Optical Delusion

by Hunter Shea

  “Had my eyes dilated at the optometrist. He said I have to keep these on for the rest of the day.”

  “You’re gonna make me feel bad, taking money from a blind guy,” Hartman said.

  “I won’t,” Fortman said, dealing out the cards. “All right, feed the kitty and let’s play.”

  When everyone lifted their cards, careful not to let the person next to him see, Blackstone nearly yelped with excitement.

  Playing cards were thin, so he knew he’d be able to see through them. But he worried that he’d see right through them and not be able to make out what was printed on the other side. The moment he spied the pair of deuces in Holes’s hands, he dropped all concern that tonight would be a bust.

  Just be patient, he reminded himself.

  He let Fortman win the first hand, as well as the second. Their host crowed like he was some kind of Vegas big shot. Holes took the next hand with a full house, queens over fours. Blackstone stayed in despite only having a pair of jacks. He’d seen The Hustler a few times and knew how to play this. And he was pretty sure the guys wouldn’t break his hands at the end of the night.

  Despite knowing every card being played in every hand, he let a half hour go by before making his move. Seeing that Rondo was bluffing with only a pair of sevens, Blackstone ran up the pot, trumping him with three nines. From that point on, he made it a point to win one out of every three hands, always getting the guys to throw a little more money in the pot.

  Two hours later, Holes folded for the night, tossing his cards in disgust. “That’s it, I’m tapped.”

  Hartman belched, chugging the dregs of his beer. “Me too. Looks like tonight was your night, Marty.”

  “Guess I was due.”

  Rondo hit his arm with the back of his hand. “Hell, you were overdue. I was starting to look at you as my personal bank, withdrawals only.” He guffawed, cashing in his few remaining chips.

  Only Fortman didn’t laugh. He knew he’d counted his chickens before they’d hatched, and he was none too happy about the turn of events.

  As Holes slipped into his coat, he said, “Maybe next time I should get my eyes dilated. Maybe they’ll give me a pair of X-ray glasses. Right?”

  Blackstone burst out coughing, choking on a good lungful of Marlboro red. It took him a moment to realize Holes was only kidding, not outing him.

  Of course he was. How the hell would he know I have actual X-ray specs, Blackstone thought, shaking the man’s hand as he walked out.

  “I’ll give you my eye guy’s number,” he joked.

  * * *

  At last night’s card game, Blackstone had made sure not to drink too much. He wanted to be up bright and early to continue with his experimentation. For once, he got up before Andrea and even Brian, creeping down the stairs, clutching the glasses.

  Over orange juice and toast, he marveled at the X-ray specs. There was no way in hell they should work. The technology of 1978, he was damn sure, wasn’t up to the point of being able to peddle such a miracle for a buck. Or even a million bucks.

  After breakfast, he went to the basement, zeroing in on the leaning stack of Popular Mechanics magazines. He’d been a subscriber ever since he was a kid and held on to every issue. His logic was that sooner or later, the Reds were going to drop a nuke on America. Within the pages of those magazines were the blueprints on how to build things. The survivors—and he planned to be one of them—would need that knowledge more than cash or gold if they wanted to crawl out from under the rubble and thrive.

  Sitting in the old shop chair, he grabbed the one at the top and scanned the table of contents, looking for any articles on X-rays. He was twenty or so issues in when the floorboards creaked overhead.

  “You down there, Marty?” Andrea said.

  “Just working on a couple of things. Thought I’d get an early start.”

  “That’s good. You want to come to church with Brian and me?”

  He couldn’t help but hear the note of hope in her voice.

  “Not a chance,” he replied. “Nice try, though.”

  He heard her walk to the kitchen, resigned to the fact that her husband was a heathen.

  The next issue had a brief side article on advances in hospital X-ray protection for technicians, but not quite what he was looking for.

  Then a terrible idea came to him.

  Setting the magazine aside, he bounded up the basement steps. Andrea was poking a spoon in a grapefruit, the radio on low.

  “On second thought, I think I will come,” he said.

  Her face brightened. “Really?”

  He made sure to rub his right eye, reddening it. “Yeah. You finally wore me down.”

  “I might have to wear my special dress to mark the occasion. Hey, what’s wrong with your eye?”

  Blackstone leaned against the wall. “Ah, I probably got some grit in it from sanding some wood. Hurts like hell. Think I’ll try to rinse it out, see if that helps.”

  “Okay, but we need to be ready to leave in half an hour. Brian’s already up, brushing his teeth.”

  “I’ll be ready. Hope the place doesn’t get struck by lightning.”

  “There’s a very strong possibility.”

  He went up to change, rubbing his eye until it hurt.

  There’d be a lot of women in church, all packed into one place. What he was praying for was definitely not on God’s approval list.

  Chapter Six

  The last time Blackstone had been to church had been at his wedding twelve years ago. He’d been so drunk standing on the altar that he barely remembered any of it.

  Sitting in the middle pew with the organ blasting, the lady next to him belting out one of the single most maudlin hymns ever conceived, he wished he’d popped a few beers before coming.

  He made it a point not to look at the rotund church lady, at least not through the glasses.

  Now, the cutie two rows up wearing the black lace bra and panties—that was another story. In fact, the entire congregation was laid bare to him. He just had to be careful where he looked.

  Andrea gave his hand a gentle squeeze, looked up and smiled at him. He smiled back, seeing she’d worn her plain church bra, the cheap one that was all about function, not form. It covered her chest like an umpire’s protective vest.

  Even Brian was beaming, happy to finally have his father included in the misery, Blackstone surmised.

  “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the priest intoned in a high singsong.

  “Amen,” everyone but Blackstone replied. After a few rambling prayers, they sat.

  “Your eye feeling any better?” Andrea whispered, leaning into him.

  “A little. The glasses are keeping the lights from making it worse,” he lied. But it was a lie told in the interest of science.

  At least that’s what he’d convinced himself.

  Everything about this was so bad. It was one thing to look through women’s clothes around the neighborhood. Even a lapsed Catholic like him saw the depravity of being a Peeping Tom in a church, surrounded by his wife and son.

  What the hell is wrong with me? he thought, listening to a woman with a stutter give the first reading. Why can’t I help myself? I’m no saint, but this is ridiculous. Maybe I should just cut it out and take the damn things off.

  His fingertips grazed the glasses when a new development presented itself. He happened to be looking down at the back of the pew. Only now, he was able to see through the wood to the flowered underpants of the nun sitting in front of him. Fascinated—not at the nun’s choice of underwear, but that he could now see through the much thicker wood—he left them on.

  Blackstone didn’t hear a single word that was said for the rest of the Mass. He just kept looking around, seeing things that titillated him and others than made him cringe. He was especially astonished when, staring at the altar, he was able to penetrate through the thick slab of granite, then the priest’s robes and pants. The second the Fruit o
f the Looms came into focus, he shifted his gaze, settling on a buxom woman across the aisle.

  By the time the closing hymn was sung, he was light-headed.

  Andrea snapped him back to reality when she patted his hand. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “No, I can’t say that it was.”

  “And the church didn’t burn down,” Brian added, chuckling. “Can we go to the bakery now?”

  Blackstone walked down the aisle, eyes glued to the bottom of a woman who had come to church naked as a jaybird under her polyester pantsuit. It wasn’t much of an ass, but he’d been married so long, he was like a starving man feasting on an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  “Earth to Marty,” Andrea said, looping her arm in his.

  “Huh?”

  “Will you take us to the bakery? I want to get one of those crumb buns,” Brian repeated.

  “Yeah, sure, sure. Crumb buns.”

  All during the drive to the bakery, he found he could see through the metal of the cars around them, catching quick glimpses of folks in their skivvies. By the time they left the bakery, even underwear had become transparent. It was like walking around a nudist colony, except everyone was bundled up in the frigid air.

  “Think I’m gonna take a nap,” he said when they got home.

  “Jesus can wear a man out,” Andrea joked.

  He ignored her, heading upstairs.

  Holy cripes, he thought, sitting on the edge of his bed. That was . . . incredible.

  He wasn’t lying about needing a nap. The morning had sapped him of all his energy. Laying back on his pillows, he almost forgot to take off the glasses. They pinched his temples something fierce, almost hurting when they slid off. The brightness of the bedroom stung his naked eyes. He slammed his lids shut, the phantom feeling of the glasses still pressing on the sides of his head while he fell into a restless sleep.

  * * *

  When he awoke, Brian was in his room with the door open, reenacting one of the scenes from Star Wars with his landspeeder skipping across the carpet. Despite the two-hour nap, Blackstone still felt tired . . . and achy. His temples and the bridge of his nose felt especially sore.

  “Hey,” he said, breaking up Brian’s running commentary as he talked Luke Skywalker through the desert of Tatooine.

  “Hi Dad. You want to play? You could be the sand people.”

  “Nah, not now. I’ve got a headache. I wanted to ask you: Where did Noel get those X-ray glasses?”

  “From a comic-book ad.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “Yeah. They have them in like every issue.”

  Brian opened up a dresser drawer that had been converted to his comic-book storage space. It was packed with four neat stacks of comic books. Blackstone saw covers for Silver Surfer, The Avengers, Green Lantern and The Amazing Spider-Man. He handed him a new issue of X-Men.

  “The ads are always near the back.”

  Blackstone flipped through the comic, marveling at the level of artwork. Comic books had come a long way since he was a kid. He saw a guy with claws coming out of his hands cutting a robot in half. Crazy shit.

  He found the adjust before the last page. It was a full-page listing of all kinds of cheap, useless crap that kids could pester their parents for, only to be disappointed when they were delivered ten to twelve weeks later.

  In it were offers to learn karate in just four short lessons, a six-foot glow-in-the-dark monster ghost that could float in the air, a thousand soldiers complete with tanks and fighter jets, a hypnotism coin, and even a diamond ring for only twenty dollars.

  But the centerpiece of the ad was the Scientific Wonder X-Ray Glasses. There was a picture of a man wearing the plastic sunglasses, looking through the wall of a house at the silhouette of a woman. The caption beneath it read: It seems impossible, but see for yourself! You’ll never look at the world the same way again. Great at parties. Fun for hours! Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope and $1 to Honor & Smith Co., PO Box 232, Minneapolis, MN. Money-back guarantee!

  “I really thought they’d work,” Brain said. “I keep telling Noel he should write to them and get his money back, just like it says in the ad.”

  Blackstone closed the comic. “Odds are, they’ll never even open the letter, much less send him his two bucks back. Them’s the breaks, pal. These places are run by scam artists.”

  At least he used to think that.

  “Well, at least they make good sunglasses, right?”

  “At least they do that. Yep. I’m going downstairs to watch some TV. Carry on, Luke Skywalker.”

  He didn’t realize until he’d gotten to the couch that he still had the comic in his hand. And he wondered what the Honor & Smith Co. would say if he told them what he’d been seeing with their gag gift. He bet they’d pay him a hell of a lot more than a buck to get their hands on them.

  “What did you do to your face?”

  Andrea sat next to him on the couch, gingerly touching his temples.

  Blackstone flinched, backing away from her touch. “What do you mean? I just got up from my nap.”

  “I think those glasses are too tight. You have deep red depressions on the sides of your head and your nose. I don’t think you should wear them again. Looks painful.”

  He got up and went to the mirror over the TV console. She was right. It almost looked like someone had drawn a partial outline of the X-ray specs on his face with a red pen.

  “See?” Andrea said.

  “I’ll live.” He plopped back down on the couch.

  “Maybe I should throw them out.”

  “Just leave them be,” he said, harsher than he’d intended. Andrea shrank away from him, clearly upset.

  “Fine. It’s your face.”

  She opened up a magazine while he turned on the TV. Neither of them said another word for the next hour.

  Chapter Seven

  The weatherman was right for a change. By Monday morning, the first snow of the season had started to fall. They were only supposed to get a few inches, not enough to close school, which deflated Brian’s hopes for one more day at home.

  The factory would have been open even if there’d been two feet. The Buick slid all over the road, barely able to get traction on the slick blacktop.

  Blackstone caught flak from Fortman about Saturday night, with a half-hearted accusation of cheating thrown in for good measure.

  “Why the hell would I cheat?”

  “Maybe because you were sick of having your ass handed to you.”

  “You’re just upset that I pissed on your little victory dance.”

  Fortman shook his head. “Yeah, maybe just a little. I need a new snow blower. Got my eyes on this one at Sears. I thought Saturday night I’d have the dough to get it.”

  “Maybe next snowstorm. You wouldn’t need it for this one anyway.”

  The whistle blew and it was time to get back to work. Blackstone had the X-ray specs in his coat pocket back in his locker. He planned to go into town for a bit before heading home. There was a very particular place he had in mind to visit.

  Come quitting time, he made a beeline for his locker, practically running to his car. The snow had tapered off, but left a mess on the Buick that took time to clear off. He’d forgotten his gloves, so his hands were numb blocks of ice by the time he was done.

  Gunning the engine, he checked his watch.

  Got fifteen minutes to get there, he thought, goosing the accelerator to prevent the cold engine from stalling.

  The roads had been salted while he’d worked, so the drive was far less treacherous. The normally bustling streets were much lighter on traffic, which only helped him get to Main Street faster. He pulled in next to a meter, ignoring the little time expired flag.

  Stepping out into the bitter cold, he looked across the street at the squat building that was home to the real-estate office. There was a lone window with the blinds drawn.

  Stacy Michaels worked in there. She was, by far, the single m
ost attractive woman in the entire town, if not the state. He’d heard rumors that she was Miss New Mexico ten years back, before moving east and settling into a non-pageant life. She was as bright as she was beautiful and could sell a house like no other.

  Every man Blackstone knew secretly lusted after her. They tended to walk very slowly past the real-estate office when the blinds were open. He’d spotted her here and there around town, and every time she took his breath away. She was tall and stacked, with olive skin and hair so black and shiny, it was as if she were a raven turned human. It was almost impossible to tear his gaze from her sparkling cobalt eyes and full, ruby lips. Catching her eye in the supermarket once, he’d actually walked right into the automatic door before it opened. It was embarrassing as hell, especially the way she quickly flicked her gaze away, snickering at the doofus who couldn’t walk straight.

  He wasn’t alone in wondering what she looked like under those smart business clothes.

  And now, at this very moment, even from across the street, she was going to be his. There was no way he was ever going to have a shot with her. Besides, despite everything that had been happening lately, he was a happily married man. A bit of a grouch at times and he often wondered how Andrea put up with him. It was one of the reasons he could never betray her.

  Was this betrayal?

  Hardly.

  It was science, pure and simple. He was a pioneer, exploring the next step in the evolution of sight.

  With shaking hands, he put the glasses on. A flake of snow landed on the left lens. He quickly wiped it off.

  Leaning against his car as if he were waiting for someone, he stared hard into the real-estate building. In seconds, the brick melted away. He saw a bald man sitting in a chair. Angelo Munson, the owner, handed over papers for him to sign.

  Blackstone moved past them before their clothes dissolved.

  And there she was.

  Stacy Michaels had her back to him, searching for something in a file cabinet. Instantly, he could see past her skirt and blouse, savoring the view of her high-cut panties. Then she turned, and it was as if her breasts defied gravity, the bra disappearing but each wonderful globe sitting high on her chest.