Free The Caveman's Valentine by George Dawes Green Page A

Y-ray.
    A Y-ray was quick and yellow. But this huge blast of light coming at him was sort of a slow, furred green. Like a clump of electric moss—and he stood there, watching, and it passed right overhead. Missed this building entirely. Wasn’t even aimed at this building, but it was headed north somewhere, somewhere upstate.
    Said Betty, “Romulus?”
    “Yeah.” He blinked at her.
    “Don’t forget the coat.”
    “Oh, right. Thank you.”
    He picked up the coat and left. Went down to the lobby, and he and the Zouave gaped at each other’s outlandish costumes. Then he trudged home.

26
    T he warm front was still at work, even in the dark. He got to the cave where an old white woman they called Cyclops—because her other eye was just a purplish burned-out socket—was asleep on his mattress.
    He took off his new clothes and folded them neatly. He put on his old clothes, then he woke Cyclops and told her to make some room. She rolled over and slumbered on, purred. Romulus sat beside her, looking out into the mist. Against his new-scrubbed skin, his old clothes chafed. They felt clammy, gritty. Didn’t seem to fit. Didn’t suit him anymore.
    Furthermore it annoyed him, it always annoyed him, to share his cave with Cyclops.
    It was a great nuisance. The cave was too small to share with anybody, and besides, Cyclops had fleas. Romulus would wake up at four in the morning and feel them popping softly against his neck, an invisible wind. Take him days to hunt all the buggers down.
    But she had no home.
    The woman was dying of six different diseases. She lay there with no blanket on, just her coat, and her calves were exposed and in the dim city-glow Romulus could see her sores. Her legs were patchworked of scabs, boils, fissures, and blisters. In her sleep she reached down and raggedly scratched herself, dug in with her moonstone claws. But wearing all that ancient armor of scab tissue, how could she hope to satisfy the itch beneath? And her breathing was one long death rattle, and her brain was a smoking wreck, and those fortunates like Romulus who
had
homes were simply obliged to share them with those who didn’t.
    There was no way around this.
    Clearly (however misty, it was a night for clear visions!), clearly, neighbors, if you would trouble yourselves
just a little,
just enough to open your doors and step out and offer up a little villagers’ love no less—why then, Stuyvesant in his tower would be defeated and he’d writhe and cringe and
HOWL!
YOU BLOODSUCKER! DEFEATED BY LOVE!
    WRITHING IN HELLFIRE!
    Clearly. But Y-rays have bleared every eye and mucked over every heart, and all who live here live only to tremble. Too busy covering their own asses to worry about anyone else. All who sleep now in the dark canyon-tenements of this city sleep fitfully, scared out of their wits, and it’s the same with me isn’t it?—truly Romulus Ledbetter must be just what his daughter says he is—frightened, a rattle-bone coward, or wouldn’t I be standing up and
showing them
what a murderous cruel son of a sick
snake
it is that they bow down before? Wouldn’t I be doing something to try to
stop this horror?
    I would. I will.
    And then as he sat there muttering to himself, Romulus heard a voice.
    “Now you’re putting on airs, baby?”
    The voice wasn’t Cyclops. The voice came from the other side of him, and he swiveled. Sheila, his wife, was right beside him. In the cave-shadows, in the dark. She seemed to be floating. Her eyes were gleaming.
    She was making one of her little
visitations.
    She dosed her voice with sarcasm and said, “Now you think you’re a
detective
?”
    “I’m just doing what I’ve got to do. That’s all.”
    She scowled. “You doing everything but what you got to do. You got to sit down at a piano. You want to show us you got more will than craziness?
Sit down at a piano.”
    “I did. I did just that. Tonight.”
    “Yeah, I was there. And did it kill you?”
    “Nearly.” They sat