Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time

She nodded and left.

He carried the two sacks full of books downstairs and then went and sat on the bed. It wasn’t a clear ending. Had Jeff killed him? Killed him for the book, or angry because there was no book? Had Jeff found him? Had Jeff just left his enthusiasm for Communist Yoga passed like all the others?

Had Frank had a good life?

He looked about the desk. He got up and opened it. Inside was a pile of mail. Junk mail and unpaid bills, and a big brown envelope with his name written on it in pencil. Inside was a small book, a cheaply made leather-bound book, and its title once golden had become verdigris-green. It was Yoga for Bolsheviks by James M. Cassutto.

Always leave ’em guessing.

John sat on the bed again, he would read for a few minutes and then join Haidee for a cup of tea and a slice of chess pie.

WHAT ARE BEST

FRIENDS FOR?

Steve wasn’t surprised when Joan hit him up for a loan. Joan had been in and out of work for three years (and there was the custody thing), and rent was due in two days. So Steve lent her three hundred dollars against her computer. Steve drew up an elaborate paper of lien—he wasn’t worried about the money, but he thought Joan might take her four-year-old son and split, and he wouldn’t have a claim on the computer. It was a better machine than the piece of crap on his desk at home. But how good a computer did you need to visit porn sites and Robot Nine?

More importantly Joan was Sally’s best friend, and Sally and he were beginning to look like a permanent alliance. Steve handed Joan three Benjamins and got her to sign the lien papers. Joan drove off to court to continue her eleventh hour custody battle, and Steve drove to work.

Texas Data Systems filled a three-story red-brick-and-gold-anodized-window building on a tree-shaded quiet street. Steve’s “office” was a windowless cubicle near the center of the second floor. He began inputting changes on his manual, a novella-length description of a nine-pin to eighteen-pin interface. Juan, his chubby cube mate, sauntered in a few minutes after one.

Juan said, “Guess what?”

“What?” asked Steve.

“I sold the story I showed you to Weird Tales.”

“Hey, congratulations.”

Juan and Steve and a couple of other people, who had since moved on from TDS, had started writing or at least playing-at-writing two years ago, after taking a class at the New Atlantis bookstore. Well Juan had, Steve had only produced the beginnings of short stories, which remained in a manila folder in the bottom drawer of his desk. Steve stood up and shook John’s sweaty pudgy hand. Steve didn’t like fat people; they smelled. He had to be friends with Juan—he didn’t want people to say that he was prejudiced. Steve and Juan made the rounds from cubicle to cubicle spreading the good news. People said all the things they say to people making their first sales. Be sure and tell us when it comes out. We’ll all get a copy. We’ll throw you a party. Someday there’ll be a plaque on this building, “Juan Martinez worked here.” Juan glowed all afternoon and Steve printed out his manual. Steve had his fun with this again that night, telling Sally at the Hunan Dragon.

“Juan was floating about two inches off the ground after he got the word.”

“Whatever happened to your literary efforts?”

“Well. You know.”

“Is that laziness or block?”

“Hey. You’re supposed to be on my side, remember. I make more with technical writing than any fiction freelancer I know. I may start up again anytime. Anyway I was able to loan Joan three hundred.”

“Against her computer.”

“Well it’s not like it’s worth it. She’s the one who insisted. I was willing to lend it to her against her word. She’s your best friend.”

“You kept her from getting evicted. Currently she tells everybody that you are her best friend.” Said Sally.

“Her best friend would be anyone that could give her a job. Maybe if she leaves town. The employment picture here sucks. And you know she’s not leaving if she has to leave her kid entirely in the hands of her ex. She’s licked.”

“He’s a real creep.”

“Yeah. I’ve met him. Here comes our Chicken Kung Pao.”

“That will all be over this Friday. The court decides custody then.”

“I hope Joan copes if the court cuts Mickey out of her life. She was pretty wide-eyed at lunch.”

Friday came. The court decided. Joan did not cope. Joan had purchased a cheap pistol at Snooper’s Pawn for protection some months back. She discharged a bullet through the top of her soft palate.

Joan’s father called Steve on Sunday afternoon. He’d found the lien and wanted Steve to come by and pick up the computer. Steve said that under the circumstances it would be O.K. for them to keep the computer. But they said they had no use for the thing—and it would help them clean up things if Steve got it. Besides Joan had told them what a good friend he was.

Steve was surprised how old Joan’s parents looked. Death of an offspring must really suck away the years.

Joan’s computer represented a step up from Steve’s old machine. He had planned to upgrade for a while, but he was the sort that never spent a nickel unless necessary. Years ago when he did therapy, his shrink told him that he was cheap because he had no self-worth. He looked up a couple of college buds on Facebook, then before he went to bed he thought he should look for any really personal files and delete them. He wouldn’t want someone reading his diary entries, or that bad love poetry he wrote for Sally, or finding the urls of his favorite porn sites.

He came upon two entries called “Games of Light and Dark” and “Allegro.” He assumed that the first was a game package and the second to be a music-generating program. He called up “Games.”

“Games of Light and Dark” proved to be a short story, a five-thousand-word tale of Egyptian adepts battling for the soul of a young psychic in modern-day Los Angeles. Car chases, gang wars, crack, incense, and the brief appearance of Set and Horus over the skies of east L.A. Good stuff really—except for the occasional dangling participle or lapse into passive. Editing habits die hard and Steve was changing this, and polishing that; before considering that this might not be his property. He hadn’t even made a back up. The story was now in its new form; although, it could perhaps be reconstructed. He didn’t know if he had just disrespected the dead. It was midnight, the traditional hour for such things.

His first impulse was to send it to Joan’s parents. Then he realized that they won’t understand it. Unlike many senior citizens the computer had not made it into their world, they had almost seemed sacred of it, fearing that it might send them down the information super highway. Then he thought of Mickey. He could sell the story and then put the money in a college savings account for Mickey. It all seemed so noble.

He would be everybody’s hero. He got out the book he had bought on selling short fiction a couple of years ago. He put the story into MSS form and realized that he needed an address to send the story. Juan had a Writer’s Market. He went to work half and hour early. He was going to do all this in secret, so that when it panned out he would look heroic. If it didn’t pan out no one would ever know.

John’s bottom drawer always sprang if you tugged hard enough. He wrote the Fantasy & Science Fiction address on the brown envelope, closed the drawer, and sprinted to the mail box in front of TDS. He shoved the envelope in just as Juan drove up on his beaten-up blue Toyota.

Juan said, “You’re here early.”

“I just wanted to mail the first fan letter for your Weird Tales story.”

“You dummy. They haven’t printed it yet.”

“Oh they won’t pay much attention to it anyway. I sent it out on your stationery.”

Weeks passed and finally Steve got an acceptance from F&SF. His first story!