The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel by Charles L. Grant Read Free Book Online Page B

a
threat.
    How the hell, Mr. Bethune, do you threaten a
rose?
    He swallowed, rubbed his mouth, and coughed into
a fist. People on the sidewalk glanced at him, or ignored him, but
none of them stopped to ask what was wrong.
    He chuckled to himself — he was practically
invisible. The postman is drunk, folks, so pretend he’s not there.
What the hell, that should be easy, they do it when he’s sober.
    He swallowed again and held his breath, released
it in spurts, and pushed away from the building, heading south,
heading home where he could dig out the telephone book and see
where Hobbs lived. He doubted she had flowers. He doubted she even
had a yard. She probably stayed in a boardinghouse and bossed the
landlady around.
    He made it as far as the corner of his block
before he had to stop and prop a shoulder against a lamppost. Deep
breaths. Swallowing. Walking once more, not quite straight, not
quite staggering, glancing at the houses he passed, knowing that
the woman in there has trouble with her medical bills, the family
over there subscribes to nine magazines and two out-of-state
newspapers, the unmarried couple in the place across from his
receives letters from France at least twice a month. He knew them,
he thought as he turned to look back the way he had come; he knew
them all and knew them well and didn’t know them at all unless he
had an envelope in his hand.
    “Oh god,” he said. “Oh god.”
    He bypassed his front door, went around the side
into the shade.
    The roses were dead, petals strewn on the
ground, fluttering in a breeze as if trying to crawl to the
grass.
    He dropped to his knees, hands weak on his
thighs, counting the bushes, reaching out and grabbing a stem,
snatching his hand back and staring dumbly at the blood bubbles
welling in his palm. There was no pain. Just the blood. He sucked
at the punctures while he looked up at the house and saw, below one
window beneath the eaves, a long blister of white paint pulling
away from the wood. Higher, and there was another, just under the
gutter, a section of which had somehow worked loose from its
bracket.
    This wasn’t right.
    This couldn’t be happening.
    But he was too befuddled to think straight and
so didn’t try. He crawled instead on all fours into the backyard,
shook his head once at the spectacle he was and shoved himself
grunting to his feet, climbed the stoop, banged open the kitchen
door and tripped over the threshold as he went in.
    He hung on to the nearest counter and lowered
his head until it cleared. Cold shower. What he needed a long,
cold, stinging shower, a gallon or two of hot coffee, clean clothes
and some food — in that order. After that, he’d hunt down Norma and
. . . he rubbed his eyes, his temples, decided he would cross that
bridge when he came to it. As it was, unless he sobered up, he’d
probably kill himself first.
    A laugh.
    He began to strip as he headed for the
bathroom.
    “. . . waltz ’cross the floor,” he sang, badly
and loudly and not giving a damn, “with the girl he adored . .
.”
    Right, he thought; right!
    She wanted to see him tonight.
    How the hell could he have forgotten? A
beautiful young woman had made a date with him, and it had
completely slipped his mind. And there, he scolded himself, is the
reason, you jackass, why you’re not rich, why you don’t have a love
life, why you ain’t never going to be more than a carrier all your
life — you don’t believe the good things even when they drop on
your thick, fat skull. Jackass is right. You got to be clobbered
with a two-by-four before anyone can get your attention.
    All right. Well, she had his attention now.
    Yard called while he was eating: “Heard you tied
one on this afternoon, m’friend.”
    “Nigel has a big mouth.”
    A television shouted the evening news in the
background,
    Until someone else shouted to turn the damn
thing down.
    Casey grinned, took another bite of his
steak.
    “So, hey,” Yard said, “you okay?”
    “Yeah. Sort