Unpossible

by Daryl Gregory

  It took him a moment to realize it was a question, a moment more to remember how to answer. "Uh-huh," he said. His mind had gone liquid. Grunt to give feedback, he thought.

  Annit was strong for being so small. She finished his back, then rearranged the sheet to do his legs. The top half of him was loose as a fish, but from his lower back to his feet he was aching with tightness. How could he not have noticed this before now? When a long stroke reached to his buttock he felt the first twinge of an erection, but then she pressed her thumbs between the muscles of his legs and he could think of nothing but the cold fire of cinched muscles stretching apart.

  Time became slippery. He might have fallen asleep if it weren’t for the persistent tightness in his forehead and eyes. Still blocked. It’s what Margaret would ask as she watched him honk into a Kleenex: Still blocked? Still. Always. Margaret would circulate the house, emitting little disgusted sounds as she plucked hardened clumps of tissue from the kitchen table, from between the cushions of the couch, from inside his forgotten coffee cups. "Why don’t you take another pill?" she would ask, irritated. But Margaret was a free-breather and could not understand. Antihistamines clamped down on his nasal passages, setting up killer headaches. Pseudoephedrine only made his nose drip incessantly without ever coming close to draining his constantly re-filling reservoirs of snot. "Here, Daddy," Michael would say, and hand him a tissue.

  Annit touched his neck. "Okay, Edward," she said very quietly. "Let’s turn over."

  She held up the sheet between them and cool air hit his skin. He rolled onto his side and had to stop himself from rolling right off the table. He shuffled his body over and Annit let the sheet settle over him like a parachute.

  His nose was full and a sneeze was growing. "Could I ... " He looked for the Kleenex box. "Do you have a ... ?"

  She opened a cabinet door and steam drifted out. She handed him a warm, moist, cotton hand-towel.

  "Oh no," he said, appalled. "I couldn’t." He talked from the back of his throat, trying to hold back the sneeze.

  "This is part of the therapy, Edward. You must use the towel. No harsh paper." She smiled and touched the back of his wrist, prompting him to lift the towel to his face. He couldn’t hold back any longer: he sneezed explosively. And again. And again.

  Weakly he wiped the tip of his nose, his upper lip, and the delicate frenulum. He was ashamed, but the warm cloth felt wonderful.

  Annit whisked it away from him and he leaned back into the table and closed his eyes. His nasal passages re-filled like ballast tanks, but at least the sneezing fit was over.

  Long moments later Annit lifted his ankles and set them onto a pillow. She oiled his feet, working the surface tissue with firm strokes. A groan of pleasure escaped him. She had a gift. She understood his body. She knew its hidden pockets of tension, and one by one she’d burst them all.

  She seemed to change her grip, and he felt a sharp prick, obviously accomplished with a metal instrument. He tensed his body, but said nothing. She stabbed him again and he nearly yelped.

  With some effort he lifted his head and looked down the landscape of his body. Annit’s hands were empty. "What’s that you’re doing?" he asked. Trying to sound mildly curious.

  "Reflexology," she said, and smiled. "The note from your wife said you wanted to try this."

  "Oh." The voodoo thing. He let his head fall back against the table and thought, maybe she won’t notice the toe.

  With thumb and forefinger she held his right foot just below his ankle in a delicate grip that burned like sharpened forceps. He sucked air and waited for her to release.

  "So," he said casually, his voice tight. "What points do those correspond to?"

  "The penis and the prostate."

  "Ah," he said, as if he’d guessed as much. She continued to hold the foot. My God, he thought, my balls are on fire. After a time she shifted to his other foot, and in the three-second gap between feet a chill coursed up his spine.

  "You have six toes on your left foot," she said. "That’s wonderful."

  The words made him flush. He knew he should make a joke, ask about correspondences, but was too embarrassed to speak. Margaret disliked the extra toe, barely acknowledged its existence. She only mentioned it in public once, obliquely, in the delivery room; she looked down at Michael’s perfectly numbered digits and said, "Thank goodness he has my feet."

  Annit worked the tips of his toes, the areas the Cosmo article had linked to sinuses. Her fingers were like needles but he began to anticipate the pain and move into it. Grunt for feedback.

  Annit’s voice drifted up from the other end of the table. "Do you trust me, Edward?"

  Her finger punctured his small toe like a fondue fork.

  "Ugh."

  Time slipped away again. He thought about Annit’s carbon-black eyes, her earnest, non-American voice: The key to therapeutic sucsase is trust. He should have told her about his daydream, about Joe Louis.

  Grunt to give feedback.

  Sometime later she moved to his face and massaged his cheek bones. "Urrm," he said, a little hesitantly. She hooked her fingers into the ridges above his eye sockets, three fingers to each socket, and pulled back. Bones creaked and he sighed. She pressed her palms to each temple and squeezed; he hissed. She wedged her thumbs against his nose and pushed east, south, west, north.

  "Okay, Edward," Annit said, a little out of breath. "How are those sinuses?"

  He tried to inhale through his nose: A wall. He tried to exhale and the air was forced out his mouth. "Still blocked," he said. Despair almost choked him. He could not move.

  Annit cursed softly in another language. She touched his face and he closed his eyes again. "Trust me, Edward. Trust me. Lie here for a second."

  Still blocked. Always. And the sins of the father would be passed on to the son. He could see the signs already. In the woods Michael’s eyes would water. Dusty rooms made him sneeze like his old man. "Why couldn’t he get my genes?" Margaret would say. It would have been better for the boy if he had. But a part of Edward felt ... not proud, not satisfied ... validated perhaps. Here was proof of lineage, distinctive as a hideous birthmark. There was something comforting in the fact that no matter how much their lives diverged—no matter if Michael grew up to be an astronaut or a drag queen—they would always share this. They would always have something to talk about.

  The smell of incense was stronger. Edward opened one eye. Annit was lighting a candle on the floor a few feet beyond the table. Other candles were lit; little flames lined the walls.

  "Isn’t this a bit—" He swallowed. His mouth was dry. "A bit dangerous?"

  Annit looked at him. Her face was painted in thick bands of yellow and red. It took him a moment to realize that she was also naked. She held up what looked like a celery stick. "Put this in your mouth," she said.

  He opened his mouth and she wedged it in crosswise. He carefully touched it with his tongue; it tasted like bark. Annit stepped behind him. She began to chant in what sounded like B-movie American Indian: lots of vowels and grunts. Moments later her voice was joined by a loud moaning sound; when she danced into his peripheral vision he could see a stick on a rope whirling above her head. He’d seen that thing on the Discovery Channel. A ... bullroarer—that’s it. Remembering the name reassured him. He closed his eyes again.

  The chanting and roaring went on for some time. It was soothing, actually, in the way that a chorus of washing machines made him sleepy in Laundromats. Grunt for feedback, she’d said. Edward hummed along with the bullroarer.

  There was a knock at the door. Annit’s voice broke off and the bullroarer wound down until it clattered suddenly against the floor. He heard the chubby girl’s voice, and Annit answering in a whisper, "I need more time."

  "But his wife—"

  "To hell with the wife. I’ve got a class-five chakra imbalance here." The door closed. There was the distinctive clack of a safety bolt sliding home.

  He felt Annit’s hand under his chin,
and then she pulled the celery from his mouth.

  He blinked up at her. "What was that you were doing?"

  "Maori action dance. Very cleansing. Any luck?"

  With an effort he brought his hand to his face and checked. Left nostril. Right nostril. Blocked as collapsed mine shafts. He sighed.

  "Shit," Annit said. Edward let his head fall back against the mat. He listened to her move around the room, rustling papers and muttering. The ceiling was stucco, troweled on in overlapping circular grooves. Theoretically there should be a final circle that did not overlap any of the others, but he couldn’t find it.

  A sound like a window shade springing up. Edward turned his head. Annit was consulting a life-size chart of the human body that had unrolled from the ceiling. She cradled a heavy book in her left arm. "Okay," she said. The book dropped to the floor, loud as a cannon shot. The chart snapped upward. "Turn over again, Edward."

  "I don’t think this is going to help," he said, half to himself. He did as he was told. Annit removed the sheet completely and applied fresh oil, rubbing him deeply until he forgot his plugged nostrils and his mind began to slide sideways into the half-dreaming trance he’d attained earlier. She worked especially on his arms and legs, pressing her fingers deep into every joint from elbow to wrist, knee to ankle, and finished by wrapping each extremity in something thick and smooth. His limbs were numb. He drifted, dreaming, drowning happily. For a long time Annit didn’t touch him, leaving him alone with the squeaks of ropes and pulleys. Edward imagined elephants from the circuses of old movies, lumbering beasts dragging poles into place, hauling on ropes to pull the tents erect. Out there in the desert, in the shadow of Ayers Rock, there was a special tent going up, the arena where he and Michael were kept as freaks. Bright posters screamed SEE! SIX-TOED SINUS MAN! AND! NASAL BOY! The crowd roared as the tattooed warriors attached block and tackle to their cage and hauled it up above the audience.

  Annit touched his neck. "Not that dream, Edward," she said. "Not the false dream-time." He heard a loud crack and suddenly he was hanging in space. He opened his eyes and found himself swinging above the floor, the massage table on its side against the wall. Several still-lit candles rolled in arcs across the floor. He tried to scream but his position made it difficult to take in air.

  Annit’s voice was warm and commanding. "Edward. Edward."

  He was splayed apart, macramé ropes at each limb suspending him from the metal planter hooks. Annit, still naked, caught his shoulders and stopped his swaying. She bent down and held his face in both hands. Her eyes were even with his. "So what’s it going to be, Edward?"

  His arms were easing out of their sockets. His groin muscles were taut. "Huh?"

  "Don’t play stupid, Edward. What’s it going to be? Back to your miserable world? Dripping and sneezing your way through life, never three feet away from a box of Kleenex?"

  He shook his head, trying to assemble his thoughts. Far away, a pounding and the sound of Margaret’s voice, calling to him.

  Annit slapped him across one cheek, then gripped his jaw and tilted his face toward her. "Come on, Edward! Are you moving forward, or going back? What’s it going to BE?"

  His cheek burned. He could pull out now and walk into the lobby, shaking his head and thinking, Crazy woman. Margaret would run up to him, all expectant eyebrows: Still? His son would hand him a tissue.

  Edward drew a breath. "Unngah."

  Annit kissed him hard on the lips. "Okay, then." She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back like a child in a swing—slowly, slowly—then back-pedaled to catch him and shove again. He closed his eyes as she worked the rhythm, feeling his arc grow by degrees heavier and steeper, his speed becoming tremendous. At the top of the arc, sinus fluid pressed to the front of his skull. As he swooped down lights crackled under his eyelids.

  The pounding on the door deepened and stretched and buzzed, becoming the bass throb of the bullroarer.

  "Edward!" Annit shouted, and he opened his eyes. He was at the zenith of his swing. The room was a fishbowl, walls curving out and back. Annit stood at the other end, naked except for her right arm, which was sheathed from elbow to fist in gleaming chrome. The gauntlet was medieval in design, covered with overlapping plates and studded with inch-long spikes, and seemed to end in too many fingers.

  Annit stood waiting for him, legs apart and arm cocked, her eyes locked fiercely on his own.

  She was braced for him. She could take him, if he trusted her.

  He nodded—in agreement, in surrender, in benediction—and fell into her, swinging down, down, like two tons of metal.

  Something furry brushed his cheek. He breathed deep, taking in a dense wave of unfamiliar scents, and opened his eyes.

  He lay on his stomach, arms and legs spread, sunk deep in the grasses of a sunlit field. He turned his head. The cat, a white Persian with blue eyes, rubbed its forehead along his brow, marking him with its scent glands. He stroked the cat’s back, and it arched into him, purring. A second cat butted against him, and a third, and a dozen more.

  He got to his feet, careful not to tread on tails and paws. The prairie stretched for miles in all directions, a green ocean of Bermuda grass and Kentucky bluegrass and brilliant ragweed, swirling with rust and orange eddies of redtop and sagebrush. The plain stirred with the movements of furred animals: long-haired cats, thick-ruffed dogs, sleek-coated mammals he couldn’t name.

  In the distance was a massive slump of naked rock, glowing pink in the sunlight. It was the flat-topped mountain he’d seen in his dream.

  Annit walked to him through a stand of towering pigweed, her hair wild, her skin still vividly painted. Michael held her hand, talking excitedly, and when she gestured to Edward the boy shouted happily and ran to him. Edward scooped him up and swung him around. The boy’s eyes were clear and dry. His nasal drip had disappeared.

  Annit stood a small way off, smiling.

  "Where are we?" Edward said.

  A breeze touched his face and he inhaled deeply through wide-open nasal passages. The air was heavy with dense floral bouquets, earthy molds, and the pungent musk of thousands and thousands of cats.

  Dead Horse Point

  Twenty-three years of silence and all it takes is one call. Not even a conversation, just a thirty-second message on her voicemail. Come now, Julia’s voice says. Come now before it’s too late. From anyone else it would have sounded melodramatic, but Julia never exaggerates; she’s always careful with her words. Venya books a flight to Utah the next morning.

  Later she’ll think, wasn’t it just like Julia to say it like a command. As if Venya had no choice but to come.

  The park ranger tells her where to find their campsite but the RV is locked, nobody home. She sits in the rental car for an hour with the engine on and air conditioning blasting, reading park maps and informational pamphlets and squinting out at the hard sunlight, until she sees the two figures walking down the campground road toward her. They look like they’ve been on a long hike. Kyle’s shirt is tied around his waist and his chest shines with sweat. Julia, following in his wake, wears hiking shorts and a webbed belt, plastic water bottles at her hips like six-guns. Both of them walk head down, lost in thought.

  Venya steps out of the car but it’s another minute before Kyle looks up and sees her. At first the only expression on his face is exhaustion, but then he recognizes her and puts on a smile, becoming the winning boy she met decades ago.

  "Oh my God," he says, loud enough for her to hear, and laughs. He glances behind him at his sister but she doesn’t look up.

  Kyle reaches Venya and holds up his hands. "I can’t hug you, I’m too sweaty!" he says, but Venya steps in and hugs him anyway. The last time she saw him he was a pale, hyper kid of 20. He’s in his mid-forties now, but still tanned and fit, hair grown to messiah-length and sun-streaked. Only his face hints at his age, and that is masked by his wild smile.

  "I can’t believe it," he says. "How on earth did you find us?" He steps ou
t of the way. "Julia, it’s Venya."

  Julia doesn’t raise her head. She frowns in concentration at a point somewhere past Venya’s right hip. Her hair is gray shot with black, a negative of two decades ago. Kyle must have decided to have it cut into something short and easy to maintain; Julia wouldn’t have had an opinion.

  "How you doing, Jay?" Venya says to her.

  Her eyes remain fixed on empty air.

  "The same," Kyle says.

  He pulls a key from his shorts pocket and unlocks the RV. Julia follows him inside automatically. It’s cooler inside, but not by much, and the air smells of ripening fruit. Kyle starts the RV’s engine to boost the air conditioning.

  The vehicle looks new—probably a rental—but Kyle and Julia seem to have been living in it for several weeks. The counters are crowded with food wrappers, unopened groceries, and stacks of paper plates. Books and papers cover the little table and most of the seats.

  Julia sits at the kitchen table. Kyle fills a plastic cup with ice from the small fridge, pours in some water from a collapsible jug, and sets it down in front of her. She lifts it to her lips without blinking.

  "How about you?" Kyle says. "I’ve got beer, bourbon, juice—"

  "Some of that water would be good." Venya restacks some books that have spilled across the bench seat and sits down opposite Julia.

  Kyle fills a cup for Venya, then opens a bag of dried apricots and sets it down on the table facing his sister. Without shifting her gaze from the tabletop, Julia reaches into the bag and puts an apricot in her mouth.

  "I was driving out here from the airport," Venya says. Kyle gulps down a cup of water and starts refilling it. "I’d forgotten how empty the highways are. I’d look down at the dash and realize I’d covered forty miles without realizing it. I thought, this must be what it’s like for Julia. Autopilot."

  "Julia’s driving a lot these days," he says. "And I’m still the road she follows." He finishes the second cup-full. "I’m going to get a clean shirt on. You okay with her?" Before she can answer he says, "What am I talking about, you did it for seven years."