Stories: All-New Tales - By Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio Page 0,53

rented a brownstone in Harlem. We live together and prepare for whatever’s coming.”

She smiled at my words and stood.

“JULIA,” A MAN SAID when we were halfway down the block from the café. “Wait up.”

He was tall and brawny, white and blond. He might have been a football player at some university, maybe the one I was attending.

“Martin,” she said by way of a tepid greeting.

“Where you going?” He had a thick gauze wad taped to his left forearm.

When she didn’t answer he gave me an evil look.

“This is my, my girlfriend, dude,” he said.

I didn’t reply. Instead I was preparing for a fight I didn’t think I could win. He was very big and I am, at best, a middleweight.

“Just walk away and you won’t get hurt,” the footballer added.

His tone had a pleading quality to it. This made him seem all the more dangerous.

“Hey, man,” I said. “I just met the lady, but you aren’t gonna make me go anywhere.”

He reached for me and I got ready to throw the hardest punch I could. I wasn’t about to let that white boy make me turn tail and run.

“Martin, stop,” Julia said. Each syllable was the sound of a hammer driving a nail.

Martin’s fingers splayed out like a fan and he drew the hand back as if it had been burned.

“Go away,” she said, “and don’t bother me again.”

Martin was well over six feet tall and weighed maybe two-forty, most of which was muscle. He shook like a man resisting a strong wind. The muscles of his neck bunched up and corded and he grimaced, exposing his teeth in a skull-like grin. After a minute or so of this strain, Martin turned his back to us and staggered from the sidewalk into the street and away. Cowering as he stumbled off, he gave the impression of a man reeling from a beating.

“You were ready to fight him,” Julia said.

I didn’t answer.

“He would have hurt you,” she stated.

With that she took my arm and walked me across downtown Manhattan to the pedestrian entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge. I didn’t question our walk. There was a buildup of energy in my blood and muscles from the fight I’d almost had, from fear of the pounding I would have surely received.

On the way she told me about her life in Rumania, her escape from the Communists to Munich where she lived with Gypsies for a time. It was a cool October evening and I listened, feeling no need to respond. For her part, she held on to my arm happily prattling about a life that seemed like a story out of a book.

When we got to the other side, she walked me to where there were many warehouses and few residences. We came to a stairwell leading down to a doorway below the surface of the street. She pushed the door open without using a key.

We went down a long hallway until coming to stairs that took us down at least three more levels. There we came to another hall and then to a door that she produced a key for.

IT WAS A SMALL, dimly lit room with a maple table in one corner and a single mattress on the floor. There were no windows, of course, and the room smelled dry and stale, like a tomb that had been sealed for centuries.

The door closed behind me and I turned to look Julia in the eye. The moons there were luminescent and her smile took my breath away. She shucked the blue T-shirt, stepped out of the loose pants, and she was naked. I realized as I lunged for her that this uncontrolled sexuality had been coming on ever since Martin had threatened me. I pulled down my pants and Julia started laughing. I dragged her to the small bed and we were together. My pants were around my ankles. My shoes were still on my feet but I couldn’t take the time to remove them. I had to be in her. I had to fuck her and to keep on fucking. Nothing could stop me. Even my orgasm only slowed down the gyrating urgency for a moment or two.

All the while Julia was laughing and talking to me in some foreign tongue. Now and again she’d pull my hair back and examine my eyes with those eerie lights in hers.

I writhed on top of her while she entwined me with her cold legs and arms. I could not stop. I could not