by R. A. Nelson
But the weather is changing. A bank of black clouds is ripping the sky in half diagonally. We’re racing into the black part without even moving. The Firestone Holy Tire Palace is silent, its bays closed and forbidding. A truck whistles by like an animal squealing for cover.
My mind is full.
Is this the last time? Is this where it all ends?
Can I do this?
Can I say goodbye?
I slither out of my bra, toss it in the trunk. Schuyler is waiting in Wilkie Collins. He has promised not to look. I wouldn’t care if he did. Not today. Not ever again. I could give him that, at least. Before I go. What does it matter anymore?
I slip into his mother’s things: an old emerald green pants suit that buttons aggressively snug up the center. What kind of material is this? It bunches and clings, feels like a cat’s tongue slipping over my little boobs. I hope my nipples show. Mom would die. I haven’t shaved my legs in days.
No deodorant.
Suede Birkenstock clogs, an olive beret. I mass my hair toward the front, covering as much of my face as possible. New shades; they look like round orange mirrors. Again I feel the confidence of anonymity descend upon me.
I’m a girl-woman in my mid- to late twenties. Occupation: Professional Student. Cocky in my element. An über-educated, hairy-pitted man hater. I change my own oil, dispose of it with respect for the environment, then charge back indoors to research my interminable doctoral thesis on George Eliot and Willa Cather. Title of? “The Burgeoning Feminist Imperative.” A worm of sweat cools my temple. Come on, make me fierce in my rankness.
Something’s missing.
I rummage in the trunk. The black bag is hot; some of the makeup is running. But I don’t need it anymore. Ah, there it is—I pull out a long red sash, symbol of the Anti-Sex League in George Orwell’s 1984. I cinch it like a tourniquet around my waist.
Ready.
“Fleetwood Lindley,” Schuyler says when I get back in the car. His disguise is less elaborate: a slouch fishing hat swiped from my dad and rectangular Walgreen shades.
“Huh? Scoot over. Aren’t you going to say anything about the way I look?”
“Fleetwood Lindley.”
I’m starting to get pissed. I don’t want to play this game right now. I’m nervous. I’m thinking about Mr. Mann at the podium in the lecture hall.
“Okay, you got me for a change,” I say. “Who’s that?”
Schuyler pulls down his shades, frowning. “I’m disappointed in you. Fleetwood Lindley was the last surviving person to ever see Abraham Lincoln. Well, his body, at least. In 1901 they exhumed Honest Abe to put him in a new tomb. Fleetwood’s dad was in the honor guard. He hauled Fleetwood out of school to see them open the casket.”
“Okay?”
“This is important! Fleetwood knew he was checking out something nobody would ever see again. Here’s what he saw: Lincoln’s face was covered with white chalk somebody had used to try to freshen the old boy up on the funeral train. His eyebrows were missing, but his beard was still there. You could definitely tell it was Lincoln. His chest was covered by a moldy flag—nothing but the stars were left. They put the top back on and Fleetwood got to help lower the casket into the new vault. He was thirteen. He had Lincoln nightmares for six months.”
“And the reason you’re telling me this is—?”
“To take my mind off the fact that you’re wearing my mother’s clothes.”
“—!”
I make a sound that’s not a word and kick his leg hard with the clogs.
We hurtle in reverse out of the Crackling Forest. “Did you bring your watch?” I say. “What time is it?”
“7:09.”
“Dammit. The reading starts in six minutes. Is your watch fast?”
“It’s synched with my XP. That’s another quarter you owe me.”
Buzz.
We rush down the interstate, pushing into the storm.
Schuyler navigates to the exit and the UTC campus looms. The grounds are a mix of stately older buildings and more recent disasters. The light is menacingly beautiful under the blackening sky. I wonder if this is how things look to a prisoner on his way to be hanged. Colors so full, everything sharply delineated, easy on the eyes.
Pure.
Only the important things are important now. The rest of it—
“Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” Schuyler says, scattering my thoughts. “That way. Downhill from the science building.”
“So you know where to go inside?”
“Yeah. I used to come here for meetings of the North Alabama Archaeological Society. I helped them with the slide shows.”
“Doors?”
“Lots of them, all along the front.”
“How many people?”
“You never know. The building holds at least three hundred. They wouldn’t let us use it after our membership dropped below fifty. The national group disbanded our chapter.”
“Aw.”
“Rednecks apparently don’t give a crap about Jewish necropoli—you just missed your turn.”
“Shit!”
I hit the median hard, crank Wilkie’s powerless steering around with the force of Starbuck driving home a harpoon. My shades bounce off; Schuyler slams against me. Wilkie waggles across the grass median. The horizon of low mountains dances, settles again, this time in the rearview mirror. Schuyler’s face is the color of floured wax paper.
“We’re going the right way now,” I say.
chamber music
Heat lightning.
I feel it inside my head.
The squall line is closing in on the setting sun as we turn into the parking lot. The Chan Auditorium is low slung and white. Architectural style: DOD Blast Shelter. The lot is crammed with cars plastered with Piscean odes to kittens and anger-management bumper stickers:
This is the place.
What I’m about to do is suddenly made excruciatingly real: Mr. Mann’s Honda is parked up front.
If there was a time to stop this, it is over now. I’m definitely going through with it.
I reach in Wilkie’s backseat and grab a composition notebook.
“You sure you want to do this?” Schuyler says. “It’s insane, you know?”
You have no idea, I think.
I haven’t told him. I’m not going to.
This is one time Schuyler doesn’t need to know everything. Can’t.
I lean over and give him a wet smack on the cheek. “Let’s go.”
We get out, shut the doors gently to keep them quiet, and head for the auditorium. A line of sweet alyssum points the way up the sidewalk like snow in the failing light. A thunderhead rumbles ominously to the west.
Six doors to choose from, one held ajar by a rubber wedge. I yank it open. From the interior comes a rush of compressed CO2. A big crowd, perfect. I wait a moment, listening, not breathing, then step through.
Schuyler slips in behind me. We’re at the top of a large bowl-shaped chamber fanned by rows of chairs with plastic backs. Six aisles going down to the stage bisect the ranks of messy heads. A few turn as we come in, sensitive eyes wary. My kind of crowd. Probably think Heisenberg is a high-end beer.
Schuyler taps my arm, frowning. “I don’t like this, Nine. There are too many people. Let’s get out of here.”
I point an elbow into his stomach and try to smile. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. “Buck up, Ozymandias. It’ll be over soon.”
“That’s what scares me.”
I sound much braver than I feel.
We separate. Schuyler stations himself in the back. I spot an aisle seat about midway down, just as if someone were saving it for me.
Where is he?
A group of professorly types is sitting at a table on the stage. Mr. Mann is not with them. I scan the rows of heads anxiously. The sunglasses make it harder to see, but I’m too scared to take them off. The wings at either end of the stage are lost in shadows. Maybe he’s there.
My cold terror is expanding all my senses. My skin could be used to monitor barometric pressure. I catch a whiff of minerals on the air telling me the rain is almost here.
Wait.
A little guy gets up from the table, struts importantly to the podium; his hair reminds me of weedy grass in the wake of a passing train. He pokes the mike with a fingernail. The sound echoes behind me like a nightstick rapping the walls.
“As director of the College of Humanities,” he begins, “I’m extraordinarily pleased and honored to be here.”
Ten minutes later he’s turned us all into unicelled creatures. Finally the first poet is introduced.
It’s not Mr. Mann.
A fifty-ish woman with Salome veils and a Jenny Craig chassis approaches the podium. Her fingers are heavy with rings. From somewhere comes the scent of Herbal Essence and pot.
Salome begins in a quavering, artificial voice:
The stone jar of my
Heart pours out
Blood clotted with my
Pain I shout at the nails in my
Teeth scream as his dissonant
Mouth weeps tears warm as
Magnolia blossoms as he blasphemes my
Womanly core
Whew.
I glance at Schuyler. He’s shifting in his seat like a man with a car battery hooked to his genitals. Lightning beats the air outside.
Where is he?
Maybe they’re saving Mr. Mann for the big finish? I look back at the stage. Salome sways, cheeks flushed, anxiously post-coital.
Oh, she’s done.
A smattering of polite applause ripples through the auditorium. “Tough house,” somebody close to me says.
The director claps the side of the mike as Salome wafts to a seat. “Thank you, Halsey. Simply beautiful. Halsey Passwater-Rhodes, ‘I Love My Love with a Bitch.’”
Where is he?
My skull is full of fire. I need to put it out.
We suffer through a succession of poets, each less healthy looking than the last. The topics of their poems run the gamut:
The asteroid belt as metaphor for HIV. Water rights in the Negev. Woman with older chickens. Weeping, fire, Nicaragua. Nintendo fetuses. I discover that good writing ability works in inverse proportion to the need to dress the part.
Someone behind me drops something. I turn, heart fluttering.
Ah.
There he is, skulking in the back: Mr. Mann.
His presence paints the air around him: black pants, conservative tie, white shirt with tiny silver stripes. I remember the last time I saw him wear it.
I was kissing his belly.
Hate.
I can’t stop it. It rushes into my fingers, pushes the fear out, makes my hands warm and tingly. I edge forward in my seat, gripping the composition book tightly. Soon. It will be over soon.
A poet with a scarf and Gandhi glasses is equating his girl-friend to Rwandan genocide. The director ushers him gently from the mike.
“And to conclude this evening’s performances, I’d like to welcome a special guest. The featured poet of this year’s UTC Fielding Poetry Series, Voices from a Single Room.”
His cue.
Mr. Mann begins making his way down the far side of the auditorium. The runty director goes on:
“His poem ‘coming in from the garden like a surprised rain’ won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Excellence in 1990. Please join me in welcoming Richard Mann.”
The applause is energetic this time, even a few Aerosmith whistles. I should be impressed.
Mr. Mann saunters to the podium and throws his head back, eyes burning around the room. He smiles appreciatively; this is his comfort zone. I realize he’s playing Him again, the one who is in command, shows no fear.
For the first time I clearly see the symbiotic connection. How each personality fuels the other, giving you a tantalizing taste of both. The powerful and the vulnerable. The commanding and the artistic. The schemer and the dreamer. Until you’re hooked, lost, gone.
Falling.
Now I feel only a heavy, numbing sadness, the flatness. The only thing it fuels is my fury.
Mr. Mann creases the chapbook open, raises it in his hand like a preacher holding a Bible, waits for the audience to settle. I chance a look at Schuyler; his seat is empty.
Here we go.
I’m blinking quickly; my heart rate zooms.
I close my eyes for an instant, pull everything into my center. The anger, my empathy, the pain, my fear. When I open my eyes again, invisible walls have risen on either side of my head. They give me a canyon of focus that closes everything else out, holds me on target.
Mr. Mann extends a single finger. He’s Adam reaching to touch the hand of God. He begins in words clear and clean:
coming in from the garden like a surprised rain
so firm and fleshed again the tomatoes
he staked, the loosened furnace grate
creaks one more goodbye
to his shoes and lays him down to sleep his why
“Just one minute! Just one minute! I have something to say!”
I’ve dumped all the hate into my voice. It comes out a grinding squawk, a wire that projects to the farthest reaches of the auditorium. Mr. Mann stops and looks up, shocked. He sees me and drops his arm. I step into the aisle, conscious of Ms. Green’s pants riding up my shins.
“Bastard!” I scream at him, pointing. I appeal to the audience, arms imploring, head swiveling. “This man is a bastard, a cheat, a liar! Bastard!”
Mr. Mann flushes; he shades his eyes to look at me.
“You thought you had destroyed me when you left my bed!” I yell. “But look what I have become! I stand here in the spirit of ”—I consult Schuyler’s notes—“Hipparchia! The world’s first liberated woman! An Athenian Cynic and philosopher, wife of Crates, with whom she openly copulated in public!”
“What the f—!” a girl says nearby.
“Get her ass out of here!” another voice says, a guy this time.
Murmurs. Shouts. Gasps of incredulity. The little director comes forward uncertainly to the edge of the stage. “Excuse me, miss, but I’m sure this is not the forum—”
“Sit down!” I shriek.
I point at Mr. Mann.
“It’s time to send a message to all men who think they can do with us as they please, come and go with impunity, defile the body of the Earth Mother!”
Mr. Mann turns to the director, covering the mike with his hand. Still everyone in the hall can hear him whisper, “Let me talk to her.”
This is it.
He leaves the podium and hops down from the stage. He has to skirt the first row of chairs to get to my aisle. Closer, closer. My body aches to run to him. Away from him. Both.
“Listen!” I say.
The composition book is my lifeline.
Emily.
She makes my voice strong:
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
A moment of silent incomprehension.
The moment grows, stretches into history in both directions. Someone nearby gasps, says something I don’t understand. There’s a low-pitched grunt of animal terror.
People are screaming now, falling away from the middle of the room, scrambling over chairs, pressing toward the walls. Now there’s nowhere else for them to go. I’m standing between them and the doors.
Mr. Mann stops coming up the aisle when he sees the pistol, face ashen.
“No! Don’t do it! Think about this. What you’re doing! Please!”
I bring the pistol level with his chest.
His arms are up, palms out, pleading.
Pull the trigger.
the color of love
Thunder.
The pistol pops in my hand once, twice, three times. It’s louder than I expected. I can’t mis
s at this range. Mr. Mann yelps and spins partway around. Large, wet splats of color appear on his shirt.
In the back, Schuyler slaps the light switches. The auditorium is plunged into gloom—the glass doors at the top let in some light from the parking lot, but my eyes are slow to adjust. A white flash of lightning suddenly marks the rectangles of the doors. I charge toward them up the aisle. Schuyler is already there, holding open the door. We hit the sidewalk and run for the streetlamps.
Raindrops spatter my back as I jump into Wilkie Collins. I sling Schuyler’s paintball pistol on the floorboards in the back, gather my legs in. The key is hanging in the ignition; I twist it, the engine sputters.
“Come on, start, baby, start,” I say, pumping the pedal.
“Nine! You didn’t tell me. Why! Why didn’t you tell me!” Schuyler still has the hat and sunglasses on.
“Come on, baby, come on.”
“I can’t believe you did that—I thought—we were just going to embarrass him. Oh God. We’re in so much trouble. God.”
He’s pounding the dash, swearing, making choking sounds. Wilkie sputters and catches. Tires squealing, I bump over the corner of the curb on the way out.
I throw off the sunglasses and look over my shoulder as we fly past the student center. The last thing I see is Mr. Mann running up the sidewalk in the streetlamp, trampling the alyssum, his new shirt splattered blue.
and do it anyway
Getaway.
We race down the interstate, not speaking. Rain is flecking the windshield. I turn on the wipers, but there isn’t enough water yet to keep them from making an awful rubbery dragging sound. I have to turn them off and on again and again to be able to see. Their rhythmic, pulling sound is huge and ominous by the time we get to the Firestone Holy Tire Palace.
In case we’re being followed, I back Wilkie Collins deeper than usual into the Crackling Forest. The leaves all around the windows make me feel a little better. We’ve landed on a different planet, one that doesn’t allow men and buildings and roads. One that’s not so crazy.
As soon as I shut off the wipers, I realize Schuyler is making a noise. He throws the sunglasses and fishing hat down.
