Hall of Small Mammals

by Thomas Pierce

  Planets, hearts, even the parts of our brains responsible for dreams—everything in the universe is made of daisy particles. The daisies come together to form larger particles by interlocking in a chain formation. No one is entirely sure what holds the chains together, but Claire’s advisor imagines them like the daisy garlands that children wear as crowns.

  In theory a daisy chain could pop in and out of existence, just like the individual daisy. In theory your entire body—since every atom in it is nothing but a complex collection of daisies—could also pop in and out of existence.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” he asks the crowd.

  On the top of the conference program, Walker draws two flowers and gives them arms and legs and hands to hold. The figures are like cave paintings. Me, man. You, woman. This, love.

  He writes, Want to be in my chain gang? and slides the program across his knee to Claire. She smiles and grabs the pen. She doodles a penis on one figure and breasts on the other. They have to avoid eye contact or else they’ll lose it.

  After the lecture, a handful of people gather in a small white room with mahogany tables, where they quietly sip red wine in groups of two and three. Claire’s advisor meanders over with a barely suppressed grin on his face.

  “And?”

  “Brilliant,” Claire says.

  Within only a few seconds, the two of them are lost in daisy revelry and Walker can only nod and smile. “We’re stretching math to the breaking point,” her advisor says, turning to Walker. “It’s almost unmath. One and one aren’t two, but onetyone.” Her advisor has his hand on Claire’s elbow, cupping it, as if propping it up. If he lets it go, her elbow might go crashing to the floor like a satellite from space. But when he walks away again, at last, Walker is pleased that her elbow stays put at her side.

  “He’s got a thing for you,” Walker says.

  “This again?”

  “Not that I can blame him.”

  “Even if he did,” she says, “it’s not like I’ve got one for him.”

  On the way home, because of construction on the bridge, they have to take a detour through another neighborhood. Claire knows these streets better than him but, against her advisement, he takes a left turn. The road dead-ends in front of an old farmhouse, its giant gray shutters flapping in the wind like moth wings. It is early summer, perfectly warm, and they have the car windows rolled down. To turn around he backs their Jeep into the driveway, the brakes squealing. Another car has turned onto the street behind them. They pass it on their way back to the main road, a pearly gray Lexus. The driver’s face is obscured by lights across the glass, but Walker can see that he has a military haircut, the gray lines sharp around his ears, the seat belt tight against a white oxford shirt. But his features are blurred. He could be anyone. Even Alan.

  Walker waits until they are back on the main street before asking what he wants to ask. Has she ever wondered if Alan is really out there somewhere? That’s he not just a dream? What if he’s real and dreams he’s married to a woman named Claire?

  “Very funny,” she says. “I don’t think so.”

  “You should ask him. What do you normally talk about?”

  “The usual stuff. Books, movies. What to fix for dinner.”

  “So in the dream, you’re definitely still you?”

  “Who else would I be?”

  “Anyone. A prairie wife, a criminal, whatever. One time I dreamed I was the king of Europe.”

  “There is no king of Europe.”

  “Right, but the point is, some people dream about being someone else. And apparently you don’t. You’re you, and Alan is Alan.”

  She shrugs. They’ve reached the house. He parks the car along the curb, lined with tall shapely pear trees, their wilted white blossoms pressed flat into the sidewalk that leads to the front door. Claire inherited the house from her great-aunt. Her parents were both engineering professors at the university. She went away for college but came back for graduate school. Inside, Walker leans over Claire’s blue bicycle and flips the light switch on the wall.

  “Okay, I have to ask something else,” he says, dropping his satchel on the hardwood floor. “Do you have sex with Alan in your dreams?”

  She is ahead of him, halfway up the stairs.

  “He’s my husband,” she says.

  Walker knows that Claire has been with other men. He thinks about this fact as little as possible, though he knows that before him there was another student in her department, and before that a Swedish guy named Jens who actually proposed, and before them a couple of college mistakes and a backseat high school fling. She never mentioned Alan in the list.

  “How often?”

  “Do you really want to do this?”

  “Just tell me once, and then we won’t have to talk about it again.”

  She’s pasting their toothbrushes.

  “If you must know, probably a few times a week. But it doesn’t often happen in the dream itself. It’s kind of offstage action, you know? For instance, the other night, we were on our way to a friend’s house for dinner, and the car ride took up the entire dream. But I knew what I’d done over the course of that day. I’d run some errands, picked up the dry cleaning. Baked strawberry brownies for dinner. The dessert was on my lap in the car.”

  “I can’t get over how detailed these dreams are,” he says. “I hardly remember anything from mine.”

  They both brush and spit into the sink.

  “Do you remember me in your dreams?” he asks. “Does it ever feel like cheating when you’re with him?”

  “Don’t get weird on me. They’re just dreams. I’m not cheating on anyone. You or him.”

  They turn off the lights and climb into bed. She tickles his back until he flips toward her. She’s naked. He wiggles out of his boxers quickly, shoves them to his feet.

  “You don’t need to worry,” she says, and climbs on top of him. He doesn’t need to worry. He knows that. Sort of, he does. She’s moving faster now. He has his hands around her waist, the way she likes. He mutters her name, and, thankfully, she mutters his, Walker, and when it’s over she tugs at his chest hair playfully, smiling. Then she goes into the bathroom. He can hear her peeing, and then, seconds later, she’s back in his arms, skin hot, nuzzling under his chin until she’s asleep.

  He lets his breath fall in line with hers and keeps his arm draped over her side, inhaling the conditioner in her hair. He can feel her heartbeat, soft and far away. Is she with Alan now? He wonders what it must be like for her, this double life, if she closes her eyes in this bed and opens them in the one she shares with Alan. Maybe her life with him mirrors this one. At that very moment, it occurs to Walker, she could be waking up and brushing her teeth all over again, discussing the upcoming day with her husband. She could be straightening his tie, pointing out the spot on his chin he missed while shaving. She could have her warm palm flat on his chest as she kisses him goodbye, the same way she sends off Walker most mornings. The idea of her repeating these private routines with another man, even one who doesn’t technically exist, is almost more unsettling than the thought of her sleeping with him.

  • • •

  The phone book contains two listings for Alan Gass and one for A. Gass. Walker scribbles down all three on the back of a take-out menu. He carries the take-out menu in his satchel for two days before pulling over on the side of the road one morning on his way to work. The sky is cloudless, and across the street a long green field unfolds between two wooded lots. A row of ancient transformer towers runs down the middle of the rolling field.

  He dials A. Gass first, and a woman answers. Her voice is so quiet and shaky that she has to repeat herself three times before Walker understands that her husband, Albert Gass, passed away the year before last.

  Walker gets out of the car. The road is not a busy one. He dials the next number, but the Alan G
ass who used to live there has moved to Columbia, the city, or possibly to the other Colombia, the one with the drugs. The man on the phone can’t remember which it was.

  He dials the last number. The phone rings and rings. Walker is about to give up when the voice mail message begins.

  “You’ve reached Alan and Monica,” the man on the line says. “We’re not around to take your call, so leave your name and digits at the beep.” It beeps. Walker hangs up quickly. The tall grass beneath the transformers swishes back and forth. He gets back in the car and starts the engine.

  The address in the phone book leads him to a part of town he rarely visits. It isn’t dangerous or run-down; it’s just out of the way. The houses on the street are adjoining, with small grass yards in front. At one corner there is a video store. Walker doesn’t recognize any of the movies in the front window. On the opposite corner, two women smoke cigarettes outside a Piggly Wiggly.

  Alan Gass lives in the middle of the block in a three-story house painted light blue, so light that it’s almost white. To the right of the front door there are three buttons, a label taped above each. The third doorbell says GASS 3B.

  He pushes it and stands back. After what feels like an eternity, a small speaker in the wall crackles and a man who sounds like he might have been asleep answers with a cough.

  “Bobby? That you? You’re early.”

  “I’m not Bobby,” Walker says.

  The line crackles. “Okay, who are you, then?”

  “Sorry for just showing up like this,” he says, “but there’s a chance we know each other through a friend. Do you have a moment to talk? I promise I won’t keep you long.”

  The man doesn’t answer. A buzzer sounds, and the door clicks open. The stairway inside is narrow and long, with a dirty blue carpet runner, smudged with old black gum, shredded at the edges. The door at the top of the stairs is half open.

  “Mr. Gass?” he calls, and steps into the apartment. “Hello?”

  The room is almost as narrow as the staircase. Walker feels like he’s looking down the barrel of a shotgun. The half of the room nearest the door serves as a living area, with a small television against one wall and a futon-couch against the other. At the far end of the hall a single window provides light. The parts of a dismantled computer are scattered across a flimsy table beneath the window. Alan Gass emerges from a room to the right of the desk. As he steps into the light of the window, his tall Art Garfunkel hair is illuminated a wispy golden brown. He looks nothing like the man Claire has described.

  He cannot be the real Alan Gass.

  Walker feels idiotic for coming and tries to think of the best way to extricate himself from the situation as quickly as possible. The man wears a starched red shirt with pearl buttons tucked tightly into a pair of gray corduroys despite the summer heat. He is a small man, shorter than Walker. His eyes are gray, almost translucent.

  “I think I’ve got the wrong Alan Gass,” Walker says. “But just in case, do you know a Claire?”

  Alan licks his bottom lip. He says that he knew a Claire once, way back in middle school, but he hasn’t heard from her in decades. So, no, currently he does not know any Claires.

  “That’s all right. Like I said, wrong Alan Gass. I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.” Walker turns to leave.

  “Before you go,” Alan says, “now that you’re up here, could I get your help with something right quick? I got a kid coming later who’s supposed to help me, but he’s not the most reliable.”

  Walker nods and asks what Alan needs from him. They go into the kitchen. The refrigerator has been pulled away from the wall and unplugged, the door ajar. A towel dropped across the floor absorbs the water as it drips from the defrosting freezer.

  “I’m selling it,” Alan says. “Got a good price for it. Only catch is that I gotta have it downstairs by noon.”

  Walker has never moved a fridge, but he knows the job will not be easy. Looking at the refrigerator, he’s not even certain that it will fit through the front door. And then there’s the matter of the staircase. But Alan says he has a dolly for that. He promises that it won’t take long. He’ll even throw in a few home-brewed beers as a thank-you. Walker says that won’t be necessary. He rolls up his sleeves. He’s ready to do this. Alan goes into a back room and returns wearing a back brace.

  “Old injury,” he explains. “You don’t need to worry.”

  They tip the fridge backward so that Alan can wedge the dolly underneath. Slowly, they wheel it out of the kitchen. The doorway is tight. The entire wall shakes as the refrigerator passes through the frame.

  “So you’re looking for some other Alan Gass, huh?” he asks. “Never really think about there being other Alan Gasses out there.”

  Walker nods. The funny part, he says, is that the Alan he’s looking for might not exist.

  “Might not exist?” Alan asks.

  To his own surprise, Walker tells him everything—about Claire, about the other Alan Gass, about the dreams.

  “Huh,” Alan says. “That’s wild.”

  They wheel the fridge out the front door of the apartment and then take a break on the landing at the top of the stairs.

  “So what if I’d been him? What would you have done?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t plan that far ahead.”

  “Pretend I’m him.”

  Walker remembers the ghostly man in the Lexus. The white shirt. The blurry face. “I suppose I’d tell him to stay away?”

  “But she’s my wife,” Alan says. “I’ve been with her longer than you have. I should be telling you to stay away. I love her and I’m never letting her go.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “You think she loves you like she loves me? She married me. That’s a sacred vow.” Alan smiles. “Whoa, you should see yourself right now. You look like you want to hit me. Is this really bothering you?”

  “You’re making me feel a little like he’s the real one and I’m the dream,” Walker says, trying to make himself laugh.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re no dream. Look, you want to know my honest opinion? You got nothing to worry about. We all got an Alan Gass,” Alan Gass says. “We all got our fantasies. In high school, my Alan Gass looked a little bit like my Spanish teacher, only she was so . . . How do you say sexy in Spanish? I forget. She had this shiny dark hair and a little vine tattoo on her back and this amazing accent. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about her late at night alone in bed, if you know what I mean. But she had no blood in her veins, you follow? There was nothing to her. Her skin was made of the same thing they use for movie screens. You can project whatever you want onto someone like that.”

  They lean the fridge back toward the stairs on the dolly and slowly lower the wheels down onto the next step. Alan has the dolly handles; Walker is below it, keeping it balanced. They lower it another step, and then another. Walker is sweating. On the next landing, they take another break.

  “I wouldn’t care about a fantasy,” Walker says. “Fantasies I understand. But Alan Gass isn’t a fantasy. Fantasies don’t have faults. But he does, and she still loves him. That’s what’s so unnerving.”

  They rock the fridge back on the dolly and drop it down another step. Walker counts off the steps as they approach the bottom. Three, two, one. They are in a very small space.

  Walker opens the front door with his backside. They try to roll the fridge through, but it’s too wide for the door by almost five inches. Alan can’t believe it. He says he measured the frame. Walker glances at his watch. He has to go soon, he says. He’s already almost an hour late for work. They’re in the middle of a new production, a play that takes place on a cruise ship lost at sea. He needs to be there soon to meet with the costume designer. Alan looks exhausted. He says he understands. Even if he has to take the whole goddamn fridge apart later, they’ll get
it through that door one way or another. He tells Walker to wait right there on the stoop. He’s got something for him.

  Walker fixes his sleeves and wipes the sweat off his forehead. When Alan returns, he’s holding a small boxy tape deck. He pushes the Eject button and extracts a gray cassette with a thin white sticker across the front. It says I MONICA KILL DEVIL HILLS SPRING BREAK SISTER GODDESS, but that is scratched out. Below that, it says ZZZZZZZZZ.

  “This is going to save you,” Alan says.

  “An old mixtape?”

  “Ever heard of sleep suggestion? I audited a class at the university a few years back and made a tape to listen to while I slept at night. Don’t laugh. It really did the trick. You can have this. I think it needs D batteries. Press this button, and you can record. Create your own tape. Tell her she’s married to you, not Alan. Tell her whatever you want. Once she’s asleep, press Play. Few weeks of this, you’ll never hear another word about this marriage thing.”

  The machine is heavy for its size. Walker holds it like a handgun in a paper bag. He tries to give it back, but Alan refuses to take it from him.

  • • •

  Claire gets some bad news. A lab somewhere in Europe has constructed a black sphere and plans to flood it with something called K-matter. She emails Walker about it at work with a frowny-faced emoticon. If the experiment in Europe works like they think it will, she says, then particles cannot half exist. The researchers will have effectively disproved Daisy Theory.

  That night he gets home late and finds Claire already in bed under the covers with her grandmother’s rosary beads. She isn’t religious. He’s never known her to even set foot in a church, but she loved her grandmother. The beads are wrapped so tight around her white palm that they leave small indentations when Walker pries them loose.

  “Say they disprove it,” he says. “Where does something go when it stops existing?”