Hart & Boot & Other Stories Read online

  Zara began speaking her lines as she walked on stage: “Oh, misery! The things I’ve suffered! And you, my sweet children, you little shits, every time I look at you, I see your father!”

  ***

  The Furies arrived late, having gotten lost on their way to the address given in their letter of commission—they only found their way at all because a well-dressed, smoky-voiced woman they met on the street offered to show them the way. After they arrived, the Furies stood on the pavement outside the building for a moment, gazing without understanding up at the lighted marquee, the cars on the street, the people laughing on the sidewalks. Their lives had been a haze of bitterness, impatience, and plodding-along for years piled upon years, and even as they’d moved through the city these past decades, they hadn’t really seen their surroundings, living mostly in their memories and minds. Now they were marginally more conscious, able to converse, able to take in the contours of the modern world as more than a cascade of lights and noise. They huddled together before the glass doors briefly, taking strength from one another. It had been a long time since they’d gone forth on an errand of justice.

  A man in a wrinkled white shirt and a dark tie walked past them, muttering, then turned and walked back, pacing, his hands balled into fists. “Fucking bitch,” he said, “I’ll kill you, bitch, you can’t do this to me.” He didn’t notice the Furies, and they looked at one another knowingly. The man was a poison-sac about to burst. Perhaps, now that they were active again, they would have cause to punish him soon, if his rage led him to transgress against those bound to him by marriage or blood.

  “Inside, I suppose,” Alecto said, and led the other two through the glass doors, into a vast room with red velvet walls, beneath a dusty crystal chandelier. The people standing behind glass counters and leaning on walls didn’t notice the three of them at all, beyond slight headaches and sudden sweats.

  Alecto looked around, frowning. “I’ve just thought. That woman, who showed us the way—how could she see us?”

  “She didn’t see us,” Megaera snapped. “She saw three old ladies. What we need, the world provides. So it has always been. We needed direction, and she came.”

  “I’m just happy to be here,” Tisiphone said. She paused, peering at the columns painted gold, the domed ceiling decorated with carved cherubs, all the faded opulence.

  “Don’t be happy,” Megaera said. “We’ve been called, which can only mean blood, kin murdering kin, an affront to the gods, a cursed house. That shouldn’t make you happy.”

  “I think we’re old enough to be honest with ourselves,” Alecto said soothingly. “We’re all happy. I feel so... sharp tonight. Better than I have in ages.”

  “Hard work is good for the mind,” Megaera said. “We’ve been idle too long.”

  “Where is that woman who showed us the way?” Tisiphone said. “I meant to thank her.”

  “We thanked her by not scooping out her eyes when she looked upon us,” Megaera muttered.

  “She seemed... familiar to me, as I think of it,” Alecto said. She squinted around the lobby. “What is this place?”

  “I thought someone said it was a theater,” Tisiphone said, but she sounded unsure.

  “Nonsense,” Megaera said. “Theaters are outside.” She gestured vaguely. “There are always... goats about. We used to go to the theater, and it was nothing like this.”

  “We used to be in the theater,” Tisiphone said. “They used to have plays about us.”

  “Perhaps they will again, someday,” Alecto said. “Come. We must find the murderess.”

  The ladies heard a collective gasp, beyond a set of double doors. They hurried forward, and threw the doors open.

  A woman sat on a raised platform at the far end of the darkened room beyond, awash in a beam of white light. Gore clotted her hair, and blood streaked her arms. She cradled a pair of dead children, and stared up at the lights. She cried out: “Our children are dead! Surely that stings you!”

  The ladies looked at one another and nodded. It was just what the letter of commission had told them to expect—a mother who murdered her children, in public, for revenge.

  They linked arms. Their forms, the old-woman-shapes they’d worn for so long, rippled and fluttered, revealing blacker, more fundamental bodies beneath.

  The Furies surged toward the stage.

  ***

  During the penultimate scene, as Zara—as Medea—sat on stage with her dead children in her arms, everything went wrong. Zara was supposed to be under a single spotlight, but suddenly a dozen other stage lights came on, illuminating the blood-spattered wreckage of the suburban living-room set. She barely paused in her lines at first—the show must go on—but then the house lights came up, too, and she heard the keening from the back of the house, a high-pitched and strangely gleeful wail. The people in the audience should have turned around and looked back, craning their heads as Zara did to find the source of the noise, but they didn’t move. In fact, they didn’t move at all—they were perfectly still, even a man apparently just back from the bathroom, who hovered above his seat in the act of sitting down. Yet they weren’t frozen—they trembled, and shifted slightly. It was like the moment in an improv exercise when the director calls “Freeze” and everyone stops and holds whatever position they happen to be in.

  “What the fuck?” Zara said, and let go of the children. They slid down to the stage, still holding their curled-up-to-her positions. Something was coming down the aisle, toward the stage, something like a black sheet blowing in the wind.

  Zara stood up, and the Chorus stepped onto the stage, half from stage left, half from stage right. They arrayed themselves behind her in a semi-circle and said, “Poor woman, swept up by tragedy! Who will give you succor? You have been led into a forest of horrors.”

  The black shadow swooped up on stage, toward Zara, howling and laughing. Zara glimpsed shapes in the roiling blackness—wings, stones, coffins, eyes, talons, scorpions, whips, spears, flails. She brought her hands up before her face. A flash of pain seared her—the taste of glass and blood in her mouth, ball bearings in her bones, something with serrated teeth gnawing deep in her gut. She gasped, and doubled over—

  —and the pain passed, leaving only the bare hint of a memory behind. Zara lowered her hands to see three old women standing before her, dressed in stained housecoats. One of the women was regal, with the face of a queen; she looked stunned. Another was pinch-faced and hunched-over, and she glowered. The last had disheveled hair, and fluttering hands, and seemed on the verge of tears. “What... what happened?” this last one said.

  “Cast change,” said a smoky voice from the audience. It was Nikki, the talent scout, dressed in a black tailored suit, rising from her seat in the front row.

  “You showed us the way here,” said the regal old woman. “You gave us directions.”

  “Oh, I had a lot to do with bringing us all together.”

  “Somebody better start talking,” Zara said, crossing her arms. “You have absolutely fucked up my show, and there’d better be a good reason.”

  “Show?” said the pinch-faced woman.

  “Yes,” Nikki said, climbing the steps to the stage. “It’s a play, ladies. About Medea.”

  “I remember Medea,” the regal woman said. She looked at Zara. “This is no Medea.”

  “Very true,” Nikki said, looking down at the children. She nudged the boy in the ribs with the toe of her stylish low-heeled boot. “They are not dead, but only sleeping.”

  “But what—” the disheveled one began.

  The regal woman interrupted her. “I think I understand. We’re being... retired. You sent the letter of commission. We’ve been tricked.” She squinted. “And I think I know you. Daughter of chaos. Mother of death and sleep. Nyx.”

  “Nyx? The goddess of night shouldn’t be blonde,” the pinch-faced one said.

  “Why would you trick us?” the fluttering woman cried.

  Nikki snorted. “There was a time
when you couldn’t have been tricked, ladies.”

  “Okay, I’m out of here,” Zara said. “I clearly walked in on the movie halfway through. You can fight it out amongst yourselves. I’m going to get this blood off me, because it itches when it dries.”

  “Zara,” Nikki said, and it was a tone of voice Zara recognized—she’d used it herself, on Doug, during their sessions. “Stay.” It was a voice meant to be obeyed. Quite against her will, Zara found herself standing still. “These women are... the kindly ones, they were called sometimes. The solemn ones. The—”

  “The Furies?” Zara said. “The Erinyes? The terrible ones?” At Nikki’s look of surprise, Zara rolled her eyes. “I’m an actress, woman, remember? I’ve read the classics. Christ, I’m starring in motherfucking Medea, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oedipus was the mother-fucking one,” the disheveled old lady said, sounding pleased with herself. “Not Medea.”

  “Yes, well,” Nikki said, glancing at the ladies, then turning her attention back to Zara. “The Furies are a force for vengeance. They punish those who kill their relatives. They saw you on stage, and thought you’d murdered your children, and tried to punish you. I imagine you felt the leading edge of that, hmm? But you didn’t kill your children. By attempting to punish you unjustly, these kind ladies committed a serious transgression. By that mistake they proved themselves unfit to be the instruments of justice. In further fact—” and here she smiled, teeth as white as stars—“as the injured party, you now have the moral authority to punish them.”

  “We were deceived,” the regal old woman said, voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. “We were told there would be murder tonight. We behaved rashly, yes, without the care we once would have shown, but we are not solely culpable.”

  Zara looked at the old women, then back at Nikki, and began to laugh.

  “You don’t believe me,” Nikki said, still sounding smug.

  “Shit, no, I believe you,” she said. “Everybody in the audience looks like they got touched while playing freeze tag, and these white-faced freaks in the Chorus have been following me since yesterday, making with the portents. I’d be crazy not to believe you. I’m laughing because you expect me to take over from the Furies. Sorry. Not a role I’m interested in.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Nikki said. “The ladies got too old, too boring, and... certain parties... decided there needed to be a cast change. You got the part, Zara. I’m the greatest talent scout there ever was. You should thank me.”

  “What certain parties?” Zara said. “The gods? Didn’t that woman say you were, what, the goddess of night? What gives you the right to fuck with me? Nobody even believes in those gods anymore.”

  Now Nikki laughed. She sat down, cross-legged, in a puddle of fake blood, heedless of dirtying her clothes. “Oh, Zara, really. I’ve was born long before the gods, and I’m a child compared to the beings I work for. The gods are nothing. They were shat and belched and vomited up out of chaos, and that’s where most of them have returned. The gods are just props—like these old ladies are, like you are, now. You’re just part of the play. But who do you think commissioned the play? Who is the director of the play of the world, who is the producer of the universe? Those beings are the ones in charge, Zara. And the producers want you to take over as an avenging force in the world. These three women sprang from the blood of Uranus to avenge his murder. Uranus was killed by a family member, and the ladies took that as their guiding principle, and went on to punish other people for that same sin. And now you’re vengeance personified. You can punish these women for their transgression.”

  Zara thought about the searing pain the Furies had inflicted on her so briefly. “So you’re saying... I have power?”

  “Yes,” Nikki said. “Sometimes. When you have cause. The Furies only punished kin-killers. We’re not yet sure what your specialty will be, but we’re all very excited to find out.” She glanced upward. “You know, some stories say I gave birth to the Furies—as I gave birth to pain, age, strife, and death—but it was never true. Until now. I feel something like a mother to you, now, Zara.”

  The house lights went down, and the stage lights, too, until there were only three spots—one on Nikki, one on the former Furies, one on Zara herself. Zara wasn’t sure how, but she knew she was the one who’d made the lights change—her power was showing itself now, whether she liked it or not.

  Nikki stood up and stepped away from her spotlight, into the dark. “Now,” she said. “Punish them, Zara, for what they did to you.”

  The former Furies stood, their backs straight, their heads held high, waiting.

  “No,” Zara said. “I won’t do it.” The spotlight found Nikki again.

  Nikki sighed. There was no fake blood on her clothes, though she’d been sitting in a pool of it. “You don’t have any choice—”

  “There is always a choice,” the regal Fury said. “We forgave Orestes. We were the benevolent ones, for a time.”

  “Yeah,” Zara said. “I can be benevolent.”

  Nikki pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, as if fighting a headache. “This isn’t the way we meant things to go.”

  Zara slapped Nikki, hard, leaving a bloody smear across her cheek. The Chorus gasped and murmured. Nikki stared at her, eyes wide.

  “This isn’t a play,” Zara said, suddenly overcome by the pressures of the past few days—Doug, the Chorus, rehearsal, and now this. “You aren’t my director. I’m not going to say the lines you wrote. You need to learn to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, or you’re going to be in for a hard time.” She turned to the Furies and snapped her fingers. The light on them went out. “Go on,” she said. “Show’s over. You’re forgiven.”

  Nikki rubbed her bloody cheek. “What, you think you saved them? They’ll just get old and die like normal people, now.”

  “That’s better than me killing them because of something you tricked them into doing,” Zara said.

  Shaking her head, Nikki smiled. “Oh, Zara. We’re going to have a great time watching you. You’re going to cut a swath, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t want the part,” Zara said.

  “Sure,” Nikki said. “Whatever you say. I’ve got to be going. You might want to pick up the children and go on with your lines—time’s going to come flooding back in here in a moment. You can finish your little play, take your bows, and then move on to more important things. I’ll see you around—but you won’t see me.” Nikki stepped out of the spotlight again, and when Zara mentally shifted the light to follow her, it illuminated only the bloody stage. Nikki, and the ladies, were gone.

  Zara sank back down to her knees and gathered the children toward her.

  Getting back into the role of Medea for this last scene was going to be hell.

  Zara begged off from the cast party, saying she didn’t feel well, and after she’d cleaned up and changed into her street clothes, she left the theater by the side entrance. She had a lot of thinking to do. She didn’t feel any different, didn’t feel brimming with power. Maybe her life didn’t have to change. Maybe she could just go on the way she’d always—

  “Bitch,” Doug said, stepping from behind a rusty trash container. “You called my office. You fucked with my life.”

  Zara moved toward him, fists clenched. “And what do you think you did to my life, you brainless prick?” she shouted.

  Doug stumbled back, startled—clearly he’d run this scenario through in his head a few times, and it hadn’t involved Zara being loud and aggressive. He rallied, though, and came toward her again. “I just wanted what you owed me. I paid you to perform a service, and you thought you could just stop, any time you wanted?”

  “Yes, Doug, you moron. It was a job. I quit.”

  “But we had a real connection,” he said, sounding hurt now. “I could tell by the way you acted with me that our sessions meant something to you, to both of us, by the way we synched
up perfectly, anticipated one another’s—”

  “No,” she said, not shouting now, just speaking quietly, and Doug fell silent. “No. I was acting. I’m an actress. It’s not my fault if you can’t tell the difference between a real connection and playing pretend.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “But you’re lying to yourself. I’ll make you understand.” He reached into his pocket, and came out with a knife, a fancy one with a shining blade and a skeletal-frame steel hilt.

  Zara narrowed her eyes. This was so... fucking... melodramatic.

  A spotlight illuminated Doug, and he squeezed his eyes shut in the sudden brilliance. “What?” he said, bewildered, shading his face and looking up toward the source of the blinding white light—it was coming from the empty air.

  Zara knew what to say. The words were there, in her head; the perfect words, the natural words, the ones that didn’t feel like prepared lines at all. She wondered whether Nikki and her friends the producers had driven Doug crazy, set him on this path in order to bring about this confrontation, for their own entertainment.

  Maybe so. But Doug was still an asshole, and he still had a lesson to learn. She wouldn’t kill him, but there were other punishments. “You need to learn to recognize what’s real, Doug,” she said, her voice almost sad. “From now on, your life will be bathed in light and clarity. You’ll never believe anything untrue again, and you’ll never be able to tell untruths of your own, either. If you go to the movies, it will just be noise and flashing lights. If you go to the theater, it will just be people standing on a stage talking. Novels will be words on a page. You don’t deserve to experience stories, Doug, because you can’t handle the responsibility that stories involve.” She waved her hand, and the spotlight went out.

  Doug sat down in the alley. He whimpered. “I—I—” He fell silent, and dropped his knife, and covered his face with his hands, desperately trying to put the scales back on his eyes.

  Zara walked out of the alley. Perhaps this was a role she could play after all. The Furies had lived to punish those who murdered their loved ones—that was the circumstance of their birth, after all. But Zara had gained her powers because some people couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was only a story, and those were the kind of people she would punish. The world wasn’t a stage, no matter what Shakespeare thought, no matter what Nikki and her producers believed. Zara wouldn’t play the part they had in mind for her. She was going off book. She was going to improvise.