Prelude to a Scream Read online

  “Would you go out to dinner with me?”

  “I— With you…”

  “Try to conceal your disgust. I’m feeling hetero tonight, baby…”

  “Please! I… Are you…”

  “Am I what, Sibyl?”

  “Are you buying?”

  The accent chuckled.

  “I like you, Sibyl. You think I won’t twist this valve the wrong way?” The high voice turned into a hiss, like escaping gas. “Think of this man’s life as a flame—the flame of a welder’s torch. When it’s cutting fine, the flame is well-defined, a knife of bluish-white. Twist the acetylene too rich, the flame goes all orange and awry, it dances as if it has bad dengue fever. Smoke lifts off the edge of the flame in black filaments like layers of burnt skin off a wraith of death. Twist the oxygen valve too rich, and,” a pair of fingers snapped, “the flame snaps out. Just like that.”

  Snap, again, of fingers sheathed in latex.

  Silence.

  “I tell you,” the high voice brooded, “this very moment, if it’s functioning properly… See it? No, that’s the gall bladder, yes, just there… Juicy Lucy! Though it seems a tad distended… But if this man’s liver is functioning properly, it’s generating enough acetylene out of that whiskey to distort his flame.”

  Silence.

  “I can’t explain it any better.”

  Silence.

  “Jesus…,” whispered the woman.

  “Yes,” said the radio voice abruptly, in a level, bored tone. “I’m sure you can’t. Equally, I think you won’t twist that valve the wrong way. There would be… consequences.”

  “A man would die. Not the first.”

  “The first.”

  “Not the first. I—”

  “The first!”

  Silence.

  “The first. Yes, of course. The first.”

  Silence.

  “Can’t have that.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  Silence.

  “Well. Isn’t… Sibyl… a shapely… morsel.”

  “Thanks, I’m sure.”

  “That crisp little uniform… The little white shoes, their little white laces…”

  “It almost looks real.”

  Silence.

  “Sure,” said the woman.

  “Sure what,” said the high voice.

  “Sure, I’ll go out to dinner with you…”

  “I’m not sure I still have my… appetite. But you should have seen me before,”—they all said it at once—“Prozac!” Through the laughter he continued, “We’ll have a couple of drinks first, maybe a little smoke. Discuss nitrous oxide and Malaysian piercing techniques…”

  A long, lingering moan.

  “You’re on…”

  Silence.

  “And Goethe, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s a date,” the high voice whispered. It sounded like a distant squeal in a subway tunnel. “I’m taking him down.”

  “Thank Christ,” said the radio voice, clearing its throat. “It’s four o’clock in the fucking morning.…”

  Gas hissed. Cutlery whispered.

  The radio voice began to intone softly, happily, lovingly, as if into a microphone it knew to be plugged directly into its listener’s ear.

  Ein ersoffener Bierfahrer wurde auf den Tish gestemmt. Irgendeiner hatte ihm eine dunkelhellila Aster zwischen die Zähne geklemmt…

  “You might mention to Christ while you’re thanking him,” muttered the high voice, “that Kraut’s poem is going to be the death of us.”

  …Als ich von der Brust aus

  unter der Haut…

  “Really,” the woman shuddered.

  …mit einem langen Messer…

  Chapter Four

  HE WAS AWAKE.

  First thing, he would have to introduce himself to these talkative people he didn’t know, who spent so much time so close to him, with whose voices he felt so intimate.

  The second thing would be to have another look at Vivienne.

  A mockingbird sang like a tortured stoolie.

  He couldn’t see anything. A play of light. His eyelids were stuck together. His lips were rubbery and crusty, like two severed bits of the gore-encrusted hose used to torture the stoolie, and they were stuck together, too. It was a chore to separate them, but once accomplished, there was the matter of his breath, which stank with a penetrating reek, like a solvent. He heard the bird, but it took time to know it as birdness. Consciousness cascaded through his brain in silent slow motion, like a submarine avalanche, a molten density all silted up. Hindered and malfunctional. These and other troubles, less defined, the more sinister for being the more ambiguous, blinked here and there on the dashboard computer. A total reset might help. A fresh start. This meant he had to get out of the vehicle, raise the hood, and blow the breathalizer tube attached to the little alcohol computer capable of shorting the ignition. A lot of trouble. That’s why they put it there, to keep you from driving when you feel like this. So you just curl up on the front seat. Get fetal. Go to sleep again.

  Somewhere a power saw ripped a bevel through in a long board. Someone else used a hammer to drive big spikes. Manic birds, frenzied, as if a snake had coiled among their eggs. The mockingbird again. Perhaps a radio. Automobiles. A two-stroke scooter. Closer, perhaps so close it was somewhere inside him, he heard a rattle of cutlery, and tasted rotten steam, as if someone were sorting large amounts of silverware out of a restaurant dishwasher. Far away, never too far away, there was a car alarm, of the type that oscillated through eight or nine samples of the audio concept of “alarm”. A quartet of beeps, a quartet of whistles, a quartet of croaks, a quartet of buzzes. Why was it called an alarm? It should be called an annoy. It was far enough away that only three or four of its annoyances were really discernible. But they hung collectively in his mind like a bat from the lid of his coffin, about an inch from his nose, a permanent annoyance. It would be nice, he thought, if they invented a car-annoy that only car owners could hear, like a dog whistle.

  Strange someone would be operating a power saw so late at night. Its chattering metallic scream cut through his hangover as efficiently as it must be cutting through the board until, finally, it had cut through both of them. The two halves of the board crashed to a plywood deck, the two halves of his hangover crashed into his skull, and he opened his eyes.

  A breeze pushed through boughs hanging protectively, closely over him. Many strange little fruit, teal and wrinkled, hung from the boughs. Each fruit had an eye that may have been interested in watching him.

  Paranoia is just heightened self-awareness, Don Quixote. Sí, Sancho. Ten thousand extra eyes could only help. Ojos de Díos — Eyes of God. Ojos del Diablo — Eyes of the Devil. Son igual — They are equal. Sí, Sancho.

  He closed his own eyes and turned his head. He knew cypress when he smelled it. Or was it juniper? He didn’t remember its fruit, just the gin they flavor with it. He smelled something else.

  He opened his eyes. Fifteen or sixteen inches from his face stood a middling pile of excrement. Two-and-a-half units. Not dog.

  He closed his eyes. Not his apartment. Not… her apartment?

  So he hadn’t been awake. Try it again.

  Wait. No sense in going for the same effect twice. Roll away.

  He was deprived, however, of his freedom of movement. Something restrained him. Claustrophobia suffused his senses, and he kicked. His foot traveled but an inch before it was arrested, and a very sharp pain shot through his lower back. The pain took his breath away, and yanked open his eyes. He saw the trunk of a tree, and a tatter of yellowed newspaper with dark glistening stains on it. He closed his eyes against the tears that filled them, rediscovered his voice, and screamed, “Where the fuck am I?”

  “Pipe the Christ down over there, man,” said a sleepy, gravelly voice.

  He moaned.

  “That’s better.”

  He opened his eyes. A tear spilled over his downside
cheek. He was on his back now, and the pain in it, though somewhat subsided, throbbed insistently. His side felt like it was in a vise. He tried to imagine the pain as something distinct and separate from himself, something with which he might become but marginally acquainted. He failed.

  The cypress limbs quivered gently above him. I’m hurt, he thought. It’s time to admit it. “I’m hurt,” he said aloud.

  “Trust in the Lord,” said the gravelly voice. “’Less you got inshore-ance.”

  “No, really,” he reiterated, in a horse whisper, “I’m hurt,” as if accepting the truth of the matter. He was hurt. If this isn’t hurt, there is no chrome in Indiana.

  And he was outdoors. Under a tree in a sleeping bag, between the tree trunk and a heap of steaming feces. Insult added to injury. To hurt.

  He’d never owned a royal purple sleeping bag.

  A crow flew overhead, calling to inaudible friends.

  In his time he had invoked a few hangovers, and knew from experience that the thing to do, when awaking in unfamiliar surroundings, was to remain calm and locate the aspirin. In due course, whether it was sufficiently degrading or not, the rest of the story would tell itself.

  The present degradation seemed a bit extreme, however. Usually the pain in a hangover was in his head and not in his back. Had he been mugged? It seemed unlikely that a mugger would leave him in a sleeping bag afterwards. Besides, he’d had very little money when he… When he…

  When he what? Goddammit…!

  The twenty dollars. He’d conned the young hooker out of it. A proud moment. Instant karma? What goes around, comes around? What he stole, got stolen?

  Con a hooker, wake up under a tree?

  Well, hey. In Sanskrit, “karma” means “action.”

  Beggars can’t be choosers.

  A bum in the bag is worth two in the cardboard…

  Be calm, be calm. In due course, the rest of the story will degrade you.

  Royal purple, a color the gay boy-scout troop might deem standard issue, and there was a big wet spot underneath him, oh dear, not far from the pain in his lower back. Had he been dragooned into a troop of gay boy-scouts?

  This hangover might stack up with the really big ones…

  The bag was zipped to his chest, his arms were inside, and in fact it was quite cozy in there. Too cozy. Perhaps he was sweating. His eyes drooped to half-mast again… snapped open. There seemed to be quite a bit of sunlight filtering down through the thickly matted cypress. So maybe the breeze shaking the tree would be the leading edge of a fog bank… That is to say, it could be the edge of a bank of fog… if…

  If he were still in San Francisco.

  If he weren’t in Indiana.

  Land of deciduous consciousness.

  The cypress was a good sign. San Francisco has lots of cypress.

  If he was still in California, everything was still half-way okay — right? Doesn’t that stubborn optimism go hand in hand with the New World experience?

  From close by he heard the sound of a filling sprinkler head, alternately spitting air and water.

  “Oh shit,” said the disembodied gravelly voice. “Here it comes, amigo. Rise and shine.”

  From the other side of the cypress he heard the rasp of a zipper and whispers of nylon and the hollow thump-thumps of shoes being clapped together.

  “Goddamn earwigs,” grumbled the voice, somewhat cheerfully, if Stanley wasn’t mistaken. “If it ain’t the fleas it’s the lice and if it ain’t the lice it’s the earwigs and if it ain’t the earwigs it’s the park service and if it ain’t none a them it’s election year.”

  “You’d think they’d let a man rest,” Stanley heard himself saying. His voice sounded as if he had someone sitting on his chest.

  “Not me,” said the gravelly voice. “I’d think they’d kill us all and be done with it.”

  “They might yet,” Stanley rasped.

  “Man’s got to stay on his toes if he ain’t got nothin’ but toes to stay on.”

  Now under full pressure, the sprinkler head began to ratchet rhythmically.

  “You ain’t gittin’ up?” said the voice. “It’s fixin’ to git a mite damp in here. C’mon’n git up. We’ll score us a couple transfers and make it down to St. Anthony’s for breakfast.”

  So he was still in San Francisco. “I take some comfort, knowing we’re only a bus-ride away from St. Anthony’s,” Stanley said weakly, not even attempting to move. “But on what bus line, exactly, do we find ourselves?”

  “Oh the Seven, the Six, that Noriega line… There’s four or five buses, run up there on Haight…”

  Ten feet above Stanley’s head a powerful stream of water played across the axis of the cypress tree. Spray ricocheted off the downsloping branches, and the jet passed on. Moments later a few drops of water and several cypress needles ticked down onto the sleeping bag and his face.

  He blinked, then opened his mouth and broadened his tongue. But no water fell on it.

  “I’m hurt,” Stanley whispered. “Thirsty…”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hurt!” His voice wasn’t any louder.

  “You’re fixin’ to be hurt and wet both,” said the man. “There’s a difference, I happen to know.”

  “I can’t feel my legs.” He struggled to free his arms from the sleeping bag. One of them, twisted beneath him, asleep, lay as heavy and unresponsive as a pig of lead. The other arm he managed to extricate.

  He still wore the pineapple shirt. The arm was in its sleeve and seemed to work all right. As he waggled the fingers of its hand in front of his face to prove its motor skills he saw the fat piece of gauze taped over the inside of his elbow, and a large purpling bruise sprawled across the skin beneath it.

  He stopped moving his tingling fingers. He stopped struggling to free himself from the unfamiliar sleeping bag. He stared at gauze and bruise for a long moment, motionless.

  The jet of irrigation water cycled back across the tree in the opposite direction.

  The bruise was a few shades darker than the purple sleeping bag, and yellowing around its edges. So maybe it was at least a day old.

  Stanley’s eyes began to move in his head, now darting this way, now that. He didn’t remember giving blood. Though, come to think on it, he’d had an HIV test about three months before.

  Que pasa?

  “Hey. Neighbor.”

  The man beyond the cypress trunk was busy packing things up. “No,” he said. “You can’t borrow my power mower.”

  “Where is this?”

  “Come again?”

  “You mentioned the Haight. Where are we, exactly?”

  “The fabulous Panhandle of the famous Golden Gate Park in beautiful San Francisco in the Promise-Me-Anything-Land, Californ-eye-ay, where joints and screenplays grow on trees and the dream never dies, yee-hah.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I like your attitude.”

  “Maybe I’ll run for office.”

  “Do you know me?”

  A grizzled face thrust itself between the two lowest limbs of the cypress, about two feet away and above Stanley’s head. The man was old, with a weathered face bronzed by the sun and empurpled by wine, with lips to match, a swollen nose long ago flattened by a fist and stippled by burst capillaries, ennobled by a closely trimmed white beard and short white hair beneath a navy watch cap. A damp pair of alert, rheumy blue eyes looked Stanley up and down.

  “Nope,” he said. “That bag looks familiar, though. You in the gay boy-scouts?”

  “What’s your name?” Stanley said.

  “Jasper.”

  Stanley held out his good hand. “Stanley”

  Jasper extended a hand beneath the limb below his head. “Pleased.”

  As Jasper shook Stanley’s hand he turned it, exposing Stanley’s forearm with its bruise and bandage.

  “I know where you can give blood and they won’t hurt you like that,” he said. “Give twenny-f
ive bucks, a cookie, and a glass of apple juice, too.” He dropped the limp hand. “Unless —”

  Stanley had been about to protest that he’d never knowingly given blood in his life, but he said, “Unless?”

  “You positive?” Jasper squinted.

  “About what?”

  “Positive. Sick. You know, got the HIV?”

  Stanley allowed his mouth to fall open, then closed it. “Ahm, no, I—Of course not. I mean, I recently tested negative.”

  The sprinkler ratcheted overhead again, and a thin trickle of water sprinted down the length of the cypress trunk between them.

  Jasper nodded toward Stanley’s elbow “Looks like they tested hell out of it.” He scratched under the back of the watch cap. “You know fer sure?”

  Stanley was at a loss to explain what the bandage and bruise were about, but, for sure, he knew they weren’t artifacts of a three-month-old HIV test. He held up his arm and looked at the bruise. “I just… know it, that’s all. A man doesn’t shoot dope…”

  “Yeah…,” Jasper said suspiciously.

  “A man doesn’t have sex with just anybody…”

  “Yeah…?” Jasper said incredulously.

  “A man doesn’t have sex with anybody at all?”

  “Yeah,” said Jasper confidently.

  “Well?”

  Jasper nodded sardonically. “I guess you get the juice and the cookie, don’t ya?”

  “Look,” Stanley changed the subject. “I need more than juice and a cookie. I can’t even get myself out of this sleeping bag.”

  “You got into it, didn’t ya?”

  The intermittent jet of water passed back overhead. A drop of water fell onto the rolled brim of Jasper’s watch cap.

  “I don’t know, Jasper,” Stanley said.

  Jasper studied him for a minute. Then he disappeared.

  Stanley dropped his head onto the bed of cypress needles, thinking, so much for the first human contact of the day. The effort of talking had exhausted him, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. The solution to that was easy, however. He closed them. A moment later, his mind fell off a cliff.

  The scraping was loud at first, but after it woke him the sound diminished to its proper volume. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep. His body was bathed in sweat. The pain in his back was focused, strong, formidable. He opened his eyes. The cypress limbs were still above him. His arm was outside the sleeping bag, the bandage and the bruise were intact. His other arm was dead. A jet of irrigation water swept the upper part of the tree, scattering partial, momentary rainbows in the patchwork of sunlight. The sunlight hurt his eyes. More and more water trickled its way down to him.