Monster Page 23

Nick was half-way through his first drink at the Grove waiting for Cap and Sarah to arrive when Mordechai sat down next to him. Nick had sensed in his soul that such an occurrence was likely and turned on his barstool to face him.

  Mordechai ordered a pint of Guinness, took a drink and wiped the foam from his beard. Behind him, Nick noticed a young woman with chin-length auburn hair and soft brown eyes. She looked over just as Nick was staring at her and she smiled a quick, polite smile. Nick smiled back. Mordechai looked at Nick and smiled oddly.

  "I wouldn't have thought you'd smile to see me. Not yet, anyway," Mordechai said.

  "I was trying for a wan, 'I knew it' kind of smile," Nick said, covering his glance at the woman with a lie.

  Mordechai clipped out a laugh. "Oh, you'd better practice, then. It seemed more like a "hi, how're you doing' kind of smile."

  Nick's stomach sank. "I read about you in the paper the other day."

  Mordechai pulled a cheroot from somewhere in his blazer and lit it. "The other day? Hell, I haven't been in the paper for years."

  "It was written years ago. I just read it the other day."

  "Checking out my story, huh?"

  "Listen, I don't know why you chose to tell me this story, but I know you've told other people."

  Mordechai squinted and inhaled.

  "The cops know you as the crazy guy in the neighborhood who goes around telling stories about aliens or something like that."

  Mordechai puffed smoke into the air. "Only something like that. I get drunk once in a while, you know. At my age, I can say anything. As a drunk, I can say more. Nobody believes me, anyway, and sometimes you feel the need to tell somebody something about the truth. Nobody ever believes, though."

  "I don't blame them."

  "But you believe."

  Nick shook his head. "No."

  Mordechai stared intently at him. "You'd better believe. You don't want to go crazy denying it. You need to begin to deal with it now, before the Awakening."

  Nick finished his drink and ordered another. "I'm going to be nice about this and ask you just to stay away from me. I've had enough of your stories and half-baked ideas about this symbiont stuff and intelligent species."

  "Nick, you're making a mistake thinking I'm a nut. I'm not. I'm like you."

  Nick waved him off and took a sip from his new drink. "No, you're not. But I'm going to end up like you if I pay attention to this shit, so I'm not."

  Mordechai puffed on his cheroot for a moment. "The dreams are becoming more frequent?"

  "No."

  "Yes, there is something. You're afraid of something. It's getting closer."

  "No."

  Mordechai lifted his glass and took several deep gulps until the glass was half empty. Nick looked past him at the woman who had smiled at him earlier. She was staring at him with her brows knitted together, looking as if she were wondering what he and Mordechai could be talking about. She smiled brightly when she caught Nick's gaze and mouthed "hello" to him. Nick responded by rolling his eyes at Mordechai and she mimed a small laugh.

  "Nick, you need to be careful, now. During the Awakening everything can go haywire, especially if you don't understand it and don't work to control it. You can't fight it. You can't beat it. If you don't know where it's guiding you and you resist too fiercely there's no knowing what will happen," Mordechai said.

  Nick excused himself and went to the rest room. When he returned, Mordechai was gone from the bar and Cap was sitting at the bar next to the girl with the medium-length auburn hair with whom Nick had been flirting. Nick sat down and picked up his drink.

  "Nick, man, what's up?" Cap said.

  Nick shook his head.

  "This is my brand new friend Kara," Cap said, motioning to the girl and making introductions.

  "You look familiar; have we met before?" Nick asked.

  Kara smiled and shook her head. "I don't think so."

  Nick shrugged.

  "Who was that guy you were talking to?" Kara asked, her eyes locking onto Nick's.

  "Just one of the regulars. He's quite a character."

  Kara shrugged. "Seemed like a weirdo from where I was sitting."

  "Yeah, he's that, too," Nick said, looking around the bar to see if Mordechai had reappeared. "He has a neat trick of disappearing, too."

  Kara took a sip from her drink and stared over the rim of her glass at Nick, her deep brown eyes penetrating his and causing a tightness somewhere deep inside Nick's chest. It was the look one gives someone from across a room when one wants to let another know of an instant physical attraction. Nick's stomach hollowed out for a moment and he tipped some beer into the vacuum.

  Hours later Nick was sitting on the side of his bed, the room spinning slowly counter-clockwise around him. Sarah was brushing her teeth down the hall. He could hear the water running in the bathroom and was wondering why the room was spinning clock-wise. There didn't seem to be a reason for it, unless it had to do with the Coriolis effect on swirling toilet water because of the hemisphere, but he couldn't decide which way the water swirled in the northern hemisphere and whether rooms would swirl similarly. Sarah walked into the room.

  "You're not going to be sick, are you?" she asked.

  Nick shook his head.

  "You know, getting drunk all the time isn't going to stop your nightmares."

  Nick looked up at both of the Sarahs that stood in the doorway. They were wearing identical cream colored nightgowns which fell to the knee and accentuated their breasts and hips.

  "What're you talking about? We went to happy hour."

  "Hours."

  "Yeah," Nick said. He rubbed his forehead hoping to clear his mind.

  "Nick...Nick, you're not under that much stress that you have to drink every night."

  "I'm not, am I?"

  The two Sarahs walked around the end of the bed and sat down on their side. For a moment they merged and then separated into a Siamese twin joined at the shoulder.

  "Maybe we need to take a vacation and get away from here for a while. We haven't taken any time off from work in seven or eight months. It might be time."

  Nick shook his head and jumbled the two Sarahs into the corners of the room. "Can't. I've got to finish the first version of my story by next Friday. John wants to see where it's going."

  Sarahs shrugged. "It doesn't have to be right away, but soon. Maybe you can get sometime off when you're done with this story, maybe just a few days, but I think we need to get away from this. You're letting everything get to you and it's wrecking you."

  Nick sniffed out a laugh. "Hey, maybe we could take the week of my thirtieth birthday off. It's only a few weeks away," Nick said as he lay back down on the bed and pulled the sheets up over his body. "That way, we could go out and get really drunk the night of my birthday."

  Nick closed his eyes and was out.

  TWENTY-FOUR