Bone Dance

There was a printing press in the basement. I should have known there would be. It was a hand-operated one; more than that I couldn’t tell, since that wasn’t the medium I specialized in. I recognized type cases, though, and the apparatus for laying out a page. I had to squeeze around it all to get to the circuit box.

I was in the cellar when Sherrea stuck her head around the door (I jumped) and said, “It’s lunch. Are you done?”

“Mmm.”

“Well, you may as well stop to eat it, since it’s there. Theo’s been asking where you are.”

It occurred to me that Theo could have done a lot of what I’d found to do today. He was a friend of Sher’s, and Sher seemed to run tame here. Had Theo been here before? Or had he been, was he still, an unknown quantity, as I’d been before Mr. Lyle — Claudius — surprised things out of me in the library?

The dining room, paneled and bay windowed, was awfully full of people. China Black and Claudius Lyle, Frances, Mick, Etie

“I’m fine.”

“You’re half out of your mind, and hiding it damn well. I’ve never seen you in a group larger than three people.”

She was right, of course. Maybe it had to do with the chameleon nature she’d commented on, or maybe I was afraid that if I talked to more than two people at a sitting, they’d compare notes and find out all my secrets. The tea party in the parlor had been, before this, the largest intimate gathering I’d ever been in.

“What’s the old woman’s name?” I asked.

“Loretta.”

“And the dog’s?”

“What?”

“The dog’s name. If I’m doing this, I may as well do it all the way.”

Sher gri

“You’re not serious.”

“The hell I’m not. It was six months before I could call him with a straight face.”

The food was laid out on the buffet, which meant I’d be spared having to ask anyone to pass the whatever. The whatever consisted of the crown jewels of southern cooking: ham and red-eye gravy, corn bread, hoppin’ john, string beans, and sweet potato pie. If Frances didn’t get on with her murder soon, she wouldn’t fit into Ego’s elevator.

Following Sherrea got me either exactly what I didn’t want, or what I did, depending on which interpretation of my wants I used. I found myself at a corner of the long table, with Sher on my right and Theo, at the end, on my left. He smiled when I sat down and pointed to the sling on his arm. “Temporary lefties get to sit in state, man,” he said. “Makes me want to ask the meeting to come to order.”

I stared at the sling, stupefied. He hadn’t told me anything about himself. I hadn’t told him anything about me. But he’d stood on that landing in the rain and taken a bullet from one of my would-be kidnappers. He — and I — made less sense than ever, but something heavy lay on the scales between us. I had ignored that, yesterday. How could I?

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting and reaching for things.” He pulled a hand-rolled smoke out of his shirt pocket. “But hey, we have the technology.” It was a red-and-orange paisley shirt. I wondered it it was his. Probably.

I would have offered to cut something up for him, but the ham was fork-tender.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the quietest person at the table. Mr. Lyle mentioned that I’d recommended wind power, and engaged me in a pleasant argument about the efficiency of aging PV cells and the availability of good bearings. The woman from the gate, Loretta, was sitting across from me; she scowled and shook her head.

“Everybody ’long the river ought to be ru

I glanced at Theo, but he seemed to be concentrating on his plate. For all I knew, he thought his father was a horse’s ass. How should I know? I had no idea what family feeling was like.

“Why hydro?” I asked.

“Frees up the rest of the stuff for folks without ru

I talked; it was Frances who was quiet. Her face was pale and pinched, and sometimes her fork would pause in midmotion, and her eyes would lock on nothing at all. I was halfway through dessert before I understood. She was afraid.

Did she share Mick’s doubts? Was she wondering if she was fast enough, strong enough? Or was she only worried about getting in and getting out?

I could tell her the number of steps in all the staircases. But she never looked at me. Had Theo told her that I had knowledge she could use? Had he realized, yet, that I did?

Theo was pushing his chair back. “Can I talk to you?” I asked.

Sunlight flashed on the lenses of his glasses. “Sure. C’mon upstairs.”

I caught sight of Sherrea as I rose from the table. She looked pleased.

Theo had a room on the second floor. It was larger than mine, but it had the same character; it was a guest room, not a regular habitation. “Heck of a house,” I said, to see how he’d respond.

“Scared the shit out of me,” he said, dropping lightly on the bed and prying his sneakers off one-handed. “When Sher brought me here, right after that Frances hauled you away, and I saw this big old house with the lightning going off behind it… I thought she was checking me into the Bates Motel, man.”

He knew I’d understand the reference. I would have used it with him, secure in the same knowledge. I looked into his face, the pale face of a confirmed nighthawk or a rich kid, and said, “I’m not a man.”

The light on his glasses interfered with his expression, but there was no great surprise in the lines of his mouth. He was nice-looking, I realized suddenly, by any standards. “It’s just a figure of speech,” he said.

“I’m not a woman, either.”

He sat quiet for a few moments. Then he said, “Oh. That explains some stuff.”

I don’t know what I’d expected. Or wanted. “What stuff?”

“Well, Sher and I once, when we’d had a lot to drink, had this discussion. I said… that I felt, sometimes, like I had a crush on you, and it made me uncomfortable. And she looked at me like I was nuts, and said she didn’t know why it would, because you seemed like someone it would be pretty easy to have a crush on. I was really embarrassed, and I laughed and said maybe for her, but you weren’t, like, my type. Then we both looked at each other fu

“She figured it out,” I said thickly.

“She didn’t tell me.” He gazed steadily at me through the tops of his glasses as he said it. He was telling me that Sher had respected my privacy; and that he had, too, by not asking.

I sat down on the edge of an armchair across from the bed. We had the window between us, lighting both our faces. The conditions for perfect vulnerability had been established. So I told him everything I knew about what I was.

“Far out,” he said when I was done. “In fact, about the farthest out I’ve ever heard of. But none of you can figure out if you’ve got a Horseman in your head?”

I shook the body part in question. “I want to say I don’t. I’m sure I don’t. But how would I know? For a while Frances thought I was Tom Worecski, and I can’t even say for certain that I’m not.”

“No,” Theo said softly. “I’m pretty sure where he is. He’s calling himself Frederick Krueger. Some joke, huh? I never got it ’til yesterday.”