The Color Over Occam

by Jonathan Thomas

  Crazy or not, these rioters had felled a peacekeeper, justifying escalation to tasers. Or, as the newscaster yammered, “When the mob ignored verbal commands, stronger measures to restore calm became necessary. In surveillance video released exclusively to News Tracker Team at 10, you can see how some of the patients continued to act up after one, two, and three attempts to pacify them. One officer sustained minor injuries and was transported to Houghton General. Participants in the disturbance were remanded to the custody of the clinic, with a single exception. Tragically, patrolmen were unable to subdue one patient, who was fatally shot, according to a public liaison officer, in self-defense. She’s seen here charging at police with what appears to be a fire extinguisher.” The image froze as cops drew and aimed sidearms at their attacker, who had fuzzy cubes for a face and electrode wires sprouting like lionfish spines. Had to be grateful for the station’s policy of freezing footage before bullets found their mark. Wondered how long broadcasters could resist airing snuff films in the name of “people’s right to know.”

  The clarification I’d been dreading, and hoping against, and never in any doubt about, followed. “Pronounced dead on the scene was Lucinda Rice, age thirty-seven, of Occam. The Osborn Clinic has been unable to reach her husband, Wilbur Rice, for the past month. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to contact the clinic or the Armitage Police. The Osborn Clinic specializes in holistic group therapy for postpartum depression, and to quote a spokesperson, has never had to deal with security problems, least of all on account of their clientele. The same spokesperson speculated that a rare drug interaction or virus may have given rise to the irrational behavior, but in the wake of tonight’s third such outbreak, the state licensing board is launching a review of the facility’s standard of care and practices.” While the story wrapped up, and used car salesmen and mattress outlets pitched their wares, and callow weathergirl muddled through the seven-day forecast, my fizzling mind could only entertain the sentiment, Boy, Lucinda really hated people blabbing about her age.

  I struggled out of neutral and clicked off the set at the anchorman’s advice to “Stay tuned for Seinfeld!” Had seen ’em all three times, safe to say. Also a solid bet that Lucinda had died as Wil was entreating her, and watching her via the “color” in his eyes. Meanwhile, what a convenience for City Hall that the Armitage cops, knowingly or not, had expunged this most dramatic case of a de novo syndrome that would have cast publicity sooner or later on the Gorman County Reservoir. The News Tracker Team had mentioned nothing, and may have been privy to nothing, about Lucinda’s physical symptoms, which surely would have hoisted red flags anywhere outside the Osborn Clinic’s circle of quacks and Occam’s muzzled brotherhood of physicians. As for an autopsy? Cause of death was no puzzle, Lucinda’s next of kin was unavailable to sign consent, and once the corpse was back in town, it might be misplaced or cremated, but dissected, never.

  Without the TV blathering, the ruckus of fugitive dog pack carried to me from deep in the woods behind my yard. I found it contrarily soothing, in part because it was too far off for me to worry about paws toppling my garbage cans tonight. And in part because the dogs were sounding endowed with way more life than townsfolk I’d met recently. If Elsie was in the chorus, she was in radically better shape than the rest of the Rice household. Occurred to me, might be nice to get up and holler for Elsie, and short of coaxing her in, be able to assure Wil I’d seen her anyway and she was okay. However, mulling all this over used up my last ounce of energy, and I capsized into sleep till 9 A.M.

  24

  Yes, I was bound for Dyer Hall, in spite of my serial procrastination, both conscious and unconscious, commencing with my late tumble out of bed. I deserved a hangover, but in its absence, had to endorse that myth of clearheaded mornings-after thanks to single-malt purity. Already on the cusp of lunchtime as I jiggled the key into the ignition. How prudent, really, was dropping by Wil’s without some fortification first? By the time I finished debating that, I was parked in front of the Aviator. Intrepid barkeep might have some pithy counsel for me on this mission. Or so I told myself. However, windows and door were boarded up, with massive plywood sections, as before a hurricane. In disarmingly fancy cursive was a ballpoint inscription, directly on the plywood over the door, “On Vacation. Watch for Reopening.” The mordant humor of a Nam-era fighter pilot?

  Next stop, Koerner’s. Convinced I had hunger to assuage, even if washing down food with a pint of courage wasn’t an option. But a napkin taped to the inside of the glass door announced, “Closed for Illness.” I grimaced to picture the softhearted old gent laid low, in bluish, brittle collapse, palsied, deranged in mind and senses. Scant days ago, he’d acted hardy as ever. Had cosmic infection slipped from soapy water into some little cut while he was scrubbing knives? Unhelpful, morbid thoughts ensued about my own barbed-wire laceration beneath a band-aid, and to leave those ruminations behind I had to hop in the car and peel out.

  On to Abdul’s, striving not to dwell on its proximity to City Hall. Fewer drivers and pedestrians were out than on a Sunday morning, and I also strove not to study any of them in passing. Plenty of parking, too, and when I stepped out on the sidewalk I was in sniffing range of grilled onions and chickpeas. Ah, this one restaurant was surviving, or more precisely, some townies were letting no tap water cross their lips. Westcott’s dictum to consort with nobody from former worksite had no expiration date, I reckoned, making this noon hour the riskiest to hang around here. And speak of the devil, Mr. Big Shot Recorder of Deeds himself burst, as if shoved, out the wildly swinging door of the neighboring Fleur de Lys Spirits.

  I didn’t have to worry about Edward Orne reporting this encounter, even though we were face to face with the length of a pool cue between us. He may well have been summarily ejected from the liquor store. He bore no likeness to the image of a preferred customer. One hand was throttling a fifth of Smirnoff by the neck. No nicety of a paper sack for his merchandise. And he may well have slept a week in his standard pumpkin-colored work attire, baggy on him now like folds of liposuctioned skin, and rife with accordion creases, and various shades dingier in places. In complexion and posture he was a sagging column of ashes, and he swayed transfixed, enthralled, apparently by vistas filling his bug eyes through no intermediary of smudgy tortoiseshell lenses. Twitching jowls and cadaverously prominent overbite still gave him the air of a tame woodchuck, but with an expression that no one, I’d daresay, had ever seen on a woodchuck before. Not in me to dawdle there and clock how long until he moved again or else crystallized like Lot’s wife.

  The headier aroma inside the shop had me salivating. Guess I had scared up an appetite for real. One customer was at the counter, murmuring his order to a gangly Syrian youth practically begging him for the third time to “repeat louder, please!” My worst misgivings proved legit when the whisperer shuffled aside to wait for his shwarma, and I pushed forward and beheld in profile my soft-spoken ex-boss Mr. Marsh.

  Told the Syrian teen I’d like a falafel in whole-wheat pocket, heavy on the hot sauce if he could, and a medium Mountain Dew. I was the end of the line, but shuffled aside out of habit and found Mr. Marsh fixing his wan blue eyes on me. Dammit to hell!

  He smiled cordially, and I really expected it to sound like paper crinkling. “Why, Jeffrey! You haven’t been in for a while. Are you on vacation, or were you sick?”

  I was so nonplussed that they’d kept him in the dark, and that he’d gone along with it in such naive complacency, that I stupidly babbled, “I was fired on Monday!”

  The news palpably shook and bewildered him. “I was never informed.” Here was his golden chance to pump me for details, but he only took a mental note. “I’ll have to look into this.” And then his sandwich was ready. His incuriosity toward me was both off-putting and a big relief. His intention to dig for answers at City Hall, on the other hand, was alarming, but what could I say to dissuade him? Oh don’t bother, Mr. Marsh, I don’t care, it’s fine? I’m counting o
n a tacit deal with the Third Floor to score Unemployment, but if you start snooping around, they’ll kill me? How about a change of subject in hopes it would sidetrack him into forgetting this inquiry on my behalf? Quick, the cashier was doling out his change.

  “I see you’re drinking bottled water. A lot healthier than my beverage of choice. Wish I had your strength of character.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” His smile had grown more wry than congenial. “A lot of our blueblood Mayflower Club types won’t touch the city water. Including the Westcotts and the Lathrops and the Pabodies. Too common for them, I suppose, or otherwise not to their taste. By the way, my own vacation starts next week. Peak season for the foliage in the White Mountains.” I watched him turn and go, then blinked in surprise to see he was gone. With 20/20 hindsight, it was dawning on me that Mr. Marsh was one more example of the “old Occam” I didn’t understand at all.

  For dining in, a silver formica shelf ran the width of plate-glass frontage and the wall to either side of it. I took the corner stool, with my back to the indoors and my nose to the dull brown paint. I ate in blissful ignorance of anyone else coming in. No one violated my space. No goons on my tail yet!

  After my last bite, jitters assailed me again. But the better part of valor couldn’t be simpler: flee with my unfinished Mountain Dew from City Hall environs, and to where except Dyer Hall? Well, there was Danforth Manor, to collar Professor Thayer off-guard and solicit a scrap or two of the grudging wisdom I’d sought at the Aviator. Yes, okay, that was arguably to good purpose, I conceded, but no further detours would be tolerated.

  Akeley Street afforded ideal parking spots, like everywhere else today. Better yet, as I observed from halfway across the Manor’s gangway of decaying railroad ties, a cinderblock was propping ajar one of the frosted-glass double doors. In my climb up the four starkly echoing flights, I was impressed that someone was still clearing away litter, all but the apparently freshest few burger wrappers and paper cups and wet condoms. I also braced for exchanges of screaming between apartments, and when none had overtaken me on the uppermost landing, I envisioned tenants too far gone, mute and hollow, spellbound by nonhuman perspectives in their parasitized retinas. How many caregivers had been made to “accept” their unliving dependents, as Wil had “accepted” Morgan, and were now corrupt vessels themselves? And why were some victims simple fodder, like the kid at Radio Shack, while others like Lucinda became conduits for unearthly temperament?

  Spacing out on rhetorical issues was not a smart option at the mouth of dismal corridor leading to Thayer’s door, which hung open a few inches, disgorging a glow of UV tinge stronger than the sallow output of humming overhead fluorescents. Knocked twice. No answer. Tried again. Still nothing. I was batting zero everywhere today, but if Thayer wasn’t home, then neither was his sinister factotum Castro. That was some consolation.

  They didn’t seem the type to take off and leave the lights on, and, as I stole in and confirmed, they weren’t. The bluish glow hindered instead of promoting clarity, and was it really bluish, or grayish, or that unreadable, baneful color hovering in my periphery ever since that midnight on the reservoir? Moreover, it had become the apartment’s dominant note. Gone were the bookcases, record shelves, CD units, all their contents, the stereo, the La-Z-Boy, the piano, the armchairs, and the rest of what had parceled one big room into sections.

  Numerous black scuffmarks had the pine floorboards to themselves, almost to the far wall. Over where television and Ionic podium and tables used to be, there were only the plants that had crowded them. And thanks to them, it felt as if I were inhaling from a vase in which a bouquet had been wilting for days. Splotchy black and brown, carbonized, exuding ugly stink despite chilly draft from fully open windows, they were also the source of unclean radiance. More of the murky glow was manifest through kitchen and bedroom doorways. The soil in terracotta pots, though, was still dark from recent watering.

  Occurred to me that after my visit Thayer may have switched from bottled to tap water for his houseplants. Using them as coal mine canaries. With everything disassembled or in crates for the moving van as soon as the “color” in foliage reached lethal proportions. And had blind, feeble Thayer lifted a finger? All that hard prep work must have devolved upon antique Castro’s uncanny reserves of strength.

  Decided I might as well make the most of illegal entry and stepped over limp fronds and stalks sprawling from their crockery like limbs of squashed crabs, and checked out the kitchen. In tighter quarters, the smell of floral rot was worse, emanating from hothouse exotics distorted beyond recognition on countertops and floor. Evacuation had also excluded stove, dishwasher, and fridge, and magnets in the shape and size of carpenter ants fixed an 8 x 11 piece of paper to the fridge door.

  Castro, presumably, had done his arthritic best, in a compact, spiky cursive redolent of the Belle Époque, to transcribe Thayer’s message: “Piscids arrive Tuesday after next. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.” I had a powerful hunch this note was meant for me. Pulled it loose and sent a shower of black iron ants to the linoleum. Wasn’t about to humor any invitation to open that fridge, though. Sounded too much like the setup for an unsavory prank. Before folding up the paper and sticking it in my denim jacket’s inside pocket, I had a look at its backside. Huh? God damn their bastard idea of a joke! It was a page from Thayer’s 1982 typescript about the meteor, out of the folder from which I’d somehow been divested when last at this address.

  Maybe the folder was in the fridge. Getting damp in the vegetable crisper. Or nestling amidst gruesomely expired meat and produce. No, on reflection, the message seemed ever more like a leering come-on. Incumbent on me to resist temptation.

  So how did I know some or all of the missing pages weren’t strewn around the bedroom? Worth a peek. The rotten miasma was at its most stifling in there, with one narrow ineffectual window toward the northeast corner. Had to count my blessings on thinking that some rooms in these Section 8 apartments might have no windows at all. Bed and other furnishings were removed, and the closet with partly retracted sliding door was vacant. The pots of ruined herbage had sole occupancy, but on one moss-green wall, above a dark oval where the back of Thayer’s head must have rested on his pillow, was a design indecipherable across a room of livid haze. Had to commit myself to point-blank range before it would resolve, and then I was impossibly torn between flinching in disgust and ogling till I gleaned some meaning from what was in front of me.

  In Castro’s anachronistic hand was a circle of Latin text, wide enough to crawl through, indelible in black Sharpie, within a square of Arabic jotted down, I guessed, by a quill pen loaded with indigo dye, within a triangle of Punic or Egyptian hieratic, maybe, or something even more arcane, daubed by thin brushstrokes in the brownish red of blood. Outside the triangle were white chalk symbols that coincided with the four compass points and that seemed equally animal or vegetable, and most reminiscent of Mayan glyphs to my amateur eye. The southern emblem overlapped the grease from Thayer’s scalp.

  At the core of this elaborate framework, carpet tacks impaled a used condom, the easiest fetish object to find in this building. No mean skill had stretched the latex taut like a cowhide, and the placement of tacks echoed the four compass points. In the center of the condom, a sewing needle skewered the thumb-sized molt of a wolf spider. This sordid display didn’t feel directed at me, especially if it were intended to deliver a curse. Where was Castro’s motivation? What had I done to him? Or was this an unusually literal treatment of prophylactic magic, and to what end? Of all my fellow townsmen whose depths I’d belatedly come to acknowledge, Castro was in a class by himself.

  I wrenched myself away from his handiwork and hurried, queasy and unclean in more a spiritual than bodily sense, out of the apartment. Derived some consolation from finding the Taurus hadn’t been further vandalized, and from telling myself that whatever else the day had in store, it couldn’t get any weirder from here. When would I learn?

 
; No more excuses blocked the road to Dyer Hall. Akeley Street and Ellery Avenue had effectively become one community joined in desolation. Any demographic gulf between them had imploded. Cosmetically different at most. Not a soul hither or yon in front of Wil’s building, or traversing its stairs and corridors. None of the encoded screaming, no mania like Lucinda’s, penetrated the insulating doors. The similarity to a mausoleum was more convincing now than ever. More than at Danforth Manor. Not even a spent condom on the burgundy carpet as a sign of life.

  In deference to formality, I knocked before using Wil’s key. That served only to make me skittish at defiling the grave-like silence. Had this corridor always acted like an amplifier? Spurred purely by worst-case conjecture that something fiendish in neighboring apartment might be on to me, I ducked inside, encouraged by the normal level of daylight through parted drapes.

  Then I inhaled, and that sunny first impression fell to pieces. No layer of smoke dimmed the air, though my sinuses clogged and stung with its rarefied acrid traces. A roast in the oven, a shirt on the ironing board, dust and mold in a heating vent, all had seemingly scorched in tandem, along with some ingredient more foreign that forcibly conjured up the ruin in the woods. Walls and ceilings, open doorways into bedroom and kitchen, and the clustered rubbish on the floor had withstood no blackening by fire. The floor, meanwhile, was somehow cleansed of the gray powder’s snaking tidelines. And where was Wil? The funereal hush out front and on the way up persisted in here, but some subliminal input warned I wasn’t alone.

  My eyes were studiously avoiding the bulky furniture straight ahead. Accidentally on purpose, I guessed. Easy enough to rationalize that I had no reason to look because nothing was moving. The side table of bamboo and rattan had a blue porcelain lamp on it and partly screened the gap between brown leather sofa and glass-top coffee table. A much broader gap separated the coffee table and the jumbo TV in profile on its squat modernist stand. None of these had been singed, either. I had yet to account for the reek in my nostrils. The toes of scruffy black slippers poked past the side table’s bamboo legs and blended in well with the red and black faux Persian rug. Between bamboo leg and the edge of the sofa I spied a sliver of khaki trouser. All right then, whether quiescent or lurking or napping, Wil had to be slouched on the sofa.