The Empire of the Dead

by Tracy Daugherty

  “I believe you,” William says. He takes Lila’s hand.

  “You do?”

  “Most certainly. It’s one of the travesties of our time that our government and our scientific institutions aren’t prepared to handle the inevitable intermingling of extraterrestrial life and homo sapiens.”

  “Fuck!” Lila says. “Yes!”

  “I belong to an academic task force, the Strategic Initiative to Identify the New Paradigm,” William says. “Its goal is to insure that humanity doesn’t react with bellicosity to representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations whenever they make themselves known to us. We could very well find ourselves in the position of Native Americans in their first encounter with Europeans, and we don’t want that to happen, now do we?”

  “So,” Lila says, “you don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Not in the least.” I see, now, why students liked William. “My friends in the university thought I was rather wobbly to pursue all this, but their vision is far too narrow, poor souls. I think it’s irresponsible for scientists not to prepare for this eventuality. Clearly, we’re not alone in the universe, the numbers don’t lie. It’s only a matter of time—”

  “Hey, let me tell you, the time is now,” Lila says, gripping his arm. “Trust me.”

  “Oh yes, Inflation Theory, coupled with recent M-brane models suggest, without doubt, that we’re part of an enormous galactic civilization,” William tells her. “I’m even persuaded that meteorites are life’s transportation system, a series of buses, if you will, carting panspermia through space.”

  “Panspermia!” Lila says. “Lovely word!”

  “You know, my wife’s name was Lily. Lily. Lila. Charming.” William beams at her. “Now, young lady. Tell me more of your story.”

  I might as well be at another table. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Afterward, for a few minutes, I stand in the parking lot, breathing deeply. A scent of freshly mown grass in the air. Through the tavern window I see William and Lila sitting knee to knee. Something tells me William won’t mind, now, if we cancel our dinner.

  A volley of laughter sweeps the room. I step back inside. By the bar, a man drops a pair of quarters into a flashing big machine. Worlds explode.

  “Adam, where have you been hiding this charming woman?” William asks me.

  “We’ve got so much in common!” Lila says, blushing prettily.

  I touch her wrist. “You’re all right?”

  “Much better now, thanks.” She smiles at William.

  “I’m glad.” I sit and order another beer.

  “So, anyway, what this means is, the End-Point will see us as we sit here tonight. We’ll be together forever,” William tells Lila.

  “Lovely,” she says.

  “Tell me. Have you always wanted a child?”

  12.

  The John Wayne poster has vanished. So has the Coke machine in the lobby. Most of the theater’s seats have been removed. The manager stands behind the empty snack bar beneath a handwritten sign: “Everything must go! Last three days!”

  He waves a small silver shovel in my face. “Popcorn scooper?” he asks.

  “No, thanks,” I say

  “Plastic catsup bottles? We’ve got a whole slew of them.”

  “Sorry. Can’t use them.”

  “They’ll shoot any and all liquids sixty, seventy feet.”

  “Nope.” I arrange for him to FedEx the theater’s curtains to the planetarium. I write him another check. As I turn to go, a man in a striped shirt and khaki pants appears in a doorway at the bottom of a wooden staircase, just to the right of the snack bar. He cradles a tattered old poster. “Are you sure about this?” he asks the manager.

  “Absolutely,” the manager says.

  “You could auction this on eBay.”

  “No. Take it.”

  I realize the man with the poster is the priest I met here before. After a moment’s hesitation, he recognizes me, too. Together, we walk out of the theater into a cloudy afternoon. “I didn’t know you, at first, without your collar,” I tell him.

  “I quit.”

  Down the block, a street crew is repaving part of an intersection: shovels, boiling tar. Nearby, a restaurant manager shouts at four Mexican boys to stop loitering in front of his place. One of the boys flips him off. The kids scatter into an alley.

  The ex-priest turns and points at the theater’s dusty marquee. “This is a special place for me. I’ve been coming back every day, mourning it. It kills me they’re tearing it down. I used to love seeing movies here as a kid. Always felt happy and safe.” He offers me his hand. “Robert Hipkiss.”

  “Adam Post. Quitting the priesthood? Pretty momentous.” Oh, don’t get started, I think. He’ll wind up as one of your crackpots. What signals do I send to draw such people to me?

  “Well, naturally, my decision was a long time coming,” he says. “The day I met you, I was wrestling with myself.” He taps the poster against his thigh. “I was thinking, that day, of the catechism, the part that says, How to deal with the educated. Temptation and scandals to be faced by the candidate during his catechumenate. I suppose most people who leave the calling do so because they lose their faith,” he says. “The chief reason for Christ’s coming was to manifest and teach God’s love for us. Here the catechist should find the focal point of his instruction.” He scratches his head. “I have no problem with that. I did, and do, believe it. It’s that other phrase. The educated. How to deal with them. It always stuck in my craw. There are many ways to interpret the catechism, of course, but I always heard in it a deep suspicion of thought … as though faith and education were somehow incompatible. I’ve never wanted to be the type of man who feels that way. I want to be contemplative and be a servant of God.”

  “But surely it’s not necessary to leave the priesthood?”

  “No. Of course it’s more complicated than that.” He unrolls his poster, careful not to tear its edges: Ringo’s big, baleful eyes. “I don’t think the theater manager knew what he had,” Hipkiss says. “These old Hard Day’s Night ads must be worth a fortune. He let it go for fifty bucks.”

  “So, are you telling me that, as a priest, you couldn’t indulge in rock ‘n’ roll?” I ask.

  “No. Though there was a certain … humorlessness in the parish, a shrinking from pleasures of any sort. I am too attached to the world, I admit it.” He grins. “I felt closer to Godly serenity in this old theater, watching Ringo tap his hi-hat, than I ever did behind the altar. Whenever I wore the collar and the rabbat, I felt that part of my identity, the happy part, had to be bound and gagged. Tucked away behind the pipe organ.”

  The street crew hammers pavement with pick axes.

  “The truth is, I fell in love,” Hipkiss tells me. He rerolls the poster. “I was assigned to a small church in this area, ministering to poor Mexican families, immigrants from Nicaragua, El Salvador. Lots of mothers working as housekeepers.”

  “Yes. I’ve seen them on the buses,” I say.

  “My heart went out to them all.”

  “Naturally. A moral obligation.”

  “And to one woman in particular. She’s married.”

  “Well.”

  “I’m not sure what we’ll do.” He chuckles sadly.

  Here’s a man who’s ceased to be an alien, an awkward stranger to himself, I think. He’s tumbled back to Earth and fallen hard.

  “I haven’t put much money away,” he says. He waves the poster. “And here I am, spending what little I have on silliness.”

  “It’s hardly silly. Not to you. ‘All you need is love’? I think God would approve.”

  He’s a gentle, amenable man, but no, I think. Not another one. Not when my own orbit is rapidly deteriorating. I move away from him, slightly.

  He gets my drift, reaches to shake my hand. “God bless you,” he says.

  “Be well.”

  He walks away, humming.

  13.

  For Susan’s opening at the a
rt gallery I’ve bought a dozen red roses.

  Her husband will be there. Is it inappropriate for me to offer his wife flowers? Will my gesture be misconstrued? What is the meaning of my gesture?

  A dying woman. Another man’s wife. The astronomer’s curse: straining for the unattainable? I kidded Karen about this whenever she flew away from me.

  But tonight it doesn’t feel like a joke. What’s wrong with me?

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I straighten the Star Room. Only three people attended this afternoon’s show, but they left an unholy mess: mud, Styrofoam cups, paper clips, loose change.

  I sit beneath the setting sun, staring at my flowers.

  The late bus is nearly empty. The art gallery is locked and dark, the show long over. Above me, a waning moon in an untroubled sky. I pause on the gallery steps. Through a window I glimpse a row of folding tables stacked with empty food trays. Candelabra top the tables. In that perking, low light, Susan must have dazzled everyone! Past all this, beyond the corner of a doorway, I see one of her paintings, a tall panel coated with oil and impasto, bright reds, somber yellows: a purifying fire.

  I lay the roses by the door.

  14.

  On one of my last nights alone at the planetarium, I revise my farewell script, hang a portion of the theater curtains in the portal to the Star Room. A note from the board, received this morning, tells me to plan my final performance a week from now and then remove my belongings from the premises.

  The curtains shimmer in dim blue light reflected off the dome. A faint trace of eau de cologne wafts from the velvet. I imagine, muffled deep within the soft worn furrows, sewn inside the seams, the voices of cowboys and femme fatales, lovers’ whispers, the Beatles’ “Yeah yeah yeahs!”

  In addition to the curtains, I’d hoped someday to add to the dome’s base a scale model of the Dallas skyline, giving viewers a sense of the sky’s immensity stretching over our city—a city bright and safe, measured, with clear and manageable paths.

  Well. My tiny Dallas is not to be.

  I look around: the dome’s bleak and toneless color, a cool ceiling over all of creation. Alone in here at night, I relish the lifeless vacancy of my space, its beautiful, mechanical boredom, which puts me at ease. It demands nothing of me. It doesn’t need my help.

  The star ball—like the jar I used to carry as a kid, with holes punched in the lid to keep captured fireflies alive, only this jar, the A3P, contains all of the flashing galaxies. Everything patterned and neatly tucked away until I release the universe, its edges blurring above me, the Star Room becoming the same size as the cosmos. Becoming the cosmos. The delicacy of Order. Totality, held like a caught breath inside a small, sealed case.

  I extinguish the stars, pull the curtains to, step outside the building, and lock the glass doors. Headlights sweep the wall. A car pulls up behind me. I pocket my keys and turn.

  An old Honda hatchback. Susan rolls down the passenger window. “Adam, can you sit with me?” she asks. She nods toward the back seat. Anna’s asleep there. “We can talk if we keep it low. She’ll snooze through anything.”

  I slide into the car. The engine idles. A Talking Heads CD plays quietly through the speakers. In the dashboard’s green and yellow light, Susan’s face floats as a series of cool, soft planes. Her hands are caked with dried purple paint. A cardboard air freshener, shaped as a tree, sways from the rearview mirror, scenting the car like oak.

  Susan rubs her bare arms. She’s wearing a white sleeveless blouse. She has goose bumps, a summer chill.

  She says, “You didn’t come to my opening.”

  “No.”

  “I looked for you. All night.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you leave the roses?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was you,” she says.

  I stare at my feet. “I know what an important night that was. How did it go? Splendidly, I hope.”

  “I wish you’d been there.”

  “Probably just as well,” I say.

  “Why?”

  Is this it? Our event horizon? The point of no return? “I would have felt funny about, you know … your husband.”

  Susan slumps, her face an open question. “Adam, have I given you the impression—?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Well, no. I mean—it doesn’t matter. How are you? How do you feel?”

  “Shit.” She thrums her fingers on the steering wheel. “We’ve met, what? Three times? Three times we’ve talked?”

  “Susan—”

  “Okay,” she says forcefully. “Here’s the thing, Adam.” She glances over her shoulder at Anna. “Daniel—my husband—is a very kind man, but he views my painting as a hobby. Not serious, you know. It doesn’t pay the bills. In the last few years, as I’ve made my way, well … the short version is, I was liking my new independence, the friends I was making, and Daniel was more and more unhappy that I wasn’t home taking care of, well, everything. To be honest, we were on the verge of splitting. And then I got sick. For Anna’s sake …”

  Her eyes glisten.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.”

  “Anyway, anyway … the day we talked in the gallery, the care you took, just looking … I hadn’t had that in a while, not since the treatments began. I felt an immediate connection.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I was so hungry for it. Maybe that wasn’t fair to you.”

  “My admiration was genuine, Susan.”

  “You’ve been so kind to Anna and me.”

  She reaches across the seat and takes my hand. The coarseness of the dried paint on her fingers reminds me of my father’s old core samples.

  “And now you’re leaving?” she says.

  “I’m afraid so. My brother—he’s all the family I’ve got left, and we’ve gone a lot of years without really talking. And you?”

  She smiles sadly. “I stay as strong as I can for as long as I can. And make sure Anna and Daniel are fine, going forward. That’s it.”

  I squeeze her hand. “It’s cruel,” I say. “It’s cruel for us to meet like this. Now.”

  “Oh, Adam, I don’t—”

  “I know, I know. Would anything have been possible under other circumstances? Who can say? But this—”

  “Yes. I feel it, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m being selfish.” I turn to watch Anna sleep. “Poor little girl. Does she know?”

  “She knows I’ve been seeing a doctor. Not the prognosis.”

  “She’s too smart, Susan. She’ll figure it out before you’re ready. She deserves to know.”

  “Yes. We’ll tell her soon.”

  “Is your husband a good father?”

  “He is.”

  “Good. Good.”

  She turns my hand over and over against the car seat, touches my fingertips as in a child’s repetitive game.

  Anna stirs, a low whine like the star ball makes whenever it moves into position. She slips a thumb into her mouth, falls still. “Should you get her to bed?” I say.

  “We haven’t resolved this.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you take care of yourself now.”

  “Three times!” She laughs. “I can’t believe that’s all it was! I’m going to miss you, Adam.”

  “Stay in touch? I’ll give you my brother’s address.”

  “Of course.”

  I nod.

  We sit silently for several more minutes. Then she asks, “Can I drop you off?”

  “You need to get her back. I’ll walk. My final show is next week. Will you bring her?”

  “I will.”

  I kiss her lightly: the left temple, where her hair fans away from her skin. Then I reach behind the seat and squeeze Anna’s arm. “Good night,” I say.

  I stand and watch Susan’s taillights pull away, as red as the scribbles my pointer leaves among the moon’s rubbled craters.


  15.

  Tonight,

  Final Show:

  A Possible History of Forever

  … or, Is That All There Is?

  William and Lila are the first to arrive. He’s looking dapper, in a red pullover sweater, neatly pressed khakis, and shiny cordovan loafers. A healthy ruddiness colors his cheeks. His eyes are keen. He links fingers with Lila.

  “You two look happy,” I say.

  “He’s a wonderful man,” Lila tells me.

  “And she’s a delight,” says William. “Thank you, Adam, for introducing us.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  Lila hands me an invitation for a potluck to promote local awareness of the Strategic Initiative to Identify the New Paradigm. “I’ve invited some of the group’s national leaders here to meet with a select bunch of forward-thinkers,” William says. “As we know, Dallas is woefully unprepared to encounter new worlds.”

  I tell them I hope they’ll enjoy the show.

  Susan and Anna step through the curtains. I hug them both. Susan looks regal against the velvet folds. Anna’s eyes are red. She slouches, and I figure Susan has told her the truth about her illness. She confirms my hunch with a nod. “I’ve got something for you,” Anna mumbles.

  “Oh?” I say.

  “A letter to keep with your others.”

  She hands me a sheet of notepaper:

  It’s not fair to take the sky away from people.

  Signed,

  Anna

  “Thank you very much,” I say. “You know, honey, only I’m leaving. Not the sky. But I’ll be proud to save this.”

  “When you make the moon rise tonight, do it real slow,” Anna says.

  “I will.” I look around the room. “All my friends,” I whisper. My sweet old crackpots.

  A few strangers wander in—maybe twelve in all. No one from the museum board.

  I push a button. Music for Airports. The lights dim. “The artist Odilon Redon once made a lithograph—a hot air balloon in the shape of a wide-open eye,” I say. With the cove lights I indicate a brittle balloon, cast by the slide projector. “Redon entitled his piece, ‘The Eye like a Strange Balloon wafts itself towards the Infinite.’ So. Tonight, as we travel together through space, may your eyes be strange balloons. I’m your host, Adam Post.”