Morning at the House on Four Mile Creek
Sunlight fell on some of the creatures huddled in a corner in that house. It was like a salve, a healing potion. They had watched it creep across the floor toward them as morning started. They had known what it was, and that its very touch brought wonderful pleasure and warmth. But they didn't move to greet it. No one got up from the naked heap and moved across the floor to greet it. This would have taken heat away from the others and would have brought cold and pain to the individual who did it. Better to wait for the sunlight together, as one.
The sunlight touched a few of them at the feet, though not all of them; and when this happened, all groaned in pleasure because all could feel the sunlight through the ones that it touched.
He was still bent over, still had his hand on the butt of the gun. He could see the other man's eyes on him, and he could read no threat or danger in them. But the man was so odd with his talk of naked women and chocolate and stalkers. The man was crazy, sure, and crazy people did crazy things, unless they were stopped.
Erthmun said, "I don't have a gun. Did you believe that I had a gun?"
Marty said, "I want you just to leave, okay?"
"I'm cold," Erthmun told him.
Marty gripped the gun, straightened with it in his hand, but kept it pointed at the floor.
Erthmun said, "Would you shoot another human being?"
"I don't know if I ever would shoot anybody," Marty said.
"I'm another human being," Erthmun said. "I'm another human being," he repeated. "And I'm cold. I need to be here."
"I don't think you can stay in my delicatessen," Marty said; his words alone would have indicated uncertainty, but his tone was firm. "I have the gun and I don't know what I would do with it. I think that you should go to the hospital."
Erthmun pointed stiffly to indicate the street and the storm. He said, his voice quaking again, "Do you see that?"
"I see it," Marty said.
"If I leave here, that storm will kill me," Erthmun said.
Marty shook his head. "No. Not in this city. There are places for you to go. So I want you to leave and go to one of those places. Go to Penn Station. It's not far. It's warm. Go there."
Erthmun stared at the man for a long moment. These words went through Erthmun's head; What's happening to me? What do I know? Why am I here, in this city, in this restaurant? Why does that man have a gun in his hand? What does he want to do with it? What am I? What am I?
As quietly and as gracefully as a moth opening its wings, Helen had stepped out of the near-dark in the cellar of the brownstone on West 161st Street, and now she stood naked and incredible in the dim morning light, dark hair streaming down her back, her sky-blue eyes fixed on the homeless man above her, on the second floor, as if she were mentally weighing his worth to her. And he stared back in awe, because he knew that this was the incredible creature that had haunted him the previous evening.
Under other circumstances, the homeless man would have thought, "She's naked, she's a woman—she's vulnerable." But these were not such circumstances. This creature was no more vulnerable than the storm that still lashed the house. No more vulnerable than Death itself.
So he stared silently at her. His gaze did not move more than once from her eyes to her body, which was as exquisite as any female body he had seen.
And, still as if assessing his worth to her, she stared silently back. And after not too long, she bent quickly over the body of the homeless man's wife, ripped open the woman's gray wool jacket, tore at the blue sweater beneath, and the pink blouse beneath that, and shoved her hand far into the woman's stomach. Then she devoured what she pulled out of that stomach—the woman's small intestine, part of the woman's liver, a kidney—while the homeless man watched silently from above.
"Who the fuck moves that quickly?" Erthmun snarled. "Who?"
Marty's mouth was open and the nose of his own gun was stuck into it. Erthmun was holding the gun, and he had bent Marty backward over one of his stoves—which had not been lit. Erthmun was holding the neck of Marty's white shirt tightly in one hand.
A dollop of drool fell from Erthmun's mouth to Marty's neck, which caused Marty to make a little squeaking noise.
"What's that!" Erthmun demanded. "Did you say something to me?"
Marty shook his head a little. He did not want to annoy this man. Marty had seen him move at a speed at which no man should be able to move. He thought, upon awed reflection, that the man had even become invisible for a moment because he was moving so fast.
"Do you know this?" Erthmun snarled. "Do you know this?"
Again, Marty shook his head a little.
"Do you know this?" Erthmun repeated, and Marty got the fleeting impression that Erthmun had no idea that he was asking a question, that the words were simply an echo. Marty shook his head again. Another dollop of drool fell to his neck; he tried to ignore it.
Erthmun said, "I don't want to kill you. I don't want to kill you." Short pause. "But maybe I need to!"
"You don't!" Marty whispered.
"Maybe I do! How do you know what I have to do? How do you know what I'm compelled to do? You don't know me. Who knows me? You don't!"
Marty said nothing.
Erthmun cocked the gun. "Maybe I do want to kill you! Maybe there's no maybe at all about anything I do. I do what I do because I feel good when I do it. And so I do what I do to feel good, because it's part of being alive. Feeling good is part of being alive. I feel good. You feel good. We do what we do and we feel good. That makes sense. Doesn't that make sense?"
Nothing.
"Answer me, goddamnit! Answer me!"
"Yes," Marty whispered.
"Do you know me? How can you know me? Who knows me?"
Marty shook his head in terrified confusion.
Erthmun took the gun from the man's mouth, pointed it at the ceiling, fired, fired again, again. Marty's body lurched with each shot.
Erthmun tossed the gun far across the deli. He held his hand up, fingers wide, for Marty to see. "I don't need that," he said. "I have these!"