After the Plague: And Other Stories Read online

  She was milling around with maybe a couple hundred other spectators—or sadists, he guessed you’d have to call them—waiting to watch the crazies do their thing. “Thanks,” she breathed, after he’d leaned in close to touch the tip of his smoke to hers. Her eyes were big wet pools, and she was no freak, no bone woman. Her lips were wet too, or maybe it was his imagination. “So,” she said, the voice caught low in her throat, a real smoker’s rasp, “here for the big event?”

  He just nodded.

  There was a pause. They sucked at their cigarettes. A pair of gulls flailed sharply at the air behind them and then settled down to poke through the sand for anything that looked edible. “My name’s Sandra,” she offered, but he wasn’t listening, not really, because it was then that it came to him, his inspiration, his moment of grace and redemption: suddenly he knew how he was going to make it up to Paula. He cut his eyes away from the woman and through the crowd to where Paula bent over her equipment, the take-no-prisoners look ironed into her face. And what does she want more than anything? he asked himself, his excitement so intense he almost spoke the words aloud. What would make her happy, glad to see him, ready to party, celebrate, dance till dawn and let bygones be bygones?

  To win. That was all. To beat Zinny Bauer. And in that moment, even as Paula caught his eye and glowered at him, he had a vision of Zinny Bauer, the Amazing Bone Woman, coming into the final stretch with her legs and arms pumping, in command, no problem, and the bright green cup of Gatorade held out for her by the smiling volunteer in the official volunteer’s cap and T-shirt—yes—and Zinny Bauer refreshing herself, drinking it down in mid-stride, running on and on until she hit the wall he was already constructing.

  Paula pulled the red bathing cap down over her ears, adjusted her swim goggles, and strode across the beach, her heartbeat as slow and steady as a lizard’s. She was focussed, as clearheaded and certain as she’d ever been in her life. Nothing mattered now except leaving all the hotshots and loudmouths and macho types behind in the dust—and Zinny Bauer too. There were a couple of pros competing in the men’s division and she had no illusions about beating them, but she was going to teach the rest of them a hard lesson, a lesson about toughness and endurance and will. If anything, what had happened with Jason last night was something she could use, the kind of thing that made her angry, that made her wonder what she’d seen in him in the first place. He didn’t care about her. He didn’t care about anybody. That was what she was thinking when the gun went off and she hit the water with the great thundering herd of them, the image of his bleary apologetic face burning into her brain—date rape, that’s what they called it—and she came out of the surf just behind Zinny Bauer, Jill Eisen, and Tommy Roe, one of the men’s pros.

  All right. Okay. She was on her bike now, through the gate in a flash and driving down the flat wide concourse of Cabrillo Boulevard in perfect rhythm, effortless, as if the blood were flowing through her legs and into the bike itself. Before she’d gone half a mile she knew she was going to catch Zinny Bauer and pass her to ride with the men’s leaders and get off first on the run. It was preordained, she could feel it, feel it pounding in her temples and in the perfect engine of her heart. The anger had settled in her legs now, a bitter, hot-burning fuel. She fed on the air, tucked herself into the handlebars, and flew. If all this time she’d raced for herself, for something uncontainable inside her, now she was racing for Jason, to show him up, to show him what she was, what she really was. There was no excuse for him. None. And she was going to win this event, she was going to beat Zinny Bauer and all those hundreds of soft, winded, undertrained, crowing, chest-thumping jocks too, and she was going to accept her trophy and stride right by him as if he didn’t exist, because she wasn’t soft, she wasn’t, and he was going to find that out once and for all.

  By the time he got back to the beach Jason thought he’d run some sort of race himself. He was breathing hard—got to quit smoking—and his tequila headache was heating up to the point where he was seriously considering ducking into Clubber’s and slamming a shot or two, though it was only half past nine and all the tourists would be there buttering their French toast and would you pass the syrup please and thank you very much. He’d had to go all the way out to Drake’s place and shake him awake to get the Tuinal—one of Drake’s mother’s six thousand and one prescriptions to fight off the withering aches of her seventy-odd years. Tuinal, Nembutal, Dalmane, Darvocet: Jason didn’t care, just so long as there was enough of it. He didn’t do barbiturates anymore—probably hadn’t swallowed a Tooey in ten years—but he remembered the sweet numb glow they gave him and the way they made his legs feel like tree trunks planted deep in the ground.

  The sun had burned off the fog by now, and the day was clear and glittering on the water. They’d started the race at seven-thirty, so that gave him a while yet—the first men would be crossing the finish line in just under three hours, and the women would be coming in at three-ten, three-twelve, something like that. All he needed to do now was finesse himself into the inner sanctum, pick up a stray T-shirt and cap, find the Gatorade and plant himself about two miles from the finish. Of course there was a chance the Amazing Bone Woman wouldn’t take the cup from him, especially if she recognized him from the other night, but he was going to pull his cap down low and hide behind his Ray-Bans and show her a face of devotion. One second, that’s all it would take. A hand coming out of the crowd, the cup beaded with moisture and moving right along beside her so she didn’t even have to break stride—and what was there to think about? She drinks and hits the wall. And if she didn’t go for it the first time, he’d hop in the car and catch her a mile farther on.

  He’d been watching one of the security volunteers stationed outside the trailer that served as a command center. A kid of eighteen maybe, greasy hair, an oversized cross dangling from one ear, a scurf of residual acne. He was a carbon copy of the kids he sold wetsuits and Killer Beeswax to—maybe he was even one of them. Jason reminded himself to tread carefully. He was a businessman, after all, one of the pillars of the downtown community, and somebody might recognize him. But then so what if they did? He was volunteering his time, that was all, a committed citizen doing his civic best to promote tourism and everything else that was right in the world. He ducked under the rope. “Hey, bro,” he said to the kid, extending his hand for the high five—which the kid gave him. “Sorry I’m late. Jeff around?”

  The kid’s face opened up in a big beaming half-witted grin. “Yeah, sure—I think he went up the beach a ways with Everardo and Linda and some of the press people, but I could maybe look if you want—”

  Jeff. It was a safe bet—no crowd of that size, especially one consisting of whippets, bone people and guppies, would be without a Jeff. Jason gave the kid a shrug. “Nah, that’s all right. But hey, where’s the T-shirts and caps at?”

  Then he was in his car, and forget the D.U.I., the big green waxed cup cold between his legs, breaking Tuinal caps and looking for a parking space along the course. He pulled in under a huge Monterey pine that was like its own little city and finished doctoring the Gatorade, stirring the stuff in with his index fingers. What would it take to make her legs go numb and wind up a Did Not Finish without arousing suspicion? Two? Three? He didn’t want her to pass out on the spot or take a dive into the bushes or anything, and he didn’t want to hurt her, either, not really. But four—four was a nice round number, and that ought to do it. He sucked the finger he’d used as a swizzle stick to see if he could detect the taste, but he couldn’t. He took a tentative sip. Nothing. Gatorade tasted like such shit anyway, who could tell the difference?

  He found a knot of volunteers in their canary-yellow T-shirts and caps and stationed himself a hundred yards up the street from them, the ice rattling as he swirled his little green time bomb around the lip of the cup. The breeze was soft, the sun caught in the crowns of the trees and reaching out to finger the road here and there in long, slim swatches. He’d never tell Paula, of course,
no way, but he’d get giddy with her, pop the champagne cork, and let her fill him with all the ecstasy of victory.

  A cheer from the crowd brought him out of his reverie. The first of the men was cranking his way round the long bend in the road, a guy with a beard and wraparound sunglasses—the Finn. He was the one favored to win, or was it the Brit? Jason tucked the cup behind his back and faded into the crowd, which was pretty sparse here, and watched the guy propel himself past, his mouth gaping black, the two holes of his nostrils punched deep into his face, his head bobbing on his neck as if it wasn’t attached right. Another guy appeared round the corner just as the Finn passed by, and then two others came slogging along behind him. Somebody cheered, but it was a pretty feeble affair.

  Jason checked his watch. It would be five minutes or so, and then he could start watching for the Amazing Bone Woman, tireless freak that she was. And did she fuck Klaus, or Olaf, or whoever he was, the night before the big event, or was she like Paula, all focus and negativity and no, no, no? He fingered the cup lightly, reminding himself not to damage or crease it in any way—it had to look pristine, fresh-dipped from the bucket—and he watched the corner at the end of the street till his eyes began to blur from the sheer concentration of it all.

  Two more men passed by, and nobody cheered, not a murmur, but then suddenly a couple of middle-aged women across the street set up a howl, and the crowd chimed in: the first woman, a woman of string and bone with a puffing heaving puppetlike frame, was swinging into the street in distant silhouette. Jason moved forward. He tugged reflexively at the bill of his hat, jammed the rims of the shades back into his eyesockets. And he started to grin, all his teeth on fire, his lips spread wide: Here, take me, drink me, have me!

  As the woman closed, loping, sweating, elbows flailing and knees pounding, the crowd getting into it now, cheering her, cheering this first of the women in a man’s event, the first Iron-woman of the day, he began to realize that this wasn’t Zinny Bauer at all. Her hair was too long, and her legs and chest were too full—and then he saw the number clearly, No. 23, and looked into Paula’s face. She was fifty yards from him, but he could see the toughness in her eyes and the tight little frozen smile of triumph and superiority. She was winning. She was beating Zinny Bauer and Jill Eisen and all those pathetic jocks laboring up the hills and down the blacktop streets behind her. This was her moment, this was it.

  But then, and he didn’t stop to think about it, he stepped forward, right out on the street where she could see him, and held out the cup. He heard her feet beating at the pavement with a hard merciless slap, saw the icy twist of a smile and the cold, triumphant eyes. And he felt the briefest fleeting touch of her flesh as the cup left his hand.

  Killing Babies

  When I got out of rehab for the second time, there were some legal complications, and the judge—an old jerk who looked like they’d just kicked him out of the Politburo—decided I needed a sponsor. There was a problem with some checks I’d been writing for a while there when all my resources were going up the glass tube, and since I didn’t have a record except for traffic infractions and a juvenile possession when I was fifteen, the court felt inclined to mercy. Was there anybody who could speak up for me, my attorney wondered, anybody financially responsible? Philip, I said, my brother Philip. He’s a doctor.

  So Philip. He lived in Detroit, a place I’d never been to, a place where it gets cold in winter and the only palm trees are under glass in the botanical gardens. It would be a change, a real change. But a change is what I needed, and the judge liked the idea that he wouldn’t have to see me in Pasadena anymore and that I’d have a room in Philip’s house with Philip’s wife and my nephews, Josh and Jeff, and that I would be gainfully employed doing lab work at Philip’s obstetrical clinic for the princely sum of six dollars and twenty-five cents an hour.

  So Philip. He met me at the airport, his thirty-eight-year-old face as trenched with anal-retentive misery as our father’s was in the year before he died. His hair was going, I saw that right away, and his glasses were too big for his head. And his shoes—he was wearing a pair of brown suede boatlike things that would have had people running for the exits at the Rainbow Club. I hadn’t seen him in six years, not since the funeral, that is, and I wouldn’t have even recognized him if it wasn’t for his eyes—they were just like mine, as blue and icy as a bottle of Aqua Velva. “Little brother,” he said, and he tried to gather a smile around the thin flaps of his lips while he stood there gaping at me like somebody who hadn’t come to the airport specifically to fetch his down-on-his-luck brother and was bewildered to discover him there.

  “Philip,” I said, and I set down my two carry-on bags to pull him to me in a full-body, back-thumping, chest-to-chest embrace, as if I was glad to see him. But I wasn’t glad to see him. Not particularly. Philip was ten years older than me, and ten years is a lot when you’re a kid. By the time I knew his name he was in college, and when I was expressing myself with my father’s vintage Mustang, a Ziploc baggie of marijuana, and a can of high-gloss spray paint, he was in medical school. I’d never much liked him, and he felt about the same toward me, and as I embraced him there in the Detroit airport I wondered how that was going to play out over the course of the six months the judge had given me to stay out of trouble and make full restitution or serve the next six in jail.

  “Have a good flight?” Philip asked when I was done embracing him.

  I stood back from him a moment, the bags at my feet, and couldn’t help being honest with him; that’s just the way I am. “You look like shit, Philip,” I said. “You look like Dad just before he died—or maybe after he died.”

  A woman with a big shining planetoid of a face stopped to give me a look, then hitched up her skirt and stamped on by in her heels. The carpeting smelled of chemicals. Outside the dirt-splotched windows was snow, a substance I’d had precious little experience of. “Don’t start, Rick,” Philip said. “I’m in no mood. Believe me.”

  I shouldered my bags, stooped over a cigarette, and lit it just to irritate him. I was hoping he’d tell me there was a county ordinance against smoking in public places and that smoking was slow suicide, from a physician’s point of view, but he didn’t rise to the bait. He just stood there, looking harassed. “I’m not starting,” I said. “I’m just … I don’t know. I’m just concerned, that’s all. I mean, you look like shit. I’m your brother. Shouldn’t I be concerned?”

  I thought he was going to start wondering aloud why I should be concerned about him, since I was the one on the run from an exasperated judicial system and twelve thousand and some-odd dollars in outstanding checks, but he surprised me. He just shrugged and shifted that lipless smile around a bit and said, “Maybe I’ve been working too hard.”

  Philip lived on Washtenaw Street, in an upscale housing development called Washtenaw Acres, big houses set back from the street and clustered around a lake glistening with black ice under a weak sky and weaker sun. The trees were stripped and ugly, like dead sticks rammed into the ground, and the snow wasn’t what I’d expected. Somehow I’d thought it would be fluffy and soft, movie snow, big pillows of it cushioning the ground while kids whooshed through it on their sleds, but it wasn’t like that at all. It lay on the ground like a scab, clots of dirt and yellow weed showing through in mangy patches. Bleak, that’s what it was, but I told myself it was better than the Honor Rancho, a whole lot better, and as we pulled into the long sweeping driveway to Philip’s house I put everything I had into feeling optimistic.

  Denise had put on weight. She was waiting for us inside the door that led from the three-car garage into the kitchen. I didn’t know her well enough to embrace her the way I’d embraced Philip, and I have to admit I was taken aback by the change in her—she was fat, there was nothing else to say about it—so I just filtered out the squeals of welcome and shook her hand as if it was something I’d found in the street. Besides which, the smell of dinner hit me square in the face, so overpowering it almost brou
ght me to my knees. I hadn’t been in a real kitchen with a real dinner in the oven since I was a kid and my mother was alive, because after she died, and with Philip away, it was just my father and me, and we tended to go out a lot, especially on Sundays.

  “You hungry?” Denise asked while we did an awkward little dance around the gleaming island of stainless steel and tile in the middle of the kitchen. “I’ll bet you’re starved,” she said, “after all that bachelor cooking and the airplane food. And look at you—you’re shivering. He’s shivering, Philip.”

  I was, and no denying it.

  “You can’t run around in a T-shirt and leather jacket and expect to survive a Michigan winter—it might be all right for L.A. maybe, but not here.” She turned to Philip, who’d been standing there as if someone had crept up on him and nailed his shoes to the floor. “Philip, haven’t you got a parka for Rick? How about that blue one with the red lining you never wear anymore? And a pair of gloves, for God’s sake. Get him a pair of gloves, will you?” She came back to me then, all smiles: “We can’t have our California boy getting frostbite now, can we?”

  Philip agreed that we couldn’t, and we all stood there smiling at one another till I said, “Isn’t anybody going to offer me a drink?”

  Then it was my nephews—red-faced howling babies in dirty yellow diapers the last time I’d seen them, at the funeral that had left me an orphan at twenty-three, little fists glomming onto the cold cuts while drool descended toward the dip—but here they were, eight and six, edging up to me in high-tops and oversized sweatshirts while I threw back my brother’s scotch. “Hey,” I said, grinning till I thought my head would burst, “remember me? I’m your Uncle Rick.”