Pivot

by L C Barlow

  "There was blood spatter on your face then, and that was a day when I had opened the box, remember. Your clothes aren't even wrinkled now."

  I nodded my head. "You'll see."

  Had I not known Cyrus at all, "We can't go back there," I would have said. "There will be cops by now." Yes, that would have been my reasoning. But I did not say these things, for I had learned by then that it didn't matter. The world always skirted around Cyrus. And so I ate my meal languidly, so languidly, as we talked of death.

  * * *

  When Cyrus drove us to the perfumery, it was just as I expected. Despite the lights being on, no one had investigated the place, or called the police, and there were still glass bottles all about the floor. If it had been a painting, I would have called it, "Alcoholic's Rampage."

  "Where's the body?" Cyrus asked.

  I pointed round the counter, while I covered my nose to breathe. As we walked towards it, though, I suddenly knew with all my heart that the body would not be there. It would have disappeared, or never originally been there. Maybe I have gone insane, I thought. But then we rounded the corner, and I saw feet, ankles, shins, stomach, throat.

  Yes, Jim was as dead as could be.

  "Mm," Cyrus hummed softly, and he squatted near the body. He touched the man's tweed jacket, running the backs of his fingers up towards the collar, and then he took the tip of his forefinger and ran it across the bloody laceration, and then finally plunged his fingers deep inside. When he pulled them out, they were covered in red, and Cyrus said to me, "No knife did this."

  "So I'm not crazy."

  Cyrus didn't respond. He opened the man's mouth, looked into the maw, and then pulled apart the man's shirt and examined his chest.

  I stood behind Cyrus, watched his back as he undid his own jacket, and then as he pulled out a knife. The blade was not particularly long. Five inches or so. He twirled it between his fingers, until, as though writing with a quill, he cut into the man's chest a series of perpendicular lines. On the last line, just as soon as Cyrus's blade left the skin, the laceration in the man's throat grew bright. Almost instantaneously, the body was covered in flames. I was in awe.

  "That's a neat trick," I whispered, absolutely entranced. The heat rose up against my hands like puffs of wolf's breath.

  Cyrus placed his hand gently against my arm and guided me back. "Return to the car," he said. "I'll be there in a moment." I nodded my head and turned to go.

  As I walked through the broken glass door and out into the night, across the expanse of parking before me, a sudden bright glow fluoresced, and my shadow stretched out very long. I flipped around.

  The entire perfumery was burning now, from concrete floor to parched, wooden roof. It was like a brilliant star had poured its blood upon the building. I felt the heat come to me as would an explosion, and my whole body shivered in exhilaration. Yet, the night was absolutely quiet. There was no crackling, sizzling, popping, moaning, hissing usually inherent in such giant flames.

  I walked towards the building, feeling my eyelids and cheeks scream against the blaze. Yet, no matter how close I came, all I could hear was the wind. The inferno didn't even whisper.

  As I stood there, out from the milky orange whips of flame walked Cyrus's cloaked figure. There was a case in his left hand, a bottle in his right, a smile on his face. The fire had left no mark on him. He appeared as dapper as the conductor of an opera.

  His pace was hot and I bolted to keep up with him. In just a flash, we were both in the car, and he was driving away.

  "Maybe you're right," he said, turning onto Connor Street.

  "About?"

  "Maybe there is a correlation. Maybe there is something threatening there." He looked at me, but I could not discern just what emotion his face evoked, if any. He turned back to the road and continued. "I wonder what it could mean... when there is a disconnect between what you do and what is done."

  In these seconds I realized that perhaps I had made in irreversible and grave mistake in telling Cyrus anything. For the first time in my life, I vaguely wished I had lied to him, even if it had killed me. "It's not necessarily a bad sign."

  "No, it's not. But the box deals in traitors and outsiders. It's what the box is implying, Jack."

  "Fuck that," I said. "I have always been there for you. Always. In whatever you've asked. I..."

  "I know." He stopped me by placing his hand on top of mine and squeezing it briefly. He let me go. "And I'll never forget it. Ever."

  My breath paused. This was not a soothing answer to me. It was not what I wanted to hear. But then, as if knowing this, he added, "Besides, that's not what I was thinking. Not what I was thinking at all."

  "What is it?" I said.

  He peered at me in the dim night. "There is something I have never told you."

  Chapter 13

  DÉJÀ VU

  "How did your test go?" Patrick asked me the next day.

  "I kicked it's ass," I said.

  "That's fuckin' right, you did." That made me smile.

  Patrick jumped off of the brick wall he had been sitting at, and he petted the cat that was close by - it was the HSME cat. Hasme we called him, because he was a feral cat that resided between the Hammond Science Building and the Maple Engineering Building. He was an orange tabby, and all students had some form of affection for him, what with all of us being ferals in our own way.

  "What are we doing today?" Patrick asked, and he handed me a cigarette and grabbed one for himself. After I brought our tips to burning life, I said, "I'm surprised you're even awake after last night."

  "I feel fine. In fact I feel," he said, and he grinned at me, "like like prepping for the end of the world."

  "Really?"

  "Well, an end of sorts. I want to get my things back tonight, if it's alright."

  Inside, Patrick made me laugh. His whole plan was adorable.

  I took a drag off of the cigarette while I stared at him. A couple of people walked by me and fake-coughed. It was obviously some anti-smoking point. Patrick kissed his hand and blew it to them with smoky breath. It made him look like a hung-over magician attempting one last sad trick. The woman frowned and the man shook his head. They kept walking and didn't look back again.

  "So what magic do you work?" he asked, turning back to me. "What's your formula?"

  "What makes you think I have one?"

  "Just something about you."

  I looked up into the trees and watched the daylight shimmer between the leaves. The light and dark struck me as magnificent. "I do have a few strategies."

  "Aha! Knew it!"

  I sighed. "I suppose we can do it together. Come on." So, we headed to the south side of town.

  We eventually parked under the Waltham Bridge and took a stroll down by the river. Many of the homeless were known to reside there because this bridge marked the deadest and poorest part of town. It reminded me of my home. Not Cyrus's. Mine. I told Patrick, "Let's go for a walk."

  He looked uncertain, but nevertheless followed. Though I did not tell him, there was a purpose to this visit and the walk and the day.

  "When you were young, did your parents try to protect you from seeing these sorts of things? Poverty?" I asked him.

  "I don't know," said Patrick, "I mean, I don't think they were overprotective, if that's what you mean, but they never, you know, pointed them out. Why?"

  I shook my head. "Nothing. The guy I lived with, he took me to the slums when I was younger. He made me talk with the people there. He pointed out the druggies, the liars, the likely murderers and thieves."

  "Why?"

  "That's a good question," I said, evading the answer. "But his son turned out to be all three of those. I guess we could have just stayed home and done the same thing."

  Patrick laughed like I had been joking, but by the end of his chuckles, I think he suspected I wasn't.

  We walked down the steep decline to where there was a concrete walkway below the bridge. There were a few peop
le, and while we were still distant from them, I pulled out my wallet from my jacket pocket and stopped in the dead grass. Patrick stopped with me.

  "How much do I owe you for the drugs?" I asked.

  "You don't owe me a thing."

  "I'm not giving you a fucking dime. Just tell me how much I've cost the drug world."

  He slowly added it up in his head. "A thousand... I think."

  "I've got five hundred here. I'm thinking a hundred for five different people," I said.

  "Why? What are you doing?" Patrick asked.

  I looked at him. "Being kind for a moment..."

  Then I was back in my wallet, searching for the last hundred. It was hidden in the back right. I unfolded it and a very unenthused Benjamin smiled at me. I put the wallet back in my pocket and started walking with Patrick to the embankment. "I usually keep this much money on me for an emergency... And a .38... and matches," I added. "And a needle and thread."

  Patrick paused. "What's the needle and thread for?" he asked, but I didn't answer. By the time I could sense he would ask again, we had already encountered a very unhappy looking group of people, and he shut up.

  Ragged, darkly smudged faces peeked out beneath hats and straggly hair. The eyes were not kind, they were keen. None gave me a headshake to acknowledge some affable hello, and a few, after eyeing Patrick and myself, turned away from us. I, as I watched them, didn't know which of us was more defeated. I had never been rich, but I had been taken under wealth's wing many times. I felt ashamed.

  Patrick whispered to me, "That guy's son you were talking about - if you're missing him at all, this would be a great place for you to visit now and again."

  I smirked at him, and he nodded his head at me like a British Professor of Herpetology would, and we continued walking down the long, dank path bordering the river.

  The first man I gave a hundred to was sleeping inside a little crevice in the concrete wall. He had a bag wrapped around his hand, and I slipped the hundred into his pants' pocket. I wondered what his expression would be when he woke.

  As we walked on, Patrick looked grimmer and worried. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.

  In reality, I wanted to get Patrick into a world beyond himself - beyond his cars and velvet couches and clinking glasses. I wanted him to breathe a little dirt before we went breaking into peoples' houses. There was another reason, though, and this one I told him outright.

  "I believe in equaling in the world, Patrick. I'm doing some good in the world before I do some bad."

  "What I have planned... isn't exactly bad."

  "All the better. But still. The world keeps a balance, and I have no reason to tilt it one way or another. When I know I'm going to throw that balance off - become part of the disease - I've got to cure some things. The balance must be maintained. We can't rework the river."

  Patrick and I continued on, silent.

  The second person tried to sell me an origami swan for two dollars. It was done in newspaper. I took the swan, flapped its wings by pulling on its tail, and I gave him two dollars for it with a ninety-eight dollar tip. He cried.

  "Have you ever done this before? Giving money to homeless people, I mean." Patrick asked me.

  I turned to him, felt the warmth coming from his body in the cooling air, and I told him, "Once. You?"

  Patrick shook his head. "No, but I was given money like this, one time. Not under a bridge, of course. It was at my Mother's funeral."

  This made me look to Patrick as though I were seeing him fully for the first time. I had never heard about his parents. I didn't know his Mother was dead.

  "In fact," he continued, "the day of my Mother's funeral, practically every relative gave me money. Every one of them in 'secret.' Each of them I remember came to me at various points. They gave me condolences, and then cards. They whispered, 'Patrick, I'm so very sorry about your Mother. You are getting so big and old, love. Here's a little to make up for not seeing you in the past few years.' I had over twenty-five hundred by the end of the day."

  I stopped walking.

  "It's the dirtiest money I've ever been given," he said, "and I've sold drugs."

  I looked down at the three other Benjamin's poking through the spaces between the fingers of my right hand. They barely showed from the bottom of the black sleeve of my jacket. I looked round the dusky and deadening surroundings, and then back to Patrick with his superb slacks and black sweater and ebon trench coat and brilliant red hair. "Do you feel that I'm being disingenuous, Patrick?"

  He took a step toward me. "No," he said. "Not to these people. I just don't see how this," he motioned around with his hands, "could make up for something tragic you might cause later. That's your idea, isn't it? But it doesn't work. Money at a funeral doesn't cheer the dead, it deadens the money."

  I smiled at him, for I did understand him, but I disagreed. "I would never try to make up for the terrible things I do," I said. "I don't think anyone is capable of that. I never bring money to a funeral."

  "What is it, then?" he asked.

  I searched for the words. "You mean, aside from trying to give God a reason not to kill me off too early?" It was a rhetorical question, and I didn't wait for an answer. "I really don't know. Maybe because I feel a split in myself, and I don't want the side that does drugs, and breaks into peoples' houses, and lies, and hates to get stronger than the other half. Maybe it's to convince myself that, if God does kill me off early, there's something about it that will be unfortunate." Patrick looked at me and didn't say anything. "Or maybe," I continued, "I try to make myself feel better by trying to make the rest of the world feel better. I don't think it really matters, though." I smiled. "The point is that these people are getting money. Something 'good' is potentially happening. I'm not going to question it. I'm just happy to be a part of that good... for once. Besides," I added as an aside, "if you and your Father had been poor, had been starving, nearly living under a bridge, money at a funeral would have been absolutely lovely for you."

  I continued walking, and Patrick followed, then met my stride. "It's not that money at a funeral is the issue. The issue is that they were giving it to someone they knew didn't need it. You needed something else. Something they didn't know how to give."

  Though he did not say anything in return, when we happened upon an older woman, Patrick pulled out a hundred from his wallet and gave it to her. I thought it was sweet, but at the same time, I nearly laughed.

  When we had passed her, I said, "You would choose her, wouldn't you?"

  "Why?" he asked.

  "She was a prostitute," I said.

  "What?" he asked, swinging his head back like a door on a hinge to look after her. "No she's not! She's... so old!"

  "It's like you subconsciously sensed the one you could fuck," I said. "Teach me your ways," I laughed, clawing at his jacket. He shook me off, and after a good long while, I stopped chuckling.

  The third guy I gave a hundred to had no teeth. He smelled of alcohol, not filth. The skin in his face seemed stretched against metal, not bone, his cheeks were so pointed. The two fingers that tweezed the bill from my grasp looked like the slim legs of a spider.

  The fourth was a woman with cloudy yellow eyes, and when I gave her the bill, I told her how much it was. I wondered if she was blind.

  After a few short sentences with Patrick, she became quite friendly with him, and I knew that even if she couldn't see his good-looks, she could at least hear the beauty in his voice. "Are you Irish?" she asked.

  "Aye," he said.

  "God bless you," she said through black teeth, "you poor bastards." Patrick laughed.

  The last donation was made to a man with thick curly hair. He was black, and his voice sounded like a man on a radio station - full and thick. It didn't need a microphone to broadcast. "Thank you," he told me when I handed him the cash. "Thank you so much... uh... What is your name?"

  "Jack," I said.

  "Jack," he repeated, and he held out his hand. "I'm Roland.
"

  My hand fell like a fishing line cast into water before I could shake his. "Roland?" I asked, breathlessly.

  "Yes," he said, and he laughed good-naturedly. "Roland, like Rollin'. Rollin'. Roland down the river," he sang. He chuckled again like an anorexic Santa Clause. "That's me."

  I peered up and into his kind eyes, and then from his head to his feet. Another Roland? Another Roland like my Roland? Was it him? The freckles on his face looked similar. So did the nose, and the chin. But his eyes... his eyes were all wrong. They were wider set. His cheekbones were lower in his face. Nevertheless... skinny, tall... it was eerie. I felt cold suddenly.

  I turned to Patrick. "Give me another hundred," I said.

  "What?" he asked.

  "I'll owe you," I replied. "No. Wait. How much money do you have on you?"

  Patrick gave me a questioning look, and I feared he wouldn't help me, but after a few tortuous seconds he pulled out his money and calmly counted through the bills. At that moment, I loved him. "Another two hundred," he said, and he looked at me like I had perhaps gone insane.

  "Let me borrow it," I said again. "I swear I'll repay you." Patrick looked at me and Roland again. Roland threw his hands up and said, "There's no need for that," but then Patrick stacked the bills and tidied them. He held the stack out for the man.

  "Are you sure about this?" Roland asked, his voice full of some magic that I felt I had heard once before, and his eyebrows lifted like balloons suddenly filling with helium.

  "If you don't take it," Patrick replied with a smile, "I'll throw it in there," and he motioned to the moving water.

  "Alright," Roland said, and he held out his hand. "Thank you. Thank you both so much. And you, Jack."

  He pointed to Patrick. "You should stick with this one."

  He put the money in the pocket of his jacket, and he held out his hand again. I shook it this time, feeling the warm, dry grasp of an old man, what seemed to me the hand of an old friend, as insane as that sounds, and as ridiculous as it seems now. "You take care of yourselves," he said to us like a store clerk in a nostalgic candy store, and he continued walking on his way.