Uptown Local and Other Interventions (13 page)

“Ah, a fine vintage, senora la Horrida,” Churro said as he got a closer look at the markings on the barrels. “A noble red—”—
if you’re used to drinking vinegar—”
—and lifetimes old.”—
as a fly reckons time!
It was a cheap Diego red, best suited to removing tarnish from metalwork. “Let me find the bunghole. Ah. And is there a hammer hereabouts? No? Then perhaps the senora will indulge me while I use this swordhilt. But before I start; your near neighbor her gracious and serene majesty Queen Teresa Elisabetta Maria Cecilia de San Vicente y Santa Monica sends you her royal greeting, along with this cup which she understands you recently unfortunately lost, and which it is her delight to restore to you—”

Churro put the cup hurriedly on top of one of the barrels, which was as well, for one of those huge taloned feet instantly swept out and snatched it away, scoring the barrel in the process. “What a nice lady,” was all Churro could make of the ensuing mumbles. He busied himself with the bunghole of one of the barrels, which (since he had no tap for it) immediately began spraying wine all over the floor. “If the charming senora will allow me to fill her cup for her—”

La Horrida nosed it back toward him. Churro examined it carefully for venom, found none, and filled it. It was a large cup, holding a quart at least. he put it down for her and watched her drink, wondering philosophically how much of its flavor wine retained when brought so rapidly to a boil.

“More,” said La Horrida, tipping over the cup with her big blunt black tongue in an attempt to get at the last drops.

So Churro poured out for her again. And again, and again, until the wine was no longer spraying out of the barrel, and Churro had to tip it over to pour; and again, and again, until in good-natured impatience La Horrida bit the top off the barrel, pushed as much of her huge head into it as she could manage, and drained it to the lees. After that, the drinking went a little faster. Churro himself was persuaded to take a little wine (“It izhn’t proper for a llllllady to dhrink by herzhelf, izh it? Drink up, man!”). He began using the Cup at that point (having surreptitiously and carefully wiped it out), while La Horrida took the top off another barrel, and matched him draft for draft. The third barrel went the same way.

By the end of the third barrel, La Horrida allowed as how she wasn’t thirsty any more. She was lying on her side on the hoard, hardly smoking at all anymore, but drooling a good deal: the golden objects under her head got pretty well melted down. And Churro, who was sitting beside her head at this point (well away from the drooling) and no longer very steady himself, began wondering what else he might be able to get away with. Just to find out, he started talking. Before he was done, Churro (as suddenly self-appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from the Queen to La Horrida de San Vicente, Gatherer of Riches, Terror of Green Things, Ruler of All She Surveyed) had negotiated a Treaty of Peace between the Queen and the dragon. This was concluded about four hours past noon. And about five hours past, as the shadows were beginning to get long, Churro finished his elaborate, flowery and excessively refined farewells to La Horrida, and stumbled back out through the cave into the open air, with the dragon’s snores rumbling in the tunnels behind him.

Unfortunately the black Cahuenga mare was not waiting for him. She had broken the charred branch to which her bridle had been tied, and had left, no doubt gratefully, for her own stable. “Ay!” Churro said, rubbing his aching head, and started to walk back to the Queen’s house.

*

It took him till late evening. When he came there he found the household in a most lamentable state. For when the black Cahuenga mare had come home without her rider, the heroes had all feared the worst: they met at dinner to eulogize Churro, and had already spent some hours composing elegant and sorrowful poetry on his valiant death, and planning the mock battle they would stage the next day, in preparation for their attack on the vile dragon. Churro’s entrance into the hall somewhat interrupted this business. The heroes raised a great shout of surprise and acclamation: and the Queen, sitting quiet and pensive-looking in her great chair at the high table, was seen to smile. She beckoned Churro forward, and he came up to the high table and whispered a word or two in her  ear.

She smiled more sweetly yet, stood up, took him by the hand, and led him off to her chambers.

The heroes shrugged, and went back to their eating and drinking. At least they could still have the mock battle.

*

So it came to pass that the dragon of San Vicente was made harmless, and the Queen’s realm came through the summer with no more brushfires than were normal. The Prince of Los Encinos, after a day’s annoyance, resigned himself to the loss of his Cup; especially considering the tale of the six guardsmen, who explained that they had all seen the Blessed Virgin, looking very tall and fair (and a bit heavy, though they didn’t mention that), walk into their guardroom, right through the solid door and into the room where the Cup was, and bear it out again, while angels and other mystical creatures surrounded her, singing in small (actually, rather squeaky) voices. His Excellency the Bishop of Los Encinos proclaimed a miracle, and celebrated a high mass to honor Our Lady of the Sacred Vessel of the Last Supper, and rang all the bells in the cathedral. The people took this for a festival, and made very merry. The Prince said the bells made his head hurt, and he went off into the hills to console himself with adventure in the form of lions and bears and crofters’ daughters.

Churro de las Resedas was ennobled by the Queen, and created Friend of the Throne and Adviser to the Queen’s Majesty, and was given land about Mandevillia Canyon (which soon got green again). He and his heirs hold that land in perpetuity, bringing in tribute to the Crown each year four peppercorns, and a bunch of grapes, and a small iron horse on wheels with a string fastened to the front to pull by, all set with smoke-colored diamonds. The Crown always gives back the horse.

And once a month a small caravan of wagons, bearing tuns of a wine whose parentage will not stand too close an inspection, rolls up to a cave high in Mandevillia Canyon, and leaves the tuns outside: this being in accord with the treaty between La Horrida de San Vicente and Teresa Elisabetta Maria Cecelia de San Vicente y Santa Monica, by the grace of God and the Holy Virgin, Lady of the Lands South of San Vicente, and Queen of Los Angeles.

And things are quiet in the hills.

It stunned me to discover some years back that Janis Ian is a big fan of my writing, the Young Wizards books in particular. And it charmed me when she asked if I would contribute something to the anthology of stories based on her songs. Typically, the most famous ones were snagged first—Heaven only knows what I might have done to, or with, “Seventeen.” But the one that I found myself wanting to write about was “Hopper Painting”, and it left me free to investigate the vexed question of what the characters inside a work of art might have to say about what the creator spirit does to them…  The painting in question is Hopper’s famous frozen moment,
“Nighthawks.”

            He turned toward the window for the millionth time, hoping to see something go by outside, anything; anything from the outside world. But the street was bleak and empty, and as dark as it had ever been; the lighting inside was too harsh and insistent for him to see anything but his reflection in the window—his face, with empty eyes. They were almost a relief; at least the Other wasn’t looking out of them.

At least the coffee was always hot.

He ducked his head over the cup and watched the steam rising. Anywhere else, that  would have been a comfort. Anywhere else, that would have been a miracle: coffee that never got cold. Of course, it never really cooled enough to drink, either. Or not comfortably. It always burned.
 

            She turned to him, and said, “Sugar?”

            As always, he had to stop to work out whether this was an endearment or a request for sweetener. Her red blouse burned itself to green afterimages in the fierce fluorescent light; her eyes, when he once more looked hopefully into them, were empty of any endearment. He sighed.
 

            “Yes,” he said, and pushed his cup a quarter inch toward her.

            She looked at him curiously for a moment, then pushed the sugar dispenser toward him. “Your  place or mine?” she said.

            But she always said that. And there was never any lessening of the sense of something out in the dark, something alien and chilly, watching her say it; as if bloodless things turned to one another, rustling out there in the dry cold dark, and whispered one to the other in coldly amused reaction.

            “Why are we here?” he said.

            She looked blankly at him. “For coffee,” she said.

           
How can she be so dumb?
the back of his brain screamed.
How can anyone be so witless?
It was beyond him how any other human being could fail to feel the emptiness that lay beyond those windows, beating against them like the vacuum of space: unfriendly, dry and cold, seeking to suck all the life out of whatever lay on this side of the glass, in whatever passed for warmth.

Passed for it.

He had to try one more time. “What about us?” he said.

“Well, of course we have to find a nice place…” she said. “My mama would kick up such a stink if we moved into any place too small. It has to be at least two bedrooms. Three would be better.”

“We don’t need three,” he said: but he knew she wouldn’t hear him. For them to ever need three, they would have to get out of here…find a quiet place…and do…

But doing
that
meant change. And where they were, trapped in this water-clear amber, change was the last thing to be expected.

He glanced toward the glass again, flinching as he did it, like someone expecting a blow. It was always better to steel yourself for what you might see, just in case. Once again past the form hunched between him and the window he saw only his eyes, dark and empty-looking in the reflection, and let out the breath he’d been holding.  

“And then we can get some nice furniture,” she said. She started going on about davenports and hassocks, and he looked away from the window, down at the table.
She can’t help it,
  he thought.
There’s nothing left in her any more but the talking, the empty sound that means she’s not quite dead. If there’s any consciousness in there at all, any more, it’s doing what I do when I keep looking out and hoping I’ll see something.
 
Something besides…  But he didn’t want to even think the name of the thing. It had heard him do that, once or twice before, and had answered to the calling; he’d been sorry for days afterwards. Or what felt like days…for it was always four AM here, and never dawn.

He glanced down and in front of him at the guy behind the counter, who was standing there getting something out from underneath, or putting something away.
 
It was a wonder how he never saw either of those actions actually happen, though something of the kind was always in train.

He’s as stuck as we are,
  he thought, watching the counter guy.
More so, maybe. But who knows what’s going on in his head? He never says anything but ‘Refill?’.

Beyond the counter guy, the cherrywood counter itself stretched away down to the end of the diner. He let his gaze travel down toward the end of it, stealthily, as if something there that might see him and run away. Occasionally he had glimpsed something down there, a brief tangle of incongruous smoky shadows defying the shiny cold primary-color gleam of the diner—a swirl blue-gray and indefinite, as if a whole packageful of Phillies were smoking themselves. Indistinct through the smoke, it might be possible to catch a glimpse of someone else in the place beyond the two of them, the hunched man, and the counter guy. There sometimes seemed to be booths down there. A few times now he’d thought he’d seen a figure hunkered down in one of them, scribbling idly and then looking up through the smoke with a bleakly speculative expression, like an self-exiled poet hunting inspiration in the blue haze. A second later this figure always looked like part of the haze himself, the mere structure of a poem with none of the detail; a moment more and even that faint manifestation would go missing again, the blue shadows dissipating in the chilly bright air of the diner as if sucked up by the ventilation system. Shortly thereafter even the booths would be gone, leaving nothing but a cherrywood counter that seemed to stretch away to infinity if you let your attention linger too long upon it.

He let his gaze fall to the tabletop once more, dwelling as if he’d never seen it before on the utensil-scuffed grain of the wood, the sticky dried-out coffee spills blotched on it here and there, the scatter of sugar crystals from the cylindrical pressed-glass dispenser that always gave you half a teaspoon less sugar per pour than you wanted, the crumpled paper napkin that was always a shade too small for whatever you wanted to do with it, the napkin dispenser that was always on the verge of going empty. The profound insufficiency of this place, this situation, struck him once again as to his left, out of the corner of his eye, he could see her red hair swing slightly while she talked enthusiastically to the counter about horsehair sofas that you could save a lot of money on, second-hand. Whoever was running this place had made sure that there wasn’t a single extra thing here, nothing superfluous, nothing beyond the bare bright necessities, scrubbed clean of the unconscious miscellany of a less ordered, more generous world.

 He sighed and looked out toward the street again, wishing for anything to be out there—a late pedestrian, even just the glare of headlights. But this time, the Other’s gaze lanced out of the immobile face of the hunched man and seized on his, glaring out at him  with a terrible, excoriating intensity. Unprepared this time for the alien regard, he was struck rigid, but trembling, like a man in an electric chair: he wondered why smoke wasn’t pouring out from under his hat, why his fat wasn’t frying under his skin as the Other looked through it, past it, trying to find not soul, but the lack of it. Locked there in that awful rigor, his eyes trapped in the depths of the chill despair of the Other’s gaze, he wanted to scream:
Why are you doing this to us? Why have you put us in this hell? What have we ever done to
you?

The Other couldn’t hear, though. It knew only Its vision of the world, the one it was imposing on them in this small corner of damnation for Its own satisfaction, the fulfillment of Its own needs. He sat there and suffered for what felt like forever, as It enforced ever more rigorously on him Its idea of what he should look like, and worse, what he should feel like. Alienation ran in his veins like meltwater; it was as if electrocution was a thing not of fire, but ice. He felt the pallor setting into his skin, a physical chill; his eyes were going steadily more shadowed with some old dull buried rage of the Other’s, until only they burned. Helplessness, hopelessness burned in his bones, rooted him to the counter stool, froze him there in an unendurable and inescapable rigor of isolation.

Its powers of concentration were awful. How long it held him there, he couldn’t tell; under Its chilly regard, after a while, thought stopped, the way the scientists said even atoms stopped vibrating when it got cold enough. And It had enough cold in its lonely brain for any ten universes. But at last that concentration broke, leaving him free to think again.

For how long…?

He would have slumped down on the counter if there’d been that much flexibility  in his body right now. The rigor took a long time to wear off, after one of these bouts: it was taking longer every time. He was terrified that one day a session would come after which Its rendition of him would be complete, and he would never be able to move on his own again, never have a thought that wasn’t a reflection of Its awful view of the world…if any thought would be left to him at all. But finally, after a long while, enough flexibility reasserted itself that he could at least sag.

I was something else once,
  he thought.
I have to do my best to remember that. I was a person. I had a name. I walked free. There was sun, not just electric lights. I went down the street whenever I wanted to. I put my hat on or took it off whenever I liked.

But that was before that man saw me in the park, and took the camera out, and  took the photo of me. And now that’s starting to be all I am: a photo he took, an image he stole, a thing he started to paint.

Pretty soon it
will
be all I am. That thing out there, that man, if it’s the same one—if It’s really a man at all: It’s making me over in Its image. Pretty soon all I’ll be is what It wants me to be. It’s already done it with
her.

He could have sobbed: but his eyes were infallibly dry, his tear ducts long since painted out. Even that slight release was denied him.

 
It’s not fair!
he thought, desperate, wishing he could open his mouth even to whisper, or find enough breath somewhere for a last good shout.
Isn’t there a God somewhere that takes pity on people like me? Isn’t there mercy anywhere for someone who doesn’t deserve to go to Hell, and gets thrown into it anyway?

Next to him, the red-haired woman was still reciting her litany of household furnishings. He wondered what she’d been like before It had seen her, walking down some street, and had taken her image and her soul to imprison it here in the chill shine of the diner. Who knew how long she’d sat here now in the cold fluorescent light, while the Other peeled away her liveliness and humanity until she was just a shell flattened under the shellac, three-dimensional only in seeming. It was too late for her now. There might be others, of course; one day, one of those smoke-in-light shapes might start to solidify, down the length of the counter, becoming real enough, trapped enough, to persist in company with the shiny walls and the slick, unreflecting counter. He gazed down the length of the counter again, for the moment unable even to really care.
More company in Hell --

He blinked, then. There
was
someone down there, in one of the booths; nothing gradual about her, no smoke-tangle. A slim shape, dark-eyed, dark-haired, looking straight at him.

He shivered, and doing so, discovered that he could move. That scared him, too, though just a few moments before he would have done anything to be able to move. There the woman sat, her gaze resting on him, both lazy and challenging. She was leaning forward on her elbows a little, doing something with her hands: he couldn’t quite make out what.

He bent his attention steadily on her, finding it astonishingly hard to believe in her. He expected her to vanish like a shadow at high noon, swallowed away by the pitiless light, the way the smoke and the shadows always did. But she sat there, concrete, and actually raised an eyebrow at him.

He swallowed, staring at her. She was as unlike the woman sitting by him as could be imagined. Her clothes were loose and strange. Her hair was dark and curly, and the hat slouching partway down over one eye was in an unfamiliar style.   Her eyes were soft, but her face had a sharp look, the mouth looking like it might be pursed a lot of the time, in assessment if not in disapproval. The expression said:
Well? I’m waiting.

He breathed hard and deep for a couple of moments, preparing for the exertion to come, and then, in a rush, tried to stand up.
Did
stand up, to his shock and amazement; it had been a long time now since he’d been able to do it in one try. He slid off the stool and staggered slightly as his feet hit the floor. He had to steady himself against the counter, and beside him, the red-haired girl didn’t even notice, just kept on talking.

“Refill?” the counter guy said, glancing up from his polishing.

He shook his head and stumbled away, around the curve of the counter, using one stool after another to brace himself as he slowly made his way down the length of the counter toward the booths. Here came the most terrible challenge, the one he had never dared before; to get past the hunched man without him turning, staring at you, enforcing you with that stare back into the place where the It behind him felt you belonged. Prayer wasn’t anything he had had access to for a long time: there was never any sense of anything listening, and he’d long since given up. Yet still the back of his mind moaned
Please, please don’t look, please—

 He passed by, and the hunched figure didn’t turn, didn’t look. Maybe that last awful gaze was all the It-thing out in the darkness had in It for the moment. Sometimes It seemed to get distracted for long periods. God knew what It was dealing with then, what other chilly creation It was enforcing Its will on.
Not my problem. The booth—

As always, the counter seemed to stretch away to infinity when you tried to walk it: but she was sitting there, watching him approach. He struggled against the foreverness of the moment and kept on walking, keeping his gaze fixed on her like a lifeline. After a moment she turned her attention to whatever it was she was doing on the table, but still he kept on coming, afraid to lose the impetus and wind up stalled and frozen again before he found out why she was here—