King of Joy

by Richard Chiem

  As quickly as she came, before Corvus can say another word, Michelle leaves and follows a new boy in a baseball cap down the hallway. She can hear Michelle say she’s lost a button, repeating herself over and over. Corvus catches herself mouthing song lyrics, looking dreamily into the dark mass downstairs, the throbbing hip-hop. Her mind fires and fires, forming his face as it was just now.

  In the dark smoke, Corvus approaches Perry and touches the small of his back and says, Hey. She whispers something else in his ear but he can’t quite hear what she’s saying; the mob of bodies around them swarm and bump and grind. The bass speaker vibrates the floor and the skin of bare feet. Some faces are kissing. Corvus says, I’m sorry for pulling a knife on you.

  Perry moves a strand of hair around her ear and says, It’s okay. His face is expressionless, blue like the hovering neon light above him, then green, then purple.

  She asks, Were you scared?

  Perry shakes his head and smiles at her. He says, I’m not scared of you.

  Corvus says, very clearly, You don’t have a baseball cap.

  He says, No.

  Touching his chest, Corvus says, I really love that. Corvus holds the joint between them and asks, Do you want to go somewhere?

  Her heart pumps new blood as she leads him with their fingers interlocked out the back door and away from the pounding stereo. A little calm arrives with what little terror she feels. The crowd parts. On either side of them: gossip and bodies, red cups of jungle juice, perfume and body spray, bright young faces. Perry seems like he’s there to listen to her. He is easy to be around, the hand in the picture, this brand-new person. It goes quiet between them. She feels her pocket for a lighter before he slips one into her hand and gently curls her fingers around it. In the wet woods, a fog settles around them. They can smell mint in the air.

  Her mother is talking to herself again, sitting at the edge of her bed, empty bottles of Navy-strength gin in rows at both ankles. Corvus glides by the crack of her mother’s open door and slips into her own bedroom at the end of the hallway, knowing where in the floor doesn’t creak.

  Stripping off everything, she doesn’t breathe until she’s under the covers, pretending to sleep. The night catches up to her and she aches in parts, as though her body is expanding. Hugging her knees on her side, Corvus finally falls asleep, a fog of a dream creeping from one end of her mind to the other, a dead blank expression from ear to ear, a little drool drop. Everything from head to toe tingles in deep sleep, ever-moving delta waves. Her mouth open against the pillow.

  Corvus dreams an hour-long nightmare in seconds, a frenzied figure keeps following and chasing her, and she cannot seem to get away, running up and down hallways she doesn’t recognize. Whoever is following her is always right where she turns her head to look. Because she has never met him before, in her dream the man chasing her has no face but a large, always looming body.

  A sudden creaking outside her door signals to Corvus that her mother is there. The sound wakes her, but she does not stir. The kitten under the bed meows at the hallway light just once. After nothing happens, she purrs.

  Her mother sits on the corner of the bed and reaches to touch Corvus’s hair.

  Her mother says, I know you’re awake, honey, and keeps caressing Corvus’s forehead, running her fingers back and forth through the strands of hair.

  I know you’re awake.

  Corvus feels exhausted from the long party and the heavy rain, and she pretends to be asleep, timing her breaths and relaxing her muscles, listening carefully. It feels important right then to be cautious.

  Her mother says, You shouldn’t talk to yourself. People start talking about you if you talk to yourself.

  Her mother says, I wish you were better. Why can’t you be a good girl and not—not a little fucking slut.

  She gets up, a power drill in one hand, and the bed rises with her weight. Corvus’s mother leaves the room and presses the trigger, turning the drill on and off as she walks, the mechanical whirring never changing in volume no matter where she is in the house. Corvus cringes and tightens her body. There is a cold that never leaves the house and the chill lingers from basement to attic, room to room. By the morning, every door in the house is off its hinges, some have fallen on the carpet, some are sticking out of the frame as though jabbing out of the wall. It looks like no one lives here.

  She wakes with a large blood clot in one eye, her left eye. Because all the doors are gone, the kitten runs laps through the house, sometimes crashing into Corvus’s legs. What gauge measures terror, the sudden urge to kill yourself? Corvus wonders. What is the threshold? What are the limits? All of her father’s possessions appear to be gone, even his ashtrays are missing.

  With her socks on and pillow marks on her face, Corvus walks around her father’s office, her bed comforter wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. His only suitcase is gone and his electronic safe beneath the window has been cleaned out with its door left open. Daylight through the trees cuts the room in half and her face in two.

  Plastic and wire clothes hangers scatter the floor of the master bedroom. Corvus’s father’s closet looks quickly ransacked, only a few old T-shirts left on their hooks, loose ties on the floor. The room means very little to Corvus. She looks around for a note or signs of struggle before giving up and walking to the kitchen. Lying down on the cold tile, Corvus presses her fist against her forehead and imagines digging it deep inside.

  Corvus drops her hand and just lies there, absorbing the softest vibrations from the refrigerator clicking on and off, and doing nothing but staring at the ceiling fan. The neighbors are vacuuming again. She lies for hours, skipping school for the day and ignoring the kitchen phone when it rings, lost in her thoughts and dead layers. After being awake and motionless there for hours, Corvus suddenly falls asleep for a few minutes.

  Her mother unlocks the front door, the only door left in the house, arriving home from work to see a body on the floor in the kitchen. She taps her daughter in the rib cage with her boot. She taps then kicks. Corvus gasps awake, holds her side, and rises.

  Her mother asks, Did you go to school?

  Papa’s gone. Papa didn’t come home.

  She grimaces and again says, Did you go to school?

  No, says Corvus. Did you hear me? Papa didn’t come home. His stuff is gone.

  Her mother takes off one of her black steel-toe boots and hits Corvus over the head with it. When Corvus cowers and runs down the hallway, she takes off her other boot and throws both after Corvus. She screams, You always go to school! Always, fuck! You always go to school.

  Corvus does not cry. In her bedroom, she slides against the wall, fists a little clenched, wishing so badly she had a door. She longs to slam a door but it feels good to be hated. Nearly out of breath, she reaches to the floor for a pen and writes on her arm: It’s good to be hated. She says softly, It’s good to be hated, willing the walls to catch fire with her mind.

  No longer quite herself, Corvus looks around her bedroom as though trying to figure out what the room could be hiding, what futures could be blooming here. The room has a sense of doom about it and she can’t seem to find a comfortable way to sit on the floor. Getting on all fours, she looks under the bed for her kitty, clicks her tongue, and stands up to make the signal: a finger-snap. She hears a meow, and the kitty materializes from underneath the bed purring and, in a beat, jumps into Corvus’s open jacket. She zips up and kisses the top of the kitty’s head, and the kitty in turn looks up, makes eye contact, and purrs again.

  Corvus whispers, You’re a good girl, and dims the lights. She dips through the kitchen and out the back door, not running until her feet touch the lawn, and then she completely bolts. Sometimes she feels like she is somewhere else, running at the speed of someone supernatural, mapping a private world within the one existing at will. Her superpower: she can check in and out, she comes and goes as she pleases. It’s a button she can push her whole life, a handle in a speeding car she can g
rab on to during turbulent rides.

  When anyone asks what she is thinking, Corvus usually answers, Nothing, I’m not thinking about anything. But the truth is she is casually overcome, sledgehammered with dream worlds. Her daydreams are scenes from fantasy novels, sad rock songs, action-adventure movies. She imagines her body in other time zones and places, and she taps in all the time. Right now, though, she has nothing and she is nowhere. Tonight, Corvus feels utterly defeated, she feels ugly—whatever magic she could usually escape to, whatever perfect world she could build, she can no longer feel it. Her stomach feels empty, and she has no one to turn to, no hand to hold, no gold to keep. She can’t think herself to somewhere new.

  After an hour of running, Corvus reaches a gas station in a part of town she’s never seen before. She has no bag or money; she walks slowly to the curb to sit down. The kitty sleeps inside her jacket, warming Corvus from her stomach to her neck. The lights are bright, the smooth concrete lot is wide and empty. Corvus leans against the wall underneath an ad for all-beef hot dogs and pulls her jacket over her knees. Her limbs and skin and nerves are exhausted, her eyes surveil the surrounding yards. But at the edge of the light, suddenly there appears to be someone walking and crossing the street.

  Perry stands alone like a man in a dream. He gently walks in between the gas pumps and sprints the rest of the way. Perry sits down right next to Corvus and they match drowsy stares and smiles. Seeing him now does not startle her or make her anxious yet Corvus shakes, smiling with what she cannot convey. The feeling is a big beautiful horror.

  Perry says, Hey.

  Hey. Surprised.

  He asks, Are you cold?

  Corvus says, No, I just yawned. I always shake when I yawn. She regains her small loss of composure. She looks at him and asks, What are you doing here?

  Perry points out into the dark, past the highway. Corvus shivers and squints and sees lit windows, the upstairs to a large house on a hill. Perry notices her shaking and takes off his sweater and throws it in her lap.

  Corvus touches the material and says, Thank you.

  Perry says, You can have it.

  Do you live there?

  Perry says, I’m visiting, remember? It’s my uncle’s place.

  He says, I looked over from my window and knew it was you. It was the strangest thing. Perry mimes a double take, looking back and forth from where he came from to where he is.

  Corvus doesn’t look up or down and pets the sleeping kitty in her jacket.

  There is some bond between them, an invisible string. The secret lodged inside her that keeps her closed off from other people is lodged inside Perry, too. She can sense this. They beat themselves up in the same way and feel despair just as quickly as the other. More adjusted to the light, Corvus’s vision seems blurrier now in a soft haze she likes.

  A little winded, Perry leans in and asks, Are you okay? Do you want to be alone?

  Corvus nods. I’m just hungry.

  He runs inside the Food Mart and she can hear muffled small talk, the chime from a register. Corvus looks up; Perry hands her an ice cream popsicle: strawberry shortcake. They sit quietly and wait for dawn together, silhouetted against the stone wall of the gas station, uninterrupted by a single passing car. The stars surround the dead yellow moon. There is almost no wind in the dry air around them. The crickets sing ad infinitum.

  Corvus says, I’m happy I saw you again.

  She raises her ice cream a little and says, These are my favorites.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  Perry says, I had a feeling.

  Corvus says, No.

  What?

  No, I don’t want to be alone, says Corvus.

  CHAPTER 6

  BIG CLEAN AMPS CROWD THE BACKGROUND OF THE SCREEN, electric guitars stacked on top like books. On the tape, Corvus takes a moment to turn her head back and contemplate them. She looks into the camera and asks, Do you play? I’ve never seen you. Smoke creeps into the shot from beyond the eye of the camera. Tim’s voice is clear as a bell and he says, I tried. Not anymore, though.

  There is a couch that folds out into a bed, and Corvus thinks about the simple magic in the world. The video recorder sits on a tripod, which sits on a bearskin rug, its mouth wide open. The bear’s eyes draw Corvus’s attention for a few moments, and she feels a chill on her arms.

  Tim presses a button and Corvus can see the camera’s red indicator light turn on, and, without thinking, she smiles. She even feels a little thrill. Corvus senses a strange heat on her chest, expecting to breathe in and undress on camera, and she reaches playfully for the buttons on her blouse.

  Can you talk about what you’re most afraid of? Tim’s voice is steady and practiced. The camera focuses in and out on Corvus’s face, blurry then clean and clear.

  Corvus asks, Excuse me?

  Can you talk about what you’re most afraid of?

  Corvus says nothing.

  That’s all this is, the video. Tim thumbs behind him to the camera. He says, This isn’t a traditional audition, don’t worry.

  Corvus asks, Excuse me?

  Tim looks up at Corvus and waits. I said, Don’t worry, says Tim’s voice.

  Sternly, she says, Sure.

  Corvus touches her face and says, You know, Tim. You haven’t changed. You’re still an asshole.

  Just answer the question, Corvus. Fucking shoot me in the face.

  Okay, okay, she says. Corvus pulls her hair back and closes her eyelids as though submerged. She says, Give me a minute. She reaches for a cigarette.

  The screen turns snowy before becoming clear again. Corvus fades into the picture with her hair down, wearing a different outfit than before: a blue floral summer dress. Her birthmark shows. There is still cigarette smoke in the static shot.

  Not being able to control anything, says Corvus. Not having any control.

  In addition to videotaping the audition, Tim has also placed a tape recorder on the coffee table close to her. She watches the wheels of the tape recorder turn. A small, intimate sound chirps from the device with each spin.

  Go on, he says.

  You can prepare for anything. It doesn’t matter. You’re just as close to death as everyone else, Corvus says. I could never feel a hundred percent happy.

  She looks at Tim, not the camera.

  She says, Even if things were perfect. There would be this.

  This what?

  Corvus shakes her head and unclenches her hands and exhales. I would just never feel settled. I knew anything could happen. I had the perfect life, and then—Corvus stops talking. She keeps shaking her head.

  I should have enjoyed more, says her voice. Felt less anxious. Perry was perfect.

  Tim says, Perry was perfect.

  Is that Perry’s old tape recorder? The one from his plays?

  The video flickers and skips, and the VCR vibrates on the glass TV stand.

  I don’t know, says Tim. Why? Do you recognize it?

  This whole thing is sick, says Corvus.

  Amber has these gold handcuffs shimmering in her purse, which she shows the camera and the imagined audience on the other side, shaking the bag’s contents. Tim barely registers her being there; he seems serenely distracted with an inner world. He gestures for her to sit down and stops smiling. The shot shows Amber looking at Tim hesitantly as he pulls out a chair. She looks as though she’s leaning away from an eerily tilting floor, as though Tim is a sinkhole. The dark lighting of the room eats her eyes. He says, Come, come. The metal chair scratches the tile and Tim turns on a standing lamp.

  Amber sits down and winks into the camera before dropping her purse and lighting a spliff she pulls out from behind her ear. Her eyes don’t roll but flicker before going calm in their sockets. She leans back in her chair and looks dazed. On screen, Amber’s skin holds a soft glow, a subtle but noticeable outline. Although she sees a sweating glass of ice water, Amber doesn’t take a drink.

  Right away, Tim says, What are you most afraid of? The
video quality flickers, turning the image into a river of pixels and colors. The white lines on the snowy picture remind Amber of nails on a chalkboard, someone crazy needlessly playing the violin.

  Sitting on the motel bed, Corvus and Amber take a moment to look at each other before Tim’s face appears beneath the static on the screen. They both grimace and scoot closer to see better. The small TV takes over the entire room, the light enveloping their faces, the queen-size bed, the cheap paintings hung on dull walls. Their eyes look dead and milky and faraway.

  Tim’s face fades to Amber’s. The video has been cheaply edited; there is no score or closed captioning. Onscreen, it takes Amber a second to process Tim’s words before her eyes briefly fill with despair. She asks, Are you serious? What is this?

  Amber looks around playfully.

  I’m serious, Tim says. He touches his chest with his fingers. What are you most afraid of?

  Corvus pauses the tape and taps the screen. Smug asshole.

  Amber massages her foot on the bed and stares at the TV. She says, He was. I never quite saw it until now. Why the fuck did he do that?

  Voyeur, says Corvus. He’s a voyeur. She shakes her head no as though tapping into a memory. He’s always been one, she says.

  Always? How far did you guys go back?

  A few years. I knew Tim in college. Or right after college, actually, the year I was married.

  Both realizing how tired they are, Corvus and Amber slowly take a look at Tim’s paused face. Amber has her mouth a little open and says, I never knew that.

  It wasn’t important, Corvus says. I’m sorry I never said anything about it to you. Corvus gets up from the bed. She opens a window and the morning sky comes in. Perfect crisp moving air. She says, We stayed up all night.

  Sensing something old and tender in her voice, Amber leans on the bed and asks, Do you want to get some breakfast? Or do you want to finish?

  Corvus turns around with the sky behind her. She says, Let’s finish the tape. Do you care? I don’t care.

  I don’t care.