The Man Who Melted

by Jack Dann

  “Cut the bullshit,” Mantle said, though not very seriously.

  “What does he mean?” Joan asked.

  “When Josiane left me the first time, I went to a place in—”

  “Kabul, in Afghanistan,” Pfeiffer interrupted as he left his valise by the door and walked to the center of the room. “I found you in a hospital there, remember?”

  “I used to have quite a fondness for gambling. I played something called Solitaire muliter. All the odds are against the player, which was why I played it, I guess.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Joan said, surprised. He was walled-in as he talked; she had only his words, none of the textures of his thoughts. Perhaps never would again, she feared.

  “I was mutilated quite badly. Carl can tell you the rest some other time.”

  “But…” Joan stopped herself. Whatever the mutilation was, he would have had it repaired surgically. Then she felt a blast of dark thought, a dart, an angry steel-scratching, and she felt his disgust mingled with her own. He had had his cock razored. “I shouldn't have come,” she said. “I should have kept my mouth shut, mind your own business, slut….”

  Mantle and Pfeiffer led her to the couch, sat down beside her.

  “You shouldn't have been put in the middle of this,” Pfeiffer said.

  “It was my doing. I knew you had things to work out between yourselves. I should have known better than to come. It was selfishness on my part.”

  “No, it wasn't,” Mantle said, “or if it was, it was the right kind of selfishness.”

  “We shouldn't have played out the past before you,” Pfeiffer said.

  “We had a similar fight once, which Caroline witnessed,” Mantle said, and Joan felt a change of mood. “Do you remember that one, Mister Ego?”

  Pfeiffer said, “I still think I was in the right,” but he smiled as if it was of no consequence, a joke at his expense. “Now, do you remember the umbrella?”

  “The what?” Mantle asked.

  “It was with Caroline, long before I really fell in love with her, before I found out how fragile she was.”

  “Not as fragile as you suspected though.”

  Pfeiffer was silent for a few beats, and then he said, “I think not, but the wheel turns, and she'll begin having episodes again. She might be fine for a year, two, or—who knows—maybe ten.”

  “But that's physiological, treatable. Certainly you're not still deluding yourself about that,” Mantle said.

  “Say what you will, but she's untreatable, at least over the long run. She adapts to her illness, so as to return to that state, just as we adapt to wellness.”

  “Bullshit,” Mantle said.

  “The umbrella?” Joan asked, sensing that there lay some sort of closure among them.

  “Well?” Pfeiffer asked Mantle, and Mantle smiled distantly, for he was remembering past events; Joan felt the touch of his thoughts, warm and also distant, as if coming from someone like Ray, yet different: younger, freer, happier.

  “Yes, I do remember,” Mantle said. “Jesus, it seems so long ago, so many relationships modeled upon it, partaking of it afterward.”

  “For you, not for me,” Pfeiffer said fussily.

  “It was simply a ménage à trois,” Mantle said. “But we all knew each other intimately anyway, that I suppose it was natural. You were particularly set on the idea, if I recall, because you were afraid of Caroline.”

  “Only to do that,” Pfeiffer said. To Joan he said, “Believe it or not, I was a virgin.”

  “She'd believe it,” Mantle said, chuckling. “That was quite a while ago, before we even reached university level. We were neighbors then—at least, Carl and I were. Caroline lived in Ithaca. Suburbia.”

  “It was more than a ménage à trois,” Pfeiffer said. “Don't demean something that was good and innocent. It was protection from the rain, from life. Remember when we went out into that rainstorm naked, shouting we had our own umbrella?”

  “You're dating us,” Mantle said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Umbrellas? That's like ice boxes.” There was no laughter, but it was somehow in the air, as the past was reaffirmed and Carl and Ray were revealed, shorn of the barnacles of the last years, healed of the myriad acid-bites of hatred and jealousy that had undone their friendship.

  “Does it upset you to talk about Caroline?” Joan asked.

  “Yes, but not just now. Not inside the umbrella.” He looked at Mantle tentatively, as if needing some familiar response, but nothing was spoken. Suddenly, Joan realized that she was trying desperately to talk, even to make small talk, because she felt that whatever was happening—whatever she had, in fact, instigated—was centered on her and would overwhelm her. She was afraid.

  She did not remember, after that, who had begun. She was fondling, and being fondled by, both of them. Undressing and being undressed. Kissing, sucking, caught inside the eye of a hurricane of soft words and quick breathing. She opened herself to it all, her mind quietly, carefully analyzing, reaching out to touch another filament of thought, as she was entered by Pfeiffer, or perhaps it was Mantle. It didn't really matter, for she was listening to Mantle, using Pfeiffer to bring her closer to him, to Mantle. They played themselves out, and Joan felt Mantle, knew him as Pfeiffer did, as a young man, all potential.

  Pfeiffer was the glue, she thought, frightened. If Ray really loved me, he wouldn't be doing this. An umbrella is for two….

  “I love you, Ray,” she whispered. Her eyes were closed, her own feral noises distant; all this fucking was geometrical, a premise she didn't understand being proven. But in some last instant before descending into exhausted sleep, she felt both their thoughts. Pfeiffer was full of anxiety and ego, but she knew that. Mantle, on the other hand, was composed, as if, like herself, floating above experience. He was thinking of the Titanic and Josiane's face just below the surface of a pool of dark liquid.

  And Joan thought she could hear Josiane's distant voice calling him.

  PART THREE

  SIXTEEN

  Mantle stared at the painting of Joan that he was working on. It was all wrong, somehow. Although it was technically brilliant, he simply could not bring the image to life. After the ménage à trois was under way, he had set up his studio in the vacant first-floor apartment, which had been his original intent when he bought the house. The light was actually better here than in his apartment, and now everyone had more room upstairs, especially Pfeiffer, who tended to spread his books, papers, clothes, and personal articles everywhere.

  Joan and Pfeiffer were both staying with him now.

  “Well, are you going to go?” Joan asked as she sat on a stool before a row of high windows. She was posing for him, and, naked, she was bathed in the cool morning light. “You've really got to give him an answer: the ship leaves from Southampton in just a few days.”

  “I can't paint here,” Mantle said, disgusted. He leaned back in the armless chair in which he always sat to paint and looked at Joan over the left side of the canvas.

  “That doesn't answer the question,” Joan said. She walked over to the windows as if oblivious that she was naked. The windows were situated high above the street, and she could not be seen except from other windows, perhaps.

  “I don't know what I want to do.”

  “If you must go to New York, the ship will give you some more time to think things out, give you a chance to reconsider…. She talked as she stared out the window onto the street. The street was empty; it was ten o'clock in the morning, the first hiatus of the day, the time when the streets became the quiet ruins of a past age.

  “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  Joan laughed—a short, bitter explosion. “Do you mean it's my choice whether you stay here or go to New York? If that's it, then I want to stay here forever. With you. My choice is to bury the past and make a future.” She looked at him, into him, and Mantle felt their connection. “There's no future for the United States now,” she continued in a low voice
that was almost a whisper. “The country is sinking into the dark spaces.”

  “I don't believe that for a moment,” Mantle snapped. “The Screamer attacks have been contained.”

  Joan shook her head. “It's only a matter of time….” After a long pause she said, “Ray, I know that you made reservations to fly to New York alone.”

  Mantle could only lower his eyes.

  “If you have to go to New York,” Joan said, “then I want to be with you, and I want to take the ship. Yes, I want the time, and you owe it to Carl.”

  “I don't owe Carl anything.”

  “I think you do, or feel that you do. He needs you, and from what I understand about you two, you've been waiting a long time for that.”

  “You're a nasty bitch.”

  “And you're a bastard, but I love you.”

  “Everything's gone wrong. I'm sitting around here, waiting; I can't paint: that's a bad sign….”

  “I know,” Joan said. “You tell me that every day. And yet, so much has felt right to me. For the first time ever.”

  “That's the triple.”

  “You sonofabitch,” she said. “Can you really believe that?”

  Mantle stood up and walked over to Joan. He put his arms around her while she stood stiffly facing the window, a warm icon. “I'm sorry. It's because of us,” Mantle admitted. “Carl, the whole ménage à trois, was the excuse.”

  “It's a shame we needed ‘an excuse’ to love each other and take the time. You've never loved me so much, or so often.” She smiled, but as it was bright outside, Mantle could not see her reflection in the window.

  “All right,” Mantle said. “I'll go with Carl…and you.”

  “I'd rather we didn't go at all.”

  “We'll stay under the umbrella until the bitter end,” Mantle said, as if to himself.

  “Don't talk that way.”

  “There's nothing in this for you,” Mantle said. “You should go back to Boulouris, spend some time with Faon and—”

  “No!”

  “You haven't even called her since you've been back here.”

  Joan pulled herself away from Mantle and picked up her clothes from the floor. She pulled a pale blue sweater over her head, then stepped into loose-fitting jeans. “I don't want anything to do with them…not now, not yet, maybe never.”

  “Why?”

  “We've been over it. I don't trust them, what they did to you…. I don't know. I just need some time, some time with you and away from them.”

  “You've got it all confused and distorted. They gave me a chance to find Josiane—”

  “They wanted you for their church,” Joan snapped.

  After a pause, Mantle said, “Faon called.”

  Joan looked at Mantle, waiting.

  “She asked me to do some work for the church.”

  “You see?”

  “She asked that we both take a visit. I think it would be a good idea. We could be alone, see if we could work without the umbrella.”

  “No,” Joan said flatly, fumbling in her pockets for an inhalor. “We're the umbrella, with or without Carl.”

  “I thought you'd stopped taking narcodrines,” Mantle said.

  “Think again.”

  “Well, I'm going. I've got some questions, some things that are driving me crazy.”

  “Then talk about them with me,” Joan said. “You don't need Faon. We're the connection, remember?”

  “Yes, of course I remember, but you've somehow got all wound around yourself. I know it's my fault, but I can't stand it. You're so afraid of everything. You're suffocating us.”

  “That's not true.”

  “It is true, and the umbrella has kept us together because we've been submerging everything for Pfeiffer.”

  Joan sat down on the floor near Mantle's easel. “What do you want to discuss with Faon that you can't discuss with me?”

  “You know what's been bothering me, but you pretend it doesn't exist. You, of all people, should be able to see it.”

  “What?” Joan whispered, afraid and certain of what was coming.

  “I've the constant sensation of being watched. I feel it, dammit, I feel that the Screamers are coming for me, coming through the dark spaces. I hear them calling me in my dreams, and when I'm awake. I hear them, even now. I can feel the dark spaces touching me. Don't tell me you haven't felt any of that….”

  Joan turned her face away, as if by not looking she would not hear. She was terrified of losing him, caught up in her obsession. They were both deaf and blind to each other. “Then all the lovemaking, the good feelings, the shared thoughts, they were all phony.”

  “No, of course not. We're too close; you've—”

  “You're using Pfeiffer and me; you're using me because you're afraid of what you're going to find in New York.”

  “Joan, stop it.” But she had caught him with that, caught him dead. He was fighting the dark spaces, and Josiane. Josiane called him, tempted him, was the very substance of his thoughts. But he was afraid and confused, and fighting for survival. So he turned to Joan as if she were Josiane, the Josiane of the bright spaces.

  “Stay here, Ray, please. We'll talk about whatever you want. I'll try; it will be different.”

  “Joan, you led me to the church, remember? It's one thing to quit, to decide it's not for you, but you're overreacting. You're lying to yourself.”

  “So are, you.”

  “About what?” Mantle asked.

  “If you're afraid, and I know you are, maybe it's for good reason. I'm afraid for you, too. Maybe you should trust yourself and be rid of Josiane.”

  “Jesus Christ—”

  “And then maybe you won't be afraid to let me into your locked bedroom that you once shared with her.”

  “I can't,” Mantle said. “I'm just not ready to do that yet.”

  “I think the Criers are just using the idea of her to lure you into the dark spaces. I've seen your dreams, I've seen that. And if you accept the church, even a little bit, then you accept the dark spaces. That acceptance brings them closer to you. Sucks you in. Into death, Ray. Death. You must fight it.”

  “I am.”

  “No, you're not, not enough, not by going back to Boulouris. And certainly not by going back to New York.”

  Just then, Pfeiffer appeared. He had been in and out of the house all morning, had been unusually nervous; now he seemed happy, as he used to when he finished a project.

  “Am I disturbing something….”

  As soon as Mantle left, Pfeiffer went upstairs and turned on the telie in the living room. Joan stayed in the studio; Pfeiffer knew enough to leave her alone.

  The living room seemed to dissolve, and was replaced by hollies. A thousand Muslim men, women, and children watched and listened to a white-bearded, ferocious-looking old man who stood on a podium and harangued them in a thin voice. He stretched out his arms, as if to Pfeiffer.

  Pfeiffer had activated all the tactiles and olfactories, and he had the crushing sensation that the crowd was pressing in on him. He could hear hoarse whisperings and huzzahs behind him, could smell the sweet and acrid odors of food and sweat as surely as if he were really in the midst of a Muslim crowd listening to Islam's new charismatic leader: the Mahdi of Sudan.

  To Pfeiffer the Mahdi said: “Know that I am the Expected Mahdi, the Successor of the Apostle of God. Thus I have no need of the sultanate, nor of the kingdom of Kordofan or elsewhere, nor of the wealth of this world and its vanity. I am but the slave of God, guiding unto God and to what is with Him….”

  Disgusted, Pfeiffer switched channels. A voice droned on about the success of containing the Screamers while Pfeiffer had an aerial view of the bombing of Long Beach, California. It was a rerun; he had seen it before. Then the scene changed to an on-the-street view of New Orleans, which was still burning. Pfeiffer deactivated the audio and watched the silent Screamers and felt the blasting heat.

  “Are you still watching that shit?”


  Pfeiffer jumped, not expecting Joan. “It is my business to know what's going on.”

  “By watching the telie?” Joan laughed, switched off the television, and sat down on the couch.

  “Raymond's not coming with me, is he,” Pfeiffer said.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, he is.”

  “Well, that's wonderful.”

  “Yes, it's certainly wonderful.”

  “What's the matter, then?” asked Pfeiffer. “Aren't you coming?”

  “Yes, we're all going.”

  “Why didn't you go back to Boulouris with him?” Pfeiffer asked, his tone of voice changing. “I don't trust them with him, I—”

  “You don't trust them…? Haven't you anything better to do with yourself than eavesdrop?”

  “I wasn't eavesdropping,” Pfeiffer said.

  “What do you call it?”

  “Listening.” Pfeiffer smiled, and the tension broke. Joan settled back into the couch; Pfeiffer sat down beside her.

  “God, I'm worried,” Joan said. “Ray's deluding himself about the church and Faon and…” Her voice just trailed off.

  “He's going to be just fine,” Pfeiffer said.

  Joan didn't reply for a moment. The curtains were drawn over the windows, and the sunlight edged in through cracks and spaces like smoky swords. She stared at the curtains and then said, “You had a bad time last night again.”

  Pfeiffer stiffened, “Was I talking in my sleep?”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You see,” Joan said softly, “you're as much of a throwback as I am.”

  “I'm sure I don't know what you're getting at.”

  “You kept crying ‘Johnny’ in your sleep. He was the furry boy, remember?”

  “I'm not a homosexual; I can't stand it in myself.”

  “You're afraid of the idea, not the act,” Joan said. “Remember when you told me I had a medieval bent of mind? I guess we're both cut of the same cloth.” Pfeiffer smiled wanly, and Joan continued; “If you like, you can pretend that I'm the furry boy, and—”