The Glass House

by David Rotenberg

  WJ glanced at his wristwatch: 4:17. By 5:17 the man across the table from him would be unable to move, speak—or anything much else. “Good?” he asked.

  “Excellent. Really excellent.” He took a second sip, this one longer than the first.

  WJ smiled and said, “Glad you approve. So Seth’s ready for me?”

  “As ready as an advanced cancer patient can be.”

  “And he has how long before—”

  “I’m no medical doctor, but I assume not long unless you get him treatment.”

  WJ turned from Dr. Chumley and looked out the window at the brilliant Southern California sun and realized that it warmed other people, made them feel alive, made them feel glad to see the day and happy—and that it did nothing for him.

  “Are you going to get him treatment?”

  WJ didn’t answer.

  “Just asking, not my concern.”

  WJ tossed the man an envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. “No, it’s not. I assume that settles us.”

  Dr. Petronius Chumley riffled through the bills. “Generous. Very generous.”

  24

  THE INSTITUTION—WJ AND SETH

  WJ WATCHED DR. CHUMLEY LOSE HIS balance as he walked towards his car. Somehow he managed to get in and drive away in the direction of I-5.

  Alone, WJ reviewed his situation one more time before he took the next huge step.

  He couldn’t continue to live this nonlife. He couldn’t. So he’d take the leap.

  He knew that most people thought that he was a mathematician, and he let them think that, but it wasn’t true. What he was, was an arithmetician. At the heart of mathematics is an elegance—a “feel.” He didn’t have that. He was an arithmetician—a detail man.

  Also a successful seducer. Long ago he’d used his arithmetic sense to break down the pickup into its component parts.

  That’s how he had looked at his initial attack on Seth Roberts back at the Wellness Dream Clinic in San Francisco—like a pickup in a bar. A very private, very special bar—for a very special pickup.

  Step One: Can I stand near you? If you don’t move away, then the answer is yes.

  The boy had been eating—nibbling actually—at a vegetable sandwich in the cafeteria, which WJ had stocked with actors who were paid to have lunch and not talk to anyone. It wouldn’t be right for Seth to realize that he was the only patient in the institution.

  There were actor patients, actor nurses and of course his paid doctors who asked the questions WJ wanted asked—and performed periodic cystoscopies to make sure that Seth felt he was actually getting medical care.

  WJ entered with a tray of food—exactly what Seth had on his plate—and took a seat at the end of the long metal table. He chewed around the edges of his sandwich, removed the tomato, which he loathed, and looked up at Seth.

  The boy’s body canted away from WJ, but the boy didn’t move—didn’t get up and leave—so the answer was yes.

  Step Two: Can I talk to you? If you talk back, the answer is yes.

  “Food’s better today,” he said.

  Seth nodded, then said, “Couldn’t be much worse.”

  Step Three: Can I mention something a bit off-colour? If you don’t object, then the answer is yes.

  “This place sucks. It’s not doing me any good,” he said.

  Again, Seth nodded. “I’m giving it time.”

  Step Four: Can I buy you a drink? If you accept, then the answer’s yes.

  “Can I get you a refill?” WJ said, pointing at Seth’s empty Perrier bottle.

  “Sure,” Seth said and held out the bottle, wondering when he had started drinking Perrier. It was his father’s favourite.

  WJ almost touched his hand—if it were a pickup he would have—but this was way more important than any pickup, and the answer was yes.

  WJ made his way to the front of the room, gave the counter person Seth’s empty bottle and pointed towards him, then left.

  Oh, yes, WJ had been pleased—pleased with how things were going and how easy it had been.

  He’d used Craigslist to recruit people to populate his Wellness Dream Clinic. What they’d been told was that it was a reality television show called The Institution. No experience required: Apply to the address above.

  Then he’d added this to his listing: About the Show: Each actor will be assigned a role in the institution, some as orderlies, some as cooks, some as cleaners, some as patients. Each will be given a scenario, which they must follow faithfully. Every moment will be filmed by more than three hundred hidden cameras. Anyone acknowledging that he or she is playing a role—at any time—will immediately be taken off the show and forfeit the thousand-dollar payment. Please read the release below and sign it before applying.

  He’d been inundated with folks anxious for their fifteen minutes of fame. So he’d cast his show, then with the help of his hacker business associates lured its star—Seth Roberts—through his Gmail account.

  • • •

  From the first night in the San Francisco Wellness Dream Clinic, WJ took to watching Seth sleep, although the fact that the boy slept with his eyes open was disconcerting. And then there was all that rapid eye movement—the kid seemed to dream from the moment he fell asleep then on and on through the entire night.

  But then his video cameras caught that cop breaking into the clinic, so he’d packed it up and moved Seth here to Southern California, to Carlsbad.

  He played his copy of the video of Seth in the Duomo again and marvelled, for the thousandth time, at the joy on the boy’s face.

  His Dulcolax had softened up the boy. It was time.

  He picked up his Andrea Amati cello, then took a deep breath and said aloud, “It’s now or never.” Or had he just thought that? He didn’t know.

  25

  WJ MEETS SETH

  THE DOOR OF HIS ROOM opened, and Seth saw an odd sight. The grey-haired man he’d met once in the cafeteria back in the Wellness Dream Clinic was there. He had an old cello in his hands.

  “Seth Roberts?”

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  “I’m your doctor, and in a way you’re my doctor.”

  Seth immediately knew that both statements were true and untrue. It confused him.

  WJ saw the confusion track across the boy’s face. Good, he thought. He smiled. “Your treatments are going very well.”

  “Are they?”

  “Yes, I’m very pleased.”

  Seth knew this was a truth—but wondered exactly what truth. “Where am I?”

  “We’re in Southern California, by the ocean.” Seth nodded. “Did you figure that out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  Seth ignored the question and asked one of his own. “I’m not here to be treated for my cancer, am I?”

  WJ didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not being treated for anything, am I? This is all some kind of bad joke.”

  “No it’s not, of that I’m sure.”

  Seth looked at the grey-haired man. The man wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling the truth either. More confusion.

  The man opened a laptop and turned it to Seth. With a few keystrokes he brought up a shot of Leonard Harrison. “Ever met him?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Now? That’s a good question.”

  “What does that mean? I’ve had enough of this, so if—”

  “You’re Decker Roberts’ son, aren’t you?”

  That surprised Seth. He hadn’t filled out anything that would identify him as Decker’s son. In fact, he didn’t mention who his father was to anyone—ever.

  “Aren’t you? No need to answer that, because I know you are. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  “Okay.”

  WJ stepped back and looked at the young man—boy. His colour was not good, and he was clearly confused by what had happened to him.

  “Did you have me handcuffed?”


  “We had to move you here as part of your cure, and you’re a very rough sleeper—you call out in your sleep and thrash about and seem to dream all night long. Do you know that you sleep with your eyes wide open? And they are in constant motion. REM sleep they call it. Deep dream sleep. So you see, padded cuffs were only there to keep you safe.” Confusion once again registered across the boy’s face. Clearly he wanted to believe that all this was for his health, and yet everything he saw or heard said that something else was going on.

  “Look here.” WJ called up a website—the synaesthetes’ website. “Do you know what this website is?”

  Seth stared at it. It was little more than a jumble of skittering lines and whorls.

  “Is this another joke?”

  If it is, WJ thought, someone’s going to pay big-time for the gag.

  WJ typed in the entry code he’d learned from the indigent synaesthete who’d first appeared at his Wellness Dream Clinic in San Francisco almost six months ago.

  The screen went blank, then a runner appeared from left to right: Welcome, fellow traveller. WJ looked at Seth. “Are you a fellow traveller, Seth?”

  “With whom?”

  “What?”

  “With whom would I be travelling?”

  “This gentleman,” WJ said, then selected a video that came up quickly. It was of the famous British synaesthete Daniel Tammet.

  Seth watched intently. Every word this Mr. Tammet said was true. This guy evidently had learned Icelandic in less than a week and had recited pi out to more than 20,000 digits. Both immensely impressive feats, but as far as Seth was concerned, they had nothing to do with him.

  “How’s about this guy?” WJ said and selected another video. This one showed a middle-aged black man who was taken to the top of the Eiffel Tower and for ten minutes scanned the Paris cityscape. He was then locked in a circular room, where within twenty-four hours he painted in astounding detail the entirety of what he had seen in those ten minutes—right down to getting the colour of the window shades and the hanging laundry correct.

  “Impressive, no?” WJ asked.

  “That’s hard to deny.”

  “What, that it’s impressive?”

  “Yeah, that,” Seth snapped. “So what has this got to do with me?”

  “Never been to this website, Seth?”

  “No. Never.”

  “So you’re not a synaesthete?”

  “What’s a synaesthete?”

  WJ ignored the boy’s question and pointed at his laptop, “Never seen this website? You’re sure?”

  “I told you I’ve never—”

  “I need you to see one more video.”

  “Swell. Is there an NFB short before it?”

  “NFB?”

  “National Film Board of Canada. Socially relevant cartoons and boring birds are their specialities. The sex life of the tribreasted warbler was their big hit.”

  “Sounds fascinating.”

  “Yeah, your tax dollars at work.”

  “Your tax dollars—not mine.”

  “Right.”

  “Wanna see one last video on your site?”

  “My—”

  “Wanna see it or not?”

  “Sure.”

  Using a remote he drew from his pocket, WJ turned off the lights in the room. They blinked off from ceiling to floor in a conical cascade.

  Then he hit a single key on the laptop.

  At first there was nothing—just darkness. Then the darkness gave way to a silhouette of a slender man dressed in what looked like a monk’s robe with its hood up. He was walking away from the camera as he entered a very large, completely circular room.

  The figure moved slowly—the word “glided” came to Seth—to the very centre of the large space. The exact centre of the space, Seth thought.

  The figure, still with his back to the camera, stopped and seemed to find an utter stillness. Was he breathing?

  Then he reached up and pulled back his cowl.

  He shook his head, and his hair fell free, well down his back.

  He rearranged his feet, then tilted his head back and sang a single note up into the dome.

  He waited.

  The echo of the note came down in loops, one note after another, each exactly the same.

  He waited until all the sound had disappeared, then he tilted his head back again and sang the same note up to the dome.

  Once again the note came down in loops.

  But this time, before the sounds dissipated, he sang a second note—a third above the first—then quickly followed with a third note a fifth above the first note.

  Then he opened his arms wide and full chords of music looped down to him.

  Again he waited for all the sound to dissipate.

  Once he had complete silence, his back tensed. He turned his head towards the dome and sang eight distinct notes at two-second intervals. And the chords came down. The first a diminished seventh, the second a minor fifth.

  The young man spread his arms, accepting the loops of music as one accepts a gentle rain in the desert, a moth’s breath.

  He bent his knees and leapt into the air—then, somehow, buoyed by the echoing chords, he stayed some six feet above the ground.

  The chords began to mesh, forming more and more complex chords and, as they did . . .

  Seth pointed at the screen.

  The young monk had inverted in the air—his head towards the floor—and spread his arms wide. He began to spin slowly. And as he did, the young monk’s face finally came into view, and on that face were etched moments of glory. That face with glory so deeply imprinted on it clearly belonged to Seth Roberts—cancer patient, master dreamer.

  WJ snapped the computer off.

  Seth felt a surge of longing deep in himself, as if his heart were being pulled forcibly from his chest, as if his true soul’s mate had been wrenched from his arms.

  WJ positioned the cello between his knees and quickly rosined the bow. “You like music.”

  “Says who?” Seth felt himself somehow falling.

  “Me. Says me.” He locked eyes with the boy.

  “I’m sick.”

  “Yes. Yes, you are. But you’re gifted, too. You’re my point of access.”

  “To what?”

  WJ didn’t answer the question. Instead, he hit a button on his remote and all four walls and the ceiling began to glow.

  Seth stared at them. They were massive LED screens. Seth slid off the gurney and stood. “What the—”

  “Look down.”

  Seth did. The floor was a screen too, and as he looked an image formed under his feet. He was standing on ancient paving stones. “Now look up,” the grey-haired man commanded. Seth did. The walls were somehow curved into a tall cylinder, and the ceiling was a perfect dome.

  “Here’s your first note,” WJ said, playing a B flat. “Now sing that.”

  And to Seth’s surprise a perfect B flat flew from his mouth up to the ceiling and then its echo descended. But before it got to him, WJ played another note and commanded, “Sing that.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  “Sing that!”

  And Seth did.

  Then a third.

  The echo of the notes surrounded him in a pure chord, and he felt a huge smile cross his face. He stopped resisting, raised his arms, and lifted off the ground.

  Instantly he was in his favourite dream, gliding out of the clearing, moving towards the glass house. But even as he saw the figure in the doorway—the figure whose face he’d never been close enough to see—open the door for him, he felt himself sucked from one dream reality to another.

  Sliding—sliding in his dream.

  Without a whoosh or any sense of motion he found himself in a large, solemn interior space.

  Seth stared at the black painted canvases on the walls—fourteen huge paintings—and although he’d never been there before, he knew where he was: one of the accesses to the forest—a portal—th
e Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.

  Then he saw him, standing alone in a corner, crying. And he knew it was Mark Rothko—the artist who created the panels that occupied every wall. He had committed suicide shortly after the completion of his masterpiece.

  A hand landed on his shoulder, and without looking he knew it was his father’s.

  “I thought this was a portal,” Decker said.

  “Someone’s forcing things. It’s not ready. Not everything’s in place.”

  “What do you—”

  “You said you thought this was a portal.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was is the operative word.”

  “Now what is it?”

  “A cul-de-sac, a dead end—just ask Mr. Rothko.”

  “But why are the portals—”

  “Because they’ve forced us to the end. Almost everyone who can get to the clearing has already gotten there or is through the forest and approaching it, so there’s no reason left for the portals—no need for a way to get to the woods.”

  A cry of anguish turned their eyes to the artist.

  The man raised his tearstained face and shrieked at them, “Is it really art? I mean, is it really art that I do?” then he broke into a cackle. From beneath a bench he withdrew an old record album, slid it out of its cover and placed it on a turntable that had not existed five seconds before.

  Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” came up and filled the space.

  Decker recalled a documentary on Dylan where one of the talking heads had said something like, “It’s as if God blew in his ass and out of his mouth came poetry.” No, he thought, out of his mouth came truth. He looked at his son.

  “You aren’t—”

  “Surprised? No, Father, I’m a much better dream traveller than you.”

  “I just heard the lions and—”

  “And here you are.”

  “You speak as if—”

  “I’m the father and you are the son?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve met in dreams before, Father, but you don’t remember them. I do. I remember all my dreams—I always have. I’ve seen the glass house, and you don’t even realize that you’re in the clearing. Do you remember the last time we met in dreams?”

  “Why are you being kind to me? You haven’t been kind to me—”