Glimmering

by Elizabeth Hand

  Trip nodded, then hoisted himself down the companionway ladder into the cabin. He returned with the knapsack Martin had packed for him. Some canned beans, dried fruit from Diana, extra clothes, sunscreen, socks. Water purification tablets past their prime. Over his arm John’s anorak; John’s cable-knit sweater dangling halfway to his knees. He stood awkwardly, as though trying to think of something to say; then dipped his head and stepped up on deck.

  “Wait,” cried Martin. He motioned for Trip to mind the engine and climbed into the cabin, coughing at the exertion. Walked unsteadily past galley and chart table until he reached his bunk, fumbling in the darkness at the pile of clothes and blankets until he found what he wanted.

  “Here,” he said.

  He held them out to Trip, a wallet of worn brown cowhide and a small wooden box.

  “Hey, no,” Trip stammered, not all that convincingly. “I can’t—”

  “There’s hardly any money”—Martin coughed, “—don’t get excited. But there’s a credit card, it should have some credit left. Not a photo one, so you might be able to use it.”

  Trip nodded. He shoved the wallet into his pocket, then looked at the box. “What’s this?”

  “The sextant.” Martin turned away. “I—I’d like you to have it.”

  Trip shook his head. “But don’t you need it? Can’t you use it, to steer by?”

  “I won’t need it, no. You go ahead, keep it—”

  He wanted to say, To remember me by, instead only smiled.

  “Okay.” Trip stared at him. His mouth twisted as though frowning, and for an awful instant Martin thought he was undone: Trip had seen through him, the Fundamentalist monster would stand finally revealed on deck beside the queer activist. Instead, to his shock, he realized that Trip was fighting tears.

  “Okay,” he repeated, thickly. He glanced away into the darkness of the cabin, then down at the sextant. Something seemed to catch his eye. Without looking up he pulled something from his hand, then held it out to the older man.

  “Here,” he said. “You can, um, have this—”

  It was his ring.

  “Oh.” Martin gave a stunned gasp. He shook his head. “Trip! I—Christ, I couldn’t. I mean, that’s your—isn’t it from her? Your—well, whoever?”

  “Take it,” Trip urged. He held the sextant to his breast as he nudged Martin with his other hand. “Please,” he added softly. “I want you to—”

  “But—”

  “I don’t know where it came from. I mean, she did have a ring like this, and so did her mother—but she didn’t give it to me. I really don’t remember how I got it.”

  “Well.” Martin took it. The metal band was thin and weighed almost nothing. He pinched it between two fingers, then slid it onto the pointer finger of his left hand. “It fits.” He fought to keep his tone light. “Thank you, Trip. Really.”

  “Okay.” Trip looked at him, then at the sextant, and grinned. “Wow. We really made it, huh?”

  Martin smiled. “We really made it.”

  The boy nodded, then opened his knapsack and stuffed the box inside. “Okay,” he said, clambering up on deck with Martin behind him. “I guess I’m off.”

  He stood in front of the older man, suddenly looking awkward and very young. Martin smiled again, thought What the hell, and leaned forward to hug him. He could feel Trip’s shoulders tighten. After a moment he backed away.

  “All right. You better go, before it gets too late—”

  Martin sank into the cockpit and clasped the tiller, watching as Trip poised himself on the traveler and measured the jump he’d have to make to the stony mound below. Without a backward glance he leapt, stumbling but catching himself before he could fall.

  “All right!” Trip shouted excitedly. He turned and shaded his eyes, looked up at the Wendameen and waved. “Thanks, Martin! Thanks a million! Good luck—”

  Martin nodded. His face hurt where tears scored his cheeks, but it no longer mattered if Trip noticed. “Good luck, Trip. Good luck—”

  He revved the engine, then angled the tiller so that the boat slid from the quay, her hull grating against bricks and rubbish. I won’t look back I won’t look back he thought; and for several minutes cut through the viscous waters, his eyes fixed on a horizon that boiled with lurid clouds and the shifting forms of distant boats.

  Finally he could stand it no longer. He was far enough out that a fresh wind began to play across the deck, tugging at furled canvas and cooling Martin’s scorched face. If he squinted into the harsh light he could just make out the bright triangles of other sailboats braving the reach. He could hoist sail now, if he wanted to, make it past Staten Island and Raritan Bay and into open water. He took a deep breath and turned to gaze behind him.

  In the distance the island reared, its shore a shabby tartan of decayed buildings, collapsed roads, twisted girders, glass and steel towers erupting from the ruins like spaceships from the desert. His eyes sought desperately to find the mound where he had left Trip, but it all looked the same now.

  He had waited too long. Then as in a dream Martin saw a bright jot moving against black ruins, disjoined from the surrounding landscape as a gull in flight. Martin cried out, madly waving—

  “Trip ! Trip!”

  —and the brightness halted before the immense backdrop of the ruined city, and almost Martin could imagine a raised hand meeting his farewell.

  “Martin! Martin, good-bye—”

  Tears burned his eyes. He dragged his sleeve across them and when he looked out again the bright spark was gone. He glanced at his hands, twin gold slivers winking from each one. Beneath him the engine thrummed, the boat stirred as swells lifted her and the breeze plucked at the sails. She wanted to be gone; she wanted to be underway.

  “It’s time then,” said Martin. “It’s time.”

  He killed the engine and pulled himself on deck. Freed the sails and trimmed them back, ducking as wind filled them and the boom sliced through the air a handspan away. Breathless, he eased into the cockpit and grasped the tiller. Ahead of him the sky coiled and uncoiled. Boats skimmed past, and seabirds. A shadow moved across the planks in front of him and Martin smiled and nodded without a word, recognizing the shape that streamed from the darkness, the long span of arms reaching for him and the breath that stirred the hairs on his neck. Felt his heart tear like a fist pounding its way out, as the tiller slipped from Martin’s hand and he turned at last, no longer afraid, falling into the embrace John and darkness and desire all stitched at last into one, all there, all healed; fell into it and he was light and joy, light and the end of waiting; he was nothing but nothing but light.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Catastrophe Theory

  The power stayed on for almost three weeks, the longest stretch Jack could remember since the glimmering began. At first they all went charily from day to day, meeting at breakfast to exclaim over Mrs. Iverson’s coffee cake or date muffins. There were plenty of baking supplies, since she so rarely had the chance to bake, and plenty of time to spend eating, since no one had anything else to do. After breakfast they moved into the living room—everyone except Mrs. Iverson—to sit with all the lights on, heat wafting up from the floor registers and warm smells from the kitchen, and watch morning television. Keeley dozed, occasionally woke to shake her head in dismay at goings-on in Calgary or Bangkok. On the floor Marz lay like a beached zeppelin, her lunar belly occupying a formidable portion of Jack’s view of the TV screen. There were no more outbursts at music videos. Jack had not been able to get any kind of explanation out of the girl. He finally chalked it up to some bizarre Last Generation analogue of Beatlemania, and tried to convince himself that with the power restored, maybe the world had toppled back onto its axis, after all. Some evenings he found her standing in the second-floor stairwell, her swollen belly pressed against the sill, hands pressed against the glass as she stared out at the broken house next door. Chiaroscuro of flame and smoke and thrashing bodies, smash of bottles, rauc
ous laughter; and the blond girl gazing hungrily as though she beheld a vision of Paradise.

  I saved you from that! Jack wanted to shout when he saw her; but when she heard his tread she would turn and wobble off. Oh God, poor thing, he thought, at the notion of bringing a child into this world. But she didn’t see it so; her belly bloomed even as her rail-thin legs grew hard and thick with edema and her eyes took on a distant dreaming look, as though already she were asleep after the trauma of labor; as though dreaming she saw beyond this darkness.

  The autumn passed. One day a postman arrived, with bills and a letter from Jack’s brother Dennis, postmarked eight months earlier. Lights worked, hot water came from the taps (never enough but that wasn’t new), Tristan und Isolde thundered from his old Bose speakers. Mrs. Iverson would do the dishes, then teeter downstairs to see to the laundry, then return to start on lunch and dinner, or to bring Keeley tea and Marz some more muffins—Jack didn’t eat much these days. All of them frantically tapping into the capricious current flowing through the house, as though that were the way to stave off chaos.

  And perhaps it was, Jack mused as he checked the answering machine for the fourth time in an hour. There were no messages, had been no messages. The phone never rang. Power might have been restored to most of the metropolitan New York grid, but for some reason it didn’t extend to the telephone system. For all he knew there would be no messages for the rest of his life, but still Jack couldn’t stop fiddling with the machine, picking up the phone to see if there was a dial tone. There never was. Three, four, seven times a day he’d go out to the carriage house, peer into the fax machine, and check his computer for e-mail. Jack didn’t like to admit it, but he was looking for Larry Muso, in all the old familiar places. And since there had never been much Larry Muso to begin with, the search was frustrating and ultimately depressing.

  Now he sank into the same wicker chair where eight months ago he had sat with The Golden Family’s envoy, and picked up (not for the first time) the copy of The King in Yellow. Opened it at random and read.

  THE LOVE TEST

  “If it is true that you love,” said Love, “then wait no longer. Give her these jewels which would dishonor her and so dishonor you in loving one dishonored. If it is true that you love,” said Love, “then wait no longer.” I took the jewels and went to her, but she trod upon them, sobbing: “Teach me to wait,—I love you!”

  “Then wait, if it is true,” said Love.

  He waited. What choice did he have? It would not be much longer. Christmas was approaching, and his New Year’s Eve bash in the shadow of a corporate temple. The end of the century, the end of the millennium.

  The end of the Kali Yuga? he wondered, watching for the hundredth time Stand in the Temple’s video on TV and that iconic singer Jack couldn’t help but think of as another emissary from GFI. Trip Marlowe, his name was: Jack learned that by sitting through one of the legion of interviews, documentaries, flatulent news bulletins, and good old-fashioned commercials promoting the band.

  “This is so shameless.” Onscreen, Trip Marlowe spoke in reverential tones of the work being done by multinational corporations to restore the environment.

  “… like, in the Rockies, they’re trying to reestablish all these extinct species of frogs, and in some places people, like, heard the frogs singing for the first time in ten years…”

  “What, dear?” Keeley raised her head; she had been asleep. “I’m sorry…”

  “Oh, nothing.” Jack sprawled on the couch, disgusted equally by the singer’s ingenuous blue-eyed gaze and his own lassitude. “It’s just—I mean, look at this guy! It’s like his entire face was reconstructed or something, he looks like he was designed by some damn corporate committee. He probably was.” He reached for the remote.

  Keeley peered at the screen. “Is that what’s-his-name? The one with the nose job and the face?”

  “No. I mean yes, this one probably has a nose job, but it’s a different nose. Jeez.” He flashed through channels, more than had been available for a year. Bombs exploding above the desert somewhere (Texas? Algeria?), an ad for a winged Barbie that morphed into her own makeup-equipped carrying case (just in time for Christmas, Supplies Very Limited), talk shows featuring people claiming to have spoken with deceased loved ones, a bit on CNN about the upcoming millennial New Year’s bash being hosted by GFI Worldwide in New York City.

  “Hey!” said Jack. “That’s—”

  He almost said, “That’s my party.” But then remembered he had never mentioned GFI’s invitation to Keeley or anyone else.

  Keeley nodded absently. A moment later she began to snore, leaving Jack to stare at a video montage. GFI’s brazen airships in formation against an indigo sky; sturgeon slitted open so that their roe spurted onto dirty grey ice; a vault filled with ranks of champagne bottles; vintage limousines; a Japanese woman being outfitted in a stiffly embroidered kimono four times as large as she was; an aerial shot of some kind of arena, swelling out from one side of the Pyramid like a wasps’ nest and covered with workers and scaffolding and construction equipment. Then the arena faded, replaced by the shuffled images of two or three hundred people Jack assumed must be famous for something. He only recognized a few of them—the beloved sports figure disfigured by petra virus, a much-married millionaire Jack had thought was dead. And the ubiquitous Trip Marlowe, natch, dancing on one foot atop a Day-Glo Sphinx.

  “… billing it as the most fabulous bash since King Tut partied on the Nile!” exulted the announcer.

  The segment ended and another began, this one about millenarian cults like the Montana-based Cognitive Dissidents, who were planning their own mass suicide at the stroke of midnight, December 31. There was a commercial for telephone insurance. Then a few more worried-looking people speculated about the end of the world. Jack made a rude noise. He turned the volume off, but left the TV on—he was superstitious about turning it off—and went into the kitchen.

  It was hard to believe that anything was coming to an end, except for Lazyland’s supply of coffee, which was dismayingly meager: only one vacuum-sealed bag remained. Leonard was their sole link with the world of such luxuries, but Leonard had not returned to Lazyland since he’d brought the Fusax. And Jack knew better than to hope that coffee would materialize on the shelves at Delmonico’s during one of his forays there for supplies.

  Still, later that morning he was amazed to see what Delmonico’s could produce. Christmas was only a week off. Mrs. Delmonico had brought out the old cardboard decorations—Santas and elves and angels, all from Finnegan’s Variety Shops circa 1967—and strung up tired garlands. Like some old-time general store, the venerable Yonkers grocery had begun to exhibit delicacies of the season. Oranges in wooden crates, their knurled skins more green than orange, and fist-sized pomegranates wrapped in varicolored tissue. (The paper could be used for wrapping presents, Mrs. Delmonico advised Jack. Wasn’t it pretty?) White rabbits and evil-looking chickens dangled upside down from their feet above the butcher counter. There were boxes of handmade toys, cars and boats and rocket ships carved from Popsicle sticks, sock puppets, old Barbies whose plastic faces had been scrubbed and repainted with ballpoint ink, dressed in new hand-stitched clothes.

  And one afternoon, beneath a churning claret sky, an ancient pickup truck pulled up in front of the grocery, its bed piled ten feet high with—

  “Christmas trees!” exclaimed Jack.

  A crowd was gathering, fellahin who camped at Getty Square and a few wary shoppers like Jack, who carried baseball bats and wore football helmets. A fellahin girl, dressed in shredded garbage bags, stood on tiptoe beside the truck to breathe in rapturously.

  “I remember these!” she cried.

  Jack smiled. He moved closer, lifted his surgical mask, and touched the soft boughs behind their protective plastic mesh. The trees were leggy, their limbs swept into torturous angles by the webbing. He ran a finger along one slender branch. Needles rained onto the truck bed—it was covered with needles
, rust-colored and greenish yellow, and twisted pine cones like arthritic fingers, and scaly bits of bark.

  But then Jack closed his eyes. Immediately darkness was there, the expectant predawn hush of a house buried in snow, whispers from his brothers’ bed and that smell, the holiest scent he had ever known: evergreen. To Jack that had always been Christmas. Not the toys, not the lights, not even the baby in the barn, but this: night and bitter cold, snow beneath and desolate stars above, a green tree in the wood that breathed in the darkness but breathed out spring.

  “’Scuse me, ’scuse me, sir—”

  He jolted from his dream, stood to let the driver and his lanky teenage son open up the truck bed. They unloaded the trees—white pine, he heard the driver say, lumber trees but they were harvesting them now, they needed the money too badly—and leaned them up against the storefront, hiding the plywood and sheet metal that covered its windows. Someone asked how much the trees were. Jack sucked his breath in at the price, but then thought of the money that would be coming from the sale of The Gaudy Book. Any day, maybe; besides which his credit was always good at Delmonico’s—a hundred years ago it had been his great-grandfather’s store, old Sabe Delmonico had bought it during the Depression but the Delmonicos considered the Finnegans part of their extended family, even now.

  He bought a tree.

  “Can you get that home by yourself?” Mrs. Delmonico eyed Jack dubiously, and before he could answer shouted out at the truck driver’s son. “Hey! YOU! C’mere, we got a job for you—carry this nice man’s tree for him, okay? Just a couple blocks. Tip him nice, Jackie, eh?”

  She winked, turned to survey the fragrant benison that had befallen her shop.

  So they brought the tree home, Jack and the boy. His name was Eben, he and his dad had driven down from New Hampshire, it took them three days.

  “Truck kept breaking. We ran out of gas, then some guy tried to steal our tires, but my dad pounded him, hah!” The boy was thin but tall, exhilarated to be so far away from home. He smelled of pine resin and diesel oil. He shouldered the tree like a rifle and loped ahead of Jack, repeating over and over how he’d never been to New York and his father had promised they’d go to the city, after the trees were sold.