Wildcards

"C. C.?"

Colors radiated from the spot she touched and then vanished. The car became black and almost vanished from the sight of the watchers. Words appeared as they had before: lyrics of songs C.C. had written and only her best friend, Rosemary, had ever heard. The watchers stood, too stunned to move.

You can sing about pain

You can sing about sorrow

But nothing will bring a new tomorrow

Or take away yesterday

Images appeared on the side of the car as if projected there. The first scene was an attack, a rape in a subway station. A hospital bed with the figure of Rosemary recognizable beside it. Someone in a hospital gown walked down fire escapes.

"That's how you got out of the hospital, C. C. Why did you run away?" Rosemary looked up and spoke to the car as if it were a friend.

The next scene showed another subway station, another attack, but the person in the hospital gown was a witness this time. She tried to stop the attack and was flung aside, hurled onto the tracks. The colors of pain and rage. The trash and just about anything else unsecured on the unoccupied platformvending machines, discarded newspapers, a dead rat, everything-was sucked down onto the tracks as if pulled into the voracious heart of a black hole. A train with six cars shrieked into the station. Suddenly another car joined it. The attacker, escaping, entered the new car and-the scene turned to crimson, as though blood were washing across the phantom car. More subway stations, more crimson. Another attacker in a leather jacket, an old woman.

"Lummy?" Rosemary stepped back from the sight of her fiance caught in mid-mugging. "Lummy?"

"Lombardo!" Don Carlo was livid at seeing his son-to-be enter the car and be slaughtered. "Joey, get Maria away from that… thing. Ricardo, where is the rocket launcher? You'll get your chance now. Frederico, move that old woman over by the car. I want them all destroyed. Now!"

Rosemary fought Joey as he hauled her out of range. "Christ," he said, not to her, not to anyone in particular. "It's just like it used to be in the villages. Jesus." Bagabond went quietly, holding the calico cat tightly to her.

Ricardo sighted the rocket launcher carefully. Bagabond straightened.

Forty pounds of angry, wild black cat hit Ricardo squarely in the back. He fell forward as the tube tilted up and the rocket he had just fired headed for the roof. It exploded in a shower of red and gold sparks.

Rosemary pulled away from Joey and ran for the car. Water began spraying into the tunnel. Jagged concrete blocks started to separate along their sealed junctures and then more water poured in.

"Ricardo, you idiot, you blew a hole in Central Park Lake!" Frederico the Butcher yelled at someone who was no longer an interested party. The mafiosi scattered down the tunnels in disarray.

"Get into the car. Come on!" Rosemary grabbed Bagabond.

"Maria, I'm coming for you. Hold on." Don Carlo struggled against the rising flood to save his only daughter. "Papa, I'm going with