by Brian Short
He would see it. I would not see it.
And suddenly intensely hot; I jumped back, drew my hands in protectively. They were not burnt, not badly, though the skin was red. On the griddle I found a dozen hotcakes, almost ready to turn. They sizzled in a thin layer of oil. A metal hotel pan on the nearby burner held scrambled eggs that slowly set and were nearly firm. A saucepan over another burner heated oatmeal that bubbled slowly, steam escaping in the morning light that suddenly spread in through the small window above. Bacon kept warm in the oven filled the small kitchen with its rich scent. Behind me, the radio spit static. If I moved to one side, the signal returned. Drivetime announcers read the news, not that I could hear them; the jabber of voices bantered meaninglessly back and forth.
When I pushed up the shutter to the dining room, the morning residents were lined up at the coffeepot, draining it as quickly as they could. Others had found their way to tables and sat, looking bored, though with the service counter now opened, they raised their heads, stood, and gathered into a rough queue. Their faces pressed forward: grizzled, sharp, surly, lost: the day.
•
I returned to the office to find Wade at the desk, looking through the logbook of the night’s events, making notes of his own into a different binder. Sunlight played through the leaves at the windows, and the thin red curtains tinted the office. As I stepped in, he looked up at me.
“I’m concerned about Rose,” he said.
I thought through the night’s events, then at last said, “I don’t know that it’s anything unusual. I mean she seemed much the same –”
“I don’t mean her insomnia, I mean this, what you wrote in the log. What she said about being raped.”
“That. She said it was the forces doing it to her, I really didn’t think it was anything.”
“It probably isn’t. Did you call the hotline and write up a report on it?”
“…No.”
“Did you read through the notebook, the one I told you to read, about emergency procedure and rape protocol?”
I said nothing.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s probably nothing. If a resident says ‘rape’, it’s what we have to do. This is a state mandate, they take it very seriously, and they will investigate. So we have to make sure that we’ve documented everything and done everything we have to, and it starts with a phone call to the hotline. I’ll take care of it… I’ll do the paperwork, I’ll make the call. And now you know. But watch out.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. But please, read the notebook. And always keep the door open whenever you’ve got somebody in here.”
•
Outside, the sky, birds suffused in traffic noise, their movements scattered within the gathering bustle of the morning; I walked past the bearded little round man on the lawn, who muttered to himself, out onto the sidewalk and looked up. Through the trees and their dense featherings of leaf I could see almost nothing. Since the traffic on the street here was sparse, I stepped out into the middle, between the cars parked to every inch of curb on either side. I craned my neck and stared up: nothing. There was only blue, and some scarce dotting of cloud. Nothing. But it wouldn’t be here, would it? This wasn’t how I would find it. Was it?
I stepped back to the walk, through the gap in the hedge and approached the round man, who smiled through his beard, his eyes sparkling. He may or may not have recognized me as the one who’d just fed him breakfast. That didn’t matter. His monologue unchanged, uninterrupted, he faced as though addressing me, “…the iridescent markings of the sky – this inward sense – this perfection of the new, toward the other – which separates against iridescence – not in opposition – in opposition toward no other – in perfect sense – this numbing effect that kindness gives – that gives it to, that it is in to – in that morning, with certain notice, because you are aware – of falling inward, warm against the skin – what the body forgets, or that it forgets, but the word gives life again – and though I was not there, the thing itself understands it well – why there is moisture, where the moisture begins – of all places, to that side of it – as mist rises against the window – and this sun rises through it – it shivers a cold light through it – reaches toward the head that fevers toward a sleeping – another sleeping…”
•
Aug. 29, 2005
Dear Reverend Master Eno and Sangha of the North Coast Abbey,
I hope that you are all well. I have included in this letter a check for the balance of the money that I owe you. Thank you for not pursuing legal recourse.
There is, I believe, no need for me to relate to you any news of the world beyond your gates; I know that you have all had quite enough of it. No, strike that – I don’t know any such thing. Where any of the sangha rest in relation to the ten thousand things is something I shouldn’t presume to know. Despite what any may have told me in private conversation, I still can’t presume. I can only speak to my own relations with the world, and it is possible I know nothing but what I directly observe. Perhaps not even that much. After a year’s involvement with the world above-surface, supra-liminal, as it were, and with its uncertain forms, I can’t say that I’m any better or worse off than when I left the depths. Have I adjusted to its needs and conditions? Is such a thing even possible for someone like myself? In my previous letter to you, I claimed that I was not crazy, and that I knew the difference between what is not crazy and what is. Again, this was presumptuous of me. I regret saying such a thing, as I regret many things. In fact, I likely was quite insane, and am even more so now, at this moment. I wouldn’t know; I can’t say.
I can tell you this much: that the air carries a scent of gasoline when it hasn’t rained in the city for several days. This was something I’d forgotten about. I can also tell you about my deep unease each time I see my own face in the mirror. I might claim that some impostor has stepped into my skin and stolen my body from me, and what looks back in reflection is a thing so unfamiliar as to be unrecognizable – only I know that I am the one who does this thing; I am the imposter. I would perhaps steal the body of another and attempt to live their life, not for them, but for myself. I will do this because I’m unable to live, myself. If I become this other person, then what is not possible becomes possible, becomes easy.
As two people, I have to consider the two worlds, the one above and that below the surface, and how both may exist in the same place and at the same time. Or no – that isn’t right. They might both occupy the same place, at least in certain circumstances, not at the same time; there would need to be some decisive factor of separation. Perhaps they are not “above” or “below” either, but one is fundamentally faster and the other one slower. Certainly there is more than one person within the space of this body that some might call Proteus. One may be here and the other one not-here. And one may be here and the other one also-here, but in speed, in time, they are different. There are degrees to this, of course, shades of gray and gradient. He is me and he is not-me; he is both me and another person. The other person can do the things that I can’t do. It is for this reason that I’m unable to do them myself, and why I need to become other than myself; opposite, in a way.
I hope that all of the sangha are thriving. I hope that the fish-people will keep their silence. I know that you, Reverend Master (if I am still allowed to call you that) are a man of peace, a being of width and depth, and that the air around you does not smell of gasoline. The many-armed and beaming Golden Body is a place, I think, and not a person. Either way.
In Gassho,
The Blue and Loving Dead Who Are Your Own,
Proteus
•
The next night I came to work, I found a woman in a clown suit and clown makeup in the chair at the desk.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
I put everything down onto the floor: backpack, my little hat, my jacket (as it had grown, in the daytime, suddenly and unseasonably c
old), coffee in a paper cup. I stood there and I tried not to stare, but found myself staring all the same. At her bright yellow costume, red floppy shoes, her big smile-face paint in grease red and pancake white, most especially at her wire shock of frizz green afro hair.
“I’m in clown school,” she explained, obviously expecting this. “My class got out right before work, so I just stayed in costume. I thought it would be fun, you know, like people here would appreciate it.”
“Yes. It is. They must. I’m sure.”
She smiled meekly up from the desk, through her painted smile.
“Do you know… uh, I thought… is… Vivianne?”
“Who?”
“I… yeah… never mind…”
She shrugged exaggeratedly, boxing up her shoulders.
“I… didn’t know there was a school for that.”
“Oh. Yeah. It isn’t something widely known.”
“Do you get… certified?”
“For this? No. No. You just learn how to do it.”
“Wow. I… I see.”
I went outside onto the porch to wait out the half-hour that I’d arrived early, positioning myself behind the cloud of gray Mary who occupied the steps, her unmoving back to me, and leaned against the banister, lit a cigarette and coughed. Henry was nowhere present, and neither was Willy. I wondered about Willy. I wondered about the girl in the clown suit. I wondered about myself. Mostly, I wondered about Vivianne.
•
Davis was stretched across the long sofa in the living room, asleep and snoring loudly, while on the noise-specked television screen, otherwise the center of collective attention, Letterman cracked jokes that made nobody laugh, not here. Despite all their fixed stares toward the screen, it was unlikely that anyone’s concentration stretched far enough to connect the punchline with the setup. And as if the other near-dozen residents, strewn over the odd assortment of mismatched furniture, or otherwise located about the room – their vectors uncertain, whether they stood, or loomed, or paced the unused corners of the floor – waited for some signal or determining event, there came a howling from downstairs. It echoed up the yellowed walls; it twisted along the wheelchair ramp-way, a sound that, however terrible, this high, anguished, piercing shriek could still be absorbed immediately back again into the inert stillness. As a signal, it deserved and got no notice, much less acknowledgement, not from this crowd, by far the toughest. In other circumstances a person might stop to wonder: was that voice in my head or did it really happen? But here, it didn’t merit the question – just another screaming, see. As it ever was. It carries us through the blank spaces, and the night is long; this warm, small weight, this human sound, perhaps it was this evening rather softer than most; it allows us some latitude of movement. I floated through this nameless viscosity, limbic, slow, detached, and ghostly. The usual gravity failed to apply somehow. My head could have been encased in cotton; it could have, but wasn’t. My fingers… trailed across the stubbly texture of the wall beside me as I walked alone through these hallways, trailed through an accumulation of grease and dust, neither soft nor hard to the touch, but sticky.
I was looking for things out of place, things that needed fixing, for doors that needed closing, perhaps for shit smeared on the walls or some strange body asleep in one of the tubs. The deeper I moved into the building, the more its noises pulled away. Behind fire doors, the television from the living room couldn’t be heard at all. Internal hums and creakings, moved into the foreground, were altered by the filterings-through of small, metal-like voices: of radios, televisions, muffled through the doors and walls, broadcasts from the land of the dead. Other voices were those of living residents, awake at this hour or maybe talking in their sleep – face-to-face with them, it may yet be hard to tell the difference.
On the second floor, I passed and was passed by Willy in the hall, on his way presumably to his room at the end. His eyes had seemed to meet mine, though he gave no acknowledgement one way or another. I couldn’t help but notice that on his feet he wore a brand-new bright pair of sneakers – Nikes, so far as I could tell, by the swoopy part – iridescent blue and untied, shoelaces trailing. It was the only unsmudged thing about him. He’d not had them on earlier. I would’ve noticed. They were clean and bright and vivid like nothing else about Willy. No doubt they would in time be muddled to the same dust-dimmed state as the rest of him. I wondered where he could’ve got them at this late hour.
“New shoes, Willy?” I said, in what I thought was a neutral enough tone.
He stopped, with the abruptness of a video set on pause. Nearly to the end of the hallway, only steps from his own bedroom door, he now stood frozen, in fact in mid-stride. I expected he might have something to say in response. I waited. He just stood there in that awkward and actually somewhat gravity-defying position, his left foot forward and planted, his right foot behind, toes on carpet, lifting, his arms held half-swung, in opposing arcs. Willy held like this as still as a statue, as still as a tree, and said, perhaps appropriately, nothing. His bright blue shoes were the glue that held him to the earth.
A little embarrassed, I turned to resume my walk-through of the house, next to the basement, where the screaming had come from. I looked once more back over my shoulder, down the length of the hallway, toward Willy, who’d not budged. Had I made him self-conscious, asking about the shoes like that? Was he trying to tell me something?
A nearby staircase led directly to the basement, where in the dining room I found the bearded round man – it was him I’d seen before, on the lawn that morning. I didn’t know his name. He wasn’t one of the nighttime regulars. He sat alone at a table, surrounded by a dozen others, all empty. He stared at a styrofoam cup of water in front of him and smiled. The only sound in the dining room, aside from my footfalls and the whine of the fluorescent lights, was the soft murmur, the rise and fall of his singsong voice as he spoke into his cup, addressing it like a microphone, or as if it contained a very small person, with his back hunched, nose only inches from where it rested on the table:
“…is to approach – the supersensible – the object beginnings of which – objects, never seen – in the ordinary way – by means of, as now, when the eyes are crossed – what is above the eyes is partially erased – the beginnings – of its own object – of thought, shape, or wanting – diminished, or diminishing – in order to approach –” and I walked past, not wanting to disturb, making towards the kitchen. He didn’t seem to notice me, or if he did, he didn’t show it.
I found the door to the kitchen, though locked at the knob, wedged open slightly. Had somebody broken in? I carefully pushed the door open: ovens, grill-top, stove, counter spaces, bins and boxes of supplies – everything in its place, undisturbed, the same as the morning, only cleaned up. I shut the door behind me and made sure it latched. Tinny, small voices softly floated in the room, just barely audible, like ghosts inside the walls themselves, much the same as upstairs. On the high shelf sat the little radio, its red power light glowing. That had been left on as well.
In the pantry all six refrigerators hummed. I looked through each to see if anything was missing, but everything seemed fine. In one corner of the room, a large gray trash bag sat on the floor. I opened it and looked inside. The bag was filled with stale, crushed doughnuts, dozens, maybe a hundred or more. I took one out: a raised, sugar-coated thing. It looked miserable. Nearly rock hard, half-smashed under the weight of the others in the bag, its sugar coating had melted into a sticky smear. Some coffee shop manager had no doubt meant well, but they’d donated thirty pounds of inedible garbage to us.
I had an idea.
I pulled several from the bag – a variety of sticky substances stuck to my fingers – then found a large, round, yellow plate in the kitchen. There were five, five doughnuts, different sorts each. Five was the right number; this was something I understood. So I arranged the doughnuts in a circle along the rim of the yellow plate, and though they slipped and slid, eventually I got them bala
nced along the rim. Together, they looked five times as miserable as they had separately.
Back in the dining room, the round man whose name I couldn’t remember still sat at his table. He talked to his cup of water. I carefully propped the kitchen door so that it wouldn’t quite shut and latched – exactly the way that I’d found it – then stepped quietly past him and back up the stairs, to the hallway where I’d left Willy.
He remained rooted to the spot at the end of the corridor, there by his bedroom door, one foot planted, the other beginning to lift. He’d not moved at all.
Okay… okay, good.
I turned and padded softly back down the stairs, back through the dining room, past the round man with his water, in again to the kitchen, to the yellow plate of horrible doughnuts arranged into a circle, a five-pointed circle.
A… five-pointed circle? Could that be right?
The kitchen was haunted. I was sure of it. It was full of ghosts.
And yeah, five was the right number.
Out into the dining room again: the round man with his water. Yes, yes: he sat in a chair at the table, and he spoke to his cup full of water, and he’d not drunk from the cup, I could tell, because it was still full. Of water. And I could not remember his name. And his hair was white, not gray. I left the kitchen door propped so that it was not quite shut and I softly climbed the stairs, and in the hallway there was Willy, same as before; there was Willy, at hallway’s end, the same as before.
“Willy,” I whispered from the other end, but he didn’t respond. Maybe he couldn’t hear me. He was frozen, and he didn’t move. He didn’t move at all. The vivid, blue tennis shoes on his feet seemed so much larger than anything else about him, but this was just because they were so bright and so new, and everything else about Willy was so faded and so worn out.
So I turned and tiptoed carefully, carefully down the stairs, trying to be as quiet as I could, but each footfall, however light I could make it, still made a small clicking noise that echoed, hollow and tight, through the stairwell. At the bottom, I paused and peered around the corner into the dining room.