"How could things get any worse?"
"They would if you had to go it alone," she said and disappeared from the window. In my head, I heard her say, "Luckily, you can't go anywhere without your unconscious."
My hand on the key was grasped by another--what felt like a real and solid hand, but invisible to my eyes. I could see it in my mind, though--the bloody fingers curling between mine as the muscular rictus spread across two beautiful faces.
"Get ready to be happy for the first time in years."
Both fragments said it in harmony--my ruthless unconscious and the sliver I'd glimpsed still in the driver's seat.
The key slipped out of the ignition, and I slipped out of my mind fighting to get away from this madness and death and hunger, but her hand reeled me back in, down into an inky darkness, and then home.
*****
The first thing I felt was a warm drip from nose to lip. I didn't realize where I was even when Forrest opened the door of the Dream Machine and unbuckled my seatbelt.
"How was it?"
I could barely see him. I felt like I'd drunk a bottle of whiskey and gotten into a boxing match I'd lost terribly.
"Hey, are you okay?" he asked,
"Help me up," I squeaked.
Whoever I'd been boxing obviously delivered some low blows. My ribs and hips ached as Forrest pulled me out of the car. I stumbled to the nearest wall and fell against it with blood, sweat, and tears streaming. Maybe Forrest's earlier joke hadn't been a joke after all.
His expression was raw desperation. When he asked the question again, his eyes flashed madness, but his mouth didn't move at all. The images pervading my mind made me want to bawl. They made me want to tear the heart from my chest and behold the last pulse in the same delight I'd had at seeing Sarah ripped apart, at being the one who ripped her apart. My experiences waited on the tip of my tongue, eager to dive from the edge into a pool of acceptance, but instead I whispered,
"I didn't see anything. Just like you."
Forrest smiled. It chilled me to the rotten core, and the core loved every hideous shiver.
"Here," he said as he handed me a piece of folded paper.
I opened it to see a one, a comma, and more zeroes than I'd expected.
"I should've told you: quite a few people are already interested in manufacturing the machine. This is just an ounce of the advance."
"Why did you need me?"
"I was told to find dreamers: dark dreamers, architect dreamers."
"Told by whom?"
His grimace stated an answer that compelled me to clap. I wanted to rip off my hands and pile them with the heart I'd already discarded.
*****
I still haven't cashed that check. I haven't spoken to Forrest Culver or left my house since that day. I haven't dreamed, asleep or otherwise. But I have seen things I've loathed and loved. As Freud said, "dreams are the royal road to the unconscious" and I've walked it hard. That is the truth I live everyday now. Like a sea choked by oil, I relish the company even as it withers me. I can delight in nothing else. It is the unconscious that rules me now, with a bloody iron fist. I envision tearing flesh from bone with nail and tooth and whatever other piece that may finish the job. It keeps me awake. It keeps me in lust. It keeps me craving blood from others and bullets to my brain. It is desire: raw and unyielding, and worst of all, it is true.
THE OFFERING
Bob Mustin
Bob is a working man's writer and I appreciate that. It's someone like Bob--who's worked as an editor and writer, with publications in The Rockhurst Review and Elysian Fields among others--who understands that a good story takes equal parts art and work. It's amazing how many writers forget that. When Bob sent "The Offering", I saw a dark tale of a rudderless man looking for something--anything--to grasp onto. The sad, and horrible, fact of life is, what we most often grasp onto leads to our own doom.
I can’t tell you the precise moment I became aware of her. I could have caught a glimpse while listening to the tour guide talk of Tulum’s history as we stood on the cliff there overlooking the sea. Or, earlier, before the tour began, the wind may have brought me the faintest scent of her perfume. All I can say for sure is that while squinting at Descending God’s image over the entrance to his limerock temple, her presence beside me became palpable.
"I used to live here," she said. She squinted and pointed to the stone image. "I was his consort." She eyed me and smiled. "But that was, you know, many lifetimes after we were companions here. Human companions, that is." She ran a hand down one hip, brushed at her yellow sundress’s skirt, and laughed loudly enough to turn heads.
For some reason I couldn't fathom, I gave her a false name. Maybe I thought the name I gave her would appeal, make me more memorable than Nathan Ploegger, my all-too plebeian birth and surname.
She took my hand and as we walked she nattered on about her improbable relationship with this deity. Occasionally she’d turn and I’d feel her gaze probe me, as if she were plumbing my thoughts. After a while, her chatter tailed into self-conscious laughter. Then she took my elbow and turned me toward the tour group, now gathered just outside Tulum’s gate.
We had an hour to eat and shop before the bus carried us back to Akumal, so we took a miniature train to a nearby shopping cluster. She suggested native food. I bought us beans and tortillas with sauce from a sidewalk vendor, and we sat on a nearby stone bench to eat. A young boy approached with an ancient Polaroid camera. He offered to take our picture for a dollar. We agreed.
As I pocketed the splotchy photo, she began another, over-long story. I'd never been a fan of such one-sided talk, but her voice enthralled. She wasn’t Mayan – her near-blonde, shoulder-length hair, much like my former girlfriend Susannah’s, and her Philadelphia accent told me that much. But she was short, tanned a native brown, her nose faintly aquiline, and she had the same affability as the Indians I’d met since coming to the Yucatan.
"I came ashore two weeks ago today," she said--the same day I’d crossed from Belize into Mexico. "I could see the structures from my cruise ship," she went on. "I could make out every detail, even though we were quite a distance away. They seemed so familiar, even from afar, you know?"
"I think a lot of people have that reaction," I replied. "Tulum seems to have an archetypal quality, maybe something about it that’s buried in the collective unconscious."
She shrugged that off. "I was so attracted. I came here day after day. Had to drop off the cruise, I was so attracted. And you know what? The place began feeling, you know, really, really familiar. Every day it was something new. After a day or two, I could read the inscriptions. I could visualize structures no longer here, even the city’s minutest details.
"Then one day I remembered being with the Olmecs. They were the ones who cleared the land and built the city. Well, it wasn’t too long before Descending God came to be with us. He’s from the planet Venus." She looked to the sea, and then again her gaze met mine. She giggled. "You don’t believe me, do you?"
"I’ve read some of the legends. I realize it was a prevailing belief." I was beginning to see her as some sort of New Age dingbat. Still, with half of me swimming in smug cynicism, the other half kept whispering, Believe, you must believe. But why such inner jousting? I’ve always been purposeful, confident, successful and, when it came to personal things, uncomplicated--that is, until my father died and Susannah dumped me, both just weeks ago. Still, I’d left those ashes in Ohio.
"Oh, it was more than a legend, a belief," she replied. "I was here when he came."
"I see."
"At first, he was a pinpoint in the sky, like a ship on the horizon. He grew bigger and bigger, until we could make him out, and then he touched down. She snapped two delicate fingers. "Just like that."
"Ah."
"He walked straight to me. ‘You’re to be my wife,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’ So we were married."
"And you lived happily ever after."
She looked away. "For a while
. Then one day, we were walking just inside the gates. He told me he had to leave Zama. That was Tulum’s name then. ‘No,’ I said, ‘Please. Don’t go!’ But he did, on the next full moon. The same way he’d arrived, except in reverse. Into a point of light."
Her downcast expression seemed so genuine. "You must’ve been heartbroken," I said.
"You have no idea." A tear schussed down her cheek. "Then he told me, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll return as often as I can, but difficult days are coming. I’m afraid I won’t be able to come in this physical form until the end of that time. But whenever you’re lonely or overwhelmed, you’ll feel my nearness in the rain. You’ll hear my voice in the wind.’"
We finished our lunch and browsed the souvenir shops, stopped to ask prices, the names of craftsmen, how they shaped their wares. I was amazed, not so much at her command of Spanish as she talked with vendors, as at her effortless lapses into the Mayan tongue, which I realized I could understand, too, but only in bits and pieces. We visited one last store, and there she saw me examining a knife carved from green stone. She took my arm.
"You like it, don’t you?" she said. "I can tell."
"I’m not sure why, but I do."
"Of course you know. Come on, what attracted you?"
"It makes me feel, I don’t know, odd." My eyes clouded.
"Sad?" she asked.
"Maybe. As if I’ve lost something important."
She nodded. "Or maybe you realize you’re sensing something the people here have lost."
Her hand slipped to mine, squeezed it. She spoke to the shopkeeper at some length in Mayan, gesturing toward the knife as she bartered. Finally, the shopkeeper looked to me and nodded. She opened her shoulder bag and handed the man a wad of pesos.
She held the knife across both hands, raised it to eye level, and I took it. "It’s a reproduction of a knife used in Descending God rituals," she said. "We’re very lucky to have found it."
I thanked her and dropped the green shaft into my souvenir bag.
On the bus to Akumal, she told me more tales: the story of a man-child the god had given her. His name was Xupan, a renowned Mayan chieftain. A warrior, a poet, a seer. "He predicted the overthrow of the Olmecs," she said. "He initiated the great classical period of Mayan culture."
Our bus driver parked in front of my hotel, which was hers, too, as it turned out. She turned in her seat to take in the plaza and its people. "It was kind of like now. The Mayans were growing stronger as a people. Oh, I wish I had time to tell you all of it. It was such a magnificent time to be alive." We disembarked and chatted a few more minutes before she kissed my cheek and strolled into the lobby.
I lingered outside for a while, enjoying the afternoon breezes. Then, in the hallway to my room, I stopped. I didn’t even know her name. I had to find out more about her. I walked the halls. No sign. And, of course, the desk clerk couldn’t--or wouldn’t--tell me anything.
For the next two nights I went sleepless. I tossed, rose, drank water, relived her stories, her mannerisms. The sound of her voice, the smell of her burnished skin, her hair. She became as alive in my awareness as the Yucatan itself.
Evening of the third night came. I was at my usual table in the hotel dining room. I had just turned a page of the local newspaper when I stopped in mid-bite and looked up. She stood before me, hands on hips, her face as radiant as the nearly full moon beyond the large window at the restaurant’s far end. She shook a finger, pretended a pout. "I’m so angry," she said. "Where’ve you been?"
Without prompting, she sat, leaned forward, pressed her hand onto mine. Its warmth swept away any interest I might have had in the newspaper article I’d been reading. Then she reached for the menu our waiter offered and ordered a salad and tilapia with rice pilaf. We decided to split a carafe of chardonnay.
She looked down, tapped the paper. "What’s this? You read Spanish?"
"It was a minor in college," I replied. "My mom’s from New Mexico, and she insisted that Dad and I learn Spanish. She always wanted to move back there, but Dad’s career wouldn’t allow us to do that." I looked away. "Dad, he died recently."
She gave me an odd smile, as if she’d just had some sort of epiphany. "Really," she said. "I’m so sorry. Is there anyone else in your life?"
"No. Not really."
We fell into small talk then. I eventually began giving her my views of Mexico, rather harsh ones, as you might expect. Drug gangs, and the killings, mostly near the U.S. border, but now spreading. The authoritarian leaders, who seemed to be relaxing their grip on the country a bit, but were nevertheless clamping a lid on movement, especially that of the poorer people. I tapped the paper and sneered. There was no mention of any of this in the local paper, I said. It was as if everything was hunky-dory here.
We sipped our wine. I told her of my concern for indigenous cultures, how modern life was shunting them aside, marginalizing their very lives. And of course that included the Mayan peoples. By then my talk must have seemed a rant. I went on about the dearth of meaning within my own life. She seemed to dwell on every word. As I talked, she filled my glass, then filled it again. And again. Finally my train of thought weakened and I fell silent.
"Are you all right?" she asked. "You’ve had a bit to drink."
For what seemed a moment, I closed my eyes. When I rubbed them open, she was gone. She’d scribbled a note on a paper napkin:
I’m sorry I had to leave before seeing you safely to your room. Let’s meet here, at this table, tomorrow evening at seven. ‘k?
Back in my room, I fell fully clothed into bed, expecting to swoon into unconsciousness. Instead, a deep foreboding took me. I couldn’t breathe. I gasped and coughed, then rose and drank from the nearby pitcher. Panic overwhelmed me.
I scrabbled about in the room, searching for something--anything--that might banish this awful feeling. The souvenir bag lay next to the bed. I reached in, probing, and closed about the stone knife. I cradled it in my palm, began to stroke the blade with a forefinger, as if sharpening it. The stone turned warm. The feeling of doom began to lift. I sighed with relief and, seconds later, I fell asleep.
I woke the next morning with not a scintilla of hangover. While sleep has always been for me part rest and part torment, that night it had been a complete, blissful unknowing. As I rose, I realized the knife had remained between my open palm and belly. For some reason, I began to laugh. I sat up, turned the blade to the morning light, inspected it wide-eyed, as a child might a new toy.
I breakfasted in-room and then pulled out a notebook I’d brought with me and began to journal. But all too soon, my thoughts returned to the woman. Frustrated, I stuffed the notebook into my suitcase, put on swim trunks and a tee, and left for the beach.
The day ripened to swelter, relieved only by intermittent breezes drifting inland from the bay. I walked along the wet sand for a long while. Noon passed. I ate at a cabana far down the beach, then swam for a while before returning to my room. The walk in tropic heat had depleted me, so I napped until after six, and then showered. While rubbing dry in my terrycloth robe, I happened to peer between the blind slats to the ocean. There she was--strolling at the water’s edge. A man ran to her, stopped her. They talked, heatedly, it seemed. Then they hugged and walked together.
My face flushed and I began to pace. Was I jealous? Had I been indulging in some childlike, fantasy romance, simply because she’d shown me some attention? I dressed in fits and starts, selected one shirt, then another, and then changed trousers and shoes. During this unquiet process, I plotted ways to be alone with her, to touch her, to drown in the scent of her.
I stuffed in my shirttail, pulled on a seersucker sportcoat, and near-ran to the restaurant. She hadn’t yet arrived. The maître d’ motioned me to my usual table. An envelope lay on a plate there. My name, or I should say the name I’d given her, had been printed on it in tiny, delicate letters. Inside, another note:
I’ve been called away. Hate to stand you up, but it’s a family oblig
ation. Very complicated. So sorry. Me
I crumpled the note, threw it to the floor, and stalked from the restaurant. I swore, loudly. Screamed. Ran down the beach, then back, bellowing as might a deranged angel. I grew tired, my rants reduced to hoarse breathing. I staggered in one direction, then another. My feet turned leaden; I couldn’t walk. Looking down, I realized I’d been walking in water, my Guccis soaked.
Normally, this would’ve irritated to no end; I’m fastidious, one who would never ruin fine clothes through carelessness. But this time, my faux pas delighted--or more accurately, it excited. I waded deeper, the water creeping up my pant legs, the fabric cold against my calves, my knees, my thighs. I stopped only when the water’s buoyancy made it difficult to tread the downward slope. Then a gust of wind came, and I thought I heard it whispering, "Are you nuts? Do you want to catch your death of cold?"
Back in the hotel room, I threw my soggy clothes to the floor, showered again, and fell asleep naked on the bed covers.
I rose with the morning sun. My obsession with the woman was upsetting me. I didn’t want to think about the past I’d left in Ohio, the loneliness I’d be going back to there. So I began to mentally chronicle everything I’d experienced on the trip, as if there was a puzzle within it that I had to solve, something that might release me from my feeling of loss: my encounters with the woman, the places I’d visited, my feelings about everything that had transpired since I’d set foot on Mexican soil. But that only aggravated my obsession with the woman. I had to find her.
On impulse, I packed a bag, handed a note to the man at the desk to hold my mail, and I left Akumal. I didn’t know where to go, but something told me she was still in Mexico. She hadn’t meant to spurn me--I’d sensed that from the precise formation of her writing, the way she’d composed her words.
It occurred that my attraction to her wasn’t romantic at all. She was beautiful, coy, even coquettish at times, the traits that had always drawn me to women. But I didn’t want her physically, I simply wanted to talk to her, to find out more about her. If I could find her, maybe I’d come to understand what she was to me, the nature of our bizarre, offhand relationship.
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