M31

by Stephen Wright

  “Everyone around here,” said Maryse, “is either in debt or half-crazy or both.”

  Gwen drifted slowly upstairs. The shades were pulled in the bedrooms, but she found the bathroom window open far enough for a glimpse. White walls, white tile, white towels, then something moved. “Uh-oh,” she said, “I think somebody’s taking a bath.”

  “All right!” cried Dallas, nudging her aside. “Here we go! Yeah, seems to be some definite skin here.”

  “Probably Irene,” said Maryse, “soaking her twat.”

  “Or her bruises,” said Trinity.

  “Shit,” complained Dallas, “you can’t make out anything, the damn crack’s too small.”

  “I guess,” said Trinity, “there’s no points for anyone tonight.”

  “Hey,” called Maryse, “catch this act.”

  Behind them a dark shape draped itself over a tombstone to the sound of vomit splattering on dry grass.

  “Jesus,” muttered Dallas, “ain’t he got no respect for the dead?”

  Gwen went over and helped him up to the house (all quiet now, parents and daughter apparently resting peacefully, Edsel asleep at the dinner table, head cradled in his arms beside the still untouched plate of food) and got Beale out of his clothes and washed him off and tucked him into his sleeping bag, and by the time she finished the others had come in from outside and dispersed to their various corners. She went into the kitchen for a glass of water, and when she turned around Dash was standing in the darkened doorway staring at her.

  “Oh, you scared me.”

  He smiled with half his mouth. Even with the sunglasses gone the eyeballs themselves seemed to be hiding behind tinted contacts. “Enjoy the stars?”

  “Very much. It wasn’t what I expected.”

  “It never is.” He came toward her like a part of the shadow in the next room detaching itself and moving into the light. The kitchen seemed painfully bright, the sputtering fluorescence overhead glazing surfaces with a hard inhospitable look. She stepped out of his way and stood leaning against the sticky counter, sipping nervously at her water.

  “I’ve been pointing my finger at the sky for decades now, but I might as well be squatting out on the interstate with it up my ass. Most people are either stupid or cruel, don’t you think? On second thought, I’m not sure there’s a significant difference.” He filled a battered copper pot and set it on the stove to boil. “How about some coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I’m afraid it would keep me up all night.”

  “Tea, then.” Up close she saw that she had been mistaken, the eyes were gray and soft, like bits of eraser.

  “I guess one cup wouldn’t hurt.” She sat down at an enamel table cluttered with piles of dirty dishes and smudged, half-empty glasses.

  He rinsed out two cups in the sink and placed them on the counter. “When I was young I used to drink whole pots of it at a time—coffee, that is. ’Course in those days I only slept three hours a night. Guess I was afraid I would miss something.”

  Suddenly this wild orange mass came leaping out of the silence onto the table and Gwen cringed.

  “That’s Minerva,” said Dash. “I think she looks like an owl, don’t you? I think most cats do, look like owls with fur.”

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  The animal looked at her for a disapproving moment through big amber marbles, then began to pick her way among the stale dinner remains, pausing to sniff daintily at the dried clots and crusts. She crossed the table and seated herself directly in front of Gwen, puffy tail curling neatly in about the white paws, the oversized elliptical pupils expanding and contracting as if taking breaths, the glimmer of intelligence inside low as a pilot light.

  Dash was pulling tea bags out of a jar. “Seems I need something warm in my belly these days before retiring.” He set a steaming cup before her, nudging the cat aside, and took a chair across from her. “Sleep little enough as it is.”

  Gwen watched the tea vapors go writhing away into nothing. “My father was like that. Warm milk every night. Because of his stomach. Finally it got so bad all he could eat was stuff without any color to it—milk, bread, cottage cheese, like that.” She sipped at her tea and paused, the most curious taste.

  “Was he ever able to work his way back into the spectrum?”

  “Huh?”

  “Colors.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in four years.” She looked into her cup at the floating leaf debris. “They’re divorced.”

  “So he doesn’t know what’s been happening with you?”

  “No.”

  “And your mother thinks you’re crazy.”

  She smiled. The words sounded funny in his mouth. “Yes.” She put down her cup. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened at dinner, I’m not usually like that.”

  “So what happened?”

  “All that emotional stuff. It kinda caught me by surprise, too.”

  “Surprise is our business. You knew that. That’s why you came.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore what I’m doing.”

  “You’re a pioneer, you’ve witnessed the crack in the egg, and that’s enough to twist anyone’s head. So don’t apologize, you knew enough to come to us and get your story on record, the official history, not the one the mole people keep. Most everybody these days seems to have settled, settled for good credit, settled for processed cheese, settled for too damn little, if you ask me. As if we’ve already finished with this world, cleared out all the woods. But a big surprise is coming, and they’re not going to be able to handle it, they’re not in the business.”

  “Will I have to witness that, too?”

  Dash smiled, professor to favorite pupil. “You already have.” He leaned toward her. “Watchers like us, you know, are the last true Americans.”

  “I’ve never felt that important.”

  “You’re a heroine, and it’s an honor to have you as a guest in my home.”

  She bent over her cup. Was that her future swirling about in dark bits and pieces on the bottom? “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” she confessed without raising her head.

  “Disappointed?”

  She looked up at him. “Are you kidding? You’re like a movie star.”

  “Really?” He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. “Which one?”

  “I can’t remember the name. He killed a lot of people and he never smiled.”

  His laughter erupted like something released from long confinement.

  “He usually died at the end,” she added.

  “Yes, don’t we all.”

  The cat lifted a paw and dipped her head, licking repeatedly along one rippling flank, scaly pinkish tongue drawing out the long hair into pointed orange tufts. Gwen placed her cup on the table, and the cat ceased its grooming and stuck its nose beneath the rim. Then it settled back and looked at her again, cold, unblinking.

  “You know, I thought when you came back that you’d kick us out. I mean, probably you’ve got people showing up at your door all the time and it must get tiresome.”

  “Not so many.” His own cup was cradled between hands almost as pale as the porcelain. “Interest waxes and wanes. Like the stock market. And why should we mind? Fresh faces are always welcome around here, particularly ones as pretty as yours.”

  She looked away. “Thank you.”

  “Your mother must be quite beautiful.”

  “I guess.”

  “Skin like that runs in families.” Beneath the merciless kitchen glare the surface of his own face appeared bloodless, rough and pebbled, the skin of someone who was, well, older.

  “Another cup?” he asked.

  “Oh no, no thank you. I think I’m about to fall out of this chair.”

  “Well, listen, Dot and I are scheduled for a segment on Night Chat next Friday. How’d you like to come sit in on the gig?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think we were planning on staying that long.”

  “I was
serious, what I said earlier.”

  “What about Dot, the rest of the family?”

  “They love company, couldn’t you tell?”

  “Let me talk this over with Beale.”

  “I think Beale wouldn’t mind moving in.”

  “I think you’re right.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. She was more tired than she had thought, the kitchen wobbled briefly, then clicked back into place. She put her empty cup in the stained sink and paused in the doorway. “Well, good night.”

  “Good night,” he said. The smile on his face seemed to be aimed in other directions than solely at her. “Don’t forget to wish upon a star.”

  She locked herself in the bathroom and brushed her teeth and washed her face, trying to ignore that other Gwen moving around inside the mirror. In the morning she would tell Beale they had to leave immediately. When she came out the kitchen light was off, the entire house lost in darkness, and she had to feel her way across the room with her feet like a blind person. Beale was snoring incredibly loudly, as if the plastic mouthpiece of a party horn were stuck in his throat, but when Gwen crawled into the sleeping bag beside him as quietly as she could, he came awake, arm clutching wildly for her in the dark.

  “Zatchoo?” he croaked in an exaggerated whisper. She was instantly enveloped in a rainbow-colored cloud of toxic fumes.

  “Yes,” she gagged.

  “Maya.” Now which old girlfriend was she supposed to be tonight? “Mica,” he repeated.

  “It’s all right.” She patted his clammy hand.

  “Mygah, I can’t find mygah.”

  “It’s all right now. Go to sleep.”

  These were magic words, for even as she spoke them he mumbled something unintelligible and dropped off again, mucus-rattling snores trailing after like noise from a bad muffler. It didn’t seem possible he could be taking in enough air through that obstruction, but she supposed she should only really start to worry when the sound stopped. It wasn’t so bad, anyway, she’d certainly rather share her consciousness with something recognizably human than one of Maryse’s spooky nonsounds: like the faraway urgent crackling of cellophane that can grow out of a dark room up into black flame eating at the walls. Oh God. She couldn’t bear another night in this horrible place. She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them, opened them, the quality of darkness remaining precisely the same, a huge roofed presence arching high overhead, already the second time flat on this floor and still not used to lying down for sleep in the middle of a church. Her mother was religious, never missing a service except for illness, but she had stopped going with her when she was fourteen, the year the pastor, Smiling Jack, touched her once after choir practice in a distinctly unspiritual way. Probably she would have quit going anyway, churches were places of perfumed boredom, places where dead bodies lay rotting in polished boxes, places where people got married. And if God was taking down her thoughts this very minute (to be branded in fire upon her flesh in the hereafter), that was fine; she had already taken down enough stuff on Him.

  After a while her body started to sway in a pleasant floating manner that she rather enjoyed. Perhaps finally she was beginning to relax. She imagined herself adrift on a blue air mattress on some warm tropical swell, trying to feel, not to think, all the inner knots going limp, coming loose, sinking slowly into the ease, breath drawing deeper, thought losing outline, when suddenly awareness sat bolt upright out of the void like a prematurely buried body crying, What? Who? Where? Up above, the high dark ceiling seemed even higher, the floor now plummeting quickly downward. Sweat broke out across her palms, her heart throbbed in her teeth. If she got up and turned on the light, it would awaken the others and reveal her secret: here she was going freaking schizo in a strange house of strange people at a dead hour in the absolute dead center of nowhere, U.S.A. But she could not move. She lay there, helpless, face up into the ominous peak, the fall of the blade. She watched, fascinated, as her panic, raving on undiminished, detached itself from her, stretching, thinning, snapping off like a length of elastic, all the little nerve creatures scampering away into the gray indistinct. She must have slept then, a light fitful doze, dreams tumbling around her too rapid to sort from the hints of another world only Fever could have ruled and maintained: sudden light spilling across her eyes to the crash of a refrigerator door, rattling trays, shattering glass, the thunder of feet brushing past her paralyzed head, Dot screaming, Zoe crying and crying and crying down a tunnel and out while above in the loft the measured creak of pacing steps, the ghost of a mad organist hunting for the stops, and occasionally she would become aware again of Beale’s snoring, the simple sound of phlegm seeking an exit become a lullaby sweet as the mechanical beat of a clock, something to cling to on the long rollicking ride to dawn, but then the feet would rush by, Zoe’s rapid feet, the refrigerator door bang, the fragile things go crash over the screaming and the crying, but was this now or before? Which was the dream? And how to comprehend the frozen image of Dallas posed before an open window, his nakedness as bright and close as the pale light of heaven trapped inside monstrous lenses and within The Object the sibilant murmur of voices rising together like engines warming for lift-off and behind the altar wall the weaving of domestic argument in shrill call and response: sensations arriving and departing in busy rush-hour numbers at the saucer terminal in her head where she was an Occupant and all the members of this frantic family aliens. Later, she awoke in calm darkness with a dry throat, a full bladder, but without will or power, the ensuing moment of fear subsiding like a bubble back into tenuous sleep and a sense of her body changing out from under her, growing, swelling, limbs bloated, muscles slack and useless and unable to resist when at last the thing emerged out of the night and lowered itself clumsily onto her chest, a penetrating fullness sweeping over her as the shadows bloomed crimson and she strained against the weight but her arms wouldn’t work and the weight began to move, rocking back and forth, drawing her in and out, and she saw Zoe in a yellowy patch of sun, hugging her knees and rocking on the scarred hardwood floor among echoes of stale hymns and Bible must and a thick voice, male and loudspeaker harsh, announced directly into her ear, to her alone, tick tock tick tock this is the way the universe fucks, and the moon swung grandly into view like a big silver ornament turning on a string and The Man in the Moon had the features of Dash himself and there were craters for his eyes.

  Six

  IT WAS RED AND POPPING with pain bubbles, so this must be it: the hollow interior of your very own head. There was pink quartz here sharp as razors and veins of black tar and knobs of forgotten muscle sticky as warm window putty. There was movement, a quick recoiling, also your own, and you opened her eyes and, groaning, flung a ponderous arm over her clammy face. The shades were up like raised theater curtains all around the room, and the sun was standing right outside, just beyond the glass, monstrous, naked, shockingly near. Her head seemed to be some sort of useless organic object peeled, discarded, and left out to dry. Her throat was stuffed with stiff blotting paper. Woozy puddles of vile fluid sloshed about in her stomach. She couldn’t handle alcohol, everyone knew that, why did she persist, and what poison was it exactly she had—the night was on her like a collapsing wall. Oh god oh god oh god oh god. She reached a frantic hand down between her cold thighs.

  “Oh, hi,” called Maryse, breezing through the room with pale Mignon connected to an even paler bottle, “you’re up. Look outside, what a gorgeous day.”

  From the kitchen came the horrifying smells and sounds of a family breakfast: spitting bacon and burned toast and the first tentative fender benders of a long summer day’s quota of emotional collisions, the pit stop for dreams and refueling having been indecently short.

  Gwen squirmed into her clothes inside the sleeping bag and rushed to the john before anyone could invite her over for a plate of runny eggs. The bathroom door was locked.

  “Who is it?” asked Beale.

  She shook the handle. “Let me in.”

  “
All right, all right.”

  She pushed her way in and quickly rebolted the door.

  “My God,” he was exclaiming to his face in the mirror, “I feel like I’ve been plowed under one of those fields out there.” Then he saw how she was looking at him. “Okay, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “We’ve…” she began, and stopped, already out of breath.

  “Let me go get a paper bag, you’re about to hyperventilate.”

  She grabbed his arm and held on. “Listen, we’ve got to get out of here. Now.” Her eyes were moving around in her head like trapped birds.

  Beale sighed. Slowly he squeezed a large white pimple bursting above one eyebrow. “Haven’t we had this discussion once, more than once?” She said nothing. He pressed a wad of toilet paper onto the oozing hole in his head, then examined the tissue with interest. “You know, I think if we offer to help out with the paperwork, their correspondence and manuscripts and stuff like that, we just might be able to hang around as long as we like.”

  She waited for the silence to accumulate properly. “Dash raped me last night,” she announced simply, reciting an equation.

  “What?” They looked at one another. The mirror between them was flecked with dried toothpaste. She could see herself still clutching her sweatshirt as if it were some small animal she had just strangled.

  “Dash came into the room in the middle of the night and crawled into my sleeping bag and raped me.” This is how you explain things to a child.

  “Are you kidding?” He saw how she looked at him. “But I was lying there right next to you.”

  She explained again, she had patience. “He got you drunk and he put something in my tea and he raped me. Obviously his plan all along. He could have fired a bullet into my head and you wouldn’t have heard.”

  Beale considered her words. None of them made any sense. His eyes blinked in the mirror. “Have you seen my gun? I can’t find it anywhere.”