Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [50]
“Okay now, if you won’t let me call anybody, maybe I can—hey, you asleep?” Approaching tentatively, knowing that she had already broken every rule for sensible behavior by a single young female living alone in San Francisco, she touched the man’s back. He did not move. Drunk, stoned, or…?
Rolling him over, she saw the shuttered eyes, the motionless mouth. First she put a hand over his lips and then she put an ear to his chest and then she stood right back away from him and put both hands to her face. A little squeak of a smothered scream filtered out between her fingers.
“Omigod. Omigod. You said you’d be all right. You said there was nothing wrong.” As much as the thought of doing so terrified her, she knew she had to make sure. She couldn’t do anything more unless she was sure. Advancing as hesitantly as a lizard patrolling a branch, she approached the immobile form a second time, forcing herself to bend down to listen to the stranger’s silent chest, putting an ear close to his unmoving lips. What she found was unequivocal. No heartbeat, no movement of air.
A strange man was dead in her apartment. And she had only been trying to help. She ought to have ignored him, lying there gasping in the street. Turned away to pick up her mail. Why didn’t she? Why, why, why?
How could she cope with what had happened? How did anyone cope with something like this? She thought he had just been sick, just needed a few minutes of respite from the cold and indifference of the street. Now…
Whirling, looking around wildly, she snatched up her purse and fled from the apartment. Carol was out of town. She had a key, could use her friend’s place to get herself together. In the morning she could call to have someone come and take the body away. What could she have been thinking? But she hadn’t expected him to die.
She did not sleep much, and not very well. When she awoke she took a long, hot shower in Carol’s sunlight-washed, plant-filled bathroom. Dressing, she moved to pick up the phone, and hesitated.
No. She ought to be in her place when the ambulance and the police came. They would want to ask questions. There was no avoiding it.
As she gingerly pushed open the still-unlocked door to her apartment, a strange sound greeted her. No, not strange, she corrected herself. Unexpected. A distinctive crackling, popping noise. It came from the vicinity of the kitchen. Automatically she looked in that direction, but could see nothing. Her gaze swiveled left.
The couch was empty.
Carol, she decided, her head pounding. Carol had come home in the night, found the door to her friend’s place standing ajar, gone inside, discovered everything, and in her firm, efficient way had Taken Care of Things, leaving Marjorie to sleep off the misadventure in her good friend’s bed. Carol was in the kitchen now, making breakfast, waiting for an explanation. Deserving one, too. Feeling better, Marjorie headed purposefully toward the kitchen, with its reinvigorating view over the rooftops of the city, already preparing in her mind the rationalization she intended to offer to her friend.
A man was standing there, frying bacon and eggs. A half-familiar face. A dead man, wearing one of her bathrobes. Crazily, she noted that it was too short for him.
“Oh, good morning.” He smiled at her. He had a very agreeable smile, set in a passably handsome face. She fainted.
When she regained consciousness, the first thing she did was apologize. She did so without thinking, because concern for the feelings of others was such an integral part of her. “I’m sorry. I’ve never done that before.” The second thing she did, as soon as she realized where she was lying, was to get off