The Glass House

by David Rotenberg

  And there were other memories—some sweet, some not. His parents arguing in their bedroom without realizing that the heating vent from their room led directly to his bedroom. Night after night he lay awake and listened to them arguing—often about him. The sweetness of a kiss at a school dance, a girl whose name he couldn’t recall, but thin in his arms and warm, and lips so soft. The back stairway in one of the houses he grew up in that held so many secrets for him—and, of course, the horror on his father’s face when he told him how much he loved the darkness there. Other memories, for some reason so vivid and clear: In a New York diner. A working-class guy—maybe fifty—clearly dragged there by his wife, who just as clearly wanted to be part of New York’s “roar,” to have something in her life that brought her a bit of joy. She’d gotten dressed up—overdressed for brunch at this place. But when the guy’s eggs arrived, one of them had a broken yolk, and his words still echoed in Decker’s head: “I can get fucked up eggs at home, I don’t have to pay for crap like this.” The woman’s face floated across Decker’s mind: So hurt. So lost. So trapped. So alone. As if this were her last hope of gaining a glimmer of joy. That idea somehow faded into the glare of the battle zone in New York in the time before Disney came and made the city safe for midwesterners. How he loved slipping from the apartment—from Sarah’s bed—and pulling on his army jacket and roaming the night world between Thirty-Ninth and Forty-Eighth Streets and Seventh and Tenth Avenues. Its hawkers and hookers, its dope dealers and dopers, its seeming aliveness creeping out from beneath the rocks when the legit theatres that Decker worked in closed and this other drama took centre stage in all its garish and vicious vitality. That art in opposition to the other art he loved—the acceptable art. Not always so acceptable. He remembered the artistic director of the theatre in Shanghai that he’d worked in. He had just arrived in China—fresh from Broadway—and this artistic director’s very first words to him were something he’d never forget: “You are to remember that you can be replaced!” Thank you and fuck you very much. Then he heard it and turned, and there was the old arhu player in the pedestrian tunnel down by the Bund—so much music from two strings, so much. And as the player pressed on the strings, its sound rebounded off the tile walls of the tunnel and led Decker to something completely else—a club. An older African-American man blowing sweetly into his flügelhorn—and the thought in Decker’s head, that the air from this man’s lungs went into the metal and came out as music. A magical transformation from the completely normal, banal, into something otherworldly—music. Then the music stopped and Inshakha turned to him, her face and whole upper body covered in thick red mud. He stepped towards her, but she shook her head and he knew he would never see her again. As she passed by him his eye was drawn to one side, and there was Viola Tripping, cowering in the corner of a windowless, locked room, demanding, “Are you of the clearing? Are you of the clearing?”

  Just another thing Decker didn’t really understand.

  8

  SLIDING

  TIME DIDN’T SEEM TO MEAN anything. No—it didn’t mean anything as Decker slid through it and space, baking pies.

  A remembrance of Seth’s birth slipped away, and he was in a doctor’s office in Manhattan as the man told him that his wife was not just tired but rather had a disease named after an old baseball player. As he relived that awful moment he looked down and there was a red ribbon of blood in the dough. He withdrew his hands and watched the blood on his right hand drip to the floor. He went to wipe it off but it wouldn’t leave his skin—and the taste of fear filled his mouth.

  He knew he was awake and in Namibia, but he was sliding again—he could feel it. There was the pretty blond secretary—and he knew where he was.

  He was back in Charleston, South Carolina. It was two or three years back. He couldn’t remember which, and he’d been offered a huge amount of money to watch an interrogation of a businessman.

  And he was there—and in Namibia at the same time.

  And he couldn’t stop the sliding—or the remembrance of the first time he saw the hanging boy and he knew that this, all of it, somehow was leading back to that—a boy with painted fingernails, missing both baby fingers, slowly being strangled by a noose around his neck.

  The starchy smell of old cigarette smoke assaulted him as he followed the pretty blonde into the small boardroom. The solid oak door closed behind him with a thunk, and an ominous click suggested that a dead bolt had been thrown.

  For a moment his blood pressure soared, then he calmed himself and sat at the antique pine table. The monitor showed him a balding, middle-aged man in casual golf attire sitting across a formal desk from two executives—or at least the men’s clothes screamed as much.

  Decker watched the printer beside the monitor spit out a running transcription of the conversation on the screen.

  He slipped on a set of headphones and flipped through the pages.

  “Henry, we’re not here to interrogate you,” the elder of the two executives said to the balding man. His tone was more pleasant than his words.

  Decker didn’t need to close his eyes to know that this statement was a nontruth—nor did the balding man, who was evidently named Henry.

  “Maxwell,” Henry said, “cut the crap. That’s exactly what you’re here to do.”

  Maxwell put his hands in the air and announced, “Guilty as charged.”

  “So what have I done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Fine, so what am I doing here? I’m number three in sales in the firm, granted down from my number-one status last year, but still better than twenty-seven other guys.”

  “True,” Maxwell said. “But that’s not what this is about.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.” It was the younger exec. Decker found it hard to place his accent—maybe the Pacific Northwest. Whatever it was, the man’s “no” broke the odd fellowship that southerners keep alive even in the most desperate of times.

  Henry turned towards the younger exec. “You’re not from here, are you.”

  “No. I’m from the central office.”

  “Henry meet Chas,” Maxwell said.

  “And where exactly is central office?” Henry asked. “This company’s been bought and sold so many times that I don’t even recognize the signature at the bottom of my paycheques.”

  “Do you recognize these?” the younger man said as he flipped three photographs onto the table in front of Henry.

  On the transcript Decker read, “FIRST ENVELOPE.”

  Decker reached across the table and opened the manila envelope marked ONE and pulled out three photographs. Each had evidently been taken in an elegant restaurant with Henry sitting across the table from two Chinese men.

  “I asked if you recognized these.” Chas.

  Henry nodded.

  “You do recall that you signed a confidentiality agreement when you entered our employ, Henry?” Maxwell.

  Henry looked away, then back at his interrogators.

  “Up and down means yes, Henry.” Chas.

  Henry nodded slowly, then lowered his eyes.

  “Come on, say something,” Decker muttered.

  But the man didn’t say anything.

  “Do you want a lawyer?” Maxwell prompted, his voice still soft and kind.

  “Or maybe you’ll just tell us what you were doing talking to these two Chink gents.” Chas.

  Finally Henry said, “I was on a wrong path.”

  Decker closed his eyes and was surprised to see two parallel lines cross his retinal screen—Henry was telling the truth. He indicated as much on the transcript, but when he looked at the monitor he got a shock. He leaned closer to the screen. For an instant Decker could have sworn that he saw a boy, not Henry. He cupped his hands over the earphones.

  “Selling the company’s secrets is sure as hell the wrong path.” Chas.

  “Not selling. Seeking,” Henry said.

  Decker closed his eyes again, and a single perfect triangle
floated up onto his retinal screen—another truth.

  “Seeking? What does that mean, Henry? Seeking what?” Chas again.

  “Answers.”

  “To what?”

  Henry looked away.

  “We’re over here, Henry, and we’re waiting. Seeking answers to what?” Chas.

  “To meaning.”

  Again the image of a young boy replaced the balding man. The bald man as a young man? Decker wondered.

  “Try me again, Henry.” Chas was demanding, not requesting, an answer.

  Henry sighed, then said, “Those two men have a niece.”

  Decker closed his eyes. A single straight line—a truth.

  “So this was about sex?” Chas.

  “No—well, maybe—but no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Henry sighed again—more deeply this time—then put his bony hands on the desk and began to drum his fingers. The odd rhythm of the drumming drew Decker’s eye. The man had a thumb but only three fingers on each hand—he was missing the baby finger on both. Decker also noticed that he had a circle of white flesh on the tanned fourth finger of his left hand—his wedding ring had been removed and his fingernails were oddly dark.

  Henry finally spoke. “Have you ever felt that you’re not really awake—that you’re actually asleep?”

  No response from the two execs.

  “Well, that’s how I felt. Then on my last visit to Hong Kong I met someone who told me how incredible Peking Opera was—and he happened to have an extra ticket for a performance in Shanghai.”

  “One of the two Chinese guys?” Chas.

  Henry nodded, hung his head, then whispered, “That was where I met her.”

  Two rectangles floated across Decker’s retinal screen—a truth.

  “The niece of our two major Asian competitors? That her?” Chas.

  Henry nodded, then said, “I didn’t know that was who she was when I met her.”

  A square—a truth.

  “All I knew was . . .”

  “What did you know, Henry?” Maxwell prompted.

  “That all my life I’ve waited to wake up, for my fake life to end and my real one to begin, and . . .”

  “And what?” Maxwell demanded—no longer the kind friend.

  “Somehow I thought that girl would start my life—awaken me.”

  Three parallel lines—a truth—and once again the young boy was present. This time Decker was sure he was the older man as a boy.

  “And you didn’t know who this girl was?”

  “I didn’t care who she was.”

  “But you knew that she was the daughter of—”

  “No I didn’t, but I wouldn’t have cared. Don’t you understand, I wouldn’t have cared.”

  “Because she ‘awakened’ you?” Chas.

  Decker ignored the young exec’s sarcasm. He knew the central operational myth of the West was the Sleeping Beauty story—that we are all actually asleep and only if the right person kisses you the right way will you awaken.

  He put his hand to the screen and watched as the balding Henry morphed into the boy he had been, then back again. Back and forth, sliding from then to now, then to now. When the image finally stabilized, Decker whispered, “Poor bastard.” He took off the headphones, completed his notes on the transcript, then stood and knocked on the door.

  He heard the deadbolt scrape and the door opened.

  The pretty blonde.

  He gave her the transcript. “The truths are underlined.”

  She handed him a thick envelope with one of his aliases, Gert Rose, on the front.

  He took it and began to walk down the hall.

  “Mr. Rose?”

  He turned back to her. “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you going to count it?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Okay,” she said, “but answer me this: why did you say ‘poor bastard’?”

  He hesitated, not pleased that his room had evidently been bugged. “Once you are awake you can’t go back to sleep. Once the blind see they can never be totally happy in the dark.”

  At her quizzical expression he turned and disappeared into the Charleston night—well at least, into its darkness.

  Then Decker broke one of Eddie’s ironclad rules, and although he left the building where he had witnessed the interview through a service entrance, changed cabs three times and posted his USB key recording of the session to himself in the Junction, he did not leave town.

  He’d always liked Charleston. When he ran that theatre in North Carolina he took every opportunity to get to Savannah and Charleston, both of which fascinated him. Their physical beauty was undeniable, as was their despicable racial history, which was in evidence down every alley and back stairway. The clash of the two opposites fired his imagination.

  So he barhopped in the old section of Charleston, allowing the liquor and the soft night to dictate his moves.

  Leaving the third bar he leaned against a gas lamp. His world was spinning. He hoped it was just the alcohol, but he knew it was more than that—it was his worlds cascading together, sliding, trying to align.

  Just past three in the morning he turned the corner at Meeting and Broad Streets and stopped in his tracks—suddenly cold sober.

  The plastic cup containing bourbon and shaved ice slipped from his hand and made a gentle squishing sound as it hit the cobblestones—then somehow became glass and split into a hundred shards.

  Decker stared at the glass, then saw something reflected in a large piece and looked up.

  The boy at the end of the noose dangling from the gaslight across the road was squirming, although he evidently didn’t have the energy to reach up to the rope around his neck or call for help.

  A clatter of hooves drew his eyes away from the hanging boy. He assumed he’d see one of the hundreds of horse-drawn tourist carriages, but that wasn’t what he saw. A dozen or more horses neighed from their hitching rail as eight or nine men in full Confederate army uniforms galloped down the street. Their uniforms were torn and covered in mud and dust. One of the men was missing an arm and had his shirtsleeve pinned up to his shoulder. Another was without a right eye. A third had a jagged cut on his left cheek that seeped blood.

  Then Decker heard a new sound, loud but low—moaning—the sound of many, many beings in pain. He looked towards the source of the sound—the slave auction house.

  He glanced down and saw his feet on the cobblestones. They were shod in knee-high boots laced with worn leather strips.

  He tasted something in his cheek and realized that he had a chaw of tobacco tucked there. He spat a slick of brown onto the cobblestones.

  The Confederate soldiers dismounted and strode towards the slave market. Decker followed them. When he crossed beneath the gaslight he lifted his eyes—the boy was now hanging limp. Something about the boy’s face was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  Then he noticed the boy’s dangling hands—he was missing the baby finger on both hands. The remaining fingers all had blackened nails.

  He slid back to the present and stared at the vast desert behind the small reality of Solitaire, now lit to a ghostly sheen by the new moon. Then he heard it. Far off a girl crying—a girl—and he trembled.

  He turned and was surprised to see Linwood. Tears were in his eyes. “It’s begun. It’s too soon, but it’s begun.”

  “A girl’s cry begins something?” Decker asked.

  And Linwood nodded slowly and stared at Decker. Finally he said, “Yes, it will begin with the girl, you must be ready.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You wait.”

  “For what?”

  “The missing piece.”

  “The—”

  “The agent of change—who will bring this nasty world to an end and usher in the new one. She’s always been there but doesn’t know the role she needs to play in this end game.”

  “End game?”

  “End of time.”

&
nbsp; “What?”

  “And you have your part to play, but in the meantime you bake pies—you owe one hundred thousand kowtows. It’s your role.”

  Decker nodded. Somehow this made sense to him. Then he heard the cry again—a simple, clean sound moving across the Namibian desert like a boundless grief loosed into the world.

  9

  MARTIN ARMISTAAD

  EX-PRISONER 271403, NOW JUST PLAIN ol’ Martin Armistaad, didn’t understand exactly what had happened that set him free, but he did know that you didn’t take your dick out of a gift horse’s mouth.

  Speaking of mouths, his hurt like hell where they put in that prison tooth.

  But he was out! Out! Unleashed and hunting. After six years in Leavenworth Penitentiary he was on his own, breathing air that had not been befouled by hundreds of other men’s breath and body odour and fear.

  And there were stars. “Stars, stars, stars and one Secony station,” he whispered to himself.

  And there indeed was a Sunoco station—“Thanks, Mr. Bruce, I’ll take it from here,” he whispered.

  Martin took his makeshift garrote from his pocket as he walked into the store behind the gas pumps. He watched the cars come and go. It was just a few degrees above freezing, but he wasn’t cold—he didn’t get cold. He had been up more than twenty-four hours but he wasn’t tired—he never got tired.

  “Can I help you, mister?” the acne-afflicted youth behind the counter asked as he looked up from the sheet of paper he was working on with a drafting pencil and compass.

  “Got any heroin?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No. Excuse me.” He walked over to the young man and asked, “What’re you doing?”

  “Working out a design problem. I’m going to be an architect.”

  “Are you?”

  “I sure hope so,” he said, moving the compass a half turn and noting the angle on a sheet of paper.