Green Eyes

by Lucius Shepard

  ‘As I told you last week, it’s obvious to me that the life span of the bacteria within the host should be on the order of a day or thereabouts. No more. Well, I believe I’ve deduced the reason for our longevity, though to be sure I’d have to take a look inside an infested brain.’

  Richmond’s back humped with silent laughter.

  ‘Your brain would do nicely, Mr Richmond. Dissection may well prove its optimal employment.’ Magnusson cackled. ‘Initially, they wouldn’t give me brain data. Said all the patients had recovered, and there was no such data. But I succeeded in convincing Brauer to assist me. Surely, I said, there must have been early failures, animal experiments. If I could see those files, I told him, no telling what insights they might elicit.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Donnell saw Magnusson embedded in a veil of red light, an aural color so deep that the old man’s head showed as featureless and distorted as the darkness at the heart of a flawed ruby.

  ‘There’s too much data to relate it all,’ said Magnusson, ‘so let me take a tuck in my argument. Each of us has experienced perceptual abnormalities, abilities the uninformed would categorize as “psychic.” It’s clear that some feature of our brain allied with these abilities is retarding the bacterial process. Three of the case studies Brauer loaned me revealed extensive infestation of the dopamine and no repenephrine systems. I didn’t dare ask him about them, but I believe they were like us, and that the seat of the retarding factor, and therefore of “psychic” potential…’

  ‘Doc, you borin’ the shit outta me!’ Richmond stood, only a little awkwardly, and Donnell envied his ease of mobility.

  ‘You won’t have to put up with me much longer, Mr Richmond.’ A loose cough racked Magnusson’s chest. ‘I’m being discharged on May the fourth. Ezawa himself will be on hand to oversee my… my liberation.’ He sucked at his teeth, ‘Mr Harrison. I want you to promise me that on May the third you’ll look closely at your bedroom walls. A simple duty, but your assumption of it will both guarantee my peace of mind and substantially prove my point.’

  Donnell nodded, wishing Magnusson away.

  ‘Your nod’s your bond, I suppose. Very well. Look closely, Mr Harrison. As closely as only you can look.’ He wheeled off, calling for his therapist.

  ‘Senile old bastard,’ said Richmond.

  ‘Every time he’s around,’ said Donnell, ‘it’s like something’s crawling up my spine. But he doesn’t sound senile to me.’

  ‘So what. I get weird vibes off you, and you ain’t senile,’ said Richmond with his usual eccentric logic. ‘Just ‘cause you get weird vibes off a dude don’t mean they gotta be one way or another…’ He lost the flow of his argument. “Course maybe I’m just used to weirdness,’ he continued moodily. ‘Where I grew up there was a cemetery right across the street, and all kinds of weird shit was goin’ on. Funerals and shit. Especially on Thursdays. How come you think Thursdays is such a big day for funerals, man?’

  ‘Probably a slow business day.’ Donnell picked up his cane.

  ‘I’m gonna head on back with the cooze. Who knows!’ Richmond waggled his tongue in a parody of lust. ‘Tonight might be the night me and ol’ Audrey get down and do the low yo-yo!’

  As Richmond sauntered off, his limp barely evident, Donnell levered himself up with his cane. His first step sent pains shooting from his feet into his knees.

  ‘Hi.’ Jocundra came up beside him. ‘Should I bring the chair?’

  ‘I can deal with it.’ He linked arms with her, and they walked toward the house at a ceremonial pace. His skin was irritated to a glow each time her hip brushed him.

  ‘Was Dr Magnusson bothering you again?’

  ‘Yeah. He says he’s being discharged May the fourth.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Donnell stepped on a pebble, teetered, but she steadied him. ‘Where’s he going to end up?’ he asked. ‘He can’t take care of himself.’

  ‘A home for the elderly, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I’ll find out from Laura if you like.’

  Her smile was sweet, open, and he smiled back. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He started to tell her of his promise to Magnusson, but thought better of it, and told her instead about Richmond having to kill a cop.

  Toward the end of April, Jocundra dreamed that Donnell came into her room one night while she was asleep. Within the logic of the dream, a very vivid dream, she was not surprised to see him because she knew - just as in reality - that he often waked before her and would sometimes become lonely and ask her to fix breakfast. This time, however, he did not wake her, merely sat beside the bed. The moon was down, and he was visible by the flickers in his eyes: jagged bursts of green lightning sharply incised upon the darkness, yet so tiny and short lived they seemed far away, as if she were watching a storm at the extreme edge of her horizon. After a minute he reached out and rested his fingers briefly on the inside of her elbow, jerking them back when a static charge crackled between them. He sat motionless for a few seconds, and she thought he was holding his breath, expecting her to wake; at last he stretched out his hand again and brushed his fingertips across the nipple of her left breast, teasing it erect beneath her nightgown, sending shivery electricities down into the flesh as if he were conducting the charges within his eyes. Then he cupped her breast, a treasuring touch, and the weight of his hand set a pulse throbbing between her legs.

  She had another dream immediately afterward, something about clowns and chasing around a subdivision, but she most remembered the one about Donnell. It disturbed her because she was not certain it had been a dream, and because it brought to mind a talk she had had with Laura Petit several days before. Donnell had requested a morning alone to begin a new project - a story, he said -and so Jocundra had picked out a magazine and gone onto the grounds. Laura had accosted her in the parking lot, saying she needed a friendly ear, and they had walked down to the stone bench near the gatehouse.

  ‘I’m losin’ touch with Hilmer,’ said Laura. ‘He wants to be alone all the time.’ Strands of hair escaped from her barrette, there were shadows around her eyes, and her lipstick was smeary.

  Jocundra was inclined to sympathy, but she couldn’t help being somewhat pleased to learn that Laura was not impervious to human affliction. ‘He’s just involved with his work,’ she advised. ‘At this stage you have to expect it.’ ‘

  ‘He’s not workin’,’ said Laura bitterly. ‘He wanders! All day long. I can’t keep track of him. Edman says to let him have the run of the house, but I just don’t feel right about it, especially with the cameras breakin’ down so much.’ She gave Jocundra a dewy, piteous look and said, ‘I should be with him! He’s only got a week, and I know there’s somethin’ he’s hidin’.’

  Appalled by the depth of Laura’s self-interest, her lack of concern for Magnusson, Jocundra opened her magazine and made no reply.

  Suddenly animated, Laura pulled out a file from her pocket and began doing her nails. ‘Well,’ she said prissily, ‘I may not have totally succeeded with Hilmer, but I’ve done my job properly… not like that Audrey Beamon.’

  Jocundra was irritated. Audrey, though dull, was at least no aggravation. ‘What’s your problem with Audrey?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘It’s not my problem.’ Registering Jocundra’s displeasure, Laura assumed a haughty pose, head high, gazing toward the house: a proud belle watching the plantation burn. ‘If you don’t want to hear it, that’s fine! But I just think you should know who you’re associatin’ with.’

  ‘I know Audrey quite well.’

  ‘Really!’ Laura hmmphed in disbelief. ‘Well, then I’m sure you know she’s been doin’ it with Jack Richmond.’

  ‘Doing it?’ Jocundra laughed. ‘Do you mean sex?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura primly. ‘Can you imagine?’

  ‘No. One of the orderlies is telling you stories to get you excited.’

  ‘It wasn’t any orderly!’ squawked Laura. ‘It was Edman!’

  Jocundra looke
d up from her magazine, startled.

  ‘You can march right up there and ask him if you don’t believe me!’ Laura stood, hands on hips, frowning. ‘You remember when the cameras went out a whole day last week? Well, they didn’t go out… not for the whole day. Edman wanted to see what might happen if people didn’t know they were bein’ observed, and he got an eyeful of Audrey and Richmond!’

  After Laura flounced off, Jocundra whimsically considered the prospect of green-eyed babies and thought about Laura’s capacity for lying - no doubt, vast; but she decided it was perfectly in keeping with Edman’s methods to have done what Laura said. She tried to imagine Audrey and Richmond making love. It was not as difficult to imagine as she had expected; in fact, given Audrey’s undergraduate reputation at Tulane - the sorority girl run amok - she probably would find Richmond fascinating. Further, Jocundra recognized that her own fascination with Donnell had allowed her to relax the role of therapist and become his friend; and if you could become the friend of a man such as Donnell, if you could put aside the facts of his life and see the person he really was -something which had been no chore to do because he was both fascinating and talented - well, then it might even be less of a chore to become his lover.

  The dream, however, shone a new light on all this. Jocundra realized the boundaries of her friendship for Donnell were fraying, and she was glad of the realization. Now that it was out in the open she could deal with it, and dealing with it was important. There certainly was no future in letting it develop. The more she thought about the dream, the more convinced she was that Donnell had actually entered her room, that she had convinced herself she was asleep, observing him from the cover of sleep, from a dreamlike perspective. Self-deception was a particular talent of hers, and had already led her to a terrible marriage. Charlie had not wanted to be married, but she had persuaded him. He had been her first lover, and after the rite of passage was unsatisfactorily concluded, feeling sullied, ruined, the ghost of her Catholic girlhood rearing up like a dead queen out of a sarcophagus, she had seduced herself into believing she could love him. From a painfully ordinary and unattractive present she had manufactured the vision of a blissful future, and had coached herself to think of Charlie foremost, to please him, thinking these submissions would consolidate her vision, yet knowing all the while that he was not only her first lover, but also her first serious mistake. And now, it seemed, this same self-deception was operating along a contrary principle: disguising the growth of strong emotion as symptoms of friendship and responsibility.

  To deal with it Jocundra let the routines of Shadows carry her away from Donnell. She attended staff meetings religiously and took every opportunity to join the other therapists for conversation and coffee; but when forced to be alone with Donnell she found these measures were not sufficient to counter the development of an attachment. She began to lie awake nights, brooding over his death, counting the days left him, wishing they would pass quickly, wishing they would pass slowly, experiencing guilt at her part in the proceedings. But despite her worries, she was satisfied that she could eventually cultivate a distance between herself and Donnell by maintaining an awareness of the problem, by adherence to the routines, and she continued to be thus satisfied until May the third arrived and all routines were shattered.

  ‘I was born in Rented Rooms Five Dollars

  Down on Adjacent Boulevard,

  You know that funky place got no fire escape,

  No vacancies, and a dirt front yard.

  My mama was Nobody’s fool,

  He left her for a masseuse down in New Orleans,

  Take the cash and flush the credit cards

  Was the best advice he ever gave to me…’

  Four doctors were holding conference in the main hall, but Richmond’s raucous voice and discordant piano stylings flushed them from the sofa, set them to buttoning their lab coats and clipping their pens in a stiff-necked bustle toward the door. ‘Turkeys!’ snarled Richmond. He hammered out the chords, screaming the words after them, elbowing Donnell, urging him to join in the chorus.

  ‘Early one mornin’ with light rain fallin’

  I rode off upon my iron horse,

  You seen my poster and you read my rap sheet:

  Armed and dangerous, no distinguishin’ marks,

  Wanted for all the unnatural crimes

  And for havin’ too much fun,

  He leads a pack of one-eyed Jacks, ,

  He’s known as Harley David’s son!

  Aw, they say hell hath no fury

  Like a woman scorned,

  But all them scornful women catch their hell

  From Harley David’s son!’

  The door slammed; Richmond quit pounding and noodled the keys, a musical texture more appropriate to the peaceful morning air. Sunlight laid a diagram of golden light and shadow over the carpet, the lowest ranks of the paintings were masked in reflected glare, and ceramic figurines glistened on end tables beside the French doors. Jocundra and Audrey were sitting on a sofa, talking, at ease, and their voices were a gentle, refined constant like the chatter of pet birds. The old house seemed to be full of its original atmosphere, its gilt and marble and lacquer breathing a graciousness which not even Richmond’s song could disrupt. And yet Donnell detected an ominous disturbance in the air, fading now, as if a gong had been struck and the rippling note had sunk below the audible threshold. He felt it dooming through his flesh, insisting that the peace and quiet was an illusion, that today was May the third, Magnusson’s May the third, and thereafter nothing would be the same. He was being foolish, he told himself, foolish and suggestible. He did not understand half of what Magnusson spouted, and the other half was unbelievable, but when he tried to finalize his disbelief, to forget about Magnusson, he could not. The old man’s arguments -though they sounded insane - were neither disassociative nor rambling, not senile.

  ‘Hey!’ Richmond nudged him and handed him a piece of paper. ‘Check it out.’

  Donnell was glad for the distraction. He read the lines, then used the piano bench as a table on which to scrawl changes. ‘Try this.’ He passed the paper back to Richmond, who frowned and fingered the chords:

  ‘Cold iron doesn’t stop me

  And you ain’t got no silver gun…’

  Richmond clucked his tongue. ‘Lemme see how it works together.’ He sang the song under his breath, filling with the chords.

  The song was Richmond’s sole creation, and Donnell approved of it; it was, like Richmond, erratic and repetitive and formless. The choruses - there were dozens, detailing the persona of a cosmic outlaw who wore a three-horned helmet - were sung over a major chord progression; Richmond talked the verses in a minor blues key, telling disconnected stories about cheap crooks and whores and perverts he had known.

  The slow vibration in the air ended, sheared off, as if a circuitbreaker had engaged, and Donnell suddenly believed it h.ad been in the air, a tangible evidence of Magnusson’s proof, and was not a product of suggestion or sensory feedback from his own body.

  ‘This here’s the best goddamn one yet!’ Richmond poised his hands above the keyboard. ‘Dig it!’

  ‘I think Magnusson’s done something,’ said Donnell.

  Richmond snorted. ‘You hearin’ voices or something, man? Shit! Listen up.’

  ‘If you hear a rumblin’,

  It’s too late to run,

  Cold iron doesn’t stop me

  And you ain’t got no silver gun,

  Then your girlfriend’s breast starts tremblin’

  And she screams, “Oh God! Here he comes!”

  Half beast, half man, half Master Plan,

  It’s Harley David’s son!

  Aw, I’ll kiss your one-eyed sister,

  Hell, I’ll lick her socket with my tongue!

  I’m Christ-come-down-and-fucked-around,

  I’m Harley David’s son!’

  ‘Now that…’ said Richmond proudly. ‘That’s got it. What’d you say about the last one?
’ ‘The archetypal power of good graffiti.’ ‘Yeah.’ Richmond plinked the keys. ‘Archetypal!’ The main doors swung open and Laura Petit wandered in, stopped, and trailed her fingers across the gilt filigree of a table. The same slow, rippling vibration filled the room, more forcibly than before, as if it hadn’t died but had merely grown too weak to pass through walls and now could enter. Audrey waved, and Laura walked toward the sofa, hesitant, looking nervously behind her. She asked something of Jocundra, who shook her head: No. ‘Please!’ shrilled Laura. Audrey stood, beckoned to Jocundra, and they all went into the hallway, closing the door after them. The vibration was cut off.

  ‘Squeeze, you might have a point about the Doc’ Richmond shut the piano lid and swiveled around to face the door. ‘There was some strange bullshit walked in with that little lady!’

  ‘What is it?’ Audrey shut the door to the main hall.

  Laura was very pale; her Adam’s apple worked. ‘Hilmer,’ she said, her voice tight and small; she looked up to the glass eye of the camera mounted above the door and was transfixed.

  Jocundra sprinted ahead, knowing it must be bad.

  Magnusson’s door stood ajar; it was dark inside. Sunlight through the louvered shutters striped a heraldic pattern of gold diagonals across the legs of the shadowy figure on the bed. She leaned in. ‘Dr Magnusson?’ Her words stirred a little something within the darkness, a shiver, a vibration, and then she saw a flicker of fiery green near the headboard, another, and another yet, as if he were sneaking a peek between his slitted eyelids. ‘Are you all right, Doctor?’ she asked, relieved, thinking Laura had overreacted and nothing was seriously wrong. She turned on the ceiling light.

  It was as if she had been watching someone’s vacation slides, the projectionist clicking from scene to scene, narrating, ‘Here’s grandpa asleep in his room… kinda pretty the way the light’s falling through the shutters there,’ click, the screen goes black, and the next slide is the obscene one which the neighbor’s teenage kid slipped in as a prank. Click. Magnusson’s room was an obscenity. So much blood was puddled in the depression made by his head and shoulders, streaked over the headboard and floor, that at first she could not bring her eye to bear on the body, tracking instead the chaotic sprays of red. A mild heated odor rose from the glistening surfaces. She clutched the doorknob for support, tucking her chin onto her chest, dizzy and nauseated.