Shifters Read online

  “Huh?”

  “We have lots of time.”

  Even her voice drove him nuts. Darkly sweet. Softly coarse. She gently turned him over on his belly, straddled him, and began to massage his back. Yeah, this was all right. So he’d blown his first load kinda fast? Like this she’d have him up again in no time. Her fingers felt like electric heat working deep into his shoulders and along his spine.

  “Does this feel good?”

  “Yeah,” Wire moaned. “Oh, yeah, baby, that’s nice.”

  Did she giggle?

  “Cadillac misses you.”

  Wire’s thought processes took a hike. His eyes bulged.

  “And so do Sliphammer and Percy,” she said.

  Suddenly he wanted to vomit. He couldn’t move, he could only lie there now in terror rigid as an iron rod. What she’d said—it was impossible. His mind became a sewer of memories: all those horrid hot sweat-stinking nights splayed out on some crusty bunk, on his belly.

  Cadillac. Sliphammer. Percy.

  They were some of the players who’d butt-fucked him back when he was in the state slam. The biggest of them, guys with cocks like radiator hose. Every night these fucking bulls gave it to him. Every night for three fucking years.

  “White ‘N Tight,” she said, and then her voice, that creamy rough sexy dark syrupy voice oozed into hideousness…

  “Yeah, we’se gonna bust you up right in yo’ boy-pussy, we’se gonna work yo’ ass.”

  Wire was screaming. The giant black hand gripped the back of his neck and mashed his face against the floor.

  “You my bitch t’night, White ‘N Tight,” Cadillac said.

  SEVEN

  Bang!

  (i)

  By midnight Concannon’s was packed. Chatter, laughter, and the aroma of halibut fish & chips swirled in the air. It was one of those nights, Locke supposed: they arrived in droves—the downtown restaurant crowd, armies of beer snobs, and revelers in general. It gave the pub its spirit; this was no pit stop for singles but a consortium of cool and happy people. Carl jockeyed drinks like a madman. Music beat in the walls. In no time Concannon’s rocked in frolic.

  Locke sank in despair.

  It didn’t take him long to get drunk. How many pints had he had? Six? Eight? Alcohol pursued his despair—it always did. I’m becoming a drunk, he drunkenly considered. Each beer delved further into his memory of Clare.

  He felt locked out of the crowd’s revelry. He felt totally alone. Where is she now? What’s she doing? How come she doesn’t come here anymore?

  Because you’re here, asshole.

  Was that it? She didn’t want his love anymore. She didn’t want him in her life anymore. She didn’t even want to be in the same room with him.

  Is that it?

  Locke ordered another pint.

  Lehrling was trying to make time with two waitresses from The College Inn. “I’m a novelist,” he bragged. “Big deal,” they both said at the same time. “I have five million books in print,” he tried again. “Oh, we care?” they both said again. Eventually they picked up their Nordic Wolfs and moved across the bar. Then a girl from the art college sat down next to him. “Hi, my name’s Dan Quayle,” Lehrling said. “Can my father buy you a drink?”

  That one seemed to work.

  His friend occupied, Locke was left to his thoughts. Before him lay balled-up examples of his current work, on bar napkins. Exorcism, he remembered Lehrling’s advice. He wrote another one:

  Through twilit nights my love still soars.

  I am forever and ineffably yours.

  He crumpled it up at once and ordered another beer. What good was poetic exorcism if it didn’t exorcise? Perhaps Locke’s love was so great it could never be exorcised. Perhaps his love for Clare would be in his heart forever.

  Every now and then he craned around. Couples holding hands. Couples kissing. Couples in love. Was the whole world in love tonight? Even Lehrling was making it; the art school girl had her arm around him!

  Kissing couples, holding hands,

  passions swirl in glee.

  Everyone’s in love tonight,

  everyone but me.

  Forlorn asshole.

  Could anything feel this bad? The beer entombed him in regret. If he had no feelings at all, then at least he could cope with himself. But how do you get rid of feelings? How do you kill your feelings?

  “How do you kill your feelings?” he muttered aloud.

  “Wish I knew,” a voice muttered back.

  Locke’s gaze flinched up. It was White Shirt. He’d come back from the john to find his barstool gone. He stood next to Locke at the rail, pasty in inebriation. “God on high, I wish I knew.”

  Locke launched into more scribbling:

  Once upon my love,

  once upon my glee,

  once upon the resplendent promise

  of all we were meant to be.

  God on high, forgive my grief,

  and kill my feelings—I beg of thee.

  White Shirt stared crosseyed at the bar napkin. “A poet, huh? That’s not bad.”

  It sucks, Locke augmented.

  “But I don’t think God does stuff like that, do you?”

  Locke shrugged.

  “If there even is a God. Well, I’m pretty sure there is.” White Shirt wobbled in place. Carl had stopped serving him an hour ago. Some goateed guy on the other side got up and left. White Shirt began drinking what was left of his beer. “My girlfriend broke up with me.” Then he paused to stare up at the rows of pewter beer-club mugs hanging from hooks on the ceiling rafters. “I still love her.”

  Locke didn’t want to hear this drunken carbon copy of himself spout his sorrows. Was love relative? Was grief?

  White Shirt gulped, digging in his pocket. “We were going to get married. She gave me the ring back last week.” He opened his palm to reveal the ring. “Fourteen hundred bucks. Can you believe that? I must be the sucker of time immemorial.” Then he leaned forward and pitched the ring into the waste can behind the bar.

  Locke’s brow elevated, but he said nothing. It wasn’t any of his business.

  “Yeah,” White Shirt bumbled on. “I wish I could kill my feelings, all right. Love’s a killer.” He gulped again and staggered away, in search of more abandoned beer.

  Love’s a killer.

  Locke tore the poem to shreds.

  “Hurry up please, it’s time!” Carl shouted, quoting T.S. Eliot as an announcement of last call.

  Time, Locke thought. He scribbled:

  Time means nothing,

  time means nothing to me.

  Heralds in ashes, heralds of love,

  vagrant angels peering to me

  the poet in his shroud of feelings,

  his extant heart, and fallow amour.

  I mean nothing.

  I mean nothing to her anymore.

  Lehrling, who was still making time with the art student, turned and rolled his eyes at Locke. “I don’t believe you, man. When I told you you gotta write about it, I didn’t mean here, now. Only dejected idiots write poetry on bar napkins.”

  “I’m a dejected idiot,” Locke mumbled.

  “What’s wrong with your friend?” asked the girl from the art college.

  “Don’t ask,” Lehrling replied. He leaned closer to Locke. “Stop moping. You’re supposed to be having a good time.”

  He was having a good time, all right. I mean nothing to her anymore, he thought. Was that the realization of truth that would end his despair, that would exorcise him? Was that what he’d been refusing to admit for the last three months?

  Locke wanted to cry.

  “Last call for alcohol!” Carl shouted. Lehrling seemed disgusted with Locke. “You want a last beer?”

  “I want Clare back,” Locke said, chin in hand. “That’s all I want.”

  “He looks so sad,” offered the art student, with doleful brown eyes beneath blonde bangs.

  Lehrling frowned. “He’s just drunk.
He doesn’t listen to advice, he’d rather mope.”

  “I still love her,” Locke warbled. The beer had caught up times ten. The world tipped. “I’d do anything to get her back.”

  “Cheer up,” the girl said. “Maybe you can work things out.”

  “Don’t even say that,” Lehrling complained. “You’ll get him going again.”

  Work things out. Right. I mean nothing to her anymore. She doesn’t want to work things out—because she doesn’t want me.

  Locke made to stand and started to fall over. Lehrling, swearing, caught him. “It was nice meeting you,” the art girl said to Lehrling. “I can see you’ve got your hands full with your friend, so maybe we better get together another time.”

  Lehrling, still propping up Locke, looked frantic. “No—wait, I—”

  “’Bye,” bid the art girl, and walked out of the bar.

  Lehrling ground his teeth. “Thanks, buddy! Thanks a lot! She was going to go home with me.”

  “Sorry,” Locke blundered. “What do you think Clare’s doing right now?”

  “Just shut up, you drunk horse’s ass.” Lehrling helped Locke out of the bar. He led him out the back way, into the parking lot along Meridian, then propped him up against the brick wall. “Listen to me, Locke. You’ve got to get your shit together. You’re letting this Clare business turn you into a perpetual fuck-up.”

  Locke tried to mouth a response, gave up, and nodded.

  “You can’t let a woman ruin you. You’ve got to face facts. It’s all over. Live with it. Move on.”

  “Yeah,” Locke managed.

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, you’re too drunk now. Get in the car, I’ll take you home.”

  Locke glanced at Lehrling’s Volante. His drunken vision made the sleek car look warped. “No, I’ll walk. I need the air.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, it’s just down the street.” The cold air began to revitalize him. “And sorry I messed things up with the art girl.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Lehrling opened the car door. “Call me tomorrow.”

  “Sure.”

  Locke remained propped against the wall as Lehrling drove off. The car sounded like a purring animal. A few minutes later the lot was empty.

  He hated being drunk; it made him feel defenseless against himself. The cold air bit into him, but he didn’t feel it. He felt warm, instead, warm and prickly in despair. He gazed out into the open night and realized that Clare was out there somewhere, oblivious to him. The notion made him feel nonexistent.

  Maybe I’ll go home and kill myself, he thought almost frivolously. It wasn’t a serious thought—suicide was for dopes, and, besides, he didn’t have a gun. But still, the thought had surfaced, and he had to wonder why. Moonlight bulged in his eyes. Love’s a killer, he recalled White Shirt’s manifesto. Locke thought about that.

  Instead of walking toward home, an unknown penchant urged him to stagger back down 45th, away from home. Where am I going? came the clear question. I don’t know. A quest for more alcohol? Maybe. Concannon’s set last call ten or fifteen minutes early—“bar” time as opposed to Pacific Standard. Drunks often manipulated this, Locke knew. But he also knew that wasn’t the reason…

  It was something else that drew him in the illogical direction. Was it a presage, then? An intuition? Locke didn’t believe in any of that. But then—

  He stopped, afret, at the corner next to a long-since-closed Chinese carry-out called Fuji’s. Footsteps snapped in his ears. He passed a comics shop, its dead front window sporting a sign: GOON ACTION FIGURES! ONLY $50! I’ll pass, Locke thought. Again, without a logical acknowledgment as to why, he ducked behind the brick corner, let his eyes survey the street. Light rain pecked at his head; it ruined the scope of his vision into a mural of tiny slits. There was another bar down here, wasn’t there? I’ve lived here all my life. I should know, shouldn’t I?

  Yes, there was another bar—well, a “wine bar” really, some nose-in-the-air pinkie-raising joint called The Cellar. Got lots of great reviews in the Post-Intelligencer and The Stranger.

  Locke didn’t get the big deal with wine. Crushed and rotten grapes were cool? He didn’t think so. They also served foi gras on lemon grass toast points, and quail tenders in mustard-sorrel sauce. Give me a Dick’s Deluxe and a beer, Locke thought, still unable to gauge what notion had brought him here.

  But then he knew…

  Maybe God had urged him out here. White Shirt had said he believed in God, hadn’t he? But if so, then what kind of sense of humor did God have?

  For when Locke peered through the rain, the first thing he saw was this:

  Clare hand in hand with some guy…

  Some guy in a brown suede leather longcoat, short dusky blonde hair, a primped goatee. Skinny, almost svelte; black silk shirt and black slacks. Locke almost hurled. What? She dumps me for some wussy eurofag lawyer? Fuck! This guy’s middle name must be Creamcake! Probably one of the goddamn associates in her firm. Probably just a paralegal himself, spending all his money on clothes…

  But then his gaze focused more sharply, onto Clare herself.

  The white blonde hair a little shorter, the same aqua/white cotton tank dress she’d worn on their first date—a simple ferry ride across the sound to Bainbridge Island—and an apricot talbard coat. And—

  And the same Bvlgari earrings I bought for her on Valentine’s Day!

  But none of that—none of the primal jealousy or meat-head ex-boyfriend covetousness—mattered, when he looked a bit harder…

  And it all came back.

  Still…so…beautiful…

  How could he describe this? How could he ever define it to himself? It was his whole world walking across that street right now, a completion of everything that meant anything at all…

  It was his truth.

  I still love her…

  They crossed the street, obviously having just had their fill of fussy and motherfucking gooseliver on toast. The blonde guy was saying something, then Clare tossed her head and laughed. Her face glowed—Locke knew, with the same love it used to glow for him.

  But not anymore.

  This guy was the wine-snob, caviar-eating hump she’d left him for? The primordial instincts poured in. What’s he got that I don’t have? Why’d she dump me for him?

  More, more.

  Is he better than me? Is he a better lover?

  What was the catch?

  Then he saw it.

  They sauntered to the corner, oblivious to the drizzle, then they stopped. The blonde dork whipped out his keys, then opened the passenger door to a cherry-red Corvette LT-5, fifty-grand worth of wheels. He slipped in, then they were driving away down 45th, Clare’s hair shimmering in the drag.

  Locke backed up, stunned. That was it, wasn’t it? That’s what it always boils down to… Not love. Not faithfulness or endearment.

  It’s money! It’s cars! It’s suede leather coats, wine, and black silk shirts!

  All an antithesis to everything Locke held sacred.

  But the vision, the glimpse of her, blinded him. I’m a fuckin’ poet who works a day a week at a goddamn bookstore… The real world was material, and that excluded him exclusively. What woman in her right mind would want to spend the rest of her life with a penniless fool?

  Yeah, cars and cash—that was reality, and why shouldn’t it be? Locke didn’t have any of the things that real people wanted, so—

  Why should she want me?

  It all dragged him down, further than ever before. Maybe he was just full of shit. Was his perception of truth just a selfish impulse? Locke looked down the wet street again—the red Corvette was gone, and so was Clare—but all he saw was the long black avenue of his failure.

  He had to face it. He’d never add up. Not in this world.

  He stood for several more minutes, sucked in the cold night air and the clouds calmly spitting on him. The city was abed; the houses along the side streets stood black. Black shadows
pooled across the parking lot.

  Locke walked back the other direction, toward where his half-soused brain told him was his apartment. Concannon’s was kicking people out. When Carl said Last Call, he wasn’t fooling around. Locke hiccoughed, then stumbled around the corner and crossed the parking lot. Just get your drunken ass home! he thought. His balance slipped, equilibrium shortchanged. He almost fell when his foot buffeted a curb slab.

  “Drink much, Locke?” he asked aloud.

  He’d only taken a half dozen steps across Concannon’s emptied parking lot when he heard someone say: “Hey.”

  He’d been wrong, the lot wasn’t empty. A single car remained parked in the corner, in rain-spotted darkness.

  “Yeah?” Locke called out. The dismal weather seemed to suck all the vitality from his voice. “Who’s that?”