by John Langan
Veronica paused. I waited, then said, "What did you do?"
"I had—you wouldn't call it a moment of clarity, not exactly—it was more a moment of less obscurity. Late one Tuesday night, I phoned both chairs and told them versions of the same story. I hadn't been feeling well lately—very run down, feverish, glands swollen—and had finally been to my doctor, who told me it was a sure case of mono and ordered me on bedrest for the next month. I was sorry to call them this late, it was just, I'd spent the last three hours trying to find someone to take my classes, and no one could, and I didn't know what to do. I was very convincing. Each of them sounded relieved. Clearly, they'd already heard complaints about me. This provided them with a solid explanation. Within an hour, I'd handed over my classes for the next four weeks, at least. The following morning, I went to my regular doctor and got him to give me an emergency referral to a psychiatrist—in Albany. I didn't want to be caught going out of anyone's office locally. There was one more night in the house. The morning after, I packed a bag, got in my car, and headed north on the Thruway. Once the shrink had heard my story—the less-edited version—I figured there was a fair-to-middling chance he'd recommend some hospital time for me. If he didn't, I planned on finding a local motel, anyway.
"As it turned out, I was right. I spent six days in a surprisingly comfortable bed, after which I checked into a motel in Delmar. There's no need to go into the gory details. Suffice it to say, I got the help I needed. After one extra week off, I picked up my classes again, and finished the spring semester in much better shape than I'd started it in. My evaluations weren't the greatest, but what did you expect?
"And that was that. It's hard to know where to end. There's always a little more to tell. I cleaned up Belvedere House after I returned from Albany. I thought about selling it, but the deed's in Roger's name—it's the one thing he didn't add me to—and the process of changing that—especially since he's officially missing, not dead—is more complicated than I can be bothered with, right now. Ditto having Roger declared legally dead. You'd be surprised how many people have urged me to do that. It's not that I think he's coming back. It's just—well, I'm not going to do it, all right?"
"Fine."
"I've kind of lost interest in literature. I teach it when I have to, but the focus of my freshman comp classes has shifted more to the visual arts, to painting. I'm writing about painting, too."
"Belvedere?"
"And de Castries."
"I thought you said you didn't care for either man's work?"
"I did. It's—I spent so much time on each of them, it seemed a shame not to do something with my research. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll do a Ph.D. in art history. I try not to pay attention to the news—so much of it is so depressing—but there are times I can't help noticing what's going on. Like now, the whole situation in Iraq. Maybe there was a case to be made for going in—I don't know. But I keep thinking, it's like, we were all traumatized on 9/11, and now we're going to pass that on, as if trauma's some kind of disease that compels you to spread it to someone else." She stood from the couch and stretched, throwing her arms out to either side. "What time is it? God, I'm exhausted."
I consulted the clock. "Four."
"Wow." She ran a hand through her hair, turned in the direction of her room. "I guess that's all—"
"Actually," I said, "there's one more thing."
"There is? What can I possibly not have told you?"
"Roger. What happened—what do you think happened to him?"
Veronica crossed her arms. "I don't know. How could I?"
"You couldn't—I don't think. But you spent a great deal of time imagining him at other moments. I find it hard to believe you haven't done the same for this one."
Her face darkened. "This doesn't seem the slightest bit intrusive to you?"
"Under normal circumstances, yes, horribly. After all that you've told me, not at all." I added, "If you want to know what the end of the story is, that's it."
There followed a long pause during which I thought Veronica was staring—glaring—at me, as if to discern . . . it was hard to say what, what further quality she was attempting to assess, since she already had judged me fit to hear things I would have assumed reserved for the priest in the confessional, if not the privacy of her own conscience. I was exhausted, my brain stuffed full of the seven course meal Veronica had served. Perhaps I had heard all that was necessary. Perhaps, but like the diner who must have the last piece of chocolate mousse cake, and so overrules his body to lift the fork to his mouth, I wanted to know the last detail. I shifted under Veronica's eyes, but did not look away.
At last, her face lightened, and I understood that she hadn't been glaring at me. She hadn't seen me at all; her gaze had been directed inward, to a question or scruple I only could guess. Arms still crossed, she sat on the edge of the cushions. "Fair enough," she said, though her mouth had the cast of someone preparing to taste a bitter drink. "You're right. I spent hours mulling over Roger's fate, speculating, constructing what I thought were plausible scenarios—although, really, when it comes to this kind of thing, how do you judge plausibility? Wrong word. What you're after is an ending that feels right, which no doubt means it's a fiction. I mean, how often does life conclude like that?
"Last night, I told you that I'd talked to one of the guys from Ted's outfit, Gene Ortiz—Woodpecker. I called him after Roger disappeared, but I didn't say why. It was because I thought I knew what had become of Roger. A narrative had presented itself to me fully formed: I woke up one morning, tongue thick, head aching, and there it was waiting for me.
"In this version, as Roger draws nearer to Ted—remember I said there was that moment he hesitated, his body language changed, and I realized he was seeing something? Well, he does, only it isn't the view that presents itself to me. Where Ted is standing waiting for him, Roger sees a path—an alley, bordered by low buildings, houses whose mud walls he recognizes at once. He's in an alleyway in Kabul. The sky is dark. The moon is up. From the position of the stars, he knows with stomach-dropping certainty what night this is. He runs to the end of the alley and looks around. He doesn't recognize the street he's on. He goes to turn left, decides on right instead. The street is deserted. He runs to the next intersection. He doesn't—wait, he does know where he is. If he crosses this street, there should be an alley ahead to the left—yes, he has his bearings, now. If he follows this narrow, crooked passage, he should come out at the square where Ted and his patrol are to be ambushed. If he can catch them before they enter it—or at least warn them—
"Roger's legs pound harder than they have since he was twelve and racing to make it home before the deadline his father had set. He's half-expecting his heart to start shouting, but when he stops, it's to catch his breath. Truth be told, he's happy—elated—the fear that had gripped him on the front step melted by the chance he's been given, the opportunity to make everything right.
"He sets off for the ambush site once more, doing his best to pace himself. On his way, he checks the sky. From the strip of it he can see, there isn't much time left. The alley forks. He chooses left when he should have picked right, and is a hundred yards the wrong way before he realizes his mistake. Cursing himself, he doubles back, grabbing a robe from atop a heap of clothing behind a house and struggling into it as he runs. It's occurred to him that, if he hurtles into the square in his jeans and polo short, the assassins may take it as a cue to open fire. He needs enough of a disguise to buy himself fifteen, twenty seconds. He pulls the robe closed, and there's the square ahead. He can see the movie theater's silhouette rising above its fellow buildings. Is that someone on the roof?
"As he approaches the end of the alley, a debate springs up in his mind. He knows where the attackers are positioned. Should he try to disable one of them, use that weapon to kill the others? Or should his priority be warning Ted? Then his legs have carried him out into the square and there is Ted's patrol spread out across it—dammit, he's too lat
e; there's no time—the best he can do is warn them, which he's already doing. He's yelling at the top of his lungs, an inarticulate howl that draws all the soldiers' weapons in his direction. 'Not me, you idiots!' he wants to shout, but the clock is ticking. Any second now, the old man, the Judas goat, will come running out and the ambush will begin.
"He runs up to Ted, his heart straining with joy at the sight of his son, alive and well in front of him after everything. He wants to throw his arms around Ted, wrap him in a hug and tell him all is forgiven, but he has to warn him, first, which he's doing, a stream of information pouring out of his mouth as he gestures wildly, pointing at the spots where the attackers are concealed. Ted's eyes are wide. He's stepped forward to meet this man who looks exactly like his father but cannot be him, because that's impossible, and who's yelling about an ambush, men with guns all around them. He's so focused on Roger that he doesn't hear the RPG cough—but Roger does, and the instant before they're both blown out of this life, he moves to embrace Ted. That's how he dies: arms outstretched to the son who's backing away from him.
"This conclusion arrived with the force of revelation. There was no doubt in my mind that this was Roger's fate. So I set about trying to clarify it, which was why I called Woodpecker. Needless to say, I didn't tell him the real reason I was contacting him. I said I'd found Ted's death very troubling and was now in therapy to help me come to terms with it. My therapist had suggested I might find it helpful to talk to someone who'd known Ted. The CO had identified Gene as Ted's best friend. Would he mind talking to me?
"If I'd been waiting for some kind of confirmation, however, a telling detail that would verify my narrative of Roger's end, I was disappointed. Trying not to appear any more interested in the old man who'd halted the patrol and so set them up than I was in the rest of the story, I asked Woodpecker what he remembered about him. Not much, he said. He was just an old man waving his arms and shouting. Did he have a beard? I asked. Could you understand what he was saying? To be honest, Gene said, he wasn't too sure about anything when it came to the old man. The attack had happened so soon after he appeared. He guessed the old man must've had a beard, because all the men in those parts wore facial hair. No, he couldn't understand a word coming out of the guy's mouth. Do you know what became of his body? I asked. He didn't. Probably in an anonymous grave somewhere on the outskirts of Kabul. If I would excuse him for saying so, he thought that body, and those of their attackers, should have been left to rot where they were. That was all right, I said, I didn't mind.
"So, compelling as it may have been, my scenario remained speculative. There was sufficient uncertainty in Gene Ortiz's account of the attack for my version of events to slot into it. In the absence of corroborating evidence from Gene, though, or any of the other soldiers—I talked to the four men I could get in contact with—the story I had stayed more invention than hypothesis. As the weeks crept on, everything that had argued so forcefully in its favor—especially its irresistible neatness—increasingly seemed to count against it. It was too Twilight Zone—ironic, but not necessarily logical. Ted allows Roger to go back in time to insure that he—Ted—will be killed. You see what I mean?"
I nodded.
"The second ending I arrived at more deliberately. While I was recuperating in Albany, I told the first scenario to my shrink. He'd heard more of the supernatural events I'd been through than the cops had—not as much as you; you've heard pretty much everything—because by then it cost me too much effort to conceal them, to create parallel situations that would account for the same results. He didn't believe any of it—he was quite candid about that, said he thought I'd created this massive hallucinatory structure to mediate my experience to myself—but he encouraged me to discuss the supernatural moments in depth. He said it would help him map the parameters of my delusion. When we'd reached the end of the story, he asked me what had become of Roger. I told him I'd thought I knew, but wasn't sure anymore, and gave him my exercise in irony. He agreed it didn't make much sense if you considered it closely, but he was fascinated by it all the same, especially what he called its 'mis-en-abyme' quality. 'Roger goes into the past in order to create the situation that will end in him going into the past in order to create the situation that will end in him going into the past, and so on.' What I'd created was a wonderful symbol for Roger's obsession with Ted's death and its destructive effects on him and me.
"He gave me an assignment—write a new ending for Roger and Ted, a more hopeful one. He handed me a legal pad and a pen, and I had till our appointment the next morning to see what I could come up with. It was hard to conceive of any finish to this story that didn't include pain and suffering. I went through the entire pad—fifty sheets torn off and crumpled into yellow balls I threw at the garbage can in mounting frustration—until all I had was the cardboard backing. I spent a restless night, irritated at my inability to fulfill what appeared to be a straightforward-enough task. I could have tossed off something simple and banal—Roger and Ted go to heaven and everyone's happy—but that wouldn't do. For the assignment to serve its purpose, whatever I wrote would have to feel right in the same way the first ending had.
"An hour before that next appointment, the edge of an idea presented itself to me, and I started to write, using the backing and keeping my handwriting tiny. I was almost late completing it. I ran into the office, panting, and thrust the cardboard into the doctor's hands. He raised his eyebrows, but he read what I'd written."
"Which was?"
"I'm getting to that," Veronica said. "This version of events begins at the same moment as the previous one, with Roger stopping in his progress toward Ted, cocking his head as something becomes visible to him. In this case, it isn't an alleyway in Kabul—what he sees in the darkness ahead of him is a corridor whose familiarity he can't place right away. Its walls are strange, irregular. He advances and realizes that they're the bars of jail cells. He's back in the holding area where he and Ted spent what was left of the night after their confrontation. The lights are out, but the air outside the windows is lightening. Dawn will arrive soon. The same time he—throat dry, Roger searches for his cell, the cell in which he—there it is. Empty, he's relieved to see. He looks across at Ted's cell.
"Which isn't empty. In fact, it's full, crammed with—he walks forward until he's standing outside it. Instead of bare concrete and metal bars, its walls are crowded with tall bookcases, from each of which hangs an assortment of maps. The center of the room is dominated by a heavy table, to which—Roger has been thinking, It's my study, how did that get here? when his brain catches up to what's chained to the table. It's Ted, naked and—cut open, tortured. His chest, hips, thighs, are bare red meat, the skin dangling from them in long, ragged strips. His heart, breathing, everything stopped, Roger sees that those exposed places have suffered further violation, cut into windows for what lies beneath, or transfixed by long white needles. In more than a few places, what should have remained inside has been lifted out. Gray loops of intestine have been coiled on Ted's belly and held there by a pair of the needles. An eyeball has been loosened but not severed, left to lie on Ted's cheek, a needle inserted in the evacuated socket. There's blood everywhere, pooled under the table, splattered across the maps, dotted on the ceiling. The sharp tang of it forces itself into his nostrils and mouth before he has a chance to cover either. Roger is stunned, forced out of himself by what he can't close his eyes to. In some, faraway part of his mind, he's screaming, awash in horror, tears pouring down his face as he slams his fists against the bars. Here, though, he's silent—until, that is, Ted moves, shifting on the table as much as he can. The needles quiver, so many gauges to his continuing agony. Roger groans.
"Without thinking, Roger puts his hand on the cell door, which resists his pull at first. He's afraid it's locked—who has the key? Then, with the scream of metal surrendering its grip on itself, the door slides open. He enters the cell with a combination of reverence and deliberateness. He doesn't linger, doesn't wast
e time playing voyeur to Ted's wounds. He walks to the table, surveys Ted from head to foot, and begins removing the needles, grasping hold of the end of each one and sliding it out of Ted's eye socket, ear, throat, chest, arm, hand, stomach, groin, leg, foot. The needles slide out easily, making small, wet sounds as they exit. Roger drops them on the floor, where they clatter against one another. With his throat free, Ted moans in earnest, flinching as Roger continues his work.
"The last needle removed, Roger directs his attention to Ted's other wounds, cupping his eyeball in his palm and gently returning it to its socket, folding flaps of skin back in place, lifting lengths of intestine—carefully, oh so carefully—and depositing them inside his son. When he has seen to Ted's final hurt, Roger holds up his hands, stares at the blood and gore clinging to them. He places them on Ted, who leaps at the touch, and starts to move them over him, as if rubbing Ted's blood back into him. Where Roger's hands pass, Ted's skin is whole, healed. Ted screams as Roger's hands join muscle to bone, skin to muscle, skin to skin. He twists against the chains that bind him to the table still.