-legged toward her. Eddi backed up a step. It made a ferocious noise and lunged. She turned and ran in the only direction she could, back toward Nicollet.

She got one of the streetlight posts on the mall between her and the dog and turned to face it. It wasn't there. Across the street, in the shadow of a doorway, Eddi saw the silhouette of the man in the hat and long coat. He threw back his head, and she heard his laughter. The streetlight fell on his face and throat and she saw the gleam of his white scarf, his dark skin and sloping, shining eyes. It was the man from the dance floor, from the University Bar. She ran.

The footsteps behind her seemed unhurried, yet they never dropped back, no matter how fast she ran. She tried again to turn toward Hennepin. The black dog lunged at her from out of a parking ramp exit, its red eyes blazing.

This is crazy
, she thought with the dead calm of fear.
Muggers and mad dogs. I'm stuck in a Vincent Price movie. Where are the zombies?

She was running down Nicollet again before she realized that it couldn't be the same dog. But it was insane to think that the man could have known she would walk home, impossible to think he had a pack of dogs. Her breath burned in her throat. She had a stitch in her side. Her pace had become a quick stumble.

She'd almost reached the end of the mall, she realized. Two blocks away were the Holiday Inn and the Hyatt, and she could run into either, into a lobby full of light and bellhops and a desk clerk who'd call the police. She staggered across the street toward Peavey Plaza and Orchestra Hall.

The black dog seemed to form out of the shadows. Perhaps it was only one dog, after all; surely there weren't two dogs like this. It was huge, huge, its head low, its fur bristling gunmetal-dark in the street light. It growled softly, in macabre counterpoint to the waterfall sounds of the Peavey Plaza fountain. Did the damned dog know it stood between her and safety? How had it gotten past her? She moved sideways, through the concrete planters that marked the sidewalk level of Peavey Plaza. The hotels seemed miles away now. She would have to try to lose both dog and man in the complexity of the ornamental pool and fountains below her, and escape out the other side.

The dog lifted its head and howled, and Eddi thought of the dark man and his laugh. She wanted to curse, to throw something, to be home in her bed. She raced down a flight of steps, then another.

The footsteps behind her were sudden, as was the tap on her shoulder. She tried to turn in midstride and her foot didn't land on anything. Just before she plunged backward and headfirst down the last of the steps, she saw the man behind her, his eyes wide, his hand reaching out.

Then pain took away her fear, and darkness took the pain.

She heard water running, and two voices. Were she to wake, these would be transmuted into ordinariness—the toilet wouldn't shut off, the neighbors were shouting on the other side of her bedroom wall.

"Fool!" raged a wild river of a voice. "Fool, I say!"

"Careful of your little tongue, dear. I've a mind to bite it off." This was a smoky, furry voice, laughing even as it threatened. Eddi heard a clicking, scraping sound, like a dog's toenails. That reminded her of something—what? Dogs, or toenails?

"You may have killed the mortal!"

"You amaze me," the deep voice replied. "Surely one mortal is much like another, to you?"

"Time grows short."

"Ah, of course. Time. Well, if she's harmed, it was by no work of mine." The deep voice added defensively, "And I softened her landing as best I could."

Her head ached, and she felt something cold and hard beneath her cheek—concrete? The conversation she heard was beginning to sound disturbingly sequential, less dreamlike.

"And if her people find her here?"

"Oh, they'll think of us straightaway, I'm sure! They'll think she drank too much and fell."

Fell. Eddi remembered falling—and being pursued. Suddenly she was desperate to shed her lethargy, to get up, to at least open her eyes. . . . She opened them, and nothing she saw made sense. A black shape against gray, moving water . . . The deep voice continued.

"But did you see her? She ran like a deer, Glaistig."

"I care nothing for your sport. Fool of a phouka! Are you ass, as well as dog and man? Do the conditions of your task please you so that you wish to linger at it?"

There was a rumbling growl.

"Ah, have I the right of it?" said the water-voice in a fierce purr. "Does it please you to live in mortal filth and stink? To see the mockeries they build of the bones of the earth?" Then, soft and cold as snow, "Would you be some human's little dog?"

The snarl that answered, full of rage, drove out Eddi's lassitude. She lifted her head to look, and could at last make sense of what she saw.

The black dog stood beside and above her. The forepaw beneath her nose seemed as big as her own hand, with glossy black curls of toenails the size of a parrot's beak. Its hackles spiked upward all down its back, and it curled its lips, growling at the fountain.

Eddi turned her throbbing head to look.
Not the fountain
. A woman rose from the water, tall and slender. She seemed to be standing on its surface, to be a coalescence of water into a woman-shaped pillar. Her long gown looked like water, too, spilling over her breasts and straight down in a current of darkness and green-shot light. Where it reached the surface of the pool, it disappeared into it, indistinguishable. Her hair seemed fluid as well, but snowy white, pouring down around her to her feet. Her face and arms were moon white.

Then she turned her gaze to Eddi and smiled, and Eddi remembered how, as a child, she had fallen through weak ice into freezing water.

"Well," breathed the apparition, "it lives."

"Who—what are you?" Eddi croaked. She raised herself onto one arm, and the pain in her head made her squint. "I'm gonna scream for the cops."

The water-woman gave a gurgling laugh, and bowed to her.

Next to Eddi's ear, the deep voice said, "Do it, then." Eddi turned and found the dog watching her, tongue lolling over its wolfish teeth.
The dog
. . .
talks. Oh, lord
.

"Summon your police," the dog continued, its lips working in horrible parody. "What will you tell them when they come, and find a dog and a pool of water?" It gestured with its muzzle toward the fountain.

As Eddi watched, the woman sank into the water—or became the water, spreading out until only her eyes glinted in the moonlight, then disappeared.