EATING YOUR ICECREAM CONES TWICE

*

I must have been just eight years old, when I saw Wilbur eat his icecream twice. He was licking the last curl of his soft ice, his tongue moving in a methodical way, more as if he was finishing a boring task than enjoying himself. He gazed at the empty cone. A single line puckered his brows as if he was trying to do a particular hard sum. Suddenly ice filled the cone again, rising in a weird snakelike motion.

I stared. It seemed like a neat trick at the time, but the whole world was filled with neat tricks, most of which I still had to learn. Hitting a ball all the way across the field or climbing to the top of oak in the backgarden were the important things right then.

Wilbur was not much older than I, but already overtopping most of us by a full head. A hulking, taciturn boy, his replies most of the time a single grunt, it would have been no use to ask him how he did it. So I wondered for all of two minutes and forgot the whole thing. Maybe I even told myself I had imagined the whole transformation.

*

He was the first to get laid in our class. Wilbur was only thirteen but he looked like seventeen, perhaps even older.

Wilbur was growing up fast, he made us feel ineffectual and horrible young. Though his body was skyrocketing, his mind followed at a much slower pace. He never played with us, but preferred to hang around with the older boys in front of the hamburger stand. His dog always accompanied him, a sadeyed bulldog, who spend most of his day drooling and gazing soulfully at birds. I don't think he ever chased a cat or buried a bone in the garden. It is said that a dog starts to look like his owner, which I think is rubbish, but in their case it was true.

Both of them had a disconcerting kind of inertia, never hurrying or showing the slightest trace of enthousiasm. Almost as if they knew that nothing was definitive, that any action or occurence could be repeated at will.

On a chill november night I saw his dog die.

*

I was sitting on my bed, propped up by three cushions. The fever buzzed in my ears and my eyes burned. Beyond the window the street stretched in a pale sheet, almost a void, the imprint of tires vanishing the moment they were made. Snowflakes drifted from the dark sky, suddenly materialising in the streetlamps.

The world had become a hushed place no larger than my own street and not altogether real. I heard Wilbur's footsteps, the patter of his dog's paws the moment they turned the corner. It was that quiet.

His dog paused in front of the Grahams' house, lifting a hind leg. Steam rose from the base of lamppost.

Wilbur tugged the leash. "Come on, Shep. Come on."

I heard the sound of a large truck. It was going fast, much to fast. When it took the corner it was already slipping. It passed below my window like a huge steel whale, like a horizontal avalanche. The strange thing is that I can't remember any noise. It drifted past, a fender sideswiping Wilbur's dog, hitting it like it wanted the make a home run. The dog sailed through the utterly silent air, smashing against the brick wall of the library. Only then I heard the scream of tires, the sudden revving of the truck's diesel.

The driver didn't stop, he probably hadn't even noticed the accident.

Wilbur stood on the sidewalk, his mouth gaping. It was the first time I had seen him surprized. I waited for his scream of dismay, waited with some eagerness. We had been afraid of him for a long time now and it was hard to see him as entirely human. He didn't scream. He just closed his mouth and stood looking at his dog. Blood seeped from its mouth and the blood was dark in the light of the lanterns. Like some kind of ink. The hind legs were still jerking, but I suppose it was just a reflex. The head was pulped, a ragged shard of bone poking through the fur.

The light fell full on Wilbur's face and I sat back a little, suddenly afraid he would notice me staring from the window.

He smiled. I have never seen a smile like that again and I hope I never will. Once the parson spoke in a sermon about the 'secret glee of evil'. It was like that. It was knowing something that nobody else knew, that they didn't even suspect existed. There was arrogance in that smile and a warped joy.

He walked to his dog and stood there, gazing down for four, five seconds.

"Come on, Shep," he said loudly, "come on."

And the dog rose on tottering legs and turned his head in the direction of his master's voice. It was whole, not even scratched.

*

I rose the next day the moment my mother left to shop. Putting on my wintercoat and boots I went outside. I was still very fevered, the buzz in my ears growing to a roar, the trees swirling like vegetable derwishes. It took me an eternity to cross the street. I had to lean against the freezing wall of the Library for support before my eyes focussed. I knew exactly where the dog had smashed in the wall and where it had fallen.

There was no trace of blood, the yellow brick stones immaculate. Even the snow seemed undisturbed and I found nothing when I dug down at the place where the dog had lain. There was only one thing I was quite, quite sure of. It hadn't been a dream. Later that day I suddenly remembered the icecone trick. Wilbur was able to reach back in time, to resurrect his dead dog. Or his eaten icecone.

Like Jezus and Lazarus, I thought. He's a prophet.

It was a horrible thought. None of us had recognized Wilbur's holyness. Surely we had blown our chance. Surely I was slated for hell.

I still believe that. Though for quite different reasons than I thought then.

*

I met her on a research station three miles from the Chilean coast. We were studying the Red Tide and the whole ocean was smudged with brown patches, like bruises or clotting blood. The waters were blooming, flowering with an obscene fertility. Small microorganisms were multiplying at a horrifying rate, poisoning the fish, befouling the beaches with a stinking sludge.

It had happened before, many times, but never on this scale. The plankton itself was changing, learning to break down our oil spills, attacking several kinds of plastics. It would have been a boon, a cornucopia if we had been able to process it. We could have fed the world. But it contained a host of deathly alkaloids and a single mouthfull would kill a elephant.

She put her elbows on the rails and rested her chin on her knuckles. The wind ruffled her closecropped hair, which had the color of goldveined copper. Her nose was a bit to big, her lips too thin and one of her cheeks was scored with long pale scar. She was very beautiful suddenly, rough and changeable like the sea itself. She was one of those women who seem to have a thousand faces and fleeting moods, none ever repeated. Like they said of Helen of Troy: all women to all men.

I might have noticed her before, but I had been working hard, being the only nekton specialist on the stiltlegged island. Working too hard for lust and certainly for love. She turned her fantastically intricate face to me and smiled. "You're Belford, the marine biologist, aren't you? You know you're something of a legend here? They told me you never sleep."

"I try," I said. "Not sleeping I mean. We still have so much to learn. And we don't have time."

"You're the only one who can do the job?" It might have meant many things, from a slightly ironic put down to honest admiration. With her it only meant what it said. So I didn't try for a glib answer and told her the truth. "Yeah, at least untill Crowley arrives." I spread my hands. "The others, they can map the currents, classify the dead fish, try to alert the authorities. Right now I'm the only one who understands the Bloom itself. Who can work with the plankton. I wish to God Crowley would arrive. I never met him, but he is the best. Inspired I would almost say. I'm just a plodder. Hard work is my sad substitute for genius."

"Hear, hear!" she said. "It isn't often that one sees an academic praising his greatest rival. Thank you. My name is Crowley. Janice Crowley."

*

I guess it is very important for women like Janice that someone has loved their brains before he has loved their body. You're born with both, but our civilisation being what it is, it will be a long time before most of the men will call a woman's mind beautiful before praising her face.

We didn't marry for three years, though we slept together most of the nights. We had sworn to lick the Red Tide before we did anything else.

One of the entr-es on the wedding was a shrimp cocktail with tiny red shimps. Genetically altered, they fed enthousiastically on the Red Tide, converting the poisons to honest protein.

*

Guilt can make you sick. Perhaps I wouldn't have had to spent two years in an asylum if we had made love that last night, not war. She slept in the living room and left for the university before I woke.

One of her tires blew and she crashed into a tree.

*

It wasn't hard to find Wilbur. He had never left his hometown and now owned a gas station. He didn't look like a prophet at all.

I parked my car and walked to the pump. Wilbur was sitting on the bench in front of the station, sorting through a box with greasy screwdrivers. A bulldog lay at his feet. It might have been the same dog. Somehow I thought it would be.

Wilbur didn't look thirtyfive, he didn't even look middle aged. An old man turned up his face, when my shadow fell across his hands. Sunken eyes, the sclera yellow like ancient horn. Thick blue veines rose from his hands and his skin was liverspotted parchment. I extended my hand. "Hello, Wilbur. Do you still know me? I'm Walter. Walter Belfort. We were in the same class."

I spoke each word clearly and a little bit too loud, the way of talking people usually reserve for the very old or the very young.

"Remember you," he grunted. "Yeah." I didn't think he really did. "What do you want?"

"Your help."

"Car broke down?"

I still don't know why I answered like I did. It seems such a crazy unfeeling thing to say.

"No," I said. "My wife did."

*

I wasn't hard to bundle him in my car. He seemed to have lost most of his initiative. When I put 'Shep' on the back seat he stopped protesting.

I drove carefully, halting at every intersection, never trying to overtake trucks.

*

It looked like a park. Not a park where one would like to sit for any extended length of time. It was too clean, with its geometrical meadows and regularly spaced poplars. The lawn could have been a plastic mat, its green somehow artificial. I passed under the sigh with

'Seven Oaks Cemetery' and parked my car.

I opened his door. "Lets go for a walk."

He came meekly enough. "Can Shep come too?"

"Of course." I needed that dog. It was my only way to put pressure on him. If he still cared for anything it would be for his dog.

I had only visited the cemetery twice. It had been a sterile try. If Janice was anywhere it was not here. This was no place where souls would like to tarry.

It took me half an hour to find the tombstone. It looked a little older, but not much: a slab of white limestone, taken from two miles below the ocean, the tracks of boring mussels plainly visible. I had carved her name myself.

I had forced myself to think the while thing through, ommitting no detail. I spent the next half hour inserting several small copper pipes, making sure I had penetrated the lid of the tough plastic coffin. I forced the hose of the aircompressor down and threw the switch. A low purr sounded, mephitic fumes hissing from the other holes. She wouldn't suffocate in the time it would take me to exhume the coffin.

Wilbur had been studying the tombstone. "She's dead?" he asked in a puzzled voice.

"Janice BelfordCrowley. Belford. You're Belford. She's your wife?"

"Yes. Pull her back. Resurrect her. Now. I saw your dog die. I know you can!"

"Died three times." He shook his head. "I don't do that kind of thing anymore. Because of New Town. The prof told me. It's the law." Only later I understood he meant the Law of Newton: for any action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Only in his case it wasn't equal. Each time he pushed something back in the past, restoring it to its former state, his own body was forced into the future, aging him.

"I don't care about new towns. Just do it." I took my gun from my overcoat and he smiled. It was that same smile I had seen almost twenty years ago, sneering. The secret glee of evil.

"Not afraid of guns," he said. "Never had to."

And he fixed his gaze on my weapon. I felt the tiniest of movements, and raised my weapon. It looked newer. Not much. Just a little bit less tarnished.

I shook my head. "Won't work. It is my father's. It sat for thirty years in a cupboard. Loaded."

"Not afraid of guns," he repeated.

"It's not for you. I kill your dog. I kill Shep if you don't give me back my wife." He shuddered. "No! Not Shep. He's meant to live forever." His eyes filled with tears. "I already gave him so many of my years. One cost me five."

"Tell you what? I promise not to hurt Shep if you help my wife."

"Ok," he sighed, looking at his dog with something that wasn't exactly love. "Right."

*

Her mewling cry was the most horrible sound I ever heard in my life. There was surprise in it, surprise and an awful realisation. It only lasted for three seconds, so the crash must have killed her almost at once.

The caretakers found me with her lifeless broken body in my arms, whimpering. Wilbur had tried, he had tried very hard, but he had only been able to reach the crash. Ten more seconds and she would have been whole, Janice would have been alive.

*

They had nothing to charge me with, at least nothing that made sense, and I claimed to have lost my memory of the last few days. They finally let me go home and I took Shep with me. It was the least that I could do for Wilbur.

I wonder what they did with his corpse. It looked a thousand years old, like a mummie. His skin was cracked leather and his eyes were gone. Just holes with a film of spiderwebbed dust on the bottom. I remember Shep howling, howling.

I guess our deepest sorrow is the same. Neither of us got to say goodbye to our loved one.