‘Under no circumstances are you to venture to the top floor.’
Right. That was it. I didn’t argue it or even question it at the time. The top floor is where his bedroom is. He needs his privacy and as his employee I was expected to respect that. It made sense. Besides, I had plenty of room and resources to myself. In addition to his guest bedroom he had essentially granted me the entire basement and ground level to use as an office for writing. I had no reason to explore the top level.
But I’m not about to leave this miserable mess of a day empty-handed.
As I walk up the long driveway to M’s front door, I feel the sweat that has formed on my shoulders, due in part to my brisk walk through this warm summer night, but more so to the nervousness I felt for the rule that I had already in my mind broken. Using the spare key entrusted to me I unlock the front door and already my mind is working overtime to rationalize my decision. To know the man, to write about the man with any degree of authority, I must know his secrets. I open the door and unlace my Chucks. They look somewhat puerile next to Montblanc’s panoply of posh pedial prisons. This isn’t an invasion of privacy or a breach of trust. This is research. Nothing more. I make my way to the staircase and my right foot lands on top of the first step for the first time. He said near the beginning that I needed to know him complete. I am the artist. I need to be able to follow the trail that the muse presents. I climb the stairs. As I do I issue myself a compromise—just his bedroom, nothing else. That way I can sleep soundly on this excursion being entirely work-related. The last room on the right. Somehow I already know that’s where it is. During my approach I notice several framed photographs hanging in the hallway. In one of them I see an attractive man standing on a rock overlooking a body of water. I know that it’s not Max, but I don’t break my stride long enough to pick up any other details. The last room on the right. I take a deep breath. I pause for the camera and for the audience. This would be a good time to cut to a commercial. I shake my head. I open the door.
I’ve heard that following the tragedy of a child’s demise, parents will often maintain their bedrooms as a type of static shrine that remains unchanged throughout time. This was my first thought as I enter Montblanc’s chamber. I can’t ignore the remnants of a wife still here. The flowers on the mirrored desk, once as purple as my prose, have wilted and deceased. The room emits a femininity that is both pleasant and offsetting. After standing still for a moment I get to work. I check the drawer directly under the fading flowers and find the handgun, nestled on top a pile of incongruent fabrics and coloured construction paper. I’m afraid to touch it. I’ve never held a gun in my life and while I know that it’s most likely safe, I don’t risk disturbing it. I turn my attention instead to the bed. It is blindingly white, as are the bedside tables on either end. On the bottom shelf of the left table I notice two books. Looking at their spines I see that one of these books I know quite well while the other is unmarked. I pick up and move the hardcopy version of Restoring Conviction: The Hope and Faith of a Public Servant to examine the book underneath it. There is no title on the cover. I open the book and am startled by my good fortune. There is handwriting inside—Montblanc’s handwriting. This is it. Access to his private and uncensored thoughts. I turn to an arbitrary page and begin reading the man’s private words.
I make it halfway through the page before I hear the door downstairs open.
49
PSYCHOPANNYCHISM
I SLEEP WHEN I’m scared—not a great evolutionary trait to have, is it?
As soon as I heard the door open my reflexes took over and within a second or two I had shut the book and returned it to its designated spot underneath my own. I bounded out the bedroom and made a dash down the hallway toward the stairs. I descended three steps before I locked eyes with the early-returned lord of the manor who was in the process of removing his shoes.
I sleep when I’m scared. It was earlier than my usual bedtime but I didn’t want to process anything that had just happened. I only wanted sleep to overtake me. I only wanted to make it until the morning. I only wanted to turn these freshly burned revelations into shakeable dew.
When Montblanc saw my hasty exit from the forbidden floor his reaction was one of unsettling impassivity. He looked upon me for what felt like an eternity with no words and no change in expression. I was waiting for him to lose his temper. I was waiting for any type of reaction whatsoever. Wordlessly he finished removing his shoes as I slowly made my way down the remaining steps, the taciturn parliamentarian appearing larger with each gradual decrease in elevation.
I sleep when I’m scared. Consequences are best fought as faceless and unstoppable fiends in appropriate horrorscapes, not with words and dollars and other empirically quantifiable ammunitions. Lifeblood trickles down my calf, crusting on my leg hair.
After methodically placing his shoes on the nearby rack and his black pea coat on the nearby hanger, M picked up his luggage and started walking in my direction. I was still standing at the base of the staircase, tense and mentally preparing for an impending punishment. With two steps he was standing directly in front of me. He stood there for an uncomfortable beat or two and then:
“Excuse me.”
I stepped aside as he walked past me and up the stairs before disappearing into what used to be unviolated territory.
I sleep when I’m scared. I feel that it’s coming soon but still not soon enough. This fear is multifaceted and intersectional. It is partially measurable. What would the fallout be if he kicked me off his book? But these fiduciary fears are now secondary to what I think I remember seeing in that unmarked book upstairs. There is no denying the words inside were his, and while I know I remember some of the words that I saw, I can’t be sure that the images haven’t been usurped by the frenzied architects of my subconscious. As I slip into the remedial arms of sleep I’m affronted by a bricolage of thoughts and phrases, some attributable to what I saw in M’s journal, some to myself, though I no longer know where the dividing line is meant to exist.
***
I just . . . I just like a lot. I’m numb to what I do not just to him. A lot of nothing like what I just don’t I mean I will die young enough. That it is easy. To tell you nothing to be filthy to eat pussy was a single sheet a little bigger. Listen. You’ll naturally live with little until the air is seen. Well if you’ll come along who was looking at a sheet a shell a diesel. Ideal finale she and she was here and tell him it had been a failing weekend the journey said he’s a lot more early he was a limb for the law other than the sort of played well a lot.
Said yeah he’s been doing. That. To me. Then. To bed with their beloved passionate cogs in hand. Yes, he should eat. He then looks up the national polls long study to look at the seller list and the legal slimmest things like a living hell. Good chunk of the body of the budget cut cut cut destroy the tanks for a cheap shot head a truck bomb the sleazy little bit odd ball drop.
But they are the stallions of life.
Cool long long haul. The battle continues. A lot more early he was a limb or a useful her dirty of a life in a new poll just to feel her. To you I mean engine. The feeling of the simplistic look even clicking clicking. But a lot of things that belong to the city today. She is looking to eat eat.
Listening to make these young looking all of the songs bloody well you know let me fucking Anglos will say yes or like the other infantile nothing. This is really very a little unsettling facility that he even the little ship that’s been in the Lucy the tongue. Cities were open through the hands of such truthful men. To rule with the light of the laws should. On the earth.
You know as you did was say you were in that one of whom were jack off the other men no love with him been put into it but. Why do you get I mean yes I know that what I have taught you to be how long it is I’ll be in. Luck I think to do to be how the he’ll live to are they come one must be OK if you come let me come to morning. My moth
er to me. Will see blue can be seen to be bullies do something with loads of load on lock being loaded and I am running around the court with them over a clue.
Why don’t you know going down the length of this is just not loving yourself to do no more even if you say I’ve not looked. I said you have your own head removed on her love but I do have a shot. I thought I was there no don’t understand me or I’ll have gotten better than the thought of the medicine man who thought I did not need to have to let me do it. Subtle little silk legs move to luck the muscle whom you call him relaxed their hearts filled with tranquillity. They strove for seeking sleep.
Look look look look look super super super skinny to get enough sleep. Looks to conclude the physics cyclicality into clicking it will be a little Kitty Kitty.
Never the burden of one man who would steer this vessel toward oblivion on the backs of the conquered. My course set by the eyeless visitors from above. Their mouths don’t move and they speak inside my head. Never speak their name. The Lord has brought them unto you. The seed of the Father bears gifts and sorrows. They will call you home beyond the Sun before the paint is dry. As sure as you are born, they will call you home. As sure as you are born, they will live inside you. Nobility is not in action, it is in abstinence. Let them wilt inside us, their final home. Soon I will be forced to surrender in total and the reigns of this vessel will be handed over to the eyeless invaders. The country collapses. The infrastructure collapses. Things are growing foggier. I don’t need the diagnosis. I know. I know as I always have and despaired. My time grows ever shorter as the finish line grows ever closer.
***
When I awoke I was alone in the house. Montblanc must have started his day earlier than usual. I skipped breakfast and instantly began writing about the man that I seemed to understand now better than ever before.
50
PENOLOGIST
Day 3
THOUGH HIS MIND had begun conditioning itself to resting atop flat concrete, his skull had yet to acclimate and the Convict awoke with a blue pain behind his eyes. He had dreamt about a raven-haired girl he remembered from his youth and his member now stood erect as a testament to her memory. The room was still paltry and square but seemed larger now than it had three days prior. The Convict made his way to the cell’s sunken corner where he had been piling his stool and added to it with a malnourished and underwhelming offering. He had no idea what time it was and had no way of telling. From some reservoir of unspent hardiness, he set to completing the arbitrary number of press-ups he agreed upon during the night passed. His nose tapped the stone floor on each descent and his wiry arms revealed their thew, hinting at a dormant strength not yet fully dissolved, a strength that an untouchable life ago would be used to secure his current stone-walled tenure. The Convict sat heavy-shouldered on what was called his bed and stared at the unblinking walls. He thought about how much of the world he had seen and what he would never see again.
Day 12
The pains of hunger had become affixed to the Convict’s condition and were as regular to him now as breathing the staled air. He was delivered food exactly once per day, a solitary piece of cornbread so hard that it required water be poured over it before he could bite into it. The bread came at the same time each day, though whether this was meant to be breakfast or dinner he could not say. It was delivered by a gloved hand and dropped into the cell from a hole in the ceiling that remained covered at all other times. Each time the hole was uncovered the Convict tried to see who the gloved hand belonged to, but the process was over in a matter of seconds and the man up above never revealed his face. The exercise routine the Convict tried to maintain had begun to slip and he spent most of his time atop his stone bed thinking of ways he could pass the time but never finding strength enough to pursue any of them. He had grown visibly weaker and was sleeping longer each day. He dreamt of a vast field of yellow sunflowers, the brightness of which brought tears to his eyes.
Day 38
The Convict had reduced to half the size he was at the time of his initial imprisonment. His face was sagged and gaunt and covered with patches of wiry hair. The hair on his head had thinned and more fell out each day. He collected the dead hair from around the cell and added it to a pile in the corner. With a little more hair and some clever craftsmanship, he figured he might be able to fashion something resembling a pillow. His arms and legs had shed their mass and muscularity revealing a network of protruding veins. His skin hung loose. His gums bled. The pile of stool in the sunken corner of the cell was slowly expanding, emanating a constant putrescence and further restricting the amount of habitable space. The convict’s internal clock had adjusted to the daily delivery of cornbread and he could now correctly anticipate to the minute when the gloved hand would arrive to deliver him sustenance enough to live out another day. As he ate the cornbread, taking only the smallest of bites to prolong his enjoyment of it, the Convict concluded that the gloved hand keeping him alive must surely be that of God.
Day 65
Though frail and sickly the Convict yet lived. His spine had started to curve and when he could find the resolve to stand he did so at a height now markedly lessened. He felt cold. He felt little else. On this sixty-fifth day of imprisonment, the hole in the roof was uncovered and the Convict’s mouth began to salivate in anticipation, but no gloved hand emerged and no bread was dropped, rather a voice called to the Convict. The first voice he had heard since his quarantine began.
“Is it your desire to be free?”
The Convict did not respond. He negotiated the scenario with what little wits he still maintained. He had lost the memory of many things and though he was teased with the images of a past life in his dreams he knew in this exact moment that he was not asleep and that he was not dead. The voice called again.
“Is it your desire to be free?”
The Convict had accepted early on that freedom remained starkly outside the realm of possibility. He had stayed alive simply by impulse and not by mismanaged fancies of freedom or release. And yet, here he hears the herald’s query. He had not tried speaking for many days and he found it difficult to get his words out now. With what strength remained he tried in desperation to answer the voice from up high, though what came out was but a hoarse and weakened croak.
“I will ask it of you once again, but please, hurry. Is it your desire to be free?”
The Convict’s voice continues to fail him as he struggles to be heard by the stranger in the sky. He can offer nothing but a dusty wheeze.
“I fear I must leave before they return. This is your last chance, friend. Do you desire to be freed?”
His body fights him throughout every motion, but the Convict manages to stand up and slightly reduce the distance between himself and the open hole to freedom. He cups his hands around his mouth, his long and yellowed fingernails tangling amidst one another, and shouts with whatever strength still lingered within him. But all that came out was a coarse whisper unheard by the mysterious man above.
“And so it is. I cannot force your freedom upon you. Goodbye, friend.”
The hole in the roof closes and the Convict sinks back to his stone bed where he lies curled like an embryo. He falls asleep and dreams of rusted hacksaws wielded by angels of light.
51
POTATIONS
“DRINK WITH ME.”
These were the words M sternly spoke as he walked through the door of the office where I had been working feverishly and efficiently all day. These were also the first words that he had spoken to me since he caught me trespassing in his bedroom last night—the fallout of which was still unknown to me. It was just after five and though this was only an hour shy of my usual stopping time I was, perhaps out of the guilt and embarrassment I felt for last night’s actions, enjoying a rare surge of productivity that I was not particularly inclined to cut short. But then, ‘drink with me’, spoken with an edge sharp enough to slic
e through my fettered focus. This giant boulder blowing through the door, intent on breaking the fast of Ramadan and scattering the shoals collected in the shallow waters of my throat. Halfway to Ascension and now the captain orders us to throw anchor?
I saw in his right hand a bottle of brown booze adorned with a label I didn’t recognize, and in his left two identical glasses small enough to fit in his palm. I see where he wants this to go and I suspect that he’s picked up on my apprehension.
“The book can wait, this cannot. Drink with me.”
Now while I’m tempted to tell Max that at this moment I would rather write about him than talk to him, I know better than to bite the ample hand of the benefactor. I save my work mid-sentence and close the document, hoping that I’ll remember how to finish the thought when I open it again tomorrow. Interpreting this action as acceptance of his offer, Monty takes a seat across the table from me. He’s still wearing his ‘work’ clothes—whatever that means. Was he in Toronto or Ottawa today? Who cares. I’m thirty years old and I don’t know how to tie a tie. I don’t even own a tie and I’ve deluded myself into affirming that as some point of pride. I don’t know what a Double Windsor is, but you can shove it up your ass for all I care. Okay, apparently there’s some lingering aggression I had better shake off. Great big smiles now, fake it ‘til you make it and all that.
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