by Brian Short
He exhaled, then gently swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, to the floor. He rested his feet on the floor. Beneath the thin carpeting, the concrete was ungiving and cold. He waited. He breathed in once more and held it. He listened:
The ticking clock, reverberant against the hardwood above.
Exhaling, he let his body relax and sag. Proteus hung his head. Another morning.
•
He found Maude Rumsey in her garden to the back of the house, wearing kneepads and kneeling at one of several rosebushes, carefully working it over with a pair of clippers.
“Good morning, Mrs. Rumsey,” Proteus carefully said.
“Oh, what do you want?” She said, as if mumbling to herself, though much too loudly, and then looked up at him. “Oh, yes, hello. Good morning?” Her eyes appeared glassy amidst the deep wrinkles of her face.
“It’s time for me to pay my rent for next week,” he told her. “Would you like a check now, or –”
“You should take it up with Stan. He’s at the shop today, and there’s something he wants to talk with you about, so you really ought to see him.” With that, she turned primly back to her roses, which Proteus realized she was removing the blooms from, one by one. Flowering heads lay in a scatter on the ground where she’d already been at the scraggly bushes, now naked.
•
Proteus gently shut the door behind him to the King & Queen’s Royal Figurines, a closet-sized shop that was also owned by the Rumseys, in addition to their bed and breakfast. The tiny store was filled to its limit by miniature porcelain models of dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, pigs, cherubs, hedgehogs, fairies, babies, and princesses, etc. Every inch, in fact, of every narrow shelf and glass display case was stacked with precious, delicate, useless statuary. Proteus found Stan Rumsey behind the counter, perched on a tall stool, peering down through his round-lensed glasses at a magazine as he entered. The owner looked up, appearing almost surprised to see him.
“Yes, Mr. Proteus, good morning,” he said stiffly.
“Hello, Mr. Rumsey. I’ve come to pay my rent? Mrs. Rumsey told me I should see you.”
“Very good, yes. Well, about that. Yes, you see, there is a bit of a problem. I think we shouldn’t be having you back after last night, I’m afraid. No, not after all that. Both Maude and I have discussed this, and we feel it’s in everyone’s best interests. It’s something, you see, that has troubled us for some small time now. I’m sure you’ll understand. There you go.”
“Wait, what? I’m sorry, was there a problem? I don’t understand. Are you kicking me out?”
Mr. Rumsey sighed deeply and removed his wiry glasses. “It’s not like that, my boy, not at all. We’re not kicking you out. It’s more that, ah… well, you see… ours is a facility more suited toward… visits of shorter duration. And you’ve been with us for how long now is it?”
“Three weeks. Four weeks.”
“That’s right. For nearly a month altogether, I’d say. And we’re really not best equipped to accommodate a lodger, I’m afraid, not for any length of time.”
“But I’d have thought you’d be happy to have the regular income,” Proteus protested.
“Oh dear.” Mr. Rumsey slumped his shoulders. “Well, yes, of course we are, son. That isn’t any problem. What it is…”
“What?”
“Well… you see… we’ve spoken with you about this before. Apparently it’s been to no good. You make such a terrible racket, you see. Always knocking about. Always coming in late. Making those… those horrible noises in… in your sleep… if that’s what you’re doing – I can scarcely imagine what it is you get up to down there. It’s like some running of the bulls, or some ghastly Mexican parade, each and every night. Really. One might think you were half a dozen people or more, speaking in as many languages. Horrible, guttural noises, heaven only knows… And I don’t know what sort of lodgings you’ve kept in the past, but I can’t imagine you’ve been tolerated… and if you’ve carried on all your life like this? No, look, don’t answer, don’t tell me what you’ve been up to, because I don’t want to know, and honestly, if I’d had any idea, we never would have agreed to let you stay. Maude’s quite in shock. I’m certainly not willing to put up with any more. Best you just take your things and go, and as soon as possible. Immediately, if possible. Yes, quite.”
•
Proteus’s arrival at work was announced by the chugging motor and squeak of brakes of his rusty old Honda at the curb outside. Soon after, he appeared in the doorway, his shoulders slumped, head hung, dragging his feet toward the counter.
“Well look who it is decides that he is here. Here he is, only twenty minutes late to work, doing very well today, improving the curve. You look like a beaten dog, so I won’t ask.”
“Ig, I’m homeless.”
“You must imagine how proud I am to have you as my employee.”
“Please. I went to pay my rent and they just kicked me out. I don’t understand why – I really don’t. I’ve been walking on eggshells as long as I’ve been there, but I so much as breathe in that house it breaks something. I drop my shoe on the basement floor and the whole building shakes. Nobody sleeps. They’re just waiting for me to turn over in bed so they can complain about spring-squeak in the morning. I come back from hearing about it from Stan and find all my stuff left out on the curb in front. Maude doesn’t even want me in the house long enough to pack. She’s shoved everything of mine into my saddlebags and knapsack for me. Now they won’t zip up, stuff is spilling out everywhere, unwashed clothing, everything I’ve got. I can only imagine the look on her face as she forced herself to handle my things. I don’t know what to do.”
Old Albert, sitting at the wall nearby, heard the whole sad story, and added, helpfully, “Son, you are exactly right there.”
“Albert. Yes. Thank you.”
“Things may yet become far worse.”
“Alright, Albert. If that’s the way it is. Tell me, friend, how’s it going with that insurance claim of yours? I’m sure the adjuster understands how it was that parked Winnebago got in the way of your little electric car, how that nice family inside would have become the protein ingredient of their jello salad when you accelerated and drove straight into it, had you not simply bounced off the side and come to a stop. For that matter, are they pressing charges or not?”
“That was a civil suit, boy, filed with the intention to harass me – nothing more, nothing less. That… family? Those worshipers of mammon? They call themselves people of God? All they really want is money, and more of it. Like they haven’t got enough already. My circumstances were legitimate. My foot got inextricably stuck between the accelerator and brake pedals. It is a design flaw of the car and hardly my fault.”
“Enough!” shouted Ignatius. “If you two will be quiet, please, thank you, I may have a solution to your troubles. Wait. You should never have gone to those people who are crazy, like bats. You should have come to me sooner. Wait only a minute.” Ignatius left his post behind the counter and approached the blocklike shape of Mary Margaret, in shadow, in a corner, with her cellphone wedged against her ear. He waited as she talked into her phone, then waited as she listened to her phone, then waited some more while she talked some more. Etc. When eventually her phone conversation was completed, Ignatius leaned forward and attempted communication face-to-face. She listened while he talked, then he listened while she talked. To all appearances, a dialog was being had. In the middle of this, she, Mary Margaret Mary Alice, turned and looked directly at him, at Proteus, who all but winced in discomfort from being seen, particularly like this – to be studied and discussed and such. Yet he did not shrink away and disappear, no matter how much he felt like it, however much he felt he might. He simply felt the small light that was his essential self flickering, guttering like a candle’s small flame in wind. He twitched, but he did not run away. Mary Margaret turned once more toward Ignatius and said something definitive to him. Ignatius, in turn, nodded his assen
t and left her side, approaching Proteus step by careful step, closing the distance between them by these means until he stood close, uncomfortably close, invading, as it were, personal boundaries with his physical self. Since Ignatius stood three or four inches shorter than he did, Proteus was forced to look down at him as Ignatius looked up. Their noses were almost touching.
“She will talk with you,” the coffee-shop proprietor said.
“She will?” asked Proteus.
Ignatius turned around again to look at her, at Mary Margaret Mary Alice, who watched them both, levelly, appraisingly, mostly expressionlessly.
“She is the one whom you should talk with,” explained Ignatius.
“She is?” Proteus asked.
“Mm.”
“Okay, then.” And so Proteus approached her, toward where she sat, in darkness, which somehow changed to light the closer that he got. It was as if he walked into a spotlight’s beam that could not be seen until it was stepped inside of, so personal was this luminous radiance. Mary Margaret Mary Alice watched him each step of the way with that same, flat, almost expressionless look. He would swear later that she never blinked once.
“Please, have a seat,” Mary Margaret said, once he’d entered her circle. She indicated an empty seat at her table, which he took, if a bit warily. “I understand you need someplace to live.”
“Er… well, yes, that’s right, I do, I need to live –”
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I think I might have just the thing for you. It’s been abandoned, like many of the properties around here. By someone who… left. Quite suddenly, you understand. A friend of mine, in fact. A client. I was sorry to see him go. You understand. The building is in foreclosure now, but the whole process will take some time. It’s rather complicated at the moment even to find out which bank holds the mortgage, there’ve been so many quick mergers and buyouts between institutions, credit default swaps bundled and sold as packages, then parsed and re-bundled, resold – this has all further complicated the picture. Nobody knows anymore who owes their money to whom when the homeowner simply disappears into thin air. You understand. The result, for the time being, at least so far as you’re concerned, is that this house – which is really more of a warehouse (which is in fact its historical name: ‘The Warehouse’) – is sitting empty and unsellable. You could stay there. No one can even charge you rent for it, not legally. It’s perhaps rather spartan, and will certainly be cold in the wintertime, but there’s lots of space. It was used as a studio, formerly. You’d be squatting, and so you’re in a vulnerable position legally, should the law take notice of you. But since the, ahem, the only policeman for miles around has also disappeared, the likelihood of that is rather small. Utilities are your responsibility, of course, though I wouldn’t try and put your name on those accounts. No one cares who signs those checks, as long as they’re paid. Also, you’d have to leave and never’ve been there when the situation does all turn around again, as it inevitably will, on the turn, so to speak, of a dime. So. I’ve got a set of keys at the gallery. You can come by after your shift to pick them up. What do you think?”
•
But Proteus did not think. He jumped, like a frightened rabbit. It never occurred to him, despite how much it maybe really should have, and knowing what little he knew, that nothing ever came for free – not ever, nope – especially where Mary Margaret was brokering the deal. To his credit, he was in desperate straits, having no place else to live, and he – by way of what reflection he could allow himself to summon – told himself that he could at any time exit the arrangement, should it turn out somehow not so entirely, conveniently wonderful as it all seemed. And he, as he went about his day’s work, making the coffee drinks for his day’s rotation of changing customers, whether these drinks be made rich with fat dairy products or thin with watery nonfat milk, steamed into stiffness, flavored or straight, or coffee drinks that either subjugated by grudging necessity the flavor of coffee for those who didn’t particularly like the stuff, or bypassed its presence altogether, he considered at least this much what he was getting into: that he could again, if needed, get out of it. And as he thought this, staring for the most part straight ahead in a sort of shocked stupor over the turning of the day’s events, he wondered, or rather he itched vaguely after some lost part of himself, some righteous depth, some fragmentary blur, fur-lined, flip, beady-eyed – yes, deep-sea aquatic – some thing of himself that was maybe somehow more than himself, at least insofar as he was, here and now, this hollow, staring eye, depthless, right here, a presence with certain seemingly narrow limits of shading and color, continuing by means of rude vacancy to stare always ahead, always into that same half-lit space, continuing to not blink until he had to, until his eyes hurt, a self without a necessary self, without a fathom’s reach beneath… he wondered about his soul. Split, missing. Simply gone. Would his soul perhaps know something more about this than he did, about what he was getting into? What would his own soul do? If it were here and speaking, at least to him?
SEVEN
Dead Body State
[Outside Time]
“I don’t understand…” I would’ve said that much aloud, albeit, at least, in a quiet voice, so that no one else need notice, no one need look at me and wonder what my personal problem was. Of course, as I would soon come to understand, no one who was really there would’ve anyhow – no one but Finch, who like me was not really there, because we both were in a ghostly state. “I don’t understand…?” I said it again, a little louder this time, a little more certain of it. But what exactly was it I didn’t understand? The days or the nights, or how they pass, away, along, I might’ve said. Because time was wrong, clearly it was wrong; it was so deeply irregular. At least it was not right. The daylight, for instance, may simply pass in a moment, leaving night to linger on interminably. Or the night might come and go in an eyelid’s blink, leaving a long and lingering day, or better, the half-daylight, as we found here, seeping in through the window in the front office of Inn House Manor. There was simply no order to any of it. But that wasn’t really my problem.
My problem was the kid who sat at the desk, the guy with the beard all tied into little braids, with beads and significant bits of fabric woven into it. I recognized him from before. His name was Jim. I didn’t like Jim. How Jim felt about me was irrelevant, because he didn’t at the moment seem to feel much of anything. He sat at the desk – that is, he sat propped up at the desk – staring, blank-eyed, straight ahead like a fish who’s been caught, pulled up from the water, and clubbed to death. I waved my hands in front of his open and unblinking eyes, and when that brought no response, tried snapping my fingers – all the normal tricks the newly-dead will use to try and get those still living to recognize them.
“What is it you don’t understand?” Finch asked, standing at my side. “It’s clear enough, isn’t it? He can’t see you.”
“Well, yeah, I get that. But what’s wrong with him? Shouldn’t he at least blink sometime?” I tried clapping my hands loudly, directly in front of his face. The small wind displaced by my palms being smacked together blew a wisp of stringy hair slightly aside, but the face didn’t respond otherwise. Not at all. “Is he asleep?”
“Let me try something,” Finch offered, looking around the room. Noticing the standing lamp nearby, a little to the side of the desk and behind it. He put his hand to its false brass stem, up near the switch at top, just beneath the stained, creamy yellow shade. Pressing gently, he managed to tip it, a little at first, then a little more… then more… none of which gradual movement caught the bearded Jim’s eye (nor could anything, it seemed). Finally, at the terminal point, where its base could no longer support it, it gathered force on its own and swung to hit the table, making a terrible clatter – mostly as the part-conical shade fell off and bounced, jittering maniacally about, impacting papers, sending a stack of folders to spill over and onto the floor in a slow cascade. That got Jim’s attention, startling him back to
his frightened senses with a jolt. He jumped. He looked around in surprise and incomprehension and sleepy fear. When he finally put it together, what had happened, the look of utter perplexity on his face – as to how – was priceless.
“I guess I understand,” I said. “I’ve spent enough of the long nights in this room. Time will stand completely still. Every moment that passes is torture; it won’t ever end. The morning, you know it, will never come. Then sometimes, you realize that an hour, two hours, maybe three, have just vanished and you’ve no idea what has happened with them.”
Jim had lumbered around the other side of the desk to retrieve the several folders from the floor, while Finch stood behind him, staring down in bemusement. “The moments,” he said, “don’t amount to very much.”
“No, they don’t,” I agreed. “Still. You often feel as if you’ve been somewhere. You can’t begin to say where, though.”
•
Outside on the front porch, where moths battered themselves against the overhead light shade, Finch and I observed the near-still-life of the residents’ attendant. Mary was perched on her customary third step from the top of the stoop, her back to us, engulfed in a cloud of smoke in near-darkness. On the bench sat Henry, alone, looking out into the night while his ancient tape deck sputtered milky gospel songs, songs with none of the vivacious call-and-response that might redeem it musically, but a pallid, sentimental sort of religious gumminess that thinned and depleted the blood of oxygen. It was all he ever listened to. Notably lacking was Willy, who would normally be turning in his small circles over the width of the rest of the porch, which seemed especially empty now without him. I hadn’t expected to find him there, but still it was, in its subtle way, distressing, like a death. Except that I knew it wasn’t that. What it was, I couldn’t tell anyone, but it wasn’t that. As we stepped around Mary, swirling through the fog at her head, Finch turned and looked back at her. Her pale lips were moving, her face drawn long in its familiar expression of gaping, gray horror. He brought his ear close to her mouth to listen, leaning mere inches from her face. To my surprise her eyes turned, if just slightly – they turned in his direction, causing Finch to smile with satisfaction. It was not entirely clear that she actually saw him, but she was definitely speaking to him.