Hornets and Others

'We'll see, Harry,' she says, and then she laughs and turns and leads him into the night.

In her room, in another weathered building overlooking the sea-dredged rot of Greystone Bay, Harry tries to fight the coat. There's a bottle of French wine she insisted on buying, looking up at him coyly in the dim light of the liquor store to tell him that it's her birthday and she feels like being nice to herself. And to him. The bottle sits on a table by the window, and Harry wants to run to it, tilt it back against his mouth and drown himself out. But the coat won't let him. 'We'll save it for later,' the coat makes him tell the girl.

'I'm flattered you think more of me than the wine, Harry.'

The coat makes him smile. Harry wants to cry, because she's so much like Noreen. But the coat won't let tears come. He remembers now how much he hurt Noreen when he was with her, how he drove her away because he couldn't stand her looking so hurt anymore, couldn't stand her love for him, couldn't make her see that he was no longer a schoolboy with valentines and big dreams, and couldn't face the thing he'd turned into; a wine-sucking mouth with no feelings attached, no heart. He had driven her away because he couldn't stand himself...

'I won't kill her,' Harry hisses at the coat.

'You say something, sweetie?' the girl says from the bed behind him.

You will kill her, the coat says to him, mildly, but there's anything but mildness behind the words.

'I won't!' Harry nearly shouts, turning around to see this innocent prostitute, this proto-Noreen, staring at him with real concern, the smile on her face turning to a question, parted legs angling closed as she sits up, nipples hard against the room's chill.

'You okay?' she asks.

Harry's mouth is forming the word 'No,' but even before he tries to say it, which he never does, the coat has made him thrust his hand into the long pocket of the long coat, drawing the scalpel out like a sabre.

She barely cries out, the knife drawing across at her, cutting her almost in two at the neck line.

Harry cries out, 'Noreen!' and then Harry is gone, and the coat is hacking and cutting with strength and finesse, and the night turns red and wheels away from him.

This time when the coat tells him to wake up he is still on the bed in the room. He can barely lift his arms from exhaustion. By the weak light coming in the window it looks like dusk. On the table in front of the window, unopened, silhouetted in pale light, is the bottle of French wine and he feels an overwhelming need to rise and take the bottle like a nipple into his mouth.

He sits up and sees what he has done.

Harry loses what little is in his stomach, retching bile when there is nothing left. He's still vomiting when a sound comes on the stairs outside, and then a knock at the door.

'Damniit, Ginny, get up!' someone growls outside. 'You gonna sleep all night, too? You got five minutes or I'll be back to kick your ass onto the street.'

Footsteps retrace down the stairs.

Move, the coat commands.

He is up, cleaning the room, cleaning himself and his instrument. The water is cleaner here, and in no time the blade is shining like new, the coat scrubbed free of stains and brushed. He washes his hands and face and combs his hair, and then the coat makes him look into the mirror and smile the smile of a man ready to do again what he likes to do.

Fine, the coat says. Walk.

He walks out of the bathroom toward the door to the hotel room. But then, as he passes the table with the unopened bottle of wine on it, Harry, with supreme effort, stops walking.

I said walk.

'No,' Harry says.

He puts his hand on the bottle. The coat gives a shriek of rage in his head but Harry holds on. Slowly, fighting for control of his own fingers, he peels the foil from the top of the bottle. His hands shake like he has the DTs. The coat is screaming at him, ordering him to put the bottle down, but he has actually pulled the cork out and is lifting the wine spastically to his lips when the knock comes again on the door.

'Ginny? What the hell are you doing in there?'

There is rough handling on the doorknob, and then banging.

The bottle drops from his hands, spilling wine into the worn rug, and in a second the coat has regained him and he is climbing over the table in front of the window, shoving it up and crawling out onto the fire escape. Down! The coat commands, and he descends the rusted, half-stuck ladders to the street. The coat makes him look coolly from right to left, smoothing his lapels, then makes him swagger away towards Port Boulevard, whistling a song he knew as a boy.

And then he sees Noreen.

She is just descending the stone steps of the SeaHarp to the pavement, leaving the walled fortress of the hotel behind. He is right in front of her, and though he tries to keep walking, their eyes meet.

She gasps, and Harry tries to walk by her but the coat stops him dead where he stands and smiles.

'Hello, Noreen,' he says, and now the coat makes him bow.

She stands speechless, but the shock has left her face. There is something different about her, her clothes or her hair, and, looking into her eyes, Harry can't help thinking that his absence has only strengthened her resolve to save him.

'I've missed you, Noreen,' the coat makes him say.

'What's happened to you, Harry?' she asks in her mild voice, smiling at his politeness—but, with horror, Harry sees that she likes the change in him, she approves.

'I'm a different man,' the coat makes him say, and then the coat makes him smile, and Noreen smiles too, looking as if she has stepped into a dream.

Noreen gives him a long look, and then she takes his arm, her hand brushing along the sleeve of the coat, and she says, 'I've missed you too, Harry.' She pauses, then turns to look at him, and says, 'Harry, are you—'

The coat, not missing a beat, gives her his most charming smile and says, 'I no longer drink, Noreen.'

To Harry, trapped deep within the coat, the evening progresses with horrible predictability. She takes him up the steps to the porch of the SeaHarp, and, though it is cold, she insists they sit at the same table they did that first night. She seems to battle with herself and then, suddenly, with a bright smile, she says, 'Stay here, Harry,' and she enters the hotel, returning with food from the kitchen, along with a candle. She lights the candle, and there is faerie light between them once more.

They eat, Noreen shivering, holding her coat tight about her, but gazing through the candlelight at Harry as if he were a god. As the meal is finished, a veal piccata with Harry's favorite dessert, Boston creme pie, which the coat makes him compliment extravagantly, there is a growing look of promise fulfilled in her eyes. The coat makes Harry tell her what she wants to hear, letting him see what it can do to her.

In the glow of the candle, Noreen takes Harry's hand. 'It's cold out here,' she says. She pauses, then adds softly, 'I want you to come to my room.'

'Of course,' the coat makes him answer, tenderly.

For a moment she loses her composure, and begins to cry. But then she regains herself. 'This is the dream I always had for you,' she says. 'This is what I always knew you could be.'

The coat makes Harry lift her hand to his mouth, and kiss it.

'I'm all I've ever wanted to be,' it makes him say, sincerely, and Harry knows it's speaking the truth.

Her attic apartment is as Harry remembers it. Big bed neatly made, with the coverlet Noreen quilted herself, patchwork pieces from all the worn covers and sheets she'd collected in her years at the hotel. A clean white bathroom, unchipped tiles, pictures on the walls of the living room, Edward Weston photographs, Renoir prints. Persian rugs. A polished mirror, before which, Harry remembers, she brushes her hair a hundred strokes each night before bed.

She stands before the mirror now, an aging young woman with a dream fulfilled, and she smiles, shivering,