Spider on My Tongue

by Wright, T. M.

  Good God, all of us are seduced by phantoms. I'm not unique. I'm simply someone who has decided to tell the tale and, so, relive the events. But the tale has already been told, and this is a brand new tale that's as old as the sun itself. Just like you, and me, and poor Larry of the smashed head.

  Let's make a pact: I'll continue to write as long as you continue to read. Deal?

  I'm not going to try and make you believe this is a love story. It isn't. Not, at least, in the usual sense. When I hear

  the words "love story" I think of Ali McGraw and Ryan

  O'Neal, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Wooden Allen

  and Diane Keaton, Taylor and Burton, Streisand and Redford.

  I do not think of Abner E Cray and Phyllis Pellaprat.

  —A Manhattan Ghost Story

  THREE

  June 15, 1006, 4:32 PM

  Let me tell you something you need to believe: All things that have happened, all things that are happening, and all things that will happen, are one.

  Bullshit! you say? You may be right, but I think you're wrong. I, and Larry-of-the-smashed-head, and Detective Kennedy Whelan, still looking through the ether for murder, and Phyllis Pellaprat, who sheds her clothes and her skin with equal enthusiasm and effect, and my teasingly seductive cousin, Stacey (who may or may not, at this point, be on one side or the other of this universe), and the billions who have come and gone, or will eventually come and go, think you're as wrong as a right-hand turn on a left-hand curve.

  I had a dark beer once that made me sick. I'm still enjoying it, and I'm still getting sick from it. That's what existence is for, you know, and that's what it's all about, continuous enjoyment and regret. You didn't realize that? Where have you been all your corporeal life—dreaming of heaven?

  Here's what Larry-of-the-smashed-head said about heaven:

  "It's like expecting the Queen of England to wear a thong during a croquet match."

  It's all I could get out of him on the subject.

  And here's what another of the allegedly non-corporeal, a woman named Madge who used to tend tables at a restaurant in upstate New York, had to say:

  "Heaven is a place set up to keep us from knowing very much at all."

  "About what?" I asked.

  "About heaven, of course," she answered, and then bleeped out. Burp!

  And here's what my very, very late friend Art—who loaned me the upper West Side Manhattan apartment where I met Phyllis Pellaprat, had to say about it (before he became so very late): "Abner, you dream about heaven and you might as well be dreaming about your mucous membranes."

  "I don't know what the hell that means, Art," I said.

  "Of course you don't," he said. "That's the fucking point."

  ~ * ~

  7:12 PM

  I have no energy. They've sapped it It's all I can do to sleep, and I can't even do that. They've drained me, sapped me—they're vampires, wraiths, ghouls, viruses. They come and go, come and go, come and go: they bark questions, bark answers, become whole, then half.

  I have a regular kitchen here, in this little house in the woods. I have a big, cream-colored Mixmaster mixer, which I use often for things like mashed potatoes and white sauce, and I also have a new Tappan electric stove, with two full-size burners and two medium-size burners. The stove was delivered by a tall, bearded man named Steve who drove a large green van with the words "Steve's Appliances/Only the Best" emblazoned on the sides in red. Steve was friendly and chatty, and his legs were quite short. I was going to ask him about this but I didn't want to be rude. When he left, I gave him a small tip, which he accepted with a smile and a nod of his big head.

  "Do you believe in ghosts, Steve?" I asked as he was getting into his van.

  He looked back at me: "Ghosts?" he said.

  "Yes. Do you believe in them?"

  "Sure," he said. "I've seen them, in fact."

  "I have, too, I think," I said.

  "It was my mother I saw," he said. "She was washing her feet in my living room. She always loved to wash her feet. She looked very happy when she washed her feet. She'd been dead for two days, and there she was, washing her feet in my living room, with a huge smile on her face. It was very white, her face I mean."

  "I've never seen that," I said.

  He looked oddly at me, as if I had an ear in the middle of my forehead, said, "Uh-huh," closed the van's door and drove away.

  ~ * ~

  10:26 PM

  These things all about me, in the house and in the countryside and in the woods, even insert themselves into my food. I used to enjoy eating (and obviously still do), but now I find unwanted entities in my squash.

  ~ * ~

  June 161 2:01 AM

  The trick is to keep moving, not just around the block, or from one side of the room to the other (though it helps), but mentally, too, intellectually, emotionally, too. Don't alight on one thought or memory for too long because that's when they insinuate themselves on you.

  Of course, you're not aware of any of this. In reality, you have lived what I've lived, but you don't know it. I'm telling you, now.

  ~ * ~

  7:11 AM

  It looks like a trick, like an evasion—changing the subject. I'll write about tires, for instance. Stoves, too. And mortal lovemaking on a sunny afternoon. I'll flit about from one thing to another. I'll throw myself into the kitchen and then into the living room. These things are not very quick to react (and why not?).

  If I slow down, I don't know what will happen.

  I dream of friends and acquaintances who've become vapors, less shadow than shadow, and in these dreams, I recognize them and interact with them. On a particular evening not long ago, one of these acquaintances took me to an amusement park, then to a carnival, where we played games of chance. He was very good at these games and the carnival barker was full of loud and hearty talk about my acquaintance's luck and skill. My acquaintance, whom I once called Mitch, got puffed up by all this hearty talk. His face became red and his smile became huge and, at last, his luck ended all at once and I was alone at the carnival.

  Do you like carnivals? I do. They're seamy. I like seamy. I think it gets appetizingly close to the what of us.

  ~ * ~

  8:35 AM

  About the skin of these things:

  Go to a car graveyard. Make sure it's an ancient car graveyard, one that hasn't been used for decades, which would mean that it couldn't be sold because the owners would have to drag all those old cars out, first, and then reclaim the land by cleaning up oil spills, gasoline spills, anti-freeze spills.

  In this ancient car graveyard, find the oldest car and touch it. Assumedly, that car is, by now, completely golden brown with rust. But it's beyond that, you see. It's beyond being simply "brown with rust." The rust has become so pervasive, so earnest, so destructive that the sheet metal of that car (a '57 Desoto, a '61 Falcon, who knows?) has been reduced to nothing more than a patina, no thicker, really, than the bright new paint that once covered it. So when you touch it (that skin, that patina), your finger goes through it at once. But that's not the whole story. Stake out the car, that Desoto, that Falcon, and return to it in ten years. And go there on a day when a good breeze has been forecast (Look for a cold and windy day today, folks!) then stand back from the car and watch as the wind blows the car's skin (its patina) into dust, leaving only the frame.

  Now, as you watch that car disintegrate in the brisk wind, think of skin a thousand times as thin. That's the skin that covers these acquaintances who populate my dreams.

  That's the skin of these things all around me, too—inside and outside my little house.

  But there is, you see, no wind to blow that skin away, because no heat and cold exists in their world to produce wind, and, as well, no air (nitrogen, oxygen, argon). It is a world as still as a snapshot.

  ~ * ~

  10:21 AM

  How often do you (you, reading this) hear daily the chatter of neighbors? It's usually unint
elligible; we hear it through walls and windows and floors (if the neighbors live below us), and, if we have animals (dogs especially), their ears perk up, and they look attentive, interested in this new set of untranslatable but surely human noises.

  Through floors or walls, it's usually less human sounding than through windows. But, more often than not, it is quick and meaningless, except in pitch, and it is devoid of music or rhythm. It sounds as if it's not connected to our world at all.

  ~ * ~

  12:02 AM

  Before she left not too long ago, my wife began to sense what was going on here, in this house, and around it. One afternoon, she said, "I hear people talking."

  "No you don't," I said, and she looked at me with great suspicion. "Abner," she said, "I know what I hear. How can you tell me I don't?"

  "I'm not," I said. "I'm not doing that. I'm just saying that there's no way you can hear people talking because we're the only people in the house."

  "Clearly, that's not true," she said. Her eyes were pale green, very expressive, and, at that moment, they were expressive of rebuke, which was not uncommon. She paused, looked slowly right, left. "My God!" She held her hand up, palm out, as if to stop me from speaking, though I wasn't about to speak. "My God," she repeated, "I can hear them even now. I can hear them talking."

  "Lorraine," I said, "you have to be wrong because I can't hear anything."

  She cocked her head at me. It was a pretty head and I enjoyed looking at it. "You're trying to infer that I'm going crazy, aren't you?"

  "Not 'infer,’" I said. "Imply."

  She looked silently at me a moment. "Don't do that, Abner. Don't correct my English. You always do that. Why?" Brief pause. "Never mind." She took a quick glance left, right, then her eyes were on me again. "Jesus, Abner, they're talking about us!”

  I said nothing. I think I sighed. I wanted to say, "Of course they are."

  She was gone from the house two days later.

  I had a friend in Bangor who had a nice, dirty blond beard and a

  round, gentle face, and whenever he went into a laundry near his

  home, the proprietors—two aged Chinese men named Lu and

  Yang—smiled at him when he came through the doorway and

  shouted, “Hey, Jesus Christ, how are you doing?" My friend told

  me that story quite a lot, and I always enjoyed it; it tickled me.

  His name was Sam Feary. He was two years older than I, a bit

  chunky, with a splash offreckles across the bridge of his nose. He

  looked like one of the Campbell Soup kids grown up and a few

  pounds lighter.

  —A Manhattan Ghost Story

  FOUR

  July 19, 2006, 6:07 AM

  Can't you see I'm trying to be logical about this! Can't you allow me at least that much! And if I can't be logical, then at least let me be orderly. Let me, at the very least, assign parameters—if only in the form of numbers, spacing, categorization. Certainly you understand that need.

  When I was younger, and in a very different situation, and the world became too much for me, or I was sad because of a failed test, or the sickness of a pet, or a death, I went around polishing things—doorknobs, faucets, silverware. Then I looked at my face or my hand or the room in the surface of what I'd polished and it made me momentarily happy. I don't do that anymore. I don't run around polishing things. Now I put words down on paper—word after word after word—in order to tell my stories, in order to give you an idea of the life I've led and the life I'm leading, what may be in store for me, and what in the name of heaven I think it all means, as if it's supposed to mean anything at all.

  Now I simply write.

  ~ * ~

  6:09 AM

  And so, "FOUR."

  ~ * ~

  6:15 AM

  Thank you.

  ~ * ~

  7:45 AM

  Yes, Lorraine left and hasn't returned. That was some weeks ago. She didn't say goodbye, didn't leave a note, didn't give me any warning whatever. Was I happy to see her go? Yes. She desired it, obviously. Desired to leave. Needed it. I can't leave, however. Where would I go? There's no place to go. It's all the same place; it's all this place.

  ~ * ~

  8:23 AM

  You don't need to sleep anymore. I do. Remember that. It's important. (Or maybe you do sleep. Maybe you need it as much as I, perhaps more. I have no real idea unless you tell me. I have no way to judge otherwise. There are people nearby, within a mile or two, in a little village whose name escapes me. I go to that village now and again for food. I walk there, with my little tote bags flung over my shoulder (both tote bags sport a graphic of beagle puppies; I had half a dozen beagles when I was a kid, and their pleasant, affectionate and intelligent faces still charm me), and, after doing my shopping, I talk with the man behind the counter for a minute—he's tall and bald and very thin, and he loves to talk, though his conversation is banal, which is okay, sometimes, almost comforting. But then I feel the tug of my little house, and when I leave the store, I often encounter people walking on the village's only street and I nod and smile, and they nod and smile back at me, but I don't know any of them, I don't live with them, I live with these others), I trudge back with my bread and eggs and cider and peanut butter, et cetera, et cetera, in my beagle puppy tote bags.

  When I walk back from the village and I see this little stand of woods, I'm always ambivalent about it. These woods shelter my home, this little house, which gave me good shelter for a time, though, now, it shelters these others, too, the ones who follow me on my way out, down a narrow path that winds through the woods to a clearing, where I can see the village not far off (it's almost a picture-postcard; church steeple, red and green roofs, a farmer's windmill and two tall silos further off). And when I reach the edge of the woods, on my way to that village, I can feel them drop away. A few trudge after me for a while, yes, but, after a couple of minutes, I turn and see that they've dropped away, as well. I don't think it's sunlight or, beneath a sky filled with clouds, the daylight that draws them back. I can't say what draws them back. Perhaps they realize I have nowhere else to go, that, before long, I'll return to the little house in the dim woods and, so, to them.

  ~ * ~

  8:29 AM

  And thank you for the spacing, the asterisks and chapter numbers.

  ~ * ~

  8:45 AM

  I don't know whose story I'm telling, really—my own or theirs (yours). It would have to be both, of course, since there really is no difference between them (you) and me. How could there be? Is there any real difference between the soil in Montana and the soil in Palermo? Is there any real difference between time that's passed and time that's being measured?

  ~ * ~

  8:48 AM

  I do not thank the now-late (I assume) Barbara W. Barber for her gift, so long ago. A kiss, a curse, a legacy of nightmare. If only I hadn't boarded that train. If only I'd had the good sense to sit in a different car. If only I hadn't caught her eye. I would have remained blissfully ignorant and unaware. Now I exist at the center of chaos. Now I cannot say that I am one of the dead or one of the living because I can define neither, because it's become so abundantly and horrifyingly clear to me that no one can. Neither they (you), nor I.

  I can not say that I am not a part of the passing misery.

  I can only say that I really do shop for peanut butter and eggs in a tiny village whose name I forget, and that I talk there with a tall, thin, bald man whose conversation is meaningless.

  I can only say that I wake every morning at precisely 5:45 with an oddly dull pain moving through my entire body (and sometimes it doesn't feel like physical pain at all but merely the memory of pain) which subsides, but never vanishes, as the morning progresses, and that these others around me in my little house, and in the dim woods beyond, are as present as air and as visible as darkness.

  ~ * ~

  10:21 AM

  And Barbara W. Barber wasn't even att
ractive.

  ~ * ~

  12:45 PM

  During those first awful years in Manhattan, after Phyllis Pellaprat dissipated, I ran. Of course. You get spooked, you feel threatened, you become paranoid, you run. Oldest human failing in the book. Because when you (they) run, they (you) follow. You run, they follow. They run,you follow.

  And there they (you) are—at the corner, around the block, asleep on an awning, under a table, sitting at the table and enjoying a stiff drink, piloting yellow cabs, grinning vacantly, or rabidly, from behind windows and locked doors, begging for change, giving change, holding hands and kissing and playing hopscotch, screeching like owls selling puppies on busy streets, asking, endlessly, for an elevator to be held.

  These are the things I knew about Phyllis Pellaprat after our first

  week together, at Art DeGraff's apartment: I knew that she was

  intelligent, that she was incredibly sensual, that she liked to play

  Yahtzee—Christ, she liked to play Yahtzee—and I knew also

  that she was not a romantic. This disappointed me because I am

  a romantic; I have always been a romantic—the words I love

  you fly easily from my lips. And when I said to her, for the very