Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  Daniel turned from the window. Grace had told him she’d followed Simon to a building that looked like a church. She hadn’t wanted Daniel to go but knew he was beyond that now and would do what he would. So she’d avoided his eyes and given him the address, telling him to go in the early morning if he must go at all. It was just seven when he pulled on his coat and headed out.

  * * *

  An oculus was cut into the dome of the roof, fresh light spilling and pooling onto the floor, revealing every scrape in the stone, the wearing that comes from generations of feet shuffled one step at a time. Daniel walked the circle, careful not to touch its edge, content to live in the shadows that otherwise filled the space.

  He knew he was being watched and waited while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. A gilded angel grinned from the rafters, studying with its Mona Lisa smile. Simon was sheltered in the alcove just below. Their eyes caught and Daniel saw a fighter plane scream, slashes of sun setting its wings ablaze as they tipped and dove. A tree bent over a river, white blossoms dropping from its branches while a circle of silent ripples fled outward. The two images twisted and bled until the wash from the plane and the chop across the water were one in Daniel’s head.

  Simon beckoned with two fingers. “This way.”

  He stayed just out of reach, salt on his tongue and in his words, leading Daniel to a room just off the main area. There was a desk with a lamp, a phone, an adding machine, and a spread of newspapers. A sleeping bag was rolled up in one corner and a fireplace was cut into the wall. Simon pulled two coffees from a plain white bag.

  “It’s black, but there’s cream and sugar there.” Simon took the top off his coffee, which turned out to be tea. He dunked the bag a couple of times and tossed it into a wastebasket as he settled behind the desk. Daniel sat in the only chair left.

  “How are you feeling?” Simon said, blowing on his tea before trying it.

  “What is this place?”

  “Used to be a church. Puritan, Anglican, Catholic. Now, the Buddhists are giving it a go.”

  “You got a key or something?”

  “I’ve got a key. They let me come in and think. Sometimes I sit in the sunlight.”

  Daniel pulled across his coffee but didn’t take a sip. “I know you’ve been in the apartment at night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you come around during the day?”

  “Why don’t you come out at night?”

  “Forget it.”

  From outside came the muffle of traffic. Simon set his tea on the desk and gave the cup a quarter turn. “In quantum physics there’s a principle we call ‘decoherence.’ It says that the act of looking at or measuring particles in an entangled state will actually cause that state to collapse and cease to exist.”

  “So?”

  “So to get around that, we take our measurements indirectly, with eyes averted, if you will.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing with me?”

  “In a sense. You needed space, Daniel. So I gave it to you.”

  “And now?”

  “And now perhaps it’s time to risk a more direct approach.” Simon opened up a drawer and pulled out two files. One was red, the other green. He picked up the first and balanced it on the flat of his palm. “The autopsy report on your brother.”

  “And the other?”

  “Your mother. Where would you like to start?”

  Daniel picked up the green file. Simon stayed his hand. “Let me walk you through it.”

  Sometimes he referred to the file. Other times, he just sat back and talked and Daniel knew he’d been there, somewhere along the empty highway of beach, watching, studying, keeping score. Simon paused when he came to the part about how Daniel’s mother died, why she died, the play-by-play of events that led to that moment. It was a tricky passage and Daniel wanted to take the corners at high speed.

  “Who was in the car with her?”

  “You mean who put you in the trunk?”

  “How do you know so much?”

  “I don’t know any more than you.”

  “Afterward I was in a hospital.”

  Simon pulled out his pipe and took his time lighting it. “Boston City. You lapsed into a coma.”

  “There was a man there when I woke up. On the day I was discharged, he jumped off a roof.”

  “You wanted him dead. Just like part of you wanted your mother dead.” Simon waited for a challenge that never came. He drew on the pipe and continued. “Coincidentally, they both died. And now, you’re wondering if you . . . what’s the term you use?”

  “Pushed.”

  “Yes. If you pushed them. I already told you it doesn’t work that way. The man jumped because he wanted to. All you did was applaud. As for your mother, you know what you know.”

  “I saw who was with her on the beach.”

  “Really?”

  Daniel could sense the first bit of tightening around Simon’s eyes.

  “There are flashes. A glimpse of something as he slammed the trunk.”

  “What if I told you what happened to her was for the best?”

  “I’d tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  Simon smiled, a sentient thing that stole over his face and was gone. He put down his pipe and picked up the autopsy report on Harry. “The police never told you about the different types of wounds your brother suffered?”

  “No.”

  Simon tossed the file back on the desk. “You hungry?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Me neither.” Simon opened up another, deeper drawer and pulled out a bag. It had a Five Faces logo on the side.

  “I know that place,” Daniel said.

  Simon unwrapped an order of beef shish kebab. The meat looked cold and was thick with grease. He pulled the pieces off with his fingers, holding the skewer by one end.

  “Open up the autopsy file, Daniel. Page seven, there’s some highlighted language.”

  Daniel read while Simon talked. When he was done, he sat back and watched as Daniel’s belly and bowels turned to water.

  “You think that killed my brother?”

  “One like it, yes.”

  “And you know who did it?”

  “As I said, I know as much as you do.”

  “How did you get these reports?”

  “I told you about computers, internetworking. It will be commonplace in the future to do what I do. For now, it’s not.” Simon brushed his fingers across the spread of files. “Why do you think I’m sharing all this?”

  “No idea.”

  “Why do you think you see the animals?”

  “I became one myself.”

  “Yes, in the Boston Common. Then, in Franklin Park with the hyenas. And, of course, the first time, at Latin School. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Guess I’m hallucinating.”

  Simon turned up his nose at the notion.

  “Then what?”

  “The animals helped to crack your world open. Create the room necessary for change.”

  “What sort of change?”

  Simon pressed his lips together, and the room seemed to dim. “Remember when I asked if you knew about ‘deep time’?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a term more and more scientists are using to explain spans of time that otherwise seem incomprehensible. The earth, for example, is roughly four and a half billion years old. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Daniel shrugged.

  “Exactly. An impossible concept for most of us to grasp. But consider a metaphor.” Simon snapped his fingers and a thin blue light flickered to life, a laser running in a line from the inside of his eye to the tip of his outstretched finger. “Are you still with me?”

  Daniel would have gasped, except he knew if he did the light would disappear and, right now, that was the last thing he wanted. So he just nodded.

  “Good. One of my colleagues has suggested we think about the earth’s age as the equivalent of the old me
asure of the English yard—that is, the distance from the king’s nose to the tip of his finger.” Simon wiggled his outstretched index finger. “If we were to accept that premise, then the entirety of human history—the entirety, mind you—would be represented by the nail’s edge on the very end of that finger. One tickle with a file and mankind is toast. Erased from all existence. That’s how old the earth is . . . and how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things.” Simon dropped his arm and the blue light vanished.

  “I get it,” Daniel said, just to say something.

  Simon shook his head. “You get nothing. What I’ve given you is an example of horizontal deep time. Interesting, sure, but on its best day little more than a tunnel into the past. What truly matters is something I like to call vertical deep time.” He leaned closer so Daniel could see the swirl in his eyes. “As an object approaches the speed of light, time slows to a crawl. If we could actually travel at the speed of light, time would stand still.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “Is it? I suspect deep time doesn’t just stretch back into history, Daniel. I believe it can also drill down into each passing moment, freezing reality and peeling it back, exposing all its dimensions and all its layers. Kind of like when you dream.”

  “Except you’re not?”

  “Except you’re not.”

  “Is deep time tied into entanglement?”

  Simon’s smile was a flicker of curling flame. “Everything in the universe is connected, every person, every animal, every plant, everything, living or not. Not just spatially, but temporally. All things exist at the same time, all measures of yourself, all that’s ever been and ever will be, flows continually like water from a spigot. And all at the speed of light. That’s what we feel even if we don’t understand. That’s what we see even if we don’t recognize.”

  Simon got up and walked over to the hearth, squatting to light a match. The fire blazed quickly, unnaturally, filling the room with its heat. He rubbed his hands together and took a seat against the opposite wall, pulling his knees tight to his chest as his face dissolved into shadow.

  “It’s the ghost in the mirror. The chill when you walk into an empty house. It’s déjà vu, premonition, that tingle of ‘clicking’ with someone new as if you’ve known her all your life. People come up with all sorts of names, but what they’re really seeing is a crack in the wall, a glimpse, a glimmer of the eternal we’re all enmeshed in.”

  “Entangled.”

  “You’re uniquely able to exist, persist in the great fields of connectivity. You can access them, navigate them. Maintain that space and actually live in it. It’s a gift, Daniel. Nothing else.”

  “It didn’t save my brother.”

  “Every man must one day stretch out his hand. Harry understood that.”

  “You talk like you knew him.”

  “I did. And I knew he had to die.”

  Daniel flinched, head turning as the fire in the hearth cracked like a gunshot. When he turned back, Simon was gone. On the floor where he’d been sitting was his leather case full of sketches. Daniel pulled out the top sketch, the one Simon had shown him on that first day at the apartment, except now it was finished. A piece of coastline—trees, a seawall, and a black road twisting down to a flat slab of beach. Daniel knew the place. And knew what it was he must do.

  43

  BARKLEY WAS parked on G Street, listening to the radio and watching all the crazy Irish fucks, asleep in their crazy Irish fuck beds. Except one. There was a light burning in Tommy Dillon’s living room. Barkley was about to open the door when a set of headlights swept past. A station wagon trimmed in wood pulled up in front of the three-decker and a thick-legged woman got out. Katie Dillon met her on the porch. Katie was wrapped up in a robe and wore a pair of baby blue slippers. The other woman was bundled in a parka and kept it zipped to her throat. The two women seemed anxious, eyes sweeping the street as they talked. Serious talk between serious women. Women with a problem. Katie disappeared inside and returned a minute later, handing the other woman something and hugging her.

  Barkley waited until the station wagon had turned the corner, then waited another couple of minutes, listening to Eddie Andelman talk about Norm Cook, the C’s first-round draft pick, and how he sucked the big one. Barkley kicked out of the car and made his way across the street. The door opened before he could knock. Then he was inside, in the dark and the warmth, the scent of the house that was a home even with all the rest of it. She closed the door behind him and turned so he could see her face.

  “He hit you.”

  Katie put a finger to her lips and led him down the hall to the bedroom.

  “Where is he?”

  “The girls are sleeping.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Let me see.”

  She let him turn her face into the light. The right side had ripened to a rich shade of plum and was already swollen, like someone had slipped a soft egg under the skin. Her left eye was partially shut, the white in the lower half clotted with blood.

  “My neighbor’s coming over.”

  Barkley let go of her chin. “I just saw her. In the wagon?”

  Katie nodded. “Loretta Sweeney. She’s gonna take the girls. Could you help get them into the car? I don’t want them to see me . . .” She lifted her hands to her face and crumbled a bit at the edges.

  “I’ll get them.”

  There was a small knock.

  “That’s her,” Katie said. “I told her to come around to the kitchen.”

  “Stay here.”

  “Just tell them it’s a sleepover. Loretta will explain the rest.”

  Barkley went to the back door and let in the woman he’d seen in the wagon. If Loretta Sweeney was surprised to see a massive black man in the Dillons’ kitchen at seven in the morning, she didn’t let on.

  “The kids?”

  He led her down the hall and stood in the doorway as she gently woke first Molly, then Maggie. She left them in their pajamas, bundling them into heavy coats and sweeping them, stiff legged and still half asleep, down the hall. One of them, Barkley thought it was Maggie, finally seemed to realize what was going on when the door opened and the cold air hit her.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  Loretta smoothed Maggie’s hair with thick, blunt fingers and kissed the top of her head. “She and your daddy have to take care of some things this morning. So you’re gonna stay with me. Okay?”

  “What about school?”

  “No school today. We’ll sleep late, watch some TV. Maybe make cupcakes. What do you say?”

  “Who’s that?” Maggie pointed at Barkley, who squatted so he was eye level with the two girls.

  “I work with your dad. You’ve seen me.”

  The twins nodded but didn’t seem certain. Who could blame them?

  “You go on now, okay? Your mom will pick you up this afternoon.”

  “Can we have cocoa?” That was Molly, finally coming around.

  “Sure,” Barkley said.

  “And marshmallows?” Maggie was in on the game.

  “Why not?”

  “And cinnamon toast with butter?” Molly, again.

  Barkley smiled and nodded, kissing each of the girls on the top of the head. And then they left, Loretta giving him a final, flat look before closing the door. Southie might be a closed book to the rest of the world, but they looked out for their own. And that wasn’t something you could say about most places.

  Barkley went back down the hall. Katie had been listening. She stepped into the bedroom and sat at a small table and mirror. She was barefoot now, dressed in a thin nightgown and not yet thirty, but Barkley could already see the gentle sag in her breasts, a hint of loose flesh under her arms. When she looked up at him in the mirror, her reflection was that of a woman who’d put in the miles, wrinkles carved around stiff eyes, a hardness at the corners of her mouth.

  “I look a wreck.”

 
“Like hell.”

  “I’m sorry, Bark. Fuck.”

  “Let’s get a better look at your face.”

  He found a shallow pan and filled it. She fussed, but he made her sit still and soaked a washcloth in the warm, soapy water. Barkley didn’t do a lot of gentle things and felt his pulse quicken and the spit in his mouth turn to dust as he dabbed at his partner’s palm print tattooed in long red welts across the side of his wife’s face. At first touch Katie winced and closed her eyes. His second touch caused her to shiver from the inside out. The third broke her wide open. Blood mingled with water, mingled with tears, mingled with life and ran down her face in a sticky, brave-as-fuck mess.

  “It’s okay, Katie.”

  It wasn’t okay, would never be okay. She began to cry harder, quieter, fiercer, and Barkley could feel her strength, running generations deep and woman strong, stronger than him, stronger than her husband, stronger than any man could fathom.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She looked up, eyes fierce now, drenched in life for all its sadness and all its thankless bullshit.

  “Tell me.”

  A tear rolled down one cheek. He caught it with a fingertip and she stroked the side of his hand, turning so he could feel the rub of her skin. She kissed his hand and took it in hers, hungry butterfly kisses along its length before slipping it slowly inside her nightgown so he could feel the fullness there and her nipple rise and grow hard.

  “Katie . . .”

  “Don’t fucking talk.”

  “But . . .”

  “No, Bark. Fuck, no.” She pulled him down, pulled him close, opening her mouth as she kissed him, moving now, rising to her feet, pushing her body against his, pinning him against the wall, running her hands along his back, free inside his shirt. He heard himself moan lightly as she tugged at his belt, then slipped inside and gripped him, staring at him through her damaged eye as she began to stroke.

  “K—”

  “Shut up.” She slid to her knees, never breaking eye contact, and took him in her mouth. Then they were on the bed, her on the bottom, then somehow on top, her nightgown floating away as she began to move, leaning back so he could see the line of her body, feel the rhythm of her hips, the grind of her pelvis. Barkley rolled his eyes back in his head and let himself fill her, deep-rooted now, joined as one in mind and flesh, if only for this moment in time and this moment was everything that ever was and ever would be. And then the front door opened.