by Ronald Malfi
He walked down the corridor, too conscious of the absolute silence. Was the whole floor empty? The entire hotel? He stopped outside Isabella’s door and knocked. Thinking he heard movement on the other side of the door, he pushed himself back on his heels to see if the tiny pinpoint of light behind the door’s peephole would suddenly go black. It did not. His eyes dropped to the floor. He thought, too, that he saw the shifting of shadows in the strip of dull light beneath the door. But he could not be certain.
Knocking again: “Isabella?”
No one answered.
Something moved at the end of the hallway. Again, he thought it was her…
“Isabella?”
Yet he was alone.
Outside, he searched futilely for her along the beach. The droning chhhh of the cicadas was unrelenting. Yes, she had complained about the mural. Yes, he was certain of it. Though not for the reasons she had allegedly given—she was not offended by any such violence, Nick knew—but because it was all part of her game. Yes. Isabella Rosales’s game. It was nothing new—was, in fact, part of the same game that required her to alter her personality whenever Emma was around; the same game that found her taunting and teasing him since the day of their initial meeting; the same game that thrived on the total contradiction of who Isabella Rosales really was. This was one more rule of the game. Did she feel she owned him? Did she find some sort of perverse fulfillment in the manipulation of him, and in facilitating his own personal destruction? Had she set out from the very beginning to bring ruination upon him? Pausing by the edge of the sea, feeling the slide of the icy water lap at his toes, he thought of the way she had beaten the man known as Pygmalion last night on the street—the glowing embers of her eyes flaring as she slammed the ukulele down on him, down on him, down on him, and kicked her feet at him as Nick dragged her away. He had thought her to be crying when he finally got her tucked away safely in the alley between the shops…but no, she had been laughing. So was he also part of her game—perhaps the most important part…the only part?
Though the day was pleasant, the beach was not nearly as crowded as he had anticipated. It was just starting to get cool now, too; he could see the gray threat of thunderclouds just beyond the horizon. Perhaps it was the cicadas that kept everyone indoors. The giant, blind bugs stuttered through the air, frequently thumping into his chest, legs, the back of his head. He batted them away with his one good hand; it was like swatting slow-motion bullets from the air. They congregated, too, on the sand, many of them having already been crunched dead in the center of an errant footprint. Mostly, they clung to the reeds and azalea bushes, the trees and magnolia blossoms. He couldn’t walk five steps without stepping on one—couldn’t hear the sea without first hearing their radio-hiss din in the air.
Isabella was not on the beach. He walked about a mile south from the hotel and could not find her. He could not find Emma, either. He could find no one. Everything was immersed in that eerie quality of silence that comes just before a storm. He wondered if Emma had become disgusted by the cicadas and had gone back to the hotel room. Cicadas, it seemed, would disgust her…
Walking back toward the hotel, cresting one of the many ribbed dunes, he could see the faint silhouette of the Harbour Town lighthouse hovering just slightly above the trees. Out on the water, he could see the Kerberos, a dull glowing light coming through the pilothouse windows, rocking peacefully beneath the steel-gray sky.
He walked quickly through the lobby. It was empty—evacuated. As if afraid to be seen, he hurried across the lobby until he disappeared within the bank of elevators at the opposite end of the foyer.
On the sixth floor, he found a notice taped to the door of their hotel room:
LIMBO!
How low can you go?
Every night this week in the Riviera Room!
The hotel room was empty. No room service tray sat on the writing desk; no opened bottles of wine or carafes of coffee. Emma’s clothes were still here, as were the keys to the Impala…but all her seashells had been cleared away from the bathroom countertop. Had they been there this morning? He couldn’t remember…
There were a few books on the writing desk. The room’s Bible, as well as Emma’s poetry books. Absently, he picked one up, thumbed through the dog-eared pages. Byron. He picked up a second—Dante’s Inferno—and, without thinking, brought it up to his face, smelled the paper cover. They smelled of sand and the beach, the pages themselves sticky with sea salt. Eyes closed, he was back in Iraq, working over rough sketches in one of his sketchpads as the Eastern sun settled behind a caustic archipelago of ruins. Joseph Bowerman was again at his side, asking broad questions about love and life, of women and God, of faith and sex. Karuptka telling them to shoot the bitch. Myles Granger, silent, stoic, too young and too green and just about the wettest damn thing Nick had ever seen. Angelino and Hidenfelter flipping over cards, attempting to outdo each other with the most outrageous binge-drinking story from their own personal catalogues…
Nick opened Emma’s book. Flipping the pages, his thumbs smearing the print, his eyes scanned the text. Then something fell out of the book: a folded slip of paper. Outside, cicadas kamikazied the patio doors.
He picked up the slip of paper, unfolded it.
In Emma’s handwriting:
Sleep-stirred,
Caught awake
You here with me—
My soul doth quake.
Downstairs, he located the Riviera Room, but it was empty. The night’s festivities had not yet started. The calm before the storm. A dais was pushed against one wall, stacked with paper cup towers and an empty punch bowl. A few crepe streamers were draped over the doorway and the windows. It was just barely daylight now, but the sun still managed to peek over and creep in through the high windows. The Riviera Room was a dance floor for dust motes.
He went back to their room and grabbed the Impala’s keys. Back downstairs, he was still only faintly aware that he was practically all alone in the old hotel. Before leaving, he poked his head into the restaurant but it was empty. There was no Roger behind the bar, either; there was no James waiting tables. A ghost town.
He heard a bang come from the lobby. Nick hurried into the main foyer and saw it, too, was deserted except for the broad-shouldered, hulking shape of the handsome Palauan coming through the lobby doors, wheeling behind him his table of trinkets. The banging had been one of the lobby doors yawning open and slamming into an aluminum trash receptacle. From across the lobby, Nick watched, unmoving, unspeaking. The Palauan’s shadow stretched long and tired across the lobby floor. The wheels of the trinkets table shrieked like a thousand souls in sufferance; a few string beads swung like a hypnotic pendulum from the side of the table. Securing a corner of the lobby, the handsome Palauan proceeded to rearrange the items on his table while humming gently to himself. At one point, he became aware of Nick’s presence and looked up.
“Bugs,” he said. “Outside.” Said, “Very big bugs.”
Nick only stared at the man—stared at his dark, densely-lashed, hypnotic eyes.
“Is there something you are looking for?” the Palauan asked.
“Someone,” he said.
“I have things,” said the Palauan. “Only things.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Your pretty wife—she has purchased many beautiful shells.”
“Yes.”
“She will be back?” asked the Palauan.
“I don’t know,” Nick said.
“Perhaps, then, we can find something for you.”
“There’s nothing I need.”
“I am certain, my good brother, that I have something you need.”
“I have to go.”
He found himself half in a daze, taking the Impala through the dark-twisted, wet streets of the island. There were very few vehicles on the road. He drove as if with a purpose, although he was not completely (or consciously) aware of his destination. Cicadas exploded like mortars on the windshield. Turning on t
he wipers only created a milky yellow glaze across the glass.
I can spin you out, he thought, directed at the car. I can spin you out and cough up dust just like Emma did that day on that dirt road.
He motored the Impala west along the evacuation route. Indeed, there were large blue signs on which had been printed a picture of a tornado, just as Emma had seen on the drive into the town. And thinking of this reminded him of the day he and Emma had crossed the causeway from South Carolina onto the island, and he could picture it as clearly as if he were watching it unfold in real-time before his own eyes. He recalled how excited Emma had been to see the island settled in the water as they approached. But there had been no seeing it: almost as if they had never gone anywhere, never left the mainland, there was no seeing it. He’d explained to her the peculiar topography—the reasons for her not seeing the glittering span of water that separated the mainland from the island—and she had tucked her poetry book down into the seat and had listened to him.
Now, around him, night was beginning to fall. Driving west, chasing the sun, a bright yellow glare sprawled across the Impala’s gluey windshield. He dropped the visor and squinted against the setting sun. He could still hear the sound of the solid little pellets thudding and popping against the windshield, too: the cicadas. Five minutes of driving and the windshield was smeared with muck. The wipers continued to worsen the condition.
It became apparent to him that he was now the only vehicle on the road. He did not know if that was the result of the cicadas or the threat of another impending storm. All he knew was that he drove and did not pass a single car.
After several more minutes of driving, the Impala rolled across a transition in pavement and began to climb the gradual incline preceding the causeway which communicated with the mainland. Still, he was the only one on the road.
In the seat beside him, Myles Granger said, “Shoot me. Shoot me in the head.”
“Hang on,” he told him.
“Shoot me in the head. It hurts. Please, Lieutenant. Kill me.”
“You’ll be okay,” he promised the boy.
“My legs,” groaned Myles Granger, his voice hitching and sounding extremely small, far away. “I don’t want to lose my legs, Lieutenant.”
“You’re not going to lose your legs, Myles.”
“I don’t want to die, Lieutenant.”
“You’re not—we’re not—you’re not—”
He couldn’t find the words. It was peculiar, all of it. They could all envision themselves killing others, killing countless others and never slowing. They could do it as well as any machine. But in the same breath, it was impossible to imagine your own demise. They were immortal; they would never die.
“You’re not—we’re not,” he stuttered.
But there was no one in the seat beside him. Iraq was gone and dead. Myles Granger was gone and dead. Bowerman was gone and dead, split open and stretched like human taffy across the sand, his books scattered about his prone body: Pynchon, Kosinski, Bukowski—all of them, strewn, wing-clipped and fluttering dead in the sand. Book-birds. Flightless and lifeless.
Dead.
And where am I going? he wondered. Home? Alone?
The Impala shuddered to a halt. His foot on the brake, the car strumming and bucking around him, he looked through the smeary, grime-caked windshield at the expanse of bridgework that lay ahead. An odd breeze rustled the trees. Even at a standstill, the cicadas were unrelenting, propelling themselves at the windshield, their tiny carapaces exploding in a burp of yellow fluid upon impact.
Home? he thought. Alone?
Lieuten—
Something thick, whole, and black loomed just over the western horizon. At first he thought it was a storm cloud…but on closer inspection, he realized it was too full, too tangible, moving too rapidly. An airplane? But there were no lights. Then he finally realized it was comprised of a million living, moving things, and he thought it was a flock of birds, must be a flock of birds fleeing the storm. It drew closer, ever closer, and he recognized it for what it truly was: a massive swarm of cicadas baring down upon the island in a plague. He had been driving with the driver’s side window cracked; now, aware of the onslaught, he quickly sealed the window shut. And he was just in time: a mere second later, the swarm collided with the Impala, pelting the grill, hood, windshield with hundreds of wriggling, buzzing shells. The sound was like a million gunshots. Most struck the windshield and disintegrated in an asterisk of yellow mucus. Others somehow managed to survive the impact, albeit for a brief few seconds, their cellophane wings zipping against the glass, their split torsos thrusting futile black legs into the muck of their unfortunate predecessors before dying. Behind the wheel, Nick turned his head and shut his eyes as if in preparation of a second shockwave attack. He could hear the swarm continue to strike the Impala, overtake it, even rock it slightly on its shocks. Like gunfire, he heard every pop, every explosion, every thud and crack and bump and twitter against the cast-iron body of the car. The chiding of their wings was like rain falling on a tin roof. Eyes still closed, he reached out and jerked the car into reverse, slammed down on the accelerator. The Impala shuddered then roared backward in a frenzy. Flipping open his eyes, ill-prepared for the speed at which the car had taken off, Nick pawed uselessly at the steering wheel. Somehow he managed to swing the car around—but not before he felt a jarring thud at his rear, the car seizing to a sudden standstill. A tree—he’d struck a tree. Slamming the car into drive, still spinning the steering wheel, Nick gunned the Impala forward. It lurched over a swipe of grass and mud, taking with it a section of azaleas, then propelled down the vacant expanse of highway back in the direction it had come.
—Chapter XXI—
He crashed the Impala into the base of a palm just outside the hotel. By this time, the entire windshield was covered in the remains of cicadas; the Molotov cocktail bursts of their tiny bodies dinging off the frame of the car were unrelenting. Shoving open the door, he stumbled out of the vehicle and, with his bandaged hand held up over his eyes, staggered back into the hotel.
The hallways and corridors stood on a tilt.
Riding the elevator to the sixth floor, he was conscious only of his heartbeat and the raspy squeal of his breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. On the sixth floor, it seemed many of the bulbs, designed in imitation of flickering candle flames, had gone dead in the candelabras. In fact, stepping off the elevator, Nick could see only a single light halfway down the length of the hallway. A soft yellow rectangle of light, spilling out onto the hallway floor, onto the opposite wall. The light was coming from Nick’s room; the door was open.
Emma, he thought.
He walked down the hall. He seemed to be the only living soul on the floor. As he drew closer to the open door, however, his ears picked up the slight sigh of shuffling papers—and, in his mind, he summoned the visage of his wife seated at the writing desk, working through reams of poetry, nearly possessed, nearly in obsession. Nearly in madness.
Emma…
It was not Emma.
He passed in front of the open door and stopped. He did not bother saying anything for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the bell captain, who was sitting on the edge of the bed surrounded by an autumn flutter of loose-leaf paper, spoke.
“It’s funny,” Granger said.
“What is?”
“How you can sum up a person in letters and keep them in an old shoebox. A shoebox like a coffin.”
Indeed, there was an old cardboard shoebox on the floor by Granger’s feet. The unfolding wings of old letters lay around the old man on the mattress, in his lap. A few of Myles Granger’s letters were scattered around the floor, too.
Granger said, “A person, whether they know it or not, truly defines himself in his writing.”
“Mr. Granger…”
The bell captain was crying—softly, silently, only the wash of tears tracing down the swell of his reddened, patchy face. He suddenly looked twice his age, or l
ike someone who had died and had been resurrected by a god with designs on forcing the brain of his undead corpse into madness.
Again—madness…
“He was a good boy,” Granger said flatly.
Standing in the doorway beside Nick, Myles Granger whispered, “Shoot me in the head.”
“A good boy,” Granger continued. “He thought so highly of you, Nick. Over and over he talks about you in his letters.”
“I had no idea.”
“It’s how you wound up here.”
“Yes,” Nick said, not knowing what else he should say. “Thank you.”
“A good boy,” marveled Granger, his eyes scanning letter after letter. He had them balled in his fists, damp with his tears, the writing smeared and smudged in places. Nick thought of Emma, and how she had said something about the smell and feel of a letter doused in tears. When had that been? He couldn’t remember. Suddenly, he found he could not remember a single thing.
Cicadas slammed against the glass doors.
We’re under attack, he thought with little emotion. We’ve been ambushed and we’re under attack.
“Eleven months,” Granger went on. He set one of the letters aside and brought his eyes up, unfocused, and looked out across the room and at nothing in particular. “Eleven months of handwriting, and that’s all I have left of him. Summed up and kept in a shoebox, and that’s all I have of him.”
“I’m sorry,” he told the bell captain.
“Not you,” Granger said. “Never you. Don’t be sorry. Everyone else, Nick—everyone else can be sorry. All of them, they can all be sorry. But not you, Nick. Never you.”
“Mr. Granger—”
Granger raised a handgun and pressed it to his temple.
“Mr. Granger!”
Shoot me in the head, Lieutenant, his mind yammered.
“You can’t save everyone, Nick.”