The wind died, and the cougar padded slowly down the path between the board fence and the rear of the theater. She stopped to sniff at the crates, spending more time on the one which had been overturned than on the one which still stood against the wall. There were many intermingled scents here. The last person who had stood on the over-turned crate had then pushed it off the one still against the wall. The cougar could smell his hands, a different, sharper smell than the others. A skin smell, undressed somehow, tangy with sweat and oils. It belonged to a male in the prime of his life.
She could also smell guns. Under other circumstances that smell would have sent her running, but now it didn’t matter. She would go where the old one sent her; she had no choice. The cougar sniffed the wall, then looked up at the window. It was unlocked; she could see it moving back and forth in the wind. Not much, because it was recessed, but enough for her to be sure it was open. She could get inside. It would be easy. The window would push in before her, giving way as man-things sometimes did.
No, the voice of the unformed said. You can’t.
An image flickered briefly in her mind: shiny things. Man-drinkers, sometimes smashed to bright fragments on the rocks when the men were done with them. She under-stood (in the way that a layperson may vaguely under-stand a complicated geometry proof, if it is carefully explained) that she would knock a number of these man- drinkers onto he floor if she tried to jump through the window. She didn’t know how that could be, but the voice in her head said it was, and that the others would hear them break.
The cougar passed beneath the unlatched window like a dark eddy, paused to sniff at the fire door, which had been boarded shut, then came to a second window. This one was at the same height as the one with the man-drinkers inside of it, and made of the same white glass, but it wasn’t unlatched.
It’s the one you’ll use, though, the voice in the cougar’s head whispered. When I tell you it’s time, that’s the one YOU WILL use.
Yes. She might cut herself on the glass in the window, as she had once cut the pads of her feet on the pieces of man-drinkers up in the hills, but when the voice in her head told her that the time had come, she would jump at the window. Once inside, she would continue to do what the voice told her. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.. . but for now, it was the way things were.
The cougar lay below the bolted men’s-room window, curled her tail around her, and waited for the voice of the thing from the pit. The voice of the outsider. The voice of Tak. When it came, she would move. Until it did, she would lie here and listen to the voice of the wind, and smell the bitterness it brought with it, like bad news from another world.
Mary watched the old veterinarian take a bottle of whiskey out of the liquor cabinet, almost drop it, then pour himself a drink. She took a step toward Johnny and spoke to him in a low voice. “Make him stop.
That’s the one with the drunk in it.”
He looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Who elected you Temperance Queen?”
“You shithead,” she hissed. “Don’t you think I know who got him started? Don’t you think I saw?”
She started toward Tom, but Johnny pulled her back and went himself. He heard her little gasp of pain
and supposed he might have squeezed her wrist a little harder than was exactly gentlemanly. Well, he wasn’t used to being called a shithead. He had won a National Book Award, after all. He had been on the cover of Time. He had also fuckedAmerica ’s sweetheart (well, maybe that was sort of retroactive, or something, she hadn’t really beenAmerica ’s sweetheart since 1965 or so, but he had still fucked her), and he wasn’t used to being called a shit-head. Yet, Mary had a point. He, a man not unacquainted with the highways and byways of Alcoholics Anonymous, had nevertheless given that kiddy favorite, Mr.
Drunken Doggy Doctor, his first shot of the evening. He’d thought it would pull Billingsley together, get him focused (and they had needed him focused, it was his town, after all) but hadn’t he also been a teeny-tiny bit pissed off at the tosspot vet awarding himself a loaded gun while The National Book Award Kid had to be contented with an unloaded .22?
No. No, dammit, the gun wasn’t the issue. Keeping the old man wired together enough to he of some help, that was the issue.
Well, maybe. Maybe. It felt a little bogus, hut you had to give yourself the benefit of the doubt in some situations – especially the crazy ones, which this certainly was. Either way, it maybe hadn’t been such a good idea. He had had a large number of not-such-good ideas in his life, and if anyone was qualified to recognize one when he saw it, John Edward Marinville was probably that fellow.
“Why don’t we save that for later, Tom?” he said, and smoothly plucked the glass of whiskey out of the vet’s hand just as he was bringing it to his lips.
“Hey!” Billingsley cawed, making a swipe at it. His eyes were more watery than ever, and now threaded with bright red stitches that looked like tiny cuts. ”Ginime that!”
Johnny held it away from him, up by his own mouth, and felt a sudden, appallingly strong urge to take care of the problem in the quickest, simplest way. Instead, he put the glass on top of the bar, where ole Tommy wouldn’t be able to reach it unless he jumped around to one side or the other. Not that he didn’t think Tommy was capable of jumping for a drink; ale Tommy had gotten to a point where he would probably try to fart “The Marine Hymn” if someone promised him a double. Meantime, the others were watching, Mary rubbing her wrist (which was red, he observed-but just a little, really no big deal).
“Gimme!” Billingsley bawled, and stretched out one hand toward the glass on top of the bar, opening and closing his fingers like an angry baby that wants its sucker back. Johnny suddenly remembered how the actress-the one with the emeralds, the one who had been America’s number one honeybunny in days of yore, so sweet sugar wouldn’t melt in her snatch-had once pushed him into the pool at the Bel-Air, how everyone had laughed, how he himself had laughed as he came out dripping, with his bottle of beer still in his hand, too drunk to know what was happening, that the flushing sound he heard was the remainder of his reputation going down the shitter. Yes sir and yes ma’am. there he had been on that hot
day in Los Angeles, laughing like mad in his wet Pierre Cardin suit, bottle of Bud upraised in one hand like a trophy, everyone else laughing right along with him; they were all having a great old time, he had been pushed into the pool just like in a movie and they were having a great old time, hardy-har and hidey ho, welcome to the wonderful world of too drunk to know better, let’s see you write your way out of this one, Marinville.
He felt a burst of shame that was more for himself than for Tom, although he knew it was Tom they were looking at (except for Mary, who was still making a big deal of her wrist), Tom who was still saying
“Gimme that baack!” while he clenched and unclenched his hand like Baby Fucking Huey, Tom who was already shot on only three drinks. Johnny had seen this before, too; after a certain number of years spent swimming around in the bottle drinking everything in sight and yet seeming to remain almost stone-sober, your booze-gills had this weird tendency to suddenly seal themselves shut at almost the first taste. Crazy but true. See the amazing Late-Stage Alco -_ holic, folks, step right up, you won’t believe your eyes.
He put an arm around Tom, leaned into the brown aroma of Dant that hung around the man’s head like a fumey halo, and murmured, “Be a good boy now and you can have that shot later.”
Tom looked at him with his red-laced eyes. His chapped, cracked lips were wet with spit.
“Do you promise?” he whispered hack, a conspirator’s whisper, breathing out more fumes and running it all together, so it became Dervapromiz?
“Yes,” Johnny said. “I may have been wrong to get you started, but now that 1 have, I’m going to maintain you That’s all I’ll do, though. So have a little dignity, all right?”