Dangerous Women Part 24

"Yeah," Marvin said.

Marvin left X-Man sitting there, made a beeline for the closet. He opened the door and moved his hands around in there, trying to look like he was about natural business. He glanced back at X-Man, who had turned on his stool to look.

The cowbell rang. The two old gentlemen went at it again.

It was furious. Slamming punches to the head and ribs, the breadbasket. Clutching one another, kneeing in the b.a.l.l.s. Jesus even bit the lobe off X-Man's ear. Blood was everywhere. It was a fight that would have been amazing if the two men in the ring were in their twenties, in top shape. At their age it was phenomenal.

Marvin was standing in the old man's corner now, trying to catch X-Man's eye, but not in a real obvious way. He didn't want him to lose focus, didn't want Jesus to come under him and lift him up and drive the old man's head into the ground like a lawn dart.

Finally the two clenched. The went around and around like that, breathing heavy as steam engines. Marvin caught X-Man's eye. Marvin lifted up two knotted pipe cleaners, dark hair in the middle of the knot. Marvin untwisted the pipe cleaners and the hair floated out like a puff of dark dandruff, drifted to the floor.

X-Man let out his breath, seemed to relax.

Jesus dove for him. It was like a hawk swooping down on a mouse. Next thing Marvin knew, Jesus had X-Man low on the hips in a two-arm clench, and was lifting him up, bending back at the same time so he could drive X-Man over his head, straight into the mat.

But as X-Man went over, he ducked his head under Jesus' b.u.t.tocks, grasped the inside of Jesus' legs. Jesus flipped backwards, but X-Man came up on his back, not his head. Instead, his head was poking between Jesus' legs, and his toothless gums were buried in Jesus' tights, clamping down on his b.a.l.l.s like a clutched fist. A cry went up from the crowd.

Jesus screamed. It was the kind of scream that went down your back and got hold of your tailbone and pulled at it. X-Man maintained the clamp. Jesus writhed and twisted and kicked and punched. The punches. .h.i.t X-Man in the top of the head, but still he clung. When Jesus tried to roll out, X-Man rolled with him, his gums still buried deep in Jesus' b.a.l.l.s.

Some of the oldsters were standing up from their seats, yelling with excitement. Felina hadn't moved or changed her expression.

Then it happened.

Jesus slapped out both hands on the mat, called, "Time." And it was over.

The elders left. Except Jesus and Felina.

Jesus stayed in the bathroom for a long time. When he came out, he was limping. The front of his tights were plumped out and dark with blood.

X-Man was standing, one hand on the back of a chair, breathing heavy.

Jesus said, "You about took my nuts, X-Man. I took one of your towels, shoved it down my pants to stop the blood. Them's some gums you got, X-man. Gums like that, you don't need teeth."

"All's fair in love and war," X-Man said. "Besides, old as you are, what you using your nuts for?"

"I hear that," Jesus said, and his whole demeanor was different. He was like a bird in a cage with the door left open. He was ready to fly out.

"She's all yours," Jesus said.

We all looked at Felina. She smiled slightly. She took X-Man's hand.

X-man turned and looked at her. He said, "I don't want her," and let go of her hand. "h.e.l.l, I done outlived my d.i.c.k anyhow."

The look on Felina's face was one of amazement.

"You won her," Jesus said. "That's the rule."

"Naw," X-Man said. "Ain't no rule."

"No?" Jesus said, and you could almost see that cage door slam and lock.

"No," said X-Man, looking at Felina. "That hoodoo you done with the pipe cleaners. My boy here undid it."

"What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?" Felina said.

They just stared at each other for a long moment.

"Get out," X-Man said. "And Jesus. We ain't doing this no more."

"You don't want her?" Jesus said.

"No. Get out. Take the b.i.t.c.h with you. Get on out."

Out they went. When Felina turned the corner into the hallway, she paused and looked back. It was a look that said: You had me, and you let me go, and you'll have regrets.

X-Man just grinned at her. "Hit the road, you old b.i.t.c.h."

When they were gone, the old man stretched out on his bed, breathing heavily. Marvin pulled a chair nearby and sat. The old man looked at him and laughed.

"That pipe cleaner and hair wasn't in her coat, was it?"

"What do you mean?" Marvin said.

"That look on her face when I mentioned it. She didn't know what I was talking about. Look at me, boy. Tell me true."

Marvin took a moment, said, "I bought the pipe cleaners and some shoe polish. I cut a piece of my hair, made it dark with the shoe polish, twisted it up in the pipe cleaners."

X-Man let out a hoot. "You sneaky son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"I'm sorry," Marvin said.

"I'm not."

"You're not?"

"Nope. I learned something important. I'm a f.u.c.king dope. She didn't never have no power over me I didn't give her. Them pipe cleaners and the hair, h.e.l.l, she forgot about that fast as she did it. Just some way to pa.s.s time for her, and I made it something special. It was just me giving myself an excuse to be in love with someone wasn't worth the gunpowder it would take to blow her a.s.s up. She just liked having power over the both of us. Maybe Jesus will figure that out too. Maybe me and him figured a lot of things out today. It's all right, kid. You done good. h.e.l.l, it wasn't nothing I didn't know deep down, and now I'm out of excuses, and I'm done with her. It's like someone just let go of my throat and I can breathe again. All these years, and this thing with Felina, it wasn't nothing but me and my own bulls.h.i.+t."

About seven in the morning X-Man woke up Marvin.

"What's the matter?" Marvin asked.

X-Man was standing over him. Giving him a dentureless grin. "Nothing. It's Christmas. Merry Christmas."

"You too," Marvin said.

The old man had a T-s.h.i.+rt. He held it out with both hands. It said X-Man and had his photograph on it, just like the one he was wearing. "I want you to have it. I want you to be X-Man."

"I can't be X-Man. No one can."

"I know that. But I want you to try."

Marvin was sitting up now. He took the s.h.i.+rt.

"Put it on," said X-Man.

Marvin slipped off his s.h.i.+rt and, still sitting on the floor, pulled the X-Man s.h.i.+rt over his head. It fit good. He stood up. "But I didn't get you nothing."

"Yeah you did. You got me free."

Marvin nodded. "How do I look?"

"Like X-Man. You know, if I had had a son, I'd have been d.a.m.n lucky if he'd been like you. h.e.l.l, if he'd been you. 'Course, that gets into me f.u.c.king your mother, and we don't want to talk about that. Now I'm going back to sleep. Maybe later we'll have something for Christmas dinner."

Later in the day Marvin got up, fixed coffee, made a couple of sandwiches, went to wake X-Man.

He didn't wake up. He was cold. He was gone. There were wrestling magazines lying on the bed with him.

"d.a.m.n," Marvin said, and sat down in the chair by the bed. He took the old man's hand to hold. There was something in it. A wadded-up photo of Felina. Marvin took it and tossed it on the floor and held the old man's hand for a long time.

After a while Marvin tore a page out of one of the wrestling magazines, got up, and put it to the hot plate. It blazed. He went over and held it burning in one hand while he used the other to pull out one of the boxes of magazines. He set fire to it and pushed it back under the bed. Flames licked around the edges of the bed. Other boxes beneath the bed caught fire. The bedclothes caught. After a moment the old man caught too. He smelled like pork cooking.

Like Hercules, Marvin thought. He's rising up to the G.o.ds.

Marvin, still wearing his X-Man s.h.i.+rt, got his coat out of the closet. The room was filling with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. He put his coat on and strolled around the corner, into the hallway. Just before he went outside, he could feel the heat of the fire warming his back.

Megan Lindholm Books by Megan Lindholm include the fantasy novels Wizard of the Pigeons, Harpy's Flight, The Windsingers, The Limbreth Gate, The Luck of the Wheels, The Reindeer People, Wolf's Brother, and Cloven Hooves, the science fiction novel Alien Earth, and, with Steven Brust, the collaborative novel The Gypsy. Lindholm also writes as New York Times bestseller Robin Hobb, one of the most popular writers in fantasy today, having sold over one million copies of her work in paperback. As Robin Hobb, she's perhaps best-known for her epic fantasy Fa.r.s.eer series, including a.s.sa.s.sin's Apprentice, Royal a.s.sa.s.sin, and a.s.sa.s.sin's Quest, as well as the two fantasy series related to it, the Lives.h.i.+p Traders series, consisting of s.h.i.+p of Magic, Mad s.h.i.+p, and s.h.i.+p of Destiny, and the Tawny Man series, made up of Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, and Fool's Fate. She's also the author of the Soldier Son series, composed of Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic. Most recently, as Robin Hobb, she's started a new series, the Rain Wilds Chronicles, consisting of Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, City of Dragons, and Blood of Dragons. As Megan Lindholm, her most recent book is a "collaborative" collection with Robin Hobb, The Inheritance and Other Stories.

In the autumnal and beautifully crafted story that follows, she shows us that even the oldest of dogs, white of muzzle and slow of step, may have one last bite left in them.

NEIGHBORS.

Linda Mason was loose again.

It was three in the morning, and sleep had fled. Sarah had wandered to the kitchen in her robe, put on the kettle, and rummaged the cupboards until she found a box of Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea bags. She had set out a teacup on a saucer and put the tea bag in her "tea for one" teapot when she heard someone outside in the dark, shouting her name. "Sarah! Sarah Wilkins! You'd better hurry! It's time to go!"

Her heart jumped high in her chest and hung there, pounding. Sarah didn't recognize the shrill voice, but the triumphantly defiant tone was alarming. She didn't want to look out the window. For a moment, she was eight years old again. Don't look under the bed, don't open the closet at night. As long as you don't look, there might be nothing there. Schrodinger's boogeyman. She reminded herself that she was much closer to sixty-eight than eight and drew back the curtain.

Low billows of fog cloaked the street, a precursor to fall in the Pacific Northwest. Her eyes adjusted and she saw crazy old Linda standing in the street outside the iron fence that surrounded Sarah's backyard. She wore pink sweats and flappy bedroom slippers. She had an aluminum baseball bat in her hands and a h.e.l.lo Kitty backpack on her shoulders. The latter two items, Sarah was fairly certain, actually belonged to Linda's granddaughter. Linda's son and his wife lived with the old woman. Sarah pitied the daughter-in-law, shoved into the role of caretaker for Robbie's oddball mother. Alzheimer's was what most people said about Linda, but "just plain nuts" seemed as apt.

Sarah had known Linda for twenty-two years. They had carpooled their sons to YMCA soccer games. They'd talked over coffee, exchanged homemade jam and too many zucchini, fed each other's pets during vacation getaways, greeted each other in Safeway, and gossiped about the other neighbors. Not best friends, but neighborhood mom friends, in a fifties sort of way. Linda was one of the few older residents still in the neighborhood. The other parents she had known were long gone, had moved into condos or migrated as s...o...b..rds or been packed off by their kids to senior homes. The houses would empty, and the next flock of young families would move in. Other than Linda, of her old friends, only Maureen and her husband, Hugh, still lived on the other end of the block, but they spent most days in Seattle for Hugh's treatments.

"Sarah! You'd better hurry!" Linda shouted again. Two houses down, a bedroom light came on. The kettle began to whistle. Sarah s.n.a.t.c.hed it off the burner, seized her coat off the hook, and opened the back door. The darn porch light didn't work; the bulb had burned out last week, but it was too much trouble to get a step stool and a lightbulb and fix it. She edged down the steps carefully and headed to the fence, hoping that Sarge hadn't done his business where she would step in it.

"Linda, are you all right? What's going on?" She tried to speak to her as her old friend, but the truth was, Linda scared her now. Sometimes she was Linda, but abruptly she might say something wild and strange or mean. She did even stranger things. A few days ago, in the early morning, she had escaped into her front yard, picked all the ripe apples off her neighbor's tree, and thrown them into the street. "Better than letting them fall and rot like last year!" she shouted when they caught her at it. "You'll just waste them. Feed the future, I say! Give them to the ones who appreciate them!" When Robbie's wife had seized her by the arm and tried to drag her back into their house, Linda had slapped her. Linda's little granddaughter and her playmate had seen the whole thing. The child had started crying, but Sarah hadn't know if it was from distress, fear, or simple humiliation, for half the neighborhood had turned out for the drama, including the neighbor who owned the apple tree. That woman was furious and telling anyone who would listen that it was time to "put that crazy old woman in a home." She'd lived in the neighborhood a couple of years but Sarah didn't even know her name.

"I am in my home!" Linda had shrieked back at her. "Why are you living in Marilyn's home? What gives you more right to the apples off her tree than me? I helped her plant the d.a.m.n thing!"

"Don't you think we'd put her in a home if we could afford one? Do you think I like living like this?" Robbie's wife had shouted at the neighbor. Then she had burst into tears and finally managed to tow Linda back inside.

And now Linda was out in the foggy night, staring at Sarah with round wild eyes. The wind was blowing through her white hair, and leaves rustled past her on the pavement. She wore a pink running suit and her bedroom slippers. She had something on her head, something fastened to a wool cap. She advanced on the fence and tapped the baseball bat on top of it, making it ring.

"Don't dent my fence!" Sarah cried, and then, "Stay right there, Linda. Stay right there, I'm going to get help."

"You need help, not me!" Linda shouted. She laughed wildly, and quoted, "'Little child, come out to play, the moon doth s.h.i.+ne as bright as day!' Except it doesn't! So that's what I take with me. Moonlight!"

"Linda, it's cold out here. Come inside and tell me there." The phone. She should be calling 911 right now. Alex had told her to get a cell phone, but she just couldn't budget one more payment a month. She couldn't even afford to replace her old cordless phone with the faulty ringer. "We'll have a cup of tea and talk. Just like old times when the kids were small." She remembered it clearly, suddenly. She and Maureen and Linda sitting up together, waiting for the kids to come home from a football game. Talking and laughing. Then the kids grew up and they'd gone separate ways. They hadn't had coffee together in years.

"No, Sarah. You come with me! Magic is better than crazy. And time is the only difference between magic and crazy. Stay in there, you're crazy. Come with me, you're magic. Watch!"

She did something, her hand fumbling at her breast. Then she lit up. "Solar power!" she shouted. "That's my ticket to the future!" By the many tiny LEDs, Sarah recognized what Linda was wearing. She'd draped herself in strings of Christmas lights. The little solar panels that had charged them were fastened to her hat.

"Linda, come inside and show me. I'm freezing out here!" They were shouting. Why was the neighborhood staying dark? Someone should be getting annoyed by their loud conversation; someone's dog should be barking.

"Time and tide wait for no man, Sarah! I'm off to seek my fortune. Last chance! Will you come with me?"

Inside the house, Sarah had to look up Linda's number in the phone book, and when she called it, no one answered. After ten rings it went to recording. She hung up, took the phone to the window and dialed again. No Linda out there now. The windows in her house were dark. What to do now? Go bang on the door? Maybe Robbie had already come outside and found his mom and taken her in. Call the police? She went back into the yard, carrying the receiver in one hand. "Linda?" she called into the foggy darkness. "Linda, where are you?"

No one answered. The fog had thickened and the neighborhood was dark now. Even the streetlight on the corner, the hateful one that shone into her bedroom window, had chosen this moment to be dark. She dialed Linda's number again, listened to it ring.

Back in the house, Sarah phoned her own son. She heard Alex's sleepy "What?" on the seventh ring. She poured out her story. He wasn't impressed. "Oh, Mom. It's not our business. Go back to bed. I bet she went right back home and she's probably asleep right now. Like I wish I was."

"But what if she's wandered off into the night? You know she's not in her right mind."

"She's not the only one," Alex muttered, and then said, "Look, Mom. It's four in the morning. Go back to bed. I'll drop by on my way to work, and we'll knock on their door together. I'm sure she's okay. Go back to bed."

So she did. To toss and turn and worry.

She woke up at seven to his key in the lock. Good heavens! She'd made him detour from his Seattle commute to come by, and she wasn't even up and ready to go knock on Linda's door. "Be right down!" she shouted down the stairs, and began pulling on clothes. It took her longer than it should have, especially tying her shoes. "Floor just keeps getting farther away every day," she muttered. It was her old joke with Russ. But Russ wasn't around any longer to agree with her. Sarge was sleeping across her bedroom door. She nudged the beagle and he trailed after her.

She opened the kitchen door to a wave of heat. "What are you doing?" she demanded. Alex had the back door open and was fanning it back and forth. "What's that smell?"

He glared at her. "The stove was on when I came in! You're d.a.m.n lucky you didn't burn the house down. Why didn't your smoke detector go off?"

"Batteries must be dead," she lied. She had gotten tired of them going off for every bagel the old toaster scorched and had loosened the battery in the kitchen unit. "I must have left the burner on last night when Linda was outside. So it wasn't on all night, only three or four hours." The stove top still simmered with heat and the white ceramic around the abused burner was a creamy brown now. She started to touch it, and then drew her hand back. "A little scouring powder should clean that up. No harm done, thank goodness."

"No harm done? Only three or four hours? s.h.i.+t, Mom, do you not understand how lucky you were?" To her dismay, he unfolded her kitchen step stool and climbed up to the smoke detector. He tugged the cover open and the battery fell to the floor.

"Well! There's the problem," she observed. "It must have come loose in there."

He eyed her. "Must have," he said in a tight voice. Before she could stoop down, he hopped off the stool, scooped it up, and snapped it back into place. He closed the cover.