Elvissey

by Jack Womack

  . "Then what so necessaries Dryco's regooding?" John asked.

  "Changing circumstance," Leverett said, "as told. Regooding's a simple process. Minor readjustments, a clock's winding, new soles on the shoes. Some improve at will," he said, looking at me. "Elvii, sadly, respond to no prompts other than their own. As Mister O'Malley has said, sense goes unheard. Ergo, we'll calm them as they wish, since nothing else suffices."

  "A corresponding E's existence is unassured," John said.

  "Statistics evidence an eighty per chance." said Leverett. "Numbers' comfort satisfies."

  "Statistics lie, told to lie," John said. His damp forehead beaded, and he tempered so, that I feared he'd forgotten to medicate. I took his hand, hoping to calm; he slipped free of my grip. "If the goal's nonexistent, all's pointless."

  "Nonexistent? Unknown unless tried," said Leverett. "We'll tack a different course in event of unsuccess, but one attempt's demanded. Ends justify means, however the turnout. What concerns so, as the date nears and all plans ready to engage?"

  "Promotion's assured?"John asked, pointing towards me, seeming unmindful of his own proposed raise. Leverett sat back in his chair; examined us-still smiling-as if he were our father, and was disappointed we'd found it necessary to ask about something promised, however often he'd reneged in the past.

  "Doubled salaries in either circumstance," he said. "If all successes, unimaginable fulfillment is certified as contracted. Our world and all its wonders will lay platterways before you."

  John shrugged, quieted. A different concern beset my mind. "I discussed particulars of medical problems with Madam-"

  "She awared me," Leverett said, his smile narrowing. He reached into his desk, taking from a secured compartment two pill-filled tubes. "Had to roundabout a bit on these. All doors open when one knows the knock," he said, laughing, passing me one of the containers. "This will intensify Melaway's recomplexioning process. A like formula, similar to what you have. Take one each night till departure, along with your other dose, neither more nor less." He handed the second tube to John. "For you."

  "Added dope?" he asked, pocketing it.

  "I wouldn't call it that," Leverett said. "Should assist your trials. Again, take along with what's prescribed. There, now. Further questions?"

  "What if we find the other world's E," I asked, "and he's disinclined to return?"

  "Would anyone deny proffered godhead?" Leverett asked, his facade agleam with a child's astonishment. "Choose a limboed life over one spent in something approximating heaven? If he's there, and if he's found, relate your truth predeparture, if necessaried. Cliffside him, and show him his awaiting cities. Hold any carrots you have close to his nose." His smile engorged, revealing rows of whitened teeth. "If he still doubts," Leverett said, eyeing my husband as he rattled his bottle of pills, "well, you'll convince. My trust implicits."

  "General Biggerstaff-"

  "Luther, please. Formalities never suited," he said. "Listen as I tell. Point of transferral was here." He tapped Russia's gold meadowlands with coppery fingers. "Point of emergence, here." Adjusting his touch as if to better please a lover, he stroked Pennsylvania's rosy mountains. "You've been awared of the displacement effects of high velocity, surely. Shouldn't expect similar, moving at slower pace."

  "This globe," John asked, vizzing the world before him. "Dated when?"

  "1939," said Luther. "Summer. It's of our world, of course. Eye Germany, there. Austria and Czechoslovakia already annexed. Poland not yet overrun, and the future just over the edge."

  Imprinted upon the orb were splotches of pink and green and yellow, lingering evidence of lands long lost: Tibet and Madagascar, Baluchistan and Siam; Chosen, Tannu Touva, the Belgian Congo and Nyasaland. What were Nyasas? Where had they gone? Were they sent away by others, or had they packed themselves off en masse, that they alone might perpetrate the erasure of their memory? Standing in his living room, staring at his globe, I studied our world's face as it once showed itself. Did the resemblance to theirs still hold true, or had, unbeknownst to us or mayhap even to them, a third world emerged from the mix?

  "Enumerate their world's dissimilar manifests," John said.

  "Innumerable," said Luther.

  "What were your impressions?" I asked.

  "Tragic beauty. Grateful loss. All descriptives are contra dictory. My opinions are meaningless, after all. Rewrite the book according to your wishes as you read."

  The Biggerstaffs were forty-seventh-floored in a new Dryco building, on One-Eighty, near the park. I remembered going as a child to the old zoo, seeing animals so lost as Nyasas or Baluchistanis. Those living in the surrounding neighborhood, prior to its levelling, hadn't yet killed them all. I trepidated that evening upon entering their apartment; his wife, we were told, was from that other world, and no one briefed us as to how she would show. Luther greeted us singly, appearing to hold fewer years than in truth he actually held. After a half hour passed in his wife's absence, I relaxed enough to almost forget she was there.

  "This'll show at borderbreak?" John asked, studying a framed photo ahang on a wall that pictured a sharp white spear and marbled ball.

  "Your guess, my guess," Luther said. "We tore ours down. They have their own style."

  As did Luther; the photo was contemporaneous with the decor. Throughout the apartment were century-old antiques: Kodachromed postcards of erased American streets, stony, gargoyled towers, and restaurants guised in animal shape; bloodshaded tumblers, lamps with smooth chrome curves, skyscraper-sleek bottles, stepsided clocks faced with angular, unreadable numbers; tins logoed with non-Dryco insignia, the silver moons of hubcaps affixed to peach-pale walls. Atop an oversized wooden radio was an insecticide sprayer, its shape reminiscent of streamlined male genitalia, recast in dented tin; the painted letters FLIT underlay the shaft's rust.

  "Your museumpieces astonish," I said, eyeing it all. "Such a collection."

  "It's a bloodsport like any other. The past pleases overmuch to be entirely healthy," Luther said. "My wife needs dinner. Excuse me."

  Luther trod catfooted, glancing through the doors he passed, moving as John moved: those tarred with the Army or Security brush forever revealed their conditioning, however they tried to hide it, stepping as if each movement might bring blast, hooding their eyes against what didn't have to be seen.

  "You crossed unaware of what lay before you," John said. "What resulted?"

  "Expect your own shocks," said Luther, switching on kit- chenlight; pausing before he entered the room. "They've prepped you so well as possible for this, I gather?"

  "We're doubleprepped," I said. "Classed in linguistics, sociobservation, popular artifacts, cultural anticipation, historical processes-"

  He masked his face as he spoke, revealing nothing. "They're bleaching you? That's wise. They've absolute apartheid there, and nothing inkled that it was about to change-"

  "Forewarned, forearmed," I said. "I'm prepped to slough away hurt."

  "It'll slough like burnt skin," he said. "Excuse present company, but whites are worse than devils over there. You'll be in New York, I reason. Unimaginable what the rest is like." Luther extracted a wrapped tray from the freezer and slid it into the unit. "Can you tell what essentials this trip?"

  "You weren't briefed?" He shook his head, and sat down at his table, gesturing that we should sit as well. "Forgive and understand, we can't relate-"

  "Understood," he said. "I was outcompanied till retirement, to all intent. Jake was held irreplaceable by the company, but he chose not to return. I'd have been happy to bring him back, regardless. Blame must sleep somewhere, and Dryco found my bed best. When would it be over there, now?"

  "1954," 1 said. "May's first week."

  He nodded. "Keep minded. The longer you're there," he said, "the worse it'll become."

  John's expression shadowed, as if his curtains drew tighter, hearing of that other world's limited blessings; he appeared unsurprised by Luther's warning. "It took you long to rea
djust, postreturn?" he asked. Luther's expression inferred that the thought had never occurred; that, mayhap, he'd never readjusted. The unit's bell rang; he walked over and reset the warmer for an additional minute. "Wanda likes hers burnt black," he explained.

  "Your wife is here?" I asked, recalling her theoretical presence; unexpectedly, I discerned her spirit near, and shivered with the sense of feeling a cool draft, or ice brushed along my spine.

  "She keeps to herself," Luther said. "Consider this question personal rather than corporate. What concerns you most about your trip?"

  "Returning," I said.

  Luther nodded. "Don't expect to."

  The chime rerang; Luther extracted the tray from the unit and flayed away its glittering skin, easing back from the steamjet so as not to scald himself.

  "Understood," John said. Luther slipped on kitchen mitts before lifting the tray. "You knew Jake well?" My husband's voice came unexpectedly soft, as if we were alone.

  "Did you?" Luther asked. "My wife needs feeding. You'd care to meet?"

  "She's from the other world?" I said, hoping that he'd deny. He nodded, raising the tray before him with shaking hands, as if in offerance to one who might slap him down. I perceived in him the penultimate result of our unavoidable syzygy with time; how its touch changed over years from that of lover to that of snake, its embrace crushing as it hardened, stealing all life but for that upon which it needed to feed before crawling away.

  "Her own world," our host corrected. "If you do return, be mindful," he added. "Whoever passes, changes."

  We followed him through a passage lined with old gray engravings of Manhattan scenes, etched as if with needles of smoke, capturing glimpses of our own lost world. Even at their moment of existence those places and people were made of stuff less lasting than what had seized their shadows; concepts of the other world never seemed less empirical, nor more evanescent, than the irreality of our own.

  Luther slid open a door at the hall's end. Beyond was a darkened room, full of light. Twenty wall-installed monitors girdled his wife, each set to different channels. Each set's volume was audible enough that thirty babblebits of language might be misunderstood simultaneously. Luther's wife sat statue-still in a chair, facing most of the screens, her eyes so unblinking as theirs. Multitone spectra rainbowed her black face.

  "Wanda, honey," Luther said, kneeling beside her. "You hungry?" She muted, too enraptured by her visions to heed the world beyond her illusionary ring. "Wanda," he repeated. "Chowtime, honey. Open wide."

  He lifted a strip of potato impaled on the tines of a fork to her mouth, prodding her lips apart; she made mouthmotions as if, drowning, she wished to suck in more water. Luther's wife never took her look from the sets as she admitted the fork; when he extracted his instrument, she chewed what he'd given her with care, as if she were conscious enough to want to avoid biting her tongue, or lip, or the inside of her cheek.

  "That good?"

  She nodded. Momentslong he knelt there, free of word; it evidenced that his attentions redirected themselves solely to his wife, when they were bound in one room. He smiled, regarding her with television eyes, skycolored and endowed with induced life. I fancied that after endless exposure to unspeakable broadcasts, he'd settled upon this single channel, one showing all he could still bear to see.

  "I'm so sorry," I said.

  "Why?" Luther asked, plainfacing puzzlement over my offering; his voice's tones placing inexpressibly distant as they landed in my ears. "She's happier." His wife laughed; she'd seen something funny on one of the screens. "Don't bring souvenirs, if you return," he said, losing his smile. "Nostalgia's worse than any drug."

  "You anticipate with pleasure a trip unassuring guaranteed return?"

  "Not unassuring hope," I replied. A crack, ceilingways, appeared to my upturned eyes as a hair in milk. A chlorine scent permeated the room, as if it had contained a pool recently drained.

  "Because return isn't guaranteed?"

  "Nada," I said, correcting; regathered my thoughts and expressed something I believed I knew, at least until the moment I expressed the belief. "I've no wish to suicide."

  "Your negatives are most positive."

  "My husband so wishes."

  "You think he wishes to die?"

  "An unwavered yes." Unwavered; still, I could answer true for only one of us. Vizzing downward, I regarded the space between my feet. The clock's readout awared me that this final session was but half-done. Drafts rustled the wall-cloaking drapes that muffled all outroomed sounds.

  "Why suspect your husband of thanautopian desires?"

  "His actions evidence plain, as recounted timeover. Expressed thoughts and deeds demonstrate as well. His words and facial affect hold a matching slackness evident to all."

  "As you interpret."

  "As they reveal," I said. A poster of a Magritte work affixed to the curtains on my right reproduced the artist's green apple filling a tiny room. The wording announced a retrospective at the Postmodern, two years earlier. I'd not attended; surrealists' work was too mindfully suffused with tradition to suit my preferences. There were throughout Dryco's building, along with portraits of incompany notables departed and present, multicultural artworks of five centuries, all selected by Mister O'Malley, each possessing some private relevance; creating in toto once their details were examined and collated-or so Judy informed me-a pattern overt to none save Mister O'Malley.

  "This depresses you?"

  "Overmuch," I said, "sans relief."

  Throughout those quarters buzzed a barely-heard hum, semblancing lifesound more effectively than white noise generally did; sounding as bees in a nearby yard, a sick kitten's purr, neighbor's latenight noise discerned through the bedroom wall or the digitalized aspiration of artifical lungs.

  "A pleasurable depression, or one best avoided?"

  "Depression can be pleasurable?" I asked.

  "For some, when enhancing dreams of self-enacted conclusion."

  "I take no such pleasure."

  "So stated. This belief impresses full?"

  "As a song in the brain."

  "Who does the singing?" I was asked. "Depression scores its own fantasia, with fortissimo drowning truest truth. In such a state imagined leitmotivs, previously unheard, swell up from the noteflow. How does the listener know if they're truly in the score?"

  "Unknown," I said.

  "Self-analysis's perils proven."

  "Doubtful, regardless."

  "Attempt another approach. What is your fantasy about your trip?"

  "You mean what I hope will happen, once we're done? Or while we're there?"

  No response forthcame; lying on the couch, seeing in the ceiling, as in clouds, faces of loved and hated alike, I wished as ever for an ever-absent clarity.

  "Which?" I asked. "What's meant?"

  "What is your fantasy about your trip?"

  Before answering I closed my eyes; considered my most honest response, if not the one I'd have preferred to give. "To reengrave our image," I said. "Make all that was, whole again. The attempt matters. True?"

  "What is your fantasy about your trip?"

  "Why was what's said inapplicable?" I asked; again, silence. "I only want us bettered. Of late we've only worsened, seeming with our wishes. A remade life, that's what's desired. But it'll never pass if="

  "Your fantasy? Your fantasy? Your fantasy?"

  Troubled by my interrogator's new-erupting obsession, I turned over to confront fullfaced, wanting to disturb it as I had been disturbed; saw phrased onscreen unexpected, unsurprising, words:

  DOWNBLOCK ERRORED / SYSTEMIC FLAW / ANALYSIS PROCEEDING.

  "Your fantasy. Your fant-"

  My analyzer continued its rewrought analysis, so unwitting as any patient of its most obvious compulsion. A frayed wire, or encased dustmote, prevented me from goodbyeing one who'd so kindly simulated care. I'd allowed this particular chain to enwrap me so close that now, loosed so unexpectedly, I felt no freedom; only bere
ftness.

  Would my husband miss his chains more than me? What if I were the one who loosed them? My head ached as if it were being hollowed out from within. Uncouching myself, I left the office, shutting the door behind me.

  In the lobby I met John, embraced his stillness, shivered at his chill. The light crimsoned us, and, standing there, I wondered how long we had left to bleed.

  For two hours that afternoon we reresearched, reassuring familiarity with the construct of E: instilling ourselves thriceover with given truth gleaned from memoirs of cousins, guards, percussionists, psychic hairdressers, and all those who, while earthed, remained close to the heavenly one; reheard tales told of the Dutch Devil, recounted by Goldman (the more respectable sects of the C of E, thinking themselves freethinkers, referred to the latter only as the few); reexamined news accounts entered into computer files so obsoleted that only Alice was enabled to rosetta their lost linguas; reread sources deemed apocryphal by the faithful, telling of revelations so unlike accepted texts, and so unsettling to fundamentalists, that even sans critique they held, for infidels, the greatest credence.

  During our training John and I daily monitored, drenching ourselves in image, studying eleventh-generation footage; vizzed fuzzedged clips stolen from a black and white youth, eyed midcareer films so faded as to limn his skin orange, his hair blue. Vids shot during his penultimate months most disconcerted, ambering onstage moments when-as went the word of Elvii-holy spirit so infiltrated his being that, mid-song, he would segue into drooling glossolalia. In those most special moments E did appear possessed; by what, I hesitate to say.

  Yet in his essence was a mystery barely theological. E's musical expressions-the sole hard reality we had of him, however secondhand-were consistent; but never in either print or image did the same E twice appear. Both the Elvii and those opposed advantaged this, timeover. That the am- bulatorially-unabled might walk, the visually-challenged see, the speech-inhibited shout when he beheld them seemed, to many Elvii, undeniable; skeptics viewed him as the Confederacy's final, and most effective, blow against the Union. Those needing E most-including Dryco-came to him freighted with preconceived notions of his anatomy, that they might thereupon fashion a skin most preferable to lay over those unavoidable bones; an act of creation not so dissimilar from fetal art, it occurs to me now.