Chapter One
Clay's attention was attracted by the tinkle of an ice
cream truck. It was parked across from the Four Seasons
Hotel (which was even grander than the Copley Square) and
next to the Boston Common, which ran along Boylston for
two or three blocks on this side of the street. The words
mister softee were printed in rainbow colors over a pair
of dancing ice cream cones. Three kids were clustered
around the window, bookbags at their feet, waiting to
receive goodies. Behind them stood a woman in a pants suit
with a poodle on a leash and a couple of teenage girls in
lowrider jeans with iPods and earphones that were
currently slung around their necks so they could murmur
together - earnestly, no giggles.
Clay stood behind them, turning what had been a little
group into a short line. He had bought his estranged wife
a present; he would stop at Comix Supreme on the way home
and buy his son the new issue of Spider-Man; he might as
well treat himself, as well. He was bursting to tell
Sharon his news, but she'd be out of reach until she got
home, three forty-five or so. He thought he would hang
around the Inn at least until he talked to her, mostly
pacing the confines of his small room and looking at his
latched-up portfolio. In the meantime, Mister Softee made
an acceptable diversion.
The guy in the truck served the three kids at the window,
two Dilly Bars and a monster chocolate-and-vanilla swirl
sof'-serve cone for the big spender in the middle, who was
apparently paying for all of them. While he fumbled a
rat's nest of dollar bills from the pocket of his
fashionably baggy jeans, the woman with the poodle and the
power suit dipped into her shoulder bag, came out with her
cell phone - women in power suits would no more leave home
without their cell phones than without their AmEx cards -
and flipped it open. Behind them, in the park, a dog
barked and someone shouted. It did not sound to Clay like
a happy shout, but when he looked over his shoulder all he
could see were a few strollers, a dog trotting with a
Frisbee in its mouth (weren't they supposed to be on
leashes in there, he wondered), acres of sunny green and
inviting shade. It looked like a good place for a man who
had just sold his first graphic novel - and its sequel,
both for an amazing amount of money - to sit and eat a
chocolate ice cream cone.
When he looked back, the three kids in the baggies were
gone and the woman in the power suit was ordering a
sundae. One of the two girls behind her had a peppermint-
colored phone clipped to her hip, and the woman in the
power suit had hers screwed into her ear. Clay thought, as
he almost always did on one level of his mind or another
when he saw a variation of this behavior, that he was
watching an act which would once have been considered
almost insufferably rude - yes, even while engaging in a
small bit of commerce with a total stranger - becoming a
part of accepted everyday behavior.
Put it in Dark Wanderer, sweetheart, Sharon said. The
version of her he kept in his mind spoke often and was
bound to have her say. This was true of the real-world
Sharon as well, separation or no separation. Although not
on his cell phone. Clay didn't own one.
The peppermint-colored phone played the opening notes of
that Crazy Frog tune that Johnny loved - was it
called "Axel F"? Clay couldn't remember, perhaps because
he had blocked it out. The girl to whom the phone belonged
snatched it off her hip and said, "Beth?" She listened,
smiled, then said to her companion, "It's Beth." Now the
other girl bent forward and they both listened, nearly
identical pixie haircuts (to Clay they looked almost like
Saturday-morning cartoon characters, the Powerpuff Girls,
maybe) blowing together in the afternoon breeze.
"Maddy?" said the woman in the power suit at almost
exactly the same time. Her poodle was now sitting
contemplatively at the end of its leash (the leash was
red, and dusted with glittery stuff), looking at the
traffic on Boylston Street. Across the way, at the Four
Seasons, a doorman in a brown uniform - they always seemed
to be brown or blue - was waving, probably for a taxi. A
Duck Boat crammed with tourists sailed by, looking high
and out of place on dry land, the driver bawling into his
loudhailer about something historic. The two girls
listening to the peppermint-colored phone looked at each
other and smiled at something they were hearing, but still
did not giggle.
"Maddy? Can you hear me? Can you -"
The woman in the power suit raised the hand holding the
leash and plugged a long-nailed finger into her free ear.
Clay winced, fearing for her eardrum. He imagined drawing
her: the dog on the leash, the power suit, the fashionably
short hair ... and one small trickle of blood from around
the finger in her ear. The Duck Boat just exiting the
frame and the doorman in the background, those things
somehow lending the sketch its verisimilitude. They would;
it was just a thing you knew.
"Maddy, you're breaking up! I just wanted to tell you I
got my hair done at that new ... my hair? ... MY ..."
The guy in the Mister Softee truck bent down and held out
a sundae cup. From it rose a white Alp with chocolate and
strawberry sauce coursing down its sides. His beard-
stubbly face was impassive. It said he'd seen it all
before. Clay was sure he had, most of it twice. In the
park, someone screamed. Clay looked over his shoulder
again, telling himself that had to be a scream of joy. At
three o'clock in the afternoon, a sunny afternoon on the
Boston Common, it pretty much had to be a scream of joy.
Right?
The woman said something unintelligible to Maddy and
flipped her cell phone closed with a practiced flip of the
wrist. She dropped it back into her purse, then just stood
there, as if she had forgotten what she was doing or maybe
even where she was.
"That's four-fifty," said the Mister Softee guy, still
patiently holding out the ice cream sundae. Clay had time
to think how fucking expensive everything was in the city.
Perhaps the woman in the power suit thought so, too -
that, at least, was his first surmise - because for a
moment more she still did nothing, merely looked at the
cup with its mound of ice cream and sliding sauce as if
she had never seen such a thing before.
Then there came another cry from the Common, not a human
one this time but something between a surprised yelp and a
hurt yowl. Clay turned to look and saw the dog that had
been trotting with the Frisbee in its mouth. It was a good-
sized brown dog, maybe a Labrador, he didn't really know
dogs, when he needed to draw one he got a book and copied
a picture. A man in a business suit was down on his knees
beside this one and had it in a necklock and appeared to
be - surely I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing, Clay
thought - chewing on its ear. Then the dog howled again
and tried to spurt away. The man in the business suit held
it firm, and yes, that was the dog's ear in the man's
mouth, and as Clay continued to watch, the man tore it off
the side of the dog's head. This time the dog uttered an
almost human scream, and a number of ducks which had been
floating on a nearby pond took flight, squawking.
"Rast!" someone cried from behind Clay. It sounded like
rast. It might have been rat or roast, but later
experience made him lean toward rast: not a word at all
but merely an inarticulate sound of aggression.
He turned back toward the ice cream truck in time to see
Power Suit Woman lunge through the serving window in an
effort to grab Mister Softee Guy. She managed to snag the
loose folds at the front of his white tunic, but his
single startle-step backward was enough to break her hold.
Her high heels briefly left the sidewalk, and he heard the
rasp of cloth and the clink of buttons as the front of her
jacket ran first up the little jut of the serving window's
counter and then back down. The sundae tumbled from view.
Clay saw a smear of ice cream and sauce on Power Suit
Woman's left wrist and forearm as her high heels clacked
back to the sidewalk. She staggered, knees bent. The
closed-off, well-bred, out-in-public look on her face -
what Clay thought of as your basic on-the-street-no-face
look - had been replaced by a convulsive snarl that shrank
her eyes to slits and exposed both sets of teeth. Her
upper lip had turned completely inside out, revealing a
pink velvet lining as intimate as a vulva. Her poodle ran
into the street, trailing its red leash with the hand-loop
in the end. A black limo came along and ran the poodle
down before it got halfway across. Fluff at one moment;
guts at the next.
Poor damn thing was probably yapping in doggy heaven
before it knew it was dead, Clay thought. He understood in
some clinical way he was in shock, but that in no way
changed the depth of his amazement. He stood there with
his portfolio hanging from one hand and his brown shopping
bag hanging from the other and his mouth hanging open.
Somewhere - it sounded like maybe around the corner on
Newbury Street - something exploded.
The two girls had exactly the same haircut above their
iPod headphones, but the one with the peppermint-colored
cell phone was blond and her friend was brunette; they
were Pixie Light and Pixie Dark. Now Pixie Light dropped
her phone on the sidewalk, where it shattered, and seized
Power Suit Woman around the waist. Clay assumed (so far as
he was capable of assuming anything in those moments) that
she meant to restrain Power Suit Woman either from going
after Mister Softee Guy again or from running into the
street after her dog. There was even a part of his mind
that applauded the girl's presence of mind. Her friend,
Pixie Dark, was backing away from the whole deal, small
white hands clasped between her breasts, eyes wide.
Clay dropped his own items, one on each side, and stepped
forward to help Pixie Light. On the other side of the
street - he saw this only in his peripheral vision - a car
swerved and bolted across the sidewalk in front of the
Four Seasons, causing the doorman to dart out of the way.
There were screams from the hotel's forecourt. And before
Clay could begin helping Pixie Light with Power Suit
Woman, Pixie Light had darted her pretty little face
forward with snakelike speed, bared her undoubtedly strong
young teeth, and battened on Power Suit Woman's neck.
There was an enormous jet of blood. The pixie-girl stuck
her face in it, appeared to bathe in it, perhaps even
drank from it (Clay was almost sure she did), then shook
Power Suit Woman back and forth like a doll. The woman was
taller and had to outweigh the girl by at least forty
pounds, but the girl shook her hard enough to make the
woman's head flop back and forth and send more blood
flying. At the same time the girl cocked her own blood-
smeared face up to the bright blue October sky and howled
in what sounded like triumph.
She's mad, Clay thought. Totally mad.
Pixie Dark cried out, "Who are you? What's happening?"
At the sound of her friend's voice, Pixie Light whipped
her bloody head around. Blood dripped from the short
dagger-points of hair overhanging her forehead. Eyes like
white lamps peered from blood-dappled sockets.
Pixie Dark looked at Clay, her eyes wide. "Who are you?"
she repeated ... and then: "Who am I?"
Pixie Light dropped Power Suit Woman, who collapsed to the
sidewalk with her chewed-open carotid artery still
spurting, then leaped at the girl with whom she had been
chummily sharing a phone only a few moments before.
Clay didn't think. If he had thought, Pixie Dark might
have had her throat opened like the woman in the power
suit. He didn't even look. He simply reached down and to
his right, seized the top of the small treasures shopping
bag, and swung it at the back of Pixie Light's head as she
leaped at her erstwhile friend with her outstretched hands
making claw-fish against the blue sky. If he missed -
He didn't miss, or even hit the girl a glancing blow. The
glass paperweight inside the bag struck the back of Pixie
Light's head dead-on, making a muffled thunk. Pixie Light
dropped her hands, one bloodstained, one still clean, and
fell to the sidewalk at her friend's feet like a sack of
mail.
"What the hell?" Mister Softee Guy cried. His voice was
improbably high. Maybe shock had given him that high
tenor.
"I don't know," Clay said. His heart was hammering. "Help
me quick. This other one's bleeding to death."
From behind them, on Newbury Street, came the unmistakable
hollow bang-and-jingle of a car crash, followed by
screams. The screams were followed by another explosion,
this one louder, concussive, hammering the day. Behind the
Mister Softee truck, another car swerved across three
lanes of Boylston Street and into the courtyard of the
Four Seasons, mowing down a couple of pedestrians and then
plowing into the back of the previous car, which had
finished with its nose crumpled into the revolving doors.
This second crash shoved the first car farther into the
revolving doors, bending them askew. Clay couldn't see if
anyone was trapped in there - clouds of steam were rising
from the first car's breached radiator - but the agonized
shrieks from the shadows suggested bad things. Very bad.
Mister Softee Guy, blind on that side, was leaning out his
serving window and staring at Clay. "What's going on over
there?"
"I don't know. Couple of car wrecks. People hurt. Never
mind. Help me, man." He knelt beside Power Suit Woman in
the blood and the shattered remnants of Pixie Light's pink
cell phone. Power Suit Woman's twitches had now become
weak, indeed.
"Smoke from over on Newbury," observed Mister Softee Guy,
still not emerging from the relative safety of his ice
cream wagon. "Something blew up over there. I mean
bigtime. Maybe it's terrorists."
As soon as the word was out of his mouth, Clay was sure he
was right. "Help me."
"WHO AM I?" Pixie Dark suddenly screamed.
Clay had forgotten all about her. He looked up in time to
see the girl smack herself in the forehead with the heel
of her hand, then turn around rapidly three times,
standing almost on the toes of her tennies to do it. The
sight called up a memory of some poem he'd read in a
college lit class - Weave a circle round him thrice.
Coleridge, wasn't it? She staggered, then ran rapidly down
the sidewalk and directly into a lamppost. She made no
attempt to avoid it or even put up her hands. She struck
it face-first, rebounded, staggered, then went at it
again.
"Stop that!" Clay roared. He shot to his feet, started to
run toward her, slipped in Power Suit Woman's blood,
almost fell, got going again, tripped on Pixie Light, and
almost fell again.
Pixie Dark looked around at him. Her nose was broken and
gushing blood down her lower face. A vertical contusion
was puffing up on her brow, rising like a thunderhead on a
summer day. One of her eyes had gone crooked in its
socket. She opened her mouth, exposing a ruin of what had
probably been expensive orthodontic work, and laughed at
him. He never forgot it.
Then she ran away down the sidewalk, screaming.
Behind him, a motor started up and amplified bells began
tinkling out the Sesame Street theme. Clay turned and saw
the Mister Softee truck pulling rapidly away from the curb
just as, from the top floor of the hotel across the way, a
window shattered in a bright spray of glass. A body
hurtled out into the October day. It fell to the sidewalk,
where it more or less exploded. More screams from the
forecourt. Screams of horror; screams of pain.
"No!" Clay yelled, running alongside the Mister Softee
truck. "No, come back and help me! I need some help here,
you sonofabitch!"
No answer from Mister Softee Guy, who maybe couldn't hear
over his amplified music. Clay could remember the words
from the days when he'd had no reason not to believe his
marriage wouldn't last forever. In those days Johnny
watched Sesame Street every day, sitting in his little
blue chair with his sippy cup clutched in his hands.
Something about a sunny day, keepin' the clouds away.
A man in a business suit came running out of the park,
roaring wordless sounds at the top of his lungs, his
coattails flapping behind him. Clay recognized him by his
dogfur goatee. The man ran into Boylston Street. Cars
swerved around him, barely missing him. He ran on to the
other side, still roaring and waving his hands at the sky.
He disappeared into the shadows beneath the canopy of the
Four Seasons forecourt and was lost to view, but he must
have gotten up to more dickens immediately, because a
fresh volley of screams broke out over there.