White Horse

by Alex Adams

  I swivel my knees toward the window to let her past. She settles in the seat, suitcase perched upon her lap. Strange, I think, until I realize I’m doing the same thing.

  “I love Rome,” she says. “It’s romantic. More so than Paris, I believe. Have you been?”

  “This is my first time.”

  We are a parody of normality. Strangers discussing travel like two robots mimicking human speech.

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “You should go with someone you love. I did. My husband. Well, husbands. They loved Rome. They’re both dead now.” Her knuckles tighten on the bag’s impeccably stitched edge, white marbles beneath paper-thin skin. They barely support the nest of rings stacked on top of them. “I love Rome,” she echoes. “It’s romantic.”

  We don’t speak after that. She retreats to her world, the one where she wears a haute couture dress with one ring, one necklace, where her husbands are still alive, where someone else carries her luggage. I attend to my stomach, which is launching a protest, and rip into the flimsy plastic wrapping the fortune cookie. It has snapped into pieces from the tension in my hand, which saves me the trouble of breaking it in two. The slivers dissolve on my tongue until they’re little more than the memory of sugar.

  The fortune is stiff between my fingers. I unfurl it and read.

  Welcome change.

  I read my fortune until I laugh. I laugh until I cry. I cry until I sleep.

  FOUR

  DATE: NOW

  I wake in a panic, drenched in tepid sweat. It’s not rain, because it smells sour, metallic, with an underlying sweetness like fruit just as it turns. My plane ride to Rome swirls down the drain, dormant until the next time I close my eyes. I shove myself up from the tree roots and look for Lisa. She’s asleep.

  When I rouse her, she barely recognizes my voice through the sleep fog.

  “What?”

  “You fell asleep.”

  “I was tired.”

  “I have to be able to rely on you.”

  She leans over, vomits, heaves until I worry she’ll turn inside out. Between bouts, she manages to speak.

  “I’m sorry. It just happened.”

  “Come on. We should go.”

  We push off from our resting place and I glance behind us, scan the land. Nothing but trees and grass. But something follows. Branches crack when they shouldn’t. Every so often I hear a step that doesn’t come from me or Lisa.

  We are not alone out here.

  DATE: THEN

  “Have you ever turned it over?” Dr. Rose asks. “Looked at the bottom?”

  I look at him, my mouth sagging softly because that never occurred to me.

  It’s Friday evening. In my head I call this “date night,” because I’m not like the other people who come here. I’m not crazy. I’m not even a little off balance. At least I don’t think so. But that jar bothers me. The mystery of it curls cold fingers around my heart and squeezes until I ache.

  “No. Never.”

  “Maybe you should. Maybe it’s time to take action in your dream. Take control.”

  “What do you think I’ll find?”

  “A message. A clue perhaps. Or maybe a Made in China sticker.”

  Laughter spills from my throat. “Wouldn’t that be a trip? My dream the product of mass manufacturing in China.”

  We leave together. I’m his last appointment. He locks the office door while I wait, then we stroll toward the elevators like he didn’t just print me an invoice while I wrote him a check.

  “Do it,” he says as the steel cables hoist the oversized dumbwaiter to our floor. “Push that thing over and inspect the bottom. Look, you’ve seen every other part of it. It’s a dream. If it breaks, I don’t think they’re going to hold you to the ‘You broke it, you bought it’ policy.”

  He has a point, but not the full picture.

  My voice wobbles out on unsteady legs. “I haven’t seen all of it. I haven’t seen the inside.”

  A sharp ding echoes in the hall. Metal scrapes as the elevator locks into place. When the doors slide open, Dr. Rose’s hand goes to my waist and gently urges me ahead of him. His warmth seeps through my shirt. There’s a familiar smell about him that I can’t quite grasp. Trying to pin it with a label is like nailing Jell-O to a wall.

  “Dreams are funny things,” he says. “All this technology, all these specialists and their experiments, and we still don’t have a grip on what they are or what they mean.” The elevator shakes and hums. “You asked about my dreams. Since we’re just two people making conversation, I’ll tell you.” He hits the Stop button and we jerk to a halt. “I’m standing on a beach in Greece, where my family are from. There’s no sand. The beaches are pebble, the water still. I feel … like I’m the only person left on earth. So I crouch down and pick up a smooth stone, and when I stand I feel there’s someone behind me. A woman. I can’t see her but I know she’s there.”

  “Because you’ve had the dream before?”

  His smile is reluctant. His eyes dark and serious. “Many times. It always plays out the same. When I turn, I’m almost deafened by the sound of a single gunshot. Red blooms across her stomach. It spreads fast until she’s covered in her own blood. I race to her, scoop her up as she falls, but it’s too late. And I am helpless.”

  “The man who would help everyone is helpless,” I say.

  “Not everyone.” He smiles. “Anyone on a reality TV show is screwed.”

  Sunshine. He smells of sunshine. My eyes close for just a moment and I’m standing out in my grandmother’s yard, surrounded by fresh sheets being slow-baked under a high summer sun. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me.

  “What do you think it means?”

  He shrugs, taps the Stop button, and we start moving again.

  “Nothing. It’s just a dream.” A dimple breaks the plane of his cheek. “Unless it’s not. I’ll make you a deal. Take action in your dream. Tip the jar. See what lies beneath.”

  “And if I do that?”

  “I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  It’s what I want; I know that.

  We lurch as the elevator stops. He’s still watching me, the question in his eyes, waiting on my answer.

  The words catch in my throat, then shake themselves loose. “I’m sorry,” I say, “but it wouldn’t be right. But if the world ends tomorrow, understand that I regret saying no.”

  The world doesn’t end the next day. Or the day after that. But six months later, humanity is too busy circling the drain for any of us to worry about dates we didn’t accept.

  DATE: NOW

  The day grinds on. Each hour heavier than the last. Theoretically they should be getting lighter as I get closer to Brindisi, but like any theory it’s there to be disproven.

  When I mention this to Lisa she asks, “What’s in Brindisi?”

  “Boats. More specifically, a boat. The Elpis.”

  “Can I come?”

  This morning she was glassy-eyed, but now she’s clear and bright. Her chest bones are a skin-covered xylophone peeking out of the V-neck of her shirt. Mine are the same beneath my raincoat.

  “If you want to.” Though where she’d go without me hadn’t entered my thoughts until now. “I’m counting on it.”

  “Yay.” She gives a little clap. “Where’s the boat going?”

  “Greece.”

  “Why go there?”

  “Because I’m meeting someone.”

  She chews on this for a moment. “What if they’re not there?”

  “They will be.”

  “But what if they’re not?”

  “They will be.”

  “They will be,” she parrots.

  DATE: THEN

  Ben’s eyes are bloodshot; a snot droplet hangs from the reddened rim of his left nostril.

  “Have you seen Stiffy?”

  It’s 2:53 a.m. I haven’t seen anything but my crazy dreams for the past five hours. I try to think. When
did I last see his cat? The night James came over? That was two, no, three nights ago. Have I seen the marmalade tomcat since then?

  “Is he missing?”

  My question is stupid. Of course he’s missing, otherwise Ben wouldn’t be here searching. But the sleep has scrambled my head and I haven’t yet untangled myself from its hold.

  Ben wipes the back of his hand across his nose. He pulls his omnipresent brown cardigan tighter around his narrow body. He’s pale, I see that now, and not just from the hallway’s harsh light.

  “Yeah. For a couple days now. It’s not like him, you know?”

  “He likes his food.”

  “Yeah.”

  I feel bad for Ben; Stiffy is all he has. “I’ll keep an eye out, okay? I have to work in a few hours, but I’ll help you look for him tonight.”

  “Really?”

  I make all the right noises and Ben retreats. Sleep doesn’t come again. It’s done with me for the night. Friday. The last day of the working week. Tonight I see Dr. Rose. Which means it’s three nights ago, not two, that I saw James.

  Steam rises from the cup in my hands. It’s a thin, shimmering shield that separates me from Dr. Rose. He’s watching me—not like a woman, but like a client. Between last time and this time he’s flipped a switch, and now we’re each of us in our proper place. I’m glad. Really, I am. Because I like Friday nights; I want to see the next one with him. And the one after that.

  “Why do you do it?”

  My thoughts pull out of the coffee. “Why do I clean floors?”

  He nods once.

  “Would you believe me if I said I like working with my hands?”

  Seconds tick by without him speaking. He isn’t visiting any other part of me until I’ve shown him this piece.

  “Because when Sam died I realized that life is about an inch long, and I didn’t want to drop more hours in a bucket I had no intention of filling. So I took a janitorial job that paid well enough, offered decent benefits, and didn’t ask me to think too hard. It gave me time to think about what I want to be when I grow up, where I want to study. And it’s satisfying. It yields immediate results. Something is dirty, then it’s not.”

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “Happy.”

  “I want to see that.”

  DATE: NOW

  “What happened to your friends?” Lisa asks.

  “Dead.”

  “Me too.”

  A while later …

  “Do you think they’re better off?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because not everybody can handle this.”

  “But we can.”

  “We’re doing our best.”

  “What do you think will happen to us?”

  “I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “How about you?”

  She shrugs. “I think I’m going to die. I’m scared. Are you scared?”

  “Sometimes. But I try not to think about it too hard.”

  Lisa’s makeshift cane taps constantly, chipping away the miles. My blisters have hardened into thick lumps on my heels and soles.

  “Have you ever been in love?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Great and terrible.” Like Oz.

  “I’ve never been in love. At least, I don’t think so. I used to have this boyfriend, Eddie. He wasn’t really a boyfriend—more like a boy who was a friend. He kissed me one time and then after that he wouldn’t speak to me. I cried for a week. Do you think that was love?”

  “Maybe. Only you can know for sure.”

  “I don’t think it was. I hope not. But I hope so, too. Because I don’t want to die without falling in love at least once.”

  DATE: THEN

  James is leaning back on the couch, poring through a textbook bigger than his head.

  “So, what do you think, Rain Man?”

  I laugh. “Jesus, you can’t call him that.”

  “Sure I can.” He winks at me.

  Raoul turns away from the jar, flashes me a smile that makes me wish I was wearing sunglasses. “I know what they call me behind my back. Could be worse. Like James.”

  James is making a meal of Raoul with his eyes when he’s not focused on the book. Part lust, part fascination with the younger man’s expertise.

  If Raoul notices, he’s oblivious.

  “It’s got to be Greek.”

  James’s head bobs like a parrot. “That’s what I said.”

  “But from when?” they say at the same time.

  “It’s like a missing link,” Raoul says.

  “Bridging two periods of history.”

  Raoul rubs his fingers across the delicate curve of the lip. “It looks like something I saw once. In a painting, though, and the artist wasn’t Greek. Pandora’s Box.”

  “Ahh,” James says as though that is the answer to everything. “The Eve of Greek mythology. You nosy women can’t help yourselves.”

  I’ve heard the story about the woman who opened the box and let havoc grab a choke hold on the world. But the correlation between that and my jar eludes me.

  Raoul correctly interprets my confusion. “It’s a matter of one small error in the translation of Hesiod’s work. What was thought for some time to be a box was actually a jar. Zeus gifted Pandora with a simple jar similar to those used to store foodstuffs or bones—”

  “Like an ossuary,” James adds.

  “—and then forbade her from opening the lid.”

  We all look at the jar, at the lid with its rim of wax neatly sealing the top.

  “Of course, she opened it,” James says. “But who wouldn’t have?”

  Raoul circles the jar, his hand still upon its rough surface. “It’s important to remember that like Eve she was just curious and didn’t act out of malice. Curiosity isn’t a bad thing. It drives us to improve and explore and discover. Without curiosity I wouldn’t have a job. Her actions may not have been all negative. For when she released all the ills of the world on mankind, she also gave us obstacles to overcome. Without them we would have been little more than men of clay. Instead we think and struggle and grow.”

  He looks at me. “I wonder what’s inside. Any guesses?”

  A cold-hot wave washes over my cheeks. I feel them pinken because he’s picked on my obsession and thrown the question out there like it’s nothing.

  “Bones,” James says.

  “Dust,” I say.

  “Drugs.” James’s second offering.

  Raoul flashes his smile, this time at James. “Ancient corn.”

  I flop down on the armchair, stare at the jar. “Death.”

  Raoul sinks into the couch next to James. We sit. We stare.

  DATE: NOW

  The village isn’t on the map, but it’s there off to the left of the road like an afterthought. It’s little more than a knot of houses, at least from our vantage point. The road rises ahead, an endless gray ribbon winding through the mountains. We’re going southeast, although the road struggles to stay true. When I tell Lisa this, her feet slow.

  “Can we stop?”

  “No. I have to be in Brindisi in fifteen days.”

  “But they’ll have beds. Real live beds. With blankets and pillows.”

  “Fine.”

  “Ha! I win.”

  “If you can carry it, you can have a blanket,” I say.

  “But I want to sleep in a bed.”

  “We can’t stop there. We can’t risk it.”

  “Because you have to get to a boat and find your friend. They’re probably dead just like everyone else.”

  I want to grab her, shake her, tell her I’m terrified whatever is following us isn’t human anymore. That her prolonged rape could seem like a beautiful dream compared to what a stranger could do. But I don’t because she’s just a kid. I want to tell her that getting to the Elpis is the only thing to do, that the person I’m meeting will be there. But I don�
�t say that, either, because there’s a cold tickle in my belly that says she’s right.

  “And maybe we’ll both be dead tomorrow.”

  That shuts her up.

  Guilt paints another coat of grime on my shoulders, but it’s not enough to change my mind. We’re safer out here.

  “The air feels strange,” she says. “What does that mean?”

  True enough, the clouds are the pale green of hospital scrubs.

  “Hail.”

  “I want to feel the sun again,” Lisa says. “That’s going on my list.”

  “Mine, too.”

  The clouds thicken overheard and dip down to meet us.

  DATE: NOW

  It’s the hail and high-force winds that force us into the village. We struggle to keep the bicycle upright as we slog our way to the shelter of the stone homes, wending our way between the trees. The road has the worst of it. Here we are slammed, battered, until all our energy goes into keeping ourselves standing. My body aches like a punching bag pounded with maddened fists. Branches fly, catapulted by gusts of untamed air. This wind is new. Please, I think. Please don’t let it be omnipresent like the rain.

  We don’t stop and announce our arrival, nor do we stop to take stock of our surroundings. We bolt up the stone steps for the nearest door, dragging the bicycle. I push Lisa in first, the bike, then I tumble into safety.

  The wind dies immediately when I slam the door behind us, yet it waits for us, knocking, scratching, flinging fistfuls of hail against the wood. Come out, come out, it dares us. Come out and play.

  Lisa is wild-haired and red-cheeked. Cuts mar her skin. I feel the sting where flying debris has marked my own flesh.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  Down the door I slide until I’m using my knees as a chin rest.

  “Okay. Good.” My eyes drift closed just for a moment.

  When I open them a moment later, it’s dark. The constant plink plink of hail has stopped, but the wind is still trying to huff and puff the little brick house down, and it’s brought the night with it. What time, I don’t know. There’s not enough light to see my watch. There’s not any light except a vague promise from beyond the windows. A little has trickled through the clouds.