The Tooth Fairy Part 15

'We'll go and stand outside.'

They went out to the back garden and lit up. All clouds had been chased from the sky, and the snow was made blue-white by a brilliant three-quarter moon. It was cold. Sam felt the air icy on his lungs. They stood in the snow and smoked.

When they came in again, Alice took off her jacket and reached for the cider. Her lips popped on the mouth of the bottle. The Kinks came on the radio playing 'Waterloo Sunset'. 'I love this,' said Alice.

'Yeah,' said Sam. He'd never heard it before.

'You're slow, aren't you?'

'What do you mean?'

'Never mind. You're just slow. You're all right, though. Just slow.'

Sam told Alice about his unopened package.

'You don't know who it's from?'

'No.'

'Well, open it.'

Sam went and fetched the package from upstairs. He sat next to her on the sofa and showed her how it appeared to have no folds and no flaps. 'That's nothing. They have a machine, in a shop in the town, does that. It's no big deal.'

Sam was disappointed. 'I didn't know that.' He could smell her hair, her skin. Yoghurt. Salt. Yeast. The scent of her, the proximity, made his hands tremble fractionally.

'Aren't you gonna open it?'

'I dunno. I-'

'Want me to open it?'

'No, I'll do it.' He fumbled with the paper, ultimately tearing it. Inside was a beat-up grey cardboard box. He opened it, and the contents slid into his hand.

'Looks like a bomb,' said Alice.

'No,' said Sam, staring at the contraption. 'It's not a bomb. It's a Nightmare Interceptor.'

Sam tried to explain to her what the machine was supposed to do. He even clipped the sensor to his nose by way of demonstration. What he couldn't explain was who had found it, wrapped it and left it under the Christmas tree.

'Weird,' laughed Alice. 'Bit like you, really. Weird. Pa.s.s the cider.'

Sam learned a bit more about Alice and her mother as the Radio Caroline DJ burbled happily. Her mother, according to Alice, was an alcoholic who had once worked in the chorus line at the Hippodrome Theatre but who had driven Alice's father away. Her old man was a telecommunications engineer who travelled to places like Saudi Arabia. It all sounded fabulously exotic and sordid at the same time. Since her parents' divorce, money had become a lot tighter, and inevitably her horse-riding was threatened. She and her mother were unable to maintain her horse any longer. 'That's why I wrecked the gymkhana that time. I was so upset, I went crazy for a while. But I'm all right now. I get to ride other people's horses. It's not so bad.'

When they'd finished the cider, they polished off the bottle of ginger wine. Sam had an attack of the hiccups.

'I know how to cure that,' Alice said.

'I'm not standing on my head.'

'No, it's not that. Want me to show you?'

'Sure.'

'Keep still. Ready?'

'Yes.'

She reached across and pressed her hand hard on his crotch. The hiccups stopped instantly. He gazed into her eyes. Her face was neutral, impa.s.sive.

The Radio Caroline DJ suddenly became ebullient, announcing the countdown to midnight. Alice jumped out of her seat. 'Got to get home before Mum does, or I'll get h.e.l.l.' She threw on her coat, and Sam followed her to the door. When she opened it, an icy blast of crisp midnight air blew inside the house.

'That's the New Year in,' said Sam.

She turned back to him, grabbing the collars of his shirt, c.o.c.king her head on one side. 'Do I get a New Year kiss?' Without waiting for an answer she pressed her mouth lightly on his. Sam felt his lips tingle. Then, only for a second, she pressed her tongue gently into his mouth. An instant later she was gone, hurrying down the snow-covered path.

'Happy New Year,' Sam told her departing shadow.

24.

Ad Astra 'Aren't you afraid to look at her? Not just a little bit?'

'No,' said Sam, trying to focus.

'I would be. You look at the Medusa and she turns you to stone. Anyway, you're way out. You need to move closer to the zenith.'

Sam squinted into the eyepiece and elevated the angle of his telescope at the constellation of Perseus, looking for Algol, the 'Demon Star'.

'You're still way out. The eclipse will have happened before you get there.'

'How can you tell?'

'Because the stars are my sisters and brothers.'

'No, I meant how can you tell from where you're sitting?'

The Tooth Fairy sat cross-legged on Sam's bed, picking at the ever-widening hole in her striped leggings. Her heavy boots had left an imprint of February rain and decomposed leaf on his clean bedspread. 'I've told you before: I have a map of the night sky tattooed on the inside of my skin.' She scrambled off the bed and joined him at the window, gently moving him aside. Without looking into the eyepiece she elevated the telescope another degree.

Sighting through the telescope again, Sam felt her arm settle gently on his shoulder. 'Is that it?'

'That's it. Be patient. Any moment now.'

Sam watched, waiting patiently. Finally Algol, the binary star representing the head of Medusa, moved into eclipse and faded to minimum light. It was like heaven winking back at him. 'Wow!' said Sam.

'She's dangerous, Sam.'

'It's just mythology!'

'I'm not talking about Algol. I'm talking about Alice.'

'Alice?' Sam drew back from the telescope and looked at the Tooth Fairy in surprise. Her eyes swam with starlight. 'Don't you like her?'

In the weeks since Alice had kissed him, Sam had been visited by the Tooth Fairy many times, and almost invariably on the occasions when he looked through the telescope in the quiet of his room. At these times the Tooth Fairy seemed to reflect his mood exactly; he discovered that if he could be relaxed with her, she could be with him. Though he remained afraid of her volatile and unpredictable nature, he was learning how not to provoke her, while she was capable of surprising tenderness, and even affection, towards him.

'I'm not saying that. I'm not saying I don't like her. In fact, there are many things about her I do like. But she's dangerous, and that's the point.'

'You're dangerous! What about that stunt you pulled at Christmas?'

'You still haven't forgiven me for that? So your uncle got a hairnet. So what?'

'I'm not talking about the presents. I mean what happened at the church.'

Unexpectedly the Tooth Fairy looked sad. 'You have no idea how lonely it is at Christmas.' She changed the subject hurriedly. 'Come on. Angle your telescope towards the southern horizon. Sirius is gleaming.'

The Tooth Fairy's eyes were turned up to the night sky, but her renewed interest in the stars was fake. She was grieving over something about which she could never speak, and Sam surprised himself when his heart squeezed for her. He put his eye to the gla.s.s.

'Sirius is Greek. It means the ''Shining One'' or the ''Scorching One''. I never told you before it's my star name. Sirius.' As she uttered her name, Sam thought he saw the star glimmer with needles of ultraviolet, golden and crimson light. She sighed. 'There's too much light. All of this unnatural electrical light streaming from your cities, it pollutes the night sky. You suffer. You all suffer without knowing it.'

'Suffer from what?'

'From loss of stars.'

Sam felt intimidated by the Tooth Fairy when she was in this mood. He drew back from his telescope and made notes in the journal he'd been keeping since he'd started using the telescope. He looked at his wrist.w.a.tch and noted what he'd seen. 'I've got to see Skelton again,' he told her.

'The head-shrink man? He's a star-killer too. He's a real f.u.c.king Medusa. There are snakes coming out of his head. You can't see them, but I can.'

'He's all right. Mum and Dad told him what happened with the Christmas gifts. He's made an extra appointment.'

'So I brought that on, did I? I never wanted that. Listen: I fear him, that one. I fear him more than Alice. Between them they're coming for me.'

'Will you always be around?'

'No. Because you don't want me. You make it easy for them.' She turned her eyes sky-ward, and he saw that she was crying. The faint light from the sky starbursted on a tear.

Suddenly there was something appallingly human about her. Her tights were ripped and holed, exposing small areas of white, fleshy thigh, and the wool of her bodice was unravelling under her tunic. Her boots were scuffed, and it occurred to him that, apart from the Santa cap and motorcycle jacket that day in Coventry, she'd worn the same clothes from the moment he first saw her and that the garments were slowly disintegrating.

'I didn't mean to make you sad.'

'I'm dying, Sam,' she said. 'I'm dying.'

'I'm sorry,' he tried again. 'I honestly never meant to make you sad.'

He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she stiffened, tossing her head back like a horse. Quickly wiping away her tears, she bared her pointed teeth at him, snarling, 'f.u.c.k you. Get away from me.' Without warning, she sprang on to the windowsill, sending his telescope clattering. Sam scrambled to catch the telescope as she opened the window, able only to watch her leap into the blackness of the night. He leaned out into the sharp, February air to see where she'd gone, but there was no sign of her, neither down nor up.

Sam slammed his window shut. His heart hammered. Reaching under his bed, he found the box containing the Nightmare Interceptor. He clipped the sensor to his nostril and hyperventilated through his nose until the alarm clock was triggered. He switched it off quickly so as not to alert his parents.

He disconnected the crocodile clip from his nose and went over to his astronomical journal, which was lying open on the table. Underneath the date he'd written: In the constellation of Perseus, Algol eclipsed at 11.45 p.m. Sirius brilliant in colours. Can we recover from Loss of Stars? On his bedcover was a sooty bootprint.

So he hadn't been dreaming. The Nightmare Interceptor had proved that. Unless he'd been dreaming about using the Nightmare Interceptor. He closed the curtains and climbed into bed. Before settling down to sleep, he reached out and pulled the curtain aside to look out again at the night sky.

Sirius dulled on the southern horizon.

25.

The Truth Room Meanwhile the kiss hung in the air for months, like an aerial spirit. Offered at midnight betokening a new year, with Alice's tongue inserted between his lips at some hazy time dividing the first and the last radio-broadcast chimes of Big Ben, it neither belonged to the dying old year nor yet was it properly born into the celebratory nascence of the new. So it hung, frozen in time, over the threshold of Sam's house, neither in nor out, unacknowledged, the unhatched kiss.

It was never spoken of. Sam certainly never mentioned it to either Terry or Clive. In any event, Terry would have waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and Clive would have curled his lip. Despite the fact that Alice and he sat together most days on the bus to school and back, discussing many things, the subject was never broached. The magical kiss was like the Brazil nuts and the 'Eat Me' dates: it seemed to have no place in the world beyond its seasonal novelty.

But again it wasn't a dream. She had kissed him. His tongue had tingled. His hand did tremble. Though the issue could grow no further, the moment could never be taken away. So Sam lived with it, this mystical half-way state of being kissed; and he developed, every time he saw Alice, the nervous habit of pushing his spectacles higher up the bridge of his nose.

The most extraordinary thing was the way in which some of the people around him seemed to suspect vaguely or to guess exactly. Connie had taken to watching him very closely since the holiday season. He might turn suddenly and catch his mother staring at him, her face etched with concern. Then one evening at Terry's house Linda had said something to him that caused him to blush outright. Not that this was unusual. Lovely Linda's unfolding beauty was unstoppable. She wore pink lipstick and enticing perfume even around the house; her increasingly short skirts trumpeted her dazzling, sword-slim thighs; and her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, straining against the white cotton of her blouse, provoked a pang every time he saw her. Sam didn't know how Terry could bear to live so close to her. Each time he saw Linda in a new outfit he would eventually be compelled to return home and go to his room for a frenzied bout of masturbation.

'You look different somehow.' Linda had laid a light and fragrant finger on his reddening cheek. She was wearing thigh-length patent-leather boots and a black leather miniskirt. 'What have you been up to?'

'Sam always looks like he's found a quid and lost a fiver,' chuckled Terry's Uncle Charlie.

'That's right,' Linda said thoughtfully, still looking hard at Sam. 'You look like you found something and then lost it again.'

Sam stood up, pushing his gla.s.ses higher up the bridge of his nose. 'I have to be getting back home.'

'Ask her if she's got a friend for Terry,' said Linda. Sam turned furiously. 'Joke,' she said.

But Skelton was the worst, and the most perceptive.

Sam's next appointment with Skelton was brought forward because of the Christmas-gifts fiasco. Connie had complained to her GP that Sam's visits to the psychiatrist were proving useless. The local doctor had responded to this complaint by arranging an extra session of uselessness, which, oddly enough, appeared to satisfy Connie.

Skelton too seemed to have gone through subtle but discernible changes in the holiday period. He sat behind his desk, licking his finger and slowly turning the pages in a file when Sam was shown into the familiar office. His face was pink with capillaries exploded at the surface of his skin, and his flaxen hair was brushed up in a greasy quiff. His ivory and nicotine-stained teeth jutted out further than ever when he spoke.

'Tsk, tsk, tsk. Sam, my boy, what have I told you about not buying your uncle a hairnet for Christmas? Eh?'

'Nothing,' Sam said, suddenly emboldened.

Skelton glanced up from the file. 'Correct! I've told you nothing. Was that unfair of me, laddie? Not warning you about that, I mean. Not telling you not to buy a hairnet for your uncle's tonsure?'