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by Bryan Hurt

  I wash my hands and outside lean over the water fountain. I hear a snorting, a snuffling.

  I turn. A gorilla is staring at me. He’s much larger than me. Wider. Firmer base. His eyes are dilated, he looks stressed. His muscles are enormous and shagged with coarse hair. Such fingers. He could destroy me. We turn at a siren coming through trees. He grunts, scoots along.

  They are at a picnic table, lips coated in pink puffed sugar, and what do I say to them to explain the police swarming the zoo? That those peaceful gorillas can get loose and maybe if you’re lucky you won’t get hurt? Is that the lesson here? Instead I tell them a story about a father who invents magical glass boxes for his children, all they have to do is push a button and whoosh, glass walls all around, safe and sound. They say what about air? Food? Xbox? I reassure them. These are advanced glass boxes! Totally decked out! They exchange skeptical looks.

  I drop them off and you say to me, “Hear the one about the escaped gorilla?”

  I tell you the gorilla was me and you don’t understand how such a thing could be true.

  ON MONDAY NIGHT, in my mailbox, a large yellow envelope. No return address.

  I open it inside, lights out, feeling nauseous.

  A film canister.

  CLIP #49 BEGINS as many do—nothing but darkness. Then a voice from the void.

  “Like Genesis,” murmurs Cynthia, fanning herself with the business section.

  I ask for quiet and listen to the words.

  He has seen and touched every part of this state literally traveled every paved road, been to every county seat, every damn landmark and boy there are a few thousand, aren’t there, has spoken to professors and town folk to historical society ladies and blue-collar workers to illegals and Border Patrol to vigilantes and human rights crusaders has sat with mayors and senators and oh so many civil engineers, dam builders bridge builders highway designers public transportation consultants architects and other assorted madmen, the oldest living woman in the state, and when she died the next one, and the next, and the next, plucked fruit with original fruit pickers packed crates with original crate packers flipped patties with original burger makers made fries with the sad McDonald brothers and once talked with Ray Kroc himself before that rich and sleazy salesman kicked the bucket has surfed with surfers dived with anemone divers flown with kite fliers sand volleyball players racecar drivers rock climbers artists of every color ate donuts with Sonny Barger Sonny Bono a very young Arnold and so many cultural representatives schnitzel tabbouleh pupusas cricket tacos Oaxacans Basques Guatemalans Romanians Filipinos even Tasmanians all here in this Popeye-arm-shaped state

  At this point the darkness recedes. Light enters the frame. It reveals a swastika.

  “Holy shit,” says Cynthia.

  The camera pulls back farther. The swastika resides on the face of a deranged man.

  “Whitman?” wonders Cynthia.

  The voice continues, and still the most famous, the one above them all, the firmament over this state is and always has been him, the single most unsettling person the host has ever spoken to, and the host believes that there is something of this man in us all, in the water, in the air, we are all this man, a derangement not as the rest of the country thinks, not Californians as hippies and crystals and free love but anger to the bone that anchor on Popeye’s arm swinging round and round the chain digging into the skin of the palm that pressure that needs burst.

  Staring at us steadily is Charles Manson.

  That’s it. That’s the last of the clips.

  *

  YOU LEAVE VOICE messages via can-and-string, say they’re worried about me, you are, too.

  Stop working. Take a break. Come inside. Dinner’s ready.

  But mustn’t we believe that if we can unravel just one thing the maze will come undone?

  I dream of walking at night in the dark.

  I see a large man ahead of me, saying, Who are you? Why are you following me?

  Carter Sullivan and Jack Benny, oh Jack, Your money or your wallet . . . golden silence.

  California gold? Television! That clever image, those flashing lights! We are all moths!

  I lie awake tonight, thinking of mankind fleeing darkness, flapping at bright screens.

  It’s not a lightly thought thought.

  The state of California. Been there. Not sure I made it back.

  Cynthia blocks my number. Don gets tenure. Everyone sort of tolerates me but they don’t hide it well. I move out of the city, to an apartment in Eagle Rock. We don’t see each other anymore, them, me, you, us. We were part of the group of smart people, so smart, our group of smart clever smart people, and then you and me baby we split and sure we tried to make up, but we split again and they all chose you. No, no, that’s not exactly what happened but it’s close. I call Don late the way I used to, drunkenly smoking on our porches, but he’s married now, has to sleep, notes for tomorrow’s lecture. “Those were some strange days,” I tell him, my voice thick, I can’t help it. He’s polite. “Yes, indeed. Strange days. Like in that the Doors song,” he says. That the. Always smart, Don. “Gotta tuck up, bud,” he tells me. “We’ll get together soon.”

  Some days I sit watching reruns of the host’s television show. How cheery he is! How sated! I know that TV-him isn’t real-him, that he’s a different man with his own fears, his own struggles, I know I need to stop need to let go of Cynthia/her the kids/them you/you so I/me can move on but the words trip me up every time, move on, isn’t moving on just moving back? Yielding? A surrender? I’ve never liked this state, it’s always felt uneasy to me, trembly, on the verge of explode, it’s the air, the winds, the fires, tides under ocean, deserts, I don’t know, such foreboding, just a sense is all. You can come to the West what you can do is you can come to this land of grand scale and learn to think in shadows, in shadows men will pan for gold backroom deals buy all the land steal the water forces align, it’s obvious, look around, such tremendous forces after all. Look, that dome, that volcano, that geyser. That beach. That bear. Eagle. Whale. Ronald Reagan. Woolly mammoth. Joshua tree. Death Valley. Donner Party. Neverland Ranch. John Muir. Manson. To think no forces are conspiring would be to be a fool! Sometimes I think I could learn a bit by reading up on Manson but what good would that do? It’d only make me obsessive and it’s bad to obsess over crazies. Obsess over normal things. It’s healthier.

  UNPACKING BOXES THIS week, I find these words in an old notepad:

  Go to Silver Lake, swim to the fountain, find the next clue.

  I laugh about it. So silly, all that, the days of magical mysterious clips, when everything was so cosmic and fraught. Nostalgic, I take a drive to the area. I walk the path that loops the reservoir. There’s live music from a bar. Young people laughing. Couples walking past, smiling.

  I consider swimming to the fountain. Instead I sit on a bench in sight of the fountain.

  A man walks past me. He pauses. Of course I know who it is—of course it’s the host.

  We stare at each other.

  “You’re the one,” he says. “I dream about you. You’re always following me.”

  I shake my head in denial.

  “Why are you here?” he asks. “Who are you?”

  “I’m no one,” I say.

  His voice is soft. He sounds tired. I feel bad for him. He’s old. “You did all this,” he says.

  “All what?”

  He sighs. He’s confused. Exhausted. Something falls from his hand. I pick it up. A photo. On the back is written #1. It’s a Polaroid of a chalked word on a blackboard:

  CALIFORNIA

  I rise and hand it to him. He nods thanks. For a minute we stand there together. Looking at the photo, then around us, at everything. “What is this?” the host asks softly.

  “All this time I thought you’d know,” I admit.

  We stare out. It’s dark but we know what’s out in the darkness. The valleys below us. The seas. Hills and roads
. People. Silence. Trees. I’m pretty sure we can hear waves crashing in the bay.

  Adela1

  primarily known as The Black Voyage, later reprinted

  as Red Casket of the Heart, by Anon.

  by Chanelle Benz

  We did not understand how she came to be alone. We wished to know more, the more that she alone could tell us. It was well understood in our village that Adela was a beauty, albeit a beauty past her heyday. But this was of little consequence to us, no?2

  We came not to spy and discover if indeed her bloom had faded; we came because Mother did not nod to Adela in the street when so rarely she passed, under a parasol despite there being no sun; we came because we knew that on occasion Adela had a guest of queer character who alighted in her courtyard well past the witching hour; we came because Father fumbled to attention when we dared mention “Adela” at supper, piping her syllables into the linen of our diminutive napkins; and finally, we came because Adela alone welcomed us: we, the unconsidered, the uninvited, the under five feet high.

  Uncountable afternoons that year, after we had gotten our gruel3—some of us trammeled up with the governess, others, the tutor—we raced en bloc to the back of beyond, letting ourselves into the bedimmed foyer of Adela’s ivy-shrouded, crumbling house. She who was alone could not wish to be, yet she alone had made it so, and we altogether wished to know why. Fittingly, we slid in our tender, immature fingers to try and pry Adela open. Perchance she felt this to be a merciless naïveté; as if we, Edenic formlings, did not yet have the knowledge of our collective strength.

  What is it, the youngest of us ventured to ask, that has caused you to cloister yourself all through your youth? A thwarted wish to be a nun or a monk?

  It was child’s play for us to envision Adela pacing down a windowless hall, needlework dragging over stone, her nun’s habit askew.

  Her stockinged toes working their way into the topmost corner of the divan, Adela fluttered in her crinoline. She pressed the back of her hand to a crimson’d cheek, laughing, Oh dearest children, why it has been years since I have blushed! I suppose I must confess that it was as lamentable a story as any of you could wish . . .

  One with pirates, we asked, one of dead Love and dashed Hope? Then we all at once paused, for her eyes summoned a darkling look as if she had drifted somewhere parlous, somewhere damned.

  Pirates? Adela? Pirates?

  No, she cried with a toss of her head. The lamp dimmed and the window rattled, lashed by a burst of sudden rain.

  Adela, we did chorus, Adela?

  Her silhouette bolted upright. Children? The lamplight returned restoring Adela’s dusky radiance. You curious cherubs, why it’s a foolish tale of romantic woe. I was in love and my love turned out to be quite mad, and well we know, no candle can compare to fire. And so I have chosen to remain alone. Mystery solved.

  But for us the mystery had only begun. Who was this Unnamed Love? Was he of our acquaintance? Had he wed another? Was his corpse buried in the village graveyard? Was he locked in a madhouse wherein he paced the floors, dribbling “Adela” into the folds of his bloodstained cravat? We wished to know and demanded that she tell us.

  Oh, he is quite alive, murmured Adela languidly, pouring herself a glass of Madeira, meio doce, to the brim, stirring, spilling it with her little finger, passing the glass around when we begged for a driblet.

  Is he married? we asked, our lips stained with wine.

  He is not. Though I have heard it said that he is betrothed . . . to a lovely heiress of a small but respectable estate in North Carolina.

  We choked on our commutual sip. Won’t you stop him if indeed you love him? You will, won’t you? Tell us you will, Adela, do!

  No indeed. I wish them happy, she said with a deep violet tongue.

  We did not think she could mean what she did say. We pressed her as we refilled her glass, Do you love him still? Was it not a lasting attachment?

  Oh yes. I’ll love him forever. But what of it? she asked.

  How was it possible, we mulled aloud, that Love did not rescue the day? Was this not what she had read to us from these very volumes by which we were surrounded? What of The Mysteries of Udolpho? Lord Byron’s Beppo?

  Adela nodded in affirmation yet was quick to forewarn, Do not forget the lessons of Glenarvon!4

  But should not Love and Truth strive against aught else, ergo it is better to Perish Alone in Exile? Adela, you must be mistaken, we assured her, the oldest patting the top of her bejeweled hand, for if your Love knew you loved him in perpetuum, he would return and return in a pig’s whisper!

  That would be ill-judged, nor would I permit such a thing, she snapped. As I said, he is quite mad and impossible to abide. Please, let us not speak of it, it was all too too long ago.

  Adela, we wheedled, won’t you at least tell us the name of your lost love? Don’t you trust us, Adela? Why there is nothing you do not know of us! Nothing we have not gotten down on our knees to confess! You know that we borrowed Father’s gun and we shot it; that we broke Mother’s vase and we buried it; that we contemplated our governess and tutor in the long grass giving off strange grunts and divers groans till their caterwauling ceased in a cascade of competing whimpers.

  Now hush! Didn’t I tell you not to speak of that? Very well. His name is Percival Rutherford, she yawned, entreating us to close the blinds.

  *

  IT WAS A bad plan. A wicked plan. We did not know if it came from us or the Devil so full was it of deceit. At home, milling in the library, in perusal of our aim, we selected a volume of Shakespeare’s Comedies since they all ended in marriage and marriage was by and large our end. The Bard, we suspected, had a number of strategies upon the matter.

  We set about with quill and ink and put our nib to paper. Sitting cross-legged on the dais of a desk whilst we huddled below in consternation, the oldest clapped us to attention to declaim, feather aloft:

  ∼ Dressing as boys or the boys of us dressing as girls!

  We were uncertain as to what this would achieve and thus struck it off.

  ∼ Dressing Adela in disguise so that she can visit Percival and get high-bellied!

  We were equally uncertain as to whether Adela was past the fecundating age.

  ∼ Have Adela rescue her love from a lioness thereby making him everlastingly indebted to her!

  While there was no doubt in our collective hearts that Adela could, if put to the test, best a lion—was she not the owner of a mighty sword that hung on her wall belonging to her long-deceased father?—we did doubt we could procure a lioness in this part of the country. The second oldest elbowed their way up to the desk, chastising the oldest for bothering to scribble down a strategy that was so abominably foolhardy. The oldest sneered back that the second was the one with no veritable sense of Byronic ideals. To which the second scoffed, Airmonger! But the oldest merely chose to employ a snub and concluded:

  ∼ Fake Adela’s death and give Percival report of it? Or! Send a false missive to each, swearing that one loves the other!

  Enough, barked the second oldest, crossly claiming that no remedy to our ails could be hit upon in the Comedies. Thus, we began undividedly to search elsewhere in the Canon and quickly fell upon our consensual favorite, Othello.5 We conferred, then confirmed by a show of hands: we must find Adela a beau to make her lost love jealous; Percival, in turn, would wrestle with the arrogance of his tortured soul until goaded into a violent show of love which would cure him of his madness, whereupon they would be wed, us serving as the bridal party.

  Our unanimous impetus was thus: one day, someday, one by one, we would leave this village and behind us, Adela: a tawny, companionless outcast. This we found insupportable.

  IT HAD COME to our attention that the ladies of the village were increasingly fond of the new architect, Mr. Quilby, who had taken a lodging above the apothecary. Our aunts were made prostrate admiring his finely wrought neckties and excellent leg. He is not quite B
rummell,6 the second oldest of us had quipped, not thoroughly convinced of Quilby’s suitability let alone his foil status. However, the oldest had been quick to counter that Adela was a spinster by most everyone’s calculations—though no lamb dressed in ewe’s clothes, with a countenance that was beyond pleasing to the eye—still most of the unattached gentlemen would think her a Tabby. However, Mr. Quilby, the oldest had gone on to expostulate, has streaks of silver in his sideburns plainly visible. A man of his years will be less concerned by Adela’s being a Thornback.7

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON we tromped through the fields and into the village square where we found Mr. Quilby at his drafting table, his sleeves rolled high. Under our arms we had baskets of fresh-baked bread and preserves, for we knew how to be satisfactorily winning children, to lisp and wreath smiles when such a display was demanded.

  Mr. Quilby was intrigued by our description of the enchanting recluse with whom all men dangled and yet no man had ever snared. He quizzed us as to why we thought him the one to win such an elusive prize? Though Quilby admitted he well understood that as the village’s newest bachelor, matchmaking mamas would be upon him, he owned he was surprised to find that they would recruit their children to employ such endeavors.

  We said in one breath that we believed Adela to be lonely and thought perhaps it would cheer her to have a worthy friend near to her age in whom she could confide. Quilby, breaking off a chunk of bread said, betwixt his chews, that he was not averse to such a meeting. The second oldest of us deplored the profusion of Quilby’s crumbs, hissing that Quilby was not capable of being the understudy’s understudy let alone the rival. But Quilby, unmindful of this sally, inquired, How do you think you could lure such a confirmed hermit?

  But we were there well before him. The next evening, the youngest of us was meant to take part in a glee at the chapel, a recital to which Adela had long been promised to attend. In this fashion was Quilby gulled and the first act of our accursed cabal complete.

  ON THE DAY in question, we were trembling in our boots and slippers, shaking in our corsets and caps, when at long last Adela slipped in at the back of the church. She was a trifle hagged, but we conjectured that if our star was noticeably dimmed, Quilby would only be made less shy on his approach. In the final applause, the oldest of us mimed to Quilby that he should come make her acquaintance, which Quilby did with a genteel air, bowing and being so courtly as to bestow a light kiss atop Adela’s hand. The second of us was obliged to yield an approving nod. That blush which we ourselves had beheld only the other day returned and we pursued it down Adela’s throat and across her breasts. Bobbing a sketch of a curtsey, Adela made to turn, fretful for her carriage, but Quilby was quick to inquire, Ma’am, is it you that lives in the old Nelson place?