Emma Bull - War For The Oaks

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This book is for my mother,
who knew right away that the Beatles were important,
and for my father, who never once complained about the noise.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are past due to Steven Brust, Nate Bucklin, Kara Dalkey, Pamela Dean, Pat Wrede,
Cyn Horton, and Lois Bujold; they always want to know what happens next. Thanks also to
Terri, who thought it was a good idea; Curt Quiner and Floyd Henderson, motorcycle gurus;
Pamela and Lynda, for the cookies; Val, for comfort and threats; Mike, for the keyboards;
and Knut-Koupeé, for all the guitars.
For the singin’ and dancin’: Boiled in Lead, Summer of Love, Têtes Noires, Curtiss A.,
Rue Nouveau, Paula Alexander, Prince and the Revolution, First Avenue, Seventh Street
Entry, and the Uptown Bar.
But most of all, to Will, for the whole shebang.
On the Folly of Introductions
Ideally, works of fiction don’t need to be explained. When I see one of those scholarly and
well-crafted essays that always seem to precede a volume of Jane Austen or Dorothy
Parker, I skip it. Yes, I do. If it looks promising, I come back and read it when I’m done with
the fiction. But I’d rather not know beforehand that a character is based on the author’s
brother, or that the author had just been cruelly re-jected by his childhood sweetheart when
he began chapter 10. I like biography; but Charlotte Bronte isn’t Jane Eyre, and Louisa
Alcott isn’t Jo March, and I don’t want to be lured into thinking otherwise if the author doesn’t
want me to.
I wonder sometimes how authors would feel if they read the intro-ductions that spring up in
front of their works after they’re too dead to say anything about them. What if that character
had nothing to do with the author’s brother but was actually based on the writer’s dad’s
stories about what it was like to grow up with Uncle Oscar? What if the author was rejected
by his childhood sweetheart, but it was secretly something of a relief to him by that point,
though he never said so to anyone? And does chapter 10 – read differently if the reader
knows that?
It’s all just too darn risky, this business of introductions. If I weren’t me, I’m sure I’d be
working up to declaring here that “Bull’s experi-ence as a professional musician clearly
informed War for the Oaks.” But since I am me, I get to dodge that bullet. I’d had very little
ex-perience as a professional musician when I wrote this book. I was extrapolating from
things I’d seen other people do, things I’d read and heard. War for the Oaks was written
from the backside of the monitor speakers, as it were, and it wasn’t until after the book was
published and Cats Laughing came together (Adam Stemple, Lojo Russo, Bill Colsher,
Steve Brust, and me, playing original electric folk/jazz/space music) that the novel became
at all autobiographical. (By the time I became half of the goth-folk duo the Flash Girls, I was
pretty used to the involvement of supernatural forces in one’s band. Half kidding.)
But just knowing a few facts about the chronology of the author’s life doesn’t make
introduction-writing safe. Writing a novel may be much like childbirth: once the end product’s
age is measured in double digits, the painful and messy details of its origin are a little fuzzy.
My firstborn book is a teenager, and its very existence makes it hard for me to remember
what life was like before it existed.
And as with teenagers, there’s a point at which your book leaves the nest. What War for
the Oaks means to me matters less, now that it’s done and out of my hands, than what it
means to whoever’s reading it. A book makes intimate friends with people its author will
never meet. I’m not part of those people’s lives; Eddi McCandry is, and the Phouka, and
Willy Silver, and the Queen of Air and Darkness. How can I describe or explain that
relationship, when I’m not there to see it?
Here’s what I can safely, honestly tell you about the story that fol-lows this introduction:
I still love this book. I still believe in the things it says. When someone tells me, “ War for
the Oaks is one of my favorite books,” it still makes me happy and proud.
Those are things only I could tell you; no writer of introductions, no matter how insightful,
could deduce them from the text of the novel or the details of my life. But for everything else,
the novel can, and should, speak for itself, and your relationship with it is as true as anyone
else’s, including mine. All I can do now is step aside and say, “I’d like you to meet my story.”
I hope the two of you hit it off.
Los Angeles
November 2000
Prologue
By day, the Nicollet Mall winds through Minneapolis like a paved canal. People flow between
its banks, eddying at the doors of office towers and department stores. The big
red-and-white city buses roar at every corner. On the many-globed lampposts, banners
advertising a museum exhibit flap in the wind that the tallest buildings snatch out of the sky.
The skyway system vaults the mall with its covered bridges of steel and glass, and they, too,
are full of people, color, motion.
But late at night, there’s a change in the Nicollet Mall.
The street lamp globes hang like myriad moons, and light glows in the empty bus shelters
like nebulae. Down through the silent business district the mall twists, the silver zipper in a
patchwork coat of many dark colors. The sound of traffic from Hennepin Avenue, one block
over, might be the grating of the World-Worm’s scales over stone.
Near the south end of the mall, in front of Orchestra Hall, Peavey Plaza beckons: a
reflecting pool, and a cascade that descends from tow-ering chrome cylinders to a sunken
walk-in maze of stone blocks and pillars for which “fountain” is an inadequate name. In the
moonlight, it is black and silver, gray and white, full of an elusive play of shape and contrast.
On that night, there were voices in Peavey Plaza. One was like the susurrus of the fountain
itself, sometimes hissing, sometimes with the little-bell sound of a water drop striking. The
other was deep and rough; if the concrete were an animal, it would have this voice.
“Tell me,” said the water voice, “what you have found.”
The deep voice replied. “There is a woman who will do, I think.”
When water hits a hot griddle, it sizzles; the water-voice sounded like that. “You are our
eyes and legs in this, Dog. That should not interfere with your tongue. Tell me!”
A low, growling laugh, then: “She makes music, the kind that moves heart and body. In
another time, we would have found her long before, for that alone. We grow fat and slow in
this easy life,” the rough voice said, as if it meant to say something very different.
The water made a fierce sound, but the rough voice laughed again, and went on. “She is
like flowering moss, delicate and fair, but proof against frosts and trampling feet. Her hair is
the color of an elm leaf before it falls, her eyes the gray of the storm that brings it down. She
does not offend the eye. She seems strong enough, and I think she is clever. Shall I bring her
to show to you?”
“Can you?”
“B’lieve I can. But we should rather ask—will she do what she’s to do?”
The water-voice’s laughter was like sleet on a window. “With all the Court against her if
she refuses? Oh, if we fancy her, Dog, she’ll do. Pity her if she tries to stand against us.”
And the rough voice said quietly, “I shall.”
chapter 1 – Another Magic Moment in Showbiz
The University Bar was not, in the grand scheme of the city, close to the university. Nor was
its clientele collegiate. They worked the assembly lines and warehouses, and wanted
un-complicated entertainment. The club boasted a jukebox stocked by the rental company
and two old arcade games. It was small and smoky and smelled vaguely bad. But InKline
Plain, the most misspelled band in Minneapolis, was there, playing the first night of a
two-night gig with a sort of weary desperation. The promise of fifty dollars per band member
kept them going; it was more than they’d made last week.
Eddi McCandry stared bleakly at the dim little stage with its red-and-black flocked
wallpaper. The band’s equipment threatened to overflow it. She’d tried to wedge her guitar
stand out of the way, but it still seemed likely to leap out and trip someone. She was glad the
keyboard player had quit two weeks before—there wasn’t room for him.
The first set had been bad enough, playing to a nearly empty club. The next two were
worse. Too many country fans with requests for favorites. And of course, Stuart, as
bandleader, had accepted them all, played them wretchedly, forgot the words, and made it
plain that he didn’t care. They were the wrong band for this bar.
“I think,” Eddi said, “that this job was a bad idea.”
Her companion nodded solemnly. “Every time you’ve said that this evening, it’s sounded
smarter.” Carla DiAmato was the drummer for InKline Plain. With her shaggy black hair and
her eyes made up dark for the stage, she looked exotic as a tiger, wholly out of place in the
University Bar.
“It would have been smarter to tell Stuart it was a bad idea,” Eddi said. “Ideally, before he
booked the job.”
“You couldn’t know.”
“I could. I did. Look at this place.”
Carla sighed. “I think I’m gonna hear the ‘This Band Sucks Dead Rat’ speech again.”
“Well, it does.”
“Through a straw. I know. So why don’t you quit?”
Eddi looked at her, then at her glass, then at the ceiling. “Why don’t you?”
“It’s steady work.” Carla was silent for a moment, then added, “Well, it used to be.”
“Tsk. You don’t even have my excuse.”
“You mean I haven’t been sleeping with Stuart?”
“Yeah,” Eddi sighed, “like that.”
“Sometimes I take my blessings for granted. I’m going to go up and scare the
cockroaches out of the bass drum.”
“Good luck,” said Eddi. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She almost made it to the stage before Stuart Kline grabbed her arm. His face was
flushed, and his brown hair was rumpled, half-flattened. She sighed. “You’re drunk, Stu,” she
said with a gentleness that surprised her.
“Fuck it.” Petulance twisted up his male-model features. She should have felt angry, or
ashamed. All she felt was a distant wonder: I used to be in love with him.
She asked, “You want to do easy stuff this set?”
“I said fuck it, fuck off. I’m okay.”
Eddi shrugged. “It’s your hanging.”
He grabbed her arm again. “Hey, I want you to be nicer to the club managers.”
“What?”
“Don’t look at me like that. Just flirt. It’s good for the band.”
She wanted to tweak his nose, see his smile—but that didn’t make him smile anymore.
“Stuart, you don’t get gigs by sending the rhythm guitarist to flirt with the manager. You get
‘em by playing good dance music.”
“I play good dance music.”
“We play anything that’s already been played to death. All night, people have been
sticking their heads in the front door, listening to half a song, and leaving. You in a betting
mood?”
“Why?”
“I bet the nice man at the bar tells us not to come back tomorrow.”
“Damn you,” he raged suddenly, “is that my fault?”
Eddi blinked.
“You pissed him off, didn’t you? Why do you have to be such a bitch?”
For a long moment she thought she might shout back at him. But it was laughter that came
racing up her throat. Stuart’s look of foolish surprise fed it, doubled it. She planted a
smacking kiss on his chin. “Stuart, honey,” she grinned, “you gotta grow where you’re
planted.”
She loped over and swung up on stage, took her lipstick-red Rick-enbacker from the
stand, and flipped the strap over her shoulder. She caught Carla’s eye over the tops of the
cymbals. “Dale back from break yet?”
Carla shook her head, then inhaled loudly through pursed lips. “Parking lot,” she croaked.
“Oh, goody. The whole left side of the stage in an altered state of consciousness. Let’s
figure out the set list.”
“But we’ve got a set list.”
“Let’s make a new one. May as well be hanged for Prince as for Pink Floyd.”
“But Stuart—”
Eddi grinned. “I want to leave this band in a blaze of glory.”
Carla’s eyes grew wide. “You’re—Jesus. Okay, set list. Can we dump all the Chuck
Berry?”
“Yeah. Let’s show this dive that we at least flirt with modern mu-sic, huh?”
They came up with a list of songs in a few gleeful minutes. Stuart hoisted himself on stage
as they finished, eyeing them with sullen sus-picion. He slung on his guitar and began to
noodle, running through his arsenal of electronic effects—more, Eddi suspected, to prove to
the audience that he had them than to make sure they worked.
Dale, the bass player, ambled on stage looking vaguely pleased with himself. Dale was
all right in his own disconnected way; but he liked country rock and hated rock ‘n’ roll, and
consoled himself with dope during breaks. Eddi cranked up the bass on her amp and hoped
it would make up for whatever he was too stoned to deliver.
Carla was watching her, waiting for the cue to start. Stuart and Dale were ready, if not
precisely waiting. “Give us a count,” she said to Carla. Stuart glared at her. Carla counted,
and they kicked off with a semblance of unity.
They began with a skewed version of Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” It was familiar enough to
pull people onto the dance floor, and the band’s odd arrangement disguised most of the
mistakes. Eddi and Carla did impromptu girl-group vocals. Dale looked confused. Then they
dived into the Bangles’ ”In a Different Light,” and Stuart began to sulk. Eddi had anticipated
that. The next one was an old Eagles song that gave Stuart a chance to sing and muddle up
the lead guitar riffs.
Perhaps the scanty audience felt Eddi’s sudden madness; they were in charity with the
band for the first time that night. People had finally started to dance. Eddi hoped it wasn’t
too late to impress the manager, but suspected it was.
Carla set the bass drum and her drum machine to tossing the per-cussion back and forth.
The dancers were staying on the floor, waiting for the beat to fulfill its promise. Eddi
murmured the four-count. Dale thumped out a bass line that was only a little too predictable.
Stuart shot Eddi an unreadable look and layered on the piercing voice of his Stratocaster.
Eddi grabbed her mike and began to sing.
You told me I was pretty
I can’t believe it’s true.
The little dears you left me for
They all look just like you.
Ugly is as ugly does—
Are you telling me what to do?
Wear my face
You can have it for a week
Wear my face
Aren’t the cheekbones chic?
Wear my face
See how people look at you?
Wear my face
See how much my face can do?
They were still dancing. The band was together and tight at last, and Eddi felt as if she’d
done it all herself in a burst of goddesslike musical electricity.
Then she saw the man standing at the edge of the dance floor. His walnut-stain skin
seemed too dark for his features. He wore his hair smoothed back, except for a couple of
escaped curls on his forehead. His eyes were large and slanted upward under thick arched
brows; his nose was narrow and slightly aquiline. He wore a long dark coat with the collar
up, and a gleaming white scarf that reflected the stage lights into his face. When she looked
at him, he met her eyes boldly and grinned.
Eddi snagged the microphone, took the one step toward him that she had room for, and
sang the last verse at him.
I’ve seen the way you look away
When you think I might see,
You say I scare you silly—
That’s reacting sensibly.
Why should people look at you
When they could look at me?
It was Eddi who had to turn away, and the last chorus was delivered to the dancers. The
man had met her look with a silent challenge that made her skin prickle. His sloping eyes
had been full of reflected lights in colors that shone nowhere in the room.
She almost missed Carla’s neat segue into the next song. She nailed down her first guitar
chord barely in time, and caught Stuart’s scowl out of the corner of her eye.
Eddi had wanted to close with something rambunctious, something the audience would
like yet that would allow Eddi and Carla to respect themselves in the morning. Carla had hit
upon ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sun-glasses.” Halfway into it, with a shower of sparks and a vile
smell, the ancient power amp for the PA dropped dead.
As the microphones failed, Stuart’s vocals disappeared tinnily under the sound of guitars
and bass and Carla’s drums. Stuart, never at his best in the face of adversity, lost his
temper. He yanked his guitar strap over his head and let the Strat drop to the stage. The
pickups howled painfully through his amp.
Eddi heard Dale’s bass stumble through a succession of wrong notes, and fall silent. She
supposed he was right; Stuart had made it impos-sible to end the song gracefully. But for
her pride’s sake, she played out the measure and added a final flourish. Carla matched her
perfectly, and Eddi wanted to kiss her feet for it.
The dancers had deserted the floor, and people were finishing drinks and pulling on
jackets. She swept the room a stagey bow. At the corner of her vision, she thought she saw
a dark-coated figure move toward the door.
Stuart had turned off his amp and unplugged his axe. His expression was forbidding. Eddi
turned away to tend to her own equipment, but not before she saw the club manager striding
toward the stage.
“You the bandleader?” she heard him ask Stuart.
“Yeah,” said Stuart, “what is it?”
It’s our walking papers, Stu, she thought sadly, knowing that he could save the whole gig
now, if only he would be pleasant and conciliating. He wouldn’t be, of course. The manager
would tell Stuart what he should be doing with his band, and Stuart, instead of thanking him
for the tip, would recommend he keep his asshole advice to himself.
And Stuart would make Eddi out the villain if he could. Well, she was done with that now.
She finished packing her guitar and tracked the power cord on her amplifier back to the
outlet.
“You’re that sure, huh?” Carla’s voice came from over her head.
“You mean, am I packing up everything? Yeah. You want help tearing down?”
Carla looked faded and limp. “You can pack the electronic junk.”
Eddi nodded, and started unplugging things from the back of the drum machine. “You
done good, kid. Even at the end when it hit the fan.”
Carla shook her head and grinned. “Well, you got to go out in a blaze of something.”
Over at the bar, Stuart and the manager had begun to shout at each other. “I booked a
goddamn five-piece!” the manager yelled. “You goddamn well did break your contract!”
Carla looked up at Eddi, her eyes wide. “Oh boy—you mean we’re not even gonna get
paid?”
Eddi turned to see how Dale was taking the news. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Carla, you think your wagon will hold your equipment and mine, too?”
Carla smiled. “The Titanic? I won’t even have to put the seat down.”
They did have to put the seat down, but the drums, drum machine, Eddi’s guitar, and her
Fender Twin Reverb all fit. They made three trips out the back door with the stuff, and Stuart
and the manager showed no sign of noticing them.
As Carla bullied the wagon out of its parking space, Eddi spotted Dale. He was leaning
against the back of his rusted-out Dodge. The lit end of his joint flared under his nose. “Hold
it,” Eddi said to Carla. She jumped out of the car and ran over to him. “Hey, Dale!”
“Eddi? Hullo. Is Stuart still at it?”
“Still at what?”
Dale shrugged and dragged at the joint. “You know,” he croaked, “screwing up.” He
exhaled and held the J out to her.
Eddi shook her head. “I didn’t think you’d noticed—I mean—”
“Been pretty bad the last month. It’d be hard not to.” He smiled sadly at the toes of his
cowboy boots. “So, you going?”
“Yeah. That is, I’m leaving the band.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Oh. Well, I wanted to say good-bye. I’ll miss you.” Which, Eddi realized with a start, was
more true than she’d thought.
Dale smiled at his joint. “Maybe I’ll quit gigging. Friend of mine has a farm out past
Shakopee, says I can stay there. He’s got goats, and some beehives—pretty fuckin’ weird.”
He looked at her, and his voice lost some of its dreaminess. “You know, you’re really good. I
don’t much like that stuff, you know, but you’re good.”
Eddi found she couldn’t answer that. She hugged him instead, whis-pered, “Bye, Dale,”
and ran back to the car.
Carla turned north on Highway 35. Eddi hung over the back of her seat watching the
Minneapolis skyline rise up and unroll behind them. White light banded the top of the IDS
building, rebounded off the darkened geometry of a blue glass tower nearby. The clock on
the old courthouse added the angular red of its hands. The river glittered like wrinkled black
patent leather, and the railroad bridges glowed like something from a movie set.
“I love this view,” Eddi sighed. “Even the Metrodome’s not bad from here, for a
glow-in-the-dark fungus.”
“Boy, you are feeling sentimental,” said Carla.
“Yeah.” Eddi turned around to face the windshield. “Carla, am I doing the right thing?”
“You mean dumping Personality Man?”
Eddi looked at her, startled.
“Hey,” Carla continued, “no big deduction. You couldn’t leave Stu’s band and stay friends
with Stu—nobody could. So kissing off the band means breaking up with Mr. Potato Head.”
Eddi giggled. “It’s a really pretty potato.”
“And solid all the way through. This’ll probably wipe the band out, y’know.”
“He can replace me,” Eddi shrugged.
“Maybe. But you and me?”
“You’re quitting?”
“I’m not sticking around to watch Stuart piss and moan.” Carla’s tone was a little too
offhand, and Eddi shot her a glance. “Oh, all right,” Carla amended. “Stuart would scream
about what a bitch and a traitor you are, I’d tell him he was a shit and didn’t deserve you, and
I’d end up walking out anyway. Why not now?”
Eddi slugged her gently in the shoulder. “Yer a pal.”
“Yeah, yeah. So start a band I can drum in.”
“You could play for anybody.”
“I don’t want to play for anybody. You do that, you end up working with bums like Stuart.”
With a lurch and a rumble of drumheads, they pulled in the drive-way of Chester’s. Even in
the dark, its bits of Tudor architecture were unconvincing. The bar rush that hit every all-night
restaurant was in full force; they had to wait for a table. When they got one, they ordered
coffee and tea.
“So, are you going to start a band?”
Eddi slumped in her seat. “Oh God, Carla. It’s such a crappy way to make a living. You
work and work, and you end up playing cover tunes in the Dew Drop Inn where all the guys
slow-dance with their hands in their girlfriends’ back pockets.”
“So you don’t do that kind of band.”
“What kind do you do?”
Their order arrived, and Carla dunked a tea bag with great concen-tration. “Originals,” she
said at last. “Absolutely new, on-the-edge stuff. Very high class. Only play the good venues.”
Eddi stared at her. “Maybe I should just go over to Control Data and apply for a job as
Chairman of the Board.”
Carla looked out the window. “Listen. You don’t become a bar band and work your way up
from there. There is no up from there. It’s a dead end. All you can become is the world’s best
bar band.”
Eddi sighed. “I don’t want a new band. I want to be a normal person.”
Carla’s dark eyes were very wide. “Oh,” she said.
“Hey,” Eddi smiled limply, “it’s not like you to miss a straight line.”
“Too easy,” Carla said with a shrug. Then she shook her head and made her black hair fly,
and seemed to shake off her sorrow as well. “Give it time. You don’t remember how awful it
is being normal.”
“Not as awful as being in InKline Plain.”
“Oh, worse,” said Carla solemnly. “They make you sit at a desk all day and eat vending
machine donuts, and your butt gets humongous.”
“Now that,” Eddi said, “is a job I can handle.”
“If you work hard, you get promoted to brownies.” Carla set her cup down. “Come on, let’s
roll.”
Outside, the wind was blowing. It had none of the rough-sided cold of winter in it; it was
damp, with a spoor of wildness that seemed to race through Eddi’s blood. It made her want
to run, yell, do any foolish thing. . . .
“You okay?” Carla’s voice broke into her mood. “If you don’t get in the car, I’m gonna leave
without you.”
Eddi took pleasure in the dash to the car, the way the wind tugged on her hair. “Roll the
windows down.”
“Are you bats? We’ll freeze.”
Eddi rolled down her own, but it wasn’t enough. As they drove toward the city, the early
spring madness drained away. The wagon’s rattles and squeaks, its smell of cigarette butts
and old vinyl and burnt oil, took its place. By the time they’d reached the edge of downtown,
Eddi felt weary in every muscle and bone.
What should she do now? What could she do? It sounded fine to tell Carla that she
wanted to be normal for once, but Eddi had never been suited to a normal life. Once she
had taken a job as a security guard, patrolling an abandoned factory from four until midnight.
Each night her imagination had tenanted the shadows with burglars and arsonists. At the
end of a week the shadows were full, and she quit. She typed too slowly—did everything
with her hands too slowly, in fact, except play the guitar.
As for a normal love affair, it wasn’t impossible. She was reasonably intelligent. She was
attractive, though not beautiful: blond and gray-eyed with strong features and clear skin; and
she was small and slender and knew how to choose her clothes. But she wasn’t sure where
to find men who weren’t—well, musicians.
“Mighty quiet,” Carla said, as if she already knew why.
“I’m . . . I guess I’m beginning to realize the consequences of every-thing.”
“Mmm. You going to chicken out?”
“No. But. . . would you call me tomorrow? Around two-ish? I figure I’ll call Stu at one and
tell him.”
“And you’ll need someone to tell you you’re gonna be okay.”
Eddi smiled sheepishly. “You must have done this yourself.”
“Everybody has to, at least once. Don’t beat yourself over the head for it.”
The light was red at Washington and Hennepin, the corner where Carla would begin
negotiating the rat’s nest of one-way streets that led to Eddi’s apartment. “Let me off here,”
she said suddenly.
“Wha—why?”
“I want to walk. It’s a nice night.”
Carla was shocked. “It’s freezing. And you’ll get murdered.”
“You’ve been living around the lakes too long. You think any place with buildings more
than three stories high is full of addicts.”
“And I’m right. Anyway, what about your axe and stuff?”
It was true; she couldn’t haul her guitar and amplifier fourteen blocks. She was settling
back in the passenger seat when Carla spoke again.
“I know, I know. ‘Carla, would you mind taking them to your place and carrying them all the
way up the back stairs, then carrying them back down tomorrow when you come over to
keep me from being miserable ‘cause I broke up with my boyfriend?’ Sure, Ed, what’re
friends for?”
Eddi giggled. “If you’d quit going to Mass, you’d make a great Jewish mother.” She
leaned over and hugged her.
“Jeez, will you get out of here? The light’s changed twice already!” After Eddi had
bounced out and slammed the door, Carla shouted through the half-open window, “I’ll call at
two!”
“Thank you!” Eddi yelled back, and waved as the station wagon rumbled and clanked
away from the curb. The gold-and-gray flank of the library rose before her, and she followed
it to the Nicollet Mall.
Whatever had tugged at her in the restaurant parking lot refused to be summoned back
now. Eddi shook her head and started down the mall, and hoped that the effort would blow
her melancholy away. The rhythm of her steps reminded her of a dozen different songs at
once, and she hummed one softly to herself. It was Kate Bush, she realized, “Cloudbusting,”
and she sang it as she walked.
Then she saw the figure standing by the bus shelter across the street.
By the shape, it was a man—a man’s broad-brimmed hat and long, fitted coat. He didn’t
move, didn’t seem even to turn his head to watch her, but she had a sudden wild
understanding of the idea of a bullet with one’s name on it. This figure had her name on him.
You must be feeling mighty low, girl, she scolded herself, if you think that every poor
idiot who’s missed his bus is lying in wait for you. Still, the man seemed naggingly present,
and almost familiar. And three in the morning was an odd hour to wait for a bus in a town
where the buses quit running at half past midnight.
Her pace was steady as she crossed the empty street. Behind her, she heard his steps
begin. It’s not fair, she raged as she sped up. I don’t need this, not tonight. She thought she
heard a low laugh behind her, half the block away. Her stride lost some of its purpose and
took on an edge of panic.
South of the power company offices, Eddi turned and headed for Hennepin Avenue. If
there were still people on any street in Minne-apolis, they would be on Hennepin. A police
cruiser might even come by. . . .
The footsteps behind her had stopped. There, see? Poor bastard was just walking down
Nicollet. I’ll be fine now—
A black, waist-high shape slunk out of the alley in front of her. Its bared teeth glittered as it
snarled; its eyes glowed red. It was a huge black dog, stalking stiff-legged toward her. Eddi
backed up a step. It made a ferocious noise and lunged. She turned and ran in the only
direction she could, back toward Nicollet.
She got one of the streetlight posts on the mall between her and the dog and turned to
face it. It wasn’t there. Across the street, in the shadow of a doorway, Eddi saw the
silhouette of the man in the hat and long coat. He threw back his head, and she heard his
laughter. The streetlight fell on his face and throat and she saw the gleam of his white scarf,
his dark skin and sloping, shining eyes. It was the man from the dance floor, from the
University Bar. She ran.
The footsteps behind her seemed unhurried, yet they never dropped back, no matter how
fast she ran. She tried again to turn toward Hen-nepin. The black dog lunged at her from out
of a parking ramp exit, its red eyes blazing.
This is crazy, she thought with the dead calm of fear. Muggers and mad dogs. I’m stuck
in a Vincent Price movie. Where are the zombies?
She was running down Nicollet again before she realized that it couldn’t be the same dog.
But it was insane to think that the man could have known she would walk home, impossible
to think he had a pack of dogs. Her breath burned in her throat. She had a stitch in her side.
Her pace had become a quick stumble.
She’d almost reached the end of the mall, she realized. Two blocks away were the
Holiday Inn and the Hyatt, and she could run into either, into a lobby full of light and bellhops
and a desk clerk who’d call the police. She staggered across the street toward Peavey
Plaza and Orchestra Hall.
The black dog seemed to form out of the shadows. Perhaps it was only one dog, after all;
surely there weren’t two dogs like this. It was huge, huge, its head low, its fur bristling
gunmetal-dark in the street light. It growled softly, in macabre counterpoint to the waterfall
sounds of the Peavey Plaza fountain. Did the damned dog know it stood be-tween her and
safety? How had it gotten past her? She moved sideways, through the concrete planters that
marked the sidewalk level of Peavey Plaza. The hotels seemed miles away now. She would
have to try to lose both dog and man in the complexity of the ornamental pool and fountains
below her, and escape out the other side.
The dog lifted its head and howled, and Eddi thought of the dark man and his laugh. She
wanted to curse, to throw something, to be home in her bed. She raced down a flight of
steps, then another.
The footsteps behind her were sudden, as was the tap on her shoul-der. She tried to turn
in midstride and her foot didn’t land on anything. Just before she plunged backward and
headfirst down the last of the steps, she saw the man behind her, his eyes wide, his hand
reaching out.
Then pain took away her fear, and darkness took the pain.
chapter 2 – Who Can It Be Now?
She heard water running, and two voices. Were she to wake, these would be transmuted
into ordinariness—the toilet wouldn’t shut off, the neighbors were shouting on the other side
of her bed-room wall.
“Fool!” raged a wild river of a voice. “Fool, I say!”
“Careful of your little tongue, dear. I’ve a mind to bite it off.” This was a smoky, furry voice,
laughing even as it threatened. Eddi heard a clicking, scraping sound, like a dog’s toenails.
That reminded her of something—what? Dogs, or toenails?
“You may have killed the mortal!”
“You amaze me,” the deep voice replied. “Surely one mortal is much like another, to you?”
“Time grows short.”
摘要：

    Thisbookisformymother,whoknewrightawaythattheBeatleswereimportant,andformyfather,whoneveroncecomplainedaboutthenoise.Acknowledgments  ThanksarepastduetoStevenBrust,NateBucklin,KaraDalkey,PamelaDean,PatWrede,CynHorton,andLoisBujold;theyalwayswanttoknowwhathappensnext.ThanksalsotoTerri,whothoughti...

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