Aces High

He had already set his foot upon the first step when he realized that one corner of the boxlike area before a closed metal door was already occupied. A pale, stringy-haired woman, dumpy-looking beneath unguessable layers of clothing, sat between a pair of shopping bags, staring past him. ". So Gladys tells Marty she knows he's been seeing that waitress down at Jensen's…" the woman muttered. "Excuse me," Croyd said. "Mind if I share the doorway with you? It's coming down kind of hard."

"… I told her she could still get pregnant when she was nursing, but she just laughed at me…"

Croyd shrugged and entered the alcove, moving to the opposite corner.

"When she finds another one's on the way she's really upset," the woman continued, "especially with Marty having moved in with his waitress now…"

Croyd remembered his mother's breakdown following his father's death, and a touch of sadness at this obvious case of senile dementia stirred within his breast. But- He wondered. Could his new power, his ability to influence the thought patterns of others, have some therapeutic effect on a person such as this? He had a little time to pass here. Perhaps..

"Listen," he said to the woman, thinking clearly and simply, focusing images. "You are here, now, in the present. You are sitting in a doorway, watching it snow-"

"You bastard!" the woman screamed at him, her face no longer pale, her hands darting toward one of the bags. "Mind your own business! I don't want now and snow! It hurts!"

She opened the bag, and the darkness inside expanded even as Croyd watched-rushing toward him, filling his entire field of vision, tugging him suddenly in several directions, twisting him and-

The woman, alone now in the doorway, closed her bag, stared at the snow for a moment, then said, "… So I say to her, 'Men aren't good about support payments. Sometimes you've got to get the law on them. That nice young man at Legal Aid will tell you what to do.' And then Charlie, who was working at the pizza parlor…"

Croyd's head hurt and he was not used to the feeling. He never had hangovers, because he metabolized alcohol too quickly, but this felt like what he imagined a hangover to be.

Then he became aware that his back, legs, and buttocks were wet; also, the backs of his arms. He was sprawled someplace cold and moist. He decided to open his eyes.

The sky was clear and twilit between the buildings, with a few bright stars already in sight. It had been snowing. It had also been afternoon. He sat up. What had become of the past several hours, and-

He saw a dumpster. He saw a lot of empty whiskey and wine bottles. He was in an alley, but..

This was not the same alley. The buildings were lower, there had been no dumpster in the other one, and he could not locate the doorway he had occupied thethe old woman.

He massaged his temples, felt the throbbing begin to recede. The old woman… What the hell was that black thing she'd hit him with when he'd tried to help her? She had taken it out of one of her bags and

Bags! He cast about frantically for his own bag, with the carefully parceled remains of the diminutive John Doe. He saw then that he still held it in his right hand, and that it had been turned inside out and torn.

He rose to his feet and looked about in the dim glow from a distant streetlight. He saw the doggie bags scattered about him, and he counted quickly. Nine. Yes. All nine of them were in sight, and he now saw the limbs, the head, and the thoraxthough the thorax had now been broken into four pieces and the head looked much shinier than it had earlier. From the dampness, perhaps. The jar! Where was it? The liquid might be very important to whoever wanted the remains. If the jar had been broken…

He uttered a brief cry when he saw it standing upright in the shadows near the wall to his left. The top was missing and so was an inch or so of glass from beneath it. He crossed to it, and from the odor he knew it to be the real thing and not just. rainwater.

He gathered up the doggie bags, which seemed surprisingly dry, and he placed-them on the sheltered ledge of a barred basement window. Then he collected the pieces of chitin into a heap nearby. When he recovered the legs he noted that they were both broken, but he reflected that that could make for easier packing. Then he turned his attention to the jag-topped pickle jar, and he smiled. How simple. The answer lay all about him, provided by the derelicts who frequented the area.

He gathered an armful of empty bottles and bore them over to the side, where he set them down and began uncorking and uncapping them. When he had finished he decanted the dark liquid.

It took eight bottles of various sizes, and he set them on the ledge with the doggie bags above the small mound of shattered exoskel' and cartilage. It seemed as if there were a little bit less of the guy each time he got unwrapped. Maybe it had something to do with the way he was divided now. Maybe it took algebra to understand it.

Croyd moved then to the dumpster and opened its side hatch. He smiled almost immediately, for there were long strands of Christmas ribbon near at hand. He withdrew several of these and stuffed them into a side pocket. He leaned forward. If there were ribbon, then-

The sound of rapid footfalls came and went. He spun, raising his hands to defend himself, but there was no one near.

Then he spotted him. A small man in a coat several times too large for him had halted briefly at the windowsill, where he snatched one of the larger bottles and two of the doggie bags. He ran off immediately then, toward the far end of the alley where two other shabby figures waited.

"Hey!" Croyd yelled. "Stop!" and he reached with his power but the man was out of range.

All that he heard was laughter, and a cry of, "Tonight we party, boys!"

Sighing, Croyd withdrew a large wad of red and green Christmas paper from the dumpster and returned to the window to repackage the remainder of the remains.

After he had walked several blocks, his bright parcel beneath his arm, he passed a bar called The Dugout and realized he was in the Village. His brow furrowed for a moment, but then he saw a taxi and waved, and the car pulled over. Everything was okay. Even the headache was gone.

Jube looked up, saw Croyd smiling at him. "How- How did it go?" he asked.

"Mission accomplished," Croyd answered, passing him the key.

"You got it? There was something on the news about Darlingfoot "

"I got it."

"And the possessions?"

"There weren't any."

"You sure of that, fella?"

"Absolutely. Nothing there but him, and he's in the bathtub."

"What?"

"It's okay, because I closed the drain."

"What do you mean?"

"My cab was involved in an accident on the way over and some of the bottles broke. So watch out for glass when you unwrap it."

"Bottles? Broken glass?"

"He was kind of-reduced. But I got you everything that was left."

"Left?"

"Available. He sort of came apart and melted a bit. But I saved most of him. He's all wrapped up in shiny paper with a red ribbon around him. I hope that's okay."

"Yeah… That's fine, Croyd. Sounds like you did your best. "

Jube passed him an envelope.

"I'll buy you di

"No, thanks. I-I've got things to do."

"Take along some disinfectant if you're stopping by the apartment.

"

"Yeah… I gather there were some problems?"

"Naw, it was a piece of cake."

Croyd walked off whistling, hands in his pockets. Jube stared at the key as a distant clock began to chime the hour.