by Paula Guran
He caught the back of my collar just as I put my hand on the doorknob. The neck of my shirt pressed into my windpipe, choking me, but I managed to get the door open. He was trying to reel me in, but I clamped both hands on either side of the doorway, braced myself, and opened my mouth to scream.
Kathy was standing in the hallway, near the top of the stairs. The sight startled me so much, I froze. Fortunately, Kathy’s father saw her too, and stopped struggling with me as well.
“You!” he growled at her, and shoved me aside. I fell to the floor and scrambled up again quickly, watching him advance on Kathy. She didn’t yell or scream or try to run away—she just stood there and let him come at her.
For a few moments, his body hid her completely, and I screamed as hard and as loud as I could, as if I were trying to stun him with sound. “Stop!”
Kathy’s father turned on me, letting her go. She sagged against the banister and I saw that it wasn’t Kathy as I had last seen her, but Kathy at fourteen. “Lesbo!” he snarled at me. “Is that it, you’re teaching her your dirty little girlie tricks, is that it, lesbo?”
Panic was like an electric shock. I couldn’t make myself do anything except point at Kathy, fourteen-year-old Kathy on the stairs, watching her father and me with the strangest expression of calm detachment. Was she really there, was she—?
His hand went completely around my biceps, because suddenly I was only fourteen myself. He dragged me toward the stairs as if I weighed nothing. I tried to pull away and I thought my arm would tear out of the socket. He was cursing and ranting about dirty little girls and pulling me to the head of the stairs. I clung to the banister just next to where Kathy was standing and looked up at her. She seemed about to say something, but then I felt my feet become entangled with her father’s legs. There wasn’t even time to yell Ouch—we were on our way down the stairs together the quick way.
I was pretty sure we hit every step, separately and together. At each impact, I could hear a collection of different noises, some of it music, some of it just voices, and sometimes just her voice. The Voice.
No one told you about me Though they all knew . . .
Sometime later, I had stopped falling down the stairs, but a big hole must have opened up in the floor because I was still falling, but through empty space, unimpeded even by the vision of Kathy leaning over me and explaining, “ . . . my eyes are clear and bright, but I’m not there.”
And she wasn’t, and neither was I.
I woke up here, where you all believe I’ve been waking up every day for ten of the last thirty years. I’m not disoriented; I can remember what you remember of this world. But I also remember that world. I know there’s no going back to the way things were.
The funny thing is, if she’d asked me, if Kathy had just asked me, I might have done it for her anyway. Except I’d have tried a lot harder to fix it so that we could both come out with something better for each of us.
If she had told me, back then, I would have helped her. I wouldn’t have just looked the other way. I’d have believed her. After all, she believed in me.
But for some reason, she couldn’t believe in herself, I guess. Which was why she needed me. She didn’t believe she could get out, you see. She didn’t believe there would ever be an escape for her, so she took mine. My escape, and my belief. And it worked.
It took some big sacrifices on her part, though. She couldn’t just take, she had to give up something in return. That was the suicide after the day “I’m Not There” hit number one, the sacrifice she had to offer to get my faith for her own.
She gave up The Voice, too. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have, but then, someone else didn’t have to endure her father’s weight on top of her in her own room, crushing her spirit. But she had to give up all of The Voice. That was the big price, the biggest price of all, really.
So it turned out that I was there that afternoon when we were both fourteen, and her father came home to find that she had disobeyed his rules about no visitors, and I went tumbling down the stairs with him. You see that sort of thing in the movies and it never occurs to you that it’s the sort of thing you can break your back doing. Of course, it could have been worse—Kathy’s father might have lived.
The parish was very good to me and my mother, but even a church collection plate isn’t a bottomless well. My mother’s insurance should keep me in this place for maybe another five years. After that—well, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be getting out. You know? That’s a joke, you can laugh.
I keep hoping that Kathy will suddenly reappear, come back from wherever she went—someone told me she became a nurse, but out of state somewhere. I keep hoping she’ll come back and thank me. I keep hoping, and hoping, and hoping. I don’t believe I’ll ever be getting out of this chair, but I’ve been trying to make myself believe that Kathy’s coming back.
I can see her, too. I can see just how she’ll look, and suddenly I’ll get this feeling that if I turn around real quick—
But of course, she’s still not there.
He poured a substantial slug of the strange liquid down his throat and over his thoughts. It filled his head with a humming pulse, and his skin alit with friction . . .
An Apiary of White Bees
Lee Thomas
Oliver Bennett walked across the lobby of the Cortland Hotel, nodding to his employees and guests. The floor, a lake of travertine marble, swirling with veins of cream and beige-colored stone, absorbed the dull light of a stormy afternoon. Behind the concierge desk and sitting area, French doors ran the length of the west wall; their white slats parceled the concrete promenade, the grounds, and the cloud-veiled mountain range beyond the glass into a precise grid.
Oliver didn’t care much for the Cortland. It was a landmark, decorated with extravagance and taste, but without a single concession to warmth. His wife Amanda wanted it, so he bought it, and they lived here because she wanted that too, but it was hardly a home. A home should be filled with personal belongings and intimate, happy memories. And at least one person in that place should love you.
The Cortland was an adequate shelter, Oliver supposed, pausing at the French doors, clasping a chilled silver handle in his palm. He looked over his shoulder at the lobby, observed the patrons, dressed in elegant wools, silks, and fur, moving gracefully amid the stiff-backed employees in their crisp black uniforms. Above, a Lalique chandelier hung like an immense pellucid beehive.
Oliver never noticed the similarity of shape before. The swollen center. The tapered extremes. It really is a beautiful fixture, he thought.
Outside on the veranda, he zipped his jacket against the chill and looked north over the lawn toward the swimming pool, now covered in a sky blue tarp. The swimming season ended over a month ago, making the destruction around the pool less of an inconvenience, though, no less of an eyesore.
The earth beyond the broken pool was wounded and raw. Ridges of dirt rose in a ring behind a run of yellow warning tape. A bulldozer squatted on the lawn. Oliver checked over his shoulder to make sure that Amanda wasn’t watching him—a reflex only. His wife never watched him, never followed. He knew she couldn’t be bothered to keep track of a man she felt, on kinder days, was simply an obstacle on the way to a bank account. That didn’t stop her from complaining about his behavior, however. If she caught him lighting up, she would use it as an excuse to berate him for the rest of the day. But since she was nowhere to be seen, Oliver pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and lit one. With his lungs warmed by the smoke, he crossed the lawn toward the hole in his property and the wonderful thing it held.
Two weeks ago, while digging a trench in an attempt to repair the pool’s broken plumbing, a work crew was interrupted by the discovery of a brick barrier. As the excavation continued, the barrier revealed itself to be a wall—one of four creating a vault buried deep in the ground. Oliver was there that day, standing on the lip of the gouged earth when the door was revealed. His anticipation of its opening had been wonderfu
l, the only good thing he’d felt in years.
Despite the protests of Joe Hopkins, the crew’s foreman, Oliver insisted on being among the first group of men to examine the contents of the strange brick building. After all, it was unearthed on Oliver’s property. It was his, and he had every right to be part of the discovery.
And what a find it was. Inside were crates of alcohol, stacked floor to ceiling. Narrow passages cut between them, so that Oliver, Hopkins, and two of his workmen could navigate the length and depth of the chamber.
They must have hidden it here during prohibition , Hopkins said. And nobody remembered it was here?
Apparently not.
Amazing.
Oliver stepped forward, out of the memory, and drew deeply on his cigarette. He ducked under the cordon of warning tape and stepped over the thick cable feeding electricity to the lights Hopkins had strung in the vault. He looked into the hole. Scabs of dirt marred the brick wall and filled the creases in the door’s planks.
Though he knew this was his property, and he had every right to be here, Oliver hesitated before stepping onto the steep grade that would take him down to the door. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he felt wrong, and the sensation brought a distant memory, which made the afternoon chill several degrees colder.
I want to show you something.
Where are we going, Kyle?
Come on. It’s okay. Your dad showed me this.
Oliver drew away from the hole, just one step, a minor concession to fear. Then he thought, No, this is mine. He dropped his cigarette on a mound of upturned sod and walked toward the door.
Square-faced lights glowed high on the walls, catching the grain of the crates in their cast. Walking through the narrow paths, Oliver imagined he looked much like a giant passing through a city of wooden skyscrapers. The air was thick with dust and the scent of rotted pine and oak. He paused and read the labels stenciled on the sides of the crates; some were still legible, others had faded to little more than stains. Of course, the names meant little to him. He had neither the mind nor the tongue of a connoisseur. Still, he wondered what these aged liquors might taste like after so long. Was time generous, giving the spirits some special properties, or had it sapped them of essence as it did so many other things?
He searched, looking for some indication on the wall of crates for the case that most deserved his attention. Among the labels he could read, he found some self explanatory—Gin, Scotch Whiskey, Bordeaux, and English Rum—and others told him nothing—Belle of Anderson, Crown Prince, and Old Cabin Still.
The more he explored, the more intriguing he found the vault, and Oliver believed he was working out a pattern in the room’s organization. The pedestrian liquors—the whiskeys, the gins and rums—were at the front, while the middle of the room was filled with more exotic beverages—brandies, liqueurs and aperitifs. Further back, deeper in the maze of crates, the wines took hold. When he reached the back wall, he recognized the Dom Perignon crest on two stacks, though the letters were ghosted to indecipherability. Finally, he came to two crates set aside in a corner, not touching any of the other containers. These made him all the more curious for their total lack of identification.
Every other box in the chamber carried some blemish of ink but not these. To Oliver’s mind, this was the trove he sought—its value corroborated by its anonymity. Using the knife on his key ring, he pried the lid. Aged wood and nails whined against his efforts. The edge he worked splintered. He dug in again and cracked the wood enough to glimpse the contents.
The bottles appeared yellow, but it was too gloomy to tell. They were uniquely shaped—six sided and nestled together like glass honeycombs. Each bottle was capped in wax that ran in clumped rivulets down the neck. They would do fine, he decided, and set to completing the task of opening the crate’s lid.
Once the boards were torn back, he gazed inside. The case was designed to hold eight of the hexagonal bottles—three to a side, nestling two in the middle. But the two central bottles were missing, and a profound disappointment settled on him. Though, certainly, the culprit had absconded with the bottles nearly three-quarters of a century ago, he couldn’t help but feel somehow violated.
Oliver carried a bottle of the mysterious liquor to the front of the vault and sat on a crate. He scraped the wax away with his knife, then brushed cream-colored flakes from the thighs of his trousers. Beneath this, a simple cork sealed the bottle, and it pulled free easily. He sniffed, and a sweet yet bitter odor climbed into his nose. Oliver swirled the liquid around in the bottle, and yes, the glass was yellow. Then, he drank. The liqueur cooled his throat instead of burning like so many spirits burned; it numbed his tongue, his stomach, his muscles.
He prepared himself to feel sick, perhaps poisoned, but the drink enlivened his system. Taking another sip, he leaned back on the crate and observed the vault and found it much to his liking.
Unlike Amanda, Oliver didn’t need everything in his world to be polished and precious. Whenever he could sneak away for a week or two on his own, earthier places beckoned him. Dockside bars where the men and women were calloused and broken; muskreeking video arcades with black-walled mazes, leading from one erotic shadow to the next; sweating alleys, running like veins through terminal neighborhoods—these were his places. They tarnished the silver of him and the secret of their visiting made him feel alive.
Where are you taking me, Kyle?
It’s a special place. A secret.
Lifting the bottle to his lips again, Oliver closed his eyes. The childhood recollection was back, and instead of fighting it, he entertained the memory, remembering a fine young man that he once admired, even worshipped.
Kyle was the son of the gardener who kept the grounds of the
Bennett Estate. Two years Oliver’s senior, Kyle was strong and tanned and confident, with a mop of blond hair and sinewy arms corded with veins. He was everything that Oliver was not, and as a boy, Oliver spent hours at windows or pretending to read by the pool to watch his hero work in the yard.
Succumbing to intoxication, Oliver remembered one day in particular. He was twelve years old and following his hero through the wooded area running at the back of his father’s estate. Kyle’s back muscles flexed as the boy pushed aside tree branches and leafy shrubs, leading Oliver away from the house. After hiking across the property, Kyle stopped at a large shed and opened the door.
Come on. It’s okay. Your dad showed me this .
A ringing came up in Oliver’s head. The sound grew shrill and then flattened out into a massaging resonance. With the monotonous hum buzzing behind his eyes, the memory skipped, turned sharp and painful.
Kyle was angry with him, shouting. Oliver ran away, confused and hurt and needing to be in his comfortable, familiar room. Desperate to be there. Panicked. He raced through the shrubs and low tree branches. Then he tripped on a root. Fell.
A thousand bees surrounded Oliver’s head. The world shattered into a dozen dislocated images, stacked in a trembling array before his eyes, and the horrible words, words spat at him by the gardener’s son, took on the drone of the swarming bees, grinding terrible accusations into his brain.
Oliver opened his eyes and waved a hand in the air to rid himself of the daydream bees. He couldn’t remember why he was running, couldn’t recall why Kyle was so angry with him when Oliver did nothing more or less than what his hero asked, but he remembered running. In his panic he’d tripped and fallen, crashing through a low hanging beehive.
Over thirty years lived and worn since that afternoon, but now, in this place he felt where each of those vicious creatures had stung him. A spot just below his left ear sang a particular ache now.
Despite the chill in the shadowed chamber, Oliver was sweating, and his breath hitched rapidly. The memories he indulged fueled an irrational yet intense erotic response in him, an aching heat that demanded release. Oliver put the bottle down on the crate beside him. He went to the thick wooden door and pushed it closed, cut
ting off the gray afternoon light. With his back to the door, he unsnapped his pants and stepped out wide to keep them from dropping to the dirty concrete.
He felt like a boy again, locked in his bedroom, his bathroom, a small wooden shack. The stinging at his neck aroused like a kiss, and the hive in his mind dove, tracing along the back of his throat, abrading his esophagus and gathering in his belly before working further into his system and down. The palm on his cock felt rougher than his own, more experienced. The shaft filling his hand was unfamiliar; it was too thick, too ridged with veins.
He squeezed his eyes closed to more perfectly feel the sensations.
The hive in his groin crawled frantically, seeking some means of escape. He inhaled and the bouquet of the liquor, the honeyed bitter scent, filled his head and triggered a painful yet perfect climax.
The thrumming ache of the fleeing swarm tore through his shaft as the imagined bees escaped into the black room. His ragged breath coaxed them out; tears wet his eyes.
In his ear, a single insect buzzed. A moment later, sharp pain flared on his cheek. He made a sound—almost a chuckle, more nearly a pant. Oliver’s eyes sprang open. Before them, tiny pale dots like those following a particularly bright camera flash, dotted the gloomy air. He touched the wound on his cheek, already feeling the welt of a sting rising there. Covering this blossoming bump was a bit of fluid, thick and sticky to the touch. He searched his clothing and the floor for the body of the attacking bee, but found nothing. When he returned his attention to the vault’s gloom, the pale dots were gone.
He shook his head in wonderment. Then, Oliver pulled the handkerchief from his pocket.
Go wash your hands, boy.
In the suite he shared with his wife, Oliver stared at the red welt just below his right eye and wondered on the coincidence that he should have been thinking about bees moments before being stung. The notion amused him. Indeed, he felt so good that he didn’t care about the sour looks Amanda cast at him, as she dressed for dinner.
