by F
"That's right."
I paused for a moment.
"Are you still there?" Bob asked.
"Yeah. So, what do these souls look like?"
"You can't see them," he said, as if talking to a child. "They're in bottles and jars."
"How do you know they're in those bottles and jars?"
"I can feel them."
"Feel them?"
"That's right," he said. "I sense their presence through the glass."
"Oh." I've always prided myself on being a hard-headed rationalist, but I didn't scoff. When it came to his collections, he didn't joke around. I knew Bob never traveled, so my next question was, "Souls under glass can be mailed internationally?"
"Obviously."
"How do these souls get into the bottles in the first place?"
"Different methods," he said, in the tone of a plumber explaining how to unclog a sink. "Some go in willingly, but most are put in by trickery or by exorcism."
"But why jars and bottles? Shouldn't they be contained in something less fragile?"
"They can only be kept under glass."
"No brass lamps?"
"They're not djinns."
"Well, shouldn't the souls be set free?" I asked. Bob had a persistent way of sucking you in when it came to his obsessions.
"Why?"
"Because they're trapped."
"Some of them wanted it that way."
"I don't see why anybody would," I said. "It seems like a form of hell."
"More like purgatory, because the jars won't last forever."
I heard one of his birds cheep and Bob talking to it to soothe its ruffled feathers. How could someone who cared so much about parakeets be so blasé about human souls? And then I rebuked myself for even considering the possibility that there was anything to this preposterous notion. Souls in jars? Bob's acquisitions were nothing but blown glass, and it disturbed me that he thought there was more to them. Not only did he believe he was trafficking in human souls, but he didn't even see anything wrong with the idea.
"How much does a bottled soul go for these days?" I asked.
"The bidding on this one started at a thousand dollars."
I whistled.
"Does that seem high?"
"Not for a soul, maybe, but it's still a lot of money to spend on non-necessities these days."
"It ended up at twenty-seven hundred."
"Wow," I said. "Whose soul is it?"
"It's a woman from Donburi, Thailand, who lived about three hundred years ago. She kept her husband under control through sorcery until he got a monk to capture her soul in a bottle and cork it."
"That must be quite a bottle."
"Oh, yeah, it's beautiful, deep green, Thai writing on it."
I imagined something like ideograms on an elaborate Heineken bottle.
"The monk advised him to throw the bottle in the Chao Phraya River, but he couldn't bring himself to do it."
"He kept it?"
"No, he sold it," Bob said. "This kind of trade is nothing new."
"Wasn't he afraid her soul might get out if the bottle broke?"
"Maybe that's why he sold it," Bob said. "So she'd be far away if she got out."
"How about the other three?"
"One's from Salem, Massachusetts, one's from Oxoxoco, Mexico, and one's from Bangalore, India."
"Are you going to bid on more souls?"
"Certainly," he said.
THE DAY HE DIED, I looked all over the house for the soul jars. I found them in the attic. I carefully carried Bob's soul jar up, safely boxed and padded in layers of newspaper and bubble wrap. I was amazed at how many more jars and bottles I found. He'd taken everything else out to make room for his collection, which covered the attic's floorboards in gleaming red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, leaving just enough room to walk around them without kicking them over. Everything was tidy. It looked to me as if he'd dusted them regularly, unlike the rest of the house.
I took Bob's jar out of the box and placed it under the attic's sole dormer window. The grime of decades coated that window. I looked out into his unkempt back yard as if through a heavy gray mist.
While I maneuvered my way through the glassware, I bumped my head on one of the low attic beams. Some of it was quite exotic and of antique design, but mostly just ordinary stuff, even an old Coke bottle. My foot jostled a jar, making a percussive ringing sound as it swayed from side to side. I prayed that it wouldn't topple and shatter. My dread seemed exaggerated, considering that the worst that could happen was that I'd have to clean up some broken glass. I didn't want to let Bob down. I squatted and put my hand on it to steady it.
Stepping more cautiously, I crept back to the ladder, climbed down to the ground floor, and sat in Bob's easy chair among the bird droppings and one-sheet film posters until I called Rosa to give her the news of his untimely death.
After I got off the phone, I thought about my responsibilities as the executor of Bob's estate. It shouldn't be hard to place the books, comics, posters, CDs, and DVDs. The souls were another matter entirely.
How in the world would I find somebody to take those old jars and bottles off my hands? Maybe the same way Bob had acquired them, through the Internet. The idea of trading in souls, while absurd, was creepy. The thought of dealing with people who traded in souls was even creepier. And yet I'd been friends with one of them and he was a great guy, even if he was crazy.
I occupied myself with the thought that the birds had to come first. It was my duty to find homes for them. Since one of the cockatiels had only a single foot, she might be a hard sell. The two Senegal parrots and the African Grey would be easier, because they were good talkers, but it was going to be tough to find homes for all of them. There was a bird shelter a few miles away, complete with an aviary that might take them.
Once I'd accomplished that, I'd clean the place up. The collections of music and film and illustration art had to be dealt with. Everything was to be sold, including the house. All profits would be donated to bird sanctuaries around the world.
Bob's collection of souls, however, was to be distributed only to those named in a document he had signed and had notarized. At the attorney's office the following Monday morning, I learned that the people who were to be given souls were those who had once been close friends of Bob's but who had, as he saw it, deserted him over the years. Bob hadn't understood that people moved on with their lives, since he never did.
"That's what he wants to do with them?" I incredulously asked Drew Fein, Bob's probate attorney. "Send them to old acquaintances?"
"Shall I read the relevant codicil to you again?" Mr. Fein said as he peered at me through his rimless glasses.
"No, that won't be necessary," I said. "Please forgive my outburst, but I recognize quite a few of the names on that list. Bob Krovantz claimed to despise a lot of these people."
Mr. Fein said nothing. He was as diplomatic as he was efficient.
"Maybe that's the point," I said, realizing that this could be Bob's demented revenge.
"We can conjecture all we like about Mr. Krovantz's motivations," Mr. Fein said, "but our job is to carry out the terms of his will."
"At least you're getting paid for it," I replied, trying to lighten the mood. "I'm the one who's going to have to deliver the bottles and jars to people all over the country, gratis."
"Not quite gratis," Mr. Fein said. "There's a small stipend for you, provided you follow the instructions left by Mr. Krovantz."
"Oh." I didn't bother to ask Mr. Fein how much it was. As far as I was concerned, there was no compensation large enough for this job. Nevertheless, I saw it as my duty. "I'll donate it to one of the bird shelters."
"There's something else coming to you."
"What's that?"
"The last jar."
"The one I brought to the hospital?"
"As the terms of the will stipulate."
"Okay," I said after thinking it over for a moment. At l
east I'd have something to remember Bob by.
"And there's a fair amount of money involved."
"So I have to keep Bob's soul to get the money?"
"That's what he intended."
"I would have done it anyway, if that's what he wanted."
"Just between the two of us," Mr. Fein said, "I can understand how the notion of keeping Mr. Krovantz's soul might be troubling. But if we look at the matter realistically...."
"It's only a jar."
"Precisely."
We wrapped things up and I left Drew Fein to his next client. In the building's lobby I called Rosa on my cell and told her I had something for her.
"Something from Bob?"
"Yeah, he left you a bequest."
"Why me ?" she asked as if gobsmacked. "I thought he was mad at me."
"Well, you haven't heard what he left you yet."
"Oh," she said. "What is it?"
"A soul."
"A soul," she said. It was not a question. "What care and feeding does it need?"
"Just occasional dusting."
"You can dust a soul?"
"You dust the bottle it's in."
"Oh, okay."
We stayed on the phone a little longer and Rosa offered to take some time off from her florist shop business and help me find the other soul recipients, although the law firm would probably have to use its resources to track down the more elusive parties.
I assured her that I would be happy to have her company on this odd mission. Rosa was an attractive, intelligent, and helpful person, if a bit vague at times. Some would say flaky. But she'd always had a good sense of humor, or she couldn't have gone with Bob for more than five minutes.
While we were ditching souls we'd have some laughs in between the tears, at least.
I hadn't seen Rosa in a while. When she arrived at Bob's house, I observed that she'd put on a little weight and darkened her hair, but she still seemed youthful with her big green eyes and her girlish laugh. We set to work. Finding homes for the birds started off well. The big talking parrots were easy to give away, just as I expected, and so were the parakeets and lovebirds, but some of the others were problematic, especially the bird with one foot. We just had to press on and hope we could place them all, but the sanctuary was already overcrowded, so they accepted only a few. There were going to be a lot of homeless birds if we couldn't find sympathetic souls to adopt them.
Universities and libraries were willing to take the books and periodicals they didn't already have in their collections. The CDs, audiotapes, one-sheet posters, vinyl records, 16mm films, videotapes, DVDs, and Blu-rays went mostly to private collectors and Internet buyers, although a fair percentage made it into the UC Riverside collection.
It was going as well as I could have hoped, thanks to Rosa's invaluable help. We had mailed registered letters to all the soul recipients whose addresses we could find. Most of them responded. Of course, we hadn't said in the letters exactly what the bequest from Bob's estate was. I suppose that the beneficiaries, having known Bob well at one time or another, expected to get a movie or CD, an old book, a Green Slime poster, or a Spain Rodriguez comic if they were lucky.
If we didn't get a notice from the USPS telling us that no one had signed for the letter, we shipped a bottle or jar, after padding and wrapping it thoroughly. We insured all the packages and saved our postal receipts to minimize mistakes and damages.
It took three weeks to mail them all. The postal workers at the El Monte branch got used to seeing us come in and after the third day they went right to work without question.
A few of Bob's old acquaintances were deceased, so the souls went to their next of kin. There were a couple of recipients we hadn't been able to find, but the law firm was working on those. As far as I was concerned, the job was pretty much done. Once it was all over, we cleaned the house top to bottom, getting it ready to be put on the market. Luisa Reyes, Bob's next-door neighbor, who had driven him to the hospital that final time, and two of her children helped us. At last there was nothing left to do. Rosa had her bottle and I had my jar.
"Funny that he'd want to put his own soul in that Mason jar instead of a fancy bottle like the green one I got," Rosa said as I walked her out to her car after the last day of mopping and scrubbing.
"I think that's the sorceress's soul," I said. Bob had been right when he said it was beautiful. Its convex curves and the ideograms on it lent it an air of mysterious antiquity.
"Oh, great."
"I hope she's not dangerous," I joked.
"You know, even for Bob this hobby was kinda strange."
"Yeah, but he always thought of himself as just a plain, unadorned person," I said, depositing one last trash bag in the can by the curb.
"He did, didn't he?" Rosa said.
"Look at this house," I said. "It couldn't be more ordinary-looking from the outside. Who would ever guess what he had in there?"
"All that glass going back hundreds of years," she said, "and he was content with a simple Mason jar."
"Yup." Talking this way, it almost seemed as if there really were souls captured in the jars we'd been mailing all over the country for the last few weeks.
Rosa got into her VW Bug and I placed her boxful of bottled Thai soul on the floor on the passenger's side. She started up the motor.
"Maybe I should let it go," she said.
"Let what go?"
"The soul."
"You mean pull the cork out?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know," I said, nodding at the box. "The one he gave you is so old it looks like the cork has petrified and become part of the bottle."
"Maybe a little WD-40 will loosen it."
"I guess you could try that," I said.
"Or I could just smash it."
"Yes, you could do that," I said. "Take a hammer to it."
"I'd rather break it on the rocks over the ocean," she said. "Maybe down at Palos Verdes while the gulls fly over."
"It's a pleasing thought, especially considering how much Bob loved birds."
"Maybe that's what I'll do." She smiled at me and backed out of Bob's driveway.
I watched until her car was out of sight and then turned to look at the innocuous single-story house Bob had lived in all his life. Should I release his soul inside the house? It seemed to me that he'd been imprisoned there. I would take him home with me and he'd dwell somewhere else for the first time, even if it was only a few miles away.
I wondered how he was going to like my lifestyle. Now that I was divorced and not working I had a fair amount of free time. I didn't want to get too used to loafing, but it did leave me time for writing.
BOB HAD BEEN INTERESTED in my writing—the writing I did to pay the bills and my real writing. My ex, Johanna, never understood how much I appreciated that about Bob. She thought it was kind of me to indulge him, a man she considered a nut-job loser. But finally she'd had enough of me and my inability to say good-bye to someone she thought wasn't useful. As far as Johanna was concerned, friends were people who helped you move up in the world. You didn't hang on to those who couldn't. I hadn't fully grasped her point of view until she decided I was no use to her anymore. That was shortly after she became story editor of a network sitcom.
"Johanna," I'd said one afternoon while painting the front hallway a few years back, "how do you know if people will be useful to you in the future?"
"I know Bob Krovantz will never be useful," she said while I dipped my brush, "so you better let him go."
"Let him go?" I said, dismayed. "How do you let a friend go?"
"Just stop taking his calls," she said. "He's hurting your career."
"How so?"
"You insist on taking him to parties and he doesn't know how to talk to people," she said. "He sits in a corner by himself and tells crude jokes to anyone who approaches him, or he goes on about movies nobody's seen, records nobody's ever heard."
"Somebody's seen them and heard them," I said. "A lot
of people like Bob."
That didn't matter to Johanna. "Having a guy like that around is a detriment to your career. Just think about it," she said, turning toward the kitchen. "That's all I ask."
I made no promises, but Johanna ended up getting her way, as usual. Bob received no more invitations to go places with us, I'm ashamed to say. After a while even phone calls and emails dwindled to little or no contact until Johanna and I split up. I started calling him again, once a week or so. Bob didn't take betrayals lightly and he made occasional remarks to remind me of my disloyalty, but we soon got together. I tried not to step in the caked bird droppings. My last visit to his house was years ago, when he only had maybe a dozen birds, and I was a little concerned about the current state of his surroundings, but I said nothing about it.
I first suspected something was wrong when I received no emails from Bob for a few days. The last conversation I'd had with him before that was mildly troubling. He'd told me he visited a doctor because of bronchitis and was given medication and sent home, but the problem didn't go away.
I called him and got no answer. I left a message and he didn't call back. Further emails went unanswered. There were no new posts by Bob on Facebook. I called his work number the next day and was told by a recorded message he was out of the office. I began to fear that something bad had happened. I called around to local hospitals and found that he was in a Pasadena facility owned by the insurance company he worked for.
I decided to go visit him in the hope that I might cheer him a bit. When I got to the hospital, it turned out that Bob was very sick with congestive heart failure and an as-yet-undetermined infection. I was the only one who came to visit him. I don't think it was because no one else cared, but they didn't know he was ill. Besides, it was easy for me because I had no day job since the show I wrote for had been canceled. My annuities paid enough that I didn't try very hard to get a new job, staying up late writing and getting up around noon every day.
Nights were my time. In my youth I had written Petrarchan sonnets, blank verse, and free verse. Eventually I had turned to short stories, enjoying some mild success in science fiction and fantasy publications while working on my magnum opus, a historical novel set in the Hellenistic era. None of that kept me alive and eating, though. Television writing—that strange world of character arcs and beats, contriving elaborate complications to keep the viewer interested up to the next commercial—did. I never liked the medium, because everything I wrote went through any number of word processors until it conformed to the show's guidelines. It was a drag, but it paid real money and it enabled me to make some investments to keep me going while I tried to write fiction and poetry.