Daniel left off there, and as soon as he broke character and said “Thank you,” the class erupted with applause. He smiled, bowed, and went back to his seat.
The truth was that he was not very good—his pacing was unnatural, his pronunciation was as awkward as ever, and the overall performance was melodramatic in a way only an utterly earnest adolescent could manage—but it was not lost on Dylan that something triumphant and deeply humanoid had taken place in his classroom that day. It was, in its way, deeper than mere art could ever be. This awkward boy, this pressure-cooked teenager no less, in full knowledge that he was risking the opprobrium of his peers, his school, and his very own parents, had looked fear in the eyes and told it to go fuck itself because he was throwing in with love. It was a beautiful, romantic gesture, a heroic one even, and though it was true he had violated the terms of the assignment a little, Dylan would not count himself among the young lover’s persecutors—there would be enough of those without his help. Dylan might never recommend Daniel for acting school, but he would certainly change his grade to an A.
“Bravo, Daniel,” Dylan called. “Bravo.”
• • •
For some forty days, the Greens’ experiment in communal living was an unequivocal success: the house had never been so clean, the meals so nourishing, the kids so creative and free of tears; Erin herself glowed as she had not since high school; and though Wendy had indeed taken to wearing her temple undergarments whenever she wasn’t naked, she kept her promise not to proselytize, unless indirectly through the example of her pious life and opinions and her lumpy dick.43 Having a third perspective in the house proved good for Dylan and Erin anyway; it disabused them of false binaries and served as a constant reminder that the world was grander and more interesting than their meager models of it. And the sex, though occasionally confusing, never failed to make the stone stony, as it were.
43_____________
Traditional Mormon breakfast dish consisting of scalded milk, flour, and, depending on who’s making it, any of the following: butter, cream, eggs, salt, pepper, cinnamon, syrup. Wendy prepared her own sweet version for the whole family every Sunday morning (unlike mainstream Mormons, she fasted on the first Thursday of each month, not the first Sunday, because that was the way the Prophet had wanted it).
Inevitably, though, a certain anxiety began to loom over the house, because all the adults knew that, outside of (the outside of) a Grecian urn, nothing this perfect could last. Sooner or later habituation would set in and old Shlovsky be proved right again. In the meantime, though, every felicity—every child’s laugh, every green smoothie, every simultaneous triple orgasm—was sweetened with the foretaste of its own absence. A Japanese literary critic in the eighteenth century had coined a term for this gentle sadness: mono no aware, literally the “ahh-ness” of things. Virgil had put it another way: fugit irreparabile tempus. However you named it, alas, you could not stop it from happening, could not freeze a moment in amber. Carpe diem seemed like good advice in the face of all this transience, but how, when it came down to it, did you really “carpe” anything? Wasn’t the essence of those tender epiphanies after all that moments are unseizable by their very nature? That, try as you might to hold onto them, they flee like water from your grasp? Still, Dylan seized as best he knew how, lived in the moment insofar as he knew what that meant, with his senses wide open, and, he hoped, his memory recording.
He could not pretend to be surprised, though, when the end did inevitably come. Whereas he had expected a slow dimming of the lights over time, however, what he got instead was more along the lines of a sudden blackout: All at once, the universe went dark.
It was Erin who made the discovery. She had gone to check on Junior in the middle of the night, and the scream that tore out of her when she did was unmistakable.
Dylan and Wendy rushed to her side.
“Please, God, no!” Erin cried. “I’ll do anything you want, just please not this!”
But God wasn’t there yet.
Wendy flipped the light switch to reveal the garish scene: Dylan Jr.’s small, precious body hung limp and gray from one of Erin’s arms while she frantically rubbed his back with the other. The way the head and arms just sort of dangled there.… Dylan reached out to relieve her of her burden, but she flashed him a fierce look he had never quite seen before, and shrieked, “Do something!”
“What?”
“Omni 911!”44
44_____________
As of the prior September, 911 operated galaxy-wide.
Right.
Arthur and Tavi were at the door now, rubbing their eyes and begging to be let in, but Wendy took them to the hall and kept them there while Dylan omni’d 911.
They were not ready for this. No one could be ready for a thing like this. As far as Dylan was concerned, it still seemed almost exhilarating, like a disaster movie, or like watching Challenger explode on TV in grade school. It wasn’t real yet.
“Hello. Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
“Yes, our child, our little baby, he’s…not moving.”
Dylan was so high on endorphins or insanity or whatever it was that he couldn’t make out the response. My boy, he thought, my beautiful boy, and now the clichés came thick and heavy, and for once he wanted them, as many as would come—my little miracle, my bright-eyed boy, my bundle of joy—because he loved his son more than poetry and his son was not moving and these words were narcotizing and truer-than-true and goddamned Shlovsky himself would think them too about now if he had a heart.
Things happen for a reason.
He’s in a better place.
God is love.
The rest of that night was a teary blur. An ambulance came. A neighbor watched the kids while the adults went to the Earthling ER. They drank poxna in the waiting room. The handsome Indian-American doctor explained that he’d ordered a bunch of tests and so far it looked like digoxin toxicity and bidirectional ventricular tachycardia leading to—he was so sorry to say—ventricular fibrillation and cardiogenic shock and—it really broke his heart to say—SCD, or sudden cardiac death. Yes, they might have had a chance had they caught it on time. Had they not heard him sooner?
But no, they had not heard him crying in his bed. They’d been too busy muffling their ears with one another’s thighs. Indeed, if Wendy’s garden had been the symbol of their earlier efflorescence, then the circumstances of that evening would live forever in Dylan’s memory as the symbol of their rot: their three heads buried in their three sweaty crotches while their baby’s heart gave out just one room over.
They were frozen in various degrees of catatonia.
And then the doctor asked, “Was Dylan Jr. recently exposed to any plants of the genus Digitalis?”
“What did you say?” Dylan asked.
“It’s otherwise known as the Foxglove. The native name is Munjala Nim. Existed on both Earth and New Taiwan with minor variations before first contact.”
“We drink a lot of green smoothies lately,” Erin said.
“None of the plants in the garden are that,” Wendy snapped. “What do you take me for?”
“Besides, we all drink them,” Dylan said, “and the rest of us are okay.”
“May I suggest we test the plants to be sure?” the doctor said.
“Do as you wish,” Wendy said, “but I assure you none of the plants in the garden are that.”
“What, then?” Erin asked, blowing her nose. “My baby is dead. What, then?”
It was a mystery, and there was something not wholly unlike comfort in that, until Wendy took it away: “May I say something?”
All eyes and ears in the room fell on her.
“I’m terrified of telling you this, but I feel I have to.”
“Speak!” Erin said.
“Cane got out of our bedroom last night while I was cleaning
his cage. I found him hiding behind the toilet a few minutes later. I didn’t think he’d been anywhere near the kids, but maybe I was wrong.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Dylan asked.
“What is this ‘Cane’?” the doctor asked.
“Cane is the toad I brought from Earth for religious reasons.
Bufo marinus.”
“Interesting,” the doctor said.
“What’s interesting?” Erin said. “Why is that interesting?”
“The skin is toxic,” Wendy said. “Under normal circumstances the toxicity is no big deal, but that’s why I don’t let the kids touch him. If Junior threatened him in some way, though, Cane’s glands might have shot fluid into his mouth or eyes. And since Junior puts everything in his mouth these days—”
“‘Put,’” Dylan said. “Past tense.”
“Yes, of course. Sorry.” A tear welled up in her left eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and sniffled. “Anyway, there’s a chance he may have licked Cane’s skin directly. Many a teenager has died that way because the skin also secretes a mild hallucinogen.”
Erin was shaking her head in disbelief. “Are you telling me my baby might have hallucinated to death?”
“Erin, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. Will you pray with me?”
“Fuck you,” Dylan said, suppressing an urge to strangle her outright.
Erin rolled her eyes and took some deep breaths. She was barely keeping it together. “He was crying when I put him to bed last night, but I didn’t think there was anything very unusual about that.”
So this was going to be the explanation, was it? Their baby had died for no real reason. Foul play would have been comprehensible at least, but if he had truly died of plain negligence, that was just the worst thing in the worlds. Junior’s death could not even be considered a sacrifice. It meant exactly nothing.
“And would you mind telling us,” Dylan said, “why you didn’t think to inform us that your toad was toxic?”
“I was afraid you might object to my keeping him.”
“And why ever would we do that?” Dylan asked. “Because it might give one of our children a fucking heart attack?”
Wendy winced. Erin broke down and began to sob. Through the heaves, he heard her say, “You never wanted him anyway.”
That did it. He couldn’t stand another minute here. Wherever he went now would be hell, but at least that hell might not be as claustrophobic as this one.
So he left the room and took the elevator down to the first floor. As soon as the doors opened, he began running—through the lobby, out the exit, and onto the street. On a whim, he went left. He had no destination in mind and no thoughts to slow him—he was just running. To his left, old Lem was on the rise, a purple orb in the tarnished sky. His heart hammered, and his pajamas grew heavy with sweat, but he kept on running until the whole world was awake, Lem golden and streaming and too bright to look at.
When he finally stopped for a breather, he was right in the heart of the Grind. As if on cue, an exceedingly lovely azalfud of indeterminate age sidled up to him and asked if he wanted to spend some time. The azalfud had warm eyes, a drum-tight belly, and boobs you could take a sabbatical in. His name, he said, was Zimklut.
For the first time in Dylan’s life, he conceded that he did indeed want to spend some time.
Zimklut took him to a no-frills room and unceremoniously slipped out of his clothes. His body was as gorgeous as any nebula, but Dylan could not get past the—as it happened, rather enormous—penis. So he made a request: “Would you mind maybe just holding me and rocking me for a while?” This was no act of mercy. Dylan was no moral crusader, no Holden Caulfield or Travis Bickle; penises, bifurcated or otherwise, just didn’t happen to be his thing. The touch of another hominid, though: this he needed more than ever.
“Sure, baby. Whatever you want.”
So Zimklut lay back on the bed like some gender-reassigned Titian nude and Dylan lay beside him with his head tucked in the valley of Zimklut’s voluptuous chest. Then, for the better part of a New Taiwanese hour, Zimklut stroked Dylan’s thinning hair and hummed native nursery rhymes.45 Dylan kept expecting to cry, but evidently his body wasn’t ready for that yet.
45_____________
More than a few xenomusicologists had commented on the probability-busting resemblance of New Taiwanese music to Western-Terran music: virtually every genre—classical, jazz, pop, metal, etc.—had its counterpart; the most pervasive time signature was 4/4 (which Earthlings sometimes refer to as “common time”), and, most remarkably perhaps, the natives had independently developed a system based on an octave of twelve semitones from which they had derived all of the same diatonic scales. Whereas the default scale for Earthling music was the major scale, however, the default for the New Taiwanese ear was what Earthlings call the Lydian mode, i.e. the major scale with a raised fourth degree. When Dylan had first arrived on New Taiwan, most native music sounded to him like sly variations on Danny Elfman’s theme for The Simpsons. Over time he acquired an ear for it, though, and he’d even hummed some of these very nursery rhymes to his own kids, all three of them, while they were still warm, cooing babies.
When his hour was up, he paid via omni and hailed an androcab to the teleport. Despite his current feelings about Wendy Sorenson, he requested that the driver be Frank Sinatra and that he just go ahead and sing whatever song he felt like singing; he thought there might be some refamiliarizing comfort in that musky American voice. And maybe it was the case that any one of Sinatra’s torch songs would have evinced some correspondence with Dylan’s tempest-tossed inner life, but the couple of verses he did sing before Dylan cut him off were just painfully on the nose:
Last night when we were young
Love was a star, a song unsung
Life was so new, so real so right
Ages ago last night
Today the world is old
You flew away and time grew cold
Where is that star that seemed so bright
Ages ago last night?
On hearing that, Dylan waved away the window and blew chunks on the street.
“Are you all right?” Old Blue Eyes asked.
“I will be if you’ll just go ahead and be yourself again.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Green, but I have no stable ‘self’ to speak of.”
“I’m not sure I do either, but what I mean is, go back to your default androcabby persona please. No entertainment required.”
“As you wish, sir,” Sinatra said, and then he transformed himself once again on the spot.
Dylan thought how nice it must be to be able to do that.
• • •
While waiting for his scan at the teleport, Dylan queried Omni, “Why me?”
The reply came back, “TBD”—proof enough that Omni wasn’t God yet, because if it were, it would know his pain and give a fuck.
• • •
For want of another destination, Dylan QT’d to Earth again, back to his parents’ house, back home. He arrived in the early afternoon when old Sol was blazing hotter than he remembered it ever having done before. His parents appeared to be out somewhere, maybe playing pickleball, which was a thing Erin had told him they now did. Going in the pool was a no-brainer, but first Dylan walked the mile or so to the pool store and bought a hundred-hour Hydropatch. Along the way, he passed the old Borders where he’d once worked, now an outlet shoe store. By the time he got back, he was rancid with sweat and desperate for the plunge, but the water was so warm that, even as he dove in, his skin barely registered the change. He surfaced, unpeeled the back of the Hydropatch and affixed it to his neck, and submerged himself in the deep end. For a few minutes he floated around like an astronaut out on an EVA. Then he settled on the bottom and gazed up toward the surface where the sky was now an undulating cry
stal orifice in the pool’s turquoise skin.
And he stayed like that for the next four days. He drank the pool water and peed when he needed to. Once, he shat near the drain. Otherwise, he just lay there on the bottom blowing bubbles and listening to the electric buzz inside his head. Sometimes he seemed to be immersed in blue Jell-O, other times in lukewarm coffee. His heart rate slowed so much that it was difficult to say for certain whether or not he did any sleeping. He wasn’t doing anything really. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t grieving. He was just being at the bottom of a swimming pool for a hundred hours—sometimes that is all you can do.
And then, on the fifth day, he drew his last breath from the Hydropatch and returned to the surface. He climbed out on the ladder and lay back on one of the recliners, all the skin of his body now gone as pruny as any fingertip. He rediscovered the freckle in his left palm and the line-break in his right, exactly where they’d always been. Then he studied the amorphous clouds, became them, until the screen door squeaked open and slammed shut and he snapped back inside his body again.
“Hello?” his mother called.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Dylan?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming, Mom. I needed to get away for a while.”
“My God!” She rushed to him like Tavi to the tree on Christmas morning. He stood up and hugged her tight. They rocked back and forth. It wasn’t clear who was doing the rocking; maybe they both were.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Just long enough for a dip. Erin hasn’t omni’d?”
“I don’t believe so. Should she have?”
Dylan had holo-chatted with his mother via omni at least a couple of times a month for the past twenty years—and the holograms were no longer faint and washed-out the way they used to be, so seeing her in the flesh was nothing new—but feeling her, reaching out to find she was made of solid matter; and even smelling her again, nosing those pheromones that had identified her as his mother before he’d ever so much as opened his eyes—these experiences were achingly wonderful.
King of the Worlds Page 24
