Glimmering

by Elizabeth Hand

  “Does she help out? With Grandmother and Mrs. Iverson?”

  “I guess. I don’t know what she does, really. I think maybe she sleeps a lot. I haven’t spent much time with her. Alone, I mean. But no, she’s no trouble. And Keeley and Larena, they just seem to love her. I guess because she’s a girl.” Jack gave a broken laugh. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

  Jule leaned back on the couch, balancing his glass on one knee. “A girl. Yeah, girls are different.”

  His tone grew wistful, and Jack looked up, fearful of what he might see on his friend’s face. But Jule seemed peaceful. After a moment he asked, “But how are you, Jackie? You look pretty good—”

  “Good, good, I feel—”

  “—but you look skinny.” Jule’s red face folded into worry. “You getting enough to eat here? I mean, all of you soaking wet weigh five pounds—you getting enough to eat?”

  “Of course we are. The grocery at Delmonico’s still delivers, every couple of weeks. We do okay. And—”

  “Delmonico’s! God. They still have that caponata? You don’t get shit where we are. I mean, the movie people can get it flown in, sometimes, but the rest of us, stores and stuff—if you can even get there, they don’t got shit for food. But Emma grows everything, anyway…”

  They talked for a long time. As evening came, the room a swirl of lavender and yellow, Emma brought them food—cumin-scented rice, tiny bitter eggplant, last year’s dried apples—then left. It had been a year, at least, since they’d had the luxury of time, a night together without the long treacherous drive back north for Jule, without Jack having to worry about whether his friend would make it home in one piece—Jule drank heavily since Rachel’s death, there was nothing else to be said about it—and no assurance that Jule would be able to call to let him know that he’d gotten there safely. And it had been much longer than a year since they’d really talked, unfettered by business or the need to break bad news, or to console—could it have been since Jack’s fortieth birthday?

  “Yeah, you gotta watch those birthdays, Jackie,” said Jule. “Fuckin’ A, Jackie Finnegan turns forty, and the world comes to an end!” He roared, wiping his eyes; then abruptly was weeping.

  “Oh Jule—” Jack reached for him. The first bottle of Jack Daniel’s was long empty, a second only half-full. “Don’t cry, Julie,” he stammered, not yet aware he was weeping himself. “Oh please don’t cry—”

  Jule raised a hand, begging silence. His big ugly face crumpled in upon itself like a broken box. He grabbed his friend and pulled him close.

  “Oh Jackie Jackie, why’s it all happening? Why? Why—” that big arm shaking as it hugged Jackie close, the two of them huddled in the endless twilight, little Jackie and big Jule, together at the end of all things, as they had never thought to be.

  Jack rose late the next day (he guessed it was late), went into the bathroom and threw up, poured water from an old pitcher to wash his face and clean the sink. He passed the blond girl’s bedroom and noted his grandmother in there with her, the two of them going through old clothes on the four-poster. When he got downstairs he sank into one of the Stickley chairs to catch his breath and stared up at the grandfather clock’s intricate face. Placid three-quarter moon peeking out from behind a beaming sun, dials showing high tide, low tide, the stars, the seasons, everything that could be calibrated by chime rods and winding drums, brass bobs, and golden slaves. Was there a dial there for Jackie Finnegan? For Jule? A clatter from down the hall drove him to the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Jackie,” said Emma, smiling beside a window she had filled with mason jars full of dried beans, pasta, different-colored lentils. “You look like you spent the night with my husband.”

  “I did,” whispered Jack, falling into another chair. “Remind me never to do it again.”

  Emma laughed. Her eyes betrayed something else. Not anger or annoyance; a kind of habitual assessment as she gazed at Jack holding his head in his hands. He raised his eyes to her and saw there what she did: he looked sick. He wasn’t getting better. She was a doctor. She thought he was dying.

  “Well.” Her lips pursed, and she returned his look, complicitous: we understand each other. “Jackie, I want to look at you later. Okay?”

  He nodded, and Emma turned away, to place another jar upon the sill. Then Mrs. Iverson came in, shaking her head and frowning at Jack.

  “Some people never learn, ” she announced. “At least Leonard isn’t here.”

  She poured him coffee with real milk in it, more of Emma’s bounty, and Emma gave him some bread she’d baked, a little stale but rich with molasses and sunflower seeds.

  “How come you can do this and we can’t?” Jack asked, misty-eyed with gratitude. “Grow all this stuff. Bake…”

  Emma bustled around the room, swiping at countertops, checking cabinets, collecting spent jars and replacing them with what she’d brought: tea, flour, powdered milk, dried fruit.

  “Because this is what women do,” she answered, mouth a little prim: Doctor Duck does not approve of strong drink. “Get food. Make sure everybody has enough to eat—”

  “Perform brain surgery?”

  “—perform brain surgery. Ugh, is this oatmeal? ” She glanced accusingly at Jack, who only shrugged. “The world doesn’t come to an end just because the phones are dead.”

  “Emma, we haven’t had power for ages. And before that—”

  “Neither have we. It doesn’t matter.” She dumped the oatmeal into a bowl of things destined for compost, handed it to Mrs. Iverson. “Jule Gardino, taking the fucking luxury of killing himself with alcohol—”

  He was shocked to see how angry she was, jars rattling as she shoved them in the cupboard. “—it doesn’t all come screeching to a goddamn fucking halt.”

  “You mean the world doesn’t come to an end, just because the world is coming to an end.”

  Jack turned to see Jule filling the doorway. He was unshaven, his hair mussed; otherwise, he seemed unaffected by the night’s bout. Emma took a long breath, turned to a window. “Oh, Julie. Please spare me.”

  “You know what your problem—”

  “I’m going upstairs.” Emma shoved her hands into the pockets of her cardigan and crossed the room. She paused to kiss first the top of Jack’s head, then stood on tiptoe to kiss Jule’s chin. He twisted in the doorway to let her go by, his hand touching her ass as he winked at Jack. In the hall she turned and stared back at them.

  “You know he’s killing himself?” she said to Jack, as though they were alone in the room. “You know he’s going to kill himself, one of these days?” Then disappeared down the corridor.

  “Yeah, but not today,” Jule said cheerfully. “I’m not scheduled for today.”

  He poured himself some coffee from the Thermos, went to the cupboard where liquor was kept and rummaged there until he found a bottle of Irish Mist. Jack watched silently as he poured some into his mug, then sat.

  “Morning, Jackster. You look like shit.”

  “Yeah, no lie.” The smell of whiskey floated up to him. “Christ, Jule, get that away from me before I puke.”

  “You know what you’re problem is, Jackie? Pacing. You don’t pace yourself. It’s like the marathon—”

  “I am not fucking interested in running a Jack Daniel’s marathon, especially with you. Okay?”

  Jule whooped. “The Kip Keino of booze! Whoa baby, I’m breaking records here, Jackie!”

  “Oh, shut up.” Jack shook his head. “Jesus Christ. This is like that time the door fell on me.”

  Jule laughed. “Yeah! You got nine lives, Jackie.”

  “Well, I’m probably running down to the last one.”

  Jule took a long sip of his spiked coffee. “You feeling bad, Jackie?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, no. I actually feel better than I did a few months ago, when I was in the hospital.” He traced the rim of his coffee cup, seeing how the bones of his hand stuck out, like a bat’s vestigial fingers. “
But no one believes me.”

  “I believe you,” said Jule in a low voice. “I’ve seen some things lately, made me think differently about all this—”

  He waved his hand, vaguely indicating the deteriorating house around them, the world. “Not anything I can really share with you right now—Emma doesn’t like me talking about it.” His big face took on an absurdly furtive look, the cartoon hound trying to hide something under the rug. “But I’ll tell you about it at some point, Jackie. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  Jack looked into his friend’s fervid eyes, already showing a fine glister of drink. “Right, Jackie? Right?”

  “Uh, sure.” He had no idea what Jule was talking about. “You hungry, Julie? There’s some bread—”

  “Nah. Maybe in a little bit. Got to wake up first—”

  He returned to the cabinet and poured more Irish Mist into his mug. Jack watched, suddenly undone by his own sorrow, and anger, the smell of Irish whiskey. “Look,” he said. “Julie, I feel pretty lousy. I’m going to try and lie down again for a while, see if I can sleep. You’re going to be here all day, right?”

  Jule stared thoughtfully out the window. “I think so. Maybe tonight, too, if that’s okay with you all. Unless the Allied Commander’s changed her mind.”

  “Okay. So in an hour or two, okay, I’ll be back down—”

  Jule turned to him, eyes far too bright. “Sure, Jackie, sure. We’ll talk, later.”

  He slept, though badly. Dreams of Leonard, Jack’s formerly derailed system of arousal now, oddly, back in place. Lowering his head between Leonard’s thighs, his hands parting Leonard’s muscular legs, taking Leonard’s cock in his mouth. Then Jack himself coming, the first time in ages like that, from a dream: arcing himself awake, hand between his own legs, groaning.

  “Ah, fuck.” Orgasm blindsided into a skull-jarring headache; he fumbled at his nightstand until he found the precautionary water glass he’d set there earlier. Leonard, why am I dreaming about LEONARD?

  The real question, of course, was Why haven’t I ever stopped dreaming about Leonard? Something he should have taken up with his therapist, back when New York had therapists instead of soothsayers on the stock exchange.

  He lay there for a while trying to will away his headache, a dreadful underlying tiredness that, he was beginning to sense, had too little to do with too much Jack Daniel’s. After fifteen minutes he sat up, painfully, and pulled open the drawer of his nightstand. Took out the vial of Fusax, placed a half dropperful beneath his tongue. He had just replaced the bottle when there was a knock at his door.

  “Jack? It’s Emma. May I come in?”

  “Sure,” he croaked, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He smiled gamely as she entered, wearing a faded denim jumper and cotton blouse, her tousled curls held back by a child’s flowered headband, and carrying a big canvas bag.

  “Feeling a little better? You shouldn’t try to keep up with Jule, you know—”

  “I wasn’t, I wasn’t—”

  “You should leave that to the professionals. When was the last time you saw a doctor, Jackie?”

  He thought back: the hospital, early spring. “A month,” he lied. “Maybe two.”

  “Where? Those assholes at Saint Joseph’s?”

  He stared at the floor, mumbled something about another clinic.

  Emma looked unimpressed. “What are your numbers these days? When was the last time you got them?”

  “I don’t know, Emma. I mean, I don’t remember.”

  “When you were in the hospital they were pretty lousy, Jackie.” She sighed, sitting beside him on the bed with the canvas bag at her feet: “I’m not going to fuck with you, Jack. Right now, to me, you look pretty bad.”

  “I’m just thin, Emma. I don’t feel—”

  “Even before last night: you just don’t look healthy to me. So. I want to check you out. Okay?”

  She pulled on latex gloves, took his temperature, blood pressure, pulse. Felt his joints and examined him for lesions, scabs that hadn’t healed, damp spots in the crook of knee or elbow. Stethoscope to his chest and back, first warming it with her gloved hand, then checking for the telltale sough of fluid in his lungs. Jack sat through it all with troubled patience: something medieval in this, or Victorian: doctor armed with ear trumpet and little else, certainly nothing that could shout above the din of invisibles swarming, replicating inside him. I don’t think there’s anything in that black bag for me.

  Away with the stethoscope, out with the ophthalmoscope to peer into his eyes, then change the instrument’s black avian head to examine ears and throat and nostrils.

  “Huh.” Emma drew back from him, frowning.

  “What?” demanded Jack.

  Off with the laryngoscope and back to the eyes again. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. She looked puzzled. “Have you had thrush?”

  “No.” Spark of panic. “Do I now?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. But there’s something weird in there. Like a growth—”

  “A growth? What kind of growth—”

  “I don’t know. Here—” She slid a tongue depressor from a sterile packet, and something like a very long Q-Tip, what they used for throat cultures. “Say ‘Ah,’ I want to scrape some of it…”

  He said, “Ah,” gagging. Growths. Fungus.

  “Huh.” Emma’s eyes widened as she turned to hold first the wooden depressor and then the culture probe to the light. “This is very strange.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Well, look—there’s definitely something going on in there. See?” She held the tongue depressor so he could see what was on it, a thin film of something granular, faintly greenish—not a sickly mucousy green, but crystalline, like dyed salt. The same thing adhered to the Q-Tip.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  Emma shook her head. “I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it. Or heard of anything like it.” She stared at him. “It appears to be in your eyes, too, Jack. Are you having trouble seeing? Blurred vision, anything like that?”

  “Uh, well—well, yes, maybe a little.” He gazed at the cultures in her hands. “Jesus, Emma, what is it? Is it a fungus?”

  “No. It’s definitely not a fungus. Not thrush. A fungal infection doesn’t look like this. I don’t know what looks like this. And your temperature isn’t elevated, for whatever that’s worth, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in your lungs.

  “Actually, you do seem sort of okay—I don’t see any lesions, or anything like that. But you have obviously lost quite a bit of weight, which isn’t so great. Any nausea?”

  “Not really. Just—I don’t feel all that hungry. I feel kind of speedy, actually, most of the time. And my dreams are weird…”

  He thought of the Fusax, inches from his elbow in the nightstand drawer.

  “Huh.” She fixed him with an odd look. “Jule has weird dreams, too. Has he told you?”

  “No.”

  She bent beside her canvas bag, withdrew two plastic Ziploc bags. Deposited the cultures, one in each, then scribbled something on the labels. “I’m going to have these checked out. It’s very strange, these crystals—they almost look like uric acid does, when you get dehydrated.”

  “What could it be?” Viruses from rain forests and newly exposed meteorites, mass amphibian die-outs and now a new disease, courtesy of Leonard Thrope.

  “I don’t know. Did you ever see The Andromeda Strain?”

  He started to laugh—horrified, almost delirious.

  “I’m sorry!” She swept him into a hug, cradling his head with latex hands. “Oh God, Jack, I didn’t mean that—”

  “It’s okay,” he gasped. “It’s okay—”

  “It’s just so strange, you read all the time about these weird new things. But some of them are good, Jackie—you know? At least in theory, this could be good,” she added somewhat dubiously. “I’ll run it by the lab, have some other people look at it. Are you doing a
nything different? Some weird therapy?”

  Again, the Fusax in the drawer. “No.”

  “Huh. Okay, then.” She peeled off the gloves and slid them into a biohazard container. “Well. You feel up to eating, after all this?”

  He laughed again, more easily. “Oh, sure, Emma! This is like, a real stimulant to the appetite—”

  “Not right now. Maybe a little while?” She slung the canvas bag over her shoulder. “I’ll have Julie come get you.”

  He watched her, heart spilling. There were deep lines around her eyes; her skin looked grey and listless. “You look tired, too, Emma,” he said. “You never get a break, do you?”

  She smiled sadly. “No. But that’s okay. I’ve been overdoing it, probably. I’ve felt for a while now like I’m coming down with something. Occupational hazard.”

  At the door she stopped. “Oh—I forgot. I looked at Mary Anne—”

  “Marzana.”

  “Whatever. She’s definitely pregnant. But she seems okay, as far as I can see. I gave her some vitamins. I brought some for you, too—can you make sure she takes them?”

  “Sure, Emma. Anything you say.”

  “All right. I’ll see you later.” And she went downstairs.

  They left early the next morning, rush-hour-traffic time, back when there had been traffic. Emma very small behind the wheel of the Range Rover, with all its weird protective encrustations—barbed wire, kryptonite locks, chains. Jule beside her, looking, at last, defeated by drink and fatigue. Jack had gone to bed early the night before, leaving his friend by himself in the living room with a bottle. When Jack had come down for breakfast Jule was there still, planed awkwardly into the couch. His big hand curled, conchlike, several inches above the floor, where one of Keeley’s heavy glass paperweights lay broken in two, a crystal heart revealing splintered chambers. Now Jack watched as Emma started the car. He’d already filled the tank for her, hefting the heavy plastic gas can and spilling some on the drive—one didn’t need television or radio to hear horror stories about people who ran out of gas on the Hutch or Saw Mill or the Cross Bronx Expressway—and then replacing the container in the back of the Range Rover amidst coils of barbed wire and unknown objects covered with tarpaulins.