‘Oh God, please make it die,’ he gibbered. ‘Oh God, oh God, please make it die.’
But the cat twisted and turned and ripped furiously and noisily at the plastic with its claws, screaming with a cry like a tortured baby.
Martin picked up the screwdriver, but dropped it again. It rolled across the floor, out of his reach. The cat savaged a long rent in the plastic. He saw its hate-filled face, with its mouth still stretched wide. He saw its eyes burning.
Crying out with effort, he lifted up the bag and twisted it tighter to keep the cat imprisoned inside it. Then he swung it around his head, once, twice, like a hammer thrower, and smashed it as hard as he could against the wall – and then smashed it again, and again, and again.
When the animal seemed to have stopped struggling, he dropped the bag onto the floor, scooped up his screwdriver, and crunched the blade into the cat’s body over and over again, so many times that he completely lost count. Then he knelt back on his heels, gasping for breath. ‘Oh, shit,’ he panted. ‘Oh, shit.’
He dragged the bag to the front door. It seemed impossibly heavy, just for a cat. But just as he was about to open up the door and heave the bag out, he heard voices. Italian voices, amplified with wine and indignation. The Capellis had arrived home.
‘What’s that? A cat? He doesn’t have no cat! He’s not allowed no cat! Terms of the lease! You need a doctor, you know that? Look, you’re bleeding! What’s your father going to say? Where’s Martin? What do you mean, he’s worse? What could be worse?’
Martin hesitated: then, with a rustling plasticky noise, he dragged the bag through to the kitchen, leaving calligraphic tracks of blood across the tiles. He took the lid off the big gray plastic trash bin and dropped the cat’s body inside. He mopped up the floor with his squeegee mop. He felt like a murderer as he squeezed blood-streaked water into the sink. God, he thought, what was it like when you hacked up a human being? How did you ever get rid of the blood? The blood swirled around the sink like the shower stall in
Psycho
.
Mr Capelli appeared at the door, flushed, sweating, smelling of brandy. ‘Martin?’ he shouted; then, when Martin turned around, ‘My God! Look at you! What are you doing? My God!’
Martin leaned against the wall and gave Mr Capelli a twist of his mouth that was intended to be a smile. ‘I’m okay, Mr Capelli, I’m fine. I was just looking for my car keys – you know, to drive myself down to the hospital.’
Mr Capelli frowned at him and then held out his hands. Martin reached out to take hold of them, but somehow they weren’t really there, and everything was black, and none of this really mattered, anyway.
He fell flat on his face on the kitchen floor, and he was lucky not to break his nose. Mr Capelli dithered for a moment and then called down the stairs, ‘Wanda! Call for an ambulance! Tell them
pronto!
’
He woke up and the first thing that he could hear was clicking.
Clickety-click; clickety-clack
; pause
clickety-click; clickety-clack
. He lifted his head, and there was Ramone, sitting cross-legged on one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs, furiously working at a Rubik’s Magic. The blinds were closed, so that the room was very dim, although he could hear traffic and noise and all the sounds of a busy day. There were flowers everywhere, roses and orchids and huge apricot-colored daisies; and a blowfly was tapping against the window. He tried to speak, but his mouth felt as though it were fifty times the normal size, and he couldn’t remember what you had to do to form words.
‘Mamown …’ he blurred. ‘Mamown …’
Ramone turned his head and peered at him. ‘Hey, man! You’re still alive and kicking!’ He put down his Rubik’s Magic and came across to the bed. His black face loomed over Martin like a bulging-eyed fish looking out of an aquarium. ‘We all thought you was definitely ready for the coma room – you know, where you don’t wake up, so they cut your legs off and donate them to some rich South American rumba dancer with leg cancer.’
‘Can you see my legs dancing the rumba?’ croaked Martin.
Ramone took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Guess not, brother, but good to see you’re alive. How do you feel?’
Martin tried to lift his head, but his scalp felt as if it had been sewn to the pillow. ‘Sore,’ he said. Then, ‘Jesus.’
‘Hey – Mr Caparooparelli told me all about that
cat
,’ said Ramone. ‘That was weird, man, that was definitely far out.’
Martin asked, ‘Could you pour me some water? I can hardly swallow.’
Ramone noisily poured him a large glass of Perrier. ‘It’s not surprising you feel like that. It’s the anesthetic, always makes you feel like shit. Remember when I totaled that Thunderbird? I was under for four hours, came out feeling like shit.’
Martin drank, and then said, ‘How long was I …?’
‘Two and a half hours, man. They gave you thirty-eight stitches.’
‘Jesus,’ said Martin. He felt sore and swollen and inflated. He knew that he ought to be worried, too, and working on something or other – some TV script – but he was too drowsy to remember what it was.
‘Mr Caparoopadoopa got rid of the cat,’ said Ramone. ‘Dropped it in the trash outside the supermarket. Let’s just hope the good old Humane Society doesn’t hunt him down.’
‘The cat … came through the mirror …’ said Martin in a blurred voice. ‘Must have.
Must
have. No other way. Doors locked, windows locked.’
‘You truly think it came out of the
mirror
?’ Ramone asked him. He added, in the Mr T accent that both he and Martin could mimic, ‘Now, you listen here, suckah, I’ve had enough of this jibbah-jabbuh.’
‘But it’s just like I said before,’ Martin insisted. ‘One for one. Tit for tat, cat for cat. Balance. Lugosi went into the mirror, and sooner or later some other poor cat had to come out.’
‘But that kitty cat wasn’t anything
like
Lugosi.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Martin told him. ‘The tennis ball and the rubber ball – they were just as – what do you call it? They were just as dissimilar.’
‘Dissimilar, right,’ agreed Ramone, ‘dis-simil-ah,’ and nodded; but then said, ‘What happens now? I mean you killed that cat, right? Does that mean Lugosi was killed in the mirrorland, or what? Is he still alive, or dead, or what?’
‘That’s just the question I’ve been asking,’ said Martin. ‘Not just about Lugosi, but Boofuls, too.’
Ramone picked up his Rubik’s Magic and flicked it a few times. ‘Oh, well, Boofuls, yeah. I haven’t had the pleasure yet. If it
is
a pleasure.’
Martin drank a little more water. Then he managed to lift himself up onto his elbows. ‘What time is it?’
‘Three o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘I have to get out of here.’
Ramone pushed him back onto the pillow. ‘You sure as hell don’t. You have to stay here one more night,
compadre
, for observation. That’s what they said. It’s a good thing you got medical insurance.’
‘But the mirror.’
‘What about the jive mirror?’
‘Mr Capelli said he wanted it out. And not only that, he wanted it out by tonight. Supposing he does something lunatic, like smash it up or throw it on the dump? What’s going to happen to Lugosi then? Or Boofuls, come to that?’
Ramone said, ‘You don’t have to worry yourself about that, man. I already took care of that. I told Mr Capacloopi that I was going to take the mirror off of your hands. I’m supposed to collect it later this afternoon and store it down at The Reel Thing.’
‘Will you do that?’ asked Martin with relief.
‘Sure I’ll do it. That’s unless some cat-out-of-hell comes jumping out of it and tries the same kind of number on
me
that it did on
you
.’
Martin reached out his hand. ‘You’re a pal, Perez.’
‘Well, you’re all heart, Mart.’
Martin lay back and thought for a while, and then he said, ‘Do you know something? What we need is a medium.’
‘A medium what?’ asked Ramone.
‘I mean a medium medium. A clairvoyant. Somebody who can get in contact with the spirits.’
‘Are you pulling my leg?’
‘No,’ Martin told him, ‘I’m serious. It seems to me that this mirror is acting like some kind of
gateway
, do you know what I mean, between the real world and the spirit world. You can’t tell me that Boofuls isn’t a spirit, can you? And these mediums – they should be used to handling this kind of thing, shouldn’t they? Like when they talk to the spirits, they create their own way through to the other side, right? I would have thought that any medium worth his money would jump at the chance of talking to the spirits the same way that Emilio talks to Boofuls. I mean to see the spirit as clearly as your hand in front of your face, that’s something else.’
‘Seeing your favorite cat being swallowed up is something else, too,’ Ramone complained. ‘
And
seeing your main man looking like he’s just come out of the ring with Ivan Drago. “
You will lose
,” ’ he said, imitating the Russian boxer in
Rocky IV
.
‘Do you know anybody who’s into that kind of thing?’ said Martin.
Ramone shook his head. ‘Not me. But I know somebody who might know. One of my customers is Elmore Sweet – you know, the pianist. Liberace without the restraint. His mother died about two or three years ago, but every time he comes in he tells me that he’s been rapping with Momsy about this or that. I used to think he’d lost his marbles at first, but then Dorothy Dunkley told me that he
gets in touch
, you know, with séances and everything.’
‘Good,’ said Martin. ‘So why don’t you call him and ask him the name of his medium.’
‘I’ll try.’
There was a longer pause. Ramone checked his Spiro Agnew wristwatch. ‘Guess it’s time I went back to the store. Kelly’s okay, but she can be kind of remote. Also, she doesn’t believe in responsibility. It’s something to do with this sect she’s gotten into. The Maharishi Nerdbrain or something.’
‘Take care,’ said Martin. ‘And thanks for looking after the mirror for me.’
‘It’s not for you, my friend. It’s for Lugosi. Wherever the poor bastard may be.’
Martin spent a bad night at the hospital. The nurse had given him a sedative to help him sleep, and for three or four hours he slept as heavily as a lumberjack: but all the time his mind was alive with the most vivid and terrifying nightmares. He saw Boofuls – or something he thought was Boofuls – right at the very end of a long tunnel of mirrors. Just an arm, just a leg, just a fleeting glimpse; and then an echo of laughter that sounded melodious at first, and then rang as harshly as a butcher’s knife on a butcher’s steel.
‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
,’ somebody whispered, so close and so distinct that he opened his eyes and looked around the room. ‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
.’
Then he was running across a wide, well-mowed lawn, trying to catch up with a scampering boy dressed in lemon yellow. The day was bright. The boy was laughing. But then the boy disappeared behind a long row of cypress bushes; and a cloud dragged its gray skirts over the sun; and the laughter stopped.
Martin walked along the row of cypress bushes, slowly at first. ‘Boofuls?’ he called. ‘Boofuls?’
He started to jog, and then to run. ‘Boofuls, where are you? Boofuls!’
‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
,’ somebody whispered, and then again, faster, like a train gathering momentum. ‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
.’
He ran even harder. He was terrified now. Something burst out of the cypress bushes right behind him and came running after him, just as fast, faster. He turned wild-eyed to see what it was, and it was a small boy, dressed in lemon yellow, but his face was the gilded face of Pan, snarling at him.
He stumbled, fell, rolled over; and then he woke up in bed sweating and clutching the bed rails. The nightmare garden faded; the cypresses were folded up like dark green tents and hurried away; the gilded face gleamed with momentary wickedness and then vanished.
He switched on his bedside light. Outside his door, two nurses and an orderly were loudly discussing next week’s Hospital Hootenanny. Sirens wailed down by the casualty department as the victims of the night’s violence were hurried in. Tragedy didn’t sleep; anger didn’t sleep; junkies and hookers didn’t sleep; and neither did knives.
He called for the nurse. Nurse Newton opened his door; a huge black woman with an irrepressible smile who reassured him more than all the other nurses put together. ‘What is it now, Mr Willy-ams?’
‘Do you think you could bring me a bottle of red wine? It’s the only thing that gets me to sleep.’
‘Red wine, Mr Willy-ams? That’s against regulations. And besides, you’re up to your ears in sedatives.’
‘Nurse, I need some sleep.’
Nurse Newton came over, took his temperature, and felt his pulse. ‘You’re cold,’ she remarked, frowning. ‘How come you’re so cold?’
‘Nightmares,’ he said.
‘Nightmares? Now, why should a big grown-up man like you have nightmares?’
Martin said, ‘God knows. I don’t.’
‘Well, what are they about, these nightmares?’
‘You’re going to think I’m bananas.’