I said this: "Shit, I'm a genius!"
I called her number and got her dad, whose name was Clifford, told him who I was, asked if he remembered me. “Bev's friend, right?" he said, and paused a moment. "The tall guy?"
"Uh-huh," I said. "I'm trying to locate her. I need to ask her a question."
Silence.
I added, "I need to ask her a question about fan blades."
"Fan blades'?" he said, as if he had no idea what fan blades were.
"It's a sort of a science question," I said, and went on, "So I thought..."
He cut in, “Bev died two years ago."
"Died?" I said.
"Yes. A boating accident," he said.
"Jesus, I didn't know. Jesus, I'm so sorry..."
He hung up.
~ * ~
7:24
They told me this not too long ago:
You do not see us or hear us or experience us or run from us or speak to us. You can not. Just as one current flowing in a river cannot embrace another.
I thought it was fucking lucid, though I had no idea what they were talking about.
I told them so.
They said nothing.
~ * ~
9:30 PM
I've learned about a phenomenon called resonance frequency, and it's the speed at which substances vibrate naturally. Speaker cones have a built-in natural resonance frequency. So does water. Air. Pine trees. Labrador retrievers. And, presumably, you and me and a keg of beer. Even reality itself. Or what passes for it
(reality). And them, too (the wraiths, things, spirits). These resonance frequencies vary from person to person and from object to object, and when they happen, naturally and unnaturally, between this reality and another (Their reality, the reality in which they exist), it's much like the fan blades and the TV screen (a phenomenon known as the "strobe effect": in a way, the TV picture "resonates" 30 times a second: the fan blade, moving at similar, but not exactly equal speeds, allows the light of the TV picture through at approximately the same rate, so the fan blades look as if they've slowed down: they become visible in front of the TV screen, although the other parts of the fan blades remain only a blur. I learned all this from my friend Bev herself (for whom I never lusted, although I loved her in that warm, friendly and incautious way we find ourselves loving bright, vivacious, good people who don't turn us on sexually), who died in a boating accident in her 29th year.
I'll never forget it," she said “I wouldn't even want to forget it. Do you mind if tell you about it, Abner?"
That was moments ago, here, in my little house in the dim woods.
I told her yes, I wanted her to tell me about the boating accident, I wanted to hear about her death.
She told me about the fan blades and the TV and the resonance frequencies instead. Then she added, “And that's sort of the reason you can see us, in the obtuse way that you see us, Abner, and how you can talk to us, and how we can communicate with you. Your resonance frequency approximates ours, just like the movement of the fan blades approximates the frequency of the TV. Capisce?"
So there you have it.
She has yet to tell me about her death.
She added this, too:
And, occasional, that stuff garbled and matted and full of red hair, for which there is no blame but the frequencies, there is this, in fact, there exists no blame but the frequencies, running into one the other, and making all the nonsense marvelous.
And she was gone.
~ * ~
ONE
I must congratulate myself, make a good pot of coffee, a nice raisin-nut cake, a casserole that pleases. Or maybe I'll open a good Merlot, toast with it to myself and my working brain, because, shit, I know so awfully much, now. I know why I see, and why I don't. I know who Phyllis was, and where she isn't, and Sam, as well. I even know, in oblique ways, who I really am (it's what we're all after, isn't it? Self knowledge), and why I'm here, in this dim house in the dim woods, and I know that Death wears many disguises and speaks in many voices. I know it believes itself immortal, too, and omniscient, even playful. And I know that all I know, everything I know (my name, my age, my place in the universe) is based, after all, on hunger, rationalization and ignorance (which is surely the beginning of wisdom).
It will be a good Merlot, then, and, to follow, a coconut cream pie, in congratulations.
I'll buy it at the village store, from the bald man whose name I can't remember and I'll urge him into a discussion of food.
I'll share the pie with the passing misery.
They'll be very pleased.
And so will I.
It will be like a party.
Perhaps we'll sing, and do some dancing, engage in heady conversation, solve the problems of the universe, nod and smile and know one another well.
Then, before they can flow away into one another (as they do), and make themselves scarce, I'll embrace them.
SEVEN
Illusion
I haven't learned to shield myself from them. I've been told there's a way to do it. But they insinuate themselves upon me almost continuously—if I'm eating my breakfast, usually shredded wheat and milk, no sugar, and I've just popped a spoonful of that crunchy stuff into my mouth, and I'm withdrawing the spoon, I see slow, dark movement reflected in the spoon: it isn't the movement of my mouth chewing or my eyes blinking, or the illusion of movement as I take the spoon away from my face, it's their movement, or his, or hers. And, even now—after I've experienced that movement five hundred times in the long months since I came here—I still whirl about in my chair and see them, or him, or her, fading into the ambient light that is the dim kitchen.
Or if I glance into the house's only mirror (it's small, oval, and sits on a wall in the short hallway leading from the living room to the kitchen), because a brief glance is all I can muster (a glance for reasons that might seem odd—to recall the contours of my face, to see if it still exists), and it's morning, just after sunrise, and the sun's light has filtered through the hallway, creating a kind of soft yellow haze, I see them gathering around me, as if I'm in an elevator and a crowd is boarding.
I hear them almost always. Their burps, their laughter, which, even when I believe it's right at my ear, sounds like laughter from another room. And I smell them, too—the biting odor of ionization, as if the air is painfully clean. And, quite often, I feel them breathing on my face, or my bare hands, or, when I've stepped out of the shower, on every part of my body, sometimes, though notably on my cock (Oh, God, I remember a time when it would have been impossible for me to make any reference to my cock, even in response to a doctor or nurse. I was raised to despise my cock, to fear it, and to "leave it alone." Phyllis went a long way toward giving me some love for it, though, because she loved it).
I seem to be repeating myself.
As I reread, I realize I'm repeating myself.
I wonder if I'm becoming a fool.
~ *~
30th
I'm thinking about the voice that called my name, "AAABBBNNNEEEERRRR." Phyllis drew it out like that at the end of our time together. "AAABBBNNNEEEERRRR." Perhaps it was a game she played—she had a great sense of humor; a lot of these people do. (Christ, is that the first time I've referred to them as "people"? I'll have to have a quick look backward.)
No, it isn't.
But that wasn't Phyllis saying "AAABBBNNEEERRRR." She isn't here. She's everywhere, sure, but she's not here. I'm here, they're here, but she's not here.
She could be here. That wouldn't be a problem for her. She's omnipotent and potentially omnipresent, I think. Her incredible sexuality makes her that way—omnipotent and omnipresent. She's the stuff that the march of generations is made of—lust and otherlife.
She as much as said so: "Look at me and ask yourself what you see and what the fuck you want, Abner." She is not alone in herself, ever—spread legs and a heaving chest; she is everywoman. And, sure, I am everyman. It fits, don't you think? I do.
If she is here, I want
to see her and touch her. Maybe that's who I feel on me after I leave the shower. What an idea! The wondrous and lustful wraith gives a passing blowjob to the fool in his little house.
~ * ~
12
Has it been years, now?
~ * ~
14
They lumber past my windows and peer in, mutter something I can't hear and, because their faces are little more than an oval blur, I can't read their lips, either, and so, at times, I simply give them a brisk, one-fingered salute, or I sigh, or look away, or close my eyes and wish that Barbara W. Barber had never been born.
~ * ~
18
It has been too long since I've eaten, of course.
They know this and I know too well it makes them happy. I can hear them laughing.
~ * ~
Noon
This is what I have in the kitchen:
Some soup in a can.
Some bread going moldy.
Something that might once have been mayonnaise.
A small pear.
Eggs I will not touch.
And I'm within walking distance of the little store where I bought this stuff in the first place. Sure it's a long walk. Hours, at best. But that's no matter; walking is no better or worse than sitting, which, over prolonged periods, causes bedsores and atrophy of the muscles, too.
It's reasonable that I should go there. To that little store. I'll buy more foodstuffs. I'll talk for a few long minutes to the bald man. I'll nourish myself.
And I'll leave them here, of course. They'll never follow. Personalities don't much interest them. They have no ties to me. They'll amuse each other, diddle with themselves amongst themselves.
You see, this: I don't want to starve to death and leave an unappealing corpse.
~ * ~
19
I will set out soon for there, then. And see if they follow.
~ * ~
19, late morning
I have returned, bearing nothing but departed people I have no hope of knowing.
~ * ~
20, morning
Sam Feary is certainly here, in this house, or around it: he knocked on my front door—he used the knock we used when we were young and we visited the house of the other: it's a double knock, pause, a single knock, pause, a double knock, pause, a double knock. We used this knock because we were pretending to be spies. We spied on everyone. We even spied on each other, though neither of us knew it until we were well into our teens and Sam was only a few weeks from performing his great act of stupidity—joining the Army and getting shuffled off to `Nam.
We spied on my mother and his mother. We spied, of course, on our fathers, our brothers and sisters, some of our teachers (we each had a very grave crush on a tall, leggy, redheaded science teacher named Miss White who had a perfect body, a perfect smile, a perfect walk, a perfect voice and perfect bedroom eyes (though neither of us knew that's what they were called when she was practicing her perfection on us at Bangor Junior High School), and who, we were both convinced, flirted with one or the other of us almost nonstop, both in and out of class, though she hardly ever spoke to us (we knew why; it was taboo for teachers to become involved with students; taboos were quite a turn-on, of course)).
But he's here, and I know it, because he used our knock last night, on my front door. Knock, knock, pause, knock, pause, knock, knock, pause, knock, knock. It said so much. It helped me to overcome my hunger, which was beginning to grate on me and making me focus on it, which I decided was pointless. And when I went to the door and found nothing but shadows upon shadows, it was okay, because I realized it was Sam's way of telling me he was here, at my house, but that he was playing the spying game, again, that he was ready to play the game, again.
So, now, not much later, a few hours at most, three or four hours, perhaps five hours at most, possibly six or seven hours, I'm still smiling, and I need to play the game.
~ * ~
The Afternoon of This Day
You see, there's this: they lumber along behind me, I lug them along behind me: I had a puppy once who grew into a dog, and, when he was a puppy, though not when he was a dog (and had become independent), he followed me throughout my days, close enough, at times, that I felt his small puppy body against my ankles and calves, and I looked down at him, now and then, and said something affectionate ("I love you, Galway," or, "I love you very much, Galway."), or I said, "I don't want to step on you, Galway," which was his name, after a writer I liked, and he looked at me with his oversize puppy eyes and I knew he understood nothing I was saying, and, of course, everything I was saying. So it's the same with these departed. I feel them, too. I see their oversize departed-people eyes staring at me throughout my days, and, then, throughout my nights, and in whatever dreams I have (which I want to remember, but can't; it's a shortcoming of age, or it's one of the perks of age—you can't remember the details of your dreams, but you can remember their very basic structure, and if it was pleasant, that structure, you look forward to sleep. I never look forward to sleep).
But the oversize eyes of these departed don't stare as much as settle, as if the mind beyond them (or behind them) is gone or is concentrating on some other topic—the life just past, maybe, or lovers, or the taste of food, which may or may not be past.
Hunger high into the bones.
I read that phrase somewhere. And I'm repeating it because I'm a hungry plagiarist.
Have you noticed how well I punctuate?
What a miraculous thing the mind is Its what computers are
patterned after. And the mind can figure out many things (how to
get someone to the moon, how to bring someone back from
schizophrenia, how to take an old, tired heart out of someone’s
chest and put a new one in), but it has trouble with other things.
Like the things that Phyllis and Madeline and the boy on East
80th Street introduced me to. The mind turns inward. The mind
stiffens up and says that it would rather leave such things alone.
Go to bed, it says. Get some new shoes, it says. Turn on
the tube and watch Love Boat, it says.
But the mind cannot fool itself long. At last it has to admit
that it has learned some very frightening things, some very
confusing things, but that it is still ignorant, too, and needs to
learn a lot more.
—A Manhattan Ghost Story
July 22
Phyllis is buried in a small cemetery in Brooklyn. No one gets buried in Manhattan anymore, without special dispensation—though she lived there, and was murdered there—because there's simply not enough room.
I've often wondered about bodies and cemeteries and spirit longings. Hasn't everyone? And now, here, in this little house, I wonder again, and I wonder more, because a quaint country cemetery stands only half a mile east, at the edge of these woods. I think that many of the departed who visit me here may have come from that cemetery.
But now, as I type, and think about it, that's foolish. And I realize I've always thought it was foolish. Cemeteries aren't places where people die, they're places where the dead are put after their resident souls have been liberated.
And it's an old cemetery, too. It dates to the late 18th century. Very old. And I see nothing about these departed to suggest they come from that time.
But that's neither here nor there, either.
Because most of these departed seem to be naked.
I have a theory: it just came to me (I'm very quick that way). It says this—these departed people appear naked, some of them, because, after a time, they begin to shed a lot of the artifice they carried with them from life, like the artifice that is clothing. They cling to it for a while (the artifice of clothing) because it represents an existence with which they had grown very familiar, so it's an existence they don't want to leave. But, before long (longer long in some, shorter long in others), they shed this artifice
, find their nakedness more real, more honest, more comforting. But, after a while (I know this), they shed that, as well (How can souls be covered by naked skin?). And then they—the departed—are completely shed of artifice—old and new artifice (old; the skin—new; nakedness). And they exist as whispers. After a while, though, that whispering becomes inaudible, even to them, and they, the departed, depart, presumably forever.
Neat theory, huh? I think so.
Here's the thing: I believe that I'm naked as I sit at my kitchen table and type this rambling, sometimes incoherent, always unreliable narrative.
Here's the relevant thing, however: I feel cold. I even believe, as I type, that I'm shivering.
Hunger high into the bones.
It feels like song.
~ * ~
10
Fixed my nakedness (which was a surprise—that nakedness: "Am I really naked?" I said to myself, and looked down at my little round belly and my other parts, which seemed to be retreating into my lower belly, and I decided I was indeed naked) and left my little house again, intent on that country store and foodstuffs. I remember what I liked: I liked chili very much, though not the spicy kind, and I always ate it with macaroni salad because the two tastes and textures complemented one another. And I loved cider, too, though it didn't complement the various tastes of chili. And I loved whole wheat bread, and lemon-poppy-seed muffins—so good on the tongue, with a great aftertaste.
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