Thalo Blue

by Jason McIntyre

  She only brought up the notion of her church a single time—one night after they had made love for hours. She was unique to him: a beautiful woman who could tell him anything and he would trust it like he trusted the ideas of up or down. But he could never quite get his head around her steadfast belief in the Higher Good. It seemed hokey to him at times, or as an invention people held like a crutch to make things seem easier. He wondered, but never said aloud to her, if maybe she had latched onto her beliefs to try and make sense of her terrible upbringing. She might have simply been lucky; made vulnerable by her dirty-fingered legal guardian, she might have been just an impressionable girl who stumbled across the Catholic Church sooner than another equally bad man could stumble across her. And there were lots of those in this world, lots of bad men, and he thanked something—though not God necessarily—for having her find Him instead of one of those despicable creatures. He thought of Sicily, his aunt Sissy, saw her laying nude on a hotel bed of scrambled sheets and towels, her breasts pointing at the ceiling, her head lolled to one side. And he knew, or at least he thought he knew, that such bad men could take everything from a person. They could take everything and then they could carry on and take even more.

  Sebastion could tell that Caeli had a question on her mind—she had gotten that look that she did when there was a problem floating around inside. She had gone still and quiet, staring only at the patterns of light on the wall. She started talking about her church, not specifically so, but he understood that it was a velvet underpinning to the question she was trying to pose. Her words took on a serious tone. They had a physical, waxy quality, like the countless leaves on a tree, something you couldn’t deny existed because they were there, they were real, they were rustling in the wind, singing in the wind, not being hushed by the wind; you could reach out and touch them. Sebastion felt like he could almost lay a hand on Caels’ lips and feel her words there, shiny and real on his fingertips. What she said then came out like an essay on belief, like she had studied and researched and lived with the topic for a lifetime, memorizing every facet. She said that when we die, whether we believe or not, we will be forced to. It exists and if we don’t believe in It now, we will then. She even gave such an idea a name—Fade Away Divine. Sebastion listened in quiet patience—he always did with her—and considered the information in the same manner as he would consider his own thoughts. As they lay in the semi-darkness their voices were low; not whispers, but nearly.

  After a pause, he answered her—as best he could.

  I believe in something.

  You believe in ‘something’?

  Hmm. Something. I just don’t know exactly what it is yet. Would you say that God is the same thing as your soul?

  She thought for a second, considering his point of view and the idea that he had likely never read the Old Testament cover to cover like she had done so many times. I guess you could look at it that way. Actually, yeah. I kind of like that. Makes sense.

  Well, the thing is, then...I believe I have a soul. I just don’t like the idea of it being God. There’s something out there, separate, that intangible something—I just don’t know what else to call it—and maybe it takes care of things. Takes care of us.

  She looked again at the round glow the miniature lamp made up the wall and onto the little slanted ceiling, thinking. And then her eyes closed. His words seemed to satisfy her because she went off to sleep promptly afterwards. But they didn’t satisfy him. Never had. And maybe never would. He lay in the dark that night, his eyes open and staring through the window, across the street, at that light bulb behind a veil of leaves and branch—the one that was always on.

  <> <> <>

  Caeli let him paint her once. He had carried tubes and brushes and canvas up the squeaky back steps over three trips, just waiting, cringing, for the moment when the lady of the house, Mrs. Morgan, would step out of her kitchen door and holler at him about the impropriety of his actions and God’s unearthly will. But she didn’t, not that day.

  Caeli stripped her clothes off and lay across the floor in a mound of pillows. Sunlight from the afternoon sky rested across her now coppery skin and curvaceous figure in a flowing sheet of pleasing color. Her brown hair, caught in that light, and still somewhat bleached from the summer sun, looked vaguely like the mane of a lion. When the minutes turned to hours, Caeli started singing, something she said she had only ever done in private before Sebastion had come into her life.

  It was in Italian, a Baroque piece, she said. Che veggio ohime—Orfeo. It’s about Orpheus and Eurydice.

  He didn’t know that story so she told him the long version—they had time. She asked him if he believed the story could ever happen, if love could ever reach past something as solid as death. He thought for several moments, held his finest brush still without dabbing any paint, stared at her skin, her curves. And he said that he didn’t know.

  After about three hours of singing, and the interlude about Orpheus, he was finally done. It was the longest he had ever languished on one canvas at one stretch, but it was easily worth it. And, in truth, it was the most difficult time he had ever had with a painting; it seemed a monumental struggle to pull it out of himself and spread it across the surface.

  But the result of that effort, the color, the likeness, it was perfect. In the bottom corner was his signature, unchanged in a million years: Zeb. The Z was blue. The e was green and the b was purple.

  It doesn’t capture you, he said, trying to remain modest, and somewhat honest. Nothing can.

  She hooked her bra closed backwards across her tummy, turned it right ways around, and slipped its straps up over her shoulders. She got up from her palace of pillows, came and stood next to him, and they looked at his work together. She eyed the three little letters in the corner of the canvas, and then pulled him close. You can, she said.

  <> <> <>

  Events crowd together, Sebastion decided. A person can go a long time with little occurring, then, suddenly, several things happen at once or in quick succession. You can be in the midst of an important incident, he once thought, in its very midst and not even realize that anything so immense is coming to pass. A time of such blind introspection, a time of invisible, yet meaningful, events occurred at the end of his University career and it sent Sebastion immediately into a strange mood, one that obscured and changed him inexplicably.

  Even after his dad had gotten him on at the firm, he kept working the odd shift at the Palette, almost to prove that no one was making his decisions for him. He worked afternoons and every second Wednesday morning at the offices downtown, a routine scheduled by Oliver around his son’s last semester of classes at York, but Sebastion would also squeeze in one evening shift a week at the Palette—to help out Mr. Darlinger, he told dad.

  Spring came and spring went, his Commerce degree was wrapped up, and he could barely understand where the time had gone. He was tired. His life felt tame, slow, boring even. But it was a good kind of tame-slow-boring. At least he thought it was. He had fallen to the absolute lowest point on the spiraling whirl of popularity, and, he decided consciously, it would never matter to him again.

  But there was something new, pressing in. That spring and even into the richness and heat of the summer, there was a persistent urgency in all things. It felt obtrusive and frantic, constant, like he should be waiting for something big to happen but couldn’t yet see what it would be or when it would come. To Sebastion it seemed—and maybe it was just the end of school and the lurking promise of the real world—that everyone’s eyes had a kind of expectancy in them. Expectancy that he would follow a certain path, a designation. A divine route towards a life everyone knew him capable of. His father made his expectations obvious—by handing the newspaper across the dinner table each evening. But in everyone else it was more subtle, more elusive, like the strings on a hiding shadow, sagging and dark.

  This new and intangible feeling nabbed him, and quietly hung on to his thoughts right through the summer. One thank
fully temperate night in July, two evenings after he was nearly beheaded by the frenetic yellow bird in the Palette’s tin stockroom, Sebastion was sipping an imported lager at a pub called the Always Eight, and trying to relax. It had gone through the ringer, this place, had a half-dozen different names in the last nine or so years. It was The Highchair, and then Lowbrow. Soon after it became Westenders and then Chanel Neuf. Every incarnation had gone under, a string of complete failures. With each ‘closed’ sign that hung in the soaped-over windows, the lease would sell at auction to a new owner and a new club would be born, with a fresh gimmick, an original format or a guarantee that the place would become exclusive and popular again. No go, each one fell short of expectation. But on this night, Sebastion turned away from the bar, took a short swig of his icy beer, and stared out at the bandstand where a jazz quintet was hammering out a funky rendition of Take Five. He thought to himself that this time it could actually fly. The house band was good. And if the owner would have them sign a two year contract to perform Fridays and Saturdays exclusively to the Eight he’d have something. Then, he should establish a proper menu, a rotation of decent drink specials, and advertise. He needed to advertise. Marketing... it’s all about marketing—

  He shut his thoughts off, slammed down the receiver like dad would do if a telemarketer dared to call during dinner. He silenced the voice in his head before it could say something scary, before it could begin applying the shadow strings of his education onto every aspect of life in the universe. It was bad enough that everyone else did it. It was bad enough that his father did it at every table conversation. He would not do it himself, not tonight.

  Jackson and Caeli had gone off to try dancing to a swing number which preceded Take Five. They had become a strange trio, Caeli, Jackie-O and Sebastion. Fridays and Saturdays it was the three of them. Bowling, a faculty cabaret, maybe a pool game or just a foreign film at the Cinema Art Hause. Tonight, of all things, it was a jazz and swing club. They each made suggestions, trying to avoid the doldrums and simplicity of pounding hip-hop at the numerous popular clubs. Life is about experience, Caels would always say. And even a movie from another cultural perspective is better than the same club where they play the same songs. Jackson would be quick to agree if he was ever that overt. But no, his acceptance and agreement, like his life-savvy, lay under things like a lawn under a blue blanket. He came along. And he did it with finesse. Jackson would be there, not as a tag-along, but more often than not the leader of their small pack. Sebastion even started calling him Captain Jack.

  Captain Jack, of course, was always scoping the scene for prospective offerings from the female side of things. And on several occasions, the good-looking, quick to laugh Jackson Cavanaugh, who was always eager to tell a funny story—even to a complete stranger—would give Sebastion a wink and be off out the door with some girl he had met just met. Where’s Jack? Caels would ask. Sebastion would smile and say, Oh he found a ride home. Don’t worry about ‘El Capitano’. He’ll be fine.

  The swing set had ended and now the tables and chairs scattered around the old checkerboard tile floor in front of the stage were once more filled with couples and foursomes. The individuals had liquidated into a large faceless crowd again, a mass with arms and legs and heads, all chattering at each other, all drinking with one another, all eating with empty appreciation for taste. Jack and Sebastion found themselves alone among the entity and Caeli was across the club talking with some church group friends she had spied.

  Jackson was looking in the direction of Caeli and her church friends when Sebastion’s voice rose over the clarinet-man: So...Jackie-O, who’s the lucky lady in your life these days?

  It wasn’t clear if it was the club Jackson didn’t really dig on this night, the company he didn’t really dig, or the fact that Caels was off talking to strangers whom she never seemed to introduce to Sebastion or Jackson. Maybe he didn’t dig any of it. He took his eyes off her and her friends then eyed Sebastion, looking not entirely certain whether the question had a hook in it or whether Sebastion was expecting the Captain’s usual honesty.

  There’s no one girl, Zeb, you know that. I’m too busy with a handful to settle for just one. I’m not like you. With Caels.

  ‘With Caels’. Why do you say it like that?

  Well—

  Well what?

  Zeb...

  —What?—

  ...Well I guess it’s better that she waste her time on something like church than on other things.

  That’s harsh.

  It’s a made-up word, Zeb. You know that, don’t you?

  What is?

  God.

  Oh yeah?

  Yeah.

  So you think it’s a farce? All this religion. And God is what? Nothing but a label for everything we don’t ‘get’?

  More than that. God’s something man invented.

  How does man invent God?

  We’re thinking machines, Sebastion. By our nature. Man can fabricate any idea he wants. And that’s what God is. An idea. The biggest little lie in the known universe.

  Jack.

  What? I’m serious.

  Okay. Okay. So...it’s a conscious design, you’d say? Or a convenient accidental sort of lie?

  Unconscious. But useful and certainly propagated by bigger muscles than any individual. Sebastion, this is a powerful deciet—the most powerful. It’s an idea that people, those people, lots of people, hang on to when they don’t have any power, when they feel...bowled over. When they have nothing else they can have this god of theirs to turn to. If they’re sure this world is going to swallow them up they feel better if they believe there’s something on the other side, a purpose, a master, a constant, a big giant head in the sky...

  But Zeb, the only eye in the sky is one tacked onto a nuclear warhead aimed at your house. Or maybe the thermal camera on a friendly government’s orbiting satellite...

  So you’re what, then...? An Existentialist to the core?

  I wouldn’t go that far. No. There’s no use in empty idealism. But can we agree that a diet of pure determinism could never hope to rule this entire planet of chaos?

  Sebastion considered that, then laughed. Jackson joined in.

  Agreed, said Sebastion, satisfied. Pleased.

  Jackson smiled and Sebastion changed the subject.

  You still sketching?

  Yeah, actually, Jackson hollered back. Quite a lot. I’ve been working on drawings and designs for a good long while. Ever since that mural we started. You remember that one? You? Picked up a brush in the last while?

  Naw. Haven’t. Off and on, I guess. One painting in the last year, but nothing else...

  Actually, Zeb, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.

  Yeah?

  Yeah, uh, I bundled a bunch of my work up and submitted it to a few colleges. You know how we used to talk about doing that.

  Sebastion’s face became an unreadable mask as Jackson told him that he had been accepted into NYU’s graphic design program and was leaving for New York City. He had been accepted last year in fact, but felt so close to finishing Commerce anyway he thought he would end it out before telling anyone. That, he said, and there’s the fact that The King of Cheese was paying for York anyway. But Design at NYU, that’s all on me. Says he won’t pay for any of it.

  Well, Sebastion said, still unsteady from the announcement, It’s not proper-like. No one wants to see the Prince of Cheese do anything but sell cheese, right? Though he tried to have it come out as a joke, his voice was sullen, distracted. The clarinet almost over took it.

  El Capitano didn’t dig that. What’s up, Zeb? You don’t look happy with me.

  Naw. It’s not that. I just—I thought we’d be hangin’ in the same city after we finished this whole mess...We started it together—

  It’s not like we can cover each other’s asses forever...

  To Sebastion that sounded like a discreet mention of the thing with the Portuguese kid. Call it a flex of clairvoy
ance, call it a hunch, call it wrong, but whatever it was, he thought that it was just that: a shot about an event from over four years before. One that had never been mentioned since that evening in the basement at Vivian’s place, but one that hung back in the shadows behind every conversation—the party guest who arrives and eats all the food but never adds to the repartee. Forget the topic of divinity, Sebastion was suddenly scowling and ready to argue about that night at Lake of Bays, up the road from the Leland summer house.

  But Caeli was back. And that ended the conversation.

  Things can be read in undertones. Among friends—those certain friends—one needs not say specifics aloud all the time, but can still communicate them with a mannerism, a tone, and an inflexion. It’s all non-scientific, a certain vibe that travels the air and pricks another in the nose. Sebastion and Jackson had reached that spot somewhere on the road they had come along together—neither would be able to pinpoint a definitive moment. But it had brought them to this, under a dark catwalk with high-hats being struck and a woodwind being blown. And it was all made perfectly clear.

  <> <> <>

  “How now, brown cow?”

  She had always said that to him when they were alone. When they were alone and he was being quiet. They lay together in her bed, under the slanted ceiling of her attic apartment later in the night—more like early in the next morning. “How now, brown cow?” she said again. This was following the jazz club—following Jackie-O’s departure announcement—and Sebastion was just that: quiet and sullen. Moody and ill-alert.

  He wanted to be left alone.

  And it only got worse.

  “How NOW, brown COW?” Caeli got a little more adamant, but playfully. It was her game, their game, one that she started and he always finished. Out of habit. Out of a genuine desire to play with her. It was one of the little things they had together in their little world. And there were so many little things they had together. Just fine, Clementine, was his response, the one he always gave before tonight, the one she always expected.