Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “Does it hold water?”

  “It does,” Casey said with some satisfaction.

  “Then I love it,” she replied firmly.

  In West Belfast in 1969 tubs were somewhat of a rarity, a luxury with which only the newer homes came equipped. Families made do with handbasins and washtubs screened modestly behind a makeshift sheet on Saturday nights. Pamela, used to the opulent facilities at Jamie’s house, had found it a bit of a hardship, but hadn’t complained. Casey however, wanting to provide her with such small luxuries as he could afford, thought it a stroke of divine intervention when he stumbled across the particular treasure that lay before them now.

  “Wherever did you find it?”

  “In a heap of scrap metal, if ye can believe it.”

  “I can hardly imagine,” she said faintly.

  “Of course,” he continued proudly, “it didn’t look the way it does now. ‘Twas just an old corroded tub someone had tossed out. I’ve a friend that used to work in a porcelain factory though an’ he knows a bit about restoration. He’s also a bit in the way of bein’ an artist as ye may have noticed.”

  Pamela, eyeing the naked cherubs lasciviously munching grapes that adorned the tub, was inclined to ask if the friend had apprenticed at a French brothel, but bit back the temptation.

  The tub in question was a remnant of the Victorian era, an enameled, rolltop, cast iron, ball and claw footed wonder. Its arrival had occasioned quite a stir in the neighborhood, particularly since it had taken an hour to squeeze, push and cajole the monstrous thing through the door. Word of its arrival spread and by the time Casey and the poor man who’d delivered it had it halfway through the door, the street was full of curious onlookers. Its decoration had raised eyebrows, with some mothers clapping their hands over the tender eyes of their children.

  It sat now in state in the center of their small front room, overwhelming the modest furniture like a peacock squatting down amongst a flock of scabby sparrows.

  “We can’t leave it here,” Pamela said, wondering if she’d only imagined the half-naked imp, drawn sitting on top of one leg, winking at her.

  “We’ll have to,” Casey said, “a big old cast iron tub like this full of water weighs a ton, it’d crash through the bedroom floor.”

  “We’ll not be able to sit in here, our knees would bump up against the tub,” she said practically.

  “We don’t sit in here anyhow,” Casey replied even more practically. “Besides,” he grinned, “there’s room for the both of us in there if we’ve a wish to sit in the parlor. Shall we christen it?”

  “Now?”

  “No time like the present,” he said cheerfully, “I’ll go get the bucket an’ fill it.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen and she could hear him humming happily to himself, the creak of protest as the water came bubbling up through the tap and the clank of a bucket into the sink.

  She wished vehemently that Pat would come home and by his presence put a halt to the proceedings. But Pat, since the night on the train, had made an art out of avoiding her. He couldn’t, even when pressed, meet her eyes. He’d made a brief appearance when Casey came home and between the two of them, they’d managed to concoct a feasible story about the car accident that had supposedly broken Pat’s arm. Casey, beyond a small lecture on driving too fast in other people’s cars and expressing relief that Pat had not killed himself, said little. However, he watched the both of them carefully as they spun their lies. Pat had left shortly after that, arm still inert in a sling, saying he’d things to do. Where he slept, what he did with all the hours of his day, she didn’t know. Part of her was glad, his guilt, so thick and palpable, sat between the two of them, making it hard to breathe. She was afraid it would betray them both and bring down the fragile house of cards they’d built in Casey’s absence. It angered her as well that he by his guilt might ruin all she’d done to protect his brother.

  Casey had been home five days now and had, not unexpectedly, expressed a desire to make love to her. She’d managed to avoid it by claiming she had her period, hoping he didn’t remember the pattern of her cycle from before he’d left. He’d accepted it though and contented himself with holding her in their bed at night.

  The doctor had warned her that while physically her body was ready for normal adult relations again, mentally and emotionally it could take a far longer time. Time that she did not have. Time that she could not beg, borrow nor steal.

  Several buckets of water and a scoopful of bath salts later and she knew the last grain in her hourglass had dropped down.

  “Ah, this is bliss,” Casey said with a sigh, breathing in a great lungful of rose-scented air. “If the boys on A-wing could see me now. Are ye certain ye won’t join me?” he asked in a wheedling tone.

  “In a minute, let me do your hair and back for you first,” she said, clenching and unclenching her fists behind her back in an effort to still their shaking.

  “Before I forget there’s a wee package for ye on the table, it was tucked away in the pocket of my bag an’ I’d missed it durin’ my unpackin’,” he said, taking the soap she handed him. A hard white cake of hand milled French soap out of a basket of things Love Hagerty had sent her with his compliments.

  The wee package bound in plain brown paper turned out to be a faded, gilt-lettered copy of ‘The Great Gatsby’.

  “Thank you,” she said, oddly touched by the tiny volume in a way a grander gift would not have done.

  “I remembered ye sayin’ it was yer favorite an’ ye didn’t seem to have a copy anymore. I found it in a rack of books on a sidewalk in Boston.” He soaped his arms and throat, wrinkling his nose at the strong floral scent. “Have we got any of that brown peppermint stuff ye buy at the chemist?”

  She fetched the soap and kneeling behind the tub, lathered the breadth of his shoulders slowly, reacquainting herself with the contours of his body.

  “I read the book on the plane comin’ home,” he said, leaning forward to scrub vigorously between his toes with a soapy cloth.

  “Did you like it?” she asked, trailing one finger over the nodules of his spine.

  “He’d a pretty way with words yer Fitzgerald did,” he put a hand over his shoulder for the soap and she placed the pungent brown cake in his palm.

  “He was a very sad man,” she said softly, thinking of poor, bruised Fitzgerald and his mad wife, his alcoholic pen twisted into silence by bitterness at the end.

  “I tend to like an’ endin’ with more resolution,” he continued, swishing his feet about in the water to rinse them and then laying back, propped them up on the end of the tub where they dripped extravagantly onto the floor.

  “Death,” she paused to drizzle some of Love Hagerty’s expensive shampoo onto her hands and apply it to Casey’s wet curls, “is about as resolute as it’s likely to get.”

  “Aye,” he sighed happily as she worked the soap into his scalp, “ye’ve a point but Gatsby didn’t accomplish anything he’d set out to do, he just kept hangin’ about Daisy waitin’ for something to happen.”

  “It wasn’t really Daisy he was trying to capture, it was the past. A past,” she paused to push a strand of hair behind her ear, “that only existed in his mind.”

  “I wondered,” he took one of her hands and rubbed his cheek against it, “if ye were so fond of the book because it reminded ye of him?”

  “Him?”

  “Jamie.”

  “Jamie’s nothing like Gatsby,” she said sharply, her hand stiff and still in his.

  Casey cracked one dark eye open, blowing a soap bubble away from his lips.

  “Ye don’t think so?”

  “Gatsby was an impostor.”

  “Aye, an’ Jamie’s the real thing, is he?” the pressure on her fingers increased, trapping her hand. “An’ I wondered if there wasn’t somethin’ of Daisy in ye, somethin�
� cryin’ out for a decision.”

  “If Jamie’s Gatsby and I’m Daisy, I suppose you think that makes you Tom. Is that how you see me, some empty-headed female who couldn’t have the man she wanted so took the first fool who wandered past?”

  He let go of her hand, dunking his head under water to rinse his hair and emerged spluttering.

  “Here,” she said dropping it directly into the water, “is your towel.”

  “Thanks,” he replied with no little sarcasm and stood, water cascading down the length of his body, droplets of it trapped here and there in thickets of hair. He gleamed in the dim light of the small room, its confinement making him seem all the larger. Not a body meant for small rooms, she thought, slightly dizzy in spite of her nerves. Pure, male animal, made more potent by the incongruity of his surroundings. A body that could commit violence and tenderness with equal ease.

  “Could I have a dry towel, then?” he asked shortly.

  “Of course,” she said and went to get another from the freshly laundered stack on the stairs.

  He took the towel from her wordlessly, drying himself down with an abrupt economy of movement.

  “Is that how you see us, like characters in a sad novel?” she asked quietly as he stepped from the tub, skin steaming with rose-scented vapor.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “I don’t know what I see. I’ve been gone over a month though an’ I missed ye every minute of every hour, dreamed about ye at night, ached for ye ‘til I thought I’d go mad from it an’ then I come home an’ find ye can’t meet my eyes an’ ye can’t bring yerself to our bed with honesty. Aye,” he replied to her startled look, “I know ye don’t have yer monthlies.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  He flushed slightly, “Because ye smell a bit different when ye do, a bit less like strawberries an’ a bit more like the ground they grew in. Earthier somehow.”

  “Oh,” she said faintly.

  “If ye don’t want to have me in yer bed ye only have to say so, ye needn’t lie about it. I,” he said, briskly toweling his hair, “can manage.”

  “Can you?” she asked, for his body despite his protestations seemed to have its own views on the subject.

  He took in the direction of her gaze and primly wrapped the towel about his hips.

  “Aye, I’ve desire, I’m flesh an’ blood after all an’ it takes little more than ye walkin’ past me to stir it but I’ve scruples as well an’ I’ve no wish to take a woman to my bed who’s longin’ for another man. Mayhap ye like that damn silly book because yer like Gatsby, standin’ on a dock waitin’ for a dawn that isn’t comin’.”

  “Casey,” she said, trying to ignore the panic percolating in her veins, “I think—” she hesitated and felt something unfold slightly that had been wrapped tightly since the night on the train.

  “Ye think what?” he said impatiently, bending over the tub with the bucket half-full of rose-scummed water.

  “I think perhaps you’d best,” she cleared her throat nervously, “take me to bed.”

  His eyes met hers and he quirked his eyebrows slightly, “Reassert my claim so to speak?”

  She flushed and the folded thing inside of her opened a little more, “Something like that.”

  He seemed to consider her proposal for a moment, then holding out a broad callused hand to her, he said, “Aye, perhaps that’s best.”

  Her hand, no longer trembling, joined his and she followed in his wake up the stairs and into the bed.

  It came to her in odd moments. She could be sipping tea in the morning and suddenly he’d be there, present as flesh, solid as bone. Her own personal demon.

  She’d expected Casey’s presence to lessen his somehow, to take away the power of his grip on her thoughts. But he hadn’t.

  For a moment, when Casey had first come through the door she’d thought it would work, that his solidity would chase away the ghosts. But then he’d kissed her and she’d tasted violets on his tongue and had to fight nausea.

  “Just these hideous wee candies I’ve grown a strange taste for,” Casey said when she’d asked him what the scent was and handed her an old-fashioned oval tin half-full of candied French violets. The scent sickened her, made her want to crawl into a corner somewhere and hide.

  He had been the only one to kiss her, the rest had not. And somehow the touch of his tongue on hers had a brutal intimacy the others had not been able to scar her with. His mouth had tasted strongly of flowers, clean and cloying. His words scented with violets as he whispered them in her ear, whispered all the things he was going to do to her and then did them. The scent of violets, once merely the pretty smell of woodsy flowers, had now become a trigger for nightmares.

  Beside her in the bed, Casey turned, mumbled softly and settled again, breath coming in a rumble like that of a contented bee.

  It had not been so bad. He had been very, very tender, as though he sensed her fear. She had been surprised when her body responded, softened and yielded, under his hands and mouth. Surprised and relieved. It would be all right now, they would manage.

  She watched his face in the strange waxy light of the bedroom and beyond him the curling roses of the wallpaper. And beyond that still a shifting, watery light. The pale green light of Gatsby’s hope.

  She believed in the light of dawn and if its promise eluded her today, well then tomorrow, like Gatsby, she would run faster and reach farther until it was secure within her hands.

  ...I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  She whispered and then closed her eyes to the night and its demons.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A Brief History of Time

  The sign above the door read, ‘Herr Blumfeld, Amateur Horologist, Repeating, Musical and Plain Clock and Watchmaker, Etitivator and Collector of Esoterica. Enquire within.’

  The tiny shop was buried at the end of a narrow close and had been difficult to find. As she pushed the door in, a set of bells began to play an orderly and precise rendition of one of Bach’s minor fugues. Inside was a veritable cacophony as she’d the misfortune to enter on the precise stroke of four when all the clocks were chiming, singing, ringing, clanging, rolling, hooting and grinding about on their gears. She put her hands over her ears, eyes flickering about the shop in search of the proprietor.

  She saw clocks of every variety and description, clocks without hands and clocks with seemingly too many, clocks that appeared to be constructed inside out, clocks with pendulums ticking away the seconds in stately precision. There were clocks with tiny people shuttling in and out of doors upon the quarter, half and full hour, ball clocks that looked like looping labyrinths and in the midst of it all an elf-like creature who emerged amid a cloud of dust, sneezing into a grayish colored rag.

  “Gesundheit,” she said automatically.

  When he smiled, which he did with face crinkling thoroughness, he looked much more like a gnome than an elf.

  “Welcome Fräulein, how can I be of service?” he asked, inclining his head slightly down and to one side.

  “I am looking for a man who can translate from the Arabic,” she said.

  The smile disappeared like dew upon the desert. The little man gave her a sharp look and going to the door of the shop, locked it and turned the sign in the window to read ‘Closed.’

  “Where did you hear of such a man?” he asked sharply, face no longer amiable or gnome-like.

  “It’s my understanding that Arabic is a close cousin of the Hebrew language and that you are an expert in these languages,” she said as coolly as she could.

  Herr Blumfeld laid a speculative finger alongside his nose, tapping the bridge of it three times. She could feel the cogs of his mind turning over with a precision equal to the clocks that surrounded him.

  “In Hebrew I am classically trained,” he said
quietly, “I can write and understand the three periods of it, Old Testament, Postbiblical and Modern. The language of Zion is my own, with Arabic,” he shrugged slightly, “I am somewhat less steady on my feet, though it is true there are many similarities. If not blood brothers, then the languages are at least kissing cousins. You have something, I believe, for me to look at?” He nodded, indicating the manila folder she carried.

  “Yes,” she said and handed him the onion-skinned contents of the folder. He cast a quick glance to the street outside and then carefully unfolded the sheets. He gave them a cursory glance, mumbling a little to himself. There was a gleam of something near to delight in his brown eyes.

  “Come Fräulein, we will sit and have tea.”

  She followed him towards the back of the shop, past curio cupboards choc-a-bloc with clocks, dusty old books, strange twisted scraps of furniture, delicate bits of crystal and china, as well as many oddly shaped curiosities that defied description.

  “Do you know Fräulein, how the dictionary defines esoteric? Anything with a private or secret meaning that is understood only by those who have the necessary instruction or training or more simply as something that is difficult to understand. I am a collector of the oddities of this world, of things that are difficult to understand,” Herr Blumfeld said over his shoulder as he swept aside a curtain, opening the way into a cramped, dark sitting room. “When one is Jewish, one comes to feel esoteric oneself and so I am comfortable with things that do not fit, objects that others have discarded and forgotten. Please, you will sit?” He indicated, with one small, dark hand, a large wing-backed chair swathed in grimy looking brown corduroy.

  “Surely clocks are not so difficult to understand?” she asked, settling herself on the chair, discreetly stifling a cough as a cloud of dust rose around her.

  “When one,” Herr Blumfeld put an ancient kettle on a gas burner, “collects clocks, one also collects time, which is no simple thing. For how to collect something that is only an idea, agreed upon by the majority of the human race granted, but nonetheless an idea.”