Whatever the Impulse

by Tina Amiri

  “A healer? Morgen sounded delirious. “She’d have to be God.”

  “No, my friend, but she can help you.”

  Morgen turned his face into his pillow as though it helped him to reflect on the offer. “Mexico…?”

  “I can take you to her,” Steve continued like he’d never missed a beat. “She lives in the mountains…and nobody will know you are there,” he added intuitively. “Maybe she will make you better because I seen her do it for others.”

  Morgen’s harsh air of rejection started to dissipate.

  Still seated at the edge of the bed, Night nodded at both of them. This would solve his colossal problem of what to do with Morgen when the tour took him away. He didn’t have any confidence in Steve’s aunt as a healer, but at least nobody would be the wiser if his brother died in the remote mountains of Mexico.

  Morgen cleared his throat to speak and Steve had to lean in to decipher his pause-riddled speech that only came out in whispers.

  “It’s all…shit, Steve…but…I’ll go.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “It’s…all good. Just don’t…tell anyone…anything…when you come back.”

  Steve shook his head. “Why didn’ you trus’ me with your secret, even when I tol’ you a hundred times that I knew?” But he let it rest when Night’s glare reinforced how little energy Morgen had to argue. “Can he walk? I left my car—”

  “Go get your car,” Night snapped. “I left the gate open.”

  Steve nodded and fled the suite and Night turned to Morgen. “Maybe he means it. You never know.”

  “Just help me…get ready.”

  Night helped Morgen clear his lungs, for the very last time, and this offered his speech a limited reprieve. “Pack me some clothes, and some money, and a few checks… Make them out to Steve…a couple thousand each, and put today’s date. And pack all that shit you’ve hidden from me,” he said, referring to his morphine.

  Changing Morgen’s position, drastically, always threatened to be fatal. Even Night held his breath when he transferred him twice, first into the bathroom, and then to the common room couch.

  Morgen looked like a wet kitten as they waited in the room that had witnessed every change in both himself and his brother since the day he’d arrived. They barely resembled one another now. Morgen’s stringy, poorly bleached hair fell into his gaunt face as he curled against the backrest. His eyes were glazed, likely from both the inside and outside perspective, and he wheezed incessantly as Night cozied in beside him.

  “What am I going to do without you, Morgen…alone?”

  “You’ve already been alone for months,” Morgen answered in his certain whisper that sent chills through Night’s body.

  He sensed Morgen’s desire to impart strength to him that he really couldn’t spare in any capacity. “I need you here, Morgen. I wish there was no tour.”

  “Stop it. The tour is everything…and the last thing you need, anymore, is me.”

  “You’re my other side, Morgen…” Night struggled not to say it, but then it all just poured out. “I’m never going to see you again, and I don’t want it to be like before…just nightmares.”

  Morgen laid his head back and closed his eyes. “So much for your faith in Steve’s aunt.”

  Night became frantic as the Steve’s footsteps returned in the hallway. Morgen was leaving him, ready or not.

  Steve burst through the door. His black ponytail jumped on his back as he spun around to close it. “Let’s go, my friend?” he said as though they were leaving on a joyous adventure.

  Ignoring the whimpers, Night scooped his longtime patient up with both arms—Morgen now weighing little more than a child. As he carried him into the hallway, he ordered Steve to follow with the luggage. He couldn’t help but resent Morgen’s friend, at the moment, for taking away what belonged to him.

  Night unloaded Morgen into the passenger seat of Steve’s Datsun and Morgen’s hands peeled off his shoulders, steadily, as he faded in and out of consciousness. Night stepped back and squinted in the sunlight. This moment nearly destroyed him, but he maintained a well-trained stoicism. He didn’t expect Morgen to revive when he leaned in to place sunglasses beneath his loose fingers.

  “Come here…” Morgen requested as he fought to place the designer shades on his nose with one trembling hand. At last, he fixed his concealed gaze on Night. “You were handed a raw deal, no doubt, and I know it haunts you. But I’ve seen your two sides, and you have a choice. Don’t go the wrong way. Don’t even try to be just like me, but whatever you do, Night, don’t become like Andrew Shannien…whatever the impulse.”

  Night’s jaw loosened as he withdrew from the window. The car rolled out of the driveway, and though it didn’t seem real, unlike his parting words, Morgen was gone.

  Part Three

  Abroad and Back Again

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sandy’s stash of evidence weighed heavy on Night’s mind, especially without Morgen around to focus on. He’d already found the suspicious drill hole in the wall, along with the camera system on the bookshelf in Sandy’s suite, but the pictures remained hidden, as Sandy swore they would. Night never gave up, though, and as he entered Sandy’s suite, for the third time in one day, an unfamiliar face startled him.

  “Hello,” greeted a middle-aged woman from the middle of the room. “I’m Helen, the replacement…until your regular housekeeper is able to come back. Poor thing.” She seemed undaunted by Night’s horrified expression. Her next line didn’t help. “Your parents didn’t mention you had a twin. I assume he doesn’t live here?”

  His mind raced. What did she know? Housekeepers seemed to be a lot of trouble, and now he understood why Andrew had never employed a consistent one. “Twin?”

  “Well, yes. I went to sit down on the sofa,” she said, pointing to the one behind her, “when I heard something crack underneath me and I soon realized the cushion was loaded with cassettes and pictures, all stuffed inside the foam.”

  Night exhaled with relief. “There is no twin,” he professed. “He’s just a friend. We were trying to see if we could make it look that way on camera for some project of his. So…you think we look the same?”

  “Except that the other fellow seemed awfully thin. You will have to tell him to start eating more if you guys really want to pull it off.”

  “Can I get those from you?” His voice quivered. “I’ve been using this room since Sandy’s accident, and nobody said you were coming.”

  Helen led him directly to the loaded sofa cushion and even got ahead of him in pulling all the evidence out through the pocket Sandy had sliced into the foam. “They’re awfully dismal images. I hope your friend is just making a horror film—but who am I to offer you advice? You’re a superstar. I heard all about you before I even came here, from my sister’s girls, and I’m sure they’ll just worship me if I bring them a signed poster of you.”

  Night would have given her anything she wanted. He thanked her profusely as he beckoned her to follow him to his suite. On the way, he asked about the girls’ names. From a folder beneath the bar, he dug out one of the group’s new photos, one with a white tiger, and signed it with a flourish: “Thanks, really truly, Carrie-Anne & Jenny – Morgen”.

  ****

  Night burst into Sandy’s private hospital room and flung the loaded drawstring bag at his throat. “Look inside, asshole!”

  Sandy had been asleep. The sedatives in his blood delayed his reaction, so Night grabbed the bag himself and dumped the contents all over the bedcover.

  Even Sandy’s enfeebled voice wielded an edge. “Do you think I didn’t make copies of those?”

  “If there’s more, you better tell me.” Night caressed one of the pulleys that he knew did something to service Sandy’s broken bones, but it was Night who jumped when Sandy pulled a cord and set off an alarm.

  “That’s right. Get out of here quick, you stupid fuck, or I’ll tell them I think it was a white conver
tible that ran me over!”

  Through sheer panic, Night scraped all the strewn evidence into the bag with no regard for Sandy’s legs beneath them. He cinched the bag and still afforded himself an extra second to thump Sandy’s closest leg with his fist, before colliding with a nurse on his way out.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Give him something for his pain,” Night directed, firmly.

  “Nurse…” Sandy choked. “Make it something strong.”

  The ache in Sandy’s voice hinted at more than physical pain and Night closed the door confident he didn’t have to worry about copies.

  ****

  That same afternoon, Beth came home from school, prepared to break into Morgen’s guestroom again, only to find the door ajar. She ran to both ends of the suite, finally bursting into tears in the middle of the empty bedroom. Night came in, moments later, and held her tightly.

  “He’s not dead, I promise. He’s with Steve, who’s going to get him some help in Mexico. He’s going to be just fine.”

  Since Morgen could never be convinced to admit himself into a hospital, Beth accepted this move as the next best thing. Even after hearing the details, she held to the fantasy that a miracle could still happen.

  “But I can’t believe he wouldn’t talk to me. He didn’t even want to say bye.”

  “There wasn’t time,” Night explained, sounding a bit patronizing. “But he wanted to. He told me to tell you he was sorry about the other day. Yeah…” he mused while she chose to believe, “he really wanted to see you.”

  ****

  Morgen woke up as Steve began to ease his pressure on the gas pedal. Things had become tense during his last conscious spell when he witnessed Steve dumping all his medication out onto the side of the road.

  “I don’ think you should have this when we cross the border, and you won’ need it when we get there,” he’d stated, nervously.

  “You’re right…only because I’ll probably be dead!”

  Now, as Steve veered onto a narrower mountain road, it felt like they’d broken away from earth’s stratosphere and the car was drifting into outer space. The frequency of the stillness increased as they rose in altitude. The Sierra Madré Occidental screamed against civilization and had staved it off, rather successfully, to this day. For a long time, they were surrounded by nothing but dramatic crests, gorges, and greenery; unimaginable north of the border.

  A village appeared, freckling a valley still far ahead of them. Only now did Morgen’s eyelids stay open. The scene came into vivid focus, gradually, like a developing Polaroid image. Around them, the sharp rocky peaks were covered by a brilliant haze of green made up of thornscrub, outside the pockets of pine and Chihuahua oak. The clouds dipped in and out between these giant mossy-looking peaks and blue sky appeared to be falling like water into the ravines.

  “Am I dead?” Morgen uttered, barely producing sound.

  “I thought maybe, but no… We made it, my friend.” Steve’s voice fell on Morgen’s ears warmly like the sun’s rays that filtered through their rolled-up windows.

  The temperature climbed as the car descended into the valley. There were tiny stone cottages and shacks strewn all over the land, and one was their destination. Morgen felt too weak to smile…but it was the perfect place to die.

  The road, more of a cow path, was narrow and unpaved. Broken stone fragments bumped beneath the wheels of Steve’s car and long grass grew up the middle. He brought his vehicle to rest beside his aunt’s cottage, in the shadow of the mountain’s backdrop. A tanned face appeared in a window that had no glass or screen, only wide-open shutters.

  “Esteban!”

  “Hola,” Steve answered before he reached Morgen’s side and tried to drag him out.

  The woman from the window rushed outside to assist her nephew.

  “My friend…this is my aunt, Nita.”

  “Quién es?”

  “Es mi amigo, se llama Morgen. Está muy enfermo.”

  “Es muy flaco!”

  “What’s she saying?” Morgen peeped, feeling himself losing consciousness again.

  “She says you’re skinny.”

  Nita was not, however. Over her stout figure, she wore a bright blue skirt, with a berry pattern, and a red blouse that matched the berries. Hoop earrings dangled below her short black hair. In addition to the string of pearls around her neck, Nita had many beaded strings hanging around her home. There were countless herbs and powders suspended from hooks or in canisters she kept on open wooden shelves. Nita’s dried garden, inside the house, filled the room with scents that sweetened the earthy smell from outside.

  Nita helped her nephew guide Morgen into a small room at the rear of the house. The bed consisted of a narrow mattress, on a shallow wooden frame, covered with vividly dyed covers. Morgen’s head came down on a small pillow that Nita quickly pulled under him. Congestion set in immediately and he could only wheeze as Steve and his aunt debated his fate.

  “Can you help him?” Steve asked his aunt, in English.

  “You used to bring me chinchillas,” Nita remarked, “now you bring me people. …I don’t know, Esteban.”

  She pulled a crucifix from one wall and carried it back to Morgen’s bedside. She hung it by its cloth hook onto a nail in the clay wall above the bed. Next, she picked up a string of beads that encircled a sprig of dry herbs and she began moving it, up and down, over Morgen’s body.

  Morgen could no longer keep his eyes open, but he could still hear.

  “I have to find out what ails him and then I will try, but I don’ know, Esteban. Your friend is almost dead.”

  ****

  The days before the tour saw Night floundering in a new world where he had no one to take care of and no one to answer to. He often sifted through the photographs he’d confiscated from Sandy, not sure if he would ever be able to dispose of them like he knew he should. For now, he stashed them in the ceiling of Morgen’s bedroom closet where he discovered a loose panel.

  Eventually, the tour stepped in and saved him from having to contemplate anything further. Gin Corbin had arranged for their pickup and delivery to the airport. The entire household gathered in the foyer to see him off and Beth put herself first in line to say farewell.

  “When you come back, do you think you can sneak me into your week somewhere?”

  “I don’t think it’ll be like that, Beth,” Night stated calmly, maturely. He embraced her and she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  Brigitte coaxed him into her arms and prefaced her short valedictory with a kiss. “Oh, Morgen, you’ve made it all the way to the top, even with so much thrown against you. We’re so proud.”

  Her gaze lingered on his face, verging on a double-take.

  Frederick also embraced him genuinely and then looked into his face with soft eyes. “We can get so caught up in what we want very badly… You understand?”

  Night nodded. He knew this was Frederick’s conditional apology, implying that they could both do a bit better in certain respects.

  The aggressive honk of a stretch limousine hurried their parting and Night climbed inside. His friends had already set some iced glasses, filled with tequila and margarita mix, out on a table, ready for him to lift the first glass and inaugurate the tour.

  ****

  By the time the pilot announced their descent into Atlanta, Night’s eyelids nearly met in the middle—a combination of the long flight and Brandt’s endless lecturing about his conduct on the tour. In return, Night accepted everything that was offered to him during their flight: every drink, every refill, every treat, and of course, every first-class meal.

  Deliverance came in the peace of his hotel suite, except for the self-inflicted nausea. He had to overcome it by the evening, for their first performance at a small venue that their agents referred to as warm-up, as opposed to a publicity stunt. The size of the nightclub crowd impressed Night, so when he walked into the Omni Coliseum, the next evening, the reality of his new sta
tus finally set in. Sixteen thousand seemed like a big enough number in words, but he hadn’t quite imagined what it would look like in seats, or sound like in the form of human voices.

  The opening band, that Night privately envied for having more of a metal sound, met him backstage, and each member shook his hand briskly.

  “Hey, Morgen,” Gin called out abruptly, “we’ve got a couple of backstage passes coming up here in a minute. Don’t take too long with them. You guys got less than ten minutes.” He took off, probably to find Doris, who had a habit of meeting her fans off stage.

  The three girls and one guy immediately flocked around Aden and Colby, but when Night stepped out from the sidelines, the same girls nearly barreled him over. One girl, who could easily have passed as Daphne, latched her arms around his neck, crying, but she was ousted by another who came at him with a permanent marker, begging him to sign his name above her left breast as she exposed most of it. He did this while the other band members signed various paraphernalia and body parts as well.

  Security soon hustled the backstage visitors to the stairs and someone yelled: “Five minutes!” Night felt perspiration break across his face and, for a moment, he feared for Brandt’s make-up job: liquid and powder foundation, black eyeliner—with the smoky effect—frosty-white eye shadow and mascara—all of it in jeopardy! Brandt fussed over him for a minute with tinted lip gloss and, at last, he was “Good to go.”

  When he walked into the spotlight and seized the microphone, the cheering made his eyes well up with Morgen’s tears. Every muscle in his arm showed as he fingered the frets of his guitar beneath the lights that obliterated his view of the audience. The small chains and buttons on his tattered costume caught the light so, each time he adjusted his hold on the guitar, the cheering surged like he was, in fact, doing something spectacular. He couldn’t wait to bring the tiger out in the second half of the show, with himself dressed in black vinyl that reflected electric tiger stripes in the intermittent black stage lighting.