Pariah (37 page)

“Fuckin’ little bitch cunt faggot!”
Eddie screamed as the door slammed shut.

“Huh?” Dabney sputtered, coming to. “Whuzzat?”

“Go back to sleep, old man,” Eddie muttered as he slunk into the building, closing the door behind him.

“Typical,” Karl moaned, clicking the talk button. Nothing. The walkie-talkie was out of range.

The exterior of the bookstore was blackened, a fire having devastated the establishment. Though the doors were locked, the windows had burst and tiny fragments of safety glass littered the frontage.

“It’s trashed,” Mona said.

Duh
, Karl thought. Instead he said, “Why didn’t you tell me before we got here? You must’ve been this way before. Did this just happen?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, we’re here. Might as well go in. Maybe there’s something salvageable.”

“I dunno.”

“Chicken?”

Karl felt penny ante for having utilized a grade school taunt, but it worked. Mona advanced toward the gaping maw of a former display window, gingerly poked at the jagged edge, flicking
away some loose chips of glass, then stepped into the charred cavern of the store’s interior. Karl followed straightaway, wondering if he could just walk along unescorted. He wished he could stop sweating. He felt parched.

“So?” Mona shrugged.

“So now I browse. I promised Abe a few books. Plus, I need something, too.”

The air inside was heavy with the stench of charred matter; walls were festooned with peeling scablike wallpaper, scored and scorched. The display tables had either collapsed from the conflagration or stood like crude ziggurats, the books atop them stepped masses of blackened ruin. The floor was slathered in a thick charcoal paste of burnt paper and stagnant water, perhaps from the sprinkler system, and each step they took was accompanied by a voracious sucking sound. The downstairs was a washout, but maybe upstairs was better. Two escalators divided the main room, both leading up into pitch darkness.

“Did you bring a flashlight?” Karl peeped, feeling dumb for not having done so. Mona nodded, and while grateful, Karl hated her for being better prepared. She dipped into her Hello Kitty knapsack and fished out two headlamps, the first of which she handed to Karl. She then slipped the other over the crown of her head and flicked it on, resembling a miner sans helmet. The beam cut a ghostly white swath through the murk.

“Jeez, that’s bright,” Karl marveled.

“Xenon bulb,” Mona answered, as if that meant anything to Karl.

“What’s something like this cost?” Karl asked, flicking his lamp on as they made their way up the defunct escalator. He regretted the question immediately when Mona looked back, the light from her forehead blinding him, but not before he caught the
what-a-stupid-thing-to-say
expression on her face. When they reached the
landing they stood side by side, doping out the lay of the land. The left side of the mezzanine was trashed, but the right didn’t look too bad. The nice thing was that it was empty, save for the furnishings and merchandise.

“You have any water?” Karl asked, hoping his lack of preparedness was more forgivable than his previous query.

“Uh-huh.” Mona handed him a bottle of water. After a few swigs Karl made to hand it back, but Mona waved it off with a curt, “Got my own.” That she’d anticipated his absence of foresight made him flush anew.

The bad news was that the “Medicine and Science” section was toast. At least he wouldn’t have to explain his need for a copy of the
Physician’s Desk Reference to Prescription Drugs
or the like. With resignation, Karl lumbered over to “Literature” and selected a few slightly singed copies of the classics for which Abe had been pining. Mona stared off into space nearby, chewing something. Karl didn’t care to ask. He’d asked enough dumb questions for one day.

“Okay, I guess that’ll do me,” he said, replacing the full knapsack over his tenderized back with great care. As they made for the escalators he spied on a remainder table a stack of fairly intact copies of the massive hardcover celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of
Playboy
magazine. He’d really wanted that book but at the time couldn’t afford it. Pangs of chastity and guilt boomeranged around the inside of his noodle, laced with regrets over having divested himself of his porn and sexual trophies.

Except for Lourdes Ann Kananimanu Estores—Miss June 1982.

She’d be in there. Maybe even her whole set, to keep the lonely centerfold in his drawer company. This was almost worse than having to explain away a copy of the
PDR
. No guy wants to be caught procuring whacking material in the company of a female. Fresh sweat began to leak.
This is ridiculous
, Karl thought.
Why should I
care what she thinks of me? It’s only
Playboy,
for God’s sake. It’s not like it’s
real
porn. It’s pinups. Why am I justifying this to myself? This barely qualifies as a sin. It was a sin to have thrown away the bounty I had. This is just a little compensation for my loss.

With that, Karl snatched a copy of the cumbersome volume off the table. If Mona cared a jot, it didn’t register on her face. Karl’s reddened nonetheless as he reconfigured the contents of his knapsack to accommodate the large tome. Almost to spite Mona, he snagged a second copy. A gift. With Ellen expecting, surely Alan would appreciate a treasury of the finest fillies ever to walk the earth. Karl wedged it in, then—with even greater tenderness—reaffixed the laden backpack and stepped into Mona’s wake.

Whereupon the charred floor gave way.

And Mona’s face, staring at the hole through which Karl had dropped, actually registered surprise.

Karl couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t feel anything, other than remorse, embarrassment, and the near certainty that these were likely his final thoughts.
Typical
, he thought again. He could move his eyes, and aided by the beam of his headlamp could make out that he was upside down. Or at least his head was. The rest of him he couldn’t see and apparently moving his head wasn’t an option. He opened his mouth and produced a pitiable mewl, drool running into his nostril. Above him he could hear the faint creaks of Mona tiptoeing to the escalator, weighing each step, making herself as buoyant as possible.

Once on more solid ground, she raced down the long flight of metal stairs and deposited herself directly in Karl’s line of sight. Even upside down, Karl could see she was upset, and that pressed his panic button. A postfall dreaminess had temporarily quelled his mounting hysteria, but seeing Mona’s semivegetative visage
register distress was profound and terrifying. She didn’t say anything, but as her eyes took in the damage, the unspoken appraisal was clearly bad news. The worst.

“Can you speak?”

Karl wasn’t sure if she said it or he did. His thoughts were jumbled. His head was the only body part he could feel, and it felt like a water balloon full to bursting. His eyes felt like the pressure behind them would soon propel them across the room. He was panting.

“Can you speak?”

It was Mona. He wasn’t saying anything. She touched his face, drying his drool and sweat with a tissue plucked from her silly cartoon knapsack. Upside down, the bag seemed so cute. Mona’s face seemed childlike. She didn’t seem cold and remote—just fragile and damaged. She’s
fragile and damaged
. Karl smirked—or at least thought he did; it was hard to tell, what with being numb all over.

“Can you speak?”

Karl’s vision was dimming or the battery on his headlamp was failing. Maybe a little of both. One from column A, one from column B. No soup with buffet. Karl smiled at Mona. Upside down, it’s sometimes hard to read another person’s expression. “I can’t move you,” Mona said, her voice thin.

Upside down or not, she was lovely. He pondered how he could have been so judgmental of this otherworldly waif. Mona was no demon. He was certain, finally.

“You’re too . . .” She faltered, searching for the right way to say what there was no right way to say. She sighed and squinted, then looked away from his body, which was twisted at the midriff, his legs pointing east, his torso west. Karl thought about the incinerated medical section. That might have come in useful right about now.
Stay focused
, he thought.
Remain lucid. Remain
. “Broken.” She’d finished her thought.

He tried to speak but each attempt choked him, his Adam’s apple straining, pressing upwards, crushing the words. The Adam’s apple. The
laryngeal prominence
. He remembered that from one of those atlases of the human body with the clear overlaid pages. Cross sections of the various systems. Filet of human. How many parts of his anatomy were broken, as Mona put it? All the important ones? Why was Mona immune? Karl clenched his jaw, then with great effort managed, “Wha moon?”

“Why moon?”

“Wha roo moon?” Mona shook her head, uncomprehending. “Wha roo moon?”

“Something about the moon?”

Pointless
. “Ah gobba gub,” Karl strained, sputtering up fluid, which she mopped away.

“Huh?”

“Imma bag. Ah gobba gub.”

“Your bag?”

“Yuh.”

Mona opened his bag and felt around. More surprise registered—it was a banner day. With great reluctance she produced a handgun from Karl’s backpack.

“You had this the whole time?” Mona was becoming a regular chatterbox.

“Yuh.” Big Manfred wasn’t about to let his boy head off to New Sodom unarmed. Karl had left it tucked away in its case since he’d arrived in New York, but today seemed the correct occasion to bring it out. He hadn’t anticipated being its target, though.

“And what am I . . .”

“Shoo muh.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Peez.”

“Can you feel anything?”

“Nuh.”

“I’ll be back.”

Karl watched her form as it trotted to the blown-out windows, stepped over the threshold, tossed the gun away, and disappeared from view.

Alan heard a sharp whistle from the street followed by the squawk of the walkie-talkie that announced Mona’s return. He tore himself away from the touch-ups he’d been doing on an earlier canvas of Mona only to see the real McCoy outside, solo, not looking quite as detached as usual. Solo. Alan tore down the stairs and into 2B, so upset by her arriving stag that he didn’t even alert the others. As he dropped the rope for her readmittance Mona was just climbing onto the roof of Dabney’s van. Ellen stepped up and looked over his shoulder, giving Alan a start.

“Where’s Karl?” she asked.

“Good question.”

Mona’s explanation, monosyllabic and fragmented, managed to paint an ugly portrait of Karl splayed on the carcass of a display table, his upper story turned this way, his lower that, and leaking fluids like a hooptie. Ellen fought the urge to ask if this accident
happened before or after Mona had managed to score her “morning after” pills. Timing.

“We have to get him out of there,” Alan said, affecting calm. “He can’t just be left there to die, or worse, be eaten alive. Before he fell, that whole umbrella thing was working out pretty well for you?” Mona nodded. “Right.” Alan exhaled heavily and pushed back on his chair, the front legs off the floor. He didn’t want to go out there, but duty called. He walked over to the front window and looked at the horde. “Ugh,” he said. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Do what?” Ellen said. “
Go out there
? No way. You’re not even primed at all.”

Alan whipped his head back at her, flashing the
say-no-more
look.

“Oh give me a break, Alan,” Ellen said, not having it. “Karl’s out there snapped like a rotten branch and you want to protect the pact of betrayal? Fuck that. You’re not going out there. Let Eddie go. Or Dave. They were so fucking eager to invade Mona’s stash, let ’em put it to the test.” Ellen paused and looked over at Mona, a slightly patronizing tone creeping into her voice. “Mona, sweetie, those guys—Karl included—have been filching your pills to—”

“I know,” Mona said.

“You know?”

“Yeah. I can count.”

“You
knew
and you let it happen? But they invaded your space. They violated your trust. I didn’t want to keep it secret, but frankly the gorillas in our midst spook me.”