Dominoes in Time

by Matthew Warner

  Brandon felt like saying, “I’ll try,” but he couldn’t.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Alicia held up the torso while Brandon slipped the arms through the suit’s sleeves. “Ooh, careful there,” she said when he nearly pushed the body off the table. He wasn’t paying attention.

  “They’ve been teaching us some new stuff about this at school, Bran—uh, Mr. Teller. If you want, I could show you some of it. It’s really simple, actually.”

  “No, no, that’s all right.”

  He helped her lay the torso back down, got out the comb and fixed the hair he’d disturbed. He tried to think of something to say.

  Christ, Brandon, don’t you ever shut up? Even in bed, you’re always talking—yap yap yap yap yap. And you don’t even talk about the sex when we’re doing it. It’s about all that morbid shit. You think it’s really goddamn funny, don’t you? Stop laughing!… I’m just telling you I don’t want to hear about that when we’re making love.

  He took a breath, found he could think of absolutely nothing to talk about.

  “Hey, Brandon,” Alicia said. “What do you think of Nate? You’ve known him for a good year now, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is he when he’s like, not around a woman? Does he still act like that, uh, charming guy I’ve been hanging out with?” She smiled, her cheeks reddening.

  Another memory flashed through his mind, this one of Nate, hanging naked by his neck in his office closet, a Hustler centerfold held in front of him. Get out!

  “I don’t know, I guess so.” He walked away, rifled through a cabinet drawer, not really looking for anything. “I try to not to judge people on the way they act.”

  “Really?”

  He reluctantly turned around and faced her, tried not to compare the two women’s looks, the line of her jaw, the way her hair rested on her forehead, the curvature of her shoulders—found he couldn’t. He nodded.

  And for the first time since she’d come to work there, she smiled at him—not because Nate had given her a compliment or because Nate had acted concerned about some problem she had or because Nate had done this or that—but because he had made her smile. “How do you judge people, then?” she said.

  He shrugged, looked down at his feet. “I guess more on what’s going on underneath, if that makes any sense.”

  Her hand stole into his vision, a finger raised his chin. Her smile waited only a foot or so away, a faint smell of perfume making her real. “Yeah, it does,” she said.

  A dull thudding started in his chest, picking up in rhythm. That’s what his Alicia would do when she got ready to kiss him! Touch his chin and…

  She left the room, mumbling something about needing to take a break. He started to follow, frustrated, wanting to continue the conversation. He put his hand on the doorknob, but a man’s voice made him stop.

  Nate’s. “Hey, look what grew out of my hand on the way here?”

  Laughter. “A rose! Where’d you get it, from the church’s flowerbed down the street?”

  And the two voices laughed together. Brandon let his hand drop from the doorknob, fought off a sudden wave of revulsion and the destructive thought

  (wanna kill that motherfucker)

  and went back to the corpse and resumed combing its hair, slowly.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When he went home that night, he didn’t bother to take off his coat, just dropped the car keys on the kitchen table, and after taking a long pull from the fresh bottle of bourbon waiting on the counter, walked into the bedroom, lay down, eyes dead.

  What’s the matter, baby? A hand slowly stroking his hair, comforting. You’re so tense. Here, take off your shirt, and I’ll rub your back.

  A car raced by on the street, its headlights sending slits through the venetian blinds to zebra-stripe the opposing wall and its cheap, modernist painting she’d bought two summers ago. A barrage of rain responded to pelt the roof.

  The room darkened, sapping his energy. Fine, so be it; he’d just lie there until hunger came, and then he’d resist it until it went away, and then he’d lie there some more. And then he’d be too weak to get up even if he wanted to, and that would be just fine. Just lie there and not get up. And then, eventually, he’d have to think to even breathe, and that would be fine, too, because then he’d be able to stop it.

  Just lie there and feel the anvil on your chest, weighing you down, pushing you into the bed, pushing down…

  There’s no way I’m gonna conquer this, because when I’m in group, they just push me back down. Looking up for an expression of concern but only receiving a nod, urging him to continue. They’re all on top of me, like I was the football player at the bottom of a pile.

  Another nod. What do we have you on, now, four milligrams? Hmm, doesn’t seem like it’s helping, does it? I think maybe I’ll have you take an extra two. It’s nothing big-time, just enough to…

  … push you down and so far down you’ll wish you never got up from that wreck and that it was your blood flowing across that pavement and that she’d be there when you got to Hell’s gate just to tell you that you’re a bastard and you should’ve listened to her and that she was right about the weather going bad and that you’re worthless and you’re shit and that no matter what you try you’re not going to get any higher than where you are right now because you don’t deserve it and you’re just going to get

  pushed

  down.

  He rolled over, looked at the clock, and its stabbing, red numbers told him it was one-thirty in the morning. He groaned, got up and took a deep breath.

  You’re worthless, and do you know why?

  He retrieved his keys and the bourbon and left the apartment.

  After a few minutes, he realized he didn’t remember anything from the trip, but the car had carried him back to the funeral home. What was he doing here? He snorted and smirked, trying not to laugh, and he walked in, laboriously climbed the stairs to his office.

  A soft moan sounded from down the hall, from Nate’s office. A woman’s.

  He just stood there in front of his own door, hand on the doorknob, frozen and yet relaxed. “Oh, Nate,” the voice echoed, almost a whisper.

  A man’s voice now, just a soft groan. Brandon let his hand drop from the doorknob, took a breath, felt the weight push down again.

  And the woman’s moan repeated, but this time it stopped, caught. “Hey, stop it.” Nate’s voice sounded in response, not words.

  Brandon, cut it out. You know I don’t like that. Hands grasping in the dark, reaching and being rebuffed. Stop it.

  He grabbed the doorknob again, rested his forehead against the wood, closed his eyes.

  Come on, you’re… you’re so beautiful… come on, please…

  “Stop it, please.”

  Oh, Brandon, ummmmmm…

  Alicia’s voice caught again, and Nate made another sound, this time loud and clear, despite the closed door. More sounds, like legs rubbing back and forth quickly on a desk, and then a sharp report of a lamp falling off. The only voice now was Nate’s.

  Brandon walked into his office, put the bourbon on his desk and dropped his coat on the floor, got ready to sit down and drink the whole bottle.

  Another moan from down the hall, and this time, a choking cough responded. His eyebrows furrowed. He left the office, started down the hall. More sounds, another cough.

  SLAM… SLAM… SLAM…

  Nate’s door stood slightly ajar, and Brandon’s fingertips widened the crack. Nate lay on top of Alicia, hips pumping, both hands forward and up, wrapped around her neck. The breath sucked in and out of Nate’s mouth like a wind tunnel or an engine winding up, approaching its peak, all four cylinders winding up, winding up and

  SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM

  finally approaching that point, and her blue face darkening and her eyes bulging and pleading, pleading for him to please STOP and pull over oh my god Brandon what the hell are you doing why didn’t you pull ove
r

  SLAMSLAMSLAMSLAMSLAMSLAMSLAMSLAM

  Nate stopped, let out a deep breath of satisfaction, and Brandon watched as he looked up into her purple, still face and asked her if she was okay. She didn’t respond.

  You’re worthless, you fucker, and do you know why? Here’s why: It’s your fault she died. She told you to stop, and you didn’t listen.

  He burst through the door, and Nate turned and said,

  (Get out!)

  “Brandon! What are you doing he—”

  The push cut him off, forced him off Alicia and off the desk to land on top of the lamp that’d been pushed off. Alicia’s body followed, landed on top of him, a chaotic mess of naked limbs and purple face and Nate’s outrage: “Christ, Brandon! What the hell are you doing?”

  Brandon reached past them and picked up the lamp, turned it over and swung the heavy base over his head, bringing it down on Nate’s skull, and the metal produced a hollow, tuning-fork ring.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Nate didn’t wake up as Brandon pushed him into the machine.

  Brandon then pulled the firebrick door down, the pulleys making tiny squeaking sounds as it slid shut. He reached forward with both hands and grasped the twin screws on either side and turned them until they stopped, securing the door in place, and then he shut the outside shutters.

  He worked the controls, and the whirring noise started, sounding like a huge fan.

  In a half hour, the cremator would reach its operational temperature of 2,000 degrees, and the flames would reach up for the following two hours to embrace him in hot death, charring and then devouring the flesh, sucking it quickly and efficiently up through 50 feet of State-Of-The-Art Ductwork, letting the heat out through the chimney—reducing the body to gray bone.

  The gathering heat would wake Nate up eventually, and he would cry out in the darkness, beat his hands upon the brick, begging to be let out, but Brandon knew he wouldn’t hear the shouts because of the sound-proof kiln walls.

  But he would imagine, and he would cry.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Once, when a woman came into the funeral home and started talking with Nate about what kind of casket she wanted to buy for her dead son, she went into hysterics and wouldn’t calm down. And Nate came to him and said, “Brandon, she’s getting out of control. Do you have any tranquilizers or something?”

  Brandon wasn’t sure if OSHA said anything about them giving drugs to their clients—even if it was in the interests of calming them—but Nate had been there longer and knew the business better, so he went to the drug store and looked, couldn’t find any tranquilizers but bought a bottle of 50 SleepRite pills, each good for Six Silent Hours of Sleeping Satisfaction. But by the time he got back to the home, the woman had left, and Nate wore a bright-red hand mark on his left cheek. “She was way too out of control,” Nate had said, furious and brushing past him on the way to the prep room. So, Brandon had put the unopened bottle away in his desk, and it remained unopened.

  Until now.

  He slouched in the chair and looked blearily at the open casket, put the last pill in his mouth and took the last swig from the bourbon bottle, finishing both. Alicia’s naked, dead form lay in the casket, open-jawed face searching the ceiling.

  Alicia had always liked candles—candle-lit suppers, candle-lit baths, candle-lit sex—and Brandon had long ago stashed a few in his bottom drawer in the event they’d ever make it in his office. The thought of fucking in the office almost made him laugh. Almost. They now burned in a rough semicircle that Brandon sat within, concaved towards the casket. The bourbon bottle dropped from his hand.

  “I love you, I really do,” he said.

  I love you, too.

  He got up, walked drunkenly to the casket and retrieved the casket key from where it lay on the closed lower portion of the lid. He opened the lid and then went to the foot, inserted the key in the slot and started cranking, lowering Alicia’s feet to the bottom.

  “It was my fault. Can… can you forgive me?”

  He went to the head, inserted the key and started cranking to lower her upper body, briefly lost his balance and regained it.

  I forgive you. Come hold me.

  He nearly fell as he walked around to the front again, almost tipped the casket off its stand when he put a foot in, but somehow, he got first a whole leg and then an arm in.

  Come to me.

  And finally he was in, ready to hold his beloved and whisper to her one last time that he loved her and then to drift off to dreamless sleep with her in his arms. But not yet, not until he closed the lids and shut it all out: the world, the weight upon his chest and the guilt.

  There.

  Springs Eternal

  It only made sense that a former mineral springs resort in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia, came out of nowhere as you approached it. One moment, John Linden was winding his sedan down a valley of featureless farm lands in Monroe County, and the next, a hotel designed by none other than Thomas Jefferson was smack-dab in front of him.

  Smack-dab. Yep, he better get used to phrases like that if he was going to fit in and land this job as a handyman. That, and ain’t, y’all, and fixin’ to. Whatever it took to put old man Lewis at ease.

  The old man, hisownself (that was another one), emerged from between the Doric columns of the hotel’s long porch and jogged across the lawn to him. Aside from hiking boots and a hunting cap with ear flaps—no doubt because it was colder than a witch’s armpit this morning—Mr. Lewis looked about as stereotypically West Virginian as Donald Trump. He wore an expensive suit and tie and a prissy little moustache.

  “John, my good sir. Most pleased you could make it. Welcome to Old Sweet Springs.”

  Didn’t sound like a West Virginian, either. As John shook the offered hand—soft skin—he realized he would have to revise his assumptions about this area.

  “Feeling’s mutual, sir. So, is that the building I’ll be working on?” He stopped himself from putting a twang on workin’. Maybe he could just be himself.

  “Perhaps. But we’re nearly done renovating the Jefferson building. When we reopen that as a resort—can you believe it’s been ninety years?—I’m confident guests will luxuriate in splendor. They’ll feel like all the U.S. presidents who have ever stayed here.”

  But John’s attention was already wandering to the ruinous structure behind him. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Lewis said. “I see you’ve already found your project.”

  “Sir?”

  “That’s the bath house. I can’t very well reopen a mineral springs resort when its central attraction resembles the Parthenon after the siege of the Venetians, now can I?”

  Mr. Lewis laughed at his own joke as he unlocked a tall metal gate so they could enter. He tossed the key to John. “You’ll need this.”

  John smiled. This would be easier than he thought.

  The bath house was little more than four vine-covered walls surrounding a pool floating with algae. A corner of it lay collapsed in a pile of bricks and wood as if God had smashed it in a fit. One end of the pool trickled away into an overflow ditch that John knew fed into Cove Creek.

  Mr. Lewis peered into the pool’s black depths. “Its appearance belies its wonder.”

  “Sir?”

  “This spring. The Indians believed it could cure disease.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, you do?”

  “I—I mean… ” He averted his gaze. “I mean I heard it was a historic spring.”

  “Indeed. Who knows, it may have been Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth!”

  John nodded and tried to appear stoic. He leaned forward to find the pool’s bottom but couldn’t see it.

  “Careful you don’t fall in.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, sir. I can’t swim.” And that was the truth.

  “Ah.”

  Mr. Lewis suddenly appeared unsure of himself. Maybe it was time to get this charade firmly onto the road.

/>   “So, sir, what do I need to get started?”

  “Ah, well, let’s go back to my office. After you sign some paperwork, we can continue your orientation.”

  John followed him back to the gravel service road. His gaze swept over his surroundings as he contemplated the forthcoming tour of things he cared little about: the barren trees with the mountains in the distance, the dead grasses and weeds, the ancient hotel building with its windows staring out at him.

  Just hold it together a little longer, he told himself. The old man will be out of your hair soon.

  At Mr. Lewis’s direction, he shut and locked the metal gate. The old man stared at John’s wedding band. “I didn’t know you were married. Is your wife here?”

  With the gate locked, John turned to face him. He groped for his best stoic mask. “She’ll be joining me shortly.”

  Luckily, a pickup truck pulled up alongside them. A whitehaired woman and a young man greeted them.

  “Ah. John, let me introduce my family.”

  A false grin slipped into place as John made his pleasantries. Yes sir, he sure was good at putting people at ease.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  On the night John finally sneaked out to the bath house, it was no longer colder than a witch’s armpit. It was worse, frostier than a witch’s bosom on Christmas morning. He found he rather enjoyed fake-hick expressions like that, regardless that he seemed to be the only hick around here, fake or otherwise.

  His breath steamed against the car’s windshield as he drove up the service road. His headlights were off, but he saw just fine because he’d waited for the full moon. Its glow illuminated the well-worn copy of The Legend of Ponce de Leon on the passenger seat. He glanced at it before climbing out.

  His hands trembled as he unlocked the big metal gate. This is why he’d bothered to apply for the job at all: to acquire the key. He parked inside the gate’s perimeter, then returned to close it again.