The Bewildered

by Peter Rock

  He crawled around, finding his clothes, which had been kicked to the walls. His hands shook as he pulled on his pants, tried to lace his shoes.

  “Hurry,” Kayla said.

  They ran like someone was after them, like there was no more time, down the hallway, the stairs—Chris almost falling, his shirt over his head, pulled on just as they reached the bottom, where Kayla started lifting the trapdoor.

  “Can’t we go out the front?” he said.

  “No, no,” she said, holding it open for him, following him under, through the dark, tight tunnel, past the plywood, into the damp, wide tunnel with its sour air, its buzz of electricity.

  Chris was out in front, but still catching up with his mind, rushing through the darkness. He had the same feeling as when the trucks on his skateboard began to wobble, when he was skating down a steep hill and there was no way to regain steadiness, at that speed, to avoid the crash, only the inescapable knowledge that it was coming. And his joints were sore, too, like after skating, wiping out, surprising hitches in his knees and elbows as he moved through the darkness.

  The electrical vault where Leon had been was empty, but the woman was in the next one—wrapped in wires, her shirt unbuttoned, her head steadied, her eyes rolled back, white. She trembled. She could not see them.

  “Who is she?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  The last vault was also empty. Kayla and Chris stood still for a moment. There were no lights, no voices, no motions in the shadows. Holding hands, they rushed back through the labyrinth, shards of glass crushed to powder beneath their feet. They pushed and pulled each other all the way back to the ladder.

  Squinting, they emerged into the alley. They did not speak, did not look at each other. With their feet, they kicked, they slid the heavy cover back over the manhole, and then they walked out into the sidewalk, into the stream of pedestrians, under the streetlights.

  They walked two blocks, past Hung Far Low restaurant, past whole blocks of parking lots. Down past Flanders Street, a dog in a parked car suddenly lunged barking through a half-open window, and Chris veered into Kayla. They both stopped walking, realizing they could. They looked at each other, not certain how to begin.

  “Pretty weird,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Chris said. “Did that happen? What was that notebook?”

  “A notebook I found, that’s all.” Dirt and copper splinters showed in the stubble of Kayla’s hair, against her scalp.

  “You haven’t been telling me,” Chris said.

  “You’ll know everything I do,” she said, “really soon—I mean, it’s better, you’re better for it than I am, since I already have some guesses that might be wrong, or get in my way—”

  “We’re not supposed to have secrets,” he said. “That’s not right. That’s how everything started going bad.”

  “That’s not how,” she said. “I’m going to tell you how, I’m going to show you so you’ll understand.”

  “You should have already shown me.”

  “That’s what I’m doing!” Kayla stepped closer; she reached out, touched the skin of Chris’s arm. “One thing—we can’t tell Leon that we saw him like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “He won’t understand.”

  “He definitely won’t,” Chris said, “if we don’t tell him.”

  “Trust me,” Kayla said. “Just for a little while. It’s for Leon, the three of us.”

  23.

  STEVEN OPENED HIS EYES onto Heather’s broad, pale back, the knobs of her vertebrae, the line of dark moles along one shoulderblade, her brown hair spread across the pale flowers of the pillowcase. Beyond her, he could see the tall dresser of chipped blond veneer, the framed mirror that made him feel sad, just the sight of it, and the painting that showed a child being disciplined, sent to a corner, facing the wall. A collie stood next to the child, looking out with pained eyes, a sympathetic expression on its long, thin snout. In script below, the title read The Silent Pleader. Across the bedroom, the painting on the far wall was a hunting scene—a black Labrador in mid-air, leaping over tall grass with its tail a sharp sword behind it, its tongue and ears flapping, a V of geese or ducks overhead. Steven wondered if Heather had chosen these paintings of dogs, and when, or if it had been someone else, more recently, either describing them to her or deciding what she would desire.

  The cat came into the bedroom, walked across the floor, and leapt onto the windowsill. Outside, it was raining, gray; the clouds, the rain filtered the light. Steven wanted to check his watch, but it was on the bedside table, face down, and he didn’t want to wake Heather by reaching across her. Instead, he leaned closer, felt the warmth of her body against his face, smelled her skin.

  “Let’s talk about what we did in Chinatown,” she said.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was thinking. Why haven’t we talked about it? It’s been days.”

  “We agreed not to,” he said.

  “I thought it would be better if you brought it up, to see how long you waited.” Heather turned over, so their faces were close together, her eyes closed.

  “You could have said something,” he said. “I did want to talk about it, and I didn’t.”

  “I am,” she said. “I mean, what happened is only between the two of us, and who would believe it, if we tried to tell someone else? It’d be kind of hard to explain.”

  “I was just a guest,” he said. “You were the one that guy invited.”

  “Chesterton.” Heather rolled her neck, stretching, her face flashing at the ceiling, her head moving across the pillowcase, exposing a faded flower. Reaching out, she slapped the box on the bedside table, and a remote, mechanical voice said “Seven-thirty-seven A.M.”

  “An hour and a half until we have to be at The Seeing Eye,” she said. “Stay in bed. Stay right here.”

  “I don’t like to eat in bed,” he said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. The crumbs.”

  “I want to talk,” she said. “I want to talk about what I saw.”

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  “The thing is, I saw it all—the colors, the woman undressing. I could really see it. I’ve been thinking and thinking about it. Once, I read somewhere that if you were born blind, or went blind, even, that those parts of your brain shut down, those visual parts. But in that room I could see, even if what I saw happened some other time.”

  Steven tried to move closer to Heather, to touch the length of his body to hers; his shifting felt obvious, strained. He stopped, inches from her. A bus splashed past, outside, and someone’s voice shouted in the rain. The cat leapt down from the windowsill, slid out into the hallway.

  “I was wondering if my cat misses the river,” Steven said.

  “Are you trying to change the subject?” Heather pulled herself up, leaning against the headboard. The blanket slipped down over the two sharp bones of her clavicles, the tops of her breasts, her small, dark nipples.

  “I did—I do want to talk about it,” Steven said. “It was crazy, confusing—but I was embarrassed, too. I am.” He paused, then continued with what he had to say. “What you were describing that day,” he said. “That man you saw, that was me.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “And that woman—she’s someone you know?”

  Her tone was even, impossible to read; with the guide dogs, too much mood in a voice, too much variation, brought confusion.

  “Someone I knew,” he said. “It was a just a mistake, a misunderstanding. This was before you and I were involved, before—”

  “Why are you so nervous?” Heather said. “I’m just trying to understand what happened. No reason to be so defensive.”

  “Nothing happened,” he said.

  “I mean what happened when I saw it, when we were in the room with the wires.”

  “Did you really know it was me?”

  “That made the most sense.”


  “Why?”

  “Chesterton told me to bring someone—another blind person—who was someone I wanted to learn more about. That’s why. Someone who might be keeping a secret from me.”

  “It’s not like that,” Steven said.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But still, you were embarrassed, like you said—you didn’t bring it up.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Why didn’t you sleep with her?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “In that bedroom where I saw you, the woman was undressing on the bed, posing for you—it was like she was waiting, inviting you to join her.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Come on, Steven. That was obvious.”

  “I was afraid.”

  Heather smiled, squeezed his leg under the sheets. “You’re not afraid of sex. I know that.”

  “I’m just embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t think it has to affect anything—”

  “I saw you.”

  “She wasn’t right,” he said. “This person I knew. It was like she was acting, or something, and I couldn’t understand why. She was like a different person, like it was some joke on me that I couldn’t follow.”

  Steven ran his finger down Heather’s arm, down along her ribs. She shivered. For a moment, he thought she was going to reach out for him.

  “Nothing happened,” he said.

  “Well,” Heather said. “You didn’t have sex. But something did happen, and the main thing is that I saw it, whatever it was.”

  Now she did touch his forehead, his face. He turned his head, looking at the window. Three crows were perched outside, on a shaking electrical line; they stretched their necks, re-folded their black wings, and suddenly rose, clapping airborne just as a squirrel, tail aloft, came running down the wire.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s all so strange—for instance, what does this guy Chesterton get out of it?”

  “I’ve wondered about that,” Heather said. “And I can’t tell. I think maybe he doesn’t really know, either, like he’s trying to figure out what he has. Or maybe he’s just some kind of pervert, just wants to see people take their clothes off—”

  Steven laughed. “And wire them together? But something happened. It’s not that simple. I mean, you saw.”

  “I wonder if we’ll get the chance to do it again,” she said.

  “Did he say so?”

  “He has to call.”

  “We could just ask him. Find him.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “He seemed pretty strict about all that.”

  Heather lay with the crook of her elbow over her eyes, as if keeping out light. In the silence, Steven heard the cat jumping off something, running up and down the hardwood floor of the hallway.

  “I want to tell you something,” Heather said. “Don’t laugh.”

  “All right.”

  “I want to see myself,” she said.

  “See yourself?”

  “I can hardly remember what I look like,” she said. “I mean, there are photographs that I can remember pretty exactly, but I was younger, then.”

  “I can tell you what you look like,” Steven said.

  “That’s not the same,” she said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I think maybe Chesterton could help, if we could do it again.”

  “What?”

  “One person sees a secret the other one has,” she said, “something they’re keeping from someone. So I’m thinking that if we—you and I—do something together, some kind of secret thing, that I might be able to see myself, the way I look now.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I think I get what you’re saying.”

  “So you’ll help me?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Heather reached out and slapped the clock again; its alert voice said “Eight-twelve A.M.” She threw the blankets aside and stood up. The day had begun.

  24.

  VII. CONTINUED REFLECTIONS

  In the Affected, self-medication takes many forms. Electricity draws these individuals. One common source, in my experience, is the electrical vaults in the tunnels beneath the city. Here, the Affected expose high-voltage wires and press themselves against these wires; the individuals remain in this state, unresponsive for a period of time, and, once the requisite level of electricity is absorbed, they are set free.

  Some of this is conjecture, of course; I must not assume that my limited knowledge is exhaustive, and I certainly cannot report what I have not seen—yet I have repeatedly observed the Affected as they rest suspended, underground. Here, their outward aspect (the twitching of their faces, and talking to people who are not present, their unawareness of people who are present) is strikingly similar to that of the UnAffected I have exposed to my process, upstairs, the individuals in my experiments. The question becomes how similar the interior experience of these two groups of individuals might be…

  …it’s possible that the Affected may communicate with others who are nearby, connected through the live electrical lines, that they may share dreams or memories or interact in ways that are not easy for us to grasp. Might they recognize each other, after such interactions? Is their conscious life as barren as it appears to be, or a shell hiding pleasures of grand complexity? One of my frustrations…

  …I do not wish to live forever; I do not want to die before I find out what I need to know. I admit there are times when I let my conjectures loose, when I hatch new possibilities in an attempt not to limit myself. I admit, for instance, that I have half-believed, at times, that what I have uncovered, what I am witnessing is a glimpse into the world of the dead. The Affected, after all, show no signs of aging. Admittedly, I have lost track of some individuals (I’ve also wondered if they might disappear suddenly, gone with a whispering snap in a moment when they are unobserved), but those I have tracked for years seem the same as on my first appraisal…

  …Yesterday, in a sort of desperation, I convinced Victor to join me in an experiment. Upstairs, unclothed, I attached the copper breastplates, the wires, and connected the two of us. Had Victor not undone the wires, merely minutes later, I don’t know what would have happened.

  I remember nothing, only the feeling of a sharp heat, a soldering iron at my brain-stem, every muscle gone rigid. And then I opened my eyes and Victor was loose from me, nervous, muttering politely, as ever. A sweat shone on him, an oxidizing perspiration that ran green across the copper plates, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. More alert, if anything. Sharper. He took off his chestplate, he scratched at the black hair it had covered, hair that matched his beard. I was still on the floor, my eyes even with his feet, the sharp bristles atop his toes. I could not rise. That one minute, being connected to an Affected individual, had completely drained me. I nearly had to go to the hospital. I scarcely made it off the floor, then slept for five days. I could not eat solid food for a week. It was as if all electricity had been leached from my body, each synapse gone dark.

  This was perhaps an experiment that had to be attempted, but it is also one that will not be repeated…

  Kayla wore a torn gray sweatshirt, a knit cap with orange and black stripes. The air held a damp chill; it was almost five in the morning, and she was skating—not under the bridge, but half a mile away, in the parking garage of the Radisson Hotel. She skated the circular ramp from top to bottom, corkscrewing, descending through the levels, and then she slowly climbed the concrete stairs to do it again.

  As she climbed, she held her skateboard in one hand, Chesterton’s open notebook in the other. The safety lights flickered above, just bright enough that she could read, that she could find her way through the passages she’d read so many times before. She’d reached the end, dissatisfied; yet as frustrating as she found the notebook, she doubted anyone could understand it any better. She had tried with Chris—read with him, explained the technical sections—and was not certain how far he followed, how much he grasped. All his attitude about secrets and honesty—he had to see pa
st that, to realize how far beyond them Leon was, now.

  Her board rang along the metal railing as she climbed, reading. The numbers, letters and colors—3B, Orange Level 4—passed in her peripheral vision, with glances of the few cars left overnight, their dark shapes and sharp angles casting shadows.

  …The minds of the Affected, I’ve conjectured, are capable of flights we cannot imagine, experiences both complex and displaced. It is quite possible that these experiences are contiguous with the lives they lead here, and equally possible that there is no connection at all. Perhaps their displaced actions are all in my mind, or as mundane and boring as their lives here, and there is no sense of cause and effect, no increased illumination. I’m not even certain what I’m writing of, here…

  …to articulate my dream—the beginning is merely to find a way to truly talk to the Affected, to earn their trust, to see if my simulations reflect in any way their experience, to find out what we might learn from them. Of course, here I am assuming a connection, a basis for communication, a commonality. I must admit that I have let myself be led by intuition, by hope, and that nothing I have found quite validates my desires. It only exasperates them.

  At best, my experiments have found a conduit, a means by which secrets are unlocked, a vision into a guilty corner of another’s mind. Is that all? And what memories do I retain, do I myself keep from the world? Nothing sufficiently interesting, nothing that might cast light? Things I have forgotten, repressed somehow? And how would these fragments of the past constitute a future? Here I am, seeking answers, beset by questions…

  …How pathetic I sound, even to myself! I suppose that I want to be like the Affected, and not like them. I want to have it both ways, to experience what they experience and yet retain the insight, the ability to reflect upon it that they lack. I suspect this is impossible, that one is Affected or not Affected, and perhaps I lack the certainty, the knowledge or courage to pass to the other side…