CHAPTER TWENTY-SIx

THAT'S ONE

awoke suddenly, and found that he was behind the steering of his cab.

He slapped himself awake, and then downed a to make sure he wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel again any time It was 4 a.m." and he was driving on the Upper West Side without for fares. Without destination.

He just needed to clear his The early morning was good for that, not much traffic, at least side streets, half the city was a graveyard of enormous buildings,

wind, the occasional hooker, and other cabs; streetlights so white washed out the colors of the markets and apartments and bars they He would avoid the Village which was the convenience store of town, open all night; he would drive around the park, through the park, enjoying the silent darkness, the sound of his wheels on the road, his engine muttering to itself, the voices of invisible drivers on the radio. He remembered Paula. Did I kill her?

The thought of Paula, lying there on his bed. He Winced, flashes of the night coming back to him. Why had he done it? What had possessed him? Why had she toyed with him like that? Hadn't enough already happened? Wasn't his torture complete?

He patted the cigar box that doubled as his spare The sound of coins tinkling against metal comforted him. The is a good offense, he thought, remembering a cheer from his football days.

The dream had begun without too many bumps, even lying right there.

Just like a damp skin spread out to his bedroom, the pictures on the wall, the lovely woman in

All right, he had thought, In going to sit back and enjoy trusty sleep researcher with me, got my human walls watchin got the entire city of New York just a scream away canyons made Nothing's going to get to me, nothing's going to be too bizarre.

He thought stupidly and superstitiously he could kee from his dreams if he brought the dreams out into the open, them known so he wouldn't just sit and go crazy inside his own was just something in his brain replaying pictures, spiced up dreams of his own. It was like television. Just pictures. Paula about the dreams that dealt exclusively with Wendy; able to, as if he didn't know the right language for it. So he'c that on those days he had no waking dreams whatsoever.

The clear blue eyes of a born liar, just like people used to say Wendy came to him, she was as beautiful as he remembered, tempting. She came in a dry wind, her hair blown back away forehead, her eyes intelligent and bright, her shoulders slung such a way that meant confidence, her chin thrust forward, her set in a half-smile--she knew that she would get what she "YOu have what it takes, "she said. "You belong to me, ", she said. "Come, now, "she said.

"There is much to be done, " she said.

And each time she came to him, he wanted her badly; he recapture something from his adolescence, a feeling of connection with something big, as if with her he had been the wiring of eternity. He'd been running on low voltage ever

watched Paula fall asleep uso tenderly, with her hands cupped beside her cheek, her adult personality exhaled with each breath, and left behind was this little girl, innocent to the darker existence. She studied sleep patterns and dreams as if there were for things like this, as if there were some chemical or some therapy could reach inside him and kill the waking dreams and let him normally again. To live in such a blissful state and to not see this g across the room, to not see an apartment full of papers books and bottles and pictures suddenly peel back, and another bleed through: a country of yellow skies and brown hills.

she was there, she was laughing at him, she was telling him what was going to do with these women with whom he slept. "Just bones inside a sack of skin, we will tear them, yau and I, we will those bones out through their cunts," Wendy sat there, near him. He to see through her, through the curtain she'd drawn over his

But he could not. She sat there covered with crawling red she was beautiful and she was terrifying, and the ants crawled her mouth when she laughed.

"What do you want from me?"

But before she could answer him, he pushed her backwards so that almost fell (and still she was laughing as fire ants poured from her and nostrils) and then he hit her.

As he hit her, she screamed, but her mouth was laughing at him, he looked at his arm when he felt a stinging pain there: several fire ants had leapt onto him and the back of his hand was burning. "What are you doing to me?"

"Charlie?" Wendy asked, but her mouth was laughing as the red ants began digging into her neck along the ring of small scars she had.

Charlie?

Wendy was laughing even as her head began to open up, tearing skin in that ring around her neck where the ants were busily working, prying up bits of flesh in their elongated mandibles, and as Wendy's head fell completely backwards clinging to her body by a thin bridge of skin and several dozen red ants, something began blood gurgling stump of her neck.

"Charlie?"

"Paula?" He asked, and the animal's head was Wendy's neck. It had along square snout, its lips curled back: its eyes milky red.

Something behind it.

"Charlie?"

Charlie Urquart thought he saw Paula Quinn, holding up to defend herself from him, but he wasn't sure it was her.

the dream end?) and he had to make sure the thing that was : from Wendy Swan's innards was not what he thought it was "

so he grabbed the headless corpse, ants and all, and began When it started screaming he threw the woman's yellow sky and it struck against the Virgin Mary, who baby from the blow. The baby she held in her hands began and the Virgin Mary undid her robe and offered her her little one could nurse, and somewhere behinc

Quinn lay very still.

Charlie Urquart had been about to break through the waking about to come back to his senses, back to his apartment; sure he didn't harm Paula the way he'd hurt the old man at 33a And when Charlie called out to Paula through his out of his mouth was halfway between a word and a howl.

Did I kill her? Charlie wondered as he pulled his cab over curb near Columbus Circle.

The air outside was cold and biting. Two young people front of the cab, clinging to each other, their faces bright and they'd been to a party, or they were newly in love, or they were on

, meet friends. Charlie listened to the static on his radio, and the g voices of other drivers getting their assignments. His like a musty closet. He lit a cigarette using the car lighter, its circular orange glow, remembering his father's use for the (That's three') and the subsequent burns on his arm above the "That'll teach you to keep j%m resetting my radio, " his father said, a map of tiny red blood vessels, his eyes blue like Charlie's own, his curled slightly in that eternal what have I done to deserve a kid this/ook. And that long-suffering tone of voice, as if a father had to his son lessons like this one--as the car lighter engraved a circle in his son was ever going to amount to anything.

Yeah, Pop, I'vegonefar in life, now In beating up on people Charlie his fingers on the steering wheel as he sucked on the cigarette, the hot tickling feeling of the smoke as it went down the back ; throat to his lungs. He thought of opening up the cigar box that 'on the seat beside him: it was his place for keeping valuables while there was never enough money in there for anyone to bother And if worse ever comes to worse .... Why the hell does my mind always return to Wendy Swan?

Then the dream came, like an extra set of eyelids coming down, she was there.

Wendy.

Her body was clothed in skins.

Human skin.

Wrapped tight like a straitjacket at her shoulders, across her waist, barely covering her upper thighs; the skin of human hands hung down like tassles along her pubic area; faces torn off their skulls leered from her breasts. In her clenched fists she held writhing rattlesnakes, twisting backwards to bite themselves.

Her beauty was cruel and unforgiving.

Then, as he gazed at the skins she wore, studying their patterns, he began discerning the images they held as if they were tattoos, and the

images became the former possessors of the skins. Her l with their faces screaming, faces of people he knew, faces of sent to hell by her.

And there, along her ribs, was his face: Charlie Urquart young and handsome, like a young stallion before the race Charlie Urquart, his blue eyes bright, his jaws stretched so far looked as if they would split through the skin.

Screaming louder than the rest, the voice higher and more than he remembered.

And then Charlie moved toward her, as they all cried out and remorse for what they had done, for the sin they had

Charlie's teenaged image shouted obscenities at him, struck at his arms as he reached up and began strangling her; deep punctures from the snakes; the faces she wore began he pressed his body to hers; the faces chewed his flesh; too as his hands closed tighter around her neck, but her what he expected, it was gruffer, deeper, and then her head and shimmered.

His own body was changing, too, it was all that chewing were doing, and the snake bites, it was changing him, his skin was white and tough like leather, his shoulders began to hunch hands as they closed around her neck became curled and sudden arthritis, as his fingernails grew longer, slicing heard and felt the pain as his spinal cord cracked like a whip.

The dream ended, and Charlie Urquart was still in cab. Stopped at a light.

But Paula.

How could he do something like that to her? How knowingly let her that close to him? Of course, Wendy would way to destroy him, and this had been it. She had sent his soul to that he was sure of, and his body and mind were now hers. Howl ever think I could get away from her?

"You on call or something?"

looked in his rearview mirror. An overweight middle aged man suit was scooting into the backseat. Charlie did a double-take: the guy's not a mugger. Nobody wearing a suit is gonna do anything other maybe stab you in the back as Pop used to say in his more lucid moments.

"You hear me?" The man asked.

"Yeah, I heard you. It's kind of late is all, I didn't expect a fare this of night."

"I need to get to 33rd and 3rd."

Excuse me?"

33rd and 3rd, is there a problem?"

aNo."

Charlie started his cab up, making a U-turn, "No problem, that seems to be a popular spot these days."

"Your meter running?"

Charlie flipped the meter on. "Yeah."

"I'm glad I found you."

"This time of night, like I said, you're lucky."

"No, I mean I'm glad I found you."

Charlie didn't quite understand, and glanced again in the rearview His father sat there. Of course it was his father, the suit was one of father's sweat stained gray suits that no one in their right mind on t in California would wear---except Charles "Gib" Urquart, II. The head was bashed in, as if with a hammer. It was a hammer, Charlie remembered. Charlie kept driving.

"So she can do this without even warning me."

"I don't get you, son."

"She can make me dream without my even knowing it. How much of any of this is a dream?"

"Life," his father said pulling a stogie out of his breast pocket, "is but a dream. Charles, would you mind reaching over and punching in the lighter? I need something to set the home fires burning."

"Why don't you pull over so we can talk?"

"No fucking way, Pop, I'm going to keep driving. iF i stop going to happen, and it probably won't be good."

"The years haven't exactly brought wisdom, have they?"

"Sure, Pop." Charlie laughed as soon as he said this. talking to a dead man."

"Nothing dies, Charles, we're living in the asshole as we speak. Big wheel just keep on toinin'. I guess punch that lighter in for me."

"I learned my lesson on that."

"I taught you well. But I think it's time for one final

"Do dreams kill people?" Then Charlie, in the crazy moment, thought: Dreams don't kill people. People kill people. "Maybe it would be more to the point to ask, is this a

"Look, why don't we just get to the point. She's not me alone until I'm dead, right.

"You never listen."

"Pop?"

"That's one."