Aftershock & Others Read online

  But the best part of it all was having LuAnn. LuAnn…twenty-eight with the moon-white skin of a teenager who’d never been to the beach, night-dark hair, pale blue, aventurine eyes, and the trademark ruby lipstick. All day long he ached for the sight of her. He couldn’t tell her that, of course. Had to play it cool because Marc C was cool. But, man, sometimes it was hard to hide. Most times it was hard to hide. Most times he wanted to fall at her feet professing his undying love and begging her never to leave him.

  Sure, it scanned like a third-rate Tin Pan Alley ditty, but that was how he felt.

  “Ms. Lu,” he said, bending and kissing her. God, he loved the soft, glossy touch of her lips.

  She jerked back.

  “What’s wrong, Lu?”

  “Your lips. They feel…different.”

  “Same ones I wore last night.” He tugged at them. “I don’t remember changing them.”

  LuAnn gave him a patient smile and pulled him down next to her. He waved and nodded hellos in the dimness to the LuAnn-table regulars, then turned his attention to the lady herself. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she leaned toward him and whispered close in his ear; the caress of her warm breath raised gooseflesh down his left side.

  “I hear you gave Liz’s guy the slip last night.”

  “Liz’s guy?”

  “Don’t be coy, Marc. I heard it earlier this afternoon. Liz had one of her people tail you home from my place last night—or at least try to tail you.”

  Any warmth he’d been drawing from her vanished in a chilly draft of unease. She could only mean Liz Smith, the columnist who’d been trying to get the scoop on him for months now. He guessed she was tired of tagging him with the “mystery man” line when she did a piece on the club scene. Other people had tried to tail him before but he’d spotted them easily. Whoever this guy was must have been good. Marc hadn’t had the slightest suspicion…

  “He said you ducked into an old apartment house in Brooklyn and never came out.”

  “Oh, yes…” Marc said carefully. “I spotted him shortly after I left your place. He was good. I couldn’t lose him in the usual manner so I led him all the way into Bay Ridge and used the key I have from the owner of this dump there—in the front door and out the back. I always do that when I think I’m being followed.” He rubbed his chin, Bogart style. “So he was one of Liz’s boys. That’s interesting.”

  More than interesting—terrifying.

  “Yeah, she’s determined to track you down,” LuAnn said, snuggling closer. “But she’s not going to be first, is she, Marky? You’re going to take me to your place firstest, aren’t you?”

  “Sure, Lu. You’ll be the first. But I warn you, you’ll be disappointed when the day comes.”

  “No I won’t.”

  Yes, you will. I guarantee it.

  He sat next to her and tried to keep from shaking. God, that had been close! He’d been right on the edge of having his cover blown and hadn’t had an inkling. Suddenly Marc didn’t feel so good.

  “Excuse me a moment,” he said, rising. “I need to make a pit stop.” He winked. “It’s a long ride from Bay Ridge.”

  LuAnn laughed. “Hurry back!”

  Feeling worse by the minute, he headed straight for the men’s room. As he pushed into the bright fluorescent interior, he saw Karl Peaks turning away from the sink, licking a trace of white powder from his index finger.

  “Marc?” Peaks said, sniffing and gawking. “Is that you, man?”

  “No. It’s Enrico Caruso.” Enrico Caruso? Where the hell did that come from?

  “It’s your face, man. What’s happened to it?”

  Alarmed, Marc stepped over the mirror. His knees almost buckled when he saw himself.

  My face!

  His skin was sallow, leaching into yellow under the harsh light. And the left side was drooping, the corners of his mouth and left eye sagging toward his chin.

  My God! What’s happening?

  He couldn’t stay here, couldn’t let anyone see him like this. Because it wasn’t going to get better. Somehow he knew that the longer he waited the worse it would sag.

  He spun and fled past Peaks, turned a hard right and went down the back steps, through the kitchen, and out into the rear alley.

  It had started raining. He slunk through the puddles like a rat until he found an intersecting alley that took him out to West Houston. He flagged a cab and huddled in the protective darkness of the rear seat as it carried him through the downpour, over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn. Home.

  Doug watched Marc flow back into the bucket, sliding down his arm, over his wrist and hand, to ooze off his fingertips like clear, warm wallpaper paste. A part of him was furious with Marc for letting him down tonight, but another part knew something was seriously wrong. He’d half-sensed it during the last time they’d been together. And tonight he was sure. Marc wasn’t acting right.

  Marc…Christ, why did he call this pile of goo Marc? It was goo. A nameless it. Marc Chevignon was someone who existed only when Doug was wearing the goo. He’d picked the name Marc because it sounded classy, like Marc Antony, that Roman guy in the Cleopatra movie. And Chevignon? He’d borrowed that from the label inside some fancy leather coat he’d seen in a men’s shop.

  Somewhere along the way he’d started thinking of the goo as a friend…a friend named Marc.

  “What’s the matter, Marc?” he whispered into the bucket when the goo had all run off him. “What’s goin’ on, man?”

  Marc didn’t answer. He just sat in his bucket under the harsh light of the white-tiled bathroom. Marc never answered. At least not from the bucket. Marc only spoke when he was riding Doug. Marc was brilliant when he was riding Doug. At least till now.

  Doug remembered the first time Marc climbed on him, down in the basement, when he’d reached into the plugged drain…remembered the heat, the suffocating feeling. He’d been so scared then, afraid he’d been caught in some real-life replay of The Blob, absolutely sure he was going to die. But he hadn’t died. After blacking out for a minute or so, he’d come to on the basement floor, half in, half out of the shrinking puddle. He’d scrambled to his feet, looked at his hands, felt his neck, his face. The goo was gone—not a trace of it left on him. Everything seemed almost normal.

  Almost. His skin didn’t feel quite right. Not slimy or nothing, just…different. He ran upstairs to his place, the super’s apartment on the first floor. He seemed to be moving a little different, his steps quicker, surer. Almost, like, graceful. He got to the bathroom and stared in the mirror.

  He’d changed. He looked the same, but then again he didn’t. His normally wavy brown hair was darker, straighter, maybe because it was wet and slicked back. Even his eyebrows looked a little darker. His eyes were still blue but they seemed more intense, more alive.

  And he felt different inside. Usually when he finished a day’s work he liked to get a six-pack, flip on the tube, and mellow out for the night. Now he wanted to move. He felt like going places, doing things, making things happen instead of letting them happen.

  He stared at the reflection for a long time, telling himself over and over he wasn’t crazy. He’d just had some sort of daymare or something. Or maybe fumes—yeah, some sort of fumes bubbling up from the drain had screwed up his head for a little bit. But he was okay now. Really.

  Finally, when he sort of believed that, he staggered back to the basement. Still had to do something with that water.

  But the water was gone. The drain had unclogged and all that was left of the stinking puddle was a big round glistening wet spot. Relieved that he didn’t have to stick his arm down that pipe again, Doug collected his gloves and junk and headed back upstairs.

  In the hall he ran into Theresa Coffee, the busty blond graduate student in 308. He gave her his usual smile—at least he thought it was his usual smile—and expected her usual curt nod in return. She’d caught him staring at her underwear down in the laundry room once too often and had been giving him
the cold shoulder ever since. Treated him like a pervo. Which he wasn’t. But her underwear, man—looked like it came straight out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. Whoa.

  But this time she actually stopped and talked to him. And he actually talked back to her. Like, intelligent. He sounded like he had a brain in his head. Like a guy who’d finished high school. College even. He didn’t have the faintest idea where all that talk came from, all he knew was that for the first time in his life he sounded brainy. She seemed to think so too. She even invited him up to her place. And before too long she was modeling all that underwear for him.

  Much later, when he left her, he didn’t go back to his apartment to sack out. He went back to change into his best clothes—which weren’t much then, for sure—and headed for Manhattan. For the King Kong.

  The rest was history.

  History…the celebrity friends, the notoriety, the promised writing career, LuAnn, a way up and out…history.

  Yeah. History. Only right now history seemed to be coming to an end.

  Doug stared down at the two-gallon bucketful of goo. Cloudy goo. Marc used to be clear. Crystal clear. Like Perrier. What kind of game was it trying to run?

  “C’mon, guy,” Doug said, rolling up his sleeve. “One more time.”

  He slipped his right hand up to his wrist in the goo. He noticed how Marc was cooler than usual. In the past there’d always been a near-body-temperature warmth to it. Slowly it began to slide up his forearm.

  “There y’go!”

  But it only made a few inches before it started to slide back into the bucket.

  “You bastard!”

  Doug couldn’t help being mad. He knew he owed a lot to Marc—everything, in fact—but he couldn’t help feel that he’d been teased along and now he was being dumped. He wanted to kick the bucket over. Or better yet, upend it over the toilet and flush it down to the sewers. See if Marc liked it down there in the dark with the crocodiles.

  “So what’s up, here, Marc? What’s doin’? You gonna put me through the wringer? Gonna make me crawl? Is that it? Well, it won’t work. Because I don’t need you, Marc. I owe you, I’ll give you that. But if you think I can’t live without you, f’get about it, okay?”

  For Doug had arrived at the conclusion that he didn’t need Marc anymore. Marc hadn’t really done nothing. Marc just was like the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. How’d that song go? “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn’t already have.” Right. And Doug was the Tin Man. All that sharp wit and grooviness had been hiding in him all along. All Marc had done was bring it to the surface—and take credit for it. Well, Marc wasn’t going to take credit no more. Doug was taking the wheel now. He knew he had it in him. All the doors were already open. All he had to do was walk through and make this city his oyster.

  “Okay.” He rose to his feet. “If that’s the way you want it, fine. You make plans for the sewer, I’ll head for the Spee.”

  On his way out the door he should have felt great, free, lighter than air. So how come he felt like he’d just lost his best friend?

  “Yo, Bruno,” Doug said as he stepped under the canopy and headed toward the entrance of the Graf Spee. “I’m back.”

  Bruno straightened his arm and stopped Doug with a palm against his chest. It was like thumping against a piling.

  “Glad to hear it,” Bruno said, deadpan. “Now get back in line.”

  Doug smiled. “Bruno, it’s me. Marc.”

  “Sure. An’ I’m David Bowie.”

  “Bruno—”

  “Ay! Fun’s fun, guy, an’ I ’preciate a good scam much as the next fella, but don’t wear it out, huh? When the real Mista Chevignon comes out, maybe I’ll introduce you. He’ll geta kick outta you. Maybe even pass you in. He’s good like dat.”

  “I snuck out the back, Bruno. Now I’m—”

  The piling became a pile driver, thumping Doug out from under the canopy and back into the rain. Bruno was speaking through his teeth now.

  “I’m startin’ to get pissed. You may dress like him, you may comb your hair like him, you may even look sompin’ like him, but you ain’t Marc Chevignon. I know Marc Chevignon, and you ain’t no Marc Chevignon.” Bruno’s face broke into a grin. “Ay. I sound like a president debater, don’t I? I’ll have to tell Mista Chevignon—the real one—when he comes out.”

  “At least let me get, like, a message to LuAnn. Please, Bruno.”

  Bruno’s grin vanished like a pulse from one of the strobes winking over the Spee’s dance floor. “Miz Lu’s gone home. The real Marc Chevignon would know where dat is. Now lose yourself afore I kick your butt downa Chinatown.”

  Doug stumbled away through the rain in shocked disbelief. What was happening here? Why didn’t Bruno recognize him?

  He stopped and checked his reflection in the darkened grimy window of a plumbing supply place. He couldn’t see himself too well, but he knew he looked right. The same tweed slacks, same leather coat, same white shirt. What was wrong?

  At first he’d thought it was because Bruno hadn’t seen him leave, but there was more to it than that. They’d stood within a foot of each other and Bruno thought he was somebody else.

  LuAnn! He had to see LuAnn. Bruno had said she’d gone home. Early for her, but maybe she was looking for Marc.

  Well, okay. She was going to find him.

  Doug flagged down a cruising cab and rode it up to the West Eighties. LuAnn’s condo was in a refurbished old apartment house with high-tech security. Doug knew the routine. He rang her bell in the building’s foyer and waited under operating-room floodlights while the camera ogled him from its high corner perch.

  “Marc!” her voiced squawked from the speaker. “Great! Come on up!”

  On the eighth floor the elevator opened onto a three-door atrium. The middle was LuAnn’s. She must have heard the elevator because her door opened before Doug reached it.

  Her smile was bright, welcoming. “Marky! Where on earth did you disappear to? I was—”

  And then the smile was gone and she was backing away.

  “Hey! What is this? You’re not Marc!”

  As she turned and started to close the door, Doug leapt forward. He wasn’t going to be shut out twice tonight. He had to convince her he was Marc.

  “No! LuAnn, wait!” He jammed his foot against the closing door. “It’s me! Marc! Don’t do this to me!”

  “I don’t know what your game is, buddy, but I’m going to start screaming bloody murder in a minute if you don’t back off right now!”

  Doug could see how scared she was. Her lips were white and she was puffing like a locomotive. He had to calm her down.

  “Look, Lu,” he said softly. “I don’t unnerstand what’s come over you, but if I, like, step back, will you, like, leave the door open just a crack so we can talk and I can prove I’m Marc? Okay. Ain’t that fair?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he pulled his foot free of the door, took the promised step back, and held his hands up, under-arrest style. When he saw LuAnn relax, he started talking. In a low voice, he described how they’d made it last night, the positions they’d used, the hard-core videos she’d insisted on running, even the yellow rose tattooed on her left cheek. But instead of wonder and recognition in her eyes, he saw growing disgust. She was looking at him like he might look at a sink one of the tenants had tried to fix on his own.

  “I don’t know what your game is, clown, and I don’t know what Marc’s up to, but you can tell him LuAnn is not amused.”

  “But I am Marc.”

  “You don’t even come close. And get some diction lessons before you try to pull this off again, okay?”

  With that she slammed the door. Doug pounded on it.

  “LuAnn! Please!”

  “I’m calling security right now,” she said through the door. “Beat it!”

  Doug beat it. He didn’t want no police problems. No way.

  And when he got outside to the street, he felt awfully small, while
the city looked awfully, awfully big.

  It didn’t seem the least little bit like an oyster.

  “What d’ya need, Marc?” Doug said softly over the bucket once he was home and back in the bathroom.

  Something awful had occurred to him on his way home. What if Marc was sick? Or worse yet—dying?

  The thought had been a sucker punch to the gut.

  “Just lemme know an’ I’ll get it for you. Anything. Anything at all.”

  But Marc wasn’t talking. Marc could talk only when Doug was wearing him. So Doug shoved his hand and forearm into the bucket again, deep, all the way to the bottom. He noticed how the goo was even cooler than before. Another bad sign.

  “Come on, Marc. Make me say what you need. I’ll hear it and then I’ll get it for you. What d’ya need?”

  Nothing. Doug’s lips remained slack, forming not even a syllable. Frustration bubbling into anger, he yanked his arm free, rose to his feet, and smashed his moist fist into the mirror. The glass spider-webbed, slicing up his reflection. His knuckles stung…and bled.

  He stared at the crimson puddles forming between his knuckles and dripping into the sink. He turned to look at the bucket.

  And had an idea.

  “This what y’want?” he said. “Blood? You want my blood? Awright. I’ll give it to you.”

  So saying, he jammed his fist back into the bucket and let the blood flow into the goo. When the bottom of the bucket turned red, he withdrew his hand and looked at it. The cuts had stopped bleeding and were almost healed.

  Doug tried to stand but felt a little woozy, so he sat on the toilet seat cover and stared into the reddened goo.

  Marc wanted blood—needed blood. That had to be it. Maybe the goo was some sort of vampire or something. Didn’t matter. If Marc wanted blood, Doug would find it for him. He’d said he’d get anything Marc needed, hadn’t he? Well, he meant it. Problem was…where?

  As he watched the goo that was Marc he noticed the red of his blood begin to swirl and coalesce in its depths, flowing to a central point until all the red was concentrated in a single golf ball–sized globule. And then the globule began to rise. As it approached the surface it angled toward the edge of the bucket. It broke the surface next to the lip and spilled its contents over the side. The rejected blood ran down over the metal and puddled stark red against the white bathroom tiles.