The Glass House

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by David Rotenberg


  Seth heard the echoes from the Old Testament’s Book of Ruth—one of the many sections his father had insisted he read, then memorize. But looking at the grey-haired freak he knew that any reverberations from the old book were purely coincidental.

  Seth allowed his eyes to roam past the strange man, then he took a deep breath and returned his eyes to him. He centred his voice the way he’d heard his father teach his actors—“Not on the tongue root—that’s for scaredy-cats, but on the tip of your tongue so that your lips buzz as you speak and a slight sibilance becomes part of your speech.” He knew that metaphorically the ball was in his court, so he thrashed a hard one at the grey-haired freak. “What’s your name!” He was pleased to hear that it came out as a command, not a question.

  The man hesitated, then said, “WJ.”

  Seth heard his father shouting, “Once your acting opponent opens a point of weakness, get in there and pry it open.”

  “That’s not a name. I asked you what your name was. So what’s your name?”

  “As I said, WJ.”

  Seth hid his smile. The man’s centre was in motion—good. Now how to increase that motion till he split apart. “Fine. You ask me to take you along with me and you won’t even be honest with me as to what your stupid name is.”

  “My name’s WJ.”

  Seth received the same mixed signal he had in the previous pronouncements from the man—WJ both was and was not this man’s name. “What’s your Christian name?”

  More hesitation, then, “Bill.”

  Again a truth and a nontruth. “William, isn’t it?”

  “Okay. William.”

  “And the J?”

  “Why do you need to know this?”

  “Why do you need to be able to feel?”

  Something heavy and silent sat between the two men. WJ crossed to the table and took his seat. “Enough about my name.”

  “Why is your name such a fucking secret?” His father’s stories about his Russian grandfather popped into his head. Apparently he had two famous sayings: “I don’t trust white people” and “never smile long enough that a stranger can count your teeth.”

  When Seth had first heard these statements he’d asked his father if his grandfather had been an African Canadian. His father had laughed—not a common thing for him. “Why are you laughing, Father?”

  “Because your great-grandfather had skin so white it was almost translucent.”

  “Then why—”

  “He meant English people. He didn’t trust English people.”

  Old Torontonians, Seth had thought at the time, then asked, “And the teeth-counting thing?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  But as Seth stared at the grey-haired freak across the table from him, he guessed that his great-grandfather was talking about identity. The power of hiding one’s identity—just like the J in WJ. “Is the J an initial for your middle or family name?” His demand came out in older brother/younger brother—good.

  “Middle.”

  A truth—but why hide a middle name? “Tell me, then—everyone has a stupid middle name. It’s a Caucasian parent’s last free kick at the can.” Father to son—even better.

  “Jennings.”

  “The J stands for Jennings? So you’re a William Jennings? As in William Jennings Bryan? William Jennings Bryan the Scopes trial loser, three-time presidential candidate—each time slaughtered at the polls? That kind of William Jennings? And your last name, William Jennings?”

  “Connelly. Now take me with you.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes just like that—take me with you.”

  Seth realized how the power had shifted. William Jennings’ last statement had clearly been in son/father.

  Seth’s smile broadened. “Do you dream, William Jennings?” That said father/son. Him the father, WJ the son.

  WJ turned away, a wild look on his face.

  “Don’t even think of lying to me. Do you dream, William Jennings . . . Connelly?”

  “No.” Younger brother talking to older brother.

  Flat truth.

  “Is that important?” Son begging a father.

  “If you can’t dream, you can’t learn to feel—simple as that.”

  “Then teach me how to dream.”

  “Dream, so you can feel like the monk in the Duomo?” Seth demanded. And before W. J. Connelly nodded, Seth knew he had it, had it all: the syn website, the monk, the look of glory on the boy’s face—on his face. So that’s what he had in his back pocket that William Jennings Connelly was so desperate to get. Desperate enough to create the fake clinic. Desperate enough to kidnap him and keep him cuffed to the gurney all those days.

  “Teach me. Please teach me.”

  Good, Seth thought again; in very young son/father. Very good—got you! “You have to dream first.”

  “You’ve said as much, so teach me how to dream.” Young son/father. For the briefest moment, Seth thought of telling WJ about his two novels, The Dream Chronicles, which he’d left on the hard drive at the University of Victoria library, because there was a full explanation there of how to dream—how to waking dream.

  “Please, I’ll give you anything you want.” Lover/lover. “Anything!”

  Enough health to see my fiftieth birthday, Seth thought.

  Seth looked down. A large red stain was growing at his crotch. The bloodstain didn’t surprise him—the fact that he’d peed his pants without knowing it did. Sudden sharp pain in his gut caused him to drop his head to the table.

  “Blood,” WJ said—Father/son.

  “Get me some real medical help if you want me to teach you how to dream.” Seth saw WJ hesitate. “A dead man can’t teach you anything. Get me some real help!” Shit, he thought, I said it in son/father, shit!

  “And if I do?” Clearly older brother/younger brother.

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “When?” Father/son.

  “After you take me to the ancient tree, I’ll teach you how to dream.” A scream of pain came from his mouth.

  “The ancient—”

  “The tree as old as Africa.” And as he said those last words, the pain simply took him. And he retreated to the only world he trusted—the world of dreams—and hoped to hell that it would take him to the clearing and then to the great glass house.

  46

  BIRDS

  SETH FORCED HIS HAND UP into his dreamscape, his marker for knowing that he was awake in his dream. He moved his hand forward and he glided forward. Then, sensing something above him, he stopped. He turned his hand upward and his dreamscape turned skyward. And there it was.

  The black speck.

  It had been up there for a long time—longer than Seth could remember, at least as far back as the cold day they’d buried his mother. But lately it had stopped being a speck and was becoming a bird. A high-flying bird—circling, patiently.

  And as it circled he heard the cracking, like when it was winter and he was a boy walking home from school stepping on the ice-covered puddles. Oozing, frigid water coming up over the top of his boots. He knew where he was. He had left the clearing and was making his way to the glass house. He thought that the cracking came from the glass house. Terrified, he broke into a run. He rounded the last bend in the path and was relieved to see that the great glass house was fully intact. Not a pane cracked or missing, not even a shard of glass on the ground. The figure in the door whose face he’d never seen, clearly waiting—waiting for him?

  It was then that he heard the call of the great bird for the first time, no longer a speck but a condor, its wingspan well over ten feet across, floating on the air in lazy circles, the centre of which—the apex—was him. And he understood what the cracking was. His cancer had finally broken through the wall of his bladder and was now alive in his bloodstream. A hungry entity—a searching, gliding thing. A water moccasin, its blunt snout poking into every crevice as its agile body sluiced down the slides of his arteri
es—looking, always looking, for a weakness to nose its way in.

  And when it found one, the great bird would narrow the radius of its circling and slowly descend—for him.

  He startled into waking—or was it another dream? Yes, he’d slid from the glass house and found himself on an isolated rocky outcropping surrounded by astoundingly tall leafless trees, every branch of which was occupied by birds. All completely, unworldly silent. They were grouped together by species, and much to Seth’s surprise as he looked at them their collective names came to his lips. On the lowest branches were the birds of sympathy: a charm of goldfinches, an exaltation of larks, and a pitying of turtledoves. Above them the birds of judgment: a cast of hawks, a scold of jays, and a parliament of owls. And above them, hunched, the birds of evil: a conspiracy of ravens, a deceit of lapwings, and a murder of crows. And on the tallest tree on its highest branch, the birds of death, the ironically named: flight of condors.

  And he knew, beyond knowing, that if he couldn’t get back to the glass house and find a way to stay there that this tree-encircled rocky plateau would eventually be his place of ending—his death.

  Then he saw them, the swans, and knew that his death was far nearer than he’d ever thought. Hundreds of them slowly, majestically moving towards him—encircling him. What were they called?

  Ah yes.

  A lamentation—a lamentation of swans.

  Then the trees and the birds were gone and the space was empty except for a single Joshua tree—or was it a gas lamp post? Seth couldn’t tell because it kept moving back and forth between the two, sliding—worlds forcing themselves to align—but the one thing did remain constant and unvarying: the hanging boy, his fingernails blackened, his hands missing the baby finger on each, desperately trying to loosen the noose around his neck. Screaming.

  47

  THE CORONADO HOTEL

  SETH AWOKE WITH A START.

  He went to rise and found himself attached to two IVs and surrounded by bleeping medical monitors. Behind one he saw a woman dressed as a nurse—or maybe she was a nurse. The equipment in the room was certainly the most elaborate medical stuff he’d seen since he came to the San Francisco Wellness Dream Clinic.

  He tried to calculate how long ago that was—and couldn’t.

  “Welcome back.”

  It was the woman in the nurse’s getup.

  “Where was I?”

  “Pretty far away, but we stabilized you.”

  “Are you really a nurse?”

  The woman looked at him oddly, then said, “Yes, I think so. Are you really a patient?”

  Seth ignored her comment. “What’s happened to me?”

  “Your body almost gave up the fight.”

  “Fight?”

  “That’s what cancer is. You went into severe shock, and we almost lost you. That thing in your right hand is a morphine drip. Just press the red button when you’re in pain and it should relieve it. If you use the morphine a lot we’ll add a Benadryl drip.”

  “Why?” Seth, despite himself, was warming to this woman.

  “Because the morphine causes severe itchiness in most people.”

  A truth.

  She put on a pair of glasses and leaned over him to read the monitor above his head. The pencil in her breast pocket fell to the bed. Seth covered it with his hand. As he did he caught a reflection of himself in her lenses and couldn’t believe what he saw. His face was round and puffy. Bags hung beneath his eyes, surrounded by large black circles.

  He gingerly moved his hand up to his face and felt the puffiness there. “What’s happened . . .”

  “To your face? We had to use a lot of steroids. The steroids do that.”

  “Will it—”

  “Go away? Hard to know.”

  A lie.

  “No it’s not. Will it go away?”

  She sighed, then said, “If we take you off the steroids it will eventually go away.”

  A truth.

  “But if we take you off the steroids your body won’t be able to fight.”

  “Fight what?”

  “You’ve had huge radiation doses. They’ve killed off almost all of your immune system. So you’re vulnerable to almost any bacteria or viral attack.”

  A truth. A terrifying truth.

  “Why so much radiation?”

  “Because you were dying.”

  A quick and accurate ten bars of Handel’s Trio Sonata filled the room. “Thank you very much, Nurse. I’ll take it from here.”

  It was the grey-haired freak—William Jennings Connelly playing his old cello.

  The nurse packed up quickly and left. Seth allowed his eyes to survey the room. An expensive hotel suite—older, like the spooky old Canadian Pacific hotels.

  “Where—”

  “Coronado Island, San Diego. The honeymoon suite.” He rosined his bow and then put it and his cello onto a large piece of memory foam, which he wrapped around the ancient instrument. As he did he said, “Costs a fortune, but I thought you deserved a treat.”

  “How long—”

  “Since our last encounter? Some time. You fainted—actually gave me quite a scare and no end of trouble. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a hospital bed and all this equipment into the elevator of an old hotel?”

  Seth hit the red button on the morphine pump and mainlined a strong hit of the drug. He felt it numb the place where the snake had entered his liver. Then he felt its glow move through his body. For an instant he thought, Just pump and pump and all this is over. The swans get to lament and the condor takes me—and it’s done. Finita la musica!

  Then he felt the surprising cold of William Jennings’ fingers as they pried the morphine drip out of his hand. “No. No, no, no—this will not do. Not do at all. You have much to do before you get to seek oblivion. You owe me, young man—you owe me and you’re going to pay me in the only currency that matters.”

  Seth felt himself floating up from the bottom of a deep pool. “And what currency is that?” he managed to ask.

  “Teach me to dream so I can feel the way you feel.”

  It was coming back to Seth. The key was still in his back pocket. A smile creased his puffy face. “Take me to the ancient tree. Take me there.”

  “Okay,” WJ said as he none too gently pulled the IVs out of Seth’s bruised and slack arms.

  Seth willed himself to throw the blankets from his bed. When he went to stand he wobbled but quickly found his balance.

  “Don’t stare. Not nice,” he barked. Father/son—good. “Give me a second, I’ve gotta pee.”

  WJ looked at him, then nodded.

  Seth hobbled to the bathroom and ran the water as he used the nurse’s pencil to draw a tiny Joshua tree by the mirror over the sink. He flushed the toilet and came back in the room, reaching for the stand-up lamp by the door to steady himself.

  “Hey, maybe we should—” Son/father—even better.

  “Now! Let’s go now. And take your stupid old cello with us.”

  48

  NIGHT WALK WITH DOGS

  LINWOOD DIDN’T KNOCK ON THE door of Decker’s tiny bedroom—he simply pushed it open and announced, “You need to understand something.”

  Decker had no idea what time it was, but it was well after sunset—well after his final pie dish had been washed and dried. “What? What do I need to understand?”

  The big man didn’t answer, simply turned and left the room.

  Decker threw on some clothes and followed him out into the desert.

  Neither man spoke for a very long time. Finally Linwood said, “Good.”

  “What’s good?”

  “That you’ve learned not to talk much.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  “Do you see the eyes?” Linwood asked.

  Decker had been aware of dozens of sets of eyes travelling on either side of them for some time. There wasn’t enough moonlight to see bodies but enough to catch the flicker of starlight off the dogs’ pupils. “Yes.�


  “Wild dogs. They’re here, always here, always watching, always waiting. For a stumble, an arrhythmic step, an off beat to tell them that their time has come.”

  “Their time?”

  “Yes, their time. All things have their time.”

  Their path, Decker thought—although he knew beyond knowing that it was not his thought. It was Seth’s.

  “They are the inevitable in every man’s life—and I’m not talking about taxes.”

  And that was it for the conversation. They walked until dawn, and not a word further passed between them. And when they got back to Solitaire, Decker headed into the bakery and began the first of his thousand kowtows of the day.

  49

  YSLAN IN SETH’S ROOM—THE TREE

  THE WAREHOUSE THAT HAD HOUSED the San Francisco Wellness Dream Clinic had stood empty for some time before Yslan and Emerson got there. The odd tatter of yellow police tape fluttered in the early morning breeze.

  They moved quickly through the faux outer rooms, noting where cameras and microphones must have been. When she pushed on the walls, some of them pivoted away. She quickly made her way down the hall, throwing open doors as she went. All led to the massive emptiness of the warehouse behind them. Doors to nowhere, she thought. Then she got to the door at the very end of the hallway. And threw it open.

  This was different, no warehouse—a real room with a bed and a closet and a few medical monitors that still bleeped and blopped. She quickly established two things. First, that this had been Seth Roberts’ room. Second, that it had been tossed by a pro. Evidently, from the holes in the wall, an angry pro.

  She swore softly and took out her BlackBerry. When her call was answered, she didn’t wait for the formalities, she just launched right in. “Did you toss the room at the Wellness Dream Clinic?”

  “No, of course not,” Mr. T protested. “I was there to protect our asset—as you ordered me to do.”

  “Then who tossed the kid’s room?”

 

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