have gotten this far in the first place. The idea of telling Barry was laughable; the idea
of telling Dr. Brady actually a little frightening. Dr. Brady would be recommending a
good psychiatrist before you could say Minnesota Multiphasic.
The night he got the Fritos check, Sifkitz noticed a change in the basement wall-mural.
He paused in the act of setting his alarm and approached the projection (can of Diet
Coke in one hand, reliable little Brookstone desk-clock in the other, oatmeal-raisin
cookies tucked away safely in the old shirt pocket). Something was up in there, all
right, something was different, but at first he was damned if he could tell what it was.
He closed his eyes, counted to five (clearing his mind as he did so, an old trick), then
sprang them open again, so wide that he looked like a man burlesquing fright. This
time he saw the change at once. The bright yellow marquise shape over by the door to
the furnace room was as gone as the clutch of beer cans. And the color of the sky
above the trees was a deeper, darker red. The sun was either down or almost down.
On the road to Herkimer, night was coming.
You have to stop this, Sifkitz thought, and then he thought: Tomorrow. Maybe
tomorrow.
With that he mounted up and started riding. In the woods around him, he could hear
the sound of birds settling down for the night.
V. The Screwdriver Would Do for a Start
Over the next five or six days, the time Sifkitz spent on the stationary bike (and his
childhood three-speed) was both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because he had
never felt better; his body was operating at absolute peak performance levels for a
man his age, and he knew it. He supposed that there were pro athletes in better shape
than he was, but by thirty-eight they would be approaching the end of their careers,
and whatever joy they were able to take in the tuned condition of their bodies would
necessarily be tainted by that knowledge. Sifkitz, on the other hand, might go on
creating commercial art for another forty years, if he chose to. Hell, another fifty. Five
full generations of foot ball players and four of baseball players would come and go
while he stood peacefully at his easel, painting book covers, automotive products, and
Five New Logos for Pepsi-Cola.
Except…
Except that wasn’t the ending folks familiar with this sort of story would expect, was
it? Nor the sort of ending he expected himself.
The sense of being followed grew stronger with every ride, especially after he took
down the last of the New York State plat maps and put up the first of the Canadian
ones. Using a blue pen (the same one he’d used to create MAN WITH SHOTGUN),
he drew an extension of the Herkimer Road on the previously roadless plat, adding
lots of squiggles. By now he was pedaling faster, looking over his shoulder often, and
finishing his rides covered with sweat, at first too out of breath to dismount the bike
and turn off the braying alarm.
That looking-back-over-the-shoulder thing, now—that was interesting. At first when
he did it he’d catch a glimpse of the basement alcove, and the doorway leading to the
basement’s larger rooms with its mazy arrangement of storage stalls. He’d see the
Pomona Oranges crate by the door with the Brookstone desk alarm on it, marking off
the minutes between four and six. Then a kind of red blur wiped across everything,
and when it drained away he was looking at the road behind him, the autumn-bright
trees on both sides (only not so bright now, not with twilight starting to thicken), and
the darkening red sky overhead. Later, he didn’t see the basement at all when he
looked back, not even a flash of it. Just the road leading back to Herkimer, and
eventually to Poughkeepsie.
He knew perfectly well what he was looking back over his shoulder for: headlights.
The headlights of Freddy’s Dodge Ram, if you wanted to get specific about it.
Because for Berkowitz and his crew, bewildered resentment had given way to anger.