Pulphouse Fiction Magazine Issue #27, page 19
A truck drove up their street, some souped-up pickup with oversized tires and fog lights mounted over the cab. Peter could feel the thrum of the truck’s sound system, heavy on the base, in his bones. He shook his head. What people spent their money on never ceased to amaze him.
Then he snorted at himself. More woolgathering. Maybe he was getting old after all. He should go inside instead of standing out in the cold. Make Maryellen a cup of her favorite tea. Put on some Christmas music and lean against each other on the couch and read a good book.
That’s when he heard a soft whine coming from the base of the shrub they’d planted along the side of the garage. The shrub needed trimming, a chore Peter kept putting off. He’d never liked yard work even when his knees and back could take it.
He put his hands on his knees as he bent down to look beneath the overgrown shrub. Soft brown eyes stared back at him.
For a moment he almost thought he was seeing Daisy beneath that shrub, how she’d looked when he’d found her in the parking lot at the university. Small and scared and shivering in the icy rain, but still trusting enough to let him pick her up and hold her so she’d get warm. The memory was so clear and immediate that his eyes swam and his chest felt tight.
He swiped at his eyes with the back of one hand, and that broke the spell. The dog shivering beneath the shrub wasn’t Daisy. It wasn’t any of the dogs from the neighborhood either. He’d walked their last dog, the cocker spaniel mix, all around the neighborhood, and he knew every dog who’d barked at her. He even knew the names of the dogs people walked on leashes past his house.
This dog wasn’t a puppy, but it wasn’t that old either. Its shaggy fur was matted with bits of leaves and dirt. It had the pointed snout of a terrier mix. Its fur could have been tan or brown or even black. It was difficult to tell under all the dirt, but one thing Peter did know was that it hadn’t eaten well in quite some time.
“Hey, there,” he said, keeping his voice gentle and steady. “You look like you could use a good meal. What do you say we go inside where it’s warm and get you fixed up?”
The dog whined again, but the tip of its tail, which it held close to its belly, wagged just a bit.
Peter kept talking to the dog in that same steady, gentle voice. He forgot about being cold, and he lost track of how much time he’d been outside until he heard Maryellen come out the front door looking for him.
“What in the world?” she asked. “Are you going to stay out here all day?” She had one of his zip-front hoodies in her arms.
He turned his head to look at her. “I found a new friend,” he said.
She handed him the hoodie she carried and bent down next to him. “Oh, you poor baby,” she said to the dog, and she held out her hand, palm up.
The dog took a few cautious steps out from beneath the shrub until it could sniff Maryellen’s hand, then it licked her fingers, its tail wagging a little more enthusiastically.
“No collar,” Maryellen said, tilting her head to the side. “I don’t recognize it, do you?”
“Nope.”
Peter straightened up, his back protesting all the way. He half expected the dog to run away when he stood up, but it just kept licking his wife’s fingers. She always had a way with animals, especially the dogs. Starting with Daisy, they’d always seemed to gravitate toward her.
Give his wife another five minutes, and the dog would be ready to follow her into the garage. He didn’t know if they still had dog food in the pantry, but if they didn’t, he’d make a trip to the store. They’d clean the dog up, and then they’d post a notice on the local found-pet website, but he doubted anyone would come forward to claim this poor lost soul.
Except this soul wasn’t lost any longer. Maybe the universe had decided they weren’t too old after all. Or maybe Daisy—or whoever was up there watching over them—had put in a good word.
He started to say thank you to the sky but decided he should probably keep that to himself if he didn’t want Maryellen to think he was going senile. Maybe he was. After all, he believed in the power of innocent childhood wishes, and now he supposed he should believe in the sincere wishes of old farts who still had love to give.
He wondered if this dog was used to sleeping on the furniture. Not all of their dogs had. Daisy had not only hogged the bed, she’d also insisted on curling up between the two of them on the couch. That had been their fault. They’d always kept her between the two of them when she’d been a puppy because they’d wanted her to feel safe.
This dog looked young enough to train. Not that Peter minded sharing the couch with a dog, but they did have a brand-new secondhand chair with a seat that looked just about dog sized.
He knew there was a good reason they’d brought that chair home. Not because it was a stray, but because it would be a perfect spot for their newest fur baby to curl up in the sun and know it was loved.
The first flakes of snow hit the ground. He slipped on the hoodie. It was the one Jessie had given him last year, a navy-blue fleece with a cartoon tabby cat and cocker spaniel on the back and “Best Critter Dad” embroidered in red on the front.
He should ask Jessie where she found these hoodies. He wanted to get one for Maryellen with “Best Critter Mom” embroidered on the front.
He was pretty sure the little girl she’d been, the one who’d wished with all her heart that she could rescue all the unwanted animals in the world, would agree with the sentiment. Maryellen had done the best she could—they both had—to make that little girl’s wish come true.
OLIVIA’S HOUSE
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer and maybe the most award-winning and prolific writer working today. She has won more awards in science fiction and mystery than just about anyone alive and she is the only person to win the Hugo Award for her writing as well as her editing.
I promise that this fantastic novella will grab you right from the start and not let you go.
You can find out a lot more about Kris’s work at her publisher, WMG Publishing Inc., www.wmgbooks.com or her website www.kriswrites.com.
Olivia died on Thursday. By Monday, the vultures had swooped in.
To be fair, though, the vultures had already settled this desirable little corner of Las Vegas real estate.
Arlie wiped a hand over her forehead and stood in front of her open garage door, watching the parade of Mercedes, BMW SUVs, and shiny new oversized trucks ostensibly used for construction. These men—and they all seemed to be men—never really did any construction, not like Arlie and her wife, Babette, did. Arlie and Babette worked alongside any contractor they hired, climbing on the roof, inspecting the attic, and frowning at the termite damage near the patio doors.
The pest services people had left days ago, their bill on the as-yet-unremodeled kitchen counter, next to the gigantic bill for the asbestos remediation in the bedrooms, living room, and formal dining.
The house, which had looked so perfect a year ago, had all kinds of secrets hidden in its walls, and not the kind that inspired Arlie to daydream about who might have visited here, who might have performed on that baby grand piano that the previous owners sold with the house, who might have lounged around the (at the moment empty and in desperate need of remodeling) kidney-shaped pool.
She still loved the house, but she was in the middle of a major remodel, and the middle of a remodel always brought up a twinge of buyer’s remorse.
Sweat ran down her back. Her thin long-sleeved shirt clung to her arms, rather like the sawdust from 2x6s she was trimming on the back porch. She had come to the garage to grab a broom and the wet vac when she saw all the vehicles pull in across the street.
The houses in this ancient (by Vegas standards) subdivision sat back from the winding road that circled each little sub-neighborhood. Arlie’s house sat at the end of a cul de sac, with Olivia’s house on one side, and an even older ranch on the other side.
All the original trees, expensive grass, and tall fences ensured that she hadn’t even heard the vehicles pull up. She used to joke with Babette that if Olivia wanted to hold one of those exclusive 1960s Vegas parties this little corner of the subdivision had been known for, Arlie and Babette wouldn’t have heard a thing.
But Olivia hadn’t held a party in decades, long before Arlie met her. There probably hadn’t been that many vehicles in front of Olivia’s house since the 1990s.
Arlie wiped her sawdust-covered hands on the back of her khaki work pants. She was standing in just enough shade to keep the vicious Vegas sun off her face. But it was still hot out here.
The huge black truck parked directly across from the opening in the beautiful (old) adobe fence started rocking. Then the driver’s door opened, and Leighton Taylor swung out.
Her heart sank.
Leighton owned the nightmare monstrosity at the curve leading into this particular cul de sac. Not only did Leighton’s contractors fail to water down their dirt when they dug or worked, getting grit all over this part of the neighborhood, they also worked at all hours, making the monstrosity worse, not better. At the moment, it was probably at its best (which wasn’t saying much), a partially built 8,000-square-foot series of cubes the architect Leighton hired called a house.
And worse of all, its eastern end butted up against Olivia’s property. At least the construction was on the opposite side of the house from her beautiful bedroom, so she hadn’t heard most of the construction noise, although she had complained (softly) that the beep-beep-beep of vehicles in reverse awakened her most mornings.
Leighton’s building didn’t fit at all in the subdivision, but it wasn’t the only building that looked different from the rest. Sahara Circle was built in the 1950s, one of the first subdivisions in the entire Vegas Valley.
In its heyday, Sahara Circle was the place for the rich and famous, not too far off the growing strip, and yet secluded, where the kids of the rich and famous could grow up in what they claimed to be an idyllic 1960s world.
Idyllic for straight white people, anyway. Arlie was painfully aware that she and Babette wouldn’t have been able to live here when the subdivision was built. She had seen their inclusion in this still-idyllic part of Old Vegas as a win for modernity—even thought, Babette had pointed out, that they were both white, and back in the day, they would have been considered eccentric spinsters who combined their resources to live “economically” in the manner to which they had become accustomed.
Leighton didn’t look like a mid-century mogul, either. He was long and rangy, but lacked the sun-weathered skin that marked him as someone who actually did physical labor. Up close, his face was fleshy, eyes generally puffy with either too little sleep or too much drink.
Arlie and Leighton had clashed from the moment they met, because she had made the mistake of asking him what he thought of the “piece of crap” down the street. He had given her a dismissive smile that the wealthy seemed to learn at birth.
“That piece of crap is mine,” he said.
She had flushed, but she hadn’t apologized. The neighborhood was historic, even if Vegas hadn’t yet designated it that way, and the houses were all built in a 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s style. Even the more architecturally daring homes had that mid-century vibe.
But Sahara Circle was built before subdivisions realized they needed HOAs that everyone had to sign onto, a limited range of designs, and even approved colors and landscaping.
Arlie and Babette hadn’t known about the lack of regulation when they bought in here, nor had they known that rich assholes like Leighton could buy in and then bulldoze the original homes. Initially, Arlie had thought Leighton was building on one of the few empty lots left in the city. It was only later, while talking to Olivia, Arlie learned that a sister home to hers had existed just a few houses away.
Olivia. When Arlie and Babette bought their house a year ago, Olivia had been a spry eighty-five-year-old. Then she had a fall, which occasioned an MRI and some x-rays that showed something cancerous—Arlie never caught the details—and about the time the asbestos company had finished their remediation, Olivia was confined to bed.
Arlie visited, of course. She learned all the good current gossip, all the even better ancient gossip, and all the scary gossip as well, learned who had affairs, and who drank too much, who turned a large fortune into a small fortune, and who had mob ties, back in the day. Arlie learned who had passed through the neighborhood, which celebrities lived where once upon a time, and whose kids sold off too cheap.
Olivia never said anything about her own kids, and they never visited, not once. Not after Olivia’s diagnosis, not during her treatments, and certainly not in her last weeks. Arlie had offered to call, and Olivia had shaken her head, with a sad smile.
“What’s done is done,” she had said, “and no maudlin deathbed conversations will repair it.”
For all the gossip, Arlie had never learned what “it” was, although she had hoped to get a glimmer of it at the funeral. But no. The kids hadn’t shown up for that either, although the entire neighborhood had, as well as the members of half the charity and arts boards in the city.
Arlie let out a breath, as another bead of sweat ran down her back. The early afternoon didn’t provide a lot of shade, and the Las Vegas summer sun had a bite to it, a literal bite. Still, she walked down her cracked driveway to see if she could figure out what Leighton and his minions were doing.
Although she had a hunch. She had an awful, horrible hunch.
Leighton’s gaze met hers, as if he expected to see her there. Maybe he did. Maybe one of his minions had told him she was there, watching him.
“Don’t worry.” His tone had that edge it always had when he was talking to her. “We won’t block your view.”
She blinked, frowned. There really was no view to block. Her house was a one-story ranch, behind a high fence with old palm trees and lots of planted vegetation. She couldn’t see Olivia’s house except when the gate was open, the way it was now.
Then the realization dawned, but she played ignorant, because she knew that with people like Leighton, playing ignorant was often the best way to get information.
“Your place can’t block my view,” she said, “no matter how high you go up.”
His smile was cruel. “I meant here. Across the street. We own this now.”
“Oh, good,” she said, even though she didn’t feel it. “Someone with money who already has a finger in the neighborhood. The house just needs a little TLC to be brought back to its former glory.”
“There was no former glory,” Leighton said. “It’s a goddamn ranch house. Tacky and old. It’s going down. Not sure what I’ll do with the lot yet, but I like having the room for expansion.”
Even though she had expected him to say that, her stomach twisted. She hoped the loathing she felt for him didn’t reach her face.
“You bought Olivia’s house,” Arlie said, confirming what she had just heard. She was doing her best to keep her tone neutral, so that he wouldn’t see just how much the idea of it rocked her.
“Yeah. I bought the house,” he said in a low confidential tone, “pretty much before the old lady died. The kids didn’t want the place, so I had an offer in months ago. Made it possible to finalize once the estate paperwork is done.”
Months ago. While Arlie and Babette were talking about what they would do if the house came up for sale. If their finances could handle another payment, another expensive remodel. They loved the neighborhood, and Arlie had loved the house. It was a treasure, with lots of little nooks and crannies and expensive one-of-a-kind details.
“The kids are so sure they’re going to inherit?” Arlie asked. Because she wasn’t.
“Yep.” Leighton smirked. “She has no other heirs.”
“But the will hasn’t gone through probate yet,” Arlie said. Not that she would know. It was a guess.
“Minor details,” Leighton said. His smirk grew. “But I promise. We won’t mess with the view.”
“Is that supposed to have some hidden meaning?” she asked.
His smirk turned into a half-smile of contempt. “It means that’s all I can promise. Except that the piece of crap house is coming down as soon as the legal work is finished.”
She didn’t nod. She could barely move. He had used the words “piece of crap” just to goad her.
“If the estate isn’t settled, how did you get a key?” she asked.
He shrugged a single shoulder. “Don’t have one. Just walking the outside.”
He winked at her, then pivoted and headed back to his abomination of a truck. She watched from the driveway, arms crossed, as the men gathered outside and talked, as they paced the ground, as they messed up the landscaping with their footsteps, as they forced a fence so they could get through, as they screwed everything up.
She watched until they were gone.
And then she went inside to talk to Babette.
Arlie was proud of herself: she didn’t burst into tears as she stepped into the cool darkness of the caterer’s kitchen, and she didn’t put her fist through a wall. In the past, she might have done either. Or both.
Babette was seated at the folding table they had set up in lieu of a kitchen table. She had peeled off her canvas work gloves, and placed them in the pile of gloves that ran the gamut from yellow plastic cleaning gloves to leather gloves so thick they could have been used as catcher’s mitts.
Babette was looking through bills and the original architectural rendering, which they had found in one of the built-in drawers in the super-sized laundry room.
Babette was tiny, with a buzz cut that usually showed off whatever flamboyant color she had dyed her hair. She had done rainbow hues for Pride Month, but washed those out on the first of July. In past years, she had blended into the red, white, and blue, but she was mad at the direction of the country at the moment, so she let her hair return to its usual black.
