Three doors opened into the drawing room. Three men stood in the openings, and behind them were others. But the poker was on its descent already. Wally's eyes widened.
And Waldemar felt himself hurled into the membrane.
Men in many doorways faded and were receding shadows.
He was sick with having eaten too much ice cream too quickly. His hip joints ached. He was on his way toward another life.
He was Walter Vernon and he was a failure. Every time he had attempted to ameliorate the mediocrity in which he existed, disaster slipped from the shadows to crush his spirit. He was simply not good enough. And Belinda never missed an opportunity to tell him of his inadequacies. The children were impossible, needing a strong hand and not having a father who could provide it. Each day was a campaign in a war that was lost before it had begun.
Walter Vernon, though he could not remember the fact, was running as fast as he could in a life of desolation that stretched on before him for fifteen years. At the end of that life lay a membrane that gave onto a fast lane of lives, each more awful than the ones before. Oh, perhaps some were better; and perhaps somewhere ages away there was another existence in which one could read a book that brought tears.
But, maintaining the pattern, Walter Vernon might not recognize it.
In a drawing room filled with books, a large group of men who bore a striking resemblance to each other stood talking quietly. There was a sense of great loss among them.
"He was too damaged. Too bent by what he'd been through, the poor sonofabitch," Wally Vanowen said. They nodded and sighed.
"You'd think he would have realized," said Merle Webber. "We all believed no two of us could exist in the same life when we got here. But couldn't he see he was existing with you, Wally, right here, right in this room? Couldn't he see that it could work?"
Wallace Vanowen spread his hands in hopeless resignation. "Sometimes it's been too awful for them. We do the best we can."
They talked about it for a while longer, then decided they and their wives and their lovers and their children would spend the rest of the day having a barbecue and relaxing before they returned to their separate lives here in this world that was rapidly filling up with themselves. Here in this best of all possible worlds where those who were worthy of happiness had found it.
It was the best of all possible worlds because they had made it so; a world in which check-out time never came.
Is he who opens a door and he who closes it the same being?
GASTON BACHELARD (1884–1962)
MCGRATH AWOKE SUDDENLY, just in time to see a huge mouth filled with small, sharp teeth closing in his side. In an instant it was gone, even as he shook himself awake.
Had he not been staring at the flesh, at the moment his eyes opened from sleep, he would have missed the faintest pink line of closure that remained only another heartbeat, then faded and was gone, leaving no indication the mouth had ever existed; a second — secret — mouth hiding in his skin.
At first he was sure he had wakened from a particularly nasty dream. But the memory of the thing that had escaped from within him, through the mouth, was a real memory — not a wisp of fading nightmare. He had felt the chilly passage of something rushing out of him. Like cold air from a leaking balloon. Like a chill down a hallway from a window left open in a distant room. And he had seen the mouth. It lay across the ribs vertically, just below his left nipple, running down to the bulge of fat parallel to his navel. Down his left side there had been a lipless mouth filled with teeth; and it had been open to permit a breeze of something to leave his body.
McGrath sat up on the bed. He was shaking. The Tensor lamp was still on, the paperback novel tented open on the sheet beside him, his body naked and perspiring in the August heat. The Tensor had been aimed directly at his side, bathing his flesh with light, when he had unexpectedly opened his eyes; and in that waking moment he had surprised his body in the act of opening its secret mouth.
He couldn't stop the trembling, and when the phone rang he had to steel himself to lift the receiver.
"Hello," he heard himself say, in someone else's voice.
"Lonny," said Victor Kayley's widow, "I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour . . . "
"It's okay," he said. Victor had died the day before yesterday. Sally relied on him for the arrangements, and hours of solace he didn't begrudge. Years before, Sally and he . . . then she drifted toward Victor, who had been McGrath's oldest, closest. . . they were drawn to each other more and more sweetly till. . . and finally, McGrath had taken them both to dinner at the old Steuben Tavern on West 47th, that dear old Steuben Tavern with its dark wood booths and sensational schnitzel, now gone, torn down and gone like so much else that was . . . and he had made them sit side by side in the booth across from him, and he took their hands in his. . . I love you both so much, he had said . . . I see the way you move when you're around each other. . . you're both my dearest friends, you put light in my world . . . and he laid their hands together under his, and he grinned at them for their nervousness . . .
"Are you all right; you sound so, I don't know, so strained?" Her voice was wide awake. But concerned.
"I'm, yeah, I'm okay. I just had the weirdest, I was dozing, fell asleep reading, and I had this, this weird —" He trailed off. Then went back at it, more sternly: "I'm okay. It was a scary dream."
There was, then, a long measure of silence between them. Only the open line, with the sound of ions decaying.
"Are you okay?" he said, thinking of the funeral service day after tomorrow. She had asked him to select the casket. The anodized pink aluminum "unit" they had tried to get him to go for, doing a bait-and-switch, had nauseated him. McGrath had settled on a simple copper casket, shrugging away suggestions by the Bereavement Counselor in the Casket Selection Parlor that "consideration and thoughtfulness for the departed" might better be served by the Monaco, a "Duraseal metal unit with Sea Mist Polished Finish, interior richly lined in 600 Aqua Supreme Cheney velvet, magnificently quilted and shirred, with matching jumbo bolster and coverlet."
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "I was watching television, and they had a thing about the echidna, the Australian anteater, you know . . . ?" He made a sound that indicated he knew. "And Vic never got over the trip we took to the Flinders Range in '82, and he just loved the Australian animals, and I turned in the bed to see him smiling . . ."
She began to cry.
He could feel his throat closing. He knew. The turning to tell your best friend something you'd just seen together, to get the reinforcement, the input, the expression on his face. And there was no face. There was emptiness in that place. He knew. He'd turned to Victor three dozen times in the past two days. Turned, to confront emptiness. Oh, he knew, all right.
"Sally," he murmured. "Sally, I know; I know."
She pulled herself together, snuffled herself unclogged and cleared her throat. "It's okay. I'm fine. It was just a second there . . . "
"Try to get some sleep. We have to do stuff tomorrow."
"Of course," she said, sounding really quite all right. "I'll go back to bed. I'm sorry." He told her to shut up, if you couldn't call a friend at that hour to talk about the echidna, who the hell could you call?
"Jerry Falwell," she said. "If I have to annoy someone at three in the morning, better it should be a shit like him." They laughed quickly and emptily, she said good night and told him he had been much loved by both of them, he said I know that, and they hung up.
Lonny McGrath lay there, the paperback still tented at his side, the Tensor still warming his flesh, the sheets still soggy from the humidity, and he stared at the far wall of the bedroom on whose surface, like the surface of his skin, there lay no evidence whatever of secret mouths filled with teeth.
"I can't get it out of my mind."
Dr. Jess ran her fingers down his side, looked closer. "Well, it is red; but that's more chafing than anything out of Stephen King."
"It's red because I kee
p rubbing it. I'm getting obsessive about it. And don't make fun, Jess. I can't get it out of my mind."
She sighed and raked a hand back through her thick auburn hair. "Sorry." She got up and walked to the window in the examination room. Then, as an afterthought, she said, "You can get dressed." She stared out the window as McGrath hopped off the physical therapy table, nearly catching his heel on the retractable step. He partially folded the stiff paper gown that had covered his lap, and laid it on the padded seat. As he pulled up his undershorts, Dr. Jess turned and stared at him. He thought for the hundredth time that his initial fears, years before, at being examined by a female physician, had been foolish. His friend looked at him with concern, but without the look that passed between men and women. "How long has it been since Victor died?"
"Three months, almost."
"And Emily?"
"Six months."
"And Steve and Melanie's son?"
"Oh, Christ, Jess!"
She pursed her lips. "Look, Lonny, I'm not a psychotherapist, but even I can see that all these deaths of friends is getting to you. Maybe you don't even see it, but you used the right word: obsessive. Nobody can sustain so much pain, over so brief a period, the loss of so many loved ones, without going into a spiral."
"What did the X-rays show?"
"I told you."
"But there might've been something. Some lesion, or inflammation; an irregularity in the dermis. . . something!"
"Lonny. Come on. I've never lied to you. You looked at them with me, did you see anything?" He sighed deeply, shook his head. She spread her hands as if to say, well, there you are, I can't make something sick where nothing sick exists. "I can work on your soft prostate, and I can give you a shot of cortisone in the ball joint where that cop worked you over; but I can't treat something out of a penny dreadful novel that doesn't leave any trace."
"You think I need a shrink?"
She turned back to the window. "This is your third visit, Lonny. You're my pal, kiddo, but I think you need to get counseling of a different sort."
McGrath knotted his tie and drew it up, spreading the wings of his shirt collar with his little fingers. She didn't turn around. "I'm worried about you, Lonny. You ought to be married."
"I was married. You're not talking wife, anyway. You're talking keeper." She didn't turn. He pulled on his jacket, and waited. Finally, with his hand on the doorknob, he said, "Maybe you're right. I've never been a melancholy sort, but all this . . . so many, in so short a time . . . maybe you're right."
He opened the door. She looked out the window. "We'll talk." He started out, and without turning, she said, "There won't be a charge for this visit."
He smiled thinly, not at all happily. But she didn't see it.
He called Tommy and begged off from work. Tommy went into a snit. "I'm up to my ass, Lonny," he said, affecting his Dowager Empress tone. "This is Black goddam Friday! The Eroica! That Fahrenheit woman, Farrenstock, whatever the hell it is . . . "
"Fahnestock," Lonny said, smiling for the first time in days. "I thought we'd seen the last of her when you suggested she look into the possibility of a leper sitting on her face."
Tommy sighed. "The grotesque bitch is simply a glutton. I swear to God she must be into bondage; the worse I treat her, the more often she comes in."
"What'd she bring this time?"
"Another half dozen of those tacky petit-point things. I can barely bring myself to look at them. Bleeding martyrs and scenes of culturally depressed areas in, I suppose, Iowa or Indiana. Illinois, Idaho, I don't know: one of those places that begins with an I, teeming with people who bowl."
Lonny always wound up framing Mrs. Fahnestock's gaucheries. Tommy always took one look, then went upstairs in back of the framing shop to lie down for a while. McGrath had asked the matron once, what she did with all of them. She replied that she gave them as gifts. Tommy, when he heard, fell to his knees and prayed to a God in which he did not believe that the woman would never hold him in enough esteem to feel he deserved such a gift. But she spent, oh my, how she spent.
"Let me guess," McGrath said. "She wants them blocked so tightly you could bounce a dime off them, with a fabric liner, a basic pearl matte, and the black lacquer frame from Chapin Molding. Right?"
"Yes, of course, right. Which is another reason your slacker behavior is particularly distressing. The truck from Chapin just dropped off a hundred feet of the oval top walnut molding. It's got to be unpacked, the footage measured, and put away. You can't take the day off."
"Tommy, don't whip the guilt on me. I'm a goy, remember?"
"If it weren't for guilt, the goyim would have wiped us out three thousand years ago. It's more effective than a Star Wars defense system." He puffed air through his lips for a moment, measuring how much he would actually be inconvenienced by his assistant's absence. "Monday morning? Early?"
McGrath said, "I'll be there no later than eight o'clock. I'll do the petit-points first."
"All right. And by the way, you sound awful. D'you know the worst part about being an Atheist?"
Lonny smiled. Tommy would feel it was a closed bargain if he could pass on one of his horrendous jokes. "No, what's the worst part about being an Atheist?"
"You've got no one to talk to when you're fucking."
Lonny roared, silently. There was no need to give him the satisfaction. But Tommy knew. He couldn't see him, but Lonny knew he was grinning broadly at the other end of the line. "So long, Tommy. See you Monday."
He racked the receiver in the phone booth and looked across Pico Boulevard at the office building. He had lived in Los Angeles for eleven years, since he and Victor and Sally had fled New York, and he still couldn't get used to the golden patina that lay over the days here. Except when it rained, at which times the inclemency seemed so alien he had visions of giant mushrooms sprouting from the sidewalks. The office building was unimpressive, just three storeys high and brick; but a late afternoon shadow lay across its face, and it recalled for him the eighteen frontal views of the Rouen Cathedral that Monet had painted during the winter months of 1892 and 1893: the same façade, following the light from early morning till sunset. He had seen the Monet exhibition at MOMA. Then he remembered with whom he had taken in that exhibition, and he felt again the passage of chill leaving his body through that secret mouth. He stepped out of the booth and just wanted to go somewhere and cry. Stop it! he said inside. Knock it off. He swiped at the corner of his eye, and crossed the street. He passed through the shadow that cut the sidewalk.
Inside the tiny lobby he consulted the glass-paneled wall register. Mostly, the building housed dentists and philatelists, as best he could tell. But against the ribbed black panel he read the little white plastic letters that had been darted in to include THE REM GROUP 306. He walked up the stairs.
To find 306, he had to make a choice: go left or go right. There were no office location arrows on the wall. He went to the right, and was pleased. As the numbers went down, he began to hear someone speaking rather loudly. "Sleep is of several kinds. Dream sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep — what we call REM sleep, and thus the name of our group — is predominantly found in mammals who bring forth living young, rather than eggs. Some birds and reptiles, as well."
McGrath stood outside the glass-paneled door to 306, and he listened. Viviparous mammals, he thought. He could now discern that the speaker was a woman; and her use of "living young, rather than eggs" instead of viviparous convinced him she was addressing one or more laypersons. The echidna, he thought. A familiar viviparous mammal.
"We now believe dreams originate in the brain's neocortex. Dreams have been used to attempt to foretell the future. Freud used dreams to explore the unconscious mind. Jung thought dreams formed a bridge of communication between the conscious and the unconscious." It wasn't a dream, McGrath thought. I was awake. I know the difference.
The woman was saying, " . . . those who try to make dreams work for them, to create poetry, to solve problems;
and it's generally thought that dreams aid in consolidating memories. How many of you believe that if you can only remember the dream when you waken, that you will understand something very important, or regain some special memory you've lost?"
How many of you. McGrath now understood that the dream therapy group was in session. Late on a Friday afternoon? It would have to be women in their thirties, forties.
He opened the door, to see if he was correct.
With their hands in the air, indicating they believed the capturing of a dream on awakening would bring back an old memory, all six of the women in the room, not one of them older than forty, turned to stare at McGrath as he entered. He closed the door behind him, and said, "I don't agree. I think we dream to forget. And sometimes it doesn't work."
He was looking at the woman standing in front of the six hand-raised members of the group. She stared back at him for a long moment, and all six heads turned back to her. Their hands were frozen in the air. The woman who had been speaking settled back till she was perched on the edge of her desk.
"Mr. McGrath?"
"Yes. I'm sorry I'm late. It's been a day."
She smiled quickly, totally in command, putting him at ease. "I'm Anna Picket. Tricia said you'd probably be along today. Please grab a chair."
McGrath nodded and took a folding chair from the three remaining against the wall. He unfolded it and set it at the far left of the semicircle. The six well-tended, expensively-coifed heads remained turned toward him as, one by one, the hands came down.
He wasn't at all sure letting his ex-wife call this Anna Picket, to get him into the group, had been such a good idea. They had remained friends after the divorce, and he trusted her judgment. Though he had never availed himself of her services after they'd separated and she had gone for her degree at UCLA, he'd been assured that Tricia was as good a family counseling therapist as one could find in Southern California. He had been shocked when she'd suggested a dream group. But he'd come: he had walked through the area most of the early part of the day, trying to decide if he wanted to do this, share what he'd experienced with total strangers; walked through the area stopping in at this shop and that boutique, having some gelato and shaking his head at how this neighborhood had been "gentrified," how it had changed so radically, how all the wonderful little trade-men who had flourished here had been driven out by geysering rents; walked through the area growing more and more despondent at how nothing lasted, how joy was drained away shop by shop, neighborhood by neighborhood, person by . . .
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