“I know.”
“We’ll need money again.”
“We’ll think of something. Maybe I can be a waiter. For a while.”
A bathroom opened off the hall, and he led her into it by the hand. They stood together under the shower, Nimbus naked and Teal fully clothed, to wash away most of the paint. In a moment they would go and gather her things...but right now they kissed under the cleansing stream of water in the bright white light of the bathroom—like two souls reborn.
THE BALLAD OF MOOSECOCK LIP
They were both from Punktown, but it’s a big place
Might have passed on a street
Glanced at the other one’s face
Sat in one dark room for a film to unreel
Both watched a performance by Nimbus and Teal
Stood a few feet apart on a whispering hovertrain
Both ducked into a book store to hide from the rain
Brine was laid off for six months from the plant
His murmur of unrest now an unbroken chant
Down in Moss Hollow on the outskirts of town
He went to find Dazey
Dressed in leather and frown
Dazey from the old days, trouble on legs
His smile was electric, his eyes powder kegs
Dazey seized Brine, clapped him on the back
Took him to his aeroplane riddled with flak
It lay weed-entangled and grounded for life
He lived there alone (he’d been left by his wife)
Dazey walked Brine through thick misted woods
To the scummed secret pond where he hid all his goods
Shrimp they resembled but with human feet
And when processed to drugs they did well on the street
Dazey plucked one out with a proud father’s grin
Brine hesitated, but said, “Count me in.”
* * *
Orange Girl
Color swirl
Halloween bright
Orange leotard tight
Black hair jet gloss
But her eyes were the boss
Orange irises too
Orange her hue
Orange Girl’s mother was recently dead
Dad longer gone had got shot in the head
Orange’s skin of teen age cream
Pocked by the Illness that ended her dream
Took a job as a waitress
To work wore a dress
Couldn’t wait to get back in
To her orange-peel skin
Served cold eggs and lived for the tip
At night returned to Moosecock Lip.
* * *
Brine moved into Dazey’s plane that first day
He lay in the dark like a bomb in its bay
Dazey awoke him: “Let’s take a little trip
At dawn we meet this mutant
Up on Moosecock Lip.”
Brine brought his gun, a Wolff forty-five
He dozed off several times along the long drive
He awakened to hear Dazey loading his clip
“We’re here, buddy-boy,
This is Moosecock Lip
The rods are just prudence; the girl is okay
She’s a little bit young but I like ‘em that way.”
To Brine it was a job; he just gave a shrug
Followed Dazey on foot
They carried the drug
“The girl’s got the Illness; it killed her mom Sue
It’s messed up her system but she can’t infect you.”
At the crest of the hill they came to her shack
She answered her door
But then turned her back
Alone she would dance with her previous flame
But when people called she shadowed her shame
Dazey showed her the drugs in the dark of the room
While Brine’s eyes sought her out through her shelter of gloom.
* * *
Orange Girl
Her life a baton twirl
Eyes black-pearled
Drugs now her world
Dazey excused himself for a pee
Orange Girl made Brine some coffee
Kept her eyes down-cast
Talked nervous-fast
Brine liked her quiet manner
Pictured her mane as a windy banner
He admired her leotard form
Standing close her orange was warm
He meant to ask her for a date
But Dazey chirped it was getting late
Orange Girl, orange gifted
When Brine left her orange eyes lifted
She didn’t move to turn on the light
Left herself in punishing night.
* * *
The drugs were all sold, Brine’s poverty past
He took his own room
Drove down for breakfast
He chose what looked like a nice little place
Looked up from his menu into a pretty pocked face
(Orange Girl, Orange Girl, no place to hide)
She showed him a smile
Trembled inside
They chatted awhile then he went on his way
“See ya tomorrow”
Ate there the next day
He took her to dinner, her turn to be fed
After some work
He got her to bed
She moved into his room, moved into his light
Left her shack behind on its hill in the night
But the drugs, like her scars, were a part of her still
After two painful months
She moved back to her hill
And Brine, again bitter, dressed in his frown
Packed up his anger
Left Punktown.
Orange Woman
Orange human
Danced like a flame
In her dark shack, where nobody came
On its roof danced the rain
She smashed her mom’s picture
‘Cause it mirrored her pain
She lost her job
Was too numb to sob.
* * *
A man in leather passing through
Stopped in a bar to partake of a brew
After more than a couple life had got hazy
A slap on the back
Through the smoke there was Dazey
Dazey was now a big man on the scene
Brine confessed he was back behind a factory machine
Dazey offered him work, Brine turned it down
“How’s Orange doing?”
He asked through his frown
“She whores it now, pal; her pimp is Reddream
He’s a pretty tough gun, you know what I mean
He has this sawed-off he wears on his hip
He and his boys moved in
Up on Moosecock Lip.”
Brine nodded slowly and set down his cup
His eyes sobered clear
“I’m going on up.”
Dazey grinned, “I knew you’d come back
Could you use a spare man in your little attack?”
The night’s rain had passed, now just a gold drip
From the eaves of the house
Up on Moosecock Lip
A fish-faced mutant answered the door
The first morning blast drove him straight to the floor
Dazey killed as he laughed, “Die, son of a bitch!”
As he unseamed a second with his machine gun stitch
Brine’s gun spoke; he had no words to say
As he killed the first thing that got in his way
He’d given up before without a real fight
Let an orange sun fade
Into unending night
Then a shotgun twice-loaded
Came out of a door
And Dazey exploded
Brine heard a girl scream but had no time to think
Bullet mosquitoes flew at him to drink
Reddream th
e pimp came snarling into view
Brine ducked and fired
Split the pimp’s head in two
Brine knelt by his friend but it was too late
Face-down he was drowned in the red pond of fate
He went into the kitchen and found her there
Orange Girl there
Black hair
Hanging in her face
Her lair
Hugging herself, eyes wide in the corner
As if some kind of demon had gripped her and torn her
He had to speak softly so she wouldn’t take flight
Like a lightning fast deer deeper into her night
“It was easy with our drugs, too easy to run
I want today to be the first battle we’ve won.”
* * *
Orange Girl
Her spirit far-hurled
Once she had danced like the soul of the world
She seemed deaf and dumb
Her scarred pretty face numb
But a smile slowly spread
As she came back from the dead.
* * *
For the first time in years
People far and near
Some happy, some sad
And most in-between
As varied they were as Halloween beings
Saw lights glowing warmly at night on the tip
Of the hill in the distance
Called Moosecock Lip.
FACE
“Merry Christmas!” exclaimed five year old Ian Declan. It was, however, late summer.
“Happy Halloween, is more like it,” remarked a young man to his friend as they passed the Declans going the other way down the mall.
“What did he say?” said Rebecca to her husband.
“Nothing,” Declan replied quietly, but he looked back over his shoulder. At the same time the young man glanced back, grinning. The young man was tall, with shoulder-length black hair parted on the side and held with a red barrette, features so attractive he was almost pretty, full lips spread wide to show bright teeth in a bronze face. Declan liked to believe it was something in his own face that made the youth turn quickly forward again.
Between his parents, Ian rode obliviously in his cart, which was more robot than wheelchair and made him something of a half-machine centaur. Tanks under its seat sent tubes snaking into catheters in his flesh. He still had the plastic rings of earlier ports, no longer used, here and there on his body. He’d been linked up to various forms of life support since birth, though it was only recently that he needed the cart to move about, his legs so withered and atrophied it was difficult to believe the child had ever run about their apartment, even for Declan, who had alternately chased and been chased by him.
Vaguely Declan glanced about to see if something in a shop window might have prompted Ian’s exclamation, but decided it was just his son’s recent attachment to a disc of Christmas songs he had started listening to a few weeks ago, inexplicably. He hadn’t been much interested in those songs last winter. Lately, he needed to hear the disc at least once a day, and some days multiple times. Though Ian used only a handful of simple sentences, much-ingrained at his special preschool program so that he would parrot them when needed, he could sing these songs nearly word for word. Declan had loved them as a boy himself, and often sang along with his son. He found Ian’s voice lovely, angelic.
The mall tunnels they strolled through had been converted from the subterranean remains of a portion of the city’s old sewerage system, damaged in the great earthquake that had also caved in much of Punktown’s old subway system. For character, the various tunnels and conduits still bore valves, circuit boxes and smaller pipelines that snaked overhead or along the curved walls between shops, the whole of the walls and pipes and glossy tiled floor painted a ghostly green like a patina of verdigris. Ian loved the place, though in the past he had thrown many a tantrum if not allowed to visit every toy store, to buy everything that struck his fancy. He was generally much better about that now, though it was the Declans’ habit to buy him some treat or other on each excursion.
As they came up on one of the mall’s several toy and game oriented stores, Ian began pointing and making an insistent grunt-like sound. Declan saw a passing couple look over at them. No doubt they had seen mutants even more shocking than Ian in Punktown, but these were usually the product of poverty and ignorance, and not often the offspring of a well-dressed, obviously fairly well employed couple like the Declans. Even after five years, Declan still felt that apologetic urge to explain to the other couple why this should be so. Why this creature had been allowed to live. That it was against their religious beliefs to abort—though since Ian, they had begun to use birth control. Though since Ian, they had attended their church much less frequently.
Ian reached for the store’s garish plastic-colored lights with his thin, glass-like arms. The cart helped support his head as it grew ever weightier, like a boiling storm cloud of milky flesh. Despite its now great size (larger than Declan’s own head), the child seemed composed more of spirit than of matter. This was no doubt an effect of his skin, translucent over nets of bright blue vein. But also, his father believed, it was in the purity of his smile, which Declan found beautiful, however tragic those poor eyes.
Their son between them, like an immense fetus in a mechanical womb they both bore heavily, the Declans entered the toy store.
Here, children ran about and chirped in delight. Children with silky hair their parents could stroke. How Declan had bitterly hated such parents, five years ago, when it began. Rather than be grateful that these other children were not afflicted as his son was, grateful that these parents did not suffer as he did, these days Declan found himself merely shutting them out altogether.
Ian surveyed the store’s offerings with an intense anxiousness, pulled two soldier figures off the racks and compared them, one in each hand, weighing their merits, then rejected them for a movie tie-in action figure. Able-bodied heroes, all. “Look, honey,” his mother prompted him, holding out a cute animal doll that tied in with one of his favorite vids. He barely glanced at it.
“Not enough weapons,” his father joked.
“Not expensive enough,” Rebecca joked back. She was a beautiful woman, tall, her long, thin blonde hair and pale skin and delicate bones giving her an ethereal aspect. There was a kind of remoteness in the flat blue of her eyes, but a redness about them always made her look as if she had recently been crying.
Both of them sounded tired. Both had anemic smiles.
When they returned their attention to Ian, they found he had settled on a large Randy Atlas action doll. The doll could fire a variety of harmless beams, and project a hologram of Randy’s extradimensional sidekick, Ectopup. Ian had Randy Atlas sheets and pajamas at home.
“Oh boy,” Declan said, examining the price posted on the shelf. “Thirty munits...”
“Honey,” Rebecca said, “you already have two or three Randy Atlas dolls...”
“Not like that one,” Declan said. He held out a monster figure that cost only five munits. “Ian, did you see this? Wow, look at this thing...”
“We can’t afford this today, honey, I’m sorry,” Rebecca told him, prying the box away. Ian began to fuss loudly, cry out in anger. Declan moved his son’s cart away from that shelf. “Pick something else,” Rebecca went on, replacing the doll. “We just can’t afford that today...we’re short on money, Ian...we still have to buy lunch...” She went on with her reasoning, though they both knew he would not really comprehend any of it.
After much noise, after many stares, Ian finally, broodingly accepted a small soldier figure from another aisle. All three of them exhausted, the parents let their son carry his doll to the cashier himself, tears still slick on his face. Behind the counter, the cashier rang up the sale. As the current fad dictated, the young girl wore a black leotard and a sequined Mexican wrestler’s mask that hid her face but for her eyes and her mou
th. Declan found this fad extremely annoying. The girl was no doubt very pretty under her obscuring mask. Two years ago, youngsters had similarly covered their faces in swirling Maori tattoos (since removed). Their beauty was wasted on them.
* * *
Ian died three weeks before Christmas.
The mall had not been lax in putting up its decorations, so Ian had seen them on one final excursion before he became too frail to leave the hospital. Now, Declan surveyed them again. Red and gold garlands were interwoven with pipes and sheathed cables. Silver globes hung from the concave ceiling like sparkling tumors. Over the intercom, carols were played. Burl Ives sang “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”
Declan sat abruptly and heavily on a bench, and set his bag down so quickly that it tipped over. It was one of the songs his son had sung most often.
A young woman leaned down to look into his face. It was not Rebecca; she was at church, where she was more and more often these days, as if to make up for his own total absence. With Christmas coming she had much to help them with, much to focus almost feverishly upon.
“Are you all right?” this other woman asked. She had seen him almost fall to the bench. But Declan wondered if she wasn’t as drawn to his appearance as to his obvious anguish. He was an extremely attractive man. Rebecca herself had been immediately attracted to him. The women at work flirted with him shamelessly. Even though he hadn’t shaved in two days, and had let his usually neatly cut hair grow out a bit, he was still striking.
“I’m fine,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “I’m fine, thanks.” He reached down to right his shopping bag.
“You sure?”
“Yes—thanks,” he said, not looking up. Peripherally, he saw her reluctantly withdraw. But his gaze remained on the contents of his bag. There was a bright box containing a large Randy Atlas doll in there. On Christmas eve he would put it under the tree. On Christmas morning he would unwrap it and set it on Ian’s bed with its Randy Atlas sheets.