First Person Peculiar (23 page)
Read First Person Peculiar Online
Authors: Mike Resnick
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Anthologies, #Science Fiction, #Short Stories, #Anthologies & Short Stories
Who doesn’t love the movie Casablanca? And who doesn’t wish Rick had found a way to stay with Ilsa? Hell, I’ll bet even Rick wished that, and to prove it, here’s my evidence.
Here’s Looking at You Kid
“I came to Casablanca for the waters.”
Renault almost guffaws. “Waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.”
I shrug. “I was misinformed,” I say.
Renault gives me a look.
Okay, pal,
I think,
I’m keeping my end of the bargain, I
gave you a hell of a line, one they’ll be quoting for months. Just
remember that when
she
shows up.
Then Renault lays it on me: he’s making an arrest tonight. At Rick’s. Okay, so he knows about Ugarte. Big deal. He acts like he’s doing me a favor, as if we need the publicity.
“We know there are many exit visas sold in this cafe,” he continues, “but we know you have never sold one. That is the reason we permit you to remain open.”
“I thought it was because we let you win at roulette.”
Oh,
I’m in rare form tonight. There’s another quotable line for you.
Now just remember who your friends are.
“That is another reason,” agrees Renault amiably.
Then comes The Moment. He mentions Victor Lazlo. I act impressed. I’m doing my job, playing my role, piling up points. Why admit that I hate the son of a bitch, that he’s got the brains of a flea and the personal magnetism of a fire hydrant, that he speaks only in platitudes?
I start wondering: how can I score a bonus point? Then the perfect solution hits me, and I offer to bet that Lazlo escapes.
I can see in Renault’s eyes that he knows that Lazlo can never be confined to Casablanca, that he’ll find a way to leave, but he’s got his agenda and his priorities, just as I have mine, and he takes the bet.
Then he goes off to arrest Ugarte. Poor little bastard with the poached-egg eyes and the high nasal whine. He wasn’t a bad guy, not when you compare him to the rest of the scum that inhabit this godforsaken city in the sand. Sure, he lied and he cheated and he took what didn’t belong to him—but show me a resident of Casablanca who doesn’t do the same thing. Hell, Ferrari buys and sells human beings, and Renault buys and sells the favors of half the human race. All Ugarte did was kill and rob some Nazis.
He runs up to me, the doomed little man in his sweat-stained white suit, the gendarmes hot on his tail, and begs me to help him, hide him, do
something
for him. I can’t, of course; there are twenty French cops waving their guns at us … but it gives me a chance to add to the persona I’ve been building so carefully. I push Ugarte away, right into the arms of Renault’s men, and brush myself off, uttering some crowd-pleasing drivel about how I stick my neck out for no one. The trick is to say it with insincere sincerity, so that everyone knows I’m going to stick my neck out for someone sooner or later.
I let Renault introduce me to the head Kraut and the obsequious Kraut and the pizza eater who can’t stop talking, and then Sam starts playing The Song and I know Ilsa’s here. I pretend I don’t, I walk up to him and start demanding that he quit playing, and then I see her. She’s a big girl, taller than I remember, and I’m glad they’ve got me wearing lifts; it wouldn’t do to have her tower over me. Her perfume is as sweet and delicate as I remember, her eyes are as blue, her cheekbones as high, her skin as smooth. It still surprises me how such a large woman can be so feminine.
Our eyes meet, and that old feeling is still there. Suddenly I don’t care that she deserted me in Paris, I’d sell everything I’ve got to Ferrari or anyone else if she’d agree to go away with me; hell, I’d even toss Sam into the bargain. She left me once, but it won’t happen again, not this time. I’ve done everything asked of me. I started the casino, I’ve come up with line after line that people will quote, I’ve created a persona that men will want to emulate and women will want to seduce. I’m five feet seven, I smoke like a chimney, I’m starting to go bald—and I’m a romantic hero. Now fair is fair. This time she’s got to stay with me, this time we have a happy ending.
You owe me that, pal,
and I expect you to pay your debts.
Maybe you can even clean things up so we can go back to the States. If not, then Australia, or maybe Rio or Bahia—someplace,
any
place that this goddamned war hasn’t reached.
I look at her again, and I remember the way she melted in my arms, the smell and taste and feel of her when I kissed her. And I think of our last morning in Paris. She wore blue, the Germans wore guns. I like the sound of it, but at the last moment
He
jerks me around and changes it. “The Germans wore gray,” I find myself saying. “You wore blue.”
Okay,
I admit,
it’s better your
way. But I’m trying, damn it; surely you can see that I’m trying.
Then she hits me between the eyes with it—she’s married to Lazlo.
“That sexless speechmaker?” I want to say. “I’ll bet he hasn’t touched you in six months.” But I don’t, I manage to look shocked. And I’m thinking,
That was a low blow, pal. I’m walking
the line for you, I’m pulling my weight, and
this
is how you
thank me? You’d better get your act together quick, or I’m not the
only one who will suffer. I don’t have to be cynical and sardonic,
you know; I can keep my mouth shut just as easily—and don’t you
forget it.
She walks off with the King of the Platitudes, and I stay behind to brood. Sam closes the place up and starts playing The Song, while I wonder aloud why out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walked into mine—and the second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve given him another line that he’ll be taking bows for five years from now.
I’m making you famous,
I think.
I’ve never been better
than I am tonight. You want to thank me? Give me the girl, and
this time let me keep her.
Ilsa stops by to pay me a secret visit and tell me why she married Lazlo, as if I give a damn. So she’s lived with him for the past year. Who cares? There aren’t any virgins left in the world, not in the middle of all this killing. We all have flings, and the dumb ones marry them. All I care about is that she’s back, and I have to make sure that this time she stays.
I lie and tell her that Ugarte only gave me one letter of transit, not two. I can get Lazlo out of the country, but she’ll have to stay until I can figure a way to get us out together. It doesn’t seem to bother her. She left me once, she says, and she hasn’t the strength to do it again. Just the words I want to hear.
I know I can take her to bed right now, and it’s been a long time, but
He
says No, not yet, we have to build more tension, Lazlo’s only a block away and Strasser’s goons might break in at any moment, and even Renault could sell you out for the right price.
So we just talk. I’m so pissed that I go out of my way to speak in monosyllables.
No more quotes for you, pal, not until
you meet me halfway.
An hour before dawn I send her back to Lazlo, half-hoping she’ll walk in on him with one of the bimbos who set up shop under the gas lamps along the street … but I know it won’t happen: this guy’s too much in love with himself to waste his attentions on anyone else. Then, when the sun comes up, I walk over to the Blue Parrot and offer to sell out to Ferrari. He practically drools at the chance to buy Rick’s.
I tell him he’s got to keep Sam, and he agrees. Then I decide to do my good deed for the day—I don’t figure stealing Lazlo’s wife really counts as one—so I tell him that Sam gets a quarter of the profits. He grins and tells me he knows Sam gets only ten percent, but he’s worth a quarter and a quarter’s what he’ll get. I grimace. He agreed too fast. That means with Ferrari doing the books Rick’s won’t show a profit for the next ten years, and poor Sam will be working his ass off for twenty bucks a week and tips—but I haven’t got time to worry about that, because I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row before the grand climax.
Before long I’m at the airport with Renault. I’ve told Ilsa to get Lazlo here, to tell him there are two letters of transit and they’re for the pair of them. It’s going to be interesting to see his face when he finds out we’re putting him on the plane all by himself. My guess is that as soon as he figures out that he’ll still be able to spout off in front of an audience he won’t argue, he’ll just grab his letter, kiss Ilsa good-bye, and go.
I still don’t know which side Renault’s on—the one with the most willing women, probably—so I take his gun away and turn mine on him. He seems more amused than frightened.
Suddenly Ilsa and Lazlo appear out of the fog, just as the plane to Lisbon begins warming up its engines. I hand him an envelope with one letter, and he doesn’t even look at it, he just thanks me and tells me this time our side will win.
I want to sneer and say, “I ain’t on your side, sweetheart!” but something—some
one
—stops me. He goes off to check the luggage, and I turn to Ilsa.
“We’re together forever now, baby.” That’s what I
want
to say. But what comes out is some speech about how the problems of three people don’t come to a hill of beans, and that he needs her for his work.
I check my pocket. The other letter of transit is gone, and I know with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Lazlo has both of them.
No!
I want to scream.
I did my job! I played my part, I
gave you all the quotes you can handle, I let Ugarte go down the
tubes and I’m arranging for Lalzo to get out in one piece. I won,
damn it! I deserve her!
Ilsa looks at me with tears in her eyes. “And I said I would never leave you!” she says.
Then don’t!
I try to say.
I hope you don’t think I’m doing
all this for the bozo you married.
But the words catch in my throat, and instead I’m telling her that we’ll always have Paris.
She’s about to say something else, but I just give her a loving smile and find myself saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
Great. The dumbest thing I’ve said in years, and it’s the
one everyone will remember.
Then they’re on the plane, and I turn around and Major Strasser’s there. He’s got no reason in the world to be at the airport except to make me look even more heroic.
Fuck you, pal,
I say silently.
If I don’t get the girl, you don’t get a John
Wayne gunfight.
I shoot Strasser down in cold blood just as the plane takes off.
It’s obvious that we need a memorable line, something to break the tension.
Think of your own line. I’m not playing any more.
Finally Renault says, “Round up the usual suspects.”
Not bad. I’d have done better, but not bad.
There’s nothing left to do. We start walking off into the fog. He says something about going to Brazzaville. Just what I always wanted: a garrison with no electricity, no running water, and no women except for the ones who wear those huge plates in their lips.
Give me a break,
I try to say. What comes out is, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Then it’s over, and I’m in limbo. I analyze what I did, what I said, what I could have done better, or at least differently. I’ve got to prepare, to think of subtle ways to manipulate Him as He manipulates me. I’ve got a little time to get ready: there’ll be the newsreel, and a couple of cartoons, and the coming attractions, and then we start it all over again.
Only this time I’ll get the girl.
***
I grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs, especially the Martian tales. I love Carol, to whom I have been married for 52 years as I write these words, and it is my fondest wish that I die first, because I don’t think life would be at all interesting or enjoyable without her. I combined the two—ERB’s Mars and Carol—in this story, which was a Hugo nominee (And lost to another of my stories, though to this day I prefer this one.).
A Princess of Earth
When Lisa died I felt like my soul had been ripped out of my body, and what was left wasn’t worth the powder to blow it to hell. To this day I don’t even know what she died of; the doctors tried to tell me why she had collapsed and what had killed her, but I just tuned them out. She was dead and I would never talk to her or touch her again, never share a million unimportant things with her, and that was the only fact that mattered. I didn’t even go to the funeral; I couldn’t bear to look at her in her coffin.
I quit my job—we’d been counting the days to my retirement so we could finally spend all our time together—and I considered selling the house and moving to a smaller place, but in the end I couldn’t do it. There was too much of her there, things I’d lose forever if I moved away.
I left her clothes in the closet, just the way they’d always been. Her hairbrush and her perfume and her lipstick remained on the vanity where she’d kept them neatly lined up. There was a painting of a New England landscape that I’d never liked much, but since she had loved it I left it hanging where it was. I had my favorite photos of her blown up and framed, and put them on every table and counter and shelf in the house.
I had no desire to be with other people, so I spent most of my days catching up on my reading. Well, let me amend that. I started a lot of books; I finished almost none of them. It was the same thing with movies: I’d rent a few, begin playing them, and usually turn them off within fifteen or twenty minutes. Friends would invite me out, I’d refuse, and after awhile they stopped calling. I barely noticed.
Winter came, a seemingly endless series of bleak days and frigid nights. It was the first time since I’d married Lisa that I didn’t bring a Christmas tree home to decorate. There just didn’t seem much sense to it. We’d never had any children, she wasn’t there to share it, and I wasn’t going to have any visitors.
As it turned out, I was wrong about the visitor: I spotted him maybe an hour before midnight, wandering naked across my back yard during the worst blizzard of the season.
At first I thought I was hallucinating. Five inches of snow had fallen, and the wind chill was something like ten below zero. I stared in disbelief for a full minute, and when he didn’t disappear, I put on my coat, climbed into my boots, grabbed a blanket, and rushed outside. When I reached him he seemed half- frozen. I threw the blanket around him and led him back into the house.
I rubbed his arms and legs vigorously with a towel, then sat him down in the kitchen and poured him some hot coffee. It took him a few minutes to stop shivering, but finally he reached out for the cup. He warmed his hands on it, then lifted it and took a sip.
“Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely.
Once I was that sure he wasn’t going to die, I stood back and took a look at him. He was actually pretty good-looking now that his color was returning. He might have been thirty, maybe a couple of years older. Lean body, dark hair, gray eyes. A couple of scars, but I couldn’t tell what they were from, or how fresh they were. They could have been from one of the wars in Iraq, or old sports injuries, or perhaps just the wind whipping frozen bushes against him a few minutes ago.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, I’ll be all right soon.”
“What the hell were you doing out there without any clothes on?”
“Trying to get home,” he said with an ironic smile.
“I haven’t seen you around,” I said. “Do you live near here?”
“No.”
“Is there someone who can pick you up and take you there?”
He seemed about to answer me, then changed his mind and just shook his head.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“John.” He took another swallow from the cup and made a face.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “The coffee’s pretty awful. Lisa made it better.”
“Lisa?”
“My wife,” I said. “She died last year.”
We were both silent for a couple of minutes, and I noticed still more color returning to his face.
“Where did you leave you clothes?” I asked.
“They’re very far away.”
“Just how far did you walk in this blizzard?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay,” I said in exasperation. “Who do I call—the cops, the hospital, or the nearest asylum?”
“Don’t call anyone,” said John. “I’ll be all right soon, and then I’ll leave.”
“Dressed like that? In this weather?”
He seemed surprised. “I’d forgotten. I guess I’ll have to wait here until it’s over. I’m sorry to impose, but …”
“What the hell,” I said. “I’ve been alone a long time and I’m sure Lisa would say I could use a little company, even from a naked stranger. At any rate she wouldn’t want me to throw you out in the cold on Christmas Eve.” I stared at him. “I just hope you’re not dangerous.”
“Not to my friends.”
“I figure pulling you out of the snow and giving you shelter qualifies as an act of friendship,” I said. “Just what the hell you were doing out there and what happened to your clothes?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long night, and I’ve got nothing to do.”
“All right,” said John with a shrug. “I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I can’t tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood.”
“Stop,” I said.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’ve heard that before—a long, long time ago. I don’t know where, but I’ve heard it.”
He shook his head. “No, you haven’t. But perhaps you’ve
read
it before.”
I searched through my memory, mentally scanning the bookshelves of my youth—and there I found it, right between
The Wizard of Oz
and
King Solomon’s Mines
. “God, it’s been close to half a century! I loved that book when I was growing up.”
“Thank you,” said John.
“What am I thanking you for?”
“I wrote it.”
“Sure you did,” I said. “I read the damned thing fifty years ago, and it was an old book then. Look at yourself in a mirror.”
“Nevertheless.”
Wonderful,
I thought.
Just what I needed on Christmas Eve.
Other people get carolers; I get you.
Aloud I said: “It wasn’t written by a John. It was written by an Edgar.”
“He
published
it.
I
wrote it.”
“Sure,” I said. “And your last name is Carter, right?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I should have called the loony bin to begin with.”
“They couldn’t get here until morning,” said John. “Trust me: you’re perfectly safe.”
“The assurances of a guy who walks around naked in a snowstorm and thinks he’s John Carter of Mars aren’t exactly coin of the realm,” I said. The second I said it I kind of tensed and told myself I should be humoring him, that I was a 64-year-old man with high blood pressure and worse cholesterol and he looked like a cruiserweight boxer. Then I realized that I didn’t really care whether he killed me or not, that I’d just been going through the motions of living since Lisa had died, and I decided not to humor him after all. If he picked up a kitchen knife and ran me through, Warlord of Mars style, at least it would put an end to the aching loneliness that had been my constant companion for almost a year.
“So why do you think you’re John Carter?” I asked him.
“Because I am.”
“Why not Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon—or the Scarlet Pimpernel for that matter?”
“Why aren’t you Doc Savage or the Shadow?” he replied. “Or James Bond for that matter?”
“I never claimed to be a fictional character,” I said.
“Neither did I. I am John Carter, formerly of Virginia, and I am trying to return to my princess.”
“Stark naked in a blizzard?”
“My clothes do not survive the transition, and I am not responsible for the weather,” he said.
“That’s a reasonably rational explanation for a crazy man.”
He stared at me. “The woman I love more than life itself is millions of miles from here. Is it so crazy to want to return to her?”
“No,” I admitted. “It’s not crazy to want to be with her. But it’s crazy to think she’s on Mars.”
“Where do
you
think she is?” he asked.
“How the hell should
I
know?” I shot back. “But I know nothing’s on Mars except a bunch of rocks. It’s below zero in the summer, there’s no oxygen, and if anything ever lived there, it died out fifty or sixty million years ago. What have you got to say to that?”
“I have spent close to a century on Barsoom. Perhaps it is some other world than the one you know as Mars. Perhaps when I traverse the void, I also traverse the eons. I’m not interested in explanations, only in results. As long as I can once again hold my incomparable princess in my arms, I’ll leave the answers to the scientists and the philosophers.”
“And the psychiatrists,” I added.
He looked grimly amused. “So if you had your way, I would be locked away in an institution until they convinced me that the woman I love doesn’t exist and that my entire life has been a meaningless fantasy. You strike me as a very unhappy man; would that make you happier?”
“I’m just a realistic man,” I said. “When I was a kid, I wanted so badly to believe
A Princess of Mars
was true that I used to stand in my back yard every night and reach my hands out to Mars, just the way you did. I kept waiting to get whisked away from the mundane life I’d been living and transported to Barsoom.” I paused. “It never happened. All I got from all that reaching was sore shoulders and a lot of teasing from friends who didn’t read books.”
“Perhaps you had no reason to go to Barsoom,” he said. “You were a child, with your entire life ahead of you. I think that Barsoom can be very choosy about who it allows to visit.”
“So now you’re saying that a planet is sentient?”
“I have no idea if it is,” replied John. “Do you know for an absolute fact that it isn’t?”
I stared at him irritably. “You’re better at this than I am,” I said. “You sound so fucking reasonable. Of course, you’ve had a lot more practice.”
“More practice at what?”
“Fooling people by sounding normal.”
“More practice than you?”
“See?” I said. “That’s what I mean. You’ve got an answer for everything, and if you don’t, then you respond with a question that’ll make
me
sound like a fool if I answer it. But
I
wasn’t wandering around naked in a blizzard in the middle of the night, and I don’t think I live on Mars.”
“Do you feel better now?” he said.
“Not much,” I admitted. “You want some more coffee?”
“Actually, what I’d like to do is walk around a little and get some life back in my limbs.”
“Outside?”
He shook his head. “No, not outside.”
“Fine,” I said, getting up. “It’s not as big or stately as a Martian palace, but I’ll give you the chef’s tour.”
He got to his feet, adjusted the blanket around himself, and fell into step behind me. I led him into the living room, then stopped.
“Are you still cold?”
“A little.”
“I think I’ll light a fire,” I said. “I haven’t used the damned fireplace all winter. I might as well get my money’s worth.”
“It’s not necessary,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
“It’s no bother,” I said, opening the screen and tossing a couple of logs onto the grate. “Look around while I’m doing it.”
“You’re not afraid I might rob you?”
“Have you got any pockets to put your loot in?” I asked.
He smiled at that. “I guess it’s my good luck that I’m not a thief.”
I spent the next couple of minutes positioning the kindling and starting the fire. I don’t know which rooms he’d seen, but he was just returning when I straightened up.
“You must have loved her very much,” he said. “You’ve turned the house into a shrine to her.”
“Whether you’re John Carter or merely think you’re John Carter, you should be able to understand what I felt.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“She died last February,” I said, then added bitterly: “On Valentine’s Day.”
“She was a lovely woman.”
“Most people just get older,” I said. “She got more beautiful every day. To me, anyway.”
“I know.”
“How could you know? You never met her, never saw her.”
“I know because my princess grows more beautiful with every passing moment. When you are truly in love, your princess always grows more beautiful.”
“And if she’s Barsoomian, she stays young for a thousand years, give or take,” I said, remembering the book.
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps? Don’t you know?”
“Does it really make a difference, as long as she remains young and beautiful in my eyes?”
“That’s pretty philosophical for a guy who thinks he makes his living lopping off heads with a longsword,” I said.
“I want nothing more than to live in peace,” he replied, sitting in the armchair that was closest to the fire. “I resent every second that I am away from my Dejah Thoris.”
“I envy you,” I said.
“I thought I was supposed to be insane,” he said wryly.
“You are. It makes no difference. Whether your Dejah Thoris is real or whether she’s a figment of a deranged mind, you believe she exists and that you’re going to join her. My Lisa is dead; I’ll never see her again.”
He made no reply, but simply stared at me.
“You may be crazy as a loon,” I continued, seating myself on the sofa, “but you’re convinced you’re going to see your Princess of Mars. I’d give up every last vestige of sanity if I could believe, even for a minute, that I would see my Princess of Earth one more time.”
“I admire your courage,” said John.
“Courage?” I repeated, surprised.