by John Brooke
Tommi said, ‘What is the opposite of fear?’
‘Courage.’
‘No. Exhilaration. Courage is flat. Exhilaration builds, like fear grows. But, yes, fear is where it starts.’ Raising himself on an elbow, he pointed to his left eye: ravaged, the green faded and milky. ‘The retina,’ said Tommi, ‘is the innermost layer at the back of your eye…it’s where the optic nerve connects. It’s got a quarter of a billion photo receptors and nerve cells. The iris, this circle of color around the pupil, protects the lens — it’s a ring of muscle that opens to let in more light when you’re in a dark room, or it shuts down to pinhole size in brightness to avoid overexposure. You squint in direct sunlight. Or when a light flashes in front of you, no?’
‘Oui.’
‘But an open iris can’t always shut down fast enough when it’s exposed to sudden bright light. That’s why you see a pattern of light after the light flash. That pattern is an imprint left on the photo receptors. It’s not outside — it’s inside. You see it even if you close your eyes, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Light is physical. It’s what you see. What’s more important is what you feel. This fear. Why?’
Anne-Marie had never thought about it. ‘Because it is sudden. I mean, it’s a surprise.’
This pleased him. ‘Good word. Surprise is fear, the reaction to something sudden, and being sudden, it’s unknown, if only for a moment. When the eye sees something, the brain needs to focus on it. The brain has a need to understand…to know it. If the eye can’t focus on the bright object, the brain can’t process it — and you don’t understand what the thing in front of you is. If you don’t understand, you’re afraid. And the brain’s main message to your nervous system is fear. Instantaneously, it sends another message that produces that rush to the heart — adrenaline. And if you don’t run, you at least hide; you turn and look away.’
She touched his serious face, admitted, ‘I almost couldn’t look.’
‘No,’ said Tommi, easing back down beside her. ‘It’s basic instinct to look away. That’s why it all depends on your mind. On concentrating on beating the fear. On facing the light. Collecting it. And on alchemy — on transforming fear and disorientation into focus and exhilaration.’
Alchemy? She came close to his ear and whispered, ‘But I wanted to be with you.’
Tommi didn’t seem to hear. ‘Life is electricity, Anne-Marie.’
‘I believe you, Tommi.’ Snuggling up. Inviting him to get plugged in. To her.
He shrugged her away. Still angry after Saturday. ‘It didn’t kill you, did it?’
‘It’s still horrible,’ mumbled Anne-Marie, easing up, sensing there’d be no sex that night. ‘Your eyes rolling in that manic way…like someone who’s OD’d.’ She’d seen it happen.
‘B’en, that’s what it is. An overdose of light. A hyper-quantity of light assaulting the cortex. ‘
‘The what?’
‘The part of the brain that sends the alert. Our nerve cells spark, one, then the next, and send electricity through our bodies and our brains. We act, we think, we act, we think, it never stops — all nanoseconds, micro-flashes up and down the system. Light is electricity and electricity is energy and the eyes are the best medium for bringing it into our body’s system. My lights are like a supercharger. All you have to do is adapt your body and your eyes. Concentration,’ he intoned, ‘that’s the key. Focus emotional confusion. Transform instinctual fear. Cultivate a physically centered belief in what the Taoists call the genuine idea and the body believes, regardless of instinct or mechanics. It’s where you have to get to if the charge to the system is to be sustained and built to the point where the dragon is revealed and a man can acquit himself.’
Dragons? Dragons climbing walls. She rubbed his shoulder. Calm down, cher…calm…
‘The strobe keeps strobing, the eyes stay open, light streaming through, the brain calls for more adrenaline — which kicks the nervous system to pump more blood. The adrenaline message becomes all-encompassing. It’s a circuit, a wide-open circuit. The energy flows in, and you fly. But you have to be thinking right.’
‘So I was thinking right?’ For Anne-Marie, exhilaration and love were pretty much the same.
Tommi stared at the ceiling, brooding. ‘The heart’s just a motor. If you’re not ready for it, the heart’s mechanisms can lose control. And they’ll fail.’
Which meant death.
For a moment, she was afraid of him. But no, she wanted to be here. She murmured, ‘I heard women have stronger hearts than men.’
He mused, ‘Mm, I heard that too.’
Electricity? This dragon thing? She knew it all came back to Pearl.
It was Tommi’s deep contempt for the men who’d failed at loving Pearl. Didi Belfort. The spiteful anger he brought surging out in Tommi — hadn’t she witnessed it first hand? ‘Just another jerk-off… They don’t concentrate on their lives. They lower the quality of my story. They’ve got money, the big rep, they think that’s all they need to win a heart like Pearl’s. What’s worse, they even believe they deserve it. Sorry, you have be a true and perfect knight, my friend, nothing less will do.’
Tommi was in a war. She’d seen it before — this dark part of more than one doomed man.
Oh, oui, Tommi Bonneau was doomed. You didn’t need carrots to see that.
A week ago Friday, as she was leaving after another out-of-this-world night with Tommi, she had passed poor Belfort cruising slowly along the street, searching for his door. She saw the broken shambles in Tommi’s studio that evening, but she had no idea and didn’t want to know. She’d waited while Tommi crashed the party at that club the next night, and returned, virbating like a dog that’s made a kill. A week later she’d listened to Willem, stuttering with fear. And she knew something had happened yesterday — Tommi’s studio was suddenly clean again, certain things were no longer there. Of course she didn’t ask.
But she’d felt it last night. Tommi’s anger. Boiling over.
It was wrong that Willem should be afraid of being caught in Tommi’s war. If anyone was innocent, it was Willem. So a friend tipped off a cop. What else could she do? Now she was afraid that Tommi knew. Yet at the end of a day spent driving around aimlessly, she’d headed back to the house at 33 Rue Pontbriand. The hopeful thing was not quite gone, the itch was always there.
Would she ever learn?
She’d found him hunched in his study, surrounded by books, paper, computer things, camera stuff, tinkering. He had set up his lights. Bert was out of his cage, pecking his way through a scattering of seeds strewn across a small mirror placed on the edge of the desk. More letters from his editor were arriving on his fax machine — Tommi’s readers were responding to the situation. There was also the hope of a romantic weekend in Paris for two.
She dared to be cheery. ‘Salut. What’s happening?’
‘Test.’ He paused to scribble numbers in a notebook. Nary a glance for her.
Another test? It never ended. ‘Poor Bert.’
Tommi didn’t share her sympathy. ‘Bert’s a bird, Anne-Marie.’
‘More like a guinea pig.’
‘Somebody’s gotta do it. Eh, Bert? Better to be useful than just another pretty face, no?’
‘But he’s so small, Tommi.’
‘Yes, his heart’s tiny compared to yours and mine, but his eyes are totally sensitive to light and he’s easily startled. It’s just a matter of scale.’ Tommi made another adjustment and shrugged, ‘I’ve been through a few Berts along the way….’ another tweak, ‘and I’ve learned a lot of things. The real link between Bert and you and me and this light here is the fact that vision’s not just physical, it’s also psychological. You understand that, Anne-Marie? What we see bears directly on how we taste, how things smell, even on our moods. I mean, if you want to be anthropomorphic about it, you could say birds are highly neurotic, and this is useful. Mm?’
She understood neurotic but not anthropomorphic. ‘
But why does Bert need to be tested?’
He ignored the question. Told her, ‘I’m thinking a traveling halo has to be easier on the eyes than an alternating strobe. See? Four lights now — two over, two under, instead of three along the same plane. I’m going to build a halo around Bert and try pulsing at quicker intervals, around forty reps per second, but less intense. We’ll just see here…’
She felt herself hating his coldness. ‘So now you’re going to kill him too.’
Making another meticulous adjustment, Tommi wondered, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
There was only the sound of Bert’s claws scratching the mirror.
‘Anne-Marie?…If you don’t speak now, you can fuck off forever.’
‘Those men,’ she murmured. Suddenly so sick of his brilliant ideas.
‘They failed their heart’s test,’ said Tommi, ‘I didn’t do anything except make them face the fact. It doesn’t kill anyone. It doesn’t kill me.’ Another adjustment. ‘It didn’t kill you.’
Anne-Marie knew it had come to the moment where she had to decide who the object of her desire really was. A murderer? Was Tommi killing them? She honestly didn’t know. She finally said, ‘I could look away… If I wanted.’
‘Yes, and that’s the part I’ll never understand,’ said Tommi. ‘There has to be something inside a person that wants to face it. Anyone can look away from it.’
‘If you’ll never understand it, why don’t you stop?’
‘Stop? Why don’t you stop your nonsense? We’ll just see how this makes Bert’s heart go.’
No, she hated him. May as well speak plainly. ‘Your work’s useless, Tommi. Pearl doesn’t like them. That’s it. That’s all. You can’t make the heart do what it doesn’t want to.’
‘How do you know?’
How do I know? What a question. ‘A friend told me.’
Now he looked up from his infernal calculations. ‘What friend?’
And she couldn’t stop herself. ‘A friend who knows her. You know what else he said?’
‘Tell me.’
‘He said Pearl said, Poor Tommi’s having trouble growing up.’
Tommi smiled as if he’d heard that one before. ‘So many people in this town talking. Do you think it’s true, Anne-Marie? Or just another bit of silly gossip? Mm?’ His smile hardened. So: at least he believed her. She savored it for a spilt second.
Then Tommi made a move to grab her arm. ‘Where is she?’
‘Fuck off!’ …jumping free. He lunged. She jumped again. He grabbed, she yanked herself free. In all the movement, one of them tripped his cable. Tommi’s lights flashed. It stopped them both.
Bert was illuminated — for an instant each layer of his color was exquisitely etched, perfectly seen. Then he puffed his scarlet cheeks and spat the contents of his mouth — pof! His globe-shaped eyes wavered…but could not move, held absolutely by the framework of light that ran like neon, a luminescent barrier caging his tiny brain. Bert was just a bird and he could not look away. He stared into the light, his neck and spine twitching with each tiny pop of the flash.
Tommi watched for twenty seconds, then stopped it, muttering, ‘Far too much.’
‘Bert?’ Anne-Marie expected the bird to simply keel over.
But he stood on the mirror. One dark orb of an eye twitched — as if he were somehow hearing the wind. Then he took off, flying in a frenzy, glancing off the walls and ceiling…the bookcase, all in strange bird silence, while Tommi rushed to the end of the room and ripped open the blind to give poor Bert some light… Natural light.
Bert reacted, shooting toward it like an arrow, and — plak! — right through the window pane.
When Anne-Marie came to the window she saw a woman bending over a shape on the sidewalk in front of her van. Then the woman was looking at the house. She recognized… ‘Aliette?’
Tommi recognized her too. ‘Ah, merde!’ Then Anne-Marie felt herself yanked violently away from the window and the blind fell shut. They confronted each other. ‘Another friend, Anne-Marie?’ Tommi held her wrist. She saw his anger, and something like deep insult, the pain of betrayal. She felt his awful strength, a steel grip on her arm as he opened one slat on the blind a fraction and peeked out. They both saw the inspector leaving.
Anne-Marie tensed, preparing to be hit.
But he released her and went back to his desk. He sorted through the mess of papers. Finding the one he wanted, he muttered, ‘It doesn’t matter where Pearl is, it’s too late.’ Then Tommi began gathering his lights and power box together.
Too late for what? She took a step toward him. ‘Tommi?’
He pushed her away — so hard she fell on her ass on the floor — and left the room.
A few empty minutes later, Tommi left the house.
Anne-Marie sat on his floor, vague amid the spilled-over clutter — his research, his inspiration, the models for his story. And now all these letters, surmising on the fate of Pearl Serein. So many people, so many hearts desperate to connect with the secrets of the heart Le Vrai Tommi had uncovered and shared. The one that brought the tears was barely two lines:
Sir, If I could, I would send a violet to Pearl Serein, with a note asking humbly to be forgiven. But I fear it is too late. Signed, Willem van Hoogstraten.
Anne-Marie let it fall to the floor. She forced herself to get up and get going.
Willem was her friend. Together they had believed Tommi’s every word.
She drove to the Rembrandt. The door round back was wide open. So was the balcony door upstairs. Too late. She had an idea where they might be headed, but she knew she couldn’t follow.
No one would believe the likes of her — no chance in hell that she’d get past the door.
So she had driven back to Tommi’s, where she waited for Aliette. She knew the inspector would be back. Thinking, Come on, Aliette… Get here! Sipping wine. Bitter. Resigned.
42
Claude’s Mind
While Anne-Marie was sitting in her van feeling resigned, Claude Néon was hiding in his cellar, surrounded by flower pots, rotund planters, giant plastic bags of vermiculite and peat. ‘Ah, quel bordel!’ The gardening lady over-the-page from Le Vrai Tommi at the back of the second section was smiling blithely from the top of her column. This was a seriously demented woman. Claude had tried hard to follow her mixing instructions. ‘As God is my witness, I have tried!’ Insane gardening instructions were the very last thing he needed. ‘Please God…’ Trying to stay patient… ‘ah, merde!’ It was turning out all wrong again when Claude looked up to see shoes creeping by his cellar window. Polished shoes. Creeping by at nose level. Cop shoes. Those shameless pricks!
This impotent feeling.
This surveillance they’d put on — a team of unsubtle assholes from Division following him on his errands, into shops, his corner bistro, recording his every move. Now they were sneaking into his yard! It was too much. Merde…and double merde!
Stay cool, monsieur. Monique had told him gardening is good for the nerves.
Now, having had a good look inside his kitchen, they were creeping back. Claude heard two voices laughing in whispered tones. He lost it… ‘Putain!’
Claude Néon booted the bag of peat. The bag, still more than half full and compressed as tightly as the man attacking it, burst, spilling its contents throughout the room. Amazing mess!
But didn’t it feel good, that one quick kick? — an alpha moment! Oui.
Then Claude Néon left the mess on his cellar floor and ventured out into the warm evening. He took the car — the quicker to get to the club. Six minutes later, driving into the lot, he immediately felt better. They could invade his property, yes. But Claude was beginning to value the fact that unless they had a sticker on their windscreen (and they did not), they could not follow him past the gate. Members only, you swine, you scum, you…
God bless Gaston for extending his probationary membership. Claude owed him, big time. He strolled to the locker room, opened his
(probationary) locker, and changed. He had spent serious money for proper whites. A pair of English-made shoes cost 800 francs. And well worth it. Like the gate with the guard, the sticker on the car, these things were comforting in a way he’d never known.
He relaxed. He was getting used to being around naked men. He nodded knowingly as several members complained about Remy Lorentz. The pro had not shown up for work all day. Claude wanted to say, Well, what did you expect? But he held his tongue. Picking up a pail of balls, he strode out into the balmy evening and made his way to the practice court. He had not reserved. Luckily, it was free. He commenced slamming a ball against the backboard. First things first: learn this damn game, then find someone willing to play with him. Claude doubted he would engage the services of Remy Lorentz. Obviously none of the other members trusted him; why should he? Here in front of a wooden wall, it did not feel like he would need to. Maybe he was a natural tennis player… Smacking one…a little off balance (too much back foot, Claude), it flew over the board into the garden. He slowed his pace.
Then picked it up again — really leaning into it. Smashing a ball was a better way of coping than pressing wormy dirt into clay pots. Mm…wham! Soon he had a good sweat on. His stressed-out heart enjoyed it. Gardening? Sorry, not the type. Wham! Wham! Yes!
Claude became aware of two women watching him. Dressed for tennis. Both had three racquets tucked under their arms. He had begun to understand that a selection of racquets was the next thing to acquire after the expensive shoes. It registered that one woman was Rose Saxe. Ah, merde (again) — why couldn’t they leave him alone? But he smiled, the way one does, and tried to ignore them as he hit some more. Wham! Wham!
‘From the shoulder!’
‘…pardon?’ Turning, putting the smile back in place.
‘Less forearm,’ advised Rose. ‘Hit with the entire arm…from where your shoulder rolls…’ grasping herself in this place, ‘to the sweet spot.’
‘Sweet spot?’
