Yarrow, Page 5

  On the way home he hunted in downtown Ottawa, seeking the sleeping places of the tramps that haunted the same area by day with their hands stretched out for spare change, their eyes rimmed red from the consumption of too much alcohol, their bodies reeking of too many bathless weeks.

  He came upon three sleeping in the tiered parking lot on Cooper near Kent. Feeding on their alcohol-sodden dreams, he took enough to sustain himself without utterly draining their souls. Come morning their psyches might have difficulty coping with the bizarre visions that their own addictions would inflict upon them in their weakened state, but he doubted that they would notice any difference.

  And while he made love to the woman, and while he fed on the tramps, he thought of Cat, how he would stop by her house once more on his return. And if she slept, if she dreamed…

  Her dreams were always a fitting nightcap, allowing him to sleep easier himself. He knew that his need for her particular essence was intensifying. One night he would drain her— take it all. He never doubted it for a moment.

  But not yet. He would choose the moment in a rational manner, not have it forced upon him by a need that was no more couth than that of a junkie scrabbling for a fix.

  A hangover riding like a white fire though his head tore Farley O'Dennehy from a fitful sleep. Flickering waves of disturbing images raced ahead of the pain…

  …a shadow with eyes of ice sitting on his chest, stabbing at his face with talons of cold steel, its saurian tail wrapped around his throat… claws reaching inside his chest, ripping out his lungs… his heart… the pain white and hot… like lava sliding over his skin… hissing as it turned his sweat to steam… searing his flesh from his body in long burning strips—

  "Jesus tuck…"

  He sat up, shook his head to clear it. Bad mistake. Something like raw sewage churned in his stomach. Pain hammered at his temples. And the images… fucking DT nightmares… He lurched to his feet, stumbled over to the parking lot's low stone balustrade and looked down. Vertigo flooded him. His body shook with dry heaves, and he sank weakly to his knees.

  It didn't make any sense. He'd split a twenty-sixer with Poke and Ron Wilson, then the bottom of a bottle, of Alcool mixed with some wine. Nothing they hadn't chugged down before. But his head. The hangover wouldn't quit. He held out his hand. He had the shakes so bad it was vibrating. There was an emptiness inside him, and he had the jeebies like he couldn't believe.

  He looked to where Ron and Poke were lying, sleeping the sleep of the innocent or the damned— if you were innocent, you just didn't know any better, and if you were damned, you just didn't care. His vision blurred, doubled. He squeezed his eyes shut. The pain was lessening, but he kept getting flashes of ice-blue eyes and fire. Crawling to where his suitcase lay, he worked open the two worn clasps, dragging out his pajama top. He had one arm in a sleeve when he passed out again, falling across his suitcase.

  6

  Tuesday

  The weatherman on the CBC Late News forecasted rain for Tuesday. It came as promised, disguised as a thin drizzle, and threatened to remain throughout the day. In the tiered parking lot on Cooper Street Farley still had his hangover when he woke up, but it was nothing special. Nothing a hair of the dog wouldn't cure. He only vaguely remembered the previous night's hallucinations. Sitting up, he rubbed the two days' worth of stubble on his chin and poked Ron with his foot.

  "How's the moola holding out, Ron?"

  Ron was a thin, red-haired man with prominent blue brachial veins on his forearms and red-rimmed eyes. He dug into the pocket of his corduroys— so aged that the ribs were worn flat— and came up with a dollar bill and a handful of change.

  "Got me two… ah… two forty-three."

  "I've got a dollar. Poke?"

  Jimmy Pokupra was tall and big-boned, with a deep tan and no weight on his rangy frame. He unwrapped a sandwich that he'd just pulled out of the side pocket of his patched and torn Sears-special sports jacket which had come his way courtesy of the Sally Ann. He'd gotten the jacket in their store on Somerset. It had had a price tag of $5.25 on it, but didn't cost him more than the time it took him to put it on and walk out.

  "I'm skint," he said. "Anybody want a bite?"

  Farley and Ron shook their heads.

  "We've got to be moving," Ron said. He looked out at the wet haze without any pleasure. "Bill-Boy doesn't mind us sleeping here, but if his boss catches us…" He drew a finger across his throat.

  Farley tugged his pajama top off of the one arm it was on and stuffed it back into his suitcase.

  "I tell you," he said. "I had the weirdest nightmare I ever did have last night. I thought I woke up and had these snakes crawling all over me— or maybe it was something that was like a snake, but a man at the same time…."

  "Whoo-ee, who's got the DTs?" Poke grinned, showing a mouthful of half-chewed sandwich and the gap between his teeth.

  "You need something hot and black," Ron advised Farley.

  "Hell with that. I need something with a punch to put my head back together." He stood up, hefting his suitcase. "You guys coming?"

  Ben didn't sleep well Monday night. By Tuesday morning he'd managed to shake yesterday's headache— at the cost of three Anacin— but he'd picked up a queasiness in his stomach that stayed with him overnight and into the morning. He'd tried reading some of The Borderlord last night, but the print kept swimming before his eyes. In the end he'd watched the late movie on Channel 12 out of Montreal— Captain Blood, the 1935 version which was Errol Flynn's first swashbuckler— and dozed off sometime after two.

  In the morning he was able to keep down his toast and coffee and read yesterday's newspaper and two chapters of The Borderlord. By eleven he felt well enough to take out his cab and pick up a few fares. His rent was due and he was about fifty dollars short. That came from stopping in at Peter's store too often and buying all those pricey hardcovers. He glanced at Cat's book lying beside him on the seat, and shrugged. There were some things you just couldn't pass up.

  He picked up his first fare in the Glebe— a real Mr. Jetsetter, bound for the airport in an outfit right out of Esquire— and listened to a blow-by-blow description of where, and with who, and how Mr. Jetsetter was planning to spend his next three weeks. The cab's wipers kept time to the man's droning voice.

  "Nothing Disneylandesque, you understand. There's nothing that's more of a pain than a beach full of senior citizens basking in the golden sun with their golden years hanging out of their swimsuits— except maybe packs of noisy brats kicking sand in your cocktail…."

  Ben changed the man's misnomer from Jetsetter to Joe Ritzy and promptly shut him off before they'd gone a mile, nodding once in a while or sticking in an odd "You don't say?" when it seemed appropriate.

  "You just wouldn't believe what they're charging for an apartment in Paris this year," Joe Ritzy told him earnestly.

  I probably would, Ben thought. But who cares?

  That morning Cat woke from another dreamless sleep. By daylight, last night's fears seemed foolish. She tried to imagine what she would have said to the police if she had called them, and became embarrassed just thinking about it. Thank God she hadn't. They had more important things to worry about than illusory prowlers, while she… she had a novel to write.

  Trying to ignore her usual morning headache, she made her way downstairs to put the kettle on for coffee. She could remember a time when she used to wake up inspired, but that was before— when she still dreamed. It seemed a very long time ago now. She stared out the kitchen window, watching the thin drizzle come down in her backyard, and waited for the water to boil. Briefly she wondered where Ginger and Pad were on a wet day like this, then decided they'd come in when they were ready and not before. It might be a wet day for her pets, but inspired or not, it was a perfect day for staying inside and getting something done. No more excuses.

  After she'd washed and dressed and the first morning's caffeine was kicking through her system, she was ready to sit down and give it
a try. She cleared off her desk, dug up a travel guide to Northern Ireland and Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men, and tacked up a few pictures on the wall behind her typewriter. One was of an old Ulsterman, taken from an issue of National Geographic, two were photos of round towers that an Irish correspondent of hers had sent. The fourth was a drawing by another correspondent, who lived in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was of a raggedy elfin maid, curled up asleep in amongst the roots of an old oak tree. Tiddy Mun would like her, Cat decided as she pinned it up.

  The pictures gave her something to settle her gaze on when she looked up from the typewriter, something that wouldn't distract her from the tale at hand. Even though her writing consisted of retelling Kothlen's stories, she still used the pictures and reference books, for Kothlen chose only certain details to enlarge upon, and while she wrote intuitively, she trusted neither intuition nor her memory to see that she got everything just right. The difference this time was that the pictures and books would have to serve as inspiration, without her dreams to point the way.

  A poem by Yeats had come to her earlier while she was trying to convince the thicket that passed for her hair to be more reasonable. Looking up the poem now, she studied the lines that had brought it to mind:

  …in a dream

  Of sun and moon that a good hour

  Bellowed and danced in the round tower….

  She typed the words out and studied them some more, imagining what Kothlen might do with them, where they would take his fancy, and slowly the beginnings of a story took shape in her mind. The old man and the elfin woman. Was she once a daughter of Dana, one of the Tuatha de Danann, or had she always been of the daoine sidhe? Had the old man been young when they first met? Had the years drawn the youth from his flesh while they passed her by? Did they first meet by the tower, or were they parting there?

  She titled the story after the poem, "Under the Round Tower," and though she knew that it wasn't going to become the novel that McClelland and Stewart were waiting for, at least it would be something. Choosing a cassette from the stack on her desk, she stuck it in her Aiwa, pushed the play button on the deck, and returned to her typewriter. As the soft sounds of Vaughn Williams's "The Lark Ascending" drifted from the speakers, she began to work up the opening scene of her story.

  * * *

  Debbie Mitchell was planning to spend her lunch hour picking out a new outfit for herself in the shopping concourse below her office. Bill had just asked her if she was free tomorrow night, and if so, did she want to go out for dinner with Rick Kirkby and himself. Debbie agreed readily enough. Having spent last night with Chris Stone— who was as wearisomely me-Tarzan-you-Jane as Andy was fawning— she was in the mood for someone like Rick.

  She could tell at a glance that Rick was the kind of guy who thought mostly about himself, but that didn't worry her. He was also the kind of guy who, in making sure he was having a good time himself, livened things up for whomever he was with. She was as tired of being followed around by puppies as she was of this whole bed-as-jungle scene. Rick would be straightforward, and that suited her fine. About the only pressure she could foresee with him was if they were going to bed, and when.

  Something black to set off her hair would do, she decided, tight at the hips and breast, with a slit along the side— mid-length; sexy, but not overtly so. She was going to let Rick make the opening moves.

  Ben pulled up at the pumps at the BP station, shut off his engine and watched Mick approach from the garage, wiping his hands on his coveralls.

  "Hey, Ben. How's it going?"

  Ben grinned as he stepped from the cab. He leaned against its door while Mick worked the pumps. "I just took the longest, most boring drive out to the airport that I've ever taken. I mean, this guy would make Joe Clark sound exciting."

  Mick laughed. "Ah, the joys of working with the public. Warms my heart through and through. You working tonight?"

  "Not if I can make the rest of my rent today. Why?"

  "Some friends of mine are doing an opening set at Barrymore's tonight— thought you might want to check it out. The sound's by yours truly."

  "Loud?"

  "Well, the guitars are all plugged in…."

  "How punk are they?"

  Mick ran a hand across his Mohawk. "Well, I'm the punkest guy in the band, and I'm only on the soundboard. These guys play ska, Ben. You know— like fast reggae. Like the Beat and the Specials."

  "I'll give you a call around suppertime, okay? I didn't sleep so well last night so I might crash early. How much do I owe you?"

  "Sixteen even. Anyone ever tell you that you sleep too much?"

  "Anyone ever tell you that punk died when the Pistols packed it in?"

  Mick shook his head. "Died? Fuck, it's just starting to kick in, Ben."

  By late afternoon, all Cat had to show for her efforts was a wastepaper basket heaped with crumpled twenty-pound bond stock. The Selectric in front of her was silent, the paper in it as virginally white as when she'd rolled it into the machine. She felt like pitching the typewriter through the window. Everything she wrote had all the awkward charm of those Wind in the Willows pastiches that she'd written when she was eleven. ("Mouse felt Very Important at that moment, because Badger had asked him to help with the decorations….")

  She was supposed to be a professional, a writer who'd been described by one critic as producing work that "… flowed effortlessly across the page." Oh, really? These days her writing was more like a wooden crate bouncing down a long flight of stairs.

  She tried to tell herself that it wouldn't all come back in one day. These things took time. She had to work at it little by little. But though all that made sense in its own way, it ended up sounding like just so many well-intentioned platitudes, empty of comfort. Surely to God she could produce one or two pages of readable manuscript after a day at the typewriter? She had never had any patience with writers who complained of being blocked. You just sat down and did it. Only now… now…

  She could remember a time, not so very long ago. The Otherword stars shone down on the henge atop Redcap Hill. Inside the hill the gnomefolk were partying and up to their tricks, but outside, where the fairy thorn stood midway between the base and crest of the hill— and midway between the faint sounds of revelry that came from underfoot and the silence of the night skies above— Cat and Tiddy Mun sat, knee to knee, listening to Kothlen spin the beginning of a new tale.

  "The daughter of the King of Burndale Yellow had a silver cup," Kothlen said, "and in that cup she meant to catch the moon."

  His voice was resonant and clear, his eyes turned dreamy-gold in the starlight. At Cat's side Tiddy Mun squirmed, delighted that the elflord was beginning a new story. His eyes were wide as saucers and he bit at his lower lip in anticipation, holding Cat's hand tightly in his own.

  "Do we like her?' he asked. "The princess?"

  "Shhh," Cat said, but Kothlen smiled.

  "That you will see," he said.

  "But what was her name?" Tiddy Mun wanted to know.

  Cat and Kothlen exchanged knowing looks. The little gnome was always like this at the beginning of a tale— unable to contain either his curiosity or excitement. The proper unfolding of a tale, each event following the previous like the measures of a dance, didn't hold the same meaning for him as it did for them. He wanted to know it all. And to know it all at once.

  "Her name was Alyenora," Kothlen told the little man, "and she was as fair as a rowan in bloom. Well loved she was by all the folk of Burndale Yellow, well loved by all save Hovenden the witchman who lived in the Old Wood with a one-eyed raven and a wingless dragon."

  Tiddy Mun shivered and gripped Cat's hand more tightly.

  The next morning when she woke, Cat had begun The Moon in a Silver Cup. The words had come flowing effortlessly through her— not Kothlen's tale, exactly, but without his tale, the story she was writing would never have come. As it took shape on the paper, it became not so much Kothlen's telling, nor her own writing, but some
magical combination of the two. And as the tale was a dance, so her fingers danced on the keyboard of her IBM, pausing only long enough to take out a page and insert a fresh one, five to six hours a day, seven days a week, until the manuscript stacked beside her typewriter was a half-inch thick, and then… then she stopped dreaming and the dance stumbled to a halt, the magic fled, and—

  Ripping the blank page out of the Selectric, Cat crumpled it into a small ball, flung it at the already filled wastepaper basket, and stomped out of the room. What she was going to do was go for a walk. She might never try to write another word. She might never go into that room again. She might never come back home again.

  Lysistratus hungered once more, the pleasures of the previous night already forgotten. But the thought of faring out into the streets by day, snatching what dreams he could, as much a scavenger as the winos he'd fed from last night, was distasteful. If only the dreams he stole could give him more than sustenance and longevity, if only they could render him immune to death— to a bullet, a knife, or a simple accident. Then he would not have to exercise such caution as he did. He could stride amongst mankind like the superior being he was.

  Instead he had to remain a scavenger— like the jackal that the African rootmen named him when they drummed their magicks and drove him from their veldts and jungles; like the ghost death that the Australian bushmen named him when they drove him away with their ritual shouts; like the lone wolf that the Inuit shaman named him when they used their chants and drum magic to drive him south from their frozen wastes; like the buzzard that the Hopi shaman named him when they raised their ghost winds and drove him north from their deserts.