by Jerry
In the cab home he put his arms around me and kissed me, long and deep and sweet. I kissed back until I almost lost control and somehow began to pull away. I protested that if he didn’t stop, I couldn’t be responsible for myself, or something equally juvenile. I claimed I was married and wanted to stay that way. And he stopped. He did walk me to the hotel elevator and kissed me lightly on the cheek and thanked me for a wonderful evening. He didn’t say a word about any next time.
I was back in my room before I even realized I didn’t even know where he was staying. I called the front desk; he wasn’t staying there. Do you know how many hotels there are in San Francisco? I didn’t find one that had a Robert Chamberlin registered, but then I gave up after about the first dozen calls. I felt too stupid. I mean what if I’d found him. Then I’d have to decide something. I took his card out of my credit packet and stared at it till my head started to throb again.
Three days later I was home again. He hadn’t called; there were no more flowers or messages. My husband was home when I got in; the twins were asleep. Maybe I got my coat off before I had his pants unzipped; I’m not sure.
The very next day I stopped by Robert’s office. That’s what he liked to be called, not Bob or Rob or anything. I didn’t even have an excuse to explain my presence to his receptionist. I asked him if the doctor was available. What a question. He told me he’d be out of town until the following Monday. I declined to leave my name and number. I didn’t even know if he was married or not. I just knew I had to see him again, Implant or no Implant. Hell, I’d managed to keep my secrets from the experts; surely I could handle him.
It was a long few days. I waited outside his office Monday afternoon, and when he was leaving for the evening, I strolled over ever so casually and said, “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself,” he said with a wonderful smile.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” I asked.
“How about my place?” he answered. So, he probably wasn’t married.
His apartment was awful. He had a dog, and the dog had hair that was everywhere. But I don’t think I noticed any of that then. We weren’t even fully in the door before I melted into his arms. We were still both fully clothed when he asked me if I was sure.
“Of what?”
“That you really want to have an affair?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, I asked him if he was married. Somehow it mattered to me. He said no, he wasn’t even involved with anyone right then, but there was this relatively recent breakup he was still having some trouble with. Whatever that meant. Then I asked him if he wanted to have an affair. All this curled up together on a couch, panting heavily.
“Absolutely,” he said. “But you’re the one taking the risks, not me. Take your time; think it over. Call me in a week.” And then he got up from the couch. He was actually smiling as he wrote down his home number and gave it to me.
I muttered something about an aerobics class and left. I didn’t finish the class. Near the end I left and phoned.
“Do I have to wait a week, or can I come back over now?”
“Come back over now,” he answered and hung up. I called my husband and told him I’d be working late at the studio and would he kiss the boys goodnight for me. I promised not to be too late.
And that was how it started. Did I feel guilty? Not then.
Later, that night. I didn’t expect my viscera to feel quite so much like Chernobyl when I saw my husband. But I got over it; aside from a few minor meltdowns, I think I kept the guilt under control. And not having a phone in the studio worked out very well. I’d say I was working late, which I very often really did do, and then I never had to worry about getting called. Or checked on. We even had one weekend together at a conference where I drew and he spoke. It was in Chicago. It’s the only time I’ve ever liked Chicago.
It was about three months along before he asked me if I loved my husband. I told the truth and said yes. And we talked about marriage and kids and families. He said he thought if I wasn’t married, we’d have a wonderful future together but. It was a big “but” as I remember. That was when I learned he’d started seeing someone else. It seems he was feeling the urge to settle down. Since our relationship didn’t fit smoothly into his view of the future he’d been designing, he’d been looking elsewhere. He claimed that it was something that happened to men his age. If he was ever going to have a family, he wanted to get started. He called it exploring other options. I took it in stride, at first at least. He was real hard to argue with. He still told me he loved me, that I was the sexiest person on the face of the earth. And when I was with him, he made me believe it.
And I tried to believe that she didn’t matter. I kept telling myself that she didn’t matter. But she did. Looking back, I’m not sure which happened first. He fell more in love with her, or I slipped up and he started to suspect. I think both happened at just about the same time, about another three months after he’d told me about her for the first time. We were in his apartment, and he’d told me that we wouldn’t be able to meet freely there anymore because she was moving in. He’d warned me that it was probably going to happen. Oh, we could still see each other all right, just not there.
I didn’t even cry. I figured we still had the studio, and I could get a couch or something. We were getting ready to go out and he couldn’t find his keys and that’s when I made my mistake. I told him where they were. In his jacket pocket, outside left. Just like that. I hadn’t made such a slip in so long, I couldn’t remember. He looked at me kind of funny, but didn’t say anything. I almost tried to explain it away, like I’d seen him put them there or something, but I thought it’d only raise more suspicion.
He did begin to suspect after that; at least he acted suspicious. He started bugging me about the headaches. And suggesting therapists for me. He even said he’d take me as a patient himself, even though it could be construed as unethical. I declined and became more careful. Let him think I’m hiding a little ability. So maybe I could find things that were lost, big deal. Let him think that somehow I managed to get through the screening procedures, without anyone catching on. After all, I really had been certified as nonlatent. It hadn’t been easy, but I’d done it.
I’d heard what happened to people who had real abilities. I knew what had happened to my father. Daddy was picked by the government early. Before they fixed the Implant output modulation problem. He was tucked away in a VA hospital for seven years before his body caught up with his brain and managed to die.
He’d first explained it to me when I was about six, before any of Meg son’s work was being taken seriously. We were at the railway station; I think it was Grand Central Station in New York, but that part I’m not really sure about. I asked him why only one of the destination signs had such a pretty golden glow to it. He said people who got migraine headaches often saw such things but it was better not to tell anyone. I remember telling him I didn’t have a headache. He said I would when I got older.
The next morning he showed me the newspaper. I couldn’t read very well yet but there was a big picture of two crumpled trains, a head-on collision. Then he tried to explain about seeing the halo. And how important it was to never let anyone know about the halos or do anything at all about them. No matter what. He called it our secret. At first I was proud of it and was angry that he wouldn’t let me tell anyone, not even Mother. He tried to explain that people don’t want to know that other people might be able to know when or how they might die. I remember asking him if I could see when I was going to die, and he told me he didn’t think it worked that way. Things only glowed about other people, not ourselves. At six, I didn’t understand, but I kept the secret. By the time I was twelve, I think I had a glimmer of how sound my father’s advice was. By then I knew enough not to let on about how I could find things that were lost or what the final game score was going to be. To this day, I don’t understand why he failed to take his own advice. He actually volunteered for some of the orig
inal clinical trials exploring the applications of Megson’s work. Maybe that was how the government found him so quickly. I never did know for sure how much they found out about his abilities.
But I kept my promise to him and kept our secret and kept on having an affair. But it wasn’t the same, at least not after she’d actually moved in. I couldn’t call him anymore, couldn’t send him anything, not even a card. He said even the office really wasn’t safe because she’d drop in unexpectedly. But we still had my studio, and I’d gotten a lovely futon with an imported silk Japanese mattress cover. We still saw a lot of each other. He called more often, still said he loved me, constantly and repeatedly. He even asked me to leave my husband, twice. Once I even thought he was serious. I said no, of course. And he kept bugging me about the headaches; he hadn’t stopped wondering.
Then after one rare and particularly nasty argument over something I can’t even remember now, he told me that she suspected. Suspected what, I asked. That he was seeing someone else. I think he picked a bar on purpose. He could have told me privately, but, no, he picked a public bar. Hell, I could throw a scene better in front of a public audience than anything I could manage in private. But I didn’t. I stayed in control.
Leaning across the wide booth table as best I could, I asked him what exactly she’d said.
“Well, she didn’t really say anything in so many words,” he admitted, not meeting my eyes.
“Just what did she say?” I demanded.
“That she sensed a distance between us, that something was wrong.”
“That’s all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
I wanted to say no, not for me; it wasn’t anywhere near enough. But I didn’t. To this day I don’t know why. Maybe I was sensing rejection, that he was loving her more and more and therefore me less and less. Or maybe I just came to my senses.
“So we’ll stop. Sleeping with each other, I mean.” The bastard agreed much too fast. Oh, we talked it out more all right. We must have spent at least three more hours in the bar. I even cried a little. It was like hammering out a treaty. We’d still see each other; after all he insisted he still loved me as much as ever, but we’d behave ourselves. No sex. Hugs and greeting kisses, but no sex.
I took that in stride as well. And still, we saw a lot of each other. We stayed lovers, without making love. I know that makes no sense, but that’s what we did. We were trying to become just friends, but I still wanted him so badly I’m not sure that it was ever possible.
We were still working at it about a month later when he told me they were getting married. Soon. I told myself lots of things then. That it was much safer if he got married. That he deserved what I already had, a loving spouse, wonderful children, too many bills and fights over finances. The list went on and on. I even told him I was glad. We only saw each other a couple of times after that, and I remained civil and reasonable and promised to go to the wedding.
My husband went with me. I’d introduced Robert as someone I’d met at one of the conferences months before, and it seemed to work. I had other close male friends. My husband was not an unreasonable man. We had a good time. Not great, but good. The weather was lousy, and she looked too pretty. He laughed when I told him I’d bought the black velvet outfit. I insisted that it was only partially symbolic, that really I looked best in black. I promised not to wear a big red A over my chest. He’d laughed at that, too. I hardly cried at all during the ceremony. And the trapeze coat really did swing beautifully when we danced.
I never thought about it when he asked if we could drive them to the airport. They were off to Jamaica for their honeymoon. We’d gotten a sitter for the twins anyway, so we saw them off. We should have just left them at the curb, but my husband insisted on parking the car and escorting them in. The Philadelphia airport had just finished renovating all the information monitors. Lovely linear displays, green on black. Except for Flight 109 to Kingston which glowed. It glowed so brightly I couldn’t read the information above and below it.
Robert looked at me as I said goodbye.
“Headache?” he asked.
“Just a bit.”
“You’ve got to let me help you with those when we get back,” he said smiling but concerned.
“When you get back,” I repeated.
We all shook hands and kissed goodbye, and I walked away with my husband.
I kept telling myself that I had no way of knowing he wasn’t a government agent. That’s what I’d told myself the whole way home. That he was really a government agent and it was a trap to catch me. I knew it couldn’t be true. It was a stupid, ridiculous idea, but I kept saying it over and over again in my head. When that didn’t work, I told myself I’d promised never to try and change what had to happen. I’d promised my dad; hell, I’d promised myself I’d never act on halos.
By the time we got home, news of the explosion had already made TV. The boys had the screen on when we returned. You could see lots of smoke and parts of the plane and fire trucks. There must have been ambulances, but we didn’t see them.
I wore the same black velvet to the funeral. I went alone. My husband said something about it being difficult to get away from the office, and I didn’t argue. I was a bit overdressed for the occasion, but then so was she. I wouldn’t have thought there were enough pieces of her left for an open casket, but they had her wedding veil down over her face so you couldn’t see much anyway. And a bouquet of white lilies where her hands would have been.
Later that day I stopped at the hospital. I lied and told Robert that she’d looked beautiful and at peace. I assured him everyone knew that he’d wanted to be there but couldn’t. He told me the doctors said he’d be transferring over to a rehabilitation unit by the end of the week, that he could expect a full recovery. Those were the words the doctors used, he said. He’ll even be able to access his Implant within a few weeks.
He told me he felt guilty lying there in the hospital when so many had died. He’d been in the bathroom when the bomb exploded. She’d been strapped in her seat way up front. The reports were calling it a miracle that the plane stayed sufficiently intact to land. The flight crew was probably going to get some kind of medal for meritorious service under extreme duress or something. No one was even claiming credit for the bomb. There was speculation that someone had made a mistake and put it on the wrong flight. I didn’t think any of that was going to make Robert feel better.
I told him it was probably normal to feel guilty even though it wasn’t his fault. I told him how I’d read that survivors, and that’s what he was, a survivor, often felt guilty. He just looked sad when he told me that he knew all that. Knowing it didn’t help, he said. I kept telling him that there wasn’t anyway he could have known. No one could have known exactly what was going to happen. I must have told him that a dozen times that afternoon, maybe more. Since no one knew, no one should feel guilty. I guess I’ll probably be saying it again. And again and again. Maybe even enough to find out the truth to the old adage. Tell a lie often enough, and you might even get to believe it yourself. Now that would be real nice.
EINSTEIN’S BRAIN
Keith Allen Daniels
Bottled, botryoidal
and brown with age,
bought and sold
by oddestball collectors
for two decades
after the medicos
admitted defeat
by its mysteries, Einstein’s brain
officially disappeared
in 1999, when
a starving redneck
in the backwoods of GA
used it as catfish bait.
Now it’s back
in the food chain again,
where it always belonged.
But the catfish
have stopped biting.
1993
NIAGARA FALLS
Dieter Carra
“Old man, how do you get that thing to dangle like that?”
The “old man” was onl
y a few years older than the kid. But he’d been employed as a belt miner for the past ten. The kid, on the other hand, was new. This was his first day. Hopefully, not his last.
A lucky charm spun slowly at the end of a taut line, apparently hanging from a knob on the control panel just above their seats. It seemed to defy the weightlessness in their cramped cabin, dangling “down”. Occasionally, like a compass, it pointed toward the nearest large body or gravitational source. Once in a while, it would point for no good reason, as to ghosts of things that used to be. Massive things, for which space still held place.
The old man reached over and caught it in midspin between a thumb and forefinger. He rubbed it. He always rubbed it before entering the belt zone. The dark grey patina had long been worn away. His caressing thumb had polished it over the years to a bright metallic sheen. He credited it with his safe passage through the asteroids. And in ten years, it had never failed him. Or, so he said.
“I found this on my first mission,” the old man said. “In fact, it came from a rock in this here grouping.” He pointed out the starboard window.
The kid stretched over to see out the small triangular slit. The glass was pitted and scarred from years of service. Much of the protective coatings were stripped off. So the sunlight shone through as bright white glare. He wiped it with his fingers but the oils from his skin became a prism of reds and greens and blues. Still, he said he saw the rocks.
