Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (38 page)

I waited until his footsteps died away, and then I twisted the doorknob, slowly, as soundlessly as I could. Another minute passed before I eased inside. I could hear the regular breathing of the sleepers in the room. In the moonlight from the open window I could see two large pillars in the center of the room, and on either side of the pillars were white-and-gold water beds in the shape of lilies. I crept closer to one of the beds. Long blond hair streamed across the pillar, but the bare back and shoulders were muscular. Surely it was Kay. I switched on the flashlight, and let the light play over the features of the sleeping man.

“What the hell!” He sat up, shouting in alarm.

It wasn’t him.

The Movie Princess was screaming, too, now, and she had set off the alarm that would bring her security guards into the room. Suddenly everything was noise and lights, like a very bad dream.

I lost it.

I sat down on the bed and began to cry, for the hopelessness of it all, and because I was so tired of noise and lights and a world without seasons. The Movie Princess, seeing that I wasn’t a crazed admirer, told her guards to wait outside in the hall, and she and the man asked me what I was looking for. When I heard the blond man speak, I realized that he was from Minnesota. “Close but no fjord, my gardener friend,” I thought. I guess we all sound alike to outsiders.

I told them about Kay’s disappearance, and about my need to find the Snow Queen, which appalled them, because they were not into that sort of lifestyle, but they agreed that my purpose was noble, since I was trying to save a friend from the clutches of the powder dreams.
They gave me money and jewelry to help me on my trip, and the Movie Lady insisted that I put on one of her dresses, and take her
wheels
, as she called them, to speed me on my way. They didn’t have any advice for me about where to look, but they told me to stay cool. A funny wish, I thought, from people who choose to live where it is always hotter than copper pennies on a woodstove.

I sped away through the night, not really knowing where I was going, and wondering who to ask about the Snow Queen. I found myself going down streets that were darker and narrower, until I no longer knew which way I was going and which way I had come. I came to a stop to think about what to do next—and then the decision was no longer mine to make.

A shouting, screaming mob of people surrounded me, and hauled me out of the vehicle.

“She’s wearing gold!” one of them shouted.

A dozen hands pawed at my throat and my wrists. I struggled to throw a punch, to kick at my attackers, but I was powerless in the grip of the mob. They pinned my arms behind my back and stuffed a dirty handkerchief in my mouth. I watched them dismantle the wheels of the Movie Princess until it was an unrecognizable hulk in the dark alley. The crowd began fighting among themselves for my money and for the jewelry the Princess had given me. I figured I wasn’t going to live much longer, but nobody would come looking for me.

A large woman ambled over to me and peered into my face. “She like a little fat lamb,” the woman said. I stared at the stubble beneath her chin, hoping to distract myself from her dead eyes. “She look good enough to eat—don’tcha, baby?” She pulled a hunting knife from the folds of her skirt and began running her finger along the blade.

I struggled harder to break free from my captors but it
was no use. All I managed to do was spit out the gag. I swore in Danish: “
Pis og lort!
”

“Iddn’t she cute? She just say ‘
Peace, O Lord!
’—Never had anybody pray before.”

I didn’t give her a Danish lesson. Let her think I was praying. Maybe it would help. She edged closer to me, the knife wavering at my throat. I had closed my eyes, wondering if I should have chosen prayer, when suddenly the fat woman drew back and screamed.

I opened my eyes and saw that a small brown girl had jumped on the woman’s back and was biting her ear. The woman began to swing around, waving the knife, and swearing. “Get down, you devil of a child! What you want to do that for?”

“Give her to me!” said the girl. “I want her. She can give me her fancy clothes and her rings, and she can sleep with me in my bed!”

The men began to laugh and nudge each other. The fat woman shook her head, but her daughter bit her ear again, and she screamed, and everyone laughed even harder. “She’s playing with her cub!” somebody said.

The small brown girl got her way. They bundled us into her set of wheels, and we took off through a maze of streets, all neon and no stars. The girl was about my height, but stronger, with nut-brown skin, big dark eyes, and white wolf teeth. “She won’t kill you as long as I want you!” she told me. “Are you a movie princess?”

“No. I’m looking for somebody.”

The dark girl cocked her head. “You lookin’ for somebody? Down here? At this time of night? Girl, you were lookin’ for Trouble, and you sure enough found him. You ain’t goin’ nowhere, but at least you’re safe with me. I won’t let nobody hurt you. And if I get mad at you, why I’ll just kill you myself. So you don’t have to worry about none of the rest of them. You want a drink?”

We stopped at the curb in front of a ruined building. Some of the windows were boarded up, and some had the
glass smashed from the frames, and birds flew in and out of the dark rooms. A sign on the double front doors said
CONDEMNED
, which was true enough, I thought. This was the place the gang called home. As they marched me into the building, lean snarling dogs clustered around us, but they did not bark. One looked up at me and growled in his throat.

“You will sleep with me and my little pets tonight,” said the brown girl, patting the snarling dog. We went inside the derelict building. The gang had built a campfire on the marble floor of the entrance hall, and they were cooking their evening meal. I was given something greasy on a sort of pancake, and when I had eaten as much of it as I could, I was led upstairs and through a dark hall to the girl’s room. There was no furniture in the room, only a sleeping bag on the floor, and some straw. Holes had been punched in the walls of the room, and the windows were empty squares looking down on the lights of the city. Pigeons milled around on the floor, occasionally rising to sail out the glassless window, then drifting back in on the next puff of breeze.

“These all belong to me,” said the girl. She reached out and grabbed a waddling pigeon from the floor, and thrust it into my face. “Kiss it.”

I pulled away, and worked on the rope binding my hands.

“The pigeons live in the hole in the wall,” she said, smoothing the bird’s feathers. “They come back at night. But I got to keep old Rudy tied up, or he’d run off for sure, wouldn’t you, Rudy?” She opened the connecting door to another empty room. A frightened boy shied away from her as she approached him, but he couldn’t go far because he was chained to the floor by a copper ring encircling his neck. His face and ragged clothes were caked with dirt. The dark girl drew her knife. “Rudy’s a special pet. I’m saving him. Every night I got to tickle him a little with my blade just to remind him what would
happen if he tried to run.” She passed the knife gently across the boy’s throat. He struggled and kicked at her, but she laughed and turned away.

“Are you going to sleep with that knife?” I asked her as she climbed into the sleeping bag.

“I always sleep with the knife,” she said. “You never know what’s going to happen—do you, sunshine? Now why don’t you tell me a bedtime story? Tell me what you were doing out here all by yourself with no more protection than a pigeon got?”

“If I tell you, will you untie me then?”

She shook her head. “Make it good, and maybe I’ll untie you tomorrow.”

I started telling her about Kay, and how he had hitched his sled to the sleigh of the Snow Queen. The dark girl laughed, and said in a sleepy voice, “Boy strung out on the powder. Sure is. I heard about buying a one-way ticket on an airline made of snow. Old song. Never heard it called hitching a ride onto a sleigh before. Guess that’s what they mean by cul-tu-ral di-ver-si-ty.” Her voice trailed off into a slur of sounds. Soon her breathing became slow and even, and I knew she was asleep.

“I’ve seen her,” said a soft voice in the darkness.

It was the boy. I heard the rattle of his chain as he edged closer.

“You can talk,” I said. Somehow I had thought he wasn’t quite right in the head, I guess. But he sounded okay—just scared to be talking with his tormentor so near.

“Yeah, I can talk. I been around. After I ran away from home, I lived on the street for a while—until
they
got me and brought me here—I used to see her—the one you call the Snow Queen. She’d ride by every now and again, and there was always a good supply of that white powder on the street after she’d been around. Oh, yeah, the Snow Queen. I know her, for sure.”

“But do you know where to find her?”

“She got a place up in the hills. Couple of hours from
here, where it’s so high up it stays cold. She likes the cold. Big white showplace in the mountains, all by itself. I never been there, but I heard talk. I could find it.”

“I wish I could let you try.” I eased out of the sleeping bag and leaned back against the wall, listening to the pigeons cooing in the darkness, but I didn’t sleep. I thought about Kay.

The next morning the dark girl crawled out of the sleeping bag. “I dreamed about that guy you talked about,” she said. “Dreamed he was sitting on ice somewhere, trying to spell some big word with a bunch of crooked pieces of glass. Kept trying and trying to spell that word, and he couldn’t do it. You believe in message dreams? I do. He’s in a bad way, all right. Yes, he surely is that.”

I nodded. “Rudy says he knows where to find him.”

“What? Chain-boy? He don’t know nothing.” She reached for her knife and scowled at her prisoner, but this time he did not cringe.

“I do know,” he said. “I seen a lot. Seen her on the street. I can find her, too.”

“Maybe that’s what your dream meant,” I told her. “Maybe you’re supposed to send us after the Snow Queen.”

The dark girl looked afraid. “Even us don’t mess with her.”

“She won’t know you’re involved. It’ll just be Rudy and me. We’ll go after her.” I stared at her until she looked away. “You’ve been told to let us go,” I said. “Your dream.”

“Yeah, okay. What do I need you two for? It’s not like you were any fun or anything. Go chase the Snow Queen. Get yourself killed in a cold minute.”

The boy and I waited in silence while she made up her mind. At last she said, “Okay. The men are all out for the day, but Mamacita is downstairs, and she won’t like it if I let you go. So you have to wait a little until she goes to
sleep, and then I’ll lead you down the fire escape so she won’t see you.”

The boy and I exchanged smiles of relief.

The dark girl pulled on Rudy’s chain. “I’m gonna miss tickling you with my knife, boy,” she said. “You look so cute when you’re afraid, but never mind. I’m gonna let you go, and I want you to take this lady to the house of the Snow Queen, and you help her get him out of there. And if you run out on her, I’m going to come and find you myself. You got that?”

He nodded. “I’ll take her there.”

“Okay. I’ll get you some food.” She moved behind me with her dagger, and cut the rope that bound my wrists. Then she handed me the key to the boy’s copper neck ring, and nodded for me to unchain him. “Okay,” she hissed at us. “Get over to the fire escape. I’ll come back with the food when it’s safe for you to go. After that—anybody asks, I ain’t seen you.”

Rudy took me back to the part of town where he had been before the dark girl’s gang had captured him. “There’s an old lady here who might help,” he said. “She’s been on the street so long she knows everything.”

He led me down an alley to an old packing crate propped up against the side of a Dumpster. The sides of the crate were decorated with faded bumper stickers, and an earthenware pot of geraniums stood by the opening, which was covered with a ragged quilt. “This is her office. Well, it’s her home, too. We have to knock.”

We got down on our hands and knees to enter the tiny hovel that was home to Rudy’s friend. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw a grizzled old woman cooking fish in a pan on a camping stove. She wore a grimy Hermés scarf wrapped around her head, several layers of cast-off designer clothing, and a pair of men’s Nike running shoes.

Rudy gave the old woman a hug and immediately began
to tell her the long tale about his troubles, which he apparently considered much more important than mine. At last, though, he had run out of complaints, and the woman’s sympathetic clucks were becoming more perfunctory. Then Rudy said, “And this is my friend Gerda. She got me away from the gang, but she’s looking for a guy named Kay who went off with the Snow Queen. You know what I’m saying?”

“Poor child!” said the old woman, nodding. “You still have a long way to go! You have a hundred miles to run before you reach the hill country. The Snow Queen lives up there now, and she burns blue lights every night. I will write some words for you on a paper bag, and you can take it to Finnish Mary. She never could get the hang of city life here, so she lit out for the mountains. She lives up there in an old mining ghost town now. She will advise you better than I can.”

She gave us a little of her fish, and some produce from the grocery store Dumpster, and then she scribbled some words on the paper bag, gave Rudy directions to the mining town, and sent us off to the hill country, wishing us luck in our quest.

We walked out to the big highway, and started thumbing for rides. We were able to hitchhike most of the way into the hill country, so we made it by nightfall. The evening light was soft and silvery as we walked the last couple of miles from the highway into the ruins of the old mining town. We found Finnish Mary’s shack by following the trail of wood smoke back to a crumbling hovel that was built over the basement of a demolished house. We crept into the hot dark room. Finnish Mary was huddled next to her stove. She wore an old cotton caftan over a layer of dirt. On a clothesline close to the ceiling hung bunches of dried herbs and crystals suspended from bits of fishing line. Finnish Mary was obviously into New Age arts and holistic medicine.