The Man Who Melted

by Jack Dann

  But Mantle could feel her anxiety, her distance.

  “I'm intruding, aren't I?” she asked, but it was more a statement than a question. “It's Josiane.”

  Mantle nodded. He could not bridge the distance; perhaps it was him.

  “I'm going downstairs,” Joan said. “We'll leave tomorrow morning if that's agreeable to you. We owe them the night, at least. And Faon wants to talk to us again, kind of a counseling session to ensure that we won't kill each other with love.” She laughed at that, her bitterness as plain as a pikestaff, and stood up to leave the room.

  “Joan…?” Mantle asked.

  She paused at the door, then turned to him. Mantle tried to open himself to her, and for an instant, a current flowed between them, revealing what could not be spoken. She smiled sadly at him, and left the room.

  FIFTEEN

  Joan awakened the next morning in Faon's bed. Curtains were drawn across the windows, and the room was dim. Faon moaned, said something incomprehensible in her sleep, and moved closer to Joan, who was staring at the jigsaw puzzle of cracks in the ceiling. Joan looked at Faon, lying naked beside her, and thought about Ray.

  You tried to be the perfect fiancé last night out of guilt, didn't you, Ray. But your thoughts were already centered on Josiane. You've slipped away so easily again. I was warned that this might happen, but I didn't expect it to be so soon.

  I hate you….

  Stop it, you slut, you tried to kill him once, isn't that enough for you?

  “Joan, relax, it's all right,” Faon said, her voice hoarse. She was a heavy sleeper and snored during the night.

  “I'm sorry I woke you,” Joan mumbled.

  “You're shaking, what's the matter?”

  Joan sat up, leaned back against the pillows and headboard, and brought herself under control. The shaking subsided. “I should have been with Ray last night.”

  “Well thanks for the compliment,” Faon said, smiling.

  “I didn't mean it like that,” Joan said, remembering how Faon had kissed and caressed her.

  “I know you didn't.”

  “But Ray didn't want me last night: I read his thoughts. He was thinking about Josiane.”

  “You both needed time away from each other,” Faon said. “The connection that you have with Raymond will take some time to adjust to. And you'll just have to get used to glimpsing his thoughts of Josiane. He can't help thinking about her. She represents the past, his—”

  “I know that! But I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'll hurt him again”—she shuddered—“or kill him, as I tried to do at the pool. But I don't want to lose him. I can't lose him.” Joan started shaking again, and Faon touched her hair, her face.

  “Of course you can lose him, just as I could lose Pretre,” Faon said softly.

  “It's not the same,” Joan said. “You didn't kill Pretre.”

  “Nor did you kill Raymond.”

  “But I tried to, God forgive me.”

  “You're slipping back into old ways of thinking,” Faon said. “The church wants Raymond, the Criers in the dark spaces are calling him. You can't hold yourself responsible for what happened at the pool. You would not have tried to kill Raymond if the Criers on the other side had not prompted you and used the strength of your emotions.”

  “It was me, not the Criers.”

  “You must understand that Raymond is, inevitably, on his way to the dark side,” Faon said. “He made himself vulnerable to the Criers to find his wife.”

  “No,” Joan said, “he's not promised to the church. What happened at the pool had nothing to do with Screamers. It was me!”

  “So now you call them Screamers, as if you were an outsider.”

  “That's how I feel,” Joan said, drawing away from Faon.

  “I know this is all happening too fast for you, but you must believe in the church.”

  “Believe in the church?” Joan asked, her voice rising and cracking. “After you just told me that the fucking Criers tried to kill Ray?”

  “Stop it!” Faon said. “If the Criers take Raymond, there will be no death for him. That should be what you want if you love him in a proper way. If you lost him now, you'd have him forever.”

  “I can't believe that anymore,” Joan said.

  “But you've seen the holy Criers and the dark spaces.”

  Joan was silent.

  “You can't save him without the church,” Faon continued. “He's like a raging volcano. He's dangerous to you and others and himself. Only the Criers can help him.”

  “I can help him,” Joan insisted.

  “He will say that he's going to stay with you always,” Faon said, “but the compulsion to find Josiane will come back and he'll leave you. There's something odd about his amnesia. It seems to me that he's using it so as not to face something terrible. You must be careful.”

  Joan stared at the patterns in the ceiling. She felt lost, isolated, as if everything and everyone had receded from her.

  “If you need me, I'll always be there for you,” Faon said. “And you will always have the church, no matter how you feel about it now.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then you must help him,” Faon said. “You know what he is.”

  Joan closed her eyes, as if she could forever blot out Faon, the church, and the Criers who ruled the dark spaces.

  “He is a seed crystal,” Faon said, and then she leaned over and kissed Joan good-bye on the lips.

  Joan and Mantle rode silently in the transpod. The sunny day and breathtakingly beautiful countryside seemed like a huge joke at her expense, as if the world, which was usually so distant and ugly and foreboding, could appear so superficially friendly when she felt sick to death of it. Although she didn't show it, Joan was exhausted. Normally, her face became pale when she was tired, but the flush of yesterday's sunburn was a camouflage.

  It was a short walk from the station in Cannes to Mantle's house in Old Town. A painter was putting the last touches on the trim; the entire house had been painted exactly the same stil-de-grain yellow it had been before, but now it looked clean. Although Joan had never been inside the house, she had often passed it, as if proximity could salve her heart. It was masochistic, she had always told herself, for she always felt worse when she lost control and did that; he would be inside doing who-knows-what, thinking about anything and anyone but her. During those times, she never felt more alone, or more isolated. And then she would become angry with herself, tell herself that she wasn't seventeen and in love, and go home or to the club to pick someone up, a friend who would at least be familiar in bed.

  “The house looks nice,” she said, nervous now that she was about to enter it. Everyone else had been inside, she told herself. Why should you give a fuck? Everyone but me. The houses on either side of Mantle's looked dismal by comparison.

  “Sonofabitch,” Mantle said. “He never gives up.”

  “Well, it does look nice.”

  “Now the neighbors will expect me to paint their houses, just to keep faith. He knows that.” And Mantle smiled and said “sonofabitch” again under his breath.

  “Why are you giggling?” Joan asked, feeling shaky; that old feeling of awkwardness, of swelling hands. Suddenly she realized that she didn't want to go inside, that she had wanted him to keep his home as secret as he wished. What she wanted would not be found there, not now. But, somehow, she did want to see it, but alone, not when Pfeiffer was waiting for them. Not to have it pushed into her face that he had got there first.

  “He's just paying back an old debt,” Mantle said, pausing at the steps. “When we were schoolmates, I painted his apartment. He complained bitterly for the entire semester that he liked it better dirty. You see, I had painted it with a rather loud color that made it nearly impossible for any of us to study there for any period of time.” He chuckled again. “We all took to working in the library after that.” Then he climbed the stairs; Joan followed. Through all that hate and estrangement, he still loves him, Joan tho
ught.

  More than me, she thought as she climbed the stairs behind him. The hallway's depressing. God, I don't want to go inside. If he'd wanted me to see it…

  “Well, the prodigals return, safe and sound,” Pfeiffer said. She couldn't see him yet; he was standing just behind the doorway. The light from the apartment cut smokily into the hall; obviously only available light from the windows. “How do you like the new façade?”

  “The elephant never forgets,” Mantle said, stepping into the living room. He turned to Joan, who was standing in the doorway, nervous about coming into the apartment. As soon as she saw Pfeiffer, she had begun to blush.

  Something passed between her and Mantle.

  Jesus, he doesn't need my okay to talk to Pfeiffer, Joan thought as she walked into the room.

  “You're looking well,” Pfeiffer said to her, but she could not meet his stare.

  “What the hell were you doing organ gambling?” Mantle asked Pfeiffer. “That's—”

  “That's not like me, is it?” Pfeiffer said. “Well, I'm not the stuffy book you think me to be. Even I need to take chances, to feel alive. Frankly, I was worried about you.”

  “And that's what made you organ gamble,” Mantle said.

  “Yes, in part….”

  “Then why did you fade out and leave Joan in the hospital?”

  “I made the arrangements, I…wait a moment, I'll be right back.” And Pfeiffer left the room. He returned a few seconds later and handed Mantle a wallet. “You left this near the ruins, my friend. I believe I've saved your ass.”

  “Roberta told me that everything had been taken care of; I thought she had someone in the police….”

  “Well, I'm the someone,” Pfeiffer said. “So, you see, I didn't just ‘fade out.’ Anyway, everything has been wiped, all records, and you owe me quite a sum. I went into the hole for this.”

  “So what do you want, a medal?” Mantle asked.

  “I thought a simple ‘thank you’ would have been sufficient.”

  Mantle turned and went into the sitting room where he kept a small bar, and returned with a Campari for Joan. She accepted it, although she really didn't care for a drink. A narcodrine would have been better, but she had promised herself never to take another one. Once, she had scammed down so low that she attempted suicide; not so long ago….

  “Carl, a drink for you?”

  Pfeiffer shook his head, and Mantle did not fix a drink for himself. Something was in the air, something ancient and human. They were reenacting the mythology of their relationship. The telepathic images of Mantle's anger and envy and love and hate were palpable, and Joan closed herself from him, for she was embarrassed and repelled. She didn't want to glimpse the ugly pettiness that underlay his strength and goodness. Instead, she sat down on a comfortable sofa and looked at the paintings that filled the walls, the portraits that seemed to instantly appear as if seen from one angle and then another. She saw herself in one of them; it was in an ornate frame. An oceanscape, of all things. She looked away from it, somehow terrified to study it any longer, afraid of what she might find. Jesus, she thought, this is his world, how he sees it, and us….

  “You never gave anything away for nothing in your life, Carl,” Mantle said as he leaned against a bookcase opposite Joan.

  “That's wrong, especially coming from you, and unfair.” Pfeiffer paced around the room, then stood beside a floral-figured easy chair to stare at a fantastical painting on the wall above it. “You really haven't changed: you're still as paranoid as you used to be.”

  “But I don't spend my sleeping hours walking about and shouting that the ceiling's caving in.”

  “I must still do that,” Pfeiffer said, turning toward Mantle, “because just last night I found myself hanging out the window over there.” He pointed toward the bedroom where he slept.

  Joan looked at Pfeiffer; that didn't sound at all like him.

  “So now we've both lost someone,” Pfeiffer said, as if out of the blue. “Can we stay here together until I must leave?” Pfeiffer looked at Joan for an instant, as if to include her in his plans.

  “Jesus Christ, Carl, I think you've gone over the edge,” Mantle said.

  Pfeiffer laughed and said, “That sounds familiar.”

  Joan felt Mantle's frustration and ambivalence.

  “I propose a vacation to resolve the past and cement the future,” Pfeiffer said, and he produced three cardboard tickets, faded pink. “Joan, come over here. Now, perhaps, I can tell you that I was very worried about you. I'm very pleased Raymond brought you back.”

  “What are they?” Joan asked, walking over to Pfeiffer to examine the tickets.

  “Look closely.”

  “They look like old cinema tickets—why, they must be ancient,” Joan said. “These are steamship tickets for the Titanic,” she said, genuinely impressed.

  “That they are, for a voyage on the Royal Mail Steamship herself. This is going to be the media event of the year, and I have a ticket for each of us to New York harbor.”

  Joan felt something from Mantle, the feather touch of a thought, his old fear of being unmasked and betrayed. How could Pfeiffer know of his plans to return to New York?

  Coincidence, Joan thought, trying to communicate that to Mantle. But Joan wanted Mantle to accept Pfeiffer's offer. There were three tickets. Joan would have Mantle for a little longer, and every moment was precious, for he might change, he might stop looking for Josiane—anything was possible. Joan closed herself to Mantle and thought about him. She couldn't let him go….

  “Of course, you know the story of the Titanic,” Pfeiffer said, excited as a schoolboy, as if the great ship were a little toy.

  “Didn't it sink sometime in the eighteenth century?” Joan asked. “And was raised by some treasure hunters?”

  “It sank in the beginning of the twentieth century,” Mantle said, edging toward Joan and Pfeiffer. “But I thought the Saudis had bought it and were using it as a hotel.”

  “They did, almost a hundred years ago to the day,” Pfeiffer said. “They bought it from the Titanic Salvage Group for an exorbitant amount of money to embarrass the English. It was completely restored, exactly as it was, and kept in the harbor at Salwa as a sort of pleasure palace for dignitaries. But over the years the Saudis lost interest, and they sold it to an American conglomerate this year. Now it's getting a new lease on life, so to speak.

  “And as if by a miracle, I managed these three tickets,” Pfeiffer continued. “Will you accept them?” He looked at Mantle, then at Joan. “Raymond, the past is done. I need to be with you, I need company, help, whatever you want to call it. You came to me once in a similar situation—”

  “I don't remember.”

  “You lived with me for more than a month until you resolved your differences with Josiane.”

  “I don't remember.”

  “Yes, you do,” Joan said. “You just don't remember Josiane, but you once told me that you stayed with Carl, that he kept you together. You said it was in your diary.”

  “It was Caroline who offered help—”

  “You said it was Carl.”

  “Do you want him to stay?” Mantle asked her, talking about Pfeiffer as if he weren't there.

  “Do you want me to stay?” Joan asked, feeling as if everything had suddenly collapsed again, that she had no business meddling, or even being here. But she had caught something from Mantle. She knew he was lying, lying to Pfeiffer and himself; and there was something else too, something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but something she sensed, about Pfeiffer: when they had hooked-in at the casino, Joan was certain that Pfeiffer was hiding something, was afraid of her seeing what he had buried. And he had been successful in keeping it from her. It was as if a professional psych had done the job—a common practice, especially in those industries where brainwashing was often used as a last resort. Perhaps that was it, Joan thought, just a piece of dangerous political or corporate information lying there like a bit of undig
ested pork.

  “I've asked you to stay, isn't that enough?” Mantle asked.

  “Yes, of course it is, and I love you for keeping yourself open to me. But I feel you're not being honest with yourself, and with Carl, for all your disagreements and misunderstandings in the past. Where is Carl?” she asked, looking around. But without waiting for an answer, she said, “I think it would be good for you to be with him, for all your misgivings. I sense that something might come of it.” She was talking in a whisper.

  “What do you mean?” Mantle asked, stepping even closer to her.

  “Something during the hook-in at the casino. I'm probably just adding fuel to the fire. But he does need you; perhaps this is the time to finally make repairs.”

  “What did you feel during the hook-in?” Mantle asked, insistent.

  “Something he's afraid of. Perhaps you can help him.”

  “Then you care about him.”

  “Don't you?”

  “Did you make love with him?”

  Joan nodded, relieved that Mantle had sensed something of a relationship between Pfeiffer and herself other than a cordial sticking-it-in.

  Pfeiffer appeared in the living room, his bag in hand. He walked over to the doorway leading to the stairs and said, “I think I've had enough, and I'm sorry I've imposed. Actually, though, this wasn't a bad scene as our scenes go.” He smiled. “Remember the time we had an argument and I ran into the bedroom, you ran downstairs, and Caroline had no idea what was going on?”

  “I believe she said that we should have gotten married, rather than you and she,” Mantle said. Then after a pause: “Stay, Carl, I owe you that.”

  “Not for debt,” Carl said, but he placed his valise on the floor. “Too much blood under the bridge for that. Not even for old time's sake. For real or nothing. I came here first because we always saw each other without masks.” He laughed. “I guess we've known each other too long, seen each other step on our respective dicks too many times. But I've options. You know me, Raymond. I've always got options.” Then to Joan: “And thank you. I can't explain it, but Raymond knows why I went organ gambling. I'm only sorry I caused you pain.”