“Tell me.”
His eyes shifted to her hand still resting on top of the coffee cup. “I’ll show you instead.”
Isabelle didn’t know where to look then because Vincent avoided her eyes. Instead he continued staring at her coffee cup, so eventually she looked at it too.
Over the top of the cup now was a small hand, a child’s hand. On the fourth finger was a cheap plastic ring shaped like a sunflower. Isabelle had owned an identical ring when she was eight years old. She’d found it on the ground in the Stadtpark when she went walking there with her family one Sunday morning. Because sunflowers were her favorite flower, she’d assumed finding the ring was a magical sign; it would bring her luck. So she wore it religiously for two years, rarely taking it off.
An eight-year-old’s hand wearing that ring was at the end of her wrist on top of the cup now. The hand was small, the fingernails short to the nub, bitten away by a nervous mouth. Isabelle’s mouth when she was a girl and edgy about everything. Those nails, that hand, that very ring.
She was almost as surprised by her calm acceptance of knowing for certain that she was looking at her own eight-year-old hand as she was by the fact that that’s what it was.
And then it changed.
The hand got bigger while the fingernails grew longer and sprouted color—glaring green. A horrible, funny color she remembered well from a day when she was twenty. Flora had bought a bottle of psychedelic-green fingernail polish as a joke gift for Leni. Then the three friends ended up painting their nails and toenails with it that afternoon because they were completely bored and looking for anything to do. Flora’s mother took a picture of them showing off their green hands and toes. Isabelle had the photograph framed and still kept it on her desk.
“What are you doing, Vincent? Why is this happening?” She did not take her eyes off her hand.
“I talked to time. I asked it to do something. It understands what you say if you ask it correctly.”
“What did you ask it to do?”
“To show you your hand past, present, and future. Do you recognize them? Are they you?”
She looked at him blankly.
Ettrich said, “When a person’s alive they think time’s only what’s on a clock—hours, minutes, and days. But they’re wrong; I learned that when I was dead. Time’s also—” While he spoke her hand started to change again. In a moment what it became silenced him.
The green nail polish disappeared, replaced by a delicate silver and jasper-stone ring that Vincent had given her the week before. A thick small scar, the result of scraping her hand against a wall just after they returned from America, blossomed across the back of her thumb. At a glance it was clear this was Isabelle’s hand today. Except that one of her fingers was now missing.
Knee-Deep in Sunday Suits
“This is where I leave you.”
“What?” Haden barely heard Bob the polar bear because the animal was so far in front of him. It had been that way for miles. They had walked and walked across the city, Haden’s dream city, for most of the morning. But because the bear did not respond to his questions, the man had no idea where they were going except toward his nightmares.
“I said this is where I leave you, Simon.”
“What does that mean? Will you stop walking for a minute, please? Just stop for one fucking minute.”
Bob stopped but did not turn around. Haden looked at that huge white back in front of him and waited. Nothing happened so he used this stop time to catch his breath. When he had but the bear still hadn’t turned to face him, Haden looked around. He had never been in this part of the city. Or if he had, none of it was familiar. He knew that this place and everything in it came from his own memory and imagination. But one of the things he had learned here was that most of what a person does, thinks, and creates in a lifetime is forgotten. What remains in our memory, or in others’ hearts, or on the earth after we are gone is often a surprise.
A woman wearing a radiant blue “spinning Bobo” funeral mask from Burkina Faso walked by and said jovially, “Hi Simon!” Haden was used to this sort of loony event here by now and only acknowledged her greeting with a half wave.
“Follow her, Simon.”
Thinking about something else, Haden didn’t really register what Bob had said. “What?”
“Follow her—the one in the mask.”
“No Bob, I won’t follow her.” The bear still hadn’t turned around and frankly at that point Haden didn’t give a shit if it ever turned around again. The goddamned bear—who did it think it was, bossing him around like that? “What’s going on here anyway, huh? Where are we? What is this?”
The masked woman disappeared into a doorway down the block. For a moment Haden wondered who she was and where she was going.
Then something dawned on him—something big. Without another word, he dashed off down the street toward the woman who had disappeared.
Bob crossed its giant paws and tsked its tongue like a disapproving auntie. It was about time! From having lived with Simon Haden all through those little-boy years, Bob knew that he was dumb. But to have grown up and remained as dumb was both disheartening and impressive. Instead of his life experiences soaking down into him like water into porous stone, thereby making him weightier and more substantial, Haden seemed like glass when water is poured over it—nothing stays. Well maybe a little, but only in the remote corners and definitely not much.
The woman in the blue mask had been just about the last rabbit Bob had left to pull out of its hat. If Simon had not reacted after seeing her, the bear really would have been stumped as to what to do next. It’d led Simon through the man’s own city, past clues and signs anyone with half a brain in his head would have recognized. To no avail. Five, ten times during their walk Bob had wanted to stop, point directly at specific things, and say Look at that, Simon! Or There—don’t you recognize it? But they had told the bear to avoid “point and tell” as much as possible so it didn’t. Eventually in the end Haden had reacted to something, thank God.
“I think you’re wrong about Simon. I used to think the same thing as you, but I realized something today about the guy: he’s really not so dumb. He’s just got a bad attitude. He’d look angry eating an ice cream cone.”
Bob heard the voice but looking around, could not locate the source of it. Eventually he did look down low enough to see Broximon standing nearby, nattily dressed as always. Today he was wearing argyle and looked like a 1930s golf pro.
“Well, hello Broximon.”
“Hey Big Bob. Have you got time to go get something to drink?”
“I’ll tell you, I’ve got such shpilkes from going around in circles with Simon Haden that about the only thing my stomach could handle now is cold milk.”
“Then cold milk it is, pal. There must be some place around here we can go.”
Bob looked left and right. “Do you even know where we are? I’m sort of at a loss here. I know nothing about this part of town.”
“Me neither. But there’s gotta be a diner nearby. Simon loves diners and must have put one up around here somewhere. There are about a thousand of them in this town. They all serve that same kind of disgusting chocolate pudding with nuts he likes. Come on, we’ll find a place to go.” They started walking, Broximon moving as fast as he could just to keep up with the bear.
“Listen, Bob, I need to ask you something. Have you ever heard of John Flannery? Do you know him?”
“Who?”
“John Flannery. Big guy with a beard, sort of fat?” Broximon stroked an imaginary beard on his chin. “Goes around with a humungous Great Dane named Luba?”
“Nope, never heard of the guy. And the only Great Dane I know is named Spot. Maybe I will have something to drink.”
Suzy Nichols. That was her name. Suzy Nichols was the girl beneath the blue mask who had greeted him on the street minutes before. Haden had loved her a lot earlier in his life. Maybe as much as any woman in his life, but that was because he w
as thirteen when he knew her and everyone knows that young love is as purple and electric as a summer thunderstorm.
What was Suzy doing wearing a spinning Bobo funeral mask on the street of Simon Haden’s dream city? Because of the dance, of course—the seventh- and eighth-grade Halloween dance.
Remember junior high school dances? Where most of the girls spent most of the time running in and out of the toilet to talk with each other about the evening’s latest developments. Where most of the boys slouched cool against various walls to show these girls that they didn’t give a damn about anything, most especially these girls.
And there was always at least one girl over in a far corner crying, inconsolable about something that had just happened, surrounded by her sympathetic, clucking, consoling friends. A few geeks and losers usually showed up, making sure to stick close to each other. They did little else besides guard the shadows and stare at the goings-on. Farther down on the prestige ladder a weirdo or two was there too, which made people who noticed wonder for a second what the hell motivated them to come tonight?
Possibility, that’s what. Kids believe with all their hearts that anything can happen at school dances. Magically enough, now and then it does. The most unlikely kids pair up, things are said beneath the pound of the music that changes everything, secrets are shared amid the open, stirring hope that tags along to any gathering like this. Things could happen here tonight; sometimes they do.
Following the girl in the mask, Haden opened the door to the building and walked straight into the seventh- and eighth-grade Halloween dance at his school’s gymnasium. He was surrounded by kids in costume and the instant-nostalgia sound of Barry White singing. He immediately knew where he was and did not hesitate. Suzy would most likely be across the room at the punch bowl with the rest of the girls, or having a summit meeting in the toilet with her best friend Melinda Szep.
He remembered this night and the dance but not the dream both lived in. That was not surprising though because Haden had had over fourteen thousand dreams in his life. In his stocking feet he walked across the gym (it was a sock hop—you took off your shoes at the door so as not to mark up the wooden floor). He gradually realized that many of the dancers were looking at him. It was disconcerting but he had other things on his mind. Anyway, so what if a bunch of twelve-year-olds stared?
There was Suzy. Her blue mask lay facedown on the refreshments table. She was talking animatedly to Melinda and holding a paper cup in her hand. She was so pretty—tall and pretty. That’s why he hadn’t recognized her when he saw her before out on the street—he’d mistaken her for a woman. Even in eighth grade Suzy Nichols was tall and had a full enough figure to be mistaken for someone much older; especially when her young face was covered by a mask. Now Haden remembered that that belonged to her older brother who had served in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. He had gotten the crazy-looking thing there. And Suzy had worn the mask to their junior high Halloween dance, shocking those who knew her. Normally she was not the kind of girl who called attention to herself. Yet for some elusive reason, that night she went to the dance (something she almost never did anyway) wearing a spinning Bobo.
Melinda Szep was the first to see Haden. Eyes widening comically, she quickly looked down and put a hand across her eyebrows to prevent herself from looking again. She must have said something about it to Suzy though because the tall girl stopped speaking and looked straight at Simon.
Her face showed shock and wonder in equal amounts at what she saw. Her expression said she could have been looking at a nine-foot-tall Martian or ocelots having sex. Haden remembered how much he wanted her to like him. But now her face said the only reason she was looking at him was the wrong reason. He remembered that others in the room had stared at him too as he crossed the floor. So he looked down.
Males often look down at the front of their trousers when they see people staring at them. Because they’re sure their fly is open and that’s why people are staring. Or there’s a suspicious obvious wet spot down there. Or… something. For boys and young men especially, everything down there is essential, magical, and sometimes devastatingly embarrassing to them and who they want to be in the eyes of the world.
Not much embarrassed Haden anymore; especially now that he was dead. But when he looked down at the front of his pants and saw what was there, he was not only embarrassed but amazed. His penis, or someone’s penis (because it sure as hell wasn’t his—the thing was longer than any dick he had ever seen before), stuck straight out of his fly like a wooden stick. It must have been thirteen inches long. It looked like Pinocchio’s nose. Pinocchio porn. And sitting on this thing, this dick-stick, was a large parrot.
“Ahoy matey!” the bird squawked. It raised both wings and fluttered them vigorously a few moments before settling back down on its perch. Haden felt its claws gripping his dick. It didn’t exactly hurt but didn’t feel terrific either.
Mouth open in awe, he slowly raised his eyes and saw Suzy Nichols staring. She wasn’t staring at his face.
“What-the-fuck—?”
Hearing that word, she looked up at him but her eyes weren’t focused.
He had wanted to tell her things. He had to tell her some things. That’s why he had run in here after her.
“Wait a minute, it’s a dream! That’s all this is! It’s a nightmare I must have had when I was a kid.” The realization stung him like a wasp. Of course! Bob the Bear said it before—Haden had to go and face his nightmares. That’s what this whole thing was, although he remembered none of it. But for God’s sake, he must have had the dream, what, twenty-seven years before?
All the touchstones of a nightmare were there too—love interest, school dance—and at the moment of truth, his dick exposed for the entire world to see. Voilà! You didn’t need a cookbook to whip those ingredients into a big fat juicy nightmare; especially when you were thirteen years old. What was worse to a kid than horrible death? Horrible embarrassment, by a mile. Because kids don’t really believe they’ll die. That’s why they’re so fearless. Everyone else will die, just not them. But when you’re young, embarrassment lurks around every corner. As a result, their antennae are hyper-tuned to it. Some people dreamt of walking down the street naked. Haden dreamt (apparently) of having a foot-long wooden erection with a parrot sitting on it in full view of Suzy Nichols and other schoolmates.
He found that he couldn’t move. Frozen to the spot now, he stood there helpless and outraged that he couldn’t simply reach down, knock the preposterous bird away, and put his Pinocchio penis back in his pants. But the rules of this dream apparently wouldn’t permit it. He tried lifting his arms—first the right, then the left. He couldn’t move them away from his body. It was as if he were underwater. No—as if he were encased in tree sap or school glue, something claustrophobically thick, viscid, and unwilling to let him budge and do what he wanted with his own body. He tried to turn this way and that but to no avail.
Suzy watched it all, her face going through a whole alphabet of emotions. When Haden knew he wasn’t going to succeed in freeing his body, he tried to say something to her, he didn’t even know what. Something, anything so that he could connect with her some way. To say he was sorry, to tell her to wait until he was free of this and then they could talk, to tell her it was all ridiculous but—
Nothing. He couldn’t speak—again. He remembered the time he lost his mouth when confronting Mrs. Dugdale. Now he couldn’t tell if he even had a mouth because he couldn’t get a hand free to touch his face and feel for it there.
Kids began to come up, to sidle up, to edge closer to him. Close but not too close. They wanted to see. To them Haden was a live volcano that they wanted to get as close to the edge of without actually falling in or getting cooked by molten lava. He had whipped out his weenie at a school dance. Wow! What would he do next?
Out of the corner of his eye, Haden saw Mr. Nabisco coming over. Mr. Nabisco? Who was that? How did he know the man’s name? He’d never seen the guy bef
ore in his life. Then again, Simon wasn’t living his life right now—he was living in his dreams.
Nabisco was the name of the company that made the cookies and biscuits he’d liked so much as a boy: Oreo, fig Newtons, and Triscuit… And now he remembered! This man had been the Spanish teacher in junior high school.
“Just what the heck do you think you’re doin’ there, fella?”
Mr. Nabisco was chubby, wore a white dress shirt that was permapressed and shiny, carried four identical ballpoint pens in his breast pocket, and had a kind of Beatles/Merseybeat haircut that didn’t help his look much. “I asked what you’re doing.” He pointed to Haden’s still-erect penis. “You come with me, mister.”
“No, he ain’t going anywhere, mister. And what are you supposed to be, the fucking fifth Beatle?”
Haden heard this but because he was unable to move, he couldn’t turn around and see who’d said it. The voice came from somewhere behind him.
Mr. Nabisco looked toward the speaker. Seeing who it was, his mouth set hard. “Do I know you? Do you go to this school?” He waited, hands on his hips, for an answer that did not come.
The school gymnasium, that giant echoing room full of the ghosts of ten thousand past games, wooden everything, and kids in stocking feet, had grown quiet. No music played now, very few voices spoke.
Something brushed by Haden’s paralyzed body. Seeing what it was turned his angry blood to ice water. It also set him free. As soon as it touched him Haden was no longer encased in whatever, unable to move. He could move everything again. The first thing he did with his everything was look frantically around for the nearest exit.
Because Sunday Suits was here. It had said those rude things to Mr. Nabisco and was now moving toward him. Haden hadn’t been so frightened since dying. He didn’t remember his dreams and he didn’t remember his nightmares but he sure remembered Sunday Suits.
Ironically, it was one of the last nightmares Simon Haden ever had as an adult. Horrific, bloody, and believable, it was so right-in-his-face there, inescapable and pitiless, that it woke him at 3:37 one morning, his mouth locked open in a silent scream.
GLASS SOUP Page 14
