Dreamer's Dozen

By Richard A. Lupoff

The author of The Comic Book Killer offers up twelve tales of mystery, magic, and grouchiness—served with a liberal dash of sarcasm and cynicism. A woman’s birthday celebration becomes a prelude to murder; an absinthe-minded author seeks inspiration from a bottle; a rare volume could destroy the love/hate relationship of two book dealers; an interplanetary romance is threatened by the untimely intervention of the Scorpion Men of Mars; and that’s just the beginning! These stories leap from planet to planet, down dark avenues of hatred, and curl up in cozy nostalgic places.

Stories include: "Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl!" (a woman's "celebration" become a prelude to murder), "The Green Fairy," "Sisoh Promatem" ("Tip o’ the tam to Franz Kafka," says Lupoff), "Uncle Elmer" (a World War II veteran's tall tale is dissected with some disturbing revelations); "Greetings from Comrade Kim," "Night Lands Dream," "The Salamanca Encounter," (a tip o’ the tam to H.P. Lovercraft), "Scorpion Men of Venus" — (Homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs), "Dead of Winter" (Rex Stout homage). ALSO: Three "Tales of the Tin Can World," originally presented in Rigel science fiction magazine — "Lux Was Dead Right," in which a rare volume threatens to destroy the love/hate friendship of two book dealers; "Transtemporal Creatures Unlimited" and "Joe Nieman’s Knees" (he was a great ballplayer in his time ... but that was long ago ...) In this collection of stories—many of which appear for the first time in Dreamer's Dozen—Lupoff spins his wackiest and most wonderful tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: May 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310445552

Richard A. Lupoff

In his highly checkered career, Richard A. Lupoff has been a short-order cook, dishwasher, movie usher, military policeman, college professor, and petty bureaucrat. All of these experiences have fed into the rich — if somewhat chaotic — data bank that nourishes his literary career. In that career he has been a sports writer, radio news writer and broadcaster, novelist, short story writer, critic, screen-writer, editor, anthologist, and on very rare occasions, poet. He has the rare distinction of having had stories selected for best-of-the-year anthologies in three fields: science fiction, mystery, and horror.

Book preview

Dreamer’s Dozen

by Richard A. Lupoff

Introduction by Christopher Conlon

Published by Bold Venture Press

www.boldventurepress.com

Cover design: Rich Harvey

Dreamer’s Dozen by Richard A. Lupoff

Copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff. All Rights Reserved.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please purchase your own copy.

Contents

Publication Notes

In Praise of the Chameleon — Introduction by Christopher Conlon

Author’s Notes

Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl!

The Green Fairy

Sisoh Promatem

Uncle Elmer

Greetings from Comrade Kim

Night Lands Dream

Lux Was Dead Right

Transtemporal Creatures Unlimited

Joe Nieman’s Knees

The Salamanca Encounter

Scorpion Men of Venus

Dead of Winter

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Connect with Bold Venture Press

Publication Notes

Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl! first appeared in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, edited by Marvin Kaye, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

The Green Fairy appears for the first time in Dreamer’s Dozen, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Sisoh Promatem appears for the first time in Dreamer’s Dozen, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Uncle Elmer appears for the first time in Dreamer’s Dozen, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Greetings from Comrade Kim appears for the first time in Dreamer’s Dozen, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Night Lands Dream appears for the first time in Dreamer’s Dozen, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Lux Was Dead Right first appeared in Rigel Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Eric Vinicoff, copyright 1981 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Transtemporal Creatures Unlimited first appeared in Rigel Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Eric Vinicoff, copyright 1981 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Joe Nieman’s Knees first appeared in Rigel Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Eric Vinicoff, copyright 1982 by Richard A. Lupoff.

The Salamanca Encounter first appeared in That is Not Dead, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, copyright 2015 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Scorpion Men of Venus first appeared in Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, edited by Mike Resnick and Robert T. Garcia, copyright 2013 by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Dead of Winter originally appeared in The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction, edited by Mike Ashley, copyright 2011 by Richard A. Lupoff.

Introduction copyright 2015 Christopher Conlon.

Credits

Richard A. Lupoff, Author

Christopher Conlon, Introduction

Audrey Parente, Editor

Albert Pierre René Maignan, Front Cover Illustration

Viktor Oliva, Back Cover Illustration

In Praise of the Chameleon

Introduction by Christopher Conlon

Before I make my case for the excellence of the stories in Dreamer’s Dozen, I’d like to consider a question which might seem presumptuous in an introduction such as this one.

Why isn’t Richard A. Lupoff famous?

Don’t get me wrong. Lupoff is well known in the science fiction, fantasy, and vintage pulp communities, and has been for half a century. He’s the author of over twenty novels, including the New Wave classic Sacred Locomotive Flies, the science fiction duology Circumpolar!/Countersolar!, the epic fantasy Sword of the Demon, and—my own favorite—the wonderful Marblehead: A Novel of H.P. Lovecraft. He wrote a highly-regarded biography of the creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, and a celebrated history of comic books, All in Color for a Dime. He won a Hugo Award early on for his Xero fanzine, and has been nominated for Hugos and Nebula Awards several times since. More recently he has branched out into the mystery field, with predictable success: his popular Hobart Lindsey and Marva Plum whodunit series now stretches to eight novels and a story collection. His single most famous work, the time-loop short story 12:01 P.M., was adapted into an Oscar-nominated short film as well as a feature-length TV movie starring Martin Landau.

So yes, Richard Lupoff is well known. But, despite a vast bibliography and a long track record of admirable success, he is not famous—not in the way that, say, a bestseller like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling is famous. Nor does he enjoy the kind of within-the-genre cult fame of a writer like Samuel R. Delany or Harlan Ellison.

Why should this be?

To answer this question, let’s first take a little detour—or what may appear to be a detour, anyway. We’ll return to the main road soon enough.

D ick (as his friends call him) Lupoff and I are both classic-film fans, and one of the directors we are both fans of is Alfred Hitchcock. Whether Dick shares my lifelong, all-consuming passion for the works of the Master of Suspense I don’t know; I’ve never asked him. But I know he’s a fan, because when I invited writers to submit work for my anthology, A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock, Dick responded enthusiastically with a wonderfully witty set of four sonnets on the subject of Psycho. (You can find them in A Sea of Alone if you’re interested.) It was not, frankly, difficult to get writers to submit work for my book; Hitchcock is so legendary, so revered, so universally beloved that it’s difficult to imagine there could be anyone in the world who enjoys movies from that time who’s not a fan. For many, Hitchcock simply is classic-era Hollywood. Even teenagers today, many of them, can identify him—at least insofar as knowing that he was a maker of suspense movies; lots of them can also tell you that he made Psycho and The Birds, films they’ve heard of if not actually seen.

But now let’s take another example. Let’s look at a different filmmaker from the exact same era of Hollywood—also celebrated, also popular, also critically acclaimed. In his day, Billy Wilder was as famous as Hitchcock, and with damned good reason—this is the man who directed Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Witness for the Prosecution, and Some Like it Hot, to name only a few. Wilder may, in fact, have helmed more A-list classics than any other director in Hollywood history. He also won no fewer than five Oscars, to Hitchcock’s zero.

But, other than serious film buffs, how many people can readily identify Billy Wilder today? How many have even heard his name? A few of his films—not a lot, maybe only Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard—are still present and accounted-for in our contemporary pop-culture stew, but the rest are pretty much gone, while Wilder himself has slipped down the page of popular history into the footnotes. Young people certainly don’t know of him.

And consider this. A quick Amazon search reveals that there have been about twenty books on Wilder. There are over one hundred on Hitchcock … with more appearing every year.

Both Hitchcock and Wilder are unquestionably among the filmmaking greats of the twentieth century. What accounts, then, for the seeming invincibility of Hitchcock’s stature, and the precipitous drop of Wilder’s?

I think I know the answer—and this will eventually bring us back to Dick Lupoff.

Here’s the thing. We know what a Hitchcock film is. I don’t need to go through the elements of a classic Hitchcock work, because you’re already familiar with them. If you’ve seen Rear Window, The Lady Vanishes, Vertigo, Notorious—then you know who Hitchcock is as a filmmaker. You know the kinds of stories he tells, the kinds of characters and plot structures he uses, the visual strategies he employs. There’s even a word for it, which we all know: Hitchcockian. The films I just listed—and most of the others he made throughout his long career—are all of a piece, expressing a coherent world view in a thematically and visually consistent way. Each film reflects and intensifies the others so that, taken together, the sum makes up considerably more than the individual parts. Psycho is deepened through a familiarity with Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train. North by Northwest is richer viewed through the lens of The Thirty-Nine Steps and Saboteur.

Now try the same thing with the great Billy Wilder. It can’t be done. Unlike Hitchcock, an artist who established his themes early and created an impressively unified body of work, Wilder was a chameleon. What does the intense film noir of Double Indemnity, say, have to with the frothy comedy of The Seven-Year Itch? What connection is there between Stalag 17 and The Apartment? And how do any of these movies reflect The Spirit of St. Louis?

Answers: Nothing, none, and they don’t.

Understand: this is in no way a criticism of Wilder. The brilliance of his films is beyond argument. It’s just that, in the end, we tend to prefer artists who till a single tidy row to those who jump pell-mell all over the garden. We get the Hitchcocks of the world. The Wilders are harder to grasp—and in the end, they often end up eluding us. It’s certainly possible to argue that, because of the extraordinary range of his work, Billy Wilder was actually a greater director than Hitchcock. But the fact remains that the audience for Wilder’s movies is, except for a couple, far smaller—and, it seems, shrinking all the time. There’s no such phrase in popular culture as Wilderian. It’s unlikely any enterprising editor will ever put together an anthology of poems about his work.

The example isn’t perfect, of course—as I said, in his time Wilder was as legendary as Hitchcock, both of them enjoying a level of fame that Dick Lupoff has never quite found the equivalent of in his field of imaginative literature. The point is that certain types of artists tend to be celebrated much more than others. Most of our best-known writers—think not only of King and Rowling in popular fiction but of Hemingway and Faulkner too—have instantly recognizable styles and approaches that mark them. It’s easy to describe a typical Stephen King story or, for that matter, a typical Hemingway. Subject matter, characters, narrative mode, style—all are easily identifiable.

Now, try doing that with Richard A. Lupoff.

You’ll quickly find that it’s impossible—and the more of his writings you read, the more impossible you’ll realize it is. Like Billy Wilder, Lupoff is a chameleon. There are few obvious connections between his wildly diverse works. But, also like Wilder, everything he does he does supremely well.

Take the stories in Dreamer’s Dozen.

"In due course ennui bore down upon me, upon my future self, that is to say, for the profession I pursued in this your own time had ceased to have a use in the world which we perceive as the distant future, where in my other being that world is seen as the present while your world has faded into the mists and darkness of ancient forgetfulness; and thus I set about, more for the divertissement of my own mind than in thought of aught men or women of that distant future reading, or caring to read, my work, to set down upon paper with ink the history of our planet, as best I was able to know it."

(Night Lands Dream)

"If it hadn’t been for the ancient war between the races sprung from Ras Alhague 54 and Horologium 40, the tincan world Starrett wouldn’t have experienced its nearly-fatal, near-disaster, and Mohandis Ponnemperuna wouldn’t have become a hero."

(Transtemporal Creatures Unlimited)

"Almost anyone would have been embarrassed to answer the door wearing Buck Rogers pajamas."

(Dead of Winter)

These are the first sentences of three of Lupoff’s Dreamer’s Dozen, and they read like the work of three different writers. The length, complexity, word choices, rhythms: all are utterly dissimilar. (Lupoff is, among other things, a master of pastiche.) Beyond that, the tone of each opening is completely unlike that of the others. No reader can begin any of the stories in this book thinking, This reads like typical Lupoff. There is no typical Lupoff. From the gritty straightforward contemporary mystery of Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl! to the swashbuckling retro-adventure of Scorpion Men of Venus, Lupoff jumps with glee across the whole garden of imaginative writing. There is fantasy, horror, science fiction, and wry comedy here. The Green Fairy, a particular favorite of mine, is not only an amusing tale of overcoming writer’s block but a twenty-or-so-page master class in the process of generating fiction itself. As soon as I read it, I knew I would be using it in my own writing classes when students ask the common questions How do I think of an idea to write about? and What do I do when I get stuck?

THE humor in these tales can be subtle or straightforward. The delightful Sisoh Promatem is even more rewarding if one thinks to read the strange title backwards (the character name Znarf Akfak too), and Dead of Winter may benefit from the reader pondering why the great detective has such an unusual name as Caligula Foxx. But in many of the stories no particular subtlety is required. The three set on Starrett, Lupoff’s Tincan World—Lux Was Dead Right, Transtemporal Creatures Unlimited, and Joe Nieman’s Knees—are wild romps that, except for a few latter-day science references, would have fit perfectly into the pages of the often lighthearted and satirical Galaxy Magazine in the 1950s, right alongside the woolier tales of Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, and Cyril Kornbluth.

But that’s not all there is to Dreamer’s Dozen. There is also straightforward realistic fiction (Uncle Elmer), mind-bending story concepts (Greetings from Comrade Kim), Hodgsonian cosmic sweep (Night Lands Dream), and Lovecraftian horror (The Salamanca Encounter).

In other words, like Billy Wilder, Richard A. Lupoff gives us a little of everything—and all of it is brilliantly done.

It’s time for this extraordinary literary chameleon to finally receive the fame and recognition he deserves. His novels and stories—the latter collected in Claremont Tales and Claremont Tales II, Terrors, Visions, Dreams, and a number of other books, now including Dreamer’s Dozen—make, to my mind, an airtight case for Richard A. Lupoff being among today’s premiere imaginative writers. He is, simply put, one of the best we have.

That’s what I think.

Now turn the pages…and see what you think.

C.C.

July 2015

Author’s Notes

There are readers who dislike introductions, author’s notes, and other such encrustations on works of fiction. Each novel or short story, they maintain, should succeed or fail based purely on its own merits. Theirs is a legitimate position with which I have no quarrel.

If you, Dear Reader, are a member of this fraternity, I hereby excuse you from reading the rest of this screed. Go thou and read my stories. I wish you all of life’s pleasures.

Now, if you are still with me, I have a few things to say about the stories in this book. I hope that the information I provide will enhance your enjoyment.

Several of them are examples of that interesting literary form called the pastiche. They are stories written in the style of, or touching upon the themes previously utilized by, earlier authors. At best, they may be regarded as sincere homage. At worst they descend into the realm of parody or even approach plagiarism. I have myself practiced the art of parody in the past. None of the stories in this book, however, are meant as such. As for plagiarism, while I have on occasion been the victim of this crime, I can honestly swear that I have never committed it.

Herewith I offer a tip of the Lupoff shako to Znarf Akfak, William Hope Hodgson, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Rex Stout. I will not tell you which of my stories was inspired by which of my predecessors. You are encouraged to figure this out for yourself. It shouldn’t be very difficult, and it is my belief that it will add to the fun.

The other stories in this book are, for better or for worse, pure Lupoff. Some have previously appeared in various magazines or anthologies.

Richard Lupoff

May 8, 2015

Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl!

She didn’t look so bad, she thought, peering at the image of herself in the back-bar mirror. The cobalt-blue coloring and the bottles of vodka and whiskey didn’t hurt, and neither did the two, going-on-three, Lemon Drops that the bartender, what the hell was her name, not Mildred, Mildred’s was the name of the bar, so not Mildred, no, Cissie, that was it, the Lemon Drops that Cissie kept serving up and Dorothy kept drinking down.

Not so bad for a broad observing her fortieth birthday. Observing, not celebrating, God no, not celebrating. The cake in the office with the big plastic 4–0 on top, everybody else seemed to be celebrating but Dorothy merely observed.

Still, look at the dame in the mirror. Face was still pretty good. Hair could use a bit of touching up, especially the roots, but she had that under control. Pretty much under control. Body could use a little work. She looked down at her chest. Not bad. Could use some trimming down. She had to admit that she was starting to sag just a little bit. She figured she’d only added a pound. One lousy pound. But a pound a year, starting when she was at her best, when she was twenty. Oh, the body she’d had then, the skin, the face, the hair…

She could get back to that or close to it anyway. She promised herself as much.

She lifted her glass and took a swallow of Lemon Drop. Man, that was delicious. Who invented these drinks, anyway? She opened her purse and searched for her wallet. Found it underneath her little Nikon. Nothing like the big Canon EOS she favored at work, or the Vivitar Waterproof she took on vacation last winter, but it was fun. She fished a twenty out of the wallet and dropped it on the bar.

Cissie took something that looked like a felt-tip marker and ran it over the bill, held it up to the tensor light over the cash register, nodded and rang up the sale.

When she slid Dorothy’s change to her, Dorothy asked what that had been about.

Cissie said, Checking for queer, m’dear. We got a bulletin from the Feds about phony bills, especially twenties. I found two of ‘em last week, and even a fake Canadian twenty today. And we have to eat those, you know. So we’re being extra careful.

Somebody had left an out-of-town paper on the bar stool next to Dorothy’s. Paper had a headline about the Red Wings and the Bruins, whoever they were. She picked it up and looked at the weather forecast. Cloudy and warmer. Not here, it wasn’t. Cloudy all right. But hardly warmer. Snowflakes had been drifting down when she left the office and the breeze coming off the lake was like ice. A good thing Mildred’s was so close, she could walk there before she got more than a few stray flakes on her hair and the shoulders of her coat.

Cissie the bartender—Dorothy had once heard a customer call her a mixologist and Cissie had practically had a fit—Cissie the bartender had turned on some music. It was a CD that Dorothy had heard before. All Gershwin tunes.

Embrace me, you sweet embraceable you.

Right.

Some guy wearing a hound’s tooth jacket came out of the rest room and hoisted himself onto the stool next to Dorothy’s. He said, You can keep it if you want it. He wore thick eyeglasses with a bifocal line across the middle and boring-looking plastic frames. He smelled faintly of cigar smoke. A loser.

She gave him a WTF look.

The paper, he said. He tapped the newspaper with a stubby finger. That’s my paper, but I’m through with it. You can have it.

Embrace me, you irreplaceable you.

Dorothy half-turned toward the guy.

He waggled a finger at Cissie. Cissie nodded encouragingly and he said, Would you mind turning the light away? He indicated the miniature tensor light on top of the cash register. It’s—my eyes are sensitive and…. He made a vague, helpless gesture.

Cissie said, Sure. She turned the light away from him.

Dorothy started to say something about the newspaper, wondering if it was a pick-up line or if the guy was just being decent. If he was a pick-up artist he was the world’s most inept practitioner of the art.

That was when she saw Carter sitting at a table with a woman. What a coincidence. Carter was supposed to be out of town on business, and here he was in Chicago sitting with a frowsy blonde bitch having a drink.

Of all the gin joints in the world, Dorothy thought.

That son of a bitch, she thought.

She turned away quickly so her back was to Carter and the frowsy bitch. She could see them clearly in the back-bar mirror. The blonde bitch wasn’t so frowsy after all. In fact she was classier than Dorothy had thought, well turned out and at least ten years younger than Dorothy. Old enough to have been around the block a couple of times but young enough to still have what Dorothy had misplaced somewhere along the way.

You’d think the bastard would have had the decency to stick around for Dorothy’s birthday. They could have had a meal in a nice joint, gone back to her place or to his for a nightcap and some laughs. How often did a girl turn forty anyhow?

Carter and the bimbo were leaning over their little table, laughing at something. They hadn’t seen Dorothy, that was obvious. They were holding hands like a pair of shy teenagers just figuring out which way was up. With their free hands they lifted their glasses. She couldn’t tell what the bimbo was drinking but it was in a Martini glass. She knew what Carter drank. Jack Daniels neat.

They clinked glasses. The bimbo sipped at her drink. Carter, the son of a bitch, knocked back his JD like a desert rat getting his first taste of water in a week. They both put their glasses down. While Dorothy watched, Carter slipped his free hand under the table and reached for the bimbo. She was wearing a skirt, Dorothy could tell that. Carter moved his hand.

Son of a bitch! That was too much. Bad enough what was going on, but rubbing her nose in it was more than any woman could take.

Dorothy pushed herself away from the bar. The out-of-town paper went flying. Her bar stool tipped over backwards and the guy on the next stool half-reached, half-dived for it and caught it before it crashed to the floor.

Dorothy covered the distance to the table where Carter and the bimbo were carrying on in a few angry strides. She had her Lemon Drop glass in her hand.

Carter stood up. He held his hand toward Dorothy. The hand that he’d just withdrawn from under the bimbo’s skirt. He was sweating. He was wearing a classy gray suit and a white shirt with a button-down collar and a tie striped in quiet colors. He said, Dorothy—

She said, You fucker!

He said, Dorothy. He turned to the bimbo, looking down at her. He said, Marianne. He looked back at Dorothy. He said, Dorothy, this is my friend Mari—

She smelled something, a combination of some flowery, young girl perfume and harsh female musk. She felt sick.

She threw what was left of her third Lemon Drop, half a Lemon Drop, in his face. She felt like a fool, a character in some stupid melodrama, some amateur community theater production of a cheap melodrama.

Her drink was dripping off Carter’s face, mostly landing on his suit, some of it splashing on the table, none of it hitting Marianne the bimbo.

Carter raised his hand, a gesture halfway between the sign that a traffic cop would make to stop cars and the gesture that a kid in a stupid game of Cowboys and Indians would make when he was stuck being an Indian.

Dorothy heard a sound that was somewhere between a roar and a shriek and smashed her Lemon Drop glass on the table top and thrust it at Carter and raked it down his cheek leaving a trail that turned red and spurted blood.

Marianne the bimbo screamed and jumped up and grabbed Carter.

Dorothy thrust the broken glass at Carter’s chest. It hit the lapel of his suit and Dorothy’s hand hit the suit. The jagged edge of the glass sliced into her wrist and more blood spurted. She dropped the glass and it landed on the table and bounced and fell on the floor.

Don’t be a naughty papa, come to baby, come to baby, do.

There were a couple of napkins on the table and she grabbed a couple of them and held them against her wrist to stop the bleeding. Her purse was hanging from her arm and she swung it at Marianne the bimbo and missed. She turned around and ran from Mildred’s.

The door was heavy, padded to keep street sounds out. Dorothy had to lean on it with her shoulder and shove to get it open. The cold air and noise hit her like a fist. She turned around and looked back inside. There was a small window in the middle of the door, round like a ship’s porthole, the glass thick and heavy. Through the window she could see confusion. Carter was standing where he had been, holding a napkin against his face. It was too dark inside Mildred’s for Dorothy to tell whether the napkin was showing blood or not. Marianne the bimbo was dancing around Carter as if she didn’t know what to do, her hands fluttering in confusion, first here then there. Cissie had come around the bar. Dorothy saw her cast one quick glance at the door but they didn’t make eye contact. Instead Cissie turned and ran toward Carter and Marianne the bimbo.

There were a couple of other patrons in the place. They were milling around in confusion. The guy who’d told Dorothy she could keep his newspaper was still sitting on his bar stool as if he didn’t know what to do. A classic poster of Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce was the only decoration in the place.

Dorothy shoved her hand inside the pocket of the heavy, dark coat she’d been wearing. She still had the napkins wrapped around her wrist. She didn’t think she was bleeding any more.

The sidewalk was crowded with workers who’d stayed past quitting time and were on their way home, and with people headed out for the evening.

Dorothy had been walking as fast as the crowd would permit. Now she slowed down. She was short of breath. Each time she let out a lungful of air it turned to mist in front of her. The air she took back in felt good. It tasted good.

She reached the corner and turned to the right and kept on walking. This was a mixed neighborhood of shops, offices and high rise apartment buildings. She reached the next corner and turned again, kept going again, reached another corner. Eventually she realized that she was about to head back to Mildred’s.

She turned and headed in the opposite direction. She walked through the cold night until she came to a movie theater. She bought a ticket and went in and sat through part of some movie. She had no idea what she was watching.

She got up and made her way to the rest room. She turned on the cold water and let it run over the cut on her wrist. The skin turned fish-belly white around the cut. It wasn’t much more than a scratch. She threw the napkins she’d brought from Mildred’s in a waste container. She blotted the wound with a paper towel. A couple of drops of blood oozed from it.

She looked at her wristwatch. It was getting late. She felt sick to her stomach.

She left the theater and walked some more. She walked until she stood in front of her building. She went inside and took the self-service elevator up to her floor. She used her key and went inside her apartment. She smelled something.

She dropped her coat on the sofa and headed for her bedroom. It was down a short hallway from the living room. She pushed the door open and saw something on her bed. The comforter was drawn over the bed and all she could see was a lump the size of a man with an extra rise in it. It made her think of what a man’s body would look like as he lay on his back with an erection but the rise was at the wrong place.

She pulled back the comforter and looked at the man lying on her bed. It was Carter. Carter Hanson. The jagged cut on his cheek had stopped bleeding but blood had run down his cheek and onto Dorothy’s best bedding.

He was nude except for a pair of lace-edged, bright red panties and matching