Out there, Logan Boulevard is quiet and baking in the sun. Across the street is a green midway peppered with oaks and shadow, and then another street, and then more mansions behind wrought-iron fences. The sheer scope of the outside world, the distance from here to the mansions across the midway—which may very well just be a mirror image of the side of the boulevard that I’m on, in the house I’m in, simply unable to see myself looking at myself from within this house because of the distance…. The world is a big fucking place. It wants to collapse back in on itself.
The world is a big fucking place, and while it frightens me, I’m not ready to make it go away, so I try to keep my focus a little closer, so as to avoid seeing my doppelganger and learning we’re the only two here anymore but can never meet because we’re two sides to a mirror. Forever lonely.
Where is Karen?
I’m trying to recall but recall nothing until I let myself believe she went on a business trip. Or, she said something about Samuel’s (or, Sam, as she called him) lawyers and needing to meet with them. Perhaps that required some kind of long distance travel.
The flies in my stomach buzz and the beetles are rattling around, banging their hard backs against each other just beneath my skin. I know that means I need a drink and my pills.
Before I turn away from the window and the world to get that glass of whiskey and palmfull of pills, I spot something in the street in front of the house. It’s dark red and glistening and patched with tufts of fur. I realize it’s Astro, the neighbor’s golden retriever. Or, I think it is. It’s in the street, basically flayed open, split in half, snakes of intestines and globules of kidneys and other organs fallen from it. Glistening. Flies are zipping all around it. The poor dog’s head is crushed and its tongue hangs out. Heat wavers from the street, distorting the sight. I want to go out there and scrape him from the asphalt before the neighbor’s kids see it.
But I just can’t.
From the center of that red, glistening mass on the asphalt, I see the darkness. I see the ripple in reality—that wavering blackness, right there, right now in broad daylight. It shimmers in the middle of that animal’s dismemberment, and when a hand—a hand with burn-scars—reaches out from it, I swing away from the window and trip over the chaise lounge there and crab-crawl to the center of the house, beneath the stairs where there’s a broom closet. I’m tempted to open my eyes, completely, but I will them half-shut. I open the broom closet and squirm inside between an ironing board and a year’s supply of toilet paper.
I don’t leave for days.
PART TWO
“Oh, it’s always a good time for a party,” I hear a seductive, female voice say. I’m sitting in the broom closet, which I’ve taken to, finding the encasement comforting. It’s my sarcophagus within this castle, this pyramid, and I am King Tut. I leave it from time to time now only to take a piss or shit or watch the strangulation video. There have been times where, hands to my sides, eyes shut, I wormed my way up the stairs, laughing, until I reached my room and entertained myself for hours attempting to open my childproof bottles of medication with just my mouth.
I really think the medicine’s helping.
“But, dear, it’s summer… let’s go out and drink and dance and fuck in the sun! Besides, my skin is in drastic need of some color,” a somewhat effeminate male voice yells.
I can hear their gestures by the sounds of their clothes rustling and the noise of liquid splashing and falling to the floor. They’re excitable and animated and obviously a little bit drunk. Where they are, however, I’m not certain. They could be right outside this goddamned door, or they could be at the front of the house, on the stairs, or upstairs, for that fucking matter.
What the fuck are they even doing here?
They’re not here, I tell myself. You’re hearing the neighbors again.
You’re hearing the neighbors again.
I feel a warmth grow around me and refuse to recognize that I’ve lost control of my bladder again.
Instead, I will myself away. I will myself out of this place, into a warmth where the disgust of the human body is not even possible.
Humanity should have evolved into innocuous balls of light by now.
***
Before Samuel’s passing, my wife, Jill, left me. She didn’t like that I wanted to be a family man—was a family man, spending as much time with my family as possible. I was always here, at this three-story mansion, visiting or living with Karen and Samuel, and, for a time, Samuel’s decrepit mother. Sometimes, I took care of her like she was my own mother, feeding her soup, washing her clothes, bathing her. She was a confused old bat, and she often called me “son,” which I have to admit I did not discourage because it made me miss my own mother just a little less.
She was a lovely woman who brought her son up with respect, adoration, love, and gentleness. Confused, she once asked if I remembered her and dad taking us to one of the north side beaches of Lake Michigan, just off Lake Shore Drive—how we’d all sit there, eating frozen bananas while turning into lobsters in the sun, our toes lapped at by the ebbing lake. She wanted to know if I remembered how we would look back and up at the majestic Chicago skyline, and how she’d rename the tallest buildings after me and my sister. The Hancock building, which she said was strong and manly, like me, was mine. Sears Tower, which was regal and elegant, was named after my sister. She said they bracketed the city with many buildings separating the two, because, being brother and sister, they fought too much and, thankfully, Chicago is a very big place and allowed for enough room for both. Samuel’s mother said she and father were the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building, because they were both old, like them, and she’d laugh at that. She said these two buildings were them because they were also near each other, but distinct. As well, these two old buildings watched over the river, which spilled into the lake, and each building could keep a good eye on their children while also allowing them their space to be recognized as individuals—individuals with the choice to touch, or puncture, the sky with their horns.
I told her it was a lovely story. I told her I remembered.
She was a lovely woman. She once had beautiful hands, she told me on many occasions. She once had very beautiful hands, the kind used in glossy jewelry ads in classy magazines. Do I remember? she asked. She once had beautiful hands, but then there was a fire and she was burned. Just one hand, ruining such a perfect pair. Do I remember? she asked. Do I remember the fire?
Oh yes, I remember the fire.
***
“Harold!” I hear that sultry woman’s voice again, and she’s screaming. “Harold!” she yells again and a small thud follows—it sounds like she threw one of her pumps hard against the wood floor, pouting. I hear it in her voice. The thud unnerves me. It didn’t come from outside. How could that have come from the neighbor’s? She—they are somewhere above me. Above my painless iron maiden where I rest in the dark and wade through the mephitis.
It’s not just me, anymore. This whole place reeks of rot. Recently the power cut out and never came back on. I thought it may have been knocked out by one of those summer thunderstorms that jars the house like bombs—but, no, it’s obvious now that Karen’s been gone long enough to have missed enough electric bills that they’ve finally let this house go dark.
It’s so unlike Karen to shirk such responsibilities.
This mansion now reeks. Not just from the gnat-infested mounds of coffee grounds I’ve left all over, or all the condiments and sandwich fillings spread out all over the kitchen counters and long dining room table that sits beneath a now useless but very ornamental crystal chandelier.
Everything has gone bad—the eggs, ham, crab legs, milk, frozen shrimp, filet mignon, and bushels of veggies from the garden, all in the refrigerator—and blossomed into bulbous, fuzzy green sicknesses, attempting to rejoin the earth, which is just a big ball of death and rot falling through a black vacuum of space. Why any of us choose to hang onto the leprous skin of this dying planet, I
do not know.
My eyes are black holes.
My brain is a wormhole.
Perhaps it’s time I let it all go.
“Harold, goddammit! Where’s my mojito!” that sexy voice, hovering somewhere over me, whines and interrupts my inner monologue.
Click-clack of the latch slipping into the strike plate as some door closes and the man’s voice, with a slight lisp, says, “Jesus, Natasha, don’t get your misty little panties in a twist. Here’s your goddamned drink, you lush. Try a little patience, would you?”
And there’s a thump. And another thump. He’s kicked off his goddamned shoes and plopped into an E-Z chair. They’re lounging in this house. In my house! Who the fuck are these people?
Indignation and anger—two emotions I’ve not felt in a while—boil my blood and have me seeing stars in the dark. I’ll show them, I tell myself. I’ll look right at them and make them disappear.
Slowly, I creak open the broom closet door and peek out. There’s just the empty living room full of chaise lounges and plush armchairs and ornate coffee tables. The blinds and curtains on the front windows are drawn shut. A number of original Patrick Nagel’s hang from the walls. All the women in those paintings are ghosts. Fashionable ghosts.
I slip out of the closet under the stairs and into the living room. Cocking my head, like a skittish squirrel, I listen: An old woman’s gasps is the only sound now. I cannot hear the interlopers.
In this twilight, I’m offered only the sight of the sleepwalker (perhaps I’m sleepwalking now?). Through my weighted lids, everything’s silhouetted or dark around the edges, and ready to slip away. Reaching into the closet, I grab my Maglite, determined to ferret out these intruders and make them regret laying eyes on me when I find them.
Though I will not regret laying eyes on them.
My eyes are black holes.
With the flashlight’s long beam swaying ahead of me, I tip-toe up the stairs, remaining vigilant for any unusual noises. The stairs creak beneath me.
Dull chatter in the walls.
I can hear them! Though they sound a thousand miles away. Like they’re on another planet.
Monsters. Aliens.
Murmurmurmurmurmurmurmur.
Then: laughter. Laughter as though projected into a tin can on a string.
One step at a time, the murmurs and distant metallic chuckles remain, but get no louder, no closer.
On the second-floor landing, I aim the beam down the hall. I notice the stained glass window has Saul back on his horse, well-balanced. All the doors are closed, including the one leading to that room that shouldn’t be there—has never been there before, as long as I can remember.
I wait. I listen.
More murmurs and tinny guffaws echo off the walls and bounce around this enormous castle. They’re coming from the mystery room. I creep up the hall to the door and carefully place my ear against it and listen.
“Do you think she’s dead?” the man lisps and the woman laughs wickedly and says, “How many drinks have we had? Should we invite our friend—oh, what’s his name? Stinky?” and she laughs wickedly again. “Is it? Is it Stinky? Come on, tell me! No? You don’t know? Let’s just call him Stinky, then,” and she keeps laughing and peeling the paint off the walls. In between her giggle fit she catches her breath and says, “Should we invite Stinky to join us for one of these fabulous mojitos you’ve made? You really do make a fabulous mojito, Harold.” She laughs once more. I notice the man is not laughing with her.
I want to hurt them. I want to make her eat her own tongue, pink chunk by pink chunk, and I want to tie him down and cover him in honey and let the bears chew him to pieces.
Bursting into the room, the Maglite held before me like a weapon, I scream, “YOU SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACES! YOU SHUT YOUR GODDAMNED FACES!” before recognizing the room’s empty. Almost completely empty. There’s one chair in the middle of the room, and one painting on the wall—another portrait of me, or my father.
Click-clack as the latch slips into the strike plate. The door closes behind me.
Something’s not right about this room, and it’s not that the invading couple is absent. Something’s off. Dizzy, I take a seat in the chair in the center of room and look around and attempt to gather my thoughts, orient myself.
It finally comes to me: This room faces out toward the boulevard. It should have a window looking out over the boulevard and the oak trees and the mansions on the other side. Instead, where there should be a window, there’s a door. I don’t remember a balcony on this house. Then again, I don’t remember this goddamned room, so….
The coolness of the brass doorknob chills the center of my palm. I grip and turn and pull and I’m not met by fresh evening air and views of the neighborhood. I should be stepping onto a balcony where I can watch dog-walkers and joggers and couples strolling hand-in-hand. Where I can watch children murder children and parents laugh at them.
Instead, I’ve walked into another room, with another door directly across from me. It’s impossible, but it’s there. This room has a chair and a table. On the table is a completed game of solitaire. On the walls are two portraits: One of my father and one of my mother, both when they were younger. Or, it could be me and my sister, as we are now. I can’t tell. It’s dark in this room and the paintings are dark and one of them may even be bleeding, but I’m unwilling to shine my light on it and inspect it any further.
Again the trespassers have evaded me.
Again I can hear their faint, gossipy voices on the other side of the impossible door.
I really need my meds. I can’t remember when I last took them. And this isn’t making any sense. I probably should just go back the way I came, go upstairs, swallow my pills and sleep. Sleep for an eternity. Swallow all my pills and sleep forever.
But those fuckers are so close, I can almost smell their cologne and perfume over the wafting fumes of rot pervading this entire house.
Compelled, I stumble past the card table and portraits of my parents, and bust through that next door and…
wind up in my bedroom on the third floor? I’m standing, in fact, just outside my bathroom.
I look back and squint and, yes, it’s just my bathroom. There’s the clawfoot tub. It’s gurgling as the last of the bath water swirls down the drain and I realize I’m clean, smelling of soap and mouthwash and… cologne. I’m in a fresh, clean pair of pajamas. The window curtains are open, but it’s dark out there. Pitch black. I still have my flashlight, fortunately, as it has become my eyes.
Disoriented, I stumble over to the bed and find a bottle of Johnnie Walker on the nightstand, along with a short glass filled with ice and my prescription medicine bottles organized into a neat, tight line next to the glass.
How’d they get there?
I’m shaky, unnerved. I hold the Maglite on the glass and the light rattles. I pour myself the scotch and the glass glows. I shake out my pills and throw them toward the back of my throat and force them down with big gulps of the whiskey.
It’s nighttime, Jacky, I hear Karen say. It’s bedtime, big brother. Go on. You’ve been so good lately. You’re doing so well. Please, get some rest.
I realize the voice is coming from the other side of the bedroom door.
“Karen?” I say.
There’s a shuffle behind the door. A scuttle. A giggle. I hear a man’s voice, hushed, say, “Stop it! You’ll give yourself away!”
Suddenly dizzy, I take a seat on the bed and aim the flashlight at the door and try to catch my breath.
“Karen—is that… Karen, what are you doing?”
I’m feeling very tired.
I take one more sip of the scotch and lick my lips. My lips taste like salt. Like blood.
“Karen?” I say once more and lie back on the bed.
“Hush little baby don’t you… cry,” I hear Karen sing from the other side of the door. “Momma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird… and if the cradle rocks… oh shit, what’s the words to this goddam
ned song?” she says, sing-songy in a whispery voice, stifling laughter.
Warmth. Like a star being born on my tongue. I feel warmth spiral inside me. And I fall asleep to butchered lullabies.
***
My wife was a sick woman. A cruel woman. A vindictive woman. A heartless woman.
Her family, so she says, did not approve of me. How could I know this—how could they know this, having never met me? Her family was small and shattered like bits of glass blown across the North American continent, and it was easy, she said, that they never met me. We got married in Vegas, after all, and whenever we attempted to visit her mother in Vancouver, her father in Baton Rouge, her brother in Buffalo, we’d wind up, suitcases in hand, banging on doors with no answer, finally opting for hotel rooms where we’d get drunk off those ridiculously expensive tiny bottles of rum in the locked cabinets.
I liked her when she drank. I liked us when we drank together. She was saucy and affectionate. I was charming and chivalrous. And we’d warm up to each other and press our hot mouths together, eager to have every inch of skin touched, teased, plucked, pinched, and stroked. It was the only time she let me fuck her in any position other than missionary, and the only time our lovemaking would occur throughout the space—if we were in a hotel room, I’d fuck her on the balcony, in the bed, over the table, and in the shower. If we were in a bar, she’d slide her dress up just enough and let me finger her under the table and then fuck her in a bathroom stall or out in the alley. If we were home, we’d have to call a cleaning service the next day because the place would be so wrecked neither of us would be willing to even contemplate the cleanup.
But that was only when she drank. And once she stopped, there was no warmth. There was no affection. There was no fucking. No love.
She said she wasn’t herself when she drank and she hated me for letting her get so carried away.
I told her that was crazy. She was more herself when she drank. And when are we ever always ourselves, anyway?
My Eyes Are Black Holes Page 4
