What Comes Next

EIGHT

AN ESCAPED CONVICT wearing a white rubber mask is on the top of a small mountain, a man and two women his prisoners. Whenever anyone tries to get near him, he blasts them with a laser gun, which burns a hole in whatever it touches. There are ten or twelve already dead, decomposing on the side of the hill — among them an old math teacher, John Wayne, Fu Manchu, two former Presidents of the United States, and the secret identity of a famous comic book hero. I go up the mountain from the other side, ducking behind a tree when he turns to look. He sees me, beckons. “Come on, Christmas. Come on. I’ve been waiting for you.” Though he calls me as if he knows me, I stay behind the tree until he puts his gun down. While he’s looking the other way — he’s forgotten me — I crawl, hiding my face, toward the weapon. Grass gets up my nose, makes me want to sneeze. Ah-ah-aahh. I hold it back, the sneeze, my head swelling. The weapon getting closer. The dumb sonuvabitch has his back turned, is whistling some dumb criminal-class song. I dive on the weapon. He turns like a shot. The damn thing slips out from under me and, hitting a rock, goes off. The beam spears him in the neck, burns a hole beneath his chin the size of a half dollar. The poor bastard dances his pain. I close my eyes not to see. He hands me the mask. “Put it on,” he says. The voice a recording coming from the hole in his neck. “Put the mask on.” I say no. “Please,” he says. “Have I ever asked you for anything else?” When he dies I put it on. I untie his prisoners, but it makes no difference. They are all, no undemocratic exceptions, dead. A formation of soldiers coming up the hill. I wave to them that it’s all right. When they fire at me, I pick up the laser gun — what else can I do? — and hold them off. They fall, die — the bodies strewn across the field like trees ripped out of the earth. The soldiers revive, come after me. I turn my back, try to rip off the mask. It’s the dead man they want. The damn thing won’t come loose. It sticks like skin.

Two men, unknown to each other, confessed to Cripple Killings — this morning’s News. One of them, shown smiling in News photo, quoted as saying, “In all walks of life someone is always trying to take credit for what other people do. As God is my witness, I am the fiend the newspapers have been writing about.” There’s hardly anyone around worth killing.

Had to wait thirty minutes for a train, a cop eyeing me as if he knew who I was. He came up, asked if I was for sale. I said no. He walked away, twirling his stick.

Went home to get some more clothes, shirts mostly. Twenty dollars and forty-three cents from my mother’s pocketbook. A letter there from Rosemary, opened by them.

I looked into their room to see what they were doing. Nothing. Both asleep. The cover over her head, her hair twisted. He was on his back, rigid, like a stone god. His face gray.

His eyes opened, stared madly at me. I ran.

Someone new following me. His head shines like a cue ball.

A woman walking a small dog. I asked her the time, my watch stopped. She asked if I wanted anything else or only the time. What did she have in mind? She said nothing, only a dog to walk, nothing in mind. Did I want to come home with her? I said I had a home. Started to follow her. At the corner a police car cut me off at the curb. The back door flying open. Three of them, uniformed cops, in back. They had it so I couldn’t move.

“What did you say to her?”

I didn’t answer.

“Do you speak English? Anglissez? You P.R., Spic?”

“I asked her the time.”

The three of them laughed like axes being sharpened.

The one nearest me’s breath was like fish. To keep my balance, I had to lean back. My heels against the curb. I wasn’t sweating.

“So you asked her the time. Uh huh.” He looked at his watch. “It’s five-twenty-five. How’s that? It’s kinda early to go around asking ladies the time.”

“Do you molest women?” the fat one in the middle asked. “Expose yourself to them?”

“What are you smiling for?” Fishbreath asked.

I said it was a mouth formation. Whenever I was hungry, it looked like I was smiling.

“Where were you at this time yesterday?”

I made up an address — the first thing to come to mind.

“Is that where you live? You know we intend to check out your whole story. We have two hundred and twelve unsolved crimes waiting for you.”

I nodded. The pressure of the asphalt pushing up. My soles burning. The middle one, leaning forward: “Where are you comin’ from, if it isn’t too much to ask? Where did you get all that boodle?”

I explain about my father’s house. “I used to live there, you can check. Ludwig Steiner. Professor Ludwig Steiner.” His name.

“How would you like to come to headquarters? We’re sure to find something that suits you. Petty robbery, arson, drug abuse. Any number of things.”

“I don’t like the looks of him. Let’s go.”

“Back up,” he yells at me. “Jump.”

The door slams shut as they pull away.