“I did some business with the previous owner of that house, actually. She was going to add more dining space upstairs, and the bank was prepared to give a loan. But then she backed out at the last minute. I never found out why.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Of course, no. Listen, I won’t keep you, I’m sure you’re busy, but I have a question for you. This is going to sound strange, I realize, but the other night I saw that you’d blocked off the stairway at the back of the house and I was wondering why.”
Wilson’s face went ashen, blank. I hadn’t thought him capable of such an expression. He seemed genuinely troubled.
“They’re old, falling apart. Just a liability, that’s all.”
“I love old houses. I’ve always been interested in the history of—”
“Yes, old houses. Lots of history.”
I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t want Wilson Bizby, of all people, to think me a flake.
“The truth,” I said, “is that something unusual happened to me on those stairs a couple of years ago.”
Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “What happened? Tell me.”
Briefly I told him about the recording—the Proof—and then about my father’s experience.
“Hold on, you’ve got an actual recording?” he asked. “Of a voice?”
When I confirmed this, Wilson’s head sagged low against his chest for a moment. Then he looked up and asked me if I had another moment to spare. He wanted to tell me something, only he didn’t want to talk about it on the street. I invited him back into the bank, into my office.
The Fortune Tellers were finishing up for the day when we went inside the building. Darryl had recently proposed to his girlfriend, and soon he would be leaving Shula for DC. Diana and Susan were incredibly upset about his impending departure. Their morning talk show was coming to an end. They’d been acting sullen for weeks. All my years of working with them, I had failed to notice something crucial about the nature of their triumvirate. Susan and Diana weren’t just friends with Darryl. They were infatuated with him, though I think he, like me, had always mistaken their infatuation as a sort of doting motherliness. Quite possibly, I realized now, Susan and Diana didn’t even really like each other. Quite possibly, their clique was no clique at all but an unspoken competition for the affection of a handsome, charismatic guy with a silver stud in his ear. All of this had only become clear to me in the last few days as Darryl prepared to leave his two fellow tellers behind.
I led Wilson quickly past them and into my office, bringing the door closed behind us.
“So,” I said, sitting down.
“I’ve told no one about this,” he said. “Can I count on you to keep this private?”
I nodded. “Of course, yes.”
“I’m serious, Jim. I’m only telling you because you might be the only person who won’t think I’m completely nuts.”
“I understand. And no, I won’t think you’re nuts, whatever it is you have to tell me, trust me.”
Wilson folded his hands, interlocking his fingers, and glanced out the window. He appeared to be summoning the will to tell his story. At length, he began.
THE TALE OF KING WHITE HAIR
About a month after acquiring the property, Mr. Bizby was touring the restaurant with one of his contractors, a very dependable guy he’d relied on for years. The house needed some work: The plumbing was shoddy, the walls lacked proper insulation, and the foundation needed new concrete piers. All very typical repairs for a house that old. Nothing that worried him very much. The home inspection had turned up most of these problems, and Mr. Bizby had anticipated doing some renovations before leasing the house.
Eventually they made their way upstairs, where the contractor suggested that Mr. Bizby rip out all the non-load-bearing walls, replace the windows, and add an additional set of stairs so that The Bizby Group could rent out the second floor as a separate apartment.
Fine, Bizby told him, that was fine, great. As long as the house didn’t collapse, etc.
Then the contractor’s phone rang. He had to take a call. From an inspector about another project. Off he went down the stairs, through the house, and out onto the veranda, leaving Wilson alone on the second floor.
He took a piss in the toilet. Killed a spider on the windowsill. He didn’t remember what else, but he was up there for just a few minutes before going down the stairs himself. He was halfway to the bottom when he saw her. A woman. A beautiful woman. She had brown hair, very fair skin, a little button nose. She came rushing by him going in the other direction. He looked up from his feet and there she was, this gorgeous blur of a woman. She seemed so incredibly sad. And upset. Distraught! That was the word he was looking for.
This happened in the space of about two seconds. Three at most.
At this point in his story, Mr. Bizby paused for a moment. He leaned forward, looked me in the eye. Before he continued, I needed to understand something important. About love. About relationships.
Mr. Bizby had been married twice. His first wife had been a decent woman, though she could be very withholding, emotionally, and after their third child was born, the love had chilled a bit. They were still friends but not much else. He didn’t touch her; she didn’t touch him. Their lives were routinized. They each had roles to play, jobs to do, and for a long time this worked very well. He wasn’t sure who cheated first. It didn’t really matter. Eventually they were both sleeping with other people. This wasn’t something they discussed openly with each other, but they both knew it was happening. They also both understood implicitly that these affairs had to occur within certain parameters. Never with mutual friends, for instance. Never in the house. This went on for a couple of years, until one day Mr. Bizby broke one of the rules and threw their lives into disarray.
His wife owned one of the little boutiques downtown—still did, actually—and one summer she hired an assistant manager named Talia. The first time he saw Talia—well.
What I needed to understand was this: In our lives we only ever meet two or three people who really get us, people to whom we are truly connected, not just by love but by something more ineffable. This person might be one of your parents. It might even be your optometrist. Whoever it is, you will feel—at a soul level perhaps—a deep and complex joy just being in his or her presence. If this person also happens to be someone you wish to sleep with, it’s sort of a blessing and a curse. A blessing because, for a while at least, the sex and this other thing, whatever you want to call it, will be perfectly aligned, and the connection will be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, just total bliss. But it’s a curse, too, because eventually, no matter what, one of you will want to sleep with someone else and that will start to ruin this other, purer, lighter thing. In most cases, mixing the two is not wise. One connection is so clean and warm and the other just leaves wet stains all over the sheets. So, it’s better when the person who really understands us is just a friend or a sibling—and not a lover.
Did I understand what he was saying?
(Sort of I did. I was thinking of Annie, of course. If such connections did exist, as he was describing them, Annie and I had that, certainly.)
Anyway, Mr. Bizby had this connection with Talia. She was younger than him, sure, and beautiful, but that had nothing to do with it. She could have been a decade older for all he cared. Age was beside the point; the point was the connection. The affair began within a matter of weeks and very quickly it became clear to him that seeing her only once or twice a week was not going to be enough. He needed to be with her all the time, always. So he asked his wife for a divorce, endured the inevitable scandal and chaos that ensued, and married Talia soon thereafter. They were together for twelve years in all before she died from cancer. They weren’t perfect years, not by any means. They had their problems, their issues. Just because you belonged with someone didn’t mean you were pe
rfectly compatible. Compatibility was not a guarantee. That was important for me to understand. He knew what this sort of connection felt like, he said. He had experience with it. He’d lived it. He knew that it could be instantaneous, inexplicable, even difficult. He knew that it could happen in a single breath and that it could forever alter the course of your life, at least if you were the sort of person who stayed true to yourself.
Anyway, the point of all this, he said, was that he’d felt exactly this way when he’d passed the woman on the stairs. As soon as he’d seen her, he’d been overcome. After his second wife had died, he’d given up on ever feeling that way again and yet. And yet! Here was this woman on the stairs. One look from her and he ached. Physically. Spiritually!
So, she’d passed him, this incredible woman, and it was only when he turned that he’d realized she was already gone, that possibly she’d never even been there to begin with. Did I understand how devastating this was? His true love had appeared to him and disappeared in a single instant.
After that he started routinely visiting the stairs. Once and twice a week at first. Then three and four times. He’d sit on the steps, waiting for her to return. He’d stand. Walk. Run. He’d close his eyes and try to picture her again. He was desperate to summon her. One more look was all he needed. One more moment, however brief, if only to confirm that she was real, that he wasn’t crazy. To feel so connected to a person who maybe didn’t exist, the impossibility of it, it was heartbreaking—and strange. He couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about her, remembering her sad, lovely face. But no matter how much time he spent on the stairs, she refused to reappear.
He hired a guy. An adjunct historian, a little rumpled fellow who knew his way around an archive. This gentleman put together a dossier on the history of the house and its occupants. Birth dates, death dates, marriage licenses. A police report on the fire. Write-ups about Robert and his furniture store. About Robert’s brother, Wendell, and his days in Hollywood. About Clara Lennox, too. Poor Clara Lennox, who’d suffered terrible burns in the fire and who’d spent her final years living in a hospital in Raleigh.
Did I want to see a picture?
Of course I did.
From his wallet, Bizby removed a small black-and-white photo. He handed it to me. The photo showed a young couple: A very small and prim woman with dark hair was seated in a wicker chair with her hands in her lap, and behind her stood a man with a large bulbous forehead and deep-set eyes. He had one hand on the chair and the other in his pocket. She had a dreamy, faraway look. Their postures were very correct.
“It’s her,” he said. “Clara Lennox. The woman on the stairs. The moment I saw the photo, I knew it was true and I wasn’t insane. That was the good news. The bad news was, I’d never be with her. Not in this lifetime anyway.”
“The flowers,” I said. “That was you. You put flowers on her grave.”
He blushed and confirmed this with a nod.
It was getting to be very late now. The custodians had arrived to clean the bank, and a vacuum roared to life in the lobby.
“I need you to make me a copy of that recording,” he said. “Please. Can you do that for me? I need to hear her voice.”
“If you’ll allow me to scan this photo?”
“Yes, of course.”
I promised to email him the clip later that evening from home, which I did.
—
LOOKING AT THE PHOTO, Annie was struck by the couple’s seeming youth. They were like babies, she said. Clara, in particular, didn’t look much older than twenty, and as for Robert, his head was shaped like a giant guitar pick, the way his ample forehead tapered down to such a small, pointy chin. She zoomed in on his face, lingering on the pixelated eyes, and decided that yes, he was the sort of person who would set a dog on fire. She swiped over and down to Clara’s face again.
“She seems so fragile, doesn’t she? Like a little doll creature. Beautiful though. Where’d you get this photo from—the library?”
After swearing her to secrecy, I told her Wilson Bizby’s tale, which she found both romantic and pitiful.
“In love with a ghost,” she said, shaking her head. “I never thought I’d feel bad for someone like Wilson Bizby, but I do.” She twirled her hair in her fingers. “Do you think it’s true—what he said about these connections?” She smiled. “Did you know as soon as you saw me that—”
“Yes.”
“Really?” She considered this, then smiled.
“You didn’t feel the same?”
“I guess I’ve just never thought about it in those terms. I think love’s a little messier than that, personally. Don’t get me wrong. I thought you were cute. A little dopey but cute.”
She looked down at the picture again. “I don’t want to see this again, okay? Keep it away from me.” She was still looking at it, zooming in on their finer features: noses, eyes, skin. “It’s too creepy. Even if I ask to see it, don’t let me. I don’t like having their faces in my head.”
“Understandable.”
“Those stairs. What’s up with those stairs? A never-ending source of weirdness. It has to be a daisy hole, right?”
“You’d have to ask Sally Zinker.”
“Yes,” she said, handing me back my phone. “The elusive Sally Zinker. Wherefore art thou, Dr. Zinker?”
Sometimes I doubted Sally Zinker even existed. She was a character in a movie or an elaborate video game. She was an advertising campaign. She was a conspiracy theory website given skin and bones.
Flipping through her book one night I fell down into a sleep, a half-sleep, light and gauzy. I was aware that I was in my own bed, but the room felt altered somehow. When I reached out—for the pillows, the blankets—my hands passed right through them. I wasn’t really there. I’d slipped away somehow. I was a ghost. I was a hologram. Or maybe I was here and everything else was a hologram. I couldn’t figure it out. Again and again I reached out to the world—and again and again it refused to receive me, to touch me back, to confirm me. I began to panic, to scream, and it was then that I sat up in bed, fully awake, both my arms swiping wildly at the bedspread.
Annie was in bed beside me, a red pen in her mouth, her plays spread everywhere. She gave me a strange look.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry. I just dozed off.”
“Your phone just made a sound,” she said. “It chimed.”
She kissed my arm, moved her papers to the floor, and flipped off her light. I went over to the dresser and grabbed the phone. I’d received an alert from HeartNet; the device had just saved my life. I couldn’t believe it. Had this coincided with my dream? Had I nearly slipped into a nonexistence?
“Who was it?” Annie asked.
“Low battery,” I said.
I climbed back into bed, trying not to freak out. A few minutes later Annie was asleep, and I was alone. I wriggled my toes under the sheets, watching the blanket move at the bottom of the bed. I rolled toward Annie, breathed in her hair, her skin, wondering how much longer I’d have nostrils, a nose, a brain, an olfactory sense, a thought such as this: I could live in a cloud of my wife’s hair and be happy. I didn’t want to disappear. I didn’t want to die! She slept on peacefully, her warm rump turned toward me, the blanket halfway up her leg, a burn mark on the sheet from the dryer. Everything felt significant, fleeting.
I wanted to appreciate every aspect of this moment, to preserve it, to live in it forever. Annie’s light wheezing breath, the dance of the curtain across the AC vent in the floor, the clock’s red flashing colon that held the hours from collapsing into the minutes. I was in agony. I was crying. Sobbing, actually, face pressed to the pillow, the heat of my face rebounding off the fabric. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to wake Annie, and so I slipped out of bed, grabbed my cell off the dresser, and went downstairs to the living room. I didn’t turn on any lights. The room was very still. Bei
ng down here, alone, surrounded by such stillness, made my tears feel that much more conspicuous and strange, and I managed to stop crying.
With a tap-tap-tap on my cell phone, I opened my HeartNet app. My heart leaped onto the screen. Blue and red static swished through the four chambers. I turned up the volume to better hear it beating. It was like a basketball dribbled in an otherwise empty gymnasium, reverberative, distant. The image of my heart on the screen was the brightest thing in the room, its blue light spilling across my palm and upper arm.
But I felt just as uneasy and unsettled. I was going to die. Any second I was going to die. It was going to happen now—now, now, now. A hacker on the other side of the world would explode my heart. Or the particles in my body would blink away at once. I’d be gone. Like my father, like everyone else. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t even know it had happened. I wouldn’t know to mourn my own loss. Everything I’d ever been would slip away. I’d lose Annie. Because there was no other side, was there? Because the only side was this one?
I shut off the HeartNet app and, despite the hour, called Sally Zinker’s number again.
Please state your name, the robotic voice said, your contact information, and who you’re trying to reach.
I gave my name and my number and said, “I want to reach my father. Or God. Or anyone, for that matter. I just want to know if this is it, if I’m going to disappear when I die.”
I hung up and did a few of my breathing exercises. I was about to go upstairs again when the phone rang. An unknown number flashed. I answered after just one ring.
“Jim Byrd?” a woman asked.
“Sally Zinker?”
“Yes, yes . . . Are you there?”
“I’m here, still here. This is incredible. You won’t believe how I got this number.”
“Mr. Byrd, I don’t have much time to chat, so let’s get right to it. You’re calling because you think I’ve built a machine that allows for communication with the dead. Am I right?”
“That’s right, yes. So does that mean you haven’t built it or—?”
The Afterlives Page 22