In Concert

by Melanie Tem

  She brings the cotton balls over and wedges them so far up his nose he panics a bit. He imagines them pushing up through into his brain. His nose feels like wood.

  “I have to pack it really well,” she croons. “In case it starts bleeding again.” Then she wraps the bandage tight over his nose and under his eyes, standing on tiptoe to tie it at the back of his head. Xavier thinks he must look ridiculous, monstrous, but finds he isn’t entirely displeased by the idea, especially when Molly kisses him long and hard. He has the definite impression he should be smelling some strong, terrible odors, but he smells nothing. Ever again.

  For seven and a half months right after high school, he didn’t see Molly at all. He didn’t return her messages and, when she wouldn’t quit calling and texting, he changed his cell number. He treated Jillian like shit when Molly used her as her messenger. He moved to San Diego, for no good reason, and his parents paid his art school tuition, relieved that he had some direction in his life, which he didn’t except to get away from Molly. He made them promise not to tell anybody where he was. “Not even Molly and Jillian?” His parents had always liked “the girls” (or sometimes “our girls”), mostly because they were his only friends.

  “Especially not them.”

  His dad said something approving about striking out on your own. Really what he was doing was running away. His mom went still and tilted her head—”You know you can talk to me, honey”—but the only person who’d have had a chance of getting what he might say was Jillian and Jillian was part of it, Jillian would tell Molly, he had to cut himself off from Jillian, too.

  It sucked. He hated Molly for that more than all the other shit. And he did hate her. And he loved her. He never stopped loving her. When he came back home he paid for both hating her and loving her. Which was actually kind of fun, in an S-and-M sort of way.

  “Why’d you come back?” Jillian whispered to him that first night. Then they were clinging to each other with Molly sound asleep—or pretending to be—between them.

  “Didn’t know what to do with myself,” he tried, very aware that Molly could be listening to every word and recording it in her mental notebook. “Wanted to see what would happen next.”

  What he didn’t say then, because he didn’t quite know it yet, was that being in the world without Molly had been like being in a sensory shooting gallery, constantly bombarded, constantly on overload, not sure about which of the barrage of stimuli were foreground and which background, exhausted from trying to pay attention to them all. Molly kept things straight.

  Now Jillian is in his arms again and he asks her tenderly, “Remember the paintings I did with patches over my eyes?”

  “Sick shit,” Jillian murmurs, probably meaning both sick like “disgusting” and sick like “very cool.”

  “Totally.” Drawing his hand down her body, so familiar and sweet, he wonders what happened to those paintings. Molly probably has them cataloged somewhere, along with all the photos she takes of him and Jillian and the three of them and herself with him and with Jillian and herself with herself. And the pictures of the black cat with the cauterized eye sockets, which was what pushed him over the edge into leaving.

  Shuddering, he wonders aloud, “Whatever happened to the cat?”

  “Homer.” Jillian burrows her face into his chest. They hug each other and chorus, “for the blind poet!” like Molly always said even before the cat showed up with both eyes gone, they assumed from some mother of a fight. When she brought him home, she’d already named him Homer because she was a fan of the Iliad or something, though Xavier didn’t think she’d ever been much of a reader.

  Then Xavier and Jillian get it on for a while, and even though he can’t taste or smell her, even though they’re both crying, it’s incredible, the best it’s been between them for a long time. Actually, being fucked up like this—no smell, no taste, sobbing hysterically when he comes—makes the sex a lot better for Xavier, and it occurs to him that Molly probably knows that.

  They fall asleep for a while and then they both wake up at the same time and rush around so they won’t be late to meet Molly for the moonlight nature hike she’s decided they’re going on. Hogging the bathroom as usual, Jillian calls out to him, “Homer did okay blind.”

  “Yeah,” he grins. “Dude wrote awesome poetry.”

  She must not have heard him because when she comes back to get dressed she says, “He got so fuckin’ independent he moved out. We saw him around and he’d let us pet him and he’d eat from Molly’s hand but he wouldn’t come home. Didn’t need us. Seriously pissed her off. Remember?”

  Xavier does remember that and Molly’s files of notes on her laptop. Gelling his pompadour even bigger than before Jillian messed it up, he thinks to ask, “How did Homer lose his eyes, anyway? Did we ever know?”

  Jillian takes a toke from the pre-concert joint and passes it to him. Tightly she answers, “Catfight, wasn’t it?”

  He sucks in the smoke and says in that same cartoony voice, “I don’t think so,” but she waves him off and they hurry out the door. Molly doesn’t like to be kept waiting. It’s a huge relief on the train when Xavier realizes he’s buzzed, just like always, even though he can’t taste or smell the weed.

  Living without two of his senses turns out not to be all bad. That in itself is weird; he doesn’t know if it’s pitiful or admirable that a human being can adjust to any damn thing.

  Things he doesn’t see coming can seriously depress him—odorless wood smoke that still makes his eyes water, pumpkin pie slimy and sickening without the taste he’s never liked anyway, his parents’ messy Christmas tree that might as well be fake now that he doesn’t get the pine fragrance. But he’s doing okay, better than okay. Most of the time he’s calmer than he’s ever been. He feels safer, which is bizarre. He can follow conversations better, organize stuff like grocery lists and his checkbook, and stay with his art for longer periods of time without getting distracted. All that is of great interest to Molly.

  He graduates, takes a few additional computer courses over the summer and finds a computer graphics job because no one makes a living in fine arts anymore, gets into collages and assemblage pieces that seem to actually come out of his odorless and tasteless new world, or out of how his vision and hearing and tactile senses are moving in to where smell and taste used to be, or something. He gets a couple of shows and a mention in the neighborhood paper. Three of his pieces sell.

  At work and at the galleries he meets new people and starts doing things with friends besides Jillian and Molly or by himself, which is a first. He even has dates with a few new women, one of whom he thinks for a week or so he might be falling in love with until he hears from somebody else that she’s moved out of town. Pissed off and embarrassed, maybe hurt, he builds a 5’x 6’ walk-in assemblage piece with all kinds of shit jutting out and thrusting up from the bottom and hanging down in your face, textures and shapes in juxtapositions he doesn’t think about but just knows in ways he maybe wouldn’t if he still had to deal with all five senses bringing him input from the wide world. That piece is a little hard to place, but a gallery downtown puts it in the building lobby and Xavier likes to lurk around anonymously watching people staring at it but hesitant to go inside it. He sympathizes. He never wants to go inside it, either, but once he does he doesn’t want to come out.

  He still paints now and then although it bothers him that he can’t smell the oils. The oil smell wasn’t good for you—his painting instructors used to harp on how you had to be careful and ventilate your studio well, or use acrylics, but he never liked acrylics. Now he’s probably getting the brain damage without the odor. Whatever. These new paintings have huge electric arcs of color, faces with deep layers of tissue and bone exposed, starved bodies holding candles in amorphous dark corners.

  “You seem happy,” Molly observes in her very clear voice. They’re looking at the big assemblage. It’s the first time she’s seen it. Jillian helped him construct it in the first place a
nd then de-construct, move, and put it up here. “Why are you happy?”

  “Why not?” He speaks quietly because she’s talking too loud. Her voice echoes in the lobby and people on the other side of the assemblage look at her. Xavier suddenly doesn’t want her here.

  “I didn’t say you shouldn’t be happy. I want you to be happy. I just didn’t think you would be, after all that’s happened. And I’m interested in why.”

  “Why what?”

  Molly turns to face him. To face him down. She sets her feet shoulder-width apart and crosses her arms in her don’t-screw-with-me-asshole stance. “Xavier. You’ve lost two of your senses, so you should be getting only about sixty per cent of the normal sensory input. I’d have thought that would handicap you. But it seems to have made you more centered or at peace or something. Inspired you. How does that work?”

  Enraged like he’s never been at anybody before in his life, Xavier wouldn’t mind having a scene with Molly right here and now—it’s overdue—but not while there are people looking at his art. He grabs her arm and pulls her out onto the street, down the block, into an alley strewn with garbage he can’t smell. Probably there are other odors in here, too, other tastes in the air, piss and booze and cooking smells from the back doors of restaurants. He expected her to resist, hoped she would so he could overpower her, but she didn’t, and now she stands there against the stained brick wall half-smiling and watching him, which makes him even more furious. “Stop it!” he hisses. “Just stop, Molly, give it up!”

  Her hair is short again and she runs a hand over it. His palm tingles with the feel of it, a cellular memory. “Stop what? What am I doing?” He knows her, has known her for a long time, and there’s something wrong about the tone of her voice.

  “You’re such a fuckin’ control freak! You always have been! You set people up, and you make things happen, and you take notes, and it’s all so goddamn interesting, isn’t it, Molly?” To keep from shaking her, he’s pacing, kicking at things. He throws a half-full Corona can against a dumpster and beer splatters into his face but he doesn’t taste it. Of course he doesn’t taste it, or smell it, either.

  Molly declares, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Xavier doesn’t know what he means, either, and the anger seeps out of him, leaving despair. He mutters, “Just leave me alone,” and stalks off. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Molly follows him. She doesn’t even call his name. When he gets back to the house late that night, so stoned he can hardly walk and so depressed he hardly cares, Jillian is waiting for him. “What?” he mumbles, wanting nothing more than to collapse in bed alone.

  She takes him in her arms and he thinks he might throw up but he doesn’t have the strength to pull away. “We’ve got to get away,” she whispers. “We’ve got to get away from her.”

  “From who?”

  She claps her hand over his mouth hard enough that he feels slapped. “Shut up. I already packed your stuff. Let’s go.”

  “You packed my stuff?” He’s incredulous, in a fuzzy sort of way.

  “I don’t know where she is. She could be back any second. Come on.”

  “No,” he says.

  “Xavier, don’t be an idiot. You’re in danger. We both are, but especially you. She’s fuckin’ crazy.”

  “Who? Molly?”

  “Shut up!”

  “I’m not leaving, Jillian. You do what you gotta do, but things are going too good for me here.” That’s a lot of words for him to say in his current state, and he sits down hard on the floor.

  “She hurts you.”

  “Well, yeah, but she doesn’t mean to. It’s just her way.”

  “She means to, Xavier. And she’s going to hurt you more. I don’t know how, exactly, but she’s going to.”

  “Probably.” This is all so absurd. He’s giggling.

  They hear Molly at the back door and Jillian gives one more tug at his hand, then drops it, grabs her backpack, and runs out the front. Xavier passes out right where he is and vaguely realizes Molly is putting him to bed. Vaguely, it feels nice.

  Molly’s sick with mumps. She says she never had it as a kid and Xavier knows this could be serious. “How’d you get mumps?” he asks her tenderly, not really to find out but as a way of saying he’s sorry she feels so terrible.

  “My cousin’s kids all have it. I was over there the other day.”

  “Should’ve stayed home.”

  “I know. Wouldn’t be sick and Jillian wouldn’t be gone.” She looks so pitiful. She puts her arms around his neck and pulls him down for a long kiss. He gets into bed with her and they make out for a while, have sex. He wouldn’t think she’d feel like it and it pleases him that she wants him even when she’s sick. She’s feverish. She falls asleep and he tucks her in, only then thinks about contagion and calls his mom to see if he had mumps when he was little. He didn’t.

  When Molly’s just getting better Xavier comes down with mumps, swollen glands like alien life forms under his neck, fever dreams, puking. Now and then he gets up to paint, and when he can’t hold a brush anymore he dips his fingers into the paint and applies it to the canvas directly. He stands there, struggling to work, leaving only when he has to go to the bathroom. In the mirror he sees he has smeared paint all over his face and into his hair, raised rainbow squiggles and blotches adding to the hairline scar. Pleased with the effect, he wonders how long he can leave it there without doing damage to himself, and if he even cares about doing damage.

  At some point he may have lost consciousness. When you’re living the dream, you can never be sure if you’re awake or if you’re dreaming.

  “She tried to take your hearing,” Jillian says, above him. They’re above him a lot, floating around like angels, closer to heaven than he can ever possibly be. It makes him jealous and sad. “Do you remember coming to the hospital?” Jillian holds his face still so that he has to look at her unless he closes his eyes and that’s too much trouble.

  He thinks he’s shaking his head. Jillian is holding up a hand full of papers, scribbles like mouse droppings or worm trails, disgusting and hard on the eyes. “Are those love letters?” Trying to smile, he manages to close his eyes instead.

  “It’s her notes, Xave. She was trying to take your hearing, nobody would believe me, but now I’ve found her notes! Your own parents wouldn’t believe me, but now we can both talk to them, and the doctors, and the police. We’ll tell them everything she’s done to you!” She starts crying. “And we’ll tell them what I’ve done, too, how I was a part of it.”

  “No.” He wants to say more but doesn’t really get what more there is to say.

  “Yes, yes! Just listen to this crap! ‘Labyrinthine viral infection, from mumps or another viral illness, is one cause of Idiopathic Sudden Sensory Hearing Loss. Difficult to estimate the odds, or the danger to myself if exposed, but X is weak and susceptible, always has been, and the concerts we go to are loud, and I always insist we sit up front. He winces, but he’s so inured to abuse, I don’t think he even knows he’s in pain. He has no idea I’ve been wearing ear plugs. But it’s taking forever. I can’t wait that long.’ And, shit, here, at the bottom, ‘intracochlear membrane rupture,’ she’s got in big letters, underlined! What do you think that means?”

  “You’re crazy!” Molly shouts, snatching the papers. Jillian tries to grab them back, and Xavier actually admires how strong and fast Molly is, keeping the papers away. “And stupid. And weak! Xave, she’s lying. She pulled that stuff out of a magazine and wrote it down! I saw her out in the waiting room writing and looking things up—-now I know what she was doing. She’s resented my relationship with you for years-—she wants you all to herself! I think she always has—she just doesn’t have the guts to fight for you like a real woman.”

  Molly slaps her. Jillian pushes Molly and they are fighting, throwing punches and scratching. Xavier is kind of excited but so shut down all he can do is watch from a distance.

  Though Molly is a good three inche
s shorter and thirty pounds lighter, she has Jillian’s hands twisted up behind her back. Jillian’s hair streams over Molly’s face. “I’ve already told your parents and the doctors about her-—nobody believes her!”

  “Fuck you!” Jillian kicks backward and Molly gets her onto the floor. “Xave, listen to me—”

  From where she half-sits, half-lies on top of Jillian, Molly almost whispers, “I’m going to get you home, Xavier. I’m going to get you better.”

  His parents said they wanted him to come home with them, but Xavier didn’t notice them arguing much when Molly said she would take care of him. They’ve never known what to do with him, and the truth is they’re good with just visiting, bringing him tasteless food, chatting about crap that means even less to him now than it ever did, and leaving the rest of him to Molly. They trust Molly. They’ve always been clueless. So has he, in a different way, and that’s why he needs Molly.

  So he’s home. “You’re safe on my watch, good buddy,” she says and laughs, over and over again until it isn’t funny anymore, if it ever was.

  She tells him Jillian is in a psych ward. Everybody says she needs lots of help, rest, time to get herself better. He misses her, but not very much.

  Clay and sculpting tools were waiting for him when he got out of the hospital, a welcome-home present. Molly says it’ll help his tactile sense. He’s never much liked the feel of clay, the intense tiny-grained squishiness of it, the particles under his nails and in the creases of his skin, but now he’s sitting up in bed with a newspaper-covered tray across his knees, in gray-blue twilight, pressing and digging at the gray-brown chunk, not thinking about what it is or what’s in it, just getting used to the feel.

  “I’ve made you some tea.” Coming into the room, Molly is all smiles. She sees the clay, his fingers in the clay, the clay glistening and moving. “Ooh, that’s sweet.” She reaches toward the bulbous shape coming out from between his hands but she doesn’t quite touch it. Kissing the top of his head, she croons, “You’re so talented.”