Free Down These Strange Streets by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois Page A

said, “You want some, man?”
    He got up and come at me. I hit him with a right and knocked him clean through the window behind him. Glass sprinkled all over the hallway.
    I went over and looked out. He was lying on the fire escape, his head against the railing. He looked right at me.
    “You crazy, cocksucker. What if there hadn’t been no fire escape?”
    “You’d have your ass punched into the bricks. Still might.”
    He got up quick and clamored down the fire escape like a squirrel. I watched him till he got to the ground and went limping away down the alley between some overturned trash cans and a slinking dog.
    I picked up his razor and put it in my pocket with the one I already had, then walked over and kicked the big man in the head just because I could.

    I KNOCKED ON THE DOOR. NO ONE ANSWERED. I COULD HEAR SOUNDS FROM inside. It was similar to what I had heard on that record, but not quite, and it was faint, as if coming from a distance.
    No one answered my knock, so I stuck the key in the door and opened it and went straight away inside.
    I almost lost my breath when I did.
    The air in the room was thick and it stunk of mildew and rot and things long dead. It made those boiled pigs’ feet and that pissing cat and that rottentooth bastard downstairs smell like perfume.
    Tootie was lying on the bed, on his back. His eyes were closed. He was a guy usually dressed to the top, baby, but his shirt was wrinkled and dirty and sweaty at the neck and armpits. His pants were nasty too. He had on his shoes, but no socks. He looked like someone had set him on fire and then beat out the flames with a two-by-four. His face was like a skull, he had lost so much flesh, and he was as bony under his clothes as a skeleton.
    Where his hands lay on the sheet, there were bloodstains. His guitar was next to the bed, and there were stacks and stacks of composition notebooks lying on the floor. A couple of them were open and filled with writing. Hell, I didn’t even know Tootie could write.
    The wall on the far side was marked up in black and red paint; there were all manner of musical notes drawn on it, along with symbols I had never seen before; swiggles and circles and stick figure drawings. Blood was on the wall too, most likely from Tootie’s bleeding fingers. Two open paint cans, the red and the black, were on the floor with brushes stuck up in them. Paint was splattered on the floor and had dried in humped-up blisters. The guitar had bloodstains all over it.
    A record player, plugged in, sitting on a nightstand by the bed, was playing that strange music. I went to it right away and picked up the needle and set it aside. And let me tell you, just making my way across the room to get hold of the player was like wading through mud with my ankles tied together. It seemed to me as I got closer to the record, the louder it got, and the more ill I felt. My head throbbed. My heart pounded.
    When I had the needle up and the music off, I went over and touched Tootie. He didn’t move, but I could see his chest rising and falling. Except for his hands, he didn’t seem hurt. He was in a deep sleep. I picked up his right hand and turned it over and looked at it. The fingers were cut deep, like someone had taken a razor to the tips. Right off, I figured that was from playing his guitar. Struck me, that to get the sounds he got out of it, he really had to dig in with those fingers. And from the looks of this room, he had been at it nonstop, until recent.
    I shook him. His eyes fluttered and finally opened. They were bloodshot and had dark circles around them.
    When he saw me, he startled, and his eyes rolled around in his head like those little games kids get where you try to shake the marbles into holes. After a moment, they got straight, and he said, “Ricky?”
    That was another reason I hated him. I didn’t like being called Ricky.
    I said, “Hello, shithead. Your sister’s worried sick.”
    “The music,” he said. “Put the