"Suchness,” she stated matter-of-factly. “It's Buddhist.” When Tatum took off her glasses, Jen looked small.
"Suchness,” Jen repeated from her distant bed. “It means something like being present."
"Whatness?” Tatum asked. She'd been reading Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man for literature, and they'd learned about James Joyce and his kind of crazy epiphanies.
"No, it's Suchness. Which is what you need,” Jen stated in a superior voice. “We all do,” she added softly.
She read from her textbook: “For Buddhists, truth and acceptance are the pillars of faith. ‘Suchness’ is a term used to describe life as it is, the truth as it is. A flower is a flower. Without the knowledge of Suchness, we find ourselves trying to make life into something that it is not through false desires and illusions."
Jen stared into space, looking thoroughly pleased with this idea. She took a bite out of a peach her mother had sent in a basket from South Carolina with matzos. Being the Southern Jewish girl on campus who studied Buddhism gave her an air of importance.
"This peach is a peach—nothing more, nothing less,” Jen added solemnly.
"Suchness,” Tatum repeated. It sounded like a kiss. The word made her think about the tall man.
She wrote in her journal, while Jen took her shower.
Today he sat on the bench by the lake. I frowned at him rather than smiling. He moved slightly closer, then watched me when I got up and walked away.
For her very private satin-pillow journal, she added, I could tell he wanted to follow me. I want him to know about Suchness, about the feeling of being inside a kiss, of expecting to be kissed.
* * * *
Tatum stopped by the security office the next day after classes. She'd hoped that Officer Cathy would ask her more questions and read from the composition journal that Tatum carried with her. But she needed to make late-afternoon rounds on campus.
"Would you like to come with me?"
Tatum nodded agreeably.
"Let me know if you see anyone who looks like the man who is following you,” Officer Cathy instructed. “You can signal to me by tugging on my sleeve. No need to say anything."
There were not many men on campus, just the headmaster, who always walked in a big hurry, along with some teachers and maintenance workers. No green windbreakers.
They checked doors and looked behind buildings. Tatum liked being seen with Officer Cathy. She thought she'd like to have a job that required wearing a uniform. But not a nurse. Tatum did not like the sight of blood or even being around sick people. That was why she had been sent to the boarding school in the first place. When her mother got sick and had chemo last year, her father said it was time for Tatum to go to prep school, where she wouldn't have to worry about taking care of sick people.
She and Officer Cathy circled around the pond. They picked up trash along the way. Everyone in the school was supposed to do that. “We're all responsible for where we live.” That's what the headmaster said at convocation every term. Peppermint candy cellophane, paper cups, and a small, green, rectangular wrapper were in her path near the bench where she liked to sit. Tatum knew about the green wrapper from health class. The teacher had passed out condoms last semester and told the girls to open them up and to put the smooth latex on their thumbs, making them look like sad puppets with no ears or eyes or hair.
She threw away the other trash but kept the condom wrapper in her jeans pocket. Touching it made her feel grown-up, more knowledgeable about the secrets of life.
Officer Cathy didn't ask too many questions along the way. They walked briskly, checking the locks on the doors in the main buildings. It was after five o'clock, and the administrative offices were closed. Together they secured the back and side doors to the residence halls. Students were supposed to use the main entrances after 5 p.m. When they got to Buckley, Tatum's dorm, the basement door was propped open with a brick.
"This is not a good idea,” Officer Cathy pointed out, as if accustomed to giving lectures on safety. “Anyone could get in here. Anyone at all."
Tatum nodded in agreement. She took the brick from the security guard, placing it behind some bushes. “Nobody will be able to find it there."
"I'm going off duty for today. Stop by to see me tomorrow, or call me on your cell phone if you see him again, if he bothers you.” Officer Cathy's large, blurry eyes fixed on Tatum's for a solid moment before she turned away. Tatum wished she would hug her. Officer Cathy's arms and chest were strong, not fragile and tight like her mother's had become.
After Officer Cathy disappeared down the sidewalk, Tatum went to the front entrance to the dorm and headed down to the basement side door. She retrieved the brick and propped open the door once more. “Life is transient,” Jen had told her. “There is no such thing as security."
Tatum changed into a clean silk blouse, another hand-me-down. On the way to dinner, she checked her mailbox. There was nothing there, not even a postcard from her mother, who sent one almost every day, collected from faraway lands where she'd traveled with her father before he retired from the newspaper—places like Hong Kong, Croatia, India, and the Big Sur. Her mother stored the postcards in a small wooden box along with her formal stationery. She wrote little wobbly messages, sometimes quotations, all across the postcard with no room left for the address. Then, she placed them in an envelope and mailed them to Tatum. Sometimes she sent several postcards in a single mailing with sequential, numbered messages, like those Tatum had received yesterday: “(1) There is a new robin making a nest in the bushes. I hope that she will lay her tiny blue eggs there. (2) And the skinny, hungry babies will be here when you come home. XOXOX your Mother.” The postcards provided different views of the glimmering Taj Mahal, which the caption said had been built for love.
Tatum stuck the postcards to her wall with Superglue that would get her written up once the residence counselors realized what she had done. But she didn't care. And Jen didn't seem to mind either. Sometimes she posted them with the writing side exposed, where there were quotations written in her mother's hand from Alice in Wonderland or Little Women. She had wanted a new picture of her mother, even if she didn't have hair anymore. But her father would not send her one, not even by e-mail. At spring break her mother had worn a lovely Asian scarf around her head, maybe from Hong Kong, with interwoven Oriental colors. When Tatum returned to campus, she'd begun wearing Jen's striped scarf; soon afterward the man started following her.
"Do you want to sit with us?” These were the pretty girls who liked to have hush-hush parties with beer in the study room of the dorm. Jen was always with them, and she scooted over to make another place. Tatum sat down next to her, and Jen adjusted the scarf around Tatum's neck.
"Like that.” She loosened the ends. “So it doesn't look like it's strangling you to death. Now you can breathe.” Tatum felt Jen watching her closely as she took a deep breath.
"Have you seen him again?” one of the pretty girls asked her. Tatum thought she might like to get some new glasses like Officer Cathy's so she'd look extra smart, and they'd ask her opinion on all kinds of things. She could explain everything she knew—about how feelings can become whatever memory you need them to be.
Tatum shook her head. She was not supposed to talk about him with the other girls. Officer Cathy said she would do the talking as part of her investigation. Rumors on campus can rage out of control.
"My sister once had some people follow her at the mall. They stole her purse. She never got it back again,” one of the girls at the end of the table volunteered.
"We thought my younger brother got kidnapped once when we couldn't find him,” another girl stated. “But he'd fallen asleep in the car.” She paused to chew on a cherry tomato. “Good thing the windows were open, or he might have suffocated."
"Did you know that they might let that guy John Hinckley out of jail?” Jen volunteered. “Or I guess he's in a loony bin. He's the one who tried to kill Ronald Reagan. He's crazy.”
Reagan had been President before Tatum was born, before they all were born. Everyone, even Jen with her Suchness, wanted to tell a scary story.
"I found something down by the pond, near the bench.” Tatum pulled the condom wrapper out of her pocket and tossed it onto the table next to the butter. All of the girls gazed at it as if it were a sacred relic.
"You touched it?” Jen whispered incredulously.
"It's just the wrapper.” Tatum replied. The dark-green rectangle was ripped carefully along the top. One of the girls pushed at it with her fork. Someone snickered. “Maybe that should go in the school paper, too. Under lost and found. You'll be famous, Tatum, one way or another. Just you wait and see."
Tatum picked the wrapper back up and stuffed it in her pocket. She tugged on the scarf as she stood up. “I need to get to the library to finish my history project.” She didn't want to be the last one left at the table.
Some of the other girls grabbed their backpacks. Tatum walked out first. She liked being at the front rather than the back of the group. She fingered the torn wrapper in her pocket.
On her way to the library, Tatum called her mother on her cell phone. Usually, she got up out of bed for dinner. They ate late at home. Her father answered.
"She's still sleeping,” he stated quietly. Tatum would not ask how she was doing. Her father sighed on the other end of the phone as if he, too, had just gotten up from a long nap. “I'll tell her you called."
"Dad.” She paused. Her father was older than her mother by a lot, maybe twenty years. He was the one who was supposed to die first. “Yes, Tate?"
"There's a man following me on campus."
"Are you sure?” he asked. “Again?” he added quietly.
"They wrote about it for the school newspaper. The security guard, Officer Cathy, she's on the lookout for him.” Her father was silent for a minute.
"SOP,” Tatum added.
"Well, Tatum, it sounds like you're doing the right thing. Notifying the authorities.” He paused to swallow. “I'll call the headmaster in the morning."
His voice sounded crackly, like that of an old man. He was not as tall as he used to be. His gray hair had grown wiry and wild, not cut short like when he traveled for the newspaper. As the foreign correspondent, he had seen the world, both its good and bad parts. Newspapers were his source of reality. What got printed there was what had actually happened.
"Dad?” She wanted to tell him something else, something that would make a memory for her mother, too. But he'd already hung up. She wanted him to tell her mother about the colorful, striped scarf she wore around her neck. Tatum wanted her mother to know that she was letting her hair grow extra long. And that she washed it every other day. She wanted her mother to know that she was taking walks with Officer Cathy and about the history project. And she wanted her mother to know about Suchness, about everything that was happening, even as her own world was slowing down.
Instead of going to the library, Tatum headed back to her room. She removed her bed comforter, satin pillow, and secret notebook. Down in the basement, the door was no longer propped open. Tatum recovered the brick from behind the bush and placed it in the doorway again. She walked to the pond, to the bench near where she had found the condom wrapper. Lying down, she tucked the comforter all around her. The sky was dusky, nearly dark, with the wind making tiny, turbulent waves on the lake. The air smelled fresh, like the first hope of springtime.
Officer Cathy, Jen, her father, the headmaster, the pretty girls, or anybody else who bothered to look would find her on the bench. And Tatum would tell them about the man—about how he had been there too, his arms holding her tight, his legs tangled up with hers, his face close, breathing hot breaths on her chest. When morning came she'd write down the memory, that feeling of Suchness, all deep and hard inside of her.
(c)2008 by Rosemary M. Magee
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: THE OTHER HALF by Mick Herron
Private eyes Joe Silvermann and Zoe Boehm star in several of Mick Herron's novels but they make their first appearance in EQMM this month. Their creator was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He cur-rently lives in Oxford and com-mutes to work in London. His highly acclaimed first novel Down Cemetery Road was pub-lished in 2003. His latest book to see print in the U.S. is Recon-struction (Soho, April 2008).
* * * *
Art by Mark Evan Walker
* * * *
When she'd finished with the computer she returned to the bathroom, set the boiler's timer to constant, and collected the shirt: a black silk, collarless affair evidently saved for special occasions. She carried this downstairs, turning the thermostat up as high as it would go as she passed, then hung it on the kitchen door while she sorted out her remaining tasks. The clock on the wall read Nearly Time To Go, but she didn't need telling; her body was already sending out signals—pinpricks at the back of the neck, a fizziness in the blood; the on-the-edge messages the primal self transmits at useful moments. She'd promised herself ten minutes, max, and they were almost up. Kitchen jobs done, she retrieved the shirt and let herself out the back door, locking it behind her with the key from the hook next to the cooker. For a moment she stood fixed to the spot, gauging the quality of the neighbourhood noise. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She released the breath she'd been holding, then placed the key on the window ledge before looking down at the shirt in her hand. “Now, what are we going to do with you?” she asked; though if the truth were told, she already knew.
* * * *
"Reformatted,” Joe repeated.
"The hard drive, yes."
"Which is bad,” he ventured.
"You don't get computers, do you, Joe?"
Joe Silvermann shook his head regretfully. While he didn't mind that he didn't get computers, he hated disappointing people.
Tom Parker said, “Basically, Tessa wiped it. Erased all the work stored in the machine plus all the software loaded on it, which, trust me, comes to an expensive piece of damage on its own. Even without her other party pieces."
"Such as the heating."
"I was only away two days. Imagine if I'd been gone all week? Or a fortnight?"
"Or a long cruise,” Joe suggested. “Four weeks, sometimes six. Two months, even. I've seen adverts."
"It doesn't bear thinking about,” Tom said. “House was like a heatwave as it was. The bill'll be ruinous. Then there were the kitchen japes. Fridge and freezer doors swinging open, oven on full blast. And the phone, she'd left the phone off the hook. After dialing one of those premium-rate chat lines. Jesus!"
"It's not good,” Joe agreed, shaking his head. “Not good at all."
"And what she did with my shirt..."
He'd been steadily growing redder through this recital, and Joe was worried Tom Parker might have a seizure or something; perhaps a mild apoplectic episode requiring medical intervention. He was a youngish man, so this wasn't desperately likely, but as Joe's first-aid expertise stopped at dialing 999, he thought it best to steer conversation away from the shirt. “You'll forgive my saying so, I know,” he said. “Not only because we are friends, but because you're a fair man. But you keep saying Tessa did this. Did she perhaps leave a note? Or some other declaration of some description?"
"Of course she didn't, Joe. We're talking criminal damage here."
"She seemed a nice young woman,” he mourned.
"Well,” Tom Parker said, “don't they all? To start with."
* * * *
He'd first met Tom Parker three months previously, at a French Market in Gloucester Green, where they'd fallen into conversation over the relative merits of the olives on offer. Tom had been with Tessa—Tessa Greenlaw—and Joe, in the way of such meetings, had assumed them an established couple. He himself had been with Zoe at the time, and for all he knew, Tom and Tessa made the same assumption about them. Not that Zoe had been on the spot when the conversation started, of course—she had a way of bringing such encounters to an early clos
e—but by the time she returned from a nearby wine stall, Joe was already ushering his new friends in the direction of a coffee bar.
"You'll never stop collecting strays, will you?” she'd said later.
"Hardly strays. He runs a language school. She is an NHS, what are they calling them now? Managers? Hardly strays, Zoe."
"It's the kind of thing old people do."
Joe would never get to be old, but neither of them knew that yet. Besides, as he said, the pair weren't strays: Tom Parker was mid thirties, with a relaxed, confident way which expressed itself in his clothing, his smile, and the direct expression he wore when he shook Joe's hand. “Joe,” he'd said. “Good to meet you. This is Tessa.” Tessa was a few years younger: a sweet-faced blonde woman whose small, squarish, black-framed spectacles gave the impression that she was trying to look less attractive than she was, though to Joe's mind they made her look rather sexy. While waiting for coffee, the group swapped life details.
"I've never met a private detective,” Tom had said.
Joe shrugged modestly.
"Well, now you've met two,” Zoe told him.
"Do you solve many crimes?"
"That depends on what you mean by ‘solve,'” Joe said carefully. “And also ‘crimes.’”
"It sounds fascinating,” Tessa said. She had a rather breathy voice, to Joe's ear.
"It sounds fascinating,” Zoe echoed sarcastically as they made their way home later.
"She was trying to show an interest, that's all. I thought they were a nice couple."
Though as it turned out, they were no longer a couple by the time Joe next encountered Tom.
* * * *
This had been in a bar in the city centre, where Joe had been watering a police contact of his, one Bob Poland, who had no useful information on a young runaway case Joe was working on but managed to drag it out to five large scotches anyway. Joe himself had been nursing a beer, because there was no point getting competitive with a thirsty cop. He was only halfway through it when Bob had to leave—his shift was up—so was unfolding his newspaper when Tom Parker walked through the door. His language school, Joe remembered as he raised a hand in greeting, was just round the corner.
EQMM, May 2008 Page 12
