by Mike Heppner
“I’m afraid you might be disappointed in me, Scarlet.” Her face changed, and for a moment he read genuine disappointment in her eyes. It scared him, and he realized that he preferred the other Scarlet— the freak, the mindless believer. Turning, he hurried back into the kitchen and pulled a black parcel from behind the refrigerator. “But there is something you can do.”
“Tell me what you need.” She stood soldier-like, her back straight, hands at her sides.
“Take this package.” Reaching for a scrap, he drew a map of the road leading out of town; in one corner he placed an X. “Just leave it on the step,” he said, handing it to her. She smiled at the box, curious. “It’s a present.”
Scarlet studied the map, then tucked it into her pants pocket. The folded page felt good against her leg. Picky, she straightened some knickknacks on the coffee table. She did not wish to appear nervous or uncertain in any way; it would suggest to Derek that his teachings had failed her. “And after?” she asked, moving toward the door.
“After?”
“After I’m done? Should I come back?”
He felt his mustache, thinking about it. “Oh, I really should be alone this afternoon.” She looked disappointed (again! his power), so he added, “But come back some other day. We can figure something out.”
Perking up, she peered across the room to a dark corridor leading to the other half of the apartment. “What are you working on now?”
Anxious, he gave her the same reply he’d given Reggie Bergman back in August. “The usual. Another book, like last year and the year before. I just go from one to the other.” He caught himself, not liking his own tone of voice. “But this one will be quite different. An important work. Important to me, anyway. If you’re serious about wanting to help . . . well, we’ll see.”
“Even if you just need someone to keep you company every now and then.” Scarlet grinned, her lips spreading to show a row of perfectly square teeth. “It’s always nice to have someone to talk to, especially after you’ve been working all day.” She laughed. “That’s probably the only thing I’ve learned that I didn’t get from you.”
Near the door, she bowed low, making a flourish before going down the stairs. She must be high on something, he thought. Antidepressants, maybe. This was another way Derek’s occupation had ruined his life, limiting his understanding of human behavior to medications and their characteristic side effects. Returning to the window, he saw her emerge from the building and head up the hill to the main part of town. A few dozen yards away, she turned and waved at the apartment, brandishing the black box high over her head. Derek waved back. Goodbye, girl. See you soon.
As the box waited on the steps of the Skye mansion, Donna was many miles away, a good forty-five minutes south of the township and six freeway exits outside of North Crane City. Her companion was Lydia Tree, and they sat in an outdoor café, lunching on Brie and melted berries rolled into tubes of scorched pancake. The day was not going as planned. Lydia seemed distracted, and she kept her big sunglasses on during the entire meal, flashing her black bug eyes first at the maître d’, then at the waiter, then at the brake shop across the road. Donna kept her hands in her lap—head bowed, eyes focused on a strawberry seed stuck to the edge of her plate. It hurt her, this inattention. Here she’d spent three hours selecting her outfit, arranging her hair, matching scarves to shoes, when finally Lydia showed up fifteen minutes late dressed in jeans and a messy shirt untucked at the waist. No one cared, not really. Other women led busy lives, but only Donna took the time to ponder the significance of unimportant things. Took the time because she had the time. Lydia treated the meal like a feeding session, an hour at the trough. Stuff it ’n’ go. But Donna lingered on each sip, dreading the check, the funereal trip home. Keep drinking. Just put it on my tab.
“He’s being very selfish, and he’s not taking any of your needs into consideration, and the best thing for you to do is to just forget about it.”
“I can’t do that, Lydia. It’s not that easy. We were married for . . . it would’ve been twenty-five years.”
“Don’t cry here.”
Donna fiddled with her utensils, exchanging a fork for a knife. “I mean, what about you and Steve?”
“Not a good comparison.” Lydia looked past the table. White flares of sunlight puddled across her glasses. “The whole relationship is different. The financial structure, everything. If Steve ever left me, he’d be destitute.”
Annoyed, Donna slumped in her chair. “As opposed to me—isn’t this what you’re saying?—where I’m the dependent one. And now with Derek gone, I might as well roll up and die.”
Lydia hesitated. “Well, that’s a bit excessive. You’ll manage. It may take some time, but you’ll meet another man—”
“Oh, that’s always the answer, isn’t it?” Donna seized the butter knife and twirled it around. “No other possible way. First there was my father, then Derek, then someone else. I just swing from one to another.”
“Well, you’re going to have to do something, honey. Do you have any IRAs, anything like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she sighed, not interested in the technicalities.
“What are you—almost fifty, right? You can’t collect on your retirement unless you’ve got something to retire from.”
“Money isn’t a problem. I wish it was. I wish Derek would at least give me something to fight him on.” Gently, she reached under the table and held her own hand.
“He’s not contesting anything?”
“Nothing worth going to court over.”
Lydia leaned forward. “Is he well?” she asked.
Donna laughed; the question made her nervous. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I thought that when my father died last year, everything would get better.”
She remembered those weeks. The morning Derek woke up before sunrise, rubbing his head—nearly bald even then—and she’d asked what he was doing, but he just opened the door to the balcony and stepped outside, still rubbing his head, not a hard rub, but enough to make his scalp red, and she remembered the noise it made, a rhythmic shift, round and round, until finally he stopped and pulled out a suitcase, filled it with socks, just balls and balls of socks (looked attractive, all the different colors) and he closed the case and strode down the hall, shaking her off, the weeping woman, and he turned in the driveway to say something nasty—the final fuck-off, not worth recounting—and when he started up the car, the radio was on, a Pink Floyd tune, slow and somber, I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon, and he left it on, backing away even as her fingers clutched at the locked driver’s door, and as he moved out onto the main road, the sun broke over the pines and the music changed to Hall and Oates.
Lydia pulled a plastic cutlass out of her drink and swished it around. “It was like he was waiting for the moment when he knew you were most vulnerable, and then he stabbed you in the heart.”
“I don’t blame him. I can’t blame him.”
“Oh, please.”
“I’m sorry, Lydia.” Fork shift. “You don’t know the whole story.” No! Move it over . . . here. “I did some things that weren’t very nice.”
Lydia signaled the bartender and ordered another round, increasing the wattage, wine for vodka. “You need to get back at that man somehow, Donna dear.”
“There’s nothing I can do, and besides, whatever I try, he’ll win anyway. I guess the only thing left is to just move on and—like you say—find another man who’s willing to put up with a fifty-year-old, half-used-up—”
“Oh, come on. The self-pitying thing is not very appealing.”
“At least I don’t have any kids. That’s a selling point.”
“Never mind the man. I just said that as an example. No, of course, everyone knows that you don’t need a man.”
“Especially since, hell, I’ve got all this money now that Derek doesn’t want it.”
“So? That’s great! If that’s what he wants, if
he’s that stupid, let him!”
“Hmmm. Wonderful. I’m tickled pink.” Donna moved her plate a quarter-turn; the strawberry seed slipped from nine to six o’clock. “You want some of this cheese?”
“No, I don’t want the cheese, and don’t change the subject.” Lydia guzzled her vodka tonic and slammed the glass. “Now, this man has hurt you, and you have the right to say something about it.”
Donna settled back into her chair. “What can I do?” she asked, starting to panic. Everything they’d ordered for lunch—the drinks, the hors d’oeuvres—suddenly seemed too expensive, way out of her means.
“Write a book.” Lydia pointed. “There you go. Write a book. I dare you!”
“I can’t write.”
“So? Whoever told Derek he could write? Have you ever actually read any of that garbage?” She paused in the middle of buttering a bran muffin. “I mean, no offense, Donna, I know that you’re still very close to the man, but talk about making a fortune off of the most dopey dreck ever committed to paper. What was that one . . . ? Good God, Don’t Do It! . . . ?”
“Good God, Don’t Jump! Getting from Suicide to the Sunny-Side in Ten Easy Steps.”
“There! See, now you’re laughing.”
“It’s funny.”
“It is funny.”
“Always the ten easy steps. He made everything sound like a . . .” Donna trailed off, blanking on it.
“That’s what I’m saying. You’ve been the good girl for twenty-five years, very supportive, very loving, and now this is what happens. Okay—boom!—now it’s your turn.”
Thinking it over, Donna turned her glass, looking for a clean spot, but the rim was dirty and so she kept turning it. “Reggie Bergman could probably help me out.”
“Him, anyone. This is your chance. Derek Skye is all about one thing, Donna: men.”
“Oh, well—”
“No, wait. Not just that. White men. Read what he’s saying with that nonsense. The family. Keeping the family together. Success in the workplace. Doing the right thing for your family. We all know what that means.”
Donna saw the books on display. Hundreds of copies, stacked high. “A Woman Speaks Out by Donna Skye. A Woman’s Turn. My Turn. Didn’t Rosalynn Carter write a book called My Turn?”
“Nancy Reagan, dear.”
“I think A Woman’s Turn is better. It’s more specific.”
“No, it’s too specific. This is what you should do.”
“Oh, no.” She smiled, feeling teased. “Do I want to hear this?” Lydia removed her sunglasses and set them on the table. “A book of lore.”
“Lore?”
“Legends. Fables. Stories collected from all around the world. Tahiti. Where was the place with the AIDS? Was that Tahiti?”
“That’s right.”
“We go all over. Here we are in Outer Mongolia, where the natives are busy repairing the damage from last year’s flood.”
“Good, that sounds good!”
“Well, and then you write the commentary at the end. We can learn a lot from primitive cultures such as these. That way you can tap into the self-help market and cut Derek right in the balls.”
“Lydia!”
“The ancient clay-maker.”
“Who?”
“The old lady throwing a pot. See how her hands fashion the clay . . . this time-old tradition . . . like her mother, and her mother’s mother, and blah blah, whatever the bullshit. The more pathetic and run-down, the better. Guatemala. The Australian Outback. Naked children diving for pearls in the Indian Ocean. Anything but Cal and his tweed pants fucking around on the putting green.” She slapped the table. “ Many Voices, One Vision. That’s it!”
“That’s what?”
“The name of your book. Many Voices, One Vision. Get a napkin and write that down.”
“Phew, this one’s yikky.”
“We’re writing things down on napkins. We’re brilliant now.”
Donna scribbled the title on a cocktail napkin and held it up to her blouse. It looked good there, like a boutonniere. “But the one thing we’re missing, Lydia, is that I don’t know anything about third-world folklore.”
“So? Who gives a fuck? Who absolutely gives a fuck? Get him back here. Let’s order some champagne.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Look, Donna, listen to me. If you can read, you can write a book. If you can do research . . . go to the library, they’ll show you what to do. Or, the other thing, with the computers.”
“Oh, right.”
“Facts at your fingertips. And what you can’t find there, you make it up, it’s that easy. No one’s going to care whether you checked your sources when you’re sitting on top of the best-seller list.”
“No, I suppose that’s true. I just feel like I ought to be interviewing people or something.”
“You want to round up a few thousand refugees, we’ll go on down to the docks and chat for a few hours . . . these people can barely talk, Donna, for Christ’s sake.” She paused, then undid the top two buttons of her shirt. A busboy refilled their water glasses as she held the flap away from her chest, letting the air in. “You want to talk to someone, I know who you should talk to. The black guy, the one who just moved up to the lake.”
“Which one?”
“As if there’s more than one. He moved in a few days ago. Right on the water. You and I, we’ll both go. Safer that way.”
The ladies clinked glasses, and Donna imagined the work already completed, book published, congratulations all around. It intimidated her, for she knew she could do it, could get the thing in the right hands, but there were so many words involved, and each one had to mean something, and that’s what scared her, making meaning, making it right. Angry questions. Nasty men. Now Ms. Skye, on page 208 . . . Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember page 208. But if she smiled, if she seemed sincere. Then they would understand. No, it didn’t have to mean anything.
“We’ll do it today,” Lydia said. “On the way back, we’ll drop by. He won’t care.”
“Is he young? Old?”
“Older fella.”
“How could he ever—”
“God knows. So, that’s what you ask. You want authenticity, here you go. I’m sure he’s got some gripping story to tell about life on the streets—”
Donna covered her mouth. “Oh, gee. Now we’re being silly.”
“We need that champagne.”
“We do.” She held up her glass. “Where’s the waiter?”
“Here he comes. The dark one? Here he comes.”
“I wonder . . . what is he, Spanish or Italian?”
“Spanish, looks like.” Lydia studied the man. The waiter smiled, approaching. An easy glide. Pulled on a string. “I wonder if he plays the guitar,” she mumbled, thinking—ask him?
The Black Man in America
From the attic, Julian Mason could look out across the lake, past the tower and on toward the row of mansions near the opposite shore. The trees were wine and green and bare. The elm beside the house reminded him of a begging woman, limbs outstretched, body twisted in despair. There she was: his mother, guarding the place, her dead hands scraping the window.
But Mrs. Mason never begged—she’d worked hard, just like his father and the rest of the family. These references came from somewhere else. Whose memory was this, anyway?
The attic was dark and poorly ventilated. He’d brought his office up here for a reason—fewer distractions, too much hassle to go back downstairs. Near the window, a computer displayed a lowercase h—an italic, a digital recreation of the old Garamond issued by Adobe in 1989. The original letter had a heavier weight, with broad terminals and a large opening near the baseline. These new forms were too narrow. In Julian’s prime, typesetting machines dictated the design, and men like Goudy and Morison worked hard to meet the demands imposed by this increased level of production. Their work began on simple graph paper, and from there traveled from metal to type and from type back t
o paper. Yet times had changed; as Julian grew, the art form grew away from him. New fonts, new versions of old fonts, all lacked those elements formerly associated with type—lead, tin, antimony. The digital designer worked with spirits, two-dimensional phantoms stored on magnetic tape. No punches. No files. Unreal. Press F6 to erase.
Julian sighed, touching the screen. Balls of white packing material clung to the plastic console. A flimsy instruction manual stood open to page 4. The woman on the customer service line had been very helpful, in a patronizing sort of way. Sir? The blue button on the back? No, not there. One over. There ya go! Slumping in his chair, he stared at the receiver, waiting for her to call back, to feed him the commands one at a time. The phone was a vintage rotary dial with a top-mounted cradle. Julian loved the old shit. The circuits never went bad. The great innovations of the last quarter-century seemed designed to function only under a given set of circumstances. Each configuration of hard drive versus OS versus application versus program versus installation was a unique phenomenon—essential today, junk tomorrow. Learning the software wasn’t good enough. You had to stay plugged in, addicted to the vibe. It was all too much for an old man. Sheer incompetence blocked his ambition, hiding the dream. The goal was too remote. Toward the end of his life, Julian imagined twenty-six unborn letters, monster shapes lurking in the mist. An alphabet-in-the-making. There were other types with other names—Caslon, Fournier—but Candace was different because it was his mother’s name, and after Julian was gone, there would be no other way to remember her except for this.
The phone rang. Two round bells mounted on tiny pins clanged together, making an awful noise. He jumped, looked over his shoulder, then smoothed his hair and picked up the line.
“Jules, T. Kenneth West here. How’re the rednecks treating you?”
“Hello, sir. I’m fine. And how might yourself be?”
“Well, Jules, actually we’re in a bind, which is why I thought I’d give you a try.”
“Well, all right now.”
“How’d you feel about pitching a contract to Cam Pee later this afternoon? You don’t have to say yes or no. If you can just give me an answer within the next ten minutes.”