Dreams Underfoot Page 3

  Ellen looked up and caught his gaze. A smile touched her lips. “The cook must be in a good mood,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’ve heard that the worse mood he’s in, the hotter he makes his sauces.”

  Reece tried to give her back a smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted a beer, but they wouldn’t serve him here because he was underage. He found himself wishing Ellen wasn’t so much older than him, that he didn’t look like such a freak sitting here with her. For the first time since he’d done his hair, he was embarrassed about the way he looked. He wanted to enjoy just sitting here with her instead of knowing that everyone was looking at him like he was some kind of geek.

  “You okay?” Ellen asked.

  “Yeah. Sure. Great food.”

  He pushed the remainder of his rice around on the plate with his fork. Yeah, he had no problems. Just no place to go, no place to fit in. Body aching from last night’s beating. Woman sitting there across from him, looking tasty, but she was too old for him and there was something in her eyes that scared him a little. Not to mention a nightmare booger dogging his footsteps. Sure. Things were just rocking, mama.

  He stole another glance at her, but she was looking away, out to the darkening street, wine glass raised to her mouth.

  “That book your friend wrote,” he said.

  Her gaze shifted to his face and she put her glass down.

  “It doesn’t have anything like my booger in it,” Reece continued. “I mean, it’s got some ugly stuff, but nothing just like the booger.”

  “No,” Ellen replied. “But it’s got to work the same way. We can see it because we believe it’s there.”

  “So was it always there and we’re just aware of it now? Or does it exist because we believe in it? Is it something that came out of us—out of me?”

  “Like Uncle Dobbin’s birds, you mean?”

  Reece nodded, unaware of the flutter of dark wings that Ellen felt stir inside her.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  * * *

  “Uncle Dobbin’s Parrot Fair” was the last story in Christy Riddell’s book, the title coming from the name of the pet shop that Timothy James Dobbin owned in Santa Ana. It was a gathering place for every kind of bird, tame as well as wild. There were finches in cages, and parrots with the run of the shop, not to mention everything from sparrows to crows and gulls crowding around outside.

  In the story, T.J. Dobbin was a retired sailor with an interest in nineteenth century poets, an old bearded tar with grizzled red hair and beetling brows who wore baggy blue cotton trousers and a white T-shirt as he worked in his store, cleaning the bird cages, feeding the parakeets, teaching the parrots words. Everybody called him Uncle Dobbin.

  He had a sixteen-year-old assistant named Nori Wert who helped out on weekends. She had short blond hair and a deep tan that she started working on as soon as school was out. To set it off she invariably wore white shorts and a tank top. The only thing she liked better than the beach were the birds in Uncle Dobbin’s shop, and that was because she knew their secret.

  She didn’t find out about them right away. It took a year or so of coming in and hanging around the shop, and then another three weekends of working there, before she finally approached Uncle Dobbin with what had been bothering her.

  “I’ve been wondering,” she said as she sat down on the edge of his cluttered desk at the back of the store. She fingered the world globe beside the blotter and gave it a desultory spin.

  Uncle Dobbin raised his brow questioningly and continued to fill his pipe.

  “It’s the birds,” she said. “We never sell any—at least not since I’ve started working here. People come in and they look around, but no one asks the price of anything, no one ever buys anything. I guess you could do most of your business during the week, but then why did you hire me?”

  Uncle Dobbin looked down into the bowl of his pipe to make sure the tobacco was tamped properly. “Because you like birds,” he said before he lit a match. Smoke wreathed up toward the ceiling. A bright green parrot gave a squawk from where it was roosting nearby and turned its back on them.

  “But you don’t sell any of them, do you?” Being curious, she’d poked through his file cabinet to look at invoices and sales receipts to find that all he ever bought was bird food and cages and the like, and he never sold a thing. At least no sales were recorded.

  “Can’t sell them.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re not mine to sell.”

  Nori sighed. “Then whose are they?”

  “Better you should ask what are they.”

  “Okay,” Nori said, giving him an odd look. “I’ll bite. What are they?”

  “Magic.”

  Nori studied him for a moment and he returned her gaze steadily, giving no indication that he was teasing her. He puffed on his pipe, a serious look in his eyes, then took the pipe stem from his mouth. Setting the pipe carefully on the desk so that it wouldn’t tip over, he leaned forward in his chair.

  “People have magic,” he said, “but most of them don’t want it, or don’t believe in it, or did once, but then forgot. So I take that magic and make it into birds until they want it back, or someone else can use it.”

  “Magic.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not birds.”

  Uncle Dobbin nodded.

  “That’s crazy,” Nori said.

  “Is it?”

  He got up stiffly from his chair and stood in front of her with his hands outstretched toward her chest. Nori shrank back from him, figuring he’d flaked out and was going to cop a quick feel, but his hands paused just a few inches from her breasts. She felt a sudden pain inside—like a stitch in her side from running too hard, only it was deep in her chest. Right in her lungs. She looked down, eyes widening as a beak appeared, poking out of her chest, followed by a parrot’s head, its body and wings.

  It was like one of the holograms at the Haunted House in Disneyland, for she could see right through it, then it grew solid once it was fully emerged. The pain stopped as the bird fluttered free, but she felt an empty aching inside. Uncle Dobbin caught the bird and soothed it with a practiced touch before letting it fly free. Numbly, Nori watched it wing across the store and settle down near the front window where it began to preen its feathers. The sense of loss inside grew stronger.

  “That…it was in me…I…”

  Uncle Dobbin made his way back to his chair and sat down, picking up his pipe once more.

  “Magic,” he said before he lit it.

  “My…my magic…?”

  Uncle Dobbin nodded. “But not anymore. You didn’t believe.”

  “But I didn’t know!” she wailed.

  “You got to earn it back now,” Uncle Dobbin told her. “The side cages need cleaning.”

  Nori pressed her hands against her chest, then wrapped her arms around herself in a tight hug as though that would somehow ease the empty feeling inside her.

  “E-earn it?” she said in a small voice, her gaze going from his face to the parrot that had come out of her chest and was now sitting by the front window. “By…by working here?”

  Uncle Dobbin shook his head. “You already work here and I pay you for that, don’t I?”

  “But then how…?”

  “You’ve got to earn its trust. You’ve got to learn to believe in it again.”

  * * *

  Ellen shook her head softly. Learn to believe, she thought. I’ve always believed. But maybe never hard enough. She glanced at her companion, then out toward the street. It was almost completely dark now.

  “Let’s go walk on the beach,” she said.

  Reece nodded, following her outside after she’d paid the bill. The lemony smell of eucalyptus trees was strong in the air for a moment, then the stronger scent of the ocean winds stole it away.

  * * *

  6

  * * *

  They had the be
ach to themselves, though the pier was busy with strollers and people fishing. At the beach end of the long wooden structure, kids were hanging out, fooling around with bikes and skateboards. The soft boom of the tide drowned out the music of their ghetto blasters. The wind was cool with a salt tang as it came in from over the waves. In the distance, the oil rigs were lit up like Christmas trees.

  Ellen took off her shoes. Carrying them in her tote bag, she walked in the wet sand by the water’s edge. A raised lip of the beach hid the shorefront houses from their view as they walked south to the rocky spit that marked the beginning of the Naval Weapons Station.

  “It’s nice out here,” Reece said finally. They hadn’t spoken since leaving the restaurant.

  Ellen nodded. “A lot different from L.A.”

  “Two different worlds.”

  Ellen gave him a considering glance. Ever since this afternoon, the sullen tone had left his voice. She listened now as he spoke of his parents and how he couldn’t find a place for himself either in their world, or that of his peers.

  “You’re pretty down on the sixties,” she said when he was done.

  Reece shrugged. He was barefoot now, too, the waves coming up to lick the bottom of his jeans where the two of them stood at the water’s edge.

  “They had some good ideas—people like my parents,” he said, “but the way they want things to go…that only works if everyone agrees to live that way.”

  “That doesn’t invalidate the things they believe in.”

  “No. But what we’ve got to deal with is the real world, and you’ve got to take what you need if you want to survive in it.”

  Ellen sighed. “I suppose.”

  She looked back across the beach, but they were still alone. No one else out for a late walk across the sand. No booger. No Balloon Men. But something fluttered inside her, dark-winged. A longing as plain as what she heard in Reece’s voice, though she was looking for magic and he was just looking for a way to fit in.

  Hefting her tote bag, she tossed it onto the sand, out of the waves’ reach. Reece gave her a curious look, then averted his gaze as she stepped out of her skirt.

  “It’s okay,” she said, amused at his sudden sense of propriety. “I’m wearing my swimsuit.”

  By the time he turned back, her blouse and skirt had joined her tote bag on the beach and she was shaking loose her hair.

  “Coming in?” she asked.

  Reece simply stood and watched the sway of her hips as she headed for the water. Her swimsuit was white. In the poor light it was as though she wasn’t wearing anything, the swimsuit looking like untanned skin. She dove cleanly into a wave, head bobbing up pale in the dark water when she surfaced.

  “C’mon!” she called to him. “The water’s fine, once you get in.”

  Reece hesitated. He’d wanted to go in this afternoon, but hadn’t had the nerve to bare his white skinny limbs in front of a beach full of serious tanners. Well, there was no one to see him now, he thought as he stripped down to his underwear.

  The water hit him like a cold fist when he dove in after her and he came up gasping with shock. His body tingled, every pore stung alert. Ellen drifted farther out, riding the waves easily. As he waded out to join her, a swell rose up and tumbled him back to shore in a spill of floundering limbs that scraped him against the sand.

  “Either go under or over them,” Ellen advised him as he started back out.

  He wasn’t much of a swimmer, but the water wasn’t too deep except when a big wave came. He went under the next one and came up spluttering but pleased with himself for not getting thrown up against the beach again.

  “I love swimming at night,” Ellen said as they drifted together.

  Reece nodded. The water was surprisingly warm, too, once you were in it. You could lose all sense of time out here, just floating with the swells.

  “You do this a lot?” he asked.

  Ellen shook her head. “It’s not that good an idea to do this alone. If the undertow got you, it’d pull you right out and no one would know.”

  Reece laid his head back in the water and looked up at the sky. Though they were less than an hour by the freeway out of downtown L.A., the sky was completely different here. It didn’t have that glow from God-knows-how-many millions of lights. The stars seemed closer, too, or maybe it was that the sky seemed deeper.

  He glanced over at Ellen. Their reason for being out here was forgotten. He wished he had the nerve to just sort of sidle up to her and put his arms around her, hold her close. She’d feel all slippery, but she’d feel good.

  He paddled a little bit toward her, riding a swell up and then down again. The wave turned him slightly away from her. When he glanced back, he saw her staring wide-eyed at the shore. His gaze followed hers and then that cold he’d felt when he first entered the water returned in a numbing rush.

  The booger was here.

  It came snuffling over a rise in the beach, a squat dark shadow in the sand, greasy and slick as it beelined for their clothing. When it reached Ellen’s tote bag, it buried its face in her skirt and blouse, then proceeded to rip them to shreds. Ellen’s finger caught his arm in a frightened grip. A wave came up, lifting his feet from the bottom. He kicked out frantically, afraid he was going to drown with her holding on to him like that, but the wave tossed them both in toward the shore.

  The booger looked up, baring its barracuda teeth. The red coals of its eyes burned right into them both, pinning them there on the wet sand where the wave had left them. Leaving the ruin of Ellen’s belongings in torn shreds, it moved slowly toward them.

  “Re-Reece,” Ellen said. She was pressed close to him, shivering.

  Reece didn’t have the time to appreciate the contact of her skin against his. He wanted to say, this is what you were looking for, lady, but things weren’t so cut and dried now. Ellen wasn’t some nameless cipher anymore—just a part of a crowd that he could sneer at—and she wasn’t just something he had the hots for either. She was a person, just like him. An individual. Someone he could actually relate to.

  “Can—can’t you stop it?” Ellen cried.

  The booger was getting close now. Its sewer reek was strong enough to drown out the salty tang of the ocean. It was like something had died there on the beach and was now getting up and coming for them.

  Stop it? Reece thought. Maybe the thing had been created out of his frustrated anger, the way Ellen’s friend made out it could happen in that book of his, but Reece knew as sure as shit that he didn’t control the booger.

  Another wave came down upon them and Reece pushed at the sand so that it pulled them partway out from the shore on its way back out. Getting to his knees in the rimy water, he got in front of Ellen so that he was between her and the booger. Could the sucker swim?

  The booger hesitated at the water’s edge. It lifted its paws fastidiously from the wet sand like a cat crossing a damp lawn and relief went through Reece. When another wave came in, the booger backstepped quickly out of its reach.

  Ellen was leaning against him, face near his as she peered over his shoulder.

  “It can’t handle the water,” Reece said. He turned his face to hers when she didn’t say anything. Her clear eyes were open wide, gaze fixed on the booger. “Ellen…?” he began.

  “I can’t believe that it’s really there,” she said finally in a small voice.

  “But you’re the one—you said…” He drew a little away from her so that he could see her better.

  “I know what I said,” Ellen replied. She hugged herself, trembling at the stir of dark wings inside her. “It’s just…I wanted to believe, but…wanting to and having it be real…” There was a pressure in the center of her chest now, like something inside pushing to get out. “I…”

  The pain lanced sharp and sudden. She heard Reece gasp. Looking down, she saw what he had seen, a bird’s head poking gossamer from between her breasts. It was a dark smudge against the white of her swimsuit—not one of Uncle Dobbin’s pa
rrots, but a crow’s head, with eyes like the pair she’d seen looking back at her from the mirror. Her own magic, leaving her because she didn’t believe. Because she couldn’t believe, but—

  It didn’t make sense. She’d always believed. And now, with Reece’s booger standing there on the shore, how could she help but believe?

  The booger howled then, as though to underscore her thoughts. She looked to the shore and saw it stepping into the waves, crying out at the pain of the salt water on its flesh, but determined to get at them. To get at her. Reece’s magic, given life. While her own magic… She pressed at the half-formed crow coming from her chest, trying to force it back in.

  “I believe, I believe,” she muttered through clenched teeth. But just like Uncle Dobbin’s assistant in Christy’s story, she could feel that swelling ache of loss rise up in her. She turned despairing eyes to Reece.

  She didn’t need a light to see the horror in his eyes—horror at the booger’s approach, at the crow’s head sticking out of her chest. But he didn’t draw away from her. Instead, he reached out and caught hold of her shoulders.

  “Stop fighting it!” he cried.

  “But—“

  He shot a glance shoreward. They were bracing themselves against the waves, but a large swell had just caught the booger and sent it howling back to shore in a tumble of limbs.

  “It was your needing proof,” he said. “Your needing to see the booger, to know that it’s real—that’s what’s making you lose it. Stop trying so hard.”

  “I…”

  But she knew he was right. She pulled free of him and looked toward the shore where the booger was struggling to its feet. The creature made rattling sounds deep in its throat as it started out for them again. It was hard, hard to do, but she let her hands fall free. The pain in her chest was a fire, the aching loss building to a crescendo. But she closed herself to it, closed her eyes, willed herself to stand relaxed.