by Wim Coleman
“Marianne won’t be here,” she murmured. Then Renee wondered why she felt so guilty about that. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t even picked up the phone while Marianne was announcing that she was on her way back to Santa Barbara. Surely Renee could have persuaded Marianne to stay for the open house if she had only tried. Even worse, Renee felt more than a little responsible for Marianne’s decision to head back to Santa Barbara in the first place.
If I hadn’t been so pushy the other day when Marianne was here … If I had made room in my schedule for another visit …
“Small wonder Marianne went home,” Renee muttered aloud, still gazing self-critically into the mirror.
She jumped with surprise as she glimpsed a second reflection in the mirror—a short but attractive man dressed in baggy corduroys who had just stepped into her doorway. She spun around, a little embarrassed that somebody had caught her talking to herself.
“I hope I’m not too early,” Larry Bricker said, flashing a charming smile.
“Not at all,” Renee answered, catching her breath. “I can really use your help.”
It was a lie, of course. She had wanted to be alone as long as she could. But she was surprised at the ease with which she returned Larry’s smile. Her own smile was hollow, but it shaped itself neatly and efficiently across her face.
Quite the little media professional. Well, it’ll prove a handy skill this evening.
“I brought something for you,” Larry said, shyly presenting her with a small, gift-wrapped package.
“What is it?” Renee asked.
“A housewarming present.”
“Can I open it?”
“Not till after the party.”
“Oh, come on, Larry. What’s wrong with now?”
“Later, okay? After everybody’s gone.”
Larry leered at Renee gently.
Oh, God, he’s got an agenda. He thinks he’ll get me into bed tonight.
She had just started to like Larry and hoped he wasn’t going to blow it by being prematurely amorous. The truth was, she’d forgotten that he was even going to be here tonight—much less that he was supposed to be her official date. And she certainly didn’t want to face the dismal task of sending him moping away unlaid at the end of the evening. But it was too early to worry about that yet. It was time to play hostess.
“Come on,” she said to Larry, dutifully taking him by the hand. “You can open the first bottle of champagne.”
Renee put Larry to work with the champagne and the espresso machine and deposited the gift package in her office. Then she went to greet other guests.
They soon started arriving in droves, some already quite tipsy from Juan’s strong libations. Renee was surprised by how many of them she did not know—friends of the other hosts, apparently. Oh, here was Renee’s ubiquitous boss, slobbering lecherously all over a disgusted station receptionist. A few other people from work were also present. And she recognized some faces from the media, like the TV actress whose current sitcom was about to get cancelled and the local politician with the abominable toupee. But Renee knew only a handful of others.
She needed to get out and mix. Being garrulous and outgoing was more than her duty as hostess—it was a professional thing, it was what she did. But for some reason, she couldn’t face it right now. She stood woodenly in one corner of her living room watching, feeling strangely defiled, as if her home were full of looters, not party guests—except that these looters added insult to larceny by smiling and introducing themselves before eating and plundering and generally behaving like savages.
What’s wrong with this picture?
It had something to do with the furnishings. Even though she had recently added a new couch upholstered with soft, dull purple leather, a glass-top table supported by a scrap-metal frame, and a bevy of woven-wool throw rugs scattered all over the carpet, the room was still dominated by the relics of Renee’s past.
It’s the people who are out of place.
What right had that strange woman to browse through Renee’s book collection, and worse yet, to show off to another total stranger Renee’s big book of Manet paintings? What right had that amorous young couple to entwine themselves obscenely on Renee’s telephone-cable spool? And what right had that drunken fellow to lean on Renee’s shabby old carousel horse for support? The poor, dappled creature’s massive metal pole strained against its ceiling hook. Renee was afraid both horse and man would wind up on the floor.
Where were the people who understood the value of these objects, who had been there when Renee had gotten them? Those people were nowhere to be found.
A voice beside her said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
She turned. Larry was standing there, taking a big, appreciative bite out of one of her prize cream horns.
“God,” Renee said. “I haven’t heard that line since junior high.” She reached over and wiped a few crumbs off Larry’s chin. “Have you been in my unit this whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think you should check out some of the others?”
“Are you getting tired of my company?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just that you’re only getting one course to eat—and the least healthy course, at that. Nothing but sweets. I’d hate to ruin your arteries in one night.”
“Let me die this way,” said Larry, grinning and waving the remainder of the cream horn. “You didn’t reply to my original query,” he added.
“Give me a penny first.”
“No payments in advance. Do you think I was born yesterday? Come on, I’ve been watching you all evening. What’s the matter? You look like you lost your best friend.”
“I didn’t exactly lose my best friend. Let’s say I just sort of filed her away in a box up in the attic.”
“There’s an attic in this place?”
“I was speaking figuratively. You ought to know that. What kind of writer are you, anyway?”
“I’m a talentless hack. I wouldn’t know a metaphor if one bit me on the ass.” He paused for a moment and then said quietly, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Renee crossed her arms and was silent for a moment. Did she really want to say what she was about to say?
“I’m lonely,” she said.
“Me, too,” Larry replied simply.
Renee sighed. “Guess there’s a lot of that going around,” she said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Larry stared ahead intently. “I don’t know what it is, exactly,” he said. “I guess I’m starting to feel like I’m nothing but print on paper. Of course, when my publisher sends me out on a book tour, I get to be a different sort of illusion—like that mechanical Lincoln at Disneyland, a celebrated clockwork without any guts or soul. Do you feel that, too?”
“Oh, yes,” Renee said, feeling a strange flood of relief. “For me it’s like being … I don’t know, just a signal. A disembodied signal on the airwaves.” Renee felt her throat catch slightly. “If you make me cry, I’ll break your face,” she said.
“Same to you.”
They both watched the party crowd silently. Renee was surprised at how she felt. She had just told Larry she was lonely, and now she didn’t feel lonely at all. What was happening?
“Did you have a fight with this friend of yours?” Larry said, breaking the silence. “You know, the one filed away in the attic?”
Renee frowned. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t anything that—authentic.”
“Yeah, that’s the way it always works. Nobody really fights anymore. They send memos or faxes. Or they leave taped messages—”
“Bingo.”
“That’s you, huh?”
“Yup. The answering machine school of interpersonal relations.” Then Renee laughed. “Hey, how d
id you get to be so empathic? It surely doesn’t come from writing blood and gore.”
Larry smiled. “I have an unusually large corpus callosum for a man,” he said.
“I thought size wasn’t supposed to count.”
Larry chuckled with mock lechery. “It depends on what organ you’re talking about,” he said.
Renee felt a smile form across her own face—an utterly unsocial, unpremeditated, and unprofessional smile. It was simply real.
Things are looking up.
*
Marianne saved the just-completed rendering for the Abernathy project and quit her program. Tomorrow, she would check it over once more and modem it to the office. There was something pleasingly immaculate and final about zapping a finished product into electronic space without making any human contact—even when it was sent a mere mile and a half.
She had carried out an entirely satisfactory amount of business on the computer this evening, including faxing orders for a Chinese meal to be delivered tonight and a batch of groceries to be delivered tomorrow. It beat standing in lines.
The screen-saving marbleized patterns appeared on the monitor. Marianne stretched, yawned, and walked barefoot on the plush carpet to her spotless high-tech kitchen. She poured a glass of white wine and took it back to her office.
She huddled up in a big, soft chair and looked around the room. She was surrounded by drawing tables, art supplies, the computer, a scanner, a printer, a video camera, and other tools of her trade. But the room was not cluttered. Everything was in its precisely allocated place. On the wall hung design awards and framed watercolors of interiors. An expensive, heavy crystal paperweight was next to the computer.
The mixture of professional tools and eye-appealing details in her office was normally quite gratifying. But now the room merely seemed empty.
Why?
She picked up the paperweight and fingered it, trying unsuccessfully to find some pleasure in its smoothness. For the hundredth time this evening, she felt an inexplicable urge to scream, to cry, to break something.
Why don’t you, then? Why don’t you just go ahead and cry? Why don’t you throw this damned thing and let it break whatever it hits?
But she couldn’t. The well of tears, of passions, was dried up.
What was she feeling, then? Why was she in pain?
Was it pain?
Did she feel anything at all?
She looked out the window at the lights in other houses straggling down the hillside toward the ocean. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
Why is it so cold?
She wandered down the hall and checked the thermostat. It was set at seventy-two degrees.
Plenty warm.
She looked down the darkened hallway that seemed to yawn before her like an endless void. She had the sudden feeling that her entire house was empty and cold, that no one at all was there—not even herself.
Marianne felt dizzy and nauseous.
She leaned against the hallway wall.
She closed her eyes.
Now, in the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw a winter landscape. The imagined chill of the house became a howling wind, and Marianne became the burden-laden figure trudging across the icy lake. But this time, she saw a red beacon flashing in the distance.
A sign from the shore.
Then she recognized the shape of the beacon—it was the bloodstain from the corridor wall. It flashed before her, red and blazing and as vivid as when she had seen it that first time. It was an ambiguous and terrifying sign—at once a promise of warmth and safety and a warning that the rest of the journey could be dangerous and dark and violent. And yet, Marianne felt that she now had the indication of a direction, if she could decipher the images of her imagination. She felt that she had once again embarked on a journey that had been stalled—that she was now rushing toward her own identity and her own life.
She opened her eyes. The stain and the landscape disappeared.
“Renee,” she whispered, not knowing why.
“I’ve got to call Renee.”
*
“These really are mind altering,” said Larry slyly. “I hope you like them.”
Renee unwrapped Larry’s present and laughed. It was a clear plastic box containing a dozen tiny bottles of herbal bath oils. They all had New Age-sounding names like “Out Of Body,” “Ancient Lives,” “Millennial Dreams,” and “Inward Journey.” The liquids were all brightly colored.
It was late, and all the other guests were gone. The party had turned out to be marvelous, purely because Renee had settled happily into ignoring her guests and chatting with Larry the whole time. She had found it refreshing and wonderful to drop being a performer, and she could tell that Larry had felt the same way.
Now Larry stood in the doorway, studying Renee with an expectant look. He obviously hoped to stay and to help her try out one of the oils.
“Thank you,” said Renee. “They’re lovely.”
“Do you want help cleaning up?”
“No. It can wait till tomorrow.”
Then came a slight pause. It was one of those rare moments of sexual awkwardness that made Renee feel like she was fifteen again.
“You’re making my night very complicated,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I like it.”
“Good.”
I’m not ready for this. Or maybe I just don’t want to risk losing the mood.
She got ready to launch into a gentle but firm explanation of why she’d rather Larry didn’t spend the night—how she’d appreciated his help and enjoyed his company, and how it had already been a full, wonderful night and it was probably best to end it here.
But Larry seemed to read her thoughts. “I guess I’d better be going,” he said.
“I’ve had a lovely evening,” Renee said. “I’m glad you were here.”
They kissed briefly and warmly. Then, with a wave and a smile, Larry disappeared down the hallway. Renee closed her front door. It was splendidly odd. The evening had ended exactly the way she had expected it to end, but for completely different reasons.
Next time, I won’t turn him away.
A few minutes later, the security guard knocked on the door, checking to make sure everything was okay before he left for the night. Then Renee got ready to take a bath. She stood for a moment in the bathroom wearing nothing but her flowered silk robe, enjoying as always the sleek feel of the fabric against her naked skin. She scanned the bath-oil labels with amusement. Which one would Larry have chosen, I wonder? Oh, Inward Journey, without a doubt.
As she studied several of the other labels, the one called Out-Of-Body caught her eye. The liquid was a nearly phosphorescent yellow. In small, calligraphy-like print, the label said, “A burst of jasmine and pine plus some slow, deep breathing will lift you out of your physical self for a truly transcendent experience.”
Renee turned on the bathwater, very hot. Then she opened the bottle of Out-Of-Body. The room was quickly laced with a tart, pungent, but not at all unpleasant aroma. She poured the liquid into the rapidly filling tub. The smell became even more vigorous, more intoxicating.
Nice. Maybe I should have invited Larry to stay. She could just imagine their astral bodies thrashing about passionately, maybe three or four feet above the bathwater.
By now, the inebriating odor of Out-Of-Body had saturated the hazy air. She luxuriated in the atmosphere for a moment. Then she lit a votive candle, turned out the lights, and crept carefully into the steaming bathwater. The sensation was amazingly massage-like. As the water engulfed her, Renee felt every muscle suddenly relax.
This is quite some stuff. I wonder if it really ... ?
She took a couple of good, deep breaths. But no, she did not actually leave h
er body.
Ah, well. I guess you’ve got to believe. And Renee just wasn’t a believer. As far as she was concerned, nothing was truly “out of body.” The body was the only thing. But that was okay. Larry had promised her something “mind altering,” and it certainly was that.
She extended her left foot to turn off the faucet. Then she lay motionless for a few moments, pleasurably watching the mischievous candlelight play on the tiles all around her. The shapes formed by the light were as prolific and creative as clouds or flames in a fireplace, representing animals and sundry other things. Here were the ubiquitous camels and crocodiles, there the rarer armadillos and boa constrictors. Whole stories played out against her bathroom walls. Yes, this was a real high. As potent as marijuana. It was amazing that this stuff was actually legal. Renee giggled softly at the idea of the DEA trying to crack down on New Age bath oils.
Then she realized that the flickering candlelight was making her vaguely dizzy.
She closed her eyes.
She drifted off into a half sleep.
The scent of the bath oil evoked powerful and exquisite semi-dream images—of maples and gardens and childhood hideaways in Iowa creeks and rivers, of the smell of hay in late summer, of imaginary canoe rides through damp but sumptuous caverns, of the rare and wonderful satisfactions offered to her by a small—very small—number of past lovers.
Nice. Oh, yes. Very nice.
Then, from the midst of the images, from the depths of her cozy reverie, came a soft, kindly voice.
“Sapphire,” the voice said.
“Mmmm,” Renee replied, her eyes still closed, half-consciously figuring the voice to be an audio track to the psychic scene—or better yet, Larry’s spiritual essence about to make his presence known.
He did stay, after all. She kept her eyes closed, picturing him standing beside the bathtub, glorying in the sight of her immersed and enticing nakedness.
But then something discordant and alarming occurred to her.
