Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (88 page)

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I
guess I just wasn’t used to that reaction.”

“But you’re a…I
mean, your means of survival…”

“I know. A thief.
I was surprised too. You’d think people would fight harder after a run-in with
a pickpocket, but in the past, most of my targets just…let me go. Like it
wasn’t worth the trouble. They’d curse me out as I ran off, sure, but hardly
anybody cared enough to chase me down just for petty trinkets or pocket change.
But you did.”

I snorted. “I
cared for a stupid bottle. That’s not commendable.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s
commendable
because
it was stupid.”

I didn’t quite
understand what he meant, but I let it pass.

“Well, if we’re
apologizing,” I said, “I should say I’m sorry for putting a bullet in your
arm.”

Kitt leaned up and
examined his bandaged flesh. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “The shot
didn’t land. All it did was cut the skin open on its way past. The Magnates did
far uglier work on me.”

“Oh,” I dumbly
responded. “Good, then. Well, not
good,
I mean—”

“I know what you
mean.”

Thunder rumbled,
breaking for a moment the awkward air.

“So,” I eventually
continued, “how’d you get caught?”

“Doesn’t matter. I
just did. I got tired and they spotted me. Nobody can run forever, Pocket.”

More rumbling.
Louder.

“Dolly’s here,
isn’t she?” Kitt then said.

“Yeah,” I replied.
“She is.” I couldn’t decide whether or not to mention Gren.

“Is she in
trouble?”

I watched the
world outside of the broken window flitter between contrasting shades of color
as thunderclouds began choking the morning sky. It grew dark fast.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” Kitt
quietly said, rolling onto his side, “you should be off then.”

“But…” I
sputtered, “…what about…can you…”

“We both know how
Dolly gets when she’s kept waiting,” he smiled. “Get going.”

“Kitt, seriously—”

“Just let me rest
here,” he said. “Please.”

I stood and glumly
nodded at my friend. “Sure.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything I can do
for you before I go?”

Kitt thought about
it and lifted his shoulders off of the floor. I took his arm and helped him sit
more comfortably up.

“You see that
fallen box?” he said, nodding toward one corner of the mess. “I think there’s a
music box underneath. If you could get it going, I’d sure enjoy the company
while I rest.”

I fished out the
smallish music machine and set it at his side.

“Thanks,” Kitt
smiled. “What’s on the wax?”

I plucked the
cylinder and spied the round, printed label upon its end.

“Selections from
the ‘Book of Psalms.’” I stated.

“That’ll do, I
guess.”

“Yeah...” I looked
at the instrument and remembered something. From my overcoat pocket, I
retrieved the recording of Lady Jay I had, by chance, acquired hours earlier.

“I’ve got this,” I
offered.

“Ah,” he softly
responded. “Put it on.”

I placed what I
held into the machine and set it all into motion.

“Good to get a
little sound in here,” I whispered, making myself stand.

“Mmm,” Kitt
responded, sliding his eyes away toward the broken window. “It’s gunna rain,
you know.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” he
replied. “Better hurry before the sky opens up.”

“Agreed,” I glumly
said. “Well, I’m on my way then.”

“Give her my
best,” the fox said with one last laugh. “God knows, I’ve already shown her my
worst.”

“I will.” One
final breath and I moved off toward the stairwell. “Goodbye, Kitt.”

“What’s that?”

“I said, goodb—”

“Stop talking over
the song. I’m trying to listen to the words.”

“Sure,” I said,
taking the handrail and resuming my climb. “Sure thing.”

“Thanks,” I heard
Kitt Sunner say as I began to march upward. “And goodbye, Will Pocket.”

Moisture clogged
the outline of my eyes as I silently ascended the church. The singing voice,
freed from the music box, echoed after me in such a haunting way that I had no
choice but to hang onto the words as I climbed.

Lady Jay.

That faceless
songstress, framed and shaped only by her own words. I began to wonder if she
was ever a real woman at all. She seemed to me a familiar specter, a cloud of
sightless sound forever hovering around me, almost as if she knew when I’d next
need her accompaniment.

I absorbed her
“Far Too Early” once more, and for the first time, I realized I actually made
it through the entire song. Lifting myself up the stairs, I wrapped the song’s
concluding verses like neatly-spooled ribbon into the cavity of my head. Feel
free to correct me, Alan, if I misuse a word.

“Maybe I’ll
sing this song forever, far too long to spill my voice.

That autumn
moon is all but gone, and never by my choice.

Still got that
worst foot forward, but at least it keeps in step.

And if I don’t
forget the rhythm, I just may find you yet.”

Rhythm. I was practically
bereft of it as I went on my way. But in a lunatic response, as if instructed
by the song, I began dropping my feet upon the steps in tune with a soft, timed
beat of ploh-plop, ploh-plop. The abbey ceiling came closer to my face.

“The lesson here,
my truth be told, is if you find a jewel,

never trust it
to a pocket, or you’ll find yourself a fool.

Though if you
do, I say to you, keep close a threaded spool,

to sew the hole
that pocket grows, lest your night be that more cruel.”

And then I was at the
top. Thunder welcomed me across the finish line as I pushed my frail fingers
against the hatch to the outside. It was smaller than the one in the watch
shop, but a thousand times heavier. I pushed it ajar and breathed deep the air
from the open sky.

Now was the time.

Dirty, sweaty,
reddened, and famished, Will Pocket climbed out onto the vaulted roof of the
cathedral.

The Watchmaker’s
Doll was waiting.

“A hole that,
far too early, made you poor before you knew.

Too early, far
too early, made you poor before you knew.”

 And here we
are, Alan. This is it. We’re arrived back where we started from. Tell me, how
many hours have we passed talking in this beer-soaked hole? Nah, it doesn’t
matter. We’ve long passed the need for clocks. Besides, I can see a little
sunlight finding its way in through that frost on the panes. Heh, that’s pretty
funny. We reach our conclusion at daybreak. So allow me to conclude with one
more scene. The “big flash,” I believed you called it when we started. A boy
clinging to a steeple, finding sweet reunion with his world’s end.

The cold British
wind, as I’ve earlier commented, never feels quite so present as it does
between the cracks of your fingers as you claw your way, tired and broken, to
the tip of the highest steeple you've ever seen, your hands charred and dirty,
your eyes on the figure poised on the point, framed in her tragedy by that
divine moon.

Or what was left
of that moon. Or divinity itself, even. The circle in the air was a washed-out
shadow, the faint remainder of what had once been. The unfinished table scraps
of the morning’s all-consuming meal.

The sky was dark,
as I’ve said. Morning must’ve gotten too gluttonous and sparked a rebellion
from the early sky, which seemed to be actively trying to swallow up the sun.
It was blotted, shaded, coated so well with the trappings of a coming storm so
that it was easy to forget that it was dawn.

But I knew. As did
the figure on the point.

She was facing
away from me, arms spread like a sacrificial virgin. Her shoulders perked up at
the sound of my climb, and slowly she slid her tiny feet closer to the edge.

“Dolly!” I
coughed, crawling slowly over the rough slant. “Please! It’s me! I’m here!”

My bottle
plink-plunked against the steeple as I crawled onward.

“Dolly!” I
repeated. “I’m here! Look!”

She didn’t turn to
me. I kept moving until I was finally able to get enough of a foothold to
stand. I was bent like a hunchback, carefully monitoring my own balance. And
she was just beyond arm’s reach.

“Doll,” I spoke
again, this time trading my frantic, hoarse shouting for the softest voice I
could muster. I had to fight to keep it from wavering. “Please. Look at me.”

What happened
next, I’ll never forget.

The girl. The girl
standing at the edge of Heaven on her tiptoes.

She spoke to me.

“Mister Pocket,” I
barely heard her say, “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Come to me.”

The back of her
head shook. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.
Just take my arm. I’m not far.”

“No, I mean, I…I
shouldn’t. I should go like I planned and—”

“Please. Just come
here.”

“I said that I’d
do it when the sun came,” Dolly said, her voice heavy with shame, “but now the
sun’s gone and I haven’t done it.”

I looked up at the
darkened sky. A few raindrops began to fall.

“You don’t have to
do this.”

“Yes, I do! Don’t
say that I don’t when you don’t know! I wrote it down! In a book, no,
my
book!”

“All right, so you
keep a diary! So what?”

“So what?!? Ugh!”
As cautiously perched as she was at the peak, she took a moment and stamped her
feet like a child. “You don’t know
anything!
”

“Be careful!” I
ordered, about ready to switch from compassion back into panicked anger. The
raindrops grew into a light shower, dripping down on us.

“I wrote it in a
book!” she continued, ignoring my warning. “And books are such wonderful
things! All I’ve done before I met you was read my father’s books! They say how
things are, how things work! You should know that!”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts!” she
declared, sounding awfully sorry for herself. “I wrote in a book and I was so
proud of that! Proud to be at least contributing to something that I love
before I went to sleep forever! But I wrote that I would jump here today when
the sun goes up…and…the sun’s already gone.” She started pulling angrily at her
own hair. “So I’m a liar now.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t
do it the way I said! If I don’t jump today, I’ll be a liar in the book. If I
jump without the sun, I’ll be a liar in the book. Either way, I’m ruining
something beautiful!” She took a bitter pause and added, “I should’ve just
curled up in someone’s furnace.”

I began to shout
something angry about the ugliness of such an image, but I was immediately cut
off by a considerably louder crack of thunder. White lines of distant lightning
swam through the black clouds. I took the moment to reconsider my tone and
wisely chose a more diplomatic approach.

“Listen to me,
Doll,” I said, slowly and clearly. “Books can be changed. Edited. Rewritten.
Trimmed about.”

“That’s cheating,”
she said bluntly.

“Dolly,” I
continued, trying not to bite through my lower lip, “I’ve come a long way
tonight just to see you.”

“Well, you can see
me. You got what you wanted.”

“Please,” I said,
losing strength, “don’t do this to me.”

“To you?!?” she
shouted. “To
you?!?
Why do you think I’m doing this?!? I don’t want you
to suffer anymore!”

“This is your plan
to keep me from
suffering?!?
You’ve—”

I stopped before I
lost my thin illusion of control in the conversation. Sarcasm wasn’t going to
win any battles with Dolly, and I had no room on this steeple for mistakes. I
shook away the frustration and tried again.

“Dolly, I’ll never
know anything but pain if you leave me now.”

“Don’t say that!”
she pleaded, her voice a scared whimper. “I don’t want to ever think about
that!”

“Then stop running
away and come be with me!”

“No! You’ll regret
it! You’ll be the worse for it for the rest of your—”

“I’ll be the worse
for having finally known love and having it thrown, quite literally, away from
me!”

We waited in
silence for the other to say something first. The rain grew heavier.

“Mister…Pocket…you
mean to say that you…you know…you said, ‘love,’ like in my father’s books...”

I blinked a few
times.

Love.

Did I?

I did, didn’t I?

I frowned. The
first time in my life I’ve fallen and confessed, and I nearly didn’t realize
it.

Pocket the
Romantic. Idiot.

“Did you...” Dolly
shyly asked, “…did you…misspeak?”

Wind began to push
behind the rain, slapping the water into my face.

“No,” I said
quietly. “I...I didn't.”

“I see,” she
whispered.

Nothing happened
for a short while, and then I saw Dolly nervously twist her fingers up behind
her back.

“I'm sorry,” she
then said. “I don't...I...”

“It's okay.”

“No, I mean, I
just mean...I don't...I don't know if I'm sure what exactly, what it...what
that sort of love is supposed to feel...that is, I haven't had much time outside
my basement to...but that's not to say I don't feel, I do! I feel some very
nice but confusing things for you, Mister Pocket.”

“Then come over
here to me.”

“I just, I don't
know what to call these sensations within me. I like them, but they're scary
too.”

“Doll,” I
proclaimed, “I love you. I need you.”

“You don't know
what you need.”

“Maybe,” I
conceded, “but I'll risk being wrong on this one. So, hurry now. This rain's
too cold. Let’s go down inside and off of this scary roof.”

She shifted her
heels a little and then very softly nodded. The rain was matting her hair down,
and through the wet pigtails, I glimpsed for the first time the pair of
metallic antennae that served for her ears. I smiled. They looked really cute.