The Unseen

by Bryan, JL

  “The black rose symbolizes the darkness and alienation inside us,” he said, looking into her blue eye.

  “Do you have a lot of that inside you?” Reese moved her fingertip up and down his neck. If she was trying to turn him on, it was working, but he resisted the purely physical urge to grab her and pull her close.

  “Is this where you start trying to sell me your religion?” Peyton asked.

  Reese pouted and pulled her hand away from him, as if his words had stung her.

  “I didn’t say anything about that,” Reese said. “Why do you act so suspicious, anyway? You’re not a very trusting person.”

  “Because only idiots trust total strangers.”

  “My name is Reese Andrea Warwick,” she said. “I graduated from Chesterton Faith College in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I live at 100 Pinhurst Drive in Vinings, apartment 3212F. I like kayaking and musicals. My parents live in Dunwoody. Am I still a stranger?”

  “You were right. I do think you’re crazy.”

  Reese laughed. “You nailed me.”

  They looked quietly at each other for a moment, Peyton telling himself that he had no interest in cheating on Cassidy with this church girl, no matter how shapely she looked in a tight skirt.

  “So you’re getting out today,” she said. “You know, a bunch of us are going to Piedmont Park tomorrow night. We’re having a picnic. You should come.”

  “A picnic in the park?” Peyton couldn’t help smirking.

  “Oh, is it beneath you? It’s not a fun night if it’s not a big drug fest at some trendy new club, right?”

  “Exactly.” Peyton laughed.

  “I know what you mean. I used to be you, only ten times worse. And trust me, there’s more to life than that,” Reese said.

  “Yeah, but I’m not sold on the picnic with your church friends.”

  “It’s the ‘Blues on the Green’ concert. Old blues bands from all over the city, playing in the open air. Could be a fun night.”

  “That actually does sound pretty good,” Peyton said. He fought a minor internal struggle before saying, “I have a girlfriend.” It was a rather large detail he’d somehow left out when he’d told Reese about his car crash.

  “Oh.” Reese’s face fell, and Peyton realized that she was possibly interested in him as more than a potential new recruit for her church. “Is it serious?” she asked in a hushed voice, as though he’d just told her he had cancer.

  “Five or six months now.”

  “Well, you could bring her, I guess...”

  “Her leg’s broken. I don’t think she’s going anywhere for a while.”

  “You could still come, though,” Reese said. “Just as friends. It’s okay to make friends, right?”

  “Uh, but it’s all church people?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Reese said. “It’s all laid back. Everybody’s our age. It’ll be fun.”

  “Nobody’s going to preach at me and stuff?” Peyton said. “I mean, I don’t need to hear the Good News for the millionth time. Also, when the information’s two thousand years old, it’s not news anymore. Tell your friends.”

  Reese laughed. “It’s not what you think. Please come.” She cupped his cheek in her hand. “It would mean so much to me.”

  “So your friends can know you’re trying to proselytize?”

  “Give me your number,” Reese said, taking her phone from her purse. “I’ll give you until tomorrow to decide.”

  Peyton told her his cell number. “Since we’re not strangers anymore, can I ask about the eye patch yet?”

  “No.” Reese slid off the bed and gave him another gorgeous smile. “We’ll have to know each better much better before we talk about that. I have to get back to work. Want a hug?”

  “Why not?”

  She leaned over him, wrapping her arms around his neck, her breasts touching his upper arm. The hug lingered for several seconds.

  “May He bless you,” Reese whispered into his ear, her lower lip brushing his earlobe. It was an electric moment, and he felt himself growing an embarrassing erection under his thin hospital sheet.

  Reese pulled away.

  “See you later,” she said. “I’ll call you.”

  Soon after she left, Peyton began to wonder whether the church girl had actually visited at all, or whether it was a bizarre dream induced by heavy painkillers. The half-eaten muffin remained as evidence.

  Peyton’s parents were too busy to pick him up from the hospital, so he called a cab to take him back to East Atlanta after he’d checked out. He tried to remember where he’d last parked his car, then realized he didn’t own one anymore.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The week dragged on for Cassidy. Kieran barely communicated beyond one-word sentences, having picked up on the fact that Cassidy was trying to turn him around rather than praise his delinquency as he must have expected. She knew what her mother thought but was too kind to admit, maybe even to herself—Kieran was turning out too much like his lost cause of an older sister, and far too little like the missing father for whom he’d been named.

  On Tuesday afternoon while Kieran was still away at summer school, Cassidy found herself bored and poking around the living room, and that was when she found the old photo album in the end table by the couch. It shouldn’t have caught her off guard when she opened it and immediately saw her father, a smiling man with a thick head of red hair, holding a two-year-old Cassidy on his lap. Her toddler self was clearly befuddled by the cluster of bright helium balloons floating in front of her, and her mouth was smeared with cake.

  She took a sharp breath and let it out slowly. She forced herself to keep looking.

  The pictures charted her life from infancy to first grade—swaddled baby in the crib, butterfly Halloween costume, first day of kindergarten, her hair in barrettes and her front tooth missing. In most of them, her father or mother stood over her, beaming. There was an Olan Mills family photograph when she was five, sitting cheerfully between her mother and father with her fist tucked under chin as the photographer had instructed.

  Then Kieran arrived, the squalling infant from hell, like a herald of dark times to come.

  The pictures slowed to occasional snapshots, ending around the time Cassidy was seven and Kieran was two. Neither parent was in these pictures, because her mother had taken them and her father was gone. Cassidy and Kieran seemed to move aimlessly around the apartment with nobody watching over them at all.

  Her father had died of a ruptured heart valve. He’d smoked and drank as much as any Irishman, but he’d been less than thirty years old. The doctors said it must have been a congenital defect that had gone undetected. Cassidy and baby Kieran were checked, but neither of them showed any sign of heart problems.

  Cassidy wondered what it would be like to go back and relive any of those days, when her father was still alive and she was small and innocent enough to believe she was safe, when she knew nothing about the difficult and unhappy life that was waiting for her.

  She’d always been distant with Kieran, she realized, because some childish part of her still blamed him for everything. Life had been good, then Kieran had been born and all her parents’ attention had turned to the new baby, and then her father was gone forever.

  Cassidy realized she was crying, and then she heard the front door creak open behind her.

  “--elephant had the biggest cock I’ve ever seen,” somebody was saying.

  “How many have you seen, bro?” Kieran’s voice asked.

  Cassidy kept her back to them, hoping they’d be self-absorbed enough to pass through into Kieran’s room without noticing her. She recognized the second voice now, Kieran’s friend Devin.

  “Like four,” Devin said as he circled the couch toward the back hallway. “Or, wait, we’re counting animals and humans, right?”

  “Just humans,” Kieran said.

  “Then four. Hey, your sister’s here. What’s up, Cassidy!” Devin raised his blue eyebrows in an absurd, flirt
y sort of way, but he fell into a deep frown when he saw Cassidy’s face. “Whoa, sorry, baby.”

  Kieran looked from Cassidy’s puffy eyes to the open photo album on her lap.

  “Were you like watching Nights in Rodanthe or something?” Devin asked.

  “Shut up, Devin.” Kieran punched him in the arm. “Let’s go to my room.”

  Cassidy closed the photo album and held it against herself. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she felt like she was falling apart.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It’s morning. Bad nightmares. So bored now. PT again today and Friday. How are your McRibs?

  That was what Cassidy had texted him. Peyton looked at it for a while, trying to decide what to say back. His brain was pounding hard against his skull and the backs of his eyes.

  He groaned and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He was on his couch—apparently he’d gotten too inebriated to climb the stairs the previous night, but he had very little memory of it. A Newhart rerun blasted at ten thousand decibels over his surround-sound system, a gigantic Bob Newhart in a sweater vest booming about some kind of mix-up with the handyman.

  Rubbing his head, Peyton found the remote and hit the MUTE button. He only had a few sloshing bits of memory from the previous night. He’d come home, called his dealer for a few grams of coke, then gotten jacked up and gone out to the crowded bars in the refurbished brick buildings along Edgewood Avenue, still wearing his rib brace. He remembered ordering a double bourbon at Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room and Ping Pong Emporium. He’d been swept up by some friends from the club world and down along the street, hitting one bar and club after another.

  Somehow, he’d made it home, and now he was caught in the bright glare of early-afternoon sunlight and wanted to vomit. The western wall of his loft was nothing but two-story Art Deco windows. He lived in the pricey Typewriter Factory lofts, built back in the 1920’s when even factories were designed as works of art.

  Peyton pushed himself to his feet and shuffled away from the couch, squinting even though his back was to the sunlight. He opened one of the drawers in a built-in sideboard and found a straw and the empty corner of a torn plastic baggie, a little residue of white powder clinging to the inside.

  He licked his finger, wiped up all the residue, and rubbed it on his gums. Then he crumpled up the torn plastic and threw it into the trash. He needed to call his guy again, but that meant hitting the ATM first.

  His phone pinged again, and Peyton stumbled back to the couch. Another text from Cassidy: Are you dead?

  Almost, he replied. Just typing on his phone’s glowing screen made his headache and nausea worse.

  Swimming today?

  Left rehab, got drunk, he replied.

  Predictable, Cassidy said. Can you come over? Still at Mom’s.

  Mom hates me.

  True, but I don’t. :-*

  Can’t. No car, broken ribs, etc. Not going anywhere.

  Aw too bad. Anyone there to help you?

  I’m okay.

  Miss you.

  You too.

  Peyton searched for his lost keys. His loft was a single open space, twenty-five feet high, with an open second story above for his bedroom. The granite kitchen nestled in one brick-walled corner, by the unsightly laundry room hidden behind cheerful folding doors. Another corner was the living area with his long couch and a few loveseats clustered near the TV and sound system.

  He circled the first floor, but couldn’t find his keys anywhere. He climbed the two flights of stairs to his bedroom, where one wall was a railing overlooking the first floor. He glanced over his bed and nightstand, kicked some laundry on the floor, looked into the bathroom, growing frustrated, his headache swelling. He needed a bump of coke or his skull would crack with pain.

  He finally located the keys at his workstation, where he compiled audio and video mixes for his shows. It was a wide table strewn with cables and laptops, overlooking the living area below.

  “Idiot,” Peyton mumbled to himself as he picked up his keys. He’d clearly made the drunken crawl all the way upstairs, only to go back down and crash on the couch.

  His fingers bumped the mouse, and his computer screen faded up into life. His video-mixing app was open, and it looked like he’d recorded something the previous night. He didn’t remember doing it.

  Peyton clicked PLAY.

  It was a video of himself, coked and plastered drunk, swaying in his chair and on the verge of passing out, his eyes clearly held open with an effort.

  “Hey man,” Peyton’s recorded face said to him. “It’s me. It’s you and me. It’s us. Listen, listen, listen this is important...You don’t like her. You’re not going for her. Because, here’s thing one: she’s all church, church, religious crazy nut. And thing two is...” The recorded Peyton touched his middle finger and stared off into space for a moment. “Oh, shit, the religious thing! That’s two. Then three: she’s not Cassidy. Cassidy cool. Much cooler. We like her. And then four...four...four it doesn’t matter if she’s totally hot, if she’s so hot, if the eyepatch thing kind of gets you off...all that. Still. Listen. That’s five things. Five. So listen, I mean it, listen...all those things.” He gave a drunken thumbs-up.

  The video ended abruptly.

  “Man, I was wasted last night,” Peyton said. Then he found his shoes and headed out the door and down the sidewalk towards the nearest cash machine.

  Once his coke supply was refreshed, he focused on his workstation, furiously laying down new tracks, all of which dissatisfied him. He took more coke for inspiration, and though his brain flew a thousand miles a second, he couldn’t make anything that sounded right.

  His phone rang, and he answered without bothering to check the caller ID, his eyes locked on his screen.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Is this Peyton?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at the ugly soundscape he’d built, layer by layer, a screeching, bumping pile of pure crap.

  “Hi! It’s Reese. From the hospital?”

  “Yeah, hey.” Peyton wondered whether he should delete the whole messy thing.

  “Just wondering if you’re coming to the blues thing tonight. I can give you a ride.”

  “Huh? No, I’m staying here.”

  “You’re not home by yourself, are you? How are you feeling?”

  “Pissed off.”

  “Why?”

  “Nothing. What’s going on?” Peyton didn’t feel like being social, he felt like holing up with his digital sounds and his drugs.

  “I can come by and get you for the concert,” she repeated.

  “I don’t think I’m going. Sorry, thanks, whatever.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then who’s going to cook dinner for you?” Reese sounded as if this issue troubled her deeply. “Peyton, you shouldn’t be alone after the hospital. Let me come help.”

  “Don’t need it.”

  “Just let me come check on you before I go to the park. Is that okay?”

  “Fine,” Peyton said, deleting his audio one layer at a time and shaking his head.

  “I need your address.”

  “I live at The Typewriter Factory.”

  He only half-remembered the phone call when Reese showed up after seven, dressed in tight skinny jeans and a smock top, all smiles. She carried grocery bags inside with her and laid them out on the kitchen island.

  “Wow, your place is amazing.” Reese gaped at the high ceiling and the row of tall, narrow Deco windows. “I think I’m in love with it.”

  “It’s okay.” Peyton shrugged. “What’s in the bags?”

  “Your dinner.”

  “I don’t feel like eating.” Though he hadn’t eaten all day, the afternoon lines of coke made his stomach feel as small as a thimble. He couldn’t imagine putting food in his mouth.

  “You don’t feel well?” She approached him, touching his rib brace lightly. “Sit down. I’ll co
ok.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t hang around,” he said.

  “I’m not leaving you here alone. Just let me help a little. I got you a present.” She blushed as she reached into a bag and brought out a DVD. The cover read Lost Mysteries of the Ancient World, with a photograph of Machu Picchu against a bright sunset. “It’s one of those documentaries like you were watching. This one has Machu Picchu. That’s probably a stupid present now that I look at it.”

  “No, I like it. Thanks.”

  “Can we watch it together?”

  “When do we get to the hard sell?” Peyton sank into one of the big loveseats, picked up his remote and played Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories album over his stereo, keeping the volume soft.

  “I’m not selling you anything.” Reese followed him to the living room, crossing her arms. “Maybe I just thought you needed help. I don’t see anybody else here helping you.”

  “I could call friends if I wanted. I’m sure you saw other people in the hospital worse off than me.”

  “Maybe they weren’t as cute as you.” Reese smiled. “Seriously, though. I just had a sense you needed special healing. Not just your body, but...”

  “My soul,” he finished for her. “I’m a lost sheep, and you want to bring me back into the fold.”

  “You’ve never been in a fold like this.” Reese shook her head with a little bit of a condescending smile. “The big religions out there, they’re all about taking your power away. Turning people into obedient helpless scared little sheep, like you said. True discipleship, though—that doesn’t take your power away. It gives you power. It can give you immense power.”

  “Power to do what?” he asked.

  “Anything you can imagine.” She drifted closer, leaning her hip against the overstuffed arm of his chair.

  “I can imagine a thousand-story castle on the moon made entirely of blue Nerf,” Peyton said. “Your religion gives me the power to create that?”

  “Don’t be silly!” she laughed. “I mean power over things you care about. Power over your life. Isn’t there anything you want? Anything you crave, but you can’t have?” Reese eased slowly into the chair beside him. Either she was offering herself as a sexual temptation or she was the most self-oblivious person in the world. “Everyone wants something.”