Roy flopped down onto the thin grassy patch in front of the not-house. That house had been built long before he was born. He’d heard it had first been a hospital for poor women, and then the Clarksons had lived there for generations, and Will Clarkson still did. No, did.
“Pity, isn’t it? They must have torn it down sometime during the past two weeks.”
Roy knew the fellow walking towards him, but he didn’t have his name handy. He ran through his catalog of names, but some were missing, some scratched out, and only an alarmingly few had faces attached. Roy did know that the man lived in that house behind the missing one, its visible outer wall a pale gray patch of stucco unused to direct sunlight. Further down the block—he wasn’t sure how far—another house began to shimmer, as if the entire structure were under water.
William. No, Willem. Roy remembered now, the only person with that name he’d ever known. Dutch, maybe. But he detected no accent.
Willem had a big brown dog with him, which Roy wanted to call a mastiff, but which was probably something far less glamorous. But certainly descended from big breeds, practically a monster. When the dog breathed it made the air around it tremble. Suddenly the dog barked so loudly it made itself disappear.
Roy closed then opened his eyes and it was back again. It barked once more and Roy shut his eyes again—he couldn’t help himself. It was as if the air in front of him had suddenly frozen, then snapped into pieces, the dog’s throat a passage into some other dimension of pain.
“Duke! Quiet!” Willem shouted. “Sorry, Roy.” Still, Roy didn’t open his eyes. In the darkness inside his head he still lived on a quiet street lined with giant trees and the same old familiar houses. No one in that neighborhood was a monster or owned monsters.
The dog was whimpering now and Roy opened his eyes. The dog moved behind Willem as if seeking protection. “He’s been jumpy lately,” Willem explained. “He doesn’t like change, but then, neither do I. And neither do you, from the looks of you.”
“What happened? Was there a fire?”
“Nothing so dramatic. Some men and equipment came one morning, and they tore it down, hauled the pieces away. I didn’t see it myself. I’m not even sure if anyone lived there anymore. The older Clarkson brother—he was the last, wasn’t he? Did he die? I don’t remember him dying, do you? I live right next door, but I didn’t know—I had to ask around. There was just this hole, as if there had never been a house. I just never looked out those windows.” He gestured vaguely toward his house. “And when I walk Duke, I usually don’t walk him on this part of the block. A family of cats lived here for a while—they teased him.”
Willem’s hair was wild and windblown and appeared to be on fire. Roy at first thought the sun was behind it, but the sun was still high over Roy’s left shoulder. It hadn’t moved—some greater power had pinned it to the sky. Willem’s face was dark and opaque, and Roy couldn’t see the man’s expression, couldn’t even see his face for that matter, which was disconcerting.
“Could you move just a bit to one side, Willem?” Roy was inordinately pleased that he now had the man’s name correctly. “I can’t quite see your face.” But he couldn’t tell him his head appeared to be on fire.
The dark face barked. Roy looked for the dog, but Willem’s dog had apparently wandered away.
Willem stepped aside wordlessly. Was he angry? Roy looked up—Willem’s face was hard and cracked like damaged pottery. He couldn’t find the man’s eyes—were they closed?
“What happened to your dog?”
“My dog? I haven’t had a dog since…”
“The big brown one. Duke.”
Willem scowled unhappily. “Roy, have you been drinking? Duke died years ago.”
Roy shook his head. He made a decision to forget all about the dog. “This house, it was here just the other day. Someone was living here—I saw him looking at me from that window.” Roy pointed to where the window had been, then dropped his hand awkwardly. His finger had pointed at nothing but empty sky, a faint trace of smoke.
Willem stared into the not-place. “They keep tearing down old houses, putting up three or four new ones in their place. I imagine they could put six units into a lot this size. Boxes, mostly. Urban industrial. Bolt a few panels of rusted metal or polished wood on the outside and then you’re done.” He stepped closer to the hole and looked in. The sun suddenly shifted and shadows flowed from under the bushes and out of the sewer grates. “I’m glad my Alice didn’t live to see this.” Dark regions spread through the raw earth and quickly combined, heaving.
Roy stared at the leash dangling from Willem’s hand. Willem made that barking sound again and then the leash was gone. “Willem?” he asked, blinking his tears away. “Do you have some water? Water is … we’re all one hundred percent water, I believe. Our faces, the rest of us, are just dreams floating on all that water. Could I have some water, please? And some cereal? Do you have cereal?”
A screen of variegated noise filled the silence between them, but as Roy’s eyes searched the street he saw nothing but parked cars. Nothing appeared to be moving, and there were no people or animals about. And yet his head still thrummed from the noise of traffic, excitement, conversations so layered they were impossible to follow. He looked around anxiously, expecting to be overcome at any moment by the press of all that life and activity. He was aware of shaking his head incessantly, Willem hovering over him looking concerned.
Willem helped Roy from the grass, hooked his arm through his and guided him as if escorting his date to a ball. They went up the slight hill, staying on the narrow sidewalk until they reached the front of Willem’s house, where they turned and climbed the steps to the porch. The porch was wide and spacious and covered with dead potted plants. “I need to water those,” Willem said softly, “but I always forget.”
“But they’re already…” Roy began, but stopped. The tide of noise had risen again, pushing behind him, distinctive individual voices but he still couldn’t make out individual words.
Willem inserted his key, wiggled it. “Sometimes it sticks,” he said. He appeared to be pushing on the door, but something was blocking its swing.
Roy turned his head. They were all gathering behind him, the mass of them—men, women, children—some of them shimmering, some less solid than smoke. He thought he recognized a few, but of course he could not remember their names. They were dressed in old clothes or none. He wondered if they actually had names anymore.
Some stumbled on the steps and sprawled. Their necks grew long and snake-like, twisting their way across the porch, their heads like hairy fingertips, touching, tasting. Eager and inescapable. But perhaps Roy misunderstood what he was seeing.
The door gave way and Willem pushed inside, Roy close behind. Roy looked down—it was like shoveling—books and a debris of mail, clothing, and trash spilled around the bottom of the advancing door. Something struck him in the face and he lost his sense of smell, but he still had the wherewithal to back up against the door and shut it against what he imagined was happening on the porch, a frenetic confusion of memory and dream.
He gazed around him. Intertwined stacks of boxes, bags, the odd bit of furniture, layers of reading material, opened and unopened mail, food cartons, clothing, hardware, bottles, kitchenware, unidentifiable cloth objects, wires and lumber and even an odd tree limb or two, material knit together and leaned together, rising high over their heads almost to the ceiling. Snagged bits of brown fur accessorized some sharp corners of rubbish. He counted three, four, six dog bowls, their contents solidified, and threaded with green.
“Follow my lead into the kitchen,” Willem said beside him.
Willem stepped into what appeared to be a solid wall of collected objects, but although he struggled a bit he was able to wiggle and push his way through. Roy could see now that that section of material was less dense, and as Willem passed into it Roy could see more or less bare patches of floor beneath Willem’s shoes. He was still reluctant to proceed,
afraid that the entire conglomerate might shift and crush him, but he was even more apprehensive about the possibility of Willem leaving him behind, stranded. So he took the plunge. As he became enveloped in paper and dusty objects he tilted his head back in order to breathe. Behind him he could hear a rising murmur, and then a slow serpentine progression of arms and legs and necks and torsos, the backs of heads, swept over the ceiling and through the junk and trash alongside him. He did not know whether to be frightened or relieved that these figures would not show him their faces.
There was nothing substantial about any of these forms—they passed through Willem’s treasures and the tiny spaces between these treasures without a resulting disturbance of any kind. They were like the dust that covered everything and filled every cubic centimeter of air: they made an unpleasant effect, and they weighed nothing. They were like a visible odor.
And as if triggered by that thought Roy’s nose began to work again. Everything Roy touched, reeked. He felt trapped in the bottom of the trashcan with the worst part of the garbage. He began to cough and choke and ran into more solid and less penetrable portions of the mass of Willem’s possessions.
“Willem!” he cried, before stumbling into an open space. It was the kitchen. A light bulb dangled overhead: greasy, fly-specked, buttery. The air itself had a similar beige cast, like a vintage photograph. Willem sat in a chair at a small rickety table, an apple in one hand, a deeply yellowed newspaper clutched in the other. One of those skimpily dressed young female popstars of several years ago was on the open page, beneath the banner “Entertainment.”
“So this is what passes for entertainment these days,” Willem said.
Roy took a breath. The stench was weaker here, but still present. “That story is from several years ago, isn’t it?”
Willem examined the page heading. “So it is, but it’ll do. History repeats itself, after all. Today’s headline is ‘We Die.’ No amount of gyrating or singing, no matter how many people you shoot down from your rooftop, no matter how much money you steal from the poor, no matter what higher office you hold, you will, eventually, be erased.”
Roy looked for another chair. There was none. “But they believe their names will be remembered, and their deeds, their performances. And they’re right in that, actually, I believe.”
“It’s just a desperate grab for some small taste of immortality. People forget names, the small details of history. They do it all the time,” Willem said. Voices began to issue from the debris surrounding them, first whispers then declarations then shouts, often accompanied by weeping. When Roy glanced at his surroundings he could see their faces now, and quickly turned away. Willem appeared to pay them no attention—he certainly betrayed no alarm—but he was raising his voice, as if to be heard above the din. “I have your cereal here! I’ve filled your bowl!”
Roy took the offering, raising the bowl to peer inside. The wrinkled flakes looked more like wood chips than breakfast cereal. They were covered by the water he’d requested. There was no spoon, and he decided he wouldn’t ask for one. At least it didn’t smell, so he raised it to his lips and began to slurp. The flakes were stale, like bits of cardboard as they gathered in his mouth. But he allowed them in anyway. He swallowed what he could and allowed the rest to fall back into the bowl.
“How long…” Roy looked around at the walls of trash, avoiding the eyes scattered in the shadowed spaces. “How long have you been … collecting?”
“Mostly since Alice died. I’d always been interested in things, finding interesting stuff in the world. Often I would bring these things home. But when Alice lived with me there were limits, you know? Back then I couldn’t keep everything. But when you’re by yourself—you make your own rules. And most importantly, you don’t have to explain them.” An empty shoebox drifted off the top of one of the piles and fell at Willem’s feet. A scurrying and a rearrangement occurred within the depths of the assemblage. “I’m partial to interesting containers,” he continued. “Things that will hold other things. They mean organization, even when nothing is being organized. We all need that sense of organization, that ability to place parentheses, and a period at the end. Other things I like are things I know might be useful to someone else: a part, a knob, one piece of some ensemble. Everyone is missing something—I’d like to provide them with that missing piece someday.”
“Have you ever given any of this away?”
Willem looked up at his stacks, his eyes sweeping the walls of objects. “I have to find the right people to give them to. Do you realize how difficult that is in this day and age? People just won’t stop anymore to figure out what they’re missing.”
Roy felt the pressure in his gut, the impending disruption. “Could I please use your restroom?”
Willem stood up, reached for something in the corner behind him. “Out of order, I’m afraid. I can’t get anyone in here to even look at it. So that room’s just additional storage space for now. You’ll need to go into the back yard.” He held out a beige grocery bag and a handful of old newspaper. He gestured toward the small door in one corner of the kitchen, by an old stove whose top was buried beneath dusty pots and pans.
Roy ignored the offered materials and shuffled over to that door. The top half was glass, permitting a view of the back yard. Immediately outside there were grocery bags, paper sacks, garbage bags stacked everywhere, several feet high and barely contained by the sagging wooden fence. Several squirrels worked feverishly at a bulging, misshapen package recently fallen, its contents spilled.
Roy left the room, forcing his way into Willem’s belongings until he found a soft spot, then pushed harder, wading through what appeared to be one of everything imaginable as he attempted to find the door to the front porch. Things crashed behind him and Willem cursed and screamed in offended rage or pain, it was impossible to determine or process.
Roy was close enough to those visiting forms—the turned faces and offered lips—to hear what they were whispering, but the noise inside his head was louder than all their voices. He pushed past them as if they were no more than added bits to Willem’s collection.
Some of the stacks beside the front door had collapsed around it. Roy turned the knob and dragged the door inside as far as it would go, then climbed over the obstacles and squeezed himself through the narrow opening. He fell out onto the porch and felt a sharp pain in his knee as something gave way.
Everything murmured. Everything had something to say. But Roy wouldn’t look at any of them. He deliberately ignored them all. He climbed to his feet and hobbled down the steps and out onto the sidewalk. He stank. He needed to get home.
A great noise suddenly swallowed him up as if the secret engine of the world had just turned over. The air exploded around him in an ecstasy of escape. It was all he could do to hold onto his thoughts to prevent them from being completely swept off the planet.
A snow of tiny fragments powdered his head, his outstretched arms, and his hands. He brushed them off: bits of yellowed newspaper, trash. When finally he turned around he confronted the hole, the freshly raw ground, the fact that nothing remained to indicate that anything had ever existed there at all.
Roy wandered the empty streets looking for some familiar landmark. Off in the distance the conversations continued, but thank God the uncomfortably familiar forms kept their distance. When finally he found his block of course his apartment building was gone. In its place the terraced squares of freshly turned ground resembled most those peculiar South American pyramids, the ones where human sacrifices were performed, and everywhere you went you knew full well you were walking on the dead.
THE SWIMMING POOL PARTY
Robert Shearman
ONCE IN A WHILE A MEMORY OF MAX WILL pop into her head, and she won’t quite know what to do with it. Totally unbidden, and triggered by nothing in particular, and sometimes she won’t mind, she’ll let the memory play out like a little movie. That time, one Christmas, when they’d given Max his first bike—it had tak
en Tom ages to wrap it up, and once it was done it was just so obvious, the wrapping paper did nothing to disguise what was underneath at all; “We’ll have to do it again,” she’d said, “but this time we’ll put lumps and bumps in,” and Tom hadn’t minded, they’d done it again, together, and in the end the present for Max under the tree looked like nothing on earth, and certainly nothing like a bicycle; that Christmas morning they told him to save that present for last though he was itching to open it, and he wasn’t disappointed. Oh, she still remembers that exquisite look of joy and surprise on his face when he realised Santa had brought him the bike he wanted after all. Or—there was that memory of when they were on holiday, where was it, Cornwall? It was warm, anyway. And they were all sitting out in the beer garden, Max had a lemonade. There was a wasp. It landed on Max. They shooed it off, and the wasp went onto the table, and Tom upturned his empty pint glass and put it on top. And Max was crying, and she was suddenly so frightened—had he been stung? Where was he stung? Would he have an allergic reaction? But he wasn’t stung at all—“The poor buzzie,” he kept saying, “the poor buzzie.” The poor buzzie was trapped, flying around its beery prison looking for some way out, bashing its body against the sides of the glass. Max was howling now, he said, “Please let the buzzie out, it’s so scared,” and Tom took the glass away, and the wasp didn’t sting anyone, it flew off, and Max laughed, all tears forgotten, and went back to his lemonade.
Or, of course—there was that memory, the first memory. The doctor putting Max into her arms. And her realising that it was really all over, the whole giving birth thing, and it hadn’t been quite as difficult or painful as she’d feared. And Tom was grinning. And she’d spend so long privately worrying about this very moment—but when I’m actually there with it, with my own child, what happens if I don’t like it? Don’t want it? Can feel nothing for it? Max crying, and she crying herself with relief, that this tiny human being in her arms that had come from inside her and was a part of her was something she loved with all her heart, and she would love it forever, until the day she died.
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