Trolls in the Hamptons

Table of Contents

 

 

Then I heard cars slamming into each other, horns blaring, alarms going off. Bikes lay smashed on the sidewalk as flat as tortillas; the pavement glistened with shards of glass from doors and storefronts and windows, between new piles of bricks and rubble. What the hell? An earthquake in Manhattan? A terrorist attack? The UN wasn't all that far away.

I looked down the block to see if I could figure out what was happening, and then I shook my head to clear it. No way could a troll, a red granite giant, be swinging his fists and other proportionately massive appendages as he—definitely a he—slogged down my narrow street. Parking meters bent so coins went flying; stair railings twisted into wrought iron spaghetti; the floor beneath my feet shook.

There he was, my Fafhrd, the creature I had just drawn. And no one saw him but me. I was not God, not Frankenstein jump-starting his creation with a bolt of lightning.

No, I was crazy.

DAW Books Presents CELIA JEROME's

Willow Tate
Novels:

 

TROLLS IN THE HAMPTONS NIGHT MARES IN THE HAMPTONS

(
Available May 2011
)

Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Metzger.

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1527.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

eISBN : 978-1-101-44521-1

 

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

 

Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, November 2010

 

N
EVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF imagination. Never overestimate it, either. Take me, for instance, Willow Tate. I'm thirty-four and I can almost support my family's Manhattan apartment and myself by writing and illustrating graphic novels for young adults. I'm good; they sell. I sign them with the non-gender specific Willy Tate, but they are all my work, my inspiration, my ideas. Sometimes I write not so good poems, too. And I've made candles, painted murals, built birdhouses, and strung beaded necklaces for friends. But that's creativity, not Creation.

Think about it. The screenwriter can create an entire new world and make it come to life in a movie, so real you think you are there on the desert or the mountain or some other planet. The artist can paint flowers you can almost smell. A romance writer can tell a love story so touching you weep into your hot chocolate. They all come out of thin air and active minds.

But neither imagination, nor creativity, nor great art can make something actual and alive. Fantasy simply does not translate into reality, no matter how lovely. You cannot move into air castles or subsist on pie in the sky. Otherwise I'd have conjured up my own perfect hero long ago. He wouldn't need to be cover-model gorgeous, but he'd definitely be as noble, honorable—and hot—as the heroes of my action-adventure books. Maybe his only superpower would be making my heart beat faster, but that and a good sense of humor would be enough. And a steady job.

Instead of pulling a Romeo out of my hat, I am single, to my mother's horror, and the only man who gets my pulse thumping these days is Lou the Lout, the super of the brownstone building across from mine in the Murray Hill neighborhood, and that's adrenaline, not lust I feel. The old man terrifies me. He's never been aggressive or nasty, but he stares, even when he's sweeping the sidewalk, shoveling snow, or picking up after the pigs who don't clean up after their dogs. From my third-floor apartment—no elevator, no doorman, but a great midtown location on the East Side—I can see him looking up, into my window. That's what he does when he's not sweeping or shoveling or bagging garbage: he stares up from his place under the entry steps of his building, or from the barred window of the subfloor where I suppose he lives.

Both my parents tell me to close the blinds, which is about the only thing they agree on. It's easy for them to say, when Mom lives a block from the beach out on Long Island and has a garden in the backyard, and Dad has nothing but another high-rise senior citizen condo in his view.

Why should I block the sunlight and the scenery outside the walls of my apartment? I was raised in these same rooms, which is how I have an affordable rent-controlled unit. Mom got the summerhouse in the divorce. Dad got the Florida condo they bought for retiring. I got the city apartment. It works for all of us, except for Lou.

I spend most of my hours right here, working, sleeping, reading, or stringing those beads. I will not give up my view of the street, the pedestrians, the pigeons. I
need
that open space in the city. Besides, I refuse to let any old lecher steal my freedom. Okay, I won't walk on his side of East Thirty-Eighth Street, but that doesn't mean he's winning his war of intimidation.

The tenants of Lou's building don't seem to find him threatening, but to me he's like the monster under the bridge, waiting for unwary travelers. He's no cute gnomish old man, either, just a large, lumbering, and middle-aged troll.

. . . A troll.

Now there's an idea for a new series of books. No one does trolls. Vampires and werewolves are a dime a dozen. Dragons, witches, and psychics are done to death. Ghosts after death. But trolls?

I picked up my pen—red with a fine point—and a lined yellow pad I always keep on the round table by the window that's my office. (And dining room if company, or my mother, comes.) The 'puter and its drawing tablet are for later, once I know what I want. I took a sip of my green tea and thought,
Yeah, a troll
. I switched to a thin-line marker and started sketching. He'd be big, rocklike, wide-faced, with red skin. Green was overdone, and Lou was always flushed and angry looking, chapped in winter, sunburned in the summer. Even on a nice spring day like this one, I bet he dripped with sweat and smelled, but I never got close enough to tell.

I forgot all about him as I sketched and made notes for possible story lines. Should a troll wear clothes or not? Was he hero or villain, victim or avenger? He needed a name. Or was he a she? Girls bought my books, too. They might like a rough-and-ready female character. Or not. Trolls with boobs? Trolls in love? I'd have to run it by my editor after the weekend. For now my character was Fafhrd, after the Fritz Leiber classic fantasy hero, a gentle giant of a warrior, and best friend of the Gray Mouser.

Ah, to be in the same realm as Fritz Leiber. Right now I was flying on the wind of imagination. This was what I lived for, what made it all worthwhile, the bad reviews, the minuscule royalty advance payments, the low print runs and lack of publicity. To hell with all that; this was the fun part: the rush, the brain stimulation, the euphoria of a great, new idea that a few brushstrokes, a couple of lines, could make into something. That's the creative high, the confidence, the glow, the near postcoital satisfaction. No, this was more like the start of a new relationship, fresh, exciting, full of tingly possibilities. Who knew how it would turn out, but this might be The One.

I stopped to look at my sketches, my pages of plot, conflict, and character. Damn, I'm good.

The tea was gone, along with a dusty chocolate kiss, a stick of sugarless gum that lied about whitening teeth at the same time, and most of the afternoon. Lined yellow pages and pink sticky notes and drawings covered the table; new files and folders appeared on the computer. I could have gone on for hours; I was on such a roll. . . .

Which reminded me I'd missed lunch and my afternoon snack. Maybe I deserved Ben and Jerry's instead of a banana. And I'd burn some of the calories by walking to the deli around the corner to get it. I'd been sitting so long my neck was stiff and I could feel my rear end spreading. I looked out the window to see if I needed a sweatshirt, by checking what everyone on the street was wearing, but they were running and screaming. Then I heard the cars slamming into each other, horns blaring, alarms going off. Bikes lay smashed on the sidewalk as flat as tortillas; the pavement glistened with shards of glass from doors and storefronts and windows, between new piles of bricks and rubble. What the hell? An earthquake in Manhattan? A terrorist attack? The UN wasn't all that far away.