by David Arnold
You were the Northern Dancer, sire of the century, the superest of all racehorses.
There it was.
The idea.
“Vic.”
“What?”
“Do horses ever race in the snow?”
He looked at me for the first time since the Parlour. And I couldn’t tell for certain, but it sure felt like he was smiling.
And then we raced. And it was super.
* * *
We waited on the old stone wall for the others, the fig tree like an awning over our heads, its branches glistening with ice. Across the street, the orchard awaited our arrival. Weird how just this morning Vic and I sat on the bridge over Channel à la Goldfish and talked while staring at this stone wall—like our current selves were mirroring our former ones.
“Why did you call it a bump?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath in the thin air.
“Why did I call what a what?”
“This afternoon. When you told me how you used to sit here and look at the orchard. You said your grandparents lived around here. You called it a bump.”
Vic looked a little left of the orchard, at the neighboring graveyard. “It’s a weird word, don’t you think?”
“Bump?”
“No. Lived. My grandparents lived around here. Lived—the literal past tense of life. Also known as death.”
I understood the urge to brood, maybe better than anyone. And even though another person’s brooding is never quite as appealing as your own, I knew better than to respond.
“The word just makes sense, I guess,” said Vic.
“Lived?”
“No. Bump.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“So like—imagine each person is a unit, and each unit makes so many decisions in a day, and each decision takes each unit in so many directions, it seems kind of silly to think we’d never run into one another, you know? Especially considering units tend to cluster and linger.”
“We cluster and linger, do we?”
His eyes turned from the graveyard to me, and there it was again—the suggestion of a smile. “Yes. It’s called home.” He reached up and brushed my eyelids closed. “Consider this. You’re flying in the sky, not in a plane, but with your arms and hands. Like a miraculous bird. You’re thousands of feet above the earth, drifting through the night. And far below, you see thousands of tiny red lights on the ground. The red lights are in constant motion, blinking, shuffling between buildings and trees and houses. Old ones disappear, new ones are born. Over time, you notice the lights bump into one another occasionally. Are you surprised?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“I call it the inevitability of corresponding units.”
I opened my eyes. “So, we’re the red lights.”
He nodded, turned back to the graveyard. “People talk about coincidence like it’s some big thing. But it’s not. We bump into one another all the time. Mostly I think people are just too blind to notice.”
It was a nice thought—or reminder, really, that whatever shitty situation I’d been dealt wasn’t my fault. It was, in fact, nothing more than a sequence of unfortunate bumps.
“Wait here,” said Vic. He plopped down off the wall, unzipped his bag, and pulled out his dad’s urn.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Funny how many times I’d seen the graveyard, yet had never quite built up the courage to venture over. Vic navigated his way through tombstones and trees, a cautious but easy gait as if he knew exactly where he was going but wasn’t quite sure he wanted to go there. The streetlight shone just bright enough for me to see him stoop in front of a large tombstone, set the urn in the grass in front of him, and begin speaking. I couldn’t hear of course, but it suddenly hit me what was happening.
After a few minutes, he made his way back across the street, tucked the urn in his bag, and sat back on the stone wall.
“Your grandparents?” I asked.
He nodded. “They died in the same month, of the same thing. My dad buried his father, then came back two weeks later and buried his mother.”
“Shit, Vic.”
“I try to think of Dad from far away, as a unit, as a disappearing red light. But it’s like you said about the dying stars—sometimes I still see Dad even though he’s gone.”
“I thought you said that was bullshit.”
“Oh, it’s bullshit. But I mean—the theory holds up. Anyway, Dad’s gone. But I still smell his aftershave. I still hear him clear his throat. Little things that made him my dad, and not just a dad, you know?” Vic’s eyes had not left the graveyard. “I wonder if that’s how he felt about his parents. And I wonder if I’ll have kids who’ll feel that way about me. I hope so. Our past tenses last way longer than our present ones.”
Before I could respond, Baz and Zuz and Coco rounded the corner, effectively dissolving the conversation. Eager to get out of the cold, we all hurried under (or in Baz’s case, over) the fence, and were halfway across Channel à la Goldfish when a silhouette froze us in our tracks.
I’d only seen Gunther Maywood once, as he rarely emerged from his house; I’d completely forgotten how tall the old man was. He stood on the opposite end of the bridge, blocking our way across, and in the dark I could barely make him out, so when he spoke, the voice seemed to come from the cold itself.
“What was our deal, Mr. Kabongo?”
I saw Baz’s breath, felt him carefully calculating his surroundings, his words. “Groceries in exchange for the greenhouse.”
Gunther Maywood raised his right hand. “I found eye drops. In the gift shop bathroom. Was the gift shop bathroom part of our deal?”
“It was not,” said Baz.
Gunther tossed the eye drops to Baz. “I’m a patient man, Mr. Kabongo. But if I discover you, or your friends, trespassing again, I will call the police. Do I make myself clear?”
“You do,” said Baz.
The silhouette slowly stepped to one side of the bridge. We hustled across, didn’t say another word until we were safely inside Greenhouse Eleven. I tried to catch Vic’s eye—knowing he must have left his eye drops in the bathroom this afternoon when he changed his pants—but he wouldn’t look up.
“Don’t sweat it, Vic,” said Coco, tucking herself into her sleeping bag. “Heck, lots of people use eye drops. Might not even be yours.”
Baz set the Visine on the card table, offered Vic a small smile, and assured us there was no need to worry about Gunther, that we wouldn’t have to live in the greenhouse much longer. In the meantime we would just need to be extra careful when using the gift shop bathroom, be sure to take a lookout. Baz often referred to the future in vague and passing expressions, and I could hardly fault him for it. None of us knew what would happen, least of all me. In light of my previous conversation with Vic: it hardly mattered where we all clustered and lingered, so long as we clustered and lingered together.
Within minutes we were tucked inside our sleeping bags by the space heater. I lay on my back and stared up at the plastic ceiling and the fuzzy stars on the other side.
“Mad?” said Coco. I only remembered how truly young she was when she spoke in the dark.
“Yes?”
“I need a story.”
Zuz snapped once.
I looked over to the couch where Vic lay on his back. He had his earbuds in, his eyes wide open.
“Okay,” I said. “Which one?”
“Fro-Yo, please.”
I stayed on my side, cleared my throat, and watched Vic as I spoke. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Frozen Yogurt. Her friends called her Fro-Yo for short.” Coco giggled. She always giggled at this one. “Fro-Yo lived in a magical land called the Eleventh Aisle, where there were no houses or streets, only freezers and shelves
and sweet things that melted. But Fro-Yo was lonely. She had no friends, and nobody anywhere—not in the freezers or on the shelves—ever wanted to play with her. Poor Fro-Yo.”
“Poor Fro-Yo,” said Coco.
Vic pulled out a single earbud.
“One day,” I continued, “a little girl named Coconut—who lived in a far-off land called Greenhouse Eleven—happened upon the Eleventh Aisle. Coconut pulled Fro-Yo off the shelf, out of the cold, misty freezer, and said, ‘Yo, Fro-Yo! Hello! I will be your friend and love you forever. Would you like that? I’m from Queens, so tell the truth.’”
Coco giggled again.
“Well, poor Fro-Yo, who had been feeling very low-low, said, ‘I would like that, and that’s the truth, but alas, my parents—Ben and Jerry—are very strict and will only let me be friends with people who are from the Eleventh Aisle.’ This was odd, because Ben and Jerry were pretty progressive parents in some ways, but that’s a different story for a different bedtime.”
This time Baz chuckled.
I went on. “‘Yes, I suppose we are very different, aren’t we?’ said young Coconut. ‘Though doesn’t it seem odd?’ Poor Fro-Yo tilted her head. ‘Doesn’t what seem odd?’ she responded. ‘Well,’ said Coconut, pointing her finger to the window, and the world beyond the Eleventh Aisle. ‘Do you see that sunset?’ Fro-Yo took a look out the window and said, ‘Why, yes, I do see that sunset.’ Coconut tapped her chin, and said, ‘It seems odd that the sunset you see from the Eleventh Aisle and the one I see from Greenhouse Eleven is the exact same one. Maybe the two worlds we live in aren’t so different. We see the same sunset.’”
Vic turned on his side, and we stared at each other in the dark.
“‘Why, yes,’ said Fro-Yo, ‘we do see the same sunset, don’t we?’ And together, they walked hand in hand out of the Eleventh Aisle.”
“Where did they go?” asked Coco. “Here? Did Coconut bring Fro-Yo back here?”
“No,” I said. “They walked into that sunset, because it was something no one had ever done or heard about, or seen at all anywhere ever. And they lived drippily ever after. The end.”
Coco let out a long, contented sigh. “That was your best yet, Mad.”
It was quiet and dark and, before long, Coco snored soundly in her sleeping bag beside me.
Sometimes a thing should be strange, but it’s not. I couldn’t explain it, but Vic and I stared at each other for a long time that night. We never said anything, never smiled, and he never blinked. I imagined what he might say, what he wanted to say, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing about me.
What is that story really about? Vic never asked.
You know what it’s about, I never answered.
I fell asleep, looking at his eyes. And it should have been strange, but it wasn’t.
FOUR
OUTWARD SYMBOLS
(or, Cool in the Traditional Sense)
Interrogation Room #2
Madeline Falco & Detective H. Bundle
December 19 // 4:57 p.m.
“‘Eye of the Tiger’?” I ask. “Or no, wait, wait . . . ‘Don’t Stop Believin’.’ That was Zuz’s favorite. We had it on vinyl, he used to play it over and over again.”
Bundle twists in his seat, his back cracking like knuckles. “I told you. I don’t have a favorite song.”
“What? Come on, man. Everyone has a favorite song.”
“Well, I don’t.”
I lick the dry part of my lower lip. “I guess we’re all part of the bountiful bourgeoisie.”
“Madeline, for the most part—and don’t take this the wrong way—I never know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “Smoke break?”
“No.”
“No, like, not now, or no, like, never?”
Bundle stares at me, says nothing.
“It’s something Mom used to say”—just saying the word Mom is slightly painful, like a pinprick in my palm—“whenever she found something disappointing. She’d remind herself we were all in the same boat, just trying to do the best we could.”
For all Mom’s bizarre inclinations, she was a great mother. She instilled in me a sense of independence and did her best to cultivate a creative environment. When I said I wanted to be a fashion designer, she bought me a sewing machine. When I showed interest in archeology, she bought me a dig kit. Growing up, I’d have friends whose parents were always flabbergasted when their kids’ interests suddenly changed. What do you mean you don’t like mustard? You’ve always liked mustard. Mustard is your favorite. Parents forget what it’s like to change so quickly, to feel completely yourself one minute, then the next minute it’s like a total stranger wrapped themselves in your skin. But not Mom. Mom was like a mood meteorologist, always ahead of the curve, seemingly unfazed by my adolescent whims.
“Okay,” says Bundle. “Well. I think it’s safe to say we’ve gotten somewhat off topic.”
“You wanna know what my favorite song is?”
“Not really, but I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me anyway.”
“‘Coming Up Roses’ by Elliott Smith. It’s on his self-titled record. Lo-fi and melodic and perfect-perfect. Pretty much everything Elliott ever recorded had that sort of so-honest-it’s-terrifying quality.”
“Please oh please, Madeline, tell me more.” Bundle rubs his eyes as if we’ve been at this for days. How long have we been at this? It does feel like a long time, but with no windows and no clock, it’s impossible to tell.
“Before Mom died,” I say, “she always gave me three bucks a week for allowance. It wasn’t much, but we didn’t have much. I never complained, just saved. After five or six weeks, I’d have enough to buy a record. That was the first one I bought, Elliott Smith’s self-titled. A while back I came home from school—well, not home, I mean Uncle Lester’s. I went to my room and pulled my crate of records out from under my bed, but it was empty. He’d sold off the record player already, and all sorts of other shit to buy liquor. I knew I’d have to hide the records to keep them safe, and even if I didn’t have anything to play them on, I don’t know—I found them comforting.”
“Madeline, what does this have to do with anything?”
I twist around in my seat, lift my hair, and pull my shirt collar down a few inches so my left shoulder blade is exposed. “Earlier, you asked about my abrasions. Well, here’s one for you.”
I close my eyes, imagine what Bundle’s looking at: a pink mark of perfectly curved grooves, one-quarter of a circle, five or six inches in length. I sit frozen like this as I talk, the most tragic show-and-tell. “Uncle Les sold all my records but one. He needed that one, he said, to teach me a lesson. Said we were a family now, and families had to ‘share the wealth.’ So he held a lighter under the record and asked where I would like this lesson to be taught.”
“Jesus,” says Bundle. “He branded you.”
“Vinyl warps pretty quickly, but you’d be surprised how hot it can get before it melts.” I let my hair drop, my sweatshirt covering the pink grooves, and turn back to face Bundle. And when I speak, I do so fiercely, and I don’t even care that it’s just Bundle who hears me, because sometimes you say a thing for yourself and not for the person listening. “But the joke’s on him because I saw the record he used. Elliott Smith’s self-titled. Fitting, don’t you think? Saved me a tattoo.”
Bundle clears his throat, looks away, then back. “You moved in with your uncle after your parents died?”
I nod.
“You mind my asking how they passed?”
“Drunk driver,” I whisper, staring at my wristband. “We were all in the car, Mom and Dad and me. They died instantly. I was thrown from the vehicle. Just got this scar.” I point to the shaved side of my head.
Detective Bundle pushes pause on the recorder, and stands. “Okay, le
t’s go.”
“Where?” I ask as he slips on his coat.
“Smoke break.”
I pull my jacket off the back of my seat before he changes his mind. It feels good to stand, productive even. I’m still sore in places, but getting the blood flowing helps. In the corridor, I spot the outline of Vic through the blurred window across the hall, and I think maybe that was all I really needed—more than a cigarette, just the visual reminder of his company.
Down the hall, cops are everywhere, milling about, drinking coffee, whispering in hushed tones. A few eyes land on me, then dart away quickly.
“This way,” says Bundle, leading me in the direction opposite the lobby. “And not a word about this, okay? Lieutenant Bell would have my ass so fast, it’d make your head spin. Against a million regulations, not the least of which is you’re too young to smoke.”
On our way out a side door, we pass a clock on the wall.
5:13.
Just under three hours to go.
Outside, it’s colder than it was this morning, which I didn’t think was possible. Even by Jersey standards, it’s been a brutal December.
I pull out my pack of cigarettes, light up, and . . .
Drag.
Blow.
Calm.
I hold the pack out toward Bundle. “Want one?”
He shakes his head. “Trying to quit.”
The sidewalk is completely frozen over; traffic on State Street idles by, bumper-to-bumper during rush hour. One block over is Main Street, with its delis and cafés and a string of markets. Weird to think it was only eight days ago that I led Vic right by this spot on our way to Babushka’s. If that was the Genesis of our story, I couldn’t help wondering what the Revelation might be.
Drag.
Blow.
Calm.
“So, what exactly is Moebius syndrome?” asks Bundle. “Is Vic, you know . . . a credible witness?”
I almost drop my cigarette. “Bundle, what the fuck?”