And in case there’s any doubt about who that glass of water belongs to, he pulls out a gun. The deafening blast sends the barefoot women running down the corridor as the confused-looking Neanderthal drops to the ground, clutching himself and streaming with blood, and Celeste falls into the night.
14
Utterly predictable:
Keith flips the postcard over, but there’s nothing else on it, no other writing, no drawing.
So that’ll be the last of those cards, obviously—can’t get further back than the beginning. It must mean that Celeste will be home soon.
About time. And wait till she sees what a shambles the latest renters are sure to have made of her apartment. Well, he’ll help her get it back together.
15
Cordis is not looking good. “Eat,” he tells her. “I’ll go out and pick something up for you, anything you like.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I’m fine.” She looks at him with something like affection, he thinks.
He pats her soft, old cheek. “Celeste is going to be well pissed off at me when she gets back unless you start eating again,” he wheedles, to no effect.
In this punishing heat, she seems to be shaking with chills. He brings over a blanket to wrap around her before he goes out with Moppet.
* * *
“Mind if I check my e-mail?” he asks when he and Moppet return, but of course Cordis never minds.
Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam. He’s just about to sign out, and there it is! What he’s almost forgotten he’s been waiting for all this time.
It’s from—not exactly his father, but close enough. It’s from Kelly, the current wife:
Hi Keith, you can crawl out of whatever hole you’re cowering in, all is forgiven ☺ your fathers calmed down and called off the dogs. Mainly we want to sell the apt so would you please come by and pick up all those stinking sneakers and your other crap or should I through it all out because the RE people have to stage and they say that your sty could knock at least 1.5 off the price.
He stares at the message for a moment.
16
Kelly is trying, with one hand, to zip up her dress, a ridiculous long sparkly thing, as she opens the door with the other. It’s been a while since he’s seen her, and she seems abruptly an entirely different age than she was a second ago, before the door opened. She’ll be way over thirty by now in fact—too old for his father. Time for a trade-in, probably.
Too old for his father, but just about the right age for him, yum. Except for the dress, she looks better than ever.
“Can I help you out with that?” he says as she struggles with the zipper.
“Nooooo-oo?” she says, as if he’d just said history’s stupidest thing.
But she doesn’t protest when he pivots her around by the shoulders and pulls up the zipper. “There you go,” he says. Right—there he goes.
She smiles, and pats her hair. “What do you think? I’m considering this for some damn children’s foundation thing this week that your dad sprang on me. I’ve worn everything I’ve got.”
He stands back to survey her. “You look fantastic,” he says truthfully.
She looks fantastic, even though the dress looks like a migraine. What could it cost, with all that sparkly shit on it? Probably more than he owes his father. Ten thousand dollars is not even latte money around here.
So he’s been summoned back. How tired he is! How much he’s been through! He walks past Kelly into the huge living room to gaze out at the panoramic view of the city.
“Hey,” she says.
“It’s okay—I’m just here to pick up that stuff,” he says.
Up here, in his father’s serene realm, you can’t even hear the sirens. “Listen, Dad knows I’m going to pay him back—he believes me, right?”
“Nobody believes you. Ten thousand dollars? Where are you going to come up with that?”
There’s no call for her to talk to him this way. And whether she knows it or not, she’s basically on probation. “That’s my business, wouldn’t you agree?” he says.
“Oh, come on now,” Kelly says. She giggles uneasily. “Hey, you’ve gotten taller, haven’t you? Sure, Rick knows that you want to pay it back. Well, that you intend to pay it back. He’s tired. Your old man’s an old man now. He wants you to be happy, he wants you to be strong and okay. Rick loves you, you know that. Why else would he have made sure your mother couldn’t get her hands on you?”
His mother wafts between them, her sweet faded gold, her sweet soft arms, musical voice, distant now, with its faint gold shine . . .
Kelly shakes her head, as if at some sorrow beyond words. “Somehow you’re his only kid. Anyhow, that’s what he says.”
Poor Kelly—any moment she’s going to be in his mother’s shoes herself, along with Patti and Georgiana.
“Listen, Kelly, tell him—”
“What?”
“Oh, never mind, actually.”
He doesn’t need an intermediary. He doesn’t need anyone. He’ll call his father, like a man, and say what he has to say. He’s ready to go to law school, or to business school if need be, right away. Whichever his father thinks best.
17
His head is clearing, up here—the white carpets, the clean architectural lines . . . And fortunately his dad seems to have dropped that idea about moving. But no wonder he’d been pissed off! What stupid thing had Keith been trying to prove?
Home. Yes, he’s home . . . He opens up one of the craft beers that Kelly has laid in for him and flops himself out on the sofa. The noisy, confused dream of the past months is dissipating; though it has left, he observes an unpleasant stain in his mind, the residue of a disturbing dream.
What sort of strange delusion had he gotten tangled up in? It was as if he’d glimpsed himself as a different Keith—two different Keiths, ten, an infinite number, as if Celeste had refracted him through a three-way mirror . . . where glimpses of her now linger.
And she hasn’t even bothered to let him know when she’s returning! Celeste! He instructs his mind to wrench her out from the reflections, from remote regions of his mind, to gather her up and consolidate her—and then to release her to dissipate in the pure, climate-controlled air of his dad’s apartment.
And fold up that mirror now, please. Okay.
For a moment, a leaden, melancholy boredom seizes him
Ah, well, anyhow, no more pranks for him. Just a few more years of school, and then— He surveys the supplicant city so far below.
His sleek new phone rests on the coffee table. He reaches for it and fiddles with it idly. What should he have it do? Not much it can’t.
Oh, here’s a thought—“Call Tish,” he orders Jeannie, who lives inside it, and Jeannie responds obediently, in that bland, untroubled voice. “Calling Tish for you.”
Won’t Tish be amazed to hear from him!
* * *
Even though he’s on the other side of town now and it’s not easy for him to check up on Cordis, he isn’t neglecting his responsibilities in that quarter. Of course he won’t take a salary from her any longer, but he stopped by just yesterday to see how she was doing and bring her a bottle of the vodka he knows she likes.
She really didn’t look great, he has to say. He’ll go back in a week or so to make sure she’s okay, but when he left, he knocked on the door of Celeste’s apartment and instructed the kids who are currently staying there to look in on her in the meantime.
“Yes, sir!” one of them said. Had the kid snickered? Keith looked at him sharply, but his face was expressionless.
“By the way,” Keith said. “Have you heard when Celeste is coming back?”
The kid stared at him, and he felt himself blush.
“Celeste,” he said. “The tenant?”
A group of girls seemed to be lounging on Celeste’s bed in a heap of clothing and, possibly, food. “Don’t worry, mister,” one of them said. “Everything’s under control.”
Mister! The
girl, though heavily made up, looked like she was about fourteen.
But to his surprise, there had been one more postcard waiting for him at Cordis’s, written in some nasty-looking reddish brown ink.
it said, in letters that rippled like flame.
Pure drama, that Celeste. He shook his head, fondly after all. Well, anyhow, evidently she’ll be back soon. And as he attached Moppet’s leash—because since he was there, why not perform this little act of kindness—he smiled up at poor old Cordis, thinking how unlikely it was, the way this had all worked out. “Weird, huh,” he said. And Cordis smiled gently back, as if she understood exactly.
18
It’s not impossible that Ernst is alive, Cordis thinks, but it is impossible that he has become old himself. There he is at the site, sweating in the heat, pausing as he digs to grin at her and wave, shielding his eyes from the sun before he goes down, down, down—city beneath city, beneath city, beneath city—past the gigantic stone forms, the oldest mud dwellings, down to the early savannahs where the animal with the big brain first made its appearance, the big-brained animal so stupid—as her darling never failed to point out—that it’s burning down its own home, along with everyone else’s.
But it was never possible to know when he was really serious. And certainly, if she didn’t have words to use, how could she have borne his absence? It’s as if she’s moving across a vast meadow. The fierce summer heat is spent now. Veils of gold light drift through the intense blue of the sky, and there’s an inebriating scent of apples. For a moment, a bee hovers lazily, then is gone. A few leaves are already beginning to turn. A leaf detaches from its branch and flutters toward the grass. Leaf, she thinks, arresting it in midair, where she contemplates it. Leaf, she thinks, and lets it fall.
The Third Tower
Therese
Julia found it in a pile of old stuff. She didn’t want it, so she said she would give it to Therese.
What was she supposed to do with that? Therese said—a beaten up old book with nothing in it but blank paper.
Well, you like to do handwriting, Julia said.
Therese looked at the thing her friend was holding. Then she reached for it.
Julia laughed and her black curls bounced.
* * *
That night, Therese puts it away, under her socks—her dear, neatly folded socks. And the next night when she remembers and takes it out, it seems she has come to love it in her sleep, and through the long day at work. Maybe she’ll even take it with her on her trip.
It looks like an ancient thing, with its soft red cover. It looks like it has some tales to tell, hidden in those blank pages. She runs her fingers over the thick, rough paper, as if to awaken it . . .
Train
Back in the day, railroad tracks crisscrossed the entire country and trains sped morning and night to every corner of the great expanse.
That’s what Therese has heard. She thinks she’s heard that. Or maybe it’s a scrap from a dream—or maybe it’s just an error of her brain; maybe there were no trains at all.
Who knows. But what’s sure is there’s one train now—and it goes through the town where she lives, all the way to the City, where the hospital complex is—lucky!
Felix has hired a temp to cover for her. He’s promised to keep her on when she gets back, one way or another. She’s a good little worker, he says. But for now the spells have gotten so bad, they’re slowing her down.
When he arranged for her to go for the cure he looked sad, she told Julia.
Hm, Julia had said noncommittally.
And it’s true that Felix always has the same expression—pretty much all the old people do—of vague helplessness, as though they’ve just entered a day full of the troubles they’ve spent the night dreaming about.
But in any case, Therese is going to see the City!
Of course, they’ve all seen it a million times in movies and magazines—the brilliant air, the glistening towers and monuments, sailboats gliding from the serene harbor out toward the endless horizon—the gorgeous, gorgeously dressed men and women, the broad white boulevards, banks of flowers, grand restaurants, magnificent shop windows—great, heavy strands of gems twinkling away on velvet . . .
None of the girls from housing has ever gotten to go there until now, and the others are all jealous.
Really? Therese asks; do they want to go pitching over at random moments like she does? She’d trade any day. (Though maybe she wouldn’t, actually.)
But she’ll be their eyes and ears, she promises.
* * *
The seats are so comfortable, even here in community class. There’s a slight, thrilling jolt, and her heart lifts as the wheels begin to purr against the tracks.
This morning Julia knocked on the door of her room and gave her a cardboard box containing a sandwich and an apple so she won’t go hungry on the trip.
Actually, she’s already hungry, even though she’s just settled onto the train. But she won’t open the box yet.
Box! The word is shimmering and starting to glow—
Therese reaches into her satchel for her book and the pen she stole from laundry when Kyra wasn’t looking—but she’s too late to do whatever it was she meant to; the word has already exploded and now what’s left of it is just a hard, dry little wad: box. Okay, box. She’s sort of exhausted, as if she has awakened too abruptly from a profound sleep.
And then there’s just darkness—a tunnel, it must be.
Now it’s bright and her town is gone!
She plays a brand-new game on the seat screen, featuring zooming blobs that look like candy. Glossy! You shoot the blobs, and if you hit one just right, it emits a shower of gold coins, and then new blobs zoom in to try to eat the coins before you shoot them, too.
The rays of the sun slant at the sooty windows, moving this way and that as the train crosses over a shining river of thick, rainbow-colored mud.
But where on earth are they? Therese has never seen places like this in movies or magazine pictures—these towns! Where no person is to be seen, where the windows are broken or covered over with boards and plastic, everywhere heaps of rusted, rotted trash, with here and there a chair leg or part of an antiquated vehicle or a torn, filthy doll, sticking up from it . . .
The desolation spreads out and out, as if someone had tipped over a colossal container of wreckage by mistake. A tiny train moves through it, carrying a miniscule speck called Therese.
The train clacks slowly over another bridge—a rickety little thing spanning a cleft in the earth—and stirs up a swarm of children, who run along below, trying to keep up. Their faces are streaked with paint, or dirt. They scamper and tumble like wicked little demons, but the rocks and bottles they throw just bounce off the train’s metal shell, and zoom—now they’re just tiny, squiggling specks, themselves.
It’s cold, Therese realizes. And her speck self is speeding farther and farther from her friends . . . She holds the box Julia gave her tightly and looks around at the other passengers, but they’re inseparably focused on their screens or devices and their faces are closed.
The sights stream by out the window, wavering, not quite solid, like pictures unfurling on a bolt of printed silk. Now there are woods. And raked-over fires, it looks like. More trash . . . an old boot? A ragged shirt . . .
A few weeks ago at supper one of the girls said she’d heard that a bunch of criminals had escaped from the prison complexes. Could Therese be traveling through that part of the country?
Fugitives—the word erupts from its casing, flaring up like a rocket, fanning out, fracturing the air into prisms and splintered mirror. Therese snatches up her book and pen and rapidly writes something down.
She’s sweating. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths before she looks at what the book says: Uniforms—teams, prisoners and guards, shouting, clanging—blood and weapons. Two civil guards stumbling through trees, they trip on twisted roots, they carry a heavy pole, one of the guards at each e
nd, a man hangs from it, roped to it by bleeding wrists and ankles . . .
She stares at the words in the book. Horrible!
A good thing she’s heading toward the hospital—maybe the excitement of travel is bad for her.
She glances out the window and takes a few more deep breaths.
No, she’s okay—the glass-dust is settling, and the air is coming back together . . .
Good, the woods are behind them now.
Oh, funny! The pen has a tag on it that says, Return To Laundry.
* * *
She watches a whole series of cartoons about a cheerful creature they call a platypus. And anyhow, her town is normal—a normal, busy town. The malls are filled with people shopping.
Besides, those men in the woods—that was just a picture.
* * *
The sandwich and apple are eaten, and they have arrived. Therese brushes some crumbs off the empty box, folds it flat, and tucks it into her satchel along with her good dress—she’s brought her good dress!—and her book, of course.
Doctor
Patient T716-05: Female, 17 yrs., 8 mo’s. Worker, intelligence average, height/weight/appearance ditto. Word-stabilization reflex far below average. Mental “crowding” or “smearing,” excess liquidity of intellection. Fainting occasional but rare. Complaint suggests aberrant cortical activity, diagnosis as yet uncertain. It is to be hoped that a course of repetition modification in conjunction with indicated elaboration-suppressants (“fuzz-offs,” as the kids call them) can be devised to alleviate symptoms.
Assessment
Tree, the doctor says.
Therese looks at him, but he’s studying the ridiculous-looking contraption she’s hooked up to. Tree please, he says.
She thinks for a moment. Leaf, she says.
The doctor, watching some dials, frowns. Apparently the dials have registered a lack of conviction in her answer.
She tries again: Shade.
Just whatever comes to mind, the doctor says.
Trunk? Therese says.
Trunk? The doctor says.
Your Duck Is My Duck Page 14