by Micah Nathan
I could still hear voices from behind the door. Peter patted the bed.
“Come,” he said softly. “Breathe with me.”
I backed up against the door. “I have to go,” I said. The lightbulb flickered and I spread my arms for balance. Peter stood and walked toward me, his arm outstretched, long fingers wiggling like antennas. I lost focus for a moment, and I couldn’t remember which way I was facing or standing, and so I decided it would be best if I sat down.
“Dharana,” I said. Rebecca had said something about yoga and balance. She had been on one leg. One leg, I thought. How amazing.
There was a light shining above me, like a distant star long ago exploded, its energy still echoing around the universe but its body reduced to infinite bits of cosmic rubble, wisps of gas, and a wobbly core of primordial goo, still spinning in place. If a swirling pocket of gas one hundred million miles away can still be seen long after its demise, I wondered how many of the voices of dead people were bouncing off our ionosphere like radio waves, their transmission faded but still receivable. Perhaps that explained psychics, and why their communions with the deceased are always so mundane and trivial—rarely information such as what the afterlife is like, or whether divine retribution exists—but instead comments about someone’s new shoes, or how the weather is in Florida. Maybe psychics are just radio towers, I thought, attuned to a lower frequency, mistaking old thoughts and past conversations as current communication with the afterworld. Was my mother’s voice among the signals, just past the channel where JFK is delivering his speech to a West German crowd?
“Your shoes. Would you like me to take them off?”
Peter was smiling at me. I blinked and looked down. For a brief moment I thought I had somehow fallen through the floor, and that I was trapped in a space between the floorboards. Where I had been sitting, against the door, I was now lying down, on the bed. My pants were unbuttoned and unzipped and pushed down to my hips, catching on the ridge of bone.
“Always about the shoes,” I said, and then giggled. “Tell me about the afterlife. Do they have trees?”
I wanted to pull up my pants but I couldn’t stop giggling. My internal voice was muffled; judging by its tone it had something very important to tell me but I couldn’t focus. I knew Peter was trying to get me naked but it was so much easier to just lie there. There was a knock on the door. Peter jumped. He whipped his head around, toward the door, and then turned back to me, holding a long finger to his thin lips.
What happened next will forever be one of the defining moments of my life, the one instance in which a superhero swooped down from the sky and charged into battle like a raging juggernaut, tossing evil minions aside with a flick of his hand. That I was nearly comatose from smoking (as I later found out) a potent mixture of marijuana and PCP only added to the imagery; the colors were more vivid, the sounds amplified, and the whole thing became like a comic book, zooming to a close-up of Peter’s terrified face, then switching to my chest and panning down to my waistband bunched around my hips. And then a quick cut to our superhero, Arthur Fitch, banging open the door. His tall frame filled the doorway, shoulders brushing against the jamb, disgust sketched roughly across his face, his mouth a slash, his eyes diagonal pen strokes, square jaw outlined in charcoal lines, shadowy and severe.
Peter stood at the end of the bed, arms crossed, chin held high, everything from heel to spine in perfect alignment.
“You have no right,” he said.
Arthur strode in and bent over me.
“Eric,” he spoke slowly and clearly, “are you okay?”
I looked at Peter, and then at the light above.
“No,” I said. And then I added I like Ellen, even as my mind screamed at me to not say anything more.
Art nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “Pull up your pants.”
He closed in on Peter. A blur of movement, and Peter was thrown against the chest of drawers; the vase with withered flowers toppled over and rolled off the side, clunking onto the carpet. Art towered over him and grabbed him by the throat. I managed to get my pants zipped but not buttoned, and I sat up.
“What do you want me to do with him?” Art was talking to me but staring into Peter’s eyes, teeth bared and jaw clenched. His tie was flipped over his shoulder and his shirt was popped open. Peter was flailing at him, eyes frantic, mouth opening and closing in choked-off cries.
I stood and buttoned my pants. “Let’s just go,” I said. I stared at Peter with little emotion—he was a character in the frame, held in the clutches of an arm jutting from the border of a panel.
Art whipped Peter to the side, careening him off the corner of the bed and onto the floor, where he crashed onto his back and let out a yelp. And then there came a scream, and Rebecca Malzone stood in the doorway, arms held straight at her sides, hands clenched into fists.
“What did you do to him?” she half-screamed, half-sobbed, and she ran across the room, pushing past Art and falling to her knees, comforting Peter.
Spectators filled the doorway: the guy with the shaved head and black-rimmed glasses, a statuesque brunette wearing knee-high red leather boots. Someone mentioned the police. Peter was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, one hand stroking his neck, shouting obscenities while Rebecca tried to comfort him. Art grabbed my arm and pulled me away, pushing through the throng into the living room. I saw Nicole, passed out on the orange chair.
“They need dharana,” I said, tottering on the edge of the staircase, Arthur one step down and propping me up with his arm. The walls swirled and my consciousness faded, slowly, reducing itself to a single lightbulb high above, which flickered and guttered like a dying star, and then I slipped into the drugged unconsciousness that beckoned me with a cool, soft hand.
Chapter 4
I awoke in a moving car, my head resting against the inside of the door, right cheek painfully pressed against the door’s cracked vinyl. Art was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. The lower half of his face was lit by the weak yellow glow of the console. I rubbed my eyes until they watered, digging my palm heels into the cups of my sockets. Images floated to me out of the darkness—a man in a black turtleneck, kissing my bare stomach, running his long, clammy fingers across my chest, pausing to pinch my nipple and roll it between thumb and forefinger. My own hands pushing his head away, becoming entangled in his thatch of black hair, and his every movement turning my gestures of protest into gestures of intimacy.
I sat up and scratched at my neck where the seat belt had been rubbing against the skin. Drool evaporated on my chin. The road’s yellow divider lines snaked toward us under the beam of headlights.
“PCP,” Art said. “The joints at that party were laced with it. What were you doing there?”
“My friend Nicole,” I said. “She knows the girl who lives there.”
“Nice friend. She should know her supplier.”
Peter’s pale face tumbled into my consciousness again. I put a hand to my stomach. He had touched me there. I went under my shirt and felt my chest, where he dragged his fingers across. And there. I thrust my hands down the front of my pants and brought my fingers to my nose. There was the faint scent of someone else, unfamiliar yet intimate, like a stranger’s cologne on your pillow. There, too.
“How are you feeling?”
I crossed my arms. “Terrible,” I said.
“And the whole situation with Peter…”
His tone indicated he was waiting for me to fill in the rest, but I shook my head. “Nothing happened.”
“He’s just a lonely old queen.” Art took one hand off the steering wheel and cracked his knuckles against his thigh. “Don’t take it personally. I’ve seen him around other parties…the yoga guy, yeah, whatever.” He shook his head. “He should know better. Someone your age…that’s statutory rape.”
I thought about Art’s face looming over me as I lay helpless on the bed. Are you okay?
No…I like Ellen.
“I could’ve killed him,” Art said, cracking the knuckles of his other hand. “And who was that girl? The one who screamed and ran to his side?”
“That was Rebecca,” I said. “She’s friends with Nicole.”
“Cute girl,” Art said. “But screaming? Get real. She should’ve been applauding.”
I like Ellen. He was going to remember what I had said, I was certain. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I stared out my window. Dark landscape blurred by, shadows leaping, rising, and falling.
“Peter—who knew,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I didn’t think he’d be so desperate. I thought he only dated men his age.”
I said nothing. The very name sickened me. Peter.
Art half-smiled. “I took a few classes at his school, years ago, when he first opened. He always talked about his girlfriend.” Art laughed. “He wasn’t a bad teacher, but I didn’t know any better—I thought I needed a yogi.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” I said. I was getting dizzy again. “Just talk about something else. Anything. I don’t care.”
Art nodded and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. We drove in silence for a few minutes, then Art said:
“Have you ever heard of George Gurdjieff?”
I closed my eyes. Art went on.
“He was a 19th-century Russian mage. He believed there are three false ways to enlightenment: the physical, the emotional, and the intellectual. We can call it the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi. All three fall short because they rely on the teachings of their masters, and while they may enjoy more freedom than most of us, they’re still subject to their master’s shortcomings. Gurdjieff had a solution for this, what he called his ‘fourth way.’ The way of the cunning man.
“The cunning man has set out to test everything and experience it himself. Gurdjieff felt most people live within an accidental reality—that is, things happen to them, circumstance buffets them like a strong wind. They base their decisions upon fate. Gurdjieff’s cunning man is the opposite. He takes nothing at face value, he sets his own rules, imposes his will upon the world. People react to him, not the other way around.”
The car slowed. “Gurdjieff felt the best way to become this cunning man is through unending work. Immerse yourself in impossible toil, he said, until it adds weight to your soul, and only then will you be able to withstand the winds of circumstance.”
Art stopped the car and switched it off. I opened my eyes. We were at Dr. Cade’s house, parked next to the black Jaguar. The carved pumpkins on the front step had been replaced by a large ceramic jug, and there was a stack of half-covered firewood in front of the garage door.
Art reached into the backseat and picked up a jacket. “I got your message, by the way, and Dan told me he spoke with you. We’re thrilled to have you on board. Dr. Cade especially—he’s looking forward to your work.”
I felt stupid. The drugs made me feel stupid. I felt like I should say something but I couldn’t arrange my thoughts quickly enough. Another wave splashed across the flooded landscape of my consciousness, dissolving the solid lines of everything around me into molecules like smoky bubbles. The edges of the dashboard melted, dripping black stuff onto my legs, soaking into the cotton of my khakis like spilt ink. I reached forward and touched the dash, cool vinyl rubbing against my fingers, reassuringly solid even as it left a viscid smear across my hand.
“Are you okay?” Art put his hand on my shoulder, his face wrinkled with concern.
“I kidnapped your books,” I said.
“My books?”
“Cornelius gave them to me. Last month. He told me to give them to you but I didn’t. They’re on my desk.”
Art frowned for a moment. “The books…” he said, and I saw a sudden flash of recognition. “Oslo and Gilbert?” he said. “The Index Librorum?”
I nodded. “They’re back in my dorm room.”
“I’ve been asking Cornelius for a month,” Art said, irritated. “He said he forgot what he did with them.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Art jabbed the key into the ignition and turned. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “If Dr. Cade’s decision hadn’t taken so goddamn long then I wouldn’t have lost a month. You said you have three books, correct?”
I nodded. “Was the amount of time Dr. Cade took to decide unusual?”
“Not at all. We’re gunning for the Pendleton Prize, so he had to be sure you were the right fit. He interviewed each of us, and talked with Dr. Tindley about your language aptitude, and blah blah blah.” Art sounded like he was sick of the subject. “I have to get those books tonight,” he said. “You want to come along?”
“You’re going back now?”
Art nodded, and drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.
“I can’t go,” I said, pulling my thoughts together. “I’m still stoned. If Louise sees me like this she might call campus health.” I’d heard about Josh Briggs, who one week earlier had come to class high on acid, and was escorted to the campus health center by a security guard.
Art gave me a skeptical look. “Who’s Louise?”
“My RD,” I said.
Art shook his head. “You’re being paranoid. Your RD won’t do shit.”
“She’s a harpy,” I said.
“You can’t even tell you’re high,” Art said. “If you want, you can give me your key and wait in the car.”
I really didn’t feel like going back to campus. “I think I’ll wait here,” I said.
“Round key opens the front door,” Art said. “You have to jiggle it a few times. Wait for me in the living room and if Nilus starts barking just scratch him under his chin and he’ll shut up.”
We traded keys and Art tore down the driveway as soon as I closed the door. I stood there for a moment, in the dark, staring at Dr. Cade’s house, before slowly making my way up the front walk.
Distraction is the best thing for someone suffering from the unpleasant effects of a psychedelic drug. I think that’s why, when Art got back to the house with his three books tucked clumsily under his arm, he decided to give me an exhaustive tour. He started with the kitchen, which was smaller than I expected, a door to the backyard, a breakfast nook to the left, and a stairway against the back wall that led to the upstairs. Two windows sat above the sink, and they looked out over the pond and boathouse. The pond was more like a small lake, stretching about two hundred yards back, bending to the right where Art told me it continued into the Birchkill and then emptied into the Quinnipiac River. Cattails and tall reeds lined its edges, and there, almost lost in the dangling branches of the willow, stood a boathouse that Art told me he and Howie had built two summers ago. It was more like a shed, with vertical boards and a gabled shingled roof. A single light hung from one corner of the roof, and I could see the bright orange shape of a life vest hanging in one of the small windows and the straight line of an oar leaning within. A rowboat was tied to the base of the willow tree, where it floated gently on a slight current, a breeze sending dark ripples across the black surface of the pond.
We went into the study off the living room, and then onto the porch off the study, which led into a beautiful garden with two ornamental stone benches and a fountain. Art showed me the basement, which had a pantry filled with cans and jars stacked to the ceiling, and a huge bag of cat food that Art said had been there for years. Half of an old pipe organ stood covered in a blanket in the corner, next to a bicycle that looked like it was from the 1950s, its front wheel missing and twisted racing streamers hanging limply off the handlebars. During the tour Art told me about Dr. Cade’s book project, describing its beginnings—it was originally planned as a single volume, to be used as a course textbook—and the genesis of its concept up to its current form, that of an exhaustive, definitive, and meticulously researched series about the medieval era. Art spoke with tremendous enthusiasm, as if the project were his own, and he talked about his long hours spe
nt poring over ancient manuscripts and texts, researching, discovering, refuting old information and adding new. Dr. Cade, as far as Art was concerned, was one of the few pioneer scholars in existence, “a man of incomparable intellect and linguistic prowess, a former child prodigy on par with Champollion and Grotefend” (I had no idea who those men were but I didn’t ask). Dr. Cade had been courted by the world’s top universities, Art said, and yet he stood by Aberdeen, claiming it as his own, the way a father would a child, working tirelessly to bring his school recognition.
Art took me to my room on the second floor, the last door before the stairway heading down toward the kitchen. The bathroom was directly across the hall. “Your room has the best view,” Art said, ushering me in. “The morning sun is spectacular, especially this time of the year. It shoots right through the treetops.”
The walls were dark-stained wooden panels, and there was a simple desk, a chair, and a lowboy set against the wall. The bed had a carved maple headboard framed with engraved acorns and sheaves of wheat. The ceiling slanted down over the bed, cozying the space, covering it like an extra blanket.
“You can sleep here, if you want,” Art said. “Or I can take you back home. Either way,” he looked at his watch, “decide quickly. It’s late and I’m beat.”
I fell back on the bed. “I’ll stay here tonight, and get my stuff tomorrow.”
“You guys want to keep it down to a low roar?”
Howie was standing in the doorway, shirtless, in red boxers, one leg bunched up around the top of his thigh. His red hair was mashed flat against his forehead.
“Go back to sleep, Howie,” Art said.
Howie stared at me. “You’re moving in?”
I looked to Art.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Great. Someone else to share the bathroom with.” He looked at Art. “Ellen called you, by the way. Twice.”
“Thanks,” Art said. His tone sounded like he didn’t want to hear about it.
“She seemed pissed. I told her I didn’t know where you were.” Howie dug a finger into his ear. “I don’t think she believed me—”
