Caligatha

by Matt Spire

  “Take it,” she insists. “I'll be inside. I'll look for you. But you don't have to come back tonight.”

  “I will,” he says and kisses her. “I will.”

  She crushes her cigarette and faces the sliding doors alone.

  ***

  He can't control his panic any longer. As soon as Lydia turns away, he retches into a bush.

  God damn it.

  He's missed both of Fern's calls, and she hasn't left voicemails. She doesn't answer when he calls back.

  Returning to Blue Coral, he's certain of the inevitable. Reuben must have eventually come to his apartment, then to the hotel.

  Stupid, stupid. Why did he hide her there?

  He calls the front desk, but there's no answer. He calls Maggie and demands to know if anything is happening at Blue Coral.

  “Have you lost your fucking mind? Have you been high all day?”

  He realizes he hadn't checked the time. It's already past nine.

  “I'm sorry,” he tells her. “I know. I'm sorry.”

  He hangs up and calls Ian, the night receptionist.

  “Ian!” he yells as soon as he picks up. “Where are you?”

  But Jericho cuts him off, tells him to check on Fern's room.

  A minute later, switching between images in his mind of the blood-red pools of wine and glass and Lydia lying in the waiting room alone, he bursts open the front door.

  Empty.

  He rushes down the hall towards Fern's room.

  Ian is twisting himself into sitting up, his sweater half off, the framed painting on the wall above him crooked.

  Jericho steps over him, yanks the door. Locked. He fumbles for his card key.

  “They're okay,” Ian says. Jericho turns, realizes a stream of blood is running from Ian's nostril to his chin.

  “What happened?” Jericho yells, turning back to swipe his card key. He pushes the door, but it's obstructed.

  “He's gone.”

  “Fern!” He pounds the door, then puts his weight on it, pushing it open enough to reveal and jostle out of place an oak armoire.

  Shoving the armoire over, he steps into the room, catching his balance. Lightheaded, his entire body uncooperating, like a flesh dandelion about to split into a thousand pieces.

  The muted television flickers, the suitcase is open and its contents scattered across one of the beds.

  Cold air flows through the sliding glass door to the porch.

  “Who the hell was that?” Ian demands.

  Jericho ignores him. “Where did he go?” he manages, nearly retching again.

  Wiping the blood from his nose, Ian points further down the hallway, to an employee entrance into Tombolo's.

  Reuben knows the hotel; he knows the outdoor seating at Tombolo's is in the inner courtyard, giving access to the porches of the first floor's rooms.

  “The desk is trashed,” Ian says. “He probably has the cleaner's key.”

  “Disable it,” Jericho tells him, “and call the police.”

  Ian breathes sharply, swallowing his questions, and begins to the front desk. Jericho feels a lump in his throat so hard he can't swallow.

  His face is wet–what is it, rain? Sweat? Drool?

  Morphine.

  Everything is out of control.

  Stepping down the hall, he tries calling Fern. He swipes his card at the door to Tombalo's kitchen, Fern's phone ringing on the other end.

  The kitchen is empty, all clean and shimmering metal. He peers through the prep stations. No one scrubbing the lines. The mopped floor is dry.

  He runs into the empty dining area. Even the bartender's called it a night.

  “Fuck!” he screams, knocking over a barstool.

  The windows flash with lightning.

  Out into the outdoor seating area, he hops the short fence, knees wobbling in pain, and stands in the rain.

  Quiet. The first floor porches stare back from across the common area.

  Only the sound of rain hitting water in the fountain, insects hiding under the benches.

  His blaring heartbeat, a drum of death.

  He calls Fern again, pacing in a circle.

  A hard blow explodes near his temple, and the phone breaks across his face, sends him tumbling into the grass.

  ***

  “Miss Sortanova?” A hand touches her shoulder, and Lydia jumps.

  She hadn't been sleeping, had only just sat down, but the buzzing lights and distant voices and stale air all blended into a nauseous half-consciousness.

  “Yes?”

  One of those big white coats sits in the chair next to her, a broad and rosy face. He shakes her hand.

  “My name is David,” he tells her, but the identification hanging from his coat pocket says D. Aitken. She stares at it as he begins talking.

  “I'm very sorry, but,” and all that unnatural light and ugly air swarm around her, “cardiac arrest,” laughter from the television tumbling out like rending metal in a car wreck, and “defibrillator.” All eyes in the room fall on her, not her eyes but her shoes and knees, sheets of numbing-cold rain, “trauma team. I'm sorry.”

  He's watching her face, his frozen stare saying time can start again whenever you want it to.

  She hears herself make a sound, an “uh.”

  “I'm sorry, Miss Sortanova.”

  Then he asks if she has anyone, and she wonders what that means.

  ***

  “Where the fuck is Fern, you asshole?” Reuben is yelling. “What do you think you're doing?”

  “I don't know,” Jericho tries to say, but his dry throat gives out. He rubs embedded gravel off his face, sits.

  Reuben grabs his collar, pulling him all the way up, face-to-face. “You listen. You say one word to anyone, that's it.”

  Jericho remembers Fern's covered eye, the sunglasses–he thought she was wearing them to hide her emotions from the little girls. Was she developing a bruise?

  “What did you do?” Jericho demands, twisting free.

  “Whatever she told you, she's full of shit. You say anything to anyone, I'll kill you. How many months before a fucking soul even notices you're gone?”

  He shoves Jericho back into the ground and steps away.

  He sits there, overcome with rage, wanting to leap up, topple Reuben and tear him to pieces, to reveal all the demonic black bile inside. Always preying on the weak–himself, Fern, the student–how long had Jericho been naive?

  “You broke her arm, didn't you?” Jericho yells, but his body lies unmoving.

  “Fucking dopehead,” Reuben says, and already Jericho can hear his self-assurance returning. That burning, cocky sneer.

  He watches Reuben walk back into Tombolo's, and lays on his spine staring at the starless open void above.

  Damn it.

  He needs to find Fern, needs to find a way for her to be safe, needs to get back to the hospital.

  Damn it.

  He searches for his phone, finding only scattered pieces of plastic, glass, silicone.

  Red and blue lights flash from behind the building, and soon several porch lights turn on.

  He gets up, scraping off the larger pebbles and clumps of mud, and heads inside. Reuben is gone, probably through the restaurant exit.

  At the front desk, Ian is explaining his confrontation to an officer, flakes of blood still above his lip.

  “Christ,” he says at the sight of Jericho.

  The officer asks for Jericho's story, and he doesn't know where to begin. Between gasps for air he starts with Reuben's affair and then the broken arm and then the smashed bottles at Eden's Vineyard. The officer keeps interrupting until Jericho stops, unable to breathe.

  He leans on the desk, encased in pain.

  “Please,” he manages.

  The officer's two-way radio crackles and someone's voice says something about the third floor.

  “Sir, I'm going to ask you to stay here,” the officer says to Jericho, interrupting him again, then says “copy” i
nto his radio, heading for the stairs.

  Ian and Jericho stare at each other for a moment, then Jericho runs up the stairs, falling twice.

  Fern is standing at the far end of the third floor near a fire escape, calm and composed with Stacey and Alana.

  He yells her name, and the same officer sternly tells him to go back downstairs.

  Fern doesn't look at him, covers her face, but he glimpses it. There it is, that dark red circle around her left eye.

  His hate for Reuben turns into a cold clutch into his chest. Lightheaded, he descends the stairs as the walls begin to slant again.

  “Fuck,” he pleads. “Not now.”

  He clenches his fists until they hurt beyond any feeling.

  “I can't do this,” Ian is saying. “I'm going home for the night.” But everything sounds like it's underwater.

  Jericho collapses behind him in the chair, lays his face on the desk, envisioning the ceiling slowly pushing down on his back. For a moment he can feel his body being crushed as he retches over and over.

  The taste of vomit in his mouth grows sharper until it’s a spiny ball of death, shredding his tongue with every inhalation.

  Fucking dopehead.

  “Go away!” he screams and pounds a fist into the wood, a high-pitched squeal ringing through his ears, the white wallpaper glowing brighter and brighter.

  The terrible noise, the nausea goes on for minutes, tens of minutes, burning and burning.

  Echoes descend the stairs with bulky black bodies, radios crackling like a live wire. His face drips with sweat and pulses with pain. Blood drips from his mouth as he lifts his head.

  Fern descends next, and the girls follow, sniffling. Fern's red-eyed stare sucks him in, flays him.

  Then there's only one officer in the room, talking in snippets barely audible under the relentless squeal.

  “Not pressing charges,” and “own business,” and “nothing we can do.”

  Jericho tries to focus on the officer's face.

  “–damage to the hotel?” the man asks.

  “Where?–where is she going?” Jericho manages.

  In his blurry vision he sees a gargantuan frown, hears something about Ian, and then the officer's gone.

  Burying his head in his arms, Jericho embraces the invisible flames around him, the spinning inferno of noise, wishing it would consume him.

  Fern. Alana. Stacey.

  He stands, stumbles over the desk, throws open the door. In the wavering black there's nothing, no cars, no people.

  Lydia.

  He runs to the pier, collapsing on his knees.

  The water seems to rise up, twenty, fifty, a hundred feet tall. He lays prostrate, waiting for the crash, the destruction of everything he's ruined: Lydia's father, Fern's broken face.

  “Kill me,” he whispers to the ghosts.

  Then silence. The air grows cool.

  He looks up, lets his fists fall limp. The tide rolls, mid-dream.

  Never has he longed so desperately to be carried into oblivion, staring into the pathetically low sparkling crest beyond.

  ***

  It's all an endless sequence of visits, words, directions.

  Would she like to spend time with the body, here is a counselor, please sign this, here is a list of funeral homes.

  All the words are no longer threatening. Now they're maddeningly banal, meaningless: arrangements, executor. The body.

  She finds herself standing, walking through a doorway. Someone is gently calling her, “Miss Sortanova!” but she keeps walking.

  Out into the cool air, the sideways rain, steps turning into blocks. She lights a cigarette, noticing it tremble, but it's soaked before she can take a drag. She crushes it in her wet hand.

  Past endless facades of candlelit tables and banks and novelty shops with their stupid trinkets in the windows.

  Now what? Now where? Now who?

  She tries to light another cigarette, but the whole pack is soaked now.

  That faint feeling returns, and she leans against the brick storefront of a bicycle shop. Her palm slides on the slick windowpane and she almost falls.

  ***

  Jericho runs up to the double doors, but they don't open. The vestibule is empty, nobody in the general area.

  He bangs on the glass, frantic. He's failing everyone.

  Finally a security guard lumbers over, opens the doors, and he rushes past him to the elevator.

  He has to see Lydia, has to be there, has to do something right. He'll stay there with her at the bedside, or sleep by her in the waiting area. As long as it takes.

  She's gone.

  ***

  Heavy with rain, Lydia stares ahead at a giant building, disoriented. Without thinking, she starts up the stairs, streams of rain running down her temples and off her nose.

  Her body almost seems to move itself, the cold holding on and hoisting her away.

  She walks through the arched doors, past idle bodies, past a concession stand. The smells and lights and chatter blend, a wash of mocking sensations.

  Someone in a suit approaches her, but she can't look above his shoulders.

  A loud voice bounces off all the walls, “If you can look into the seeds of time–” and she shivers, frightened.

  All eyes are on her again, but again not her face. This time in disdain, at her dripping body plastered with waterlogged clothes.

  She realizes she hasn't changed in days, hasn't bathed, and is standing in the lobby of Caligatha Ensemble.

  This, the theater, today. This is where they were supposed to be.

  ”–And say which grain will grow, and which will not, speak.”

  The invisible speakers are projecting the only sound in the room now.

  She runs back out, and for blocks and blocks, until her chest burns and she can't breathe, stopping beside an empty laundromat.

  The faintness returns, stronger now. She tries sitting, leaning against the brick, stumbling into the wall. It responds to her touch, lets her sink into it like a pillow.

  Somewhere below her inflamed lungs something stirs, and she twists around, everything becoming white, still hearing the echoing voice from the theater. She has the strange sensation that she doesn't stop twisting around, that her body is falling apart.

  The revving and splashing of a passing car is the last sound she can clearly hear before she's enveloped, opening her eyes wide but unable to see.

  She's sucked into that terrible place of nothing, tries to remember Jericho but his name won't come, his face won't come.

  16

  A Long Rest

  Lydia comes to on her back, staring at the ceiling's dim light. It's just a tiny line, a little sliver, but it glows so bright.

  She tries to turn, but her head doesn't agree, either weightless or extremely heavy, but she finds herself looking at a wall of switches and lights.

  The hospital.

  Everything seems so close, like the inside of a coffin.

  Her eyelids slowly fall again. She almost feels at peace, almost riding a wave far out in the ocean, far beyond Caligatha, just drifting away and away.

  ***

  Keene stretches, removes the tubes from his arm, the straps around his waist and ankles.

  He slides the monitor away from Emma's still-sleeping face. It's passed like mere seconds of sleep, but their bodies need more time before looking at all that crap. For now, he understands enough to know that both of their vitals are in the green.

  Emma stirs with a hum.

  “Good morning,” he says, grinning. “Any good dreams?”

  Her eyes still closed, she moves her mouth, squirms. “A or B?” she asks. “What'll it be?”

  “You know I like my coffee before the morning news.”

  “Always with the hedonism. Gravity?”

  Keene pushes off the table, headed out of the control room.

  “I like falling on my ass,” he says, reaching for his clothes, but can already feel himself drifting dow
nward.

  He dresses in no hurry, and by the time he's descended the stairway to the main hall, pressure has returned under his feet. There's that strange realization of having a body, the clothes hanging like a second skin.

  He makes two cups of coffee in the dining room, and picks the little bits out of Emma's cup while the eggs and fruit are being prepared.

  She ambles into the room a few minutes later, still pulling on her shirt.

  “Thanks.” She says it with a flat voice, but smiles.

  “When was the last time I told you how beautiful you are?” he says, setting her up.

  “Eight months ago.”

  Keene laughs, pulls the fruit out of the thawer.

  It's all jokes, of course, but watching her sit at the table, he studies the refined features of her face. Even if all their time here has felt like only three consecutive days, they still need the humor. It's too unsettling to talk about all that passing of real time not spent together.

  “If it's not...” She stops, chews a strawberry. She fakes a smirk. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  “Happy anniversary.” Keene gets up for the eggs. “It's the least I could do.”

  “You're a few weeks late,” she says.

  “We don't know that yet.”

  She smiles a little more. “Isn't the first-year anniversary gift traditionally paper? I guess soy egg protein is a real treat.”

  They finish their food and return to the main deck.

  “If it's not, we should consider waking Jericho,” Emma says, finally finishing her thought while double-checking their awakening vitals. “Well, we've been running smoothly.”

  Keene watches her switch through the rest of the passengers, one at a time, muttering “A or B, A or B?” That's the ultimate question. He knows she wants to skip right to it.

  “Just a minute. We've got something interesting. These oscillations–she's awake.”

  “Who's awake?” he asks.

  “Jericho's...Lydia.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don't know. I don't have anything out of the ordinary until the last hour.”

  They stare at each other, unprepared for this moment.