Karl Edward Wagner - At First Just Ghostly

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2024-11-24
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AT FIRST JUST GHOSTLY
Karl Edward Wagner
I. Beginning Our Descent
His name was Cody Lennox, and he was coming back to England to die, or maybe just to forget,
and after all it's about the same in the long run.
He had been dozing for the last hour or so, when the British Airways stewardess politely offered
him an immigration card to be filled in. He placed it upon the tray table beside the unfinished game of
solitaire and the finished glass of Scotch, which he must now remember to call whisky when asking at the
bar, and this was one of the few things he was unlikely to forget.
Lennox tapped his glass. "Time for another?"
"Certainly, sir." The stewardess was blonde and compactly pretty and carefully spoke BBC English
with only a trace of a Lancashire accent. Her training had also taught her not to look askance at first class
passengers who declined breakfast in favor of another large whisky.
Lennox's fellow passenger in the aisle seat favored him with a bifocaled frown and returned to his
book of crossword puzzles. Lennox had fantasied him to be an accountant for some particularly corrupt
television evangelist, doubtlessly on an urgent mission to Switzerland. They had not spoken since the first
hour of the flight, when after preflight champagne and three subsequent large whiskies Lennox had
admitted to being a writer.
Fellow passenger (scathingly): "Oh, well then—name something you've written."
Lennox (in apparent good humor): "You go first. Name something you've read."
In the ensuing frostiness Lennox played countless hands of solitaire with the deck the stewardess
had provided and downed almost as many large whiskies, which she also dutifully provided. He
considered a visit to the overhead lounge, but a trip to the lavatory convinced him that his legs weren't to
be trusted on the stairs. So he played solitaire, patiently, undeterred by total lack of success, losing
despite the nagging temptation to cheat. Lennox had once been told by a friend in a moment of drunken
insight that a Total Loser was someone who cheated at solitaire and still lost, and Lennox didn't care to
take that chance. Eventually he fell asleep.
Cody Lennox liked to fly first class. He stood a rangy six-foot-four, and while he still combed his
hair to look like James Dean, his joints were the other side of forty and rebelled at being folded into a
747's tourist-class orange crates. He was wont to say that the edible food and free booze were more
than worth the additional expense on a seven-hour flight, and his preventive remedy for tedium and for
jet-lag was to drink himself into a blissful stupor and sleep throughout the flight. Once he and Cathy had
flown over on the Concorde, and for that cherished memory he would never do so again.
He still hadn't got used to traveling alone, and he supposed he never would.
He looked through the window and into darkness fading to grey. As they chased the dawn, clouds
began to appear and break apart; below them monotonous expanses of grey sea gave way to glimpses of
distant green land. Coming in over Ireland, he supposed, and finished his drink.
He felt steadier now, and he filled out the immigration card, wincing, as he knew he would, over the
inquiry as to marital status, etc. He placed the card inside his passport, avoiding looking at his
photograph there. There was time for another hand, so he collected and reshuffled his cards.
"We are beginning our descent into London Heathrow," someone was announcing. Lennox had
nodded off. "Please make certain your seatbelts are fastened, your seat backs are in the upright position,
your tray tables are…"
"The passengers will please refrain," prompted Lennox, scooping up the cards and locking back his
tray. "Batten the hatches, you swabs. Prepare to abandon ship."
"Do you want to know why you never won?"
"Eh?" said Lennox, startled by his seatmate's first attempt at conversation since the Jersey shore.
The mysterious accountant pointed an incisive finger toward the cabin floor. "You haven't been
playing with a full deck."
The Queen of Spades peeked out from beneath the accountant's tight black shoes.
"The opportunity to deliver a line such as that comes only once in a lifetime," Lennox said with
admiration. He reached down to recover the truant card, but the impact of landing skidded it away.
Probably the really and truly best thing about flying first class across the Atlantic was that you were
first off the plane and first to get through immigration and customs. Lennox had a morbid dread of being
engulfed by gabbling hordes of blue-haired widows from New Jersey or milling throngs of students
hunchbacked by garish knapsacks and sleeping bags. "Americans never queue up," he once observed to
an icily patient gentleman, similarly overrun while waiting for a teller at a London bank. "They just mill
about and make confused sounds."
"The purpose of your stay here, sir?" asked the immigrations officer, flipping through Lennox's
passport.
"Primarily I'm on holiday," said Lennox. "Although for tax purposes I'll be mixing in a little business,
as I'm also here to attend the World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton some days from now."
The officer was automatically stamping his passport. "So then, you're a writer, are you, sir?" His
eyes abruptly focused through the boredom of routine, and he flipped back to the passport photo.
"Cody Lennox!" He compared photo and face in disbelief. "Lord, and I've just finished reading
They Do Not Die!"
"Small world," said Cody imaginatively. "Will you still let me in?"
"First celebrity I've had here." The immigrations officer returned his passport. "Your books have
given me and the wife some fair shivers. Working on a new one, are you?"
"Might write one while I'm here."
"I'll want to read it, then."
Lennox passed through to baggage claim and found his two scruffy suitcases. They were
half-empty, as he preferred to buy whatever he needed when he needed it, and he hated to pack. He
also hated carry-on luggage, people who carried on carry-on luggage, and cameras of all sorts. Such
eccentricities frequently excited some speculation as to his nationality.
Cody Lennox was, however, American: born in Los Angeles of a Scandinavian bit-player and a
father who worked in pictures before skipping to Mexico; educated across the States with two
never-to-be-completed doctorates scattered along the way, and now living in New York City. He had
had eight best-selling horror novels over the last five years, in addition to some other books that had paid
the bills early on. His novels weren't all that long on the best-seller lists, but they were there, nonetheless,
and film rights and script work all added up to an enviable bundle. He had been on Johnny Carson
twice, but he had never hosted Saturday Night Live. His books could be found at supermarket
check-out counters between the tabloids and the TV Guides, but only for a month or so. It was a living.
Once he had been happy with his life.
Cody Lennox hauled his pair of cases through the green lane at Heathrow customs. He had made
this trip a dozen times or more, and he had never been stopped. Sometimes he considered becoming a
smuggler. Probably he looked too non-innocent for the customs officers to bother examining his luggage.
He looked a little like an on-the-skids rock star with his designer jeans and T-shirt and wrinkled
linen jacket. He still had the face of a young James Dean, but his ash-blond hair was so pale as to seem
dead-white. His left ear was pierced, but he seldom bothered to wear anything there, and his week-old
smear of a beard was fashionable but too light to be noticed. He wore blue-lensed glasses over his pale
blue eyes, but this was more of necessity than style: Lennox was virtually blinded by bright sunlight.
Lennox adjusted his scarred watch to London time while he waited to cash a traveler's check at the
bank outside the customs exit. He saw no sign of his seatmate, and for this he was grateful. Bastard might
have told him about the missing card.
The Piccadilly Line ran from Heathrow to where Lennox meant to go, but he was in no mood for
the early morning crush on the tube. Still feeling the buzz of a long flight and too many drinks, he joined
the queue for a taxi—nudging his cases along with his foot, as he endured confused American tourists
and aggressive Germans who simply shoved to the front of it all.
Lennox was very tired and somewhere on the verge of a hangover, when the next black Austin
stopped for him. He tossed his cases into the missing left-side front seat and pulled himself into the back.
After the 747 the back seat was spacious, and he stretched out his long legs.
He said: " The Bloomsbury Park Hotel. Small place on Southampton Row. Just off Russell Square."
"I know it, gov," said the driver. "Changed the name again, have they?"
"Right. Used to be the Grand. God only knows what it was before that"
II. Lost Without a Crowd
It was not much after nine when the cab made a neat U-turn across Southampton Row and landed
Lennox and his cases at the door of his hotel. In addition to changing its name, the Bloomsbury Park
Hotel had changed management half a dozen times in the dozen or so years that Lennox had been
stopping there, but the head porter had been there probably since before the Blitz, and he greeted
Lennox with a warm smile.
"Good to see you again, sir."
"Good to be back, Mr. Edwards."
It had been about a year since his last stay here, and Edwards remembered not to inquire about his
wife. The newest management had redone the foyer again; this time in trendy Art Deco, which fitted as
well with the original Art Nouveau decor as did the kilt on the golden-ager tourist who was complaining
his way across the lobby in tow of his wife.
Jack Martin was at the reception desk, scribbling away at a piece of hotel stationery.
"Hello, Jack."
"Cody! I don't believe it! I was just writing you a note telling you where I was staying."
"Synchronicity, good buddy. When'd you get here?"
"Flew in Sunday from L.A. Still coping with jet-lag, but I walked over here to see whether you'd
checked in yet. Had breakfast? Guess they fed you on the flight. How was it?"
"OK. Anything you can walk away from is OK. Here, better let me register."
Lennox filled in forms while Martin worked on a cigarette. No, his room wasn't ready yet, but
Lennox had expected that, and the porters would see to his cases in the meantime.
The girl at the desk was auburn-haired, Irish, and half Lennox's age, and he wondered if she'd been
here last time. Probably so, or else she was instinctively cheeky.
"You're very popular, sir. Two calls for you already."
"More likely ten, judging by my usual luck with hotel switchboards." Lennox studied the messages.
"Mike Carson says to give him a ring and I owe him a pint. And the other one—from a Mr. Kane?"
"He said he'd be getting in touch."
"Never heard of him. Social secretary from Buckingham Palace, isn't he? Come on, Jack. Let's go
get something to drink."
"Pubs won't open until eleven," Martin pointed out.
"Let me show you my private club."
There was a minimart just down Southampton Row from the hotel, and Lennox bought Martin a
carton of orange juice and two cans of lager for himself. Cosmo Place was the alleyway that connected
onto Queen Square, where there were vacant benches beneath the trees. Lennox was just able to keep
his hands from shaking as he popped his first lager.
Martin was trying to solve the juice carton. "So, Cody. How are things going?"
It was more than a casual question and Lennox hated the glance of watchful concern that
accompanied it, but he had grown accustomed to it all and it no longer hurt so bitterly.
"Can't complain, Jack. They Do Not Die! is still hanging high on the lists, and Mack says the sharks
are in a feeding frenzy to bid on my next one."
"How's that been coming along?"
Lennox killed his lager, stretched out with a sigh, and thoughtfully opened the second can. He said:
"Cathy and I used to come here and sit. Place close by on Theobald's Road sells some of the best fish
and chips I've ever had. Used to carry them back, sit and eat here, and then we'd walk back to The Sun
and wash it all down with pints of gut-wrenching ales."
He closed his eyes and took a long pull of lager, remembering. When he opened his eyes he saw
the worn benches stained with pigeon droppings, the dustbins overstuffed with cider bottles, the litter of
empty beer cans and crisps packets. The square smelled of urine and unwashed bodies; the derelicts
slept all about here at night.
"Let it go, Cody."
"Can't. Nothing left to hang onto but memories."
"But you're just killing yourself."
"I'm already dead."
The church steeple tolled ten. Lennox had always suspected that its bells were an array of old iron
pots. A deaf gnome banged on them with a soup ladle. The steeple was a ponderous embarrassment that
clashed with what remained of the simple Queen Anne architecture.
"The Church of St. George the Martyr," Lennox said. "Loads of history here. See that steeple?
Hawksmoor had a hand in it."
"Who's Hawksmoor?"
"The hero of a famous fairyland fantasy trilogy. Did you know, for example, that the church crypts
here are connected by a tunnel beneath Cosmo Place to the cellars of that pub on the corner—The
Queen's Larder?"
"Didn't know you read guidebooks."
"Don't. Old pensioner Cathy and I used to drink with there told us. Name was Dennis, and he
always drank purple velvets—that's stout mixed with port. Haven't seen him since then."
"With that to drink, I'm not surprised." Martin tossed his juice carton into a bin. "So why St. George
the Martyr? I always thought old George slew that dragon. Must have been another George
somewhere."
"Or another dragon," said Lennox. "Let's just see if my room is ready by now."
His room was ready. Lennox poured himself a glass of Scotch from the coals-to-Newcastle bottle
in his suitcase, then phoned Mike Carson. Carson said he'd meet them at The Swan soon after eleven,
and he did.
Lennox was at the bar buying the first round. The day was turning warm and bright after last night's
rain, and they had seats at an outside table on Cosmo Place.
"You ever notice," observed Carson, "how Cody always seems to bring good weather when he's
over?"
"No, I hadn't," said Martin. "Just must be luck."
Carson offered a cigarette, and they both lit up. "Cody once said to me," he said, inhaling, "that the
English carry umbrellas because they expect it to rain. Cody says he never does, because he expects the
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分类:外语学习
价格:5.9玖币
属性:33 页
大小:84.42KB
格式:PDF
时间:2024-11-24
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