Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron (43 page)

I am not dying in a nightmare.

∇

Calamari Curls

Kage Baker

T
he town had seen better days.

Its best year had probably been 1906, when displaced San Franciscans, fleeing south to find slightly less unstable real estate, discovered a bit of undeveloped coastline an inconvenient distance from the nearest train station.

No tracks ran past Nunas Beach. There wasn’t even a road to its golden sand dunes, and what few locals there were didn’t know why. There were rumors of long-ago pirates. There was a story that the fathers from the local mission had forbidden their parishioners to go there, back in the days of Spanish rule.

Enterprising Yankee developers laughed and built a road, and laid out lots for three little beach towns, and sold them like hotcakes. Two of the towns vanished like hotcakes at a Grange Breakfast, too; one was buried in a sandstorm and the other washed out to sea during the first winter flood.

But Nunas Beach remained, somehow, and for a brief season there were ice-cream parlors and photographers’ studios, clam stands, Ferris wheels, drug stores and holiday cottages. Then, for no single reason, people began to leave. Some of the shops burned down; some of the cottages dwindled into shanties. Willow thickets and sand encroached on the edges. What was left rusted where it stood, with sand drifting along its three streets, yet somehow did not die.

People found their way there, now and then, especially after the wars. It was a cheap place to lie in the sun while your wounds healed and your shell-shock faded away. Some people stayed.

Pegasus Bright, who had had both his legs blown off by a land mine, had stayed, and opened the Chowder Palace. He was unpleasant when he drank and, for that matter, when he didn’t, but he could cook. The Chowder Palace was a long, low place on a street corner. It wasn’t well lit, its linoleum tiles were cracked and grubby, its windows dim with grease. Still, it was the only restaurant in town. Therefore all the locals ate at the Chowder Palace, and so, too, did those few vacationers who came to Nunas Beach.

Mr. Bright bullied a staff of illegal immigrants who worked for him as waiters and busboys; at closing time they faded like ghosts back to homeless camps in the willow thickets behind the dunes, and he rolled himself back to his cot in the rear of the Palace, and slept with a tire iron under his pillow.

∇

One Monday morning the regulars were lined up on the row of stools at the counter, and Mr. Bright was pushing himself along the row topping up their mugs of coffee, when Charlie Cansanary said:

“I hear somebody’s bought the Hi-Ho Lounge.”

“No they ain’t, you stupid bastard,” said Mr. Bright. He disliked Charlie because Charlie had lost his right leg to a shark while surfing, instead of in service to his country.

“That’s what I heard too,” said Tom Avila, who was the town’s mayor.

“Why would anybody buy that place?” demanded Mr. Bright. “
Look
at it!”

They all swiveled on their stools and looked out the window at the Hi-Ho Lounge, which sat right across the street on the opposite corner. It was a windowless stucco place painted gray, with martini glasses picked out in mosaic tile on either side of the blind slab of a door. On the roof was a rusting neon sign portraying another martini glass whose neon olive had once glowed like a green star against the sunset. But not in years; the Hi-Ho Lounge had never been open in living memory.

“Maybe somebody wants to open a bar,” said Leon Silva, wiping egg yolk out of his mustache. “It might be kind of nice to have a place to drink.”

“You can get drinks here,” said Mr. Bright quickly, stung.

“Yeah, but I mean legally. And in glasses and all,” said Leon.

“Well, if you want to go to
those
kinds of places and spend an arm and a leg—” said Mr. Bright contemptuously, and then stopped himself, for Leon, having had an accident on a fishing trawler, only had one arm. Since he’d lost it while earning a paycheck rather than in pursuit of frivolous sport, however, he was less a target for Mr. Bright’s scorn. Mr. Bright continued: “Anyway it’ll never happen. Who’s going to buy an old firetrap like that place?”

“Those guys,” said Charlie smugly, pointing to the pair of business-suited men who had just stepped out of a new car and were standing on the sidewalk in front of the Hi-Ho Lounge.

Mr. Bright set down the coffee pot. Scowling, he wheeled himself from behind the counter and up to the window.

“Developers,” he said. He watched as they walked around the Hi-Ho Lounge, talking to each other and shaking their heads. One took a key from an envelope and tried it in the padlock on the front door; the lock was a chunk of rust, however, and after a few minutes he drew back and shook his head.

“You ain’t never getting in that way, buddy,” said Tom. “You don’t know beach winters.”

The developer went back to his car and, opening the trunk, took out a hammer. He struck ineffectually at the lock.

“Look at the sissy way he’s doing it,” jeered Mr. Bright. “Hit it
hard,
you dumb son of a bitch.”

The padlock broke, however, and the chain dropped; it took three kicks to get the door open, to reveal inky blackness beyond. The developers stood looking in, uncertain. The spectators in the Chowder Palace all shuddered.

“There has got to be serious mildew in there,” said Charlie.

“And pipes rusted all to hell and gone,” said Mr. Bright, with a certain satisfaction. “Good luck, suckers.”

∇

But the developers seemed to have luck. They certainly had money.

Work crews with protective masks came and stripped out the inside of the Hi-Ho Lounge. There were enough rusting fixtures to fill a dumpster; there were ancient red vinyl banquettes, so blackened with mold they looked charred, and clumped rats’ nests of horsehair and cotton batting spilled from their entrails.

When the inside had been thoroughly gutted, the outside was tackled. The ancient stucco cracked away to reveal a surprise: graceful arched windows all along both street walls, and a shell-shaped fanlight over the front door. Stripped to its framing, the place had a promise of airy charm.

Mr. Bright watched from behind the counter of the Chowder Palace, and wondered if there was any way he could sue the developers. No excuses presented themselves, however. He waited for rats to stream from their disturbed havens and attack his customers; none came. When the workmen went up on ladders and pried off the old HI-HO LOUNGE sign from the roof, he was disappointed, for no one fell through the rotting lath, nor did sharp edges of rusted tin cut through any workmen’s arteries, and they managed to get the sign down to the sidewalk without dropping it on any passers-by. Worse; they left the neon martini glass up there.

“It
is
going to be a bar,” said Leon in satisfaction, crumbling crackers into his chowder.

“Shut up,” said Mr. Bright.

“And a restaurant,” said Charlie. “My brother-in-law works at McGregor’s Restaurant Supply over in San Emidio. The developers set up this account, see. He says they’re buying lots of stuff. All top of the line. Going to be a seafood place.”

Mr. Bright felt tendrils of fear wrap about his heart and squeeze experimentally. He rolled himself back to his cubicle, took two aspirins washed down with a shot of bourbon, and rolled back out to make life hell for Julio, who had yet to clear the dirty dishes from booth three.

∇

The place opened in time for the summer season, despite several anonymous threatening calls to the County Planning Department.

The new sign said CALAMARI CURLS, all in pink and turquoise neon, with a whimsical octopus writhing around the letters. The neon martini glass was repiped a dazzling scarlet, with its olive once again winking green.

Inside was all pink and turquoise too: the tuck-and-roll banquettes, the napkins, the linoleum tiles. The staff, all bright young people working their way through Cal State San Emidio, wore pink and turquoise Hawaiian shirts.

Calamari Curls was fresh, jazzy and fun.

Mr. Bright rolled himself across the street, well after closing hours, to peer at the menus posted by the front door. He returned cackling with laughter.

“They got a
wine list!
” he told Jesus, the dishwasher. “And you should see their
prices!
Boy, have they ever made a mistake opening
here
! Who the hell in Nunas Beach is going to pay that kind of money for a basket of fish and chips?”

Everyone, apparently.

The locals began to go there; true, they paid a little more, but the food was so much better! Everything was so bright and hopeful at Calamari Curls! And the polished bar was an altar to all the mysteries of the perfect cocktail. Worse still, the great radiant sign could be seen from the highway, and passers-by who would never before have even considered stopping to fix a flat tire in Nunas Beach, now streamed in like moths to a porch light.

Calamari Curls had a glowing jukebox. Calamari Curls had karaoke on Saturday nights, and a clown who made balloon animals. Calamari Curls had a special tray with artfully made wax replicas of the mouth-watering desserts on their menu.

And the ghostly little businesses along Alder Street sanded the rust off their signs, spruced up a bit and got some of the overflow customers. After dining at Calamari Curls, visitors began to stop into Nunas Book and News to buy magazines and cigarettes. Visitors peered into the dark window of Edna’s Collectibles, at dusty furniture, carnival glass and farm implements undisturbed in twenty years. Visitors poked around for bargains at the USO Thrift Shop. Visitors priced arrowheads and fossils at Jack’s Rocks.

But Mr. Bright sat behind his counter and served chowder to an ever-dwindling clientele.

∇

The last straw was the Calamari Curls Award Winning Chowder.

Ashen-faced, Mr. Bright rolled himself across the street in broad daylight to see if it was really true. He faced down the signboard, with its playful lettering in pink-and-turquoise marker. Yes; Award-Winning Chowder, containing not only fresh-killed clams but conch and shrimp too.

And in bread bowls. Fresh-baked on the premises.

And for a lower price than at the Chowder Palace.

Mr. Bright rolled himself home, into the Chowder Palace, all the way back to his cubicle. Julio caught a glimpse of the look on Bright’s face as he passed, and hung up his apron and just walked out, never to return. Mr. Bright closed the place early. Mr. Bright took another two aspirin with bourbon.

He put the bourbon bottle back in its drawer, and then changed his mind and took it with him to the front window. There he sat through the waning hours, as the stars emerged and the green neon olive across the street shone among them, and the music and laughter echoed across the street pitilessly.

∇

On the following morning, Mr. Bright did not even bother to open the Chowder Palace. He rolled himself down to the pier instead, and looked for Betty Step-in-Time.

Betty Step-in-Time had a pink bicycle with a basket, and could be found on the pier most mornings, doing a dance routine with the bicycle. Betty wore a pink middy top, a little white sailor cap, tap shorts and white tap shoes. Betty’s mouth was made up in a red cupid’s bow. Betty looked like the depraved older sister of the boy on the Cracker Jack box.

At the conclusion of the dance routine, which involved marching in place, balletic pirouettes and a mimed sea battle, Betty handed out business cards to anyone who had stayed to watch. Printed on the cards was:

ELIZABETH MARQUES

performance artist

interpretive dancer

transgender shaman

Mr. Bright had said a number of uncomplimentary things about Betty Step-in-Time over the years, and had even sent an empty bottle flying toward his curly head on one or two occasions. Now, though, he rolled up and waited in silence as Betty trained an imaginary spyglass on a passing squid trawler.

Betty appeared to recognize someone he knew on board. He waved excitedly and blew kisses. Then he began to dance a dainty sailor’s hornpipe.

“Ahem,” said Mr. Bright.

Betty mimed climbing hand over hand through imaginary rigging, pretended to balance on a spar, and looked down at Mr. Bright.

“Look,” said Mr. Bright, “I know I never seen eye to eye with you—”

Betty went into convulsions of silent laughter, holding his sides.

“Yeah, okay, but I figure you and I got something in common,” said Mr. Bright. “Which would be, we like this town just the way it is. It’s a good place for anybody down on his luck. Am I right?

“But
that
place,” and Mr. Bright waved an arm at Calamari Curls, “that’s the beginning of the end. All that pink and blue stuff—Jesus, where do they think they are, Florida?—that’s, whatchacallit, gentrification. More people start coming here, building places like that, and pretty soon people like you and me will be squeezed out. I bet you don’t pay hardly any rent for that little shack over on the slough, huh? But once those big spenders start coming in, rents’ll go through the roof. You mark my words!”

He looked up into Betty’s face for some sign of comprehension, but the bright, blank doll-eyes remained fixed on him, nor did the painted smile waver. Mr. Bright cleared his throat.

“Well, I heard some stories about you being a shaman and all. I was hoping there was something you could do about it.”

Betty leaped astride his pink bicycle. He thrust his left hand down before Mr. Bright’s face, making a circular motion with the tip of his left thumb over the tips of his first and second fingers.

“You want to get
paid
?” said Mr. Bright, outraged. “Ain’t I just explained how you got a stake in this too?”

Betty began to pedal, riding around and around Mr. Bright in a tight circle, waving bye-bye. On the third circuit he veered away, pulling out a piece of pink Kleenex and waving it as he went.

“All right, God damn it!” shouted Mr. Bright. “Let’s do a deal.”