The Everborn (15 page)

There was something about her, something curious and familiar, and as the threat of the song’s ending reared its prospective head, Andrew forced a stutter of dialogue for fear of never again having the opportunity.

“I see you’re with the press over there. You’re here by yourself?”

She seemed pleasantly set aback by the sudden question and widened her smile. “What?” she tossed her voice above the music, then, “I’m here with the press. I’m with a magazine. Actually, it’s a newsletter. But I’m here to have a good time more than anything. Even if I have to let loose by myself.”

“The concert? I knew about it probably before most anyone else did. “I see Ralston all the time. More often than I’d like....”

“You’re friends with him? Can I throw a few questions at you?”

Andrew resisted the freshly dreadful web of insight seeping into his restless self-confidence upon the notion of Ralston-mania being responsible for this woman’s actual intentions. A repeated glance towards the portly beast of Ralston’s agent gave Andrew the suspicion that this dance was indebted to the agent’s company at Andrew’s table; Behn turned away any and all who approached the table with the unnerving recognition of who he was. This gossip-sleuth was probably the smarter of the litter, hitting on Andrew instead.

Until she pointed out her lonely press table and how she could sure use a dose of company, if only he’d excuse himself from his friends and join her for a little while.

Fuck her intentions, Andrew rested the issue with the immediate clasp of her hand amidst the thunderous applause for
Squid Friction’s
chimp nipple song. Any diversion from his “friends’” company was a slice of paradise.

And, by the suggestive stew of wanton lust stirred by the slice of paradise diverting him away from the dance floor and into the direction of press tables, Andrew could care less what she wanted him for.

It bothered Andrew: Bari and those trivial prophecies of hers.

***

A shabby grey shape shifted, watched in patient surveillance and with such tamed anticipation as can only be found among the damned baring a scheme to redeem themselves.

Such schemes were among the damned tonight.

And such schemes made them patient.

They learned to be so, and it was a lesson as twisted and as unbearably torturous as the very lives they had come to lead, as was the manner in which they destroyed other lives in turn.

The shabby grey shape drew no attention to himself, sat still and silent except to calmly scratch his brillo pad beard and the razor blade wounds healing and irritated beneath it. Draped in the overcoat of a street pauper and perched atop a bar stool at the far corner of the bar, against the wall and opposite the stage, he sat and gazed out alertly into the Crow Job night crowd like a jackal deliberating the advent of a kill.

There was a lovely couple, an unsuspecting couple, sharing a table together somewhere midway between the bar end and the brass rails of the entranceway steps.

He watched them. They were important to him.

Two individuals, after their dance, sat down at the center of the last row of tables in the press section. He knew who they were, knew of them, and they seemed interested in each other.

He was interested in
them
. He watched them, too, though not as keenly as he did the lovely couple.

And then there was the singer, the stage misfit, shining brighter than all of them at the moment, for the time being, not realizing that some day, for him, there would be no more stories to tell except for his own.

The shabby grey shape watched him also, marveling at how here....in this room, amidst this fanfare....there was gathered the most important influences of his life.

As far as
people
, for the most part.

And as far as the
living
, for the dead could not attend this reunion, particularly the young one whose blood still dried in gravel-caked splashes against the moonlight of the
Crow Job
alley.

Though the dead could not join the reunion, the reunion could always step outside and join the dead, any time.

10.

Andrew and Melony

If Melony had been more decided upon the extent of the disclosure of her identity to Andrew Erlandson, she would not have been so careless as to invite him to her table...and would not have left her press table card displaying her name and publication so openly obvious to wandering eyes.

Melony was subtly made aware...oh so subtly at first...of several things which disturbed her at the touch of the hand she now clasped, of the young man whose hand she held behind her as she led him through the dispersal of dancers for a self-arranged liaison at her night club table. She kept these things, these feelings, these thoughts, at bay for the fear of any or all of them getting the best of her, subduing her until she’d find herself sulking in the regret of a mismanaged and wasteful evening.

She’d taken advantage of the opportunity to watch and observe, a task which oddly reminded her of her husband and the security guard stories of his early college years. To observe Ralston Cooper, one of the most imperative objects of her interest, was impossible
not
to do. She was attentive to the table at which roosted Cooper’s agent, Cooper’s hokey, party-happy girlfriend, and specifically to the son of A.J. Erlandson, the son who managed
not
to disappear without a trace as did his father, as did initially his elusive twin brother also. The other imperative focus of the evening could not as readily be attended to, for the probability of this elusive
other
Erlandson’s presence, the presence of Andrew’s twin, was very much looking like a lost cause.

Even though, unlike A.J., who never to anyone’s knowledge
ever
reappeared, never
yet
at any rate, Andrew’s sordid and spectral twin had made dozens of profound special guest appearances over the years in the Erlandson saga. Reappearing, disappearing, reappearing, like the ink from the pen of a practical jokester who doesn’t quite want anyone to catch more than a hint of his message on paper.

Max and Mel had hoped for another appearance here, at the
Crow Job
Family Reunion, particularly since it was this twin who was most likely responsible for the death of Nigel in the adjoining alley outside.

After all, it was this twin who’d been behind Nigel’s disappearance and assumed death the first time around. The fabled
Wraith-child
.

Presumably. According to Max and Mel.

Melony’s husband was specific in covering a plan of action at the news of the discovery of little Nigel’s body; though he’d be truly disappointed at the absence of the twin or Melony’s failure to spot him, as Melony was as well. Max made clear that the assignment for Mel was to pay primary attention to Andrew and to go in for the informative kill on that angle. Max imposed upon his own self the task of going after the twin and as soon as his plane arrived from his short-lived Brazil excursion he would right away set to work on that end.

What disturbed Melony had little to do with any of this.

Or, said again, what disturbed Melony was that these feelings and thoughts had little to do with any of what she’d planned.

She knew she had to formally meet Andrew, to get to know him for as long as she needed him, somehow, and she had every intention of veiling her true identity and interest in him as efficiently and as coolly as the situation allowed.

And with plenty of room to back out should things get too surreal or too dangerous.

In watching his table, she knew she’d get farther with him if only she’d draw him away from William Behn’s rude snubbing of any zealous Cooper fan who approached him.

Luring him away to dance had been the first step and she scored high and heavy with his interest wholly captured. She was thankful for the frivolous urges and intuition behind her choice of dress, for the rare but refreshing ease by which she unleashed her compulsion to let loose. Together these fancies played no small part in making things work for her.

When she invited him to join her and took his hand, it was like taking the hand of a historic figure arisen from the stagnant memories of the past. She had so many questions for him, so many secrets to unravel, and it disturbed her to feel so intimidated. And on the other hand, he seemed so awkwardly timid, like a gentle young boy wrestling with a sexual tension that clearly made him come off as inexperienced with a woman’s attentions, pitting him against his own politeness.

Her presuppositions had never allowed for such humanness. She found herself ashamed of scarcely having considered this a trait for him; for if he be anything other than human, living as one all his life should certainly make him human at heart.

As they sat down together, Melony hoped her new insight proved true.

She could only hope so, because as soon as Andrew was seated he was regarding her press table card and any new insight on his part toward her could prove far more disturbing than any thought or feeling obtained just by holding his hand.

And it was much too late to turn things around, or to turn back.

***

“A newsletter, huh? What’s
Diverse Arcanum
?”

Melony took a sip of her half-downed fuzzy navel. “It means many strange things. A collection of many strange, ancient things, actually. You want a drink? What were you drinking?”

“Damn, I left my beer....” Andrew realized.

“Don’t go back,” Mel turned, motioned for a barhop. “I’ll buy us a round. Stay, keep me company a bit. I hate being alone here, not seeing anyone I know and you seem like good enough company....”

“No, believe me, uh....” Andrew glanced at the name printed in cursive boldness upon the folded card, “Melony? Melony, believe me, you’ve rescued me from a table full of assholes. I hate being up at the front like that, anyway, it’s like sitting at the front row of a crowded movie theatre, the screen in your face and all these idiots blocking your view and pushing past you regardless of it being the front row.”

A barhop approached the next moment; Mel ordered another fuzzy navel, with an added Foster’s for her guest. The barhop scribbled in jotted pen pecks upon her tray, then departed.

“Want a sip in the meantime?” Mel offered him her drink and he obliged coyly.

He returned it with a thank you and relaxed further into his seat. He then leaned forward, offered his hand to her. “Well...Melony, I’m Andrew. Thanks for the dance, by the way. That’s never happened before. To me.”

Mel took his hand and they shook. “It’ll happen again if I can help it. Andrew. I bet you love to dance, even when it’s to a band of less-than-impressive cheap nobodies trying to make a first-rate writer look good while he sings bad.”

Andrew laughed in amused agreement and she joined in the chuckle. Soon enough, the barhop returned with the drinks, adding them to a running tab exclusive only to each party within the reserved press section. Andrew lifted his Foster’s for a toast and they did so to Mel’s appreciated band comment.

They drank. Andrew was careful to harness his own roaming eyes away from the excitement of sleek shoulders bare and slender, cascading into revealing cleavage which at once fluttered loosely as black nylons crossed and rested, hands cupped and settled around the cocktail glass now placed within her lap.

Mel found herself with no choice but to notice these self-conscious subtleties. Embarrassingly enough, she wished he would admire her more daringly, for she was aware of her own beauty and of how it turned him on so and just about any male attention of this kind was welcomed and even longed for God only knew the last time
Maxy
had ever taken time out to toss even a
compliment
her way. Hell, he was all so caught up in his obsessive gallivants that the only attention she’d get aside from hurried lovemaking or occasional banks of approval over clothes shopping choices was in how well she’d compile material for his latest project or book. It never used to be this way, but for what seemed like a long, long while, it amounted to nothing more.

And now, someone was actually turned on by her, someone
else
and although for her to sense a lust of this nature from just any strange and drooling male was a common and indifferent annoyance generally, this instance could have come at no better time. As for it coming from
Andrew Erlandson
of all characters, with whom she at last just now had formally met....

....well, she suddenly discovered the odd reality of being profoundly turned on herself. And it frightened her. Though she hid it expertly, so she thought.

So far, so very good, Mel. Keep it up, and perhaps you yourself may become a historic figure of the future’s past, to arise one day from another generation’s stagnant memories.

***

They danced once more, this time to a rampant metal beat with lyrics that could never be misunderstood, only because not one word could be understood as anything anyway.