by Laird Barron
Danny nodded again. As if.
Ray turned to his friend: “Aren’t you hot man? I’m burning up in here.” The mall interior was warm, humid, stuffy. Ray could even swear he caught a whiff of the same musty stink that had all but overwhelmed him at Danny’s apartment, but maybe it was just coming off Danny. He hadn’t smelled it in the car though.
Danny shook his head, but then he hadn’t worn a coat. Just a faded Styx concert jersey with holes in the armpits he pulled on before they left: “Grand Illusion Tour.” Ray shrugged off his own coat, a bulky suede Polo number, tucked it under his left arm, muttered: “Damn, man,” shook his head, and continued his thesis filibuster:
“Mallarmé is really the key. The guy even built an altar to Poe and prayed at it. Fast forward from him to Maurice Roche in ’66, a major Mallarmé disciple, and he picks up on Mallarmé’s idea of creating optical illusions with the text itself. Well, maybe not illusions, but distortions. Like he makes a skull out of letters, calls it ‘Mnenopolis,’ the city of memories. But he mainly uses this trick called anamorphosis: you get to this part in Compact where there’s all these long stretched out lines on the page, but if you tilt the book way over on its edge, the lines are letters that spell ‘EYES EXCHANGE BANK’—in English, which is weird ‘cause the book is in French. And my French ain’t that great, so I’m having trouble working through the rest of it.”
“Anal-what-a-sis?” asked Danny. “Sounds like some kinda porn.”
“Anamorphosis, dude. It’s an old trick in painting. Luke taught me about it. The most famous example is this painting The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, where there’s a long gray diagonal blur floating near the floor in front of these two dudes dressed all fancy, like kings on playing cards. But if you get close and look at the blur from just the right angle, it’s a skull.”
For a moment, Ray imagined Danny and himself as shabbier versions of the figures in Holbein’s painting. Danny already seemed like an ambassador from some foreign land. His best friend since junior high, and Ray hardly recognized him. Living out here in Pennsy had changed him, made him strange.
“A floating skull? What’s that all about?”
“It’s a memento mori. It’s there to say ‘Remember you will die.’ Folks were big on that sort of thing back then.”
They arrived at the Pizza Uno entrance. Here at least they found signs of life: colored light gleamed out and WMMR played loudly from inside. But when they approached the hostess, a lifeless and dispirited brunette, she told them the wait for a table was 20 minutes.
Ray challenged her immediately: “What the hell? We can see a buttload of empty tables right from here. How can you have a 20 minute wait?”
“Because we’ve only got one server on tonight,” she droned. “Unnerstand? So do you wanna make a reservation or not?”
Danny gripped Ray’s arm, pulled him away from potential confrontation. “C’mon man, let’s check out the rest of the mall for awhile and come back.” Then to the hostess: “It’s cool, we’re cool. Reservation for two, Bevacqua.” He spelled it out, and Ray knew right then who was going to pay for this meal.
Danny’s hand felt too warm and damp on Ray’s forearm. His gut reaction was to shake it off. But he didn’t dare offend the mechanic he relied on to help him escape from Lansdale, so he was relieved when his friend let go.
A final section of the mall angled away to the west past Pizza Uno, and they took off down this way. Ray checked his watch and marked 6:18 p.m. Plus 20 minutes = 6:38.
He saw right away it would be hard to kill 20 minutes in this wing. There weren’t many stores, and even fewer of those were open. A jeweler, a shoe store, a leather goods emporium . . . nearly all the rest were vacant, their facades sealed with panels of raw plywood. It was worse than downtown. They soon entered a zone where every storefront was empty. Most looked as though they never opened. Plywood covered some, others were sealed with nothing more than thick hanging sheets of translucent plastic. Construction here had progressed no further than the steel framing. They advanced regardless.
Altogether, they passed only five open stores in the entire wing, and all those near the east end, close to Pizza Uno. No plastic plants here, just empty fixtures. There were long patches where the tile was out or had never been laid and the bare concrete was exposed. Sheets of water-stained plywood covered the floor in other places: subterranean ducts and pipes still under construction. Ray crossed one panel and it echoed hollow and bowed beneath him. He avoided the others after that. This wasn’t a mall. It was an abandoned construction site, a skeleton. And an obstacle course. Before long they confronted the end of the corridor: a blank wall of unpainted cinderblock.
Ray turned to Danny. “Dude, what’s with this place? It’s totally decrepit.”
“Yeah, well you know: the economy, man. That fucker Bush . . . everything went downhill after Reagan.”
They began their retreat from the dead end, but as they passed the first derelict kiosk, Ray noticed his shoelaces were loose. Again. Both sides. He’d been partial to Sperry Top-Siders since sophomore year, ever since Luke turned him on to them. Luke was from North Jersey, Englewood: not rich but upper middle class. Ray had tried to emulate his friend’s effortless preppy style, looking to recreate his own image and cut the stink of the burbs, projecting himself into the academic future he envisioned: Top-Siders, Bass Weejuns with pennies inserted, argyle, chinos, Bean Boots, buttondown shirts from Land’s End. But his current pair of boat shoes just wouldn’t stay tied.
Ray stepped over to the kiosk, set his coat lightly on the blank, dusty counter, and bent to grasp the squared leather laces. He had tied only one side when a noise came from inside the kiosk, a kind of exhalation or sigh. He froze, laces drooping through his fingers. What the hell? He listened for a 10-count. Nothing. He let out his breath and was beginning the other side when something thumped the panel in front of him so hard it bulged out in his face.
He shot to his feet and staggered backward, footsteps echoing off another plywood sheet. Where was Danny? Ray looked wildly for his friend before spotting him about 50 feet back down the corridor, still walking. Ray scrambled over to him, making frequent backward glances at the kiosk. As soon as he was close enough, he stage-whispered, pointing back toward the now-silent structure: “Dude, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“There’s something in there. Someone.”
“Probably a rat.”
“This was no rat. Whatever it was, it was way bigger than a rat!”
“Some homeless dude then, looking for a place to sleep. You woke him up.”
Ray shuddered. He knew the stats: a million millionaires under Ronnie Raygun—and a million people on the streets, many of them mental patients released when Reagan shut down the state mental hospitals. He’d done some work with the campus solidarity group “RU With the Homeless,” even volunteered in a soup kitchen in Morningside Heights during a visit to a high school girlfriend who’d gone on to Columbia. But this was not the kind of controlled circumstances under which he interacted with the homeless before. “C’mon, let’s get out of here,” he said to Danny, who shrugged but turned and continued toward the finished section of the mall as Ray hustled to catch up.
He forgot to check his watch when they returned to Pizza Uno, but the hostess sat them regardless of the time. “Bevacqua, party of two. Follow me.” Her voice remained empty of intonation. She led them to a gloomy corner booth, lingered for their drink order: two Coronas.
At first they just stared at each other across the table as they waited for their beers. Ray was still shaken from his experience at the kiosk, and he had no idea what else to say to this pallid drone that replaced his oldest friend.
The blank-faced hostess returned with a brace of Coronas and lingered to take their order. It appeared she was the one server on duty. Danny immediately ordered a chicken and artichoke heart pizza without consulting either
Ray or the menu, “And two more Coronas.” The girl shuffled back to the kitchen.
And then Danny showed a spark of his old self: “Dude, what if she brings an artichoke and chicken heart pizza? Remember Bill Cosby when we were kids, the chicken heart? ‘Pum-pum. Pum-pum.’ Just like the heart under the floorboards. That’s Poe, isn’t it? You should put that in your thing.”
Ray mustered a grunt of feigned enthusiasm. Like he really needed thesis advice from a fucking mechanic. But his thoughts turned anyway to the familiar tale of the sinister eye and the heart buried beneath floorboards, how Poe controlled the reader’s perceptions through his unreliable narrator. How could he have missed that one? He would have to work it into his thesis somehow. Not that he’d tell Danny, who would probably expect credit for something Ray would have picked up on soon anyway.
The waitress/hostess returned with their drinks. Danny raised the dewy bottle before him and said:
“Remember you will die, huh? Well, we ain’t dyin’ tonight, bro. To the single life!”
Ray reciprocated, mechanically. He would rather die himself than take any more academic advice from Danny, even if it was good, so he stabbed at another topic. “So, Dude, what’s the deal with Colleen? I thought you two were mated for life.”
“Yeah, well, she got really bitchy after I lost my job. Not like she’s got any income you know—just sponged off her family before I came along, and after that, she started hangin’ with them more even though she was spongin’ off me. They’re a mess, just the mom and the two sisters sittin’ around bitchin’ about men this, men that. It’s a regular estrogen fest, Y-chromosomes beware. But she probably would’ve come back this last time except for that whole thing with her cat.”
“What whole thing with her cat?”
“Kitten really. Dude, it was totally justified. She brought this thing home and it was always whinin’ and gettin’ in my shit. And she left it for me to take care of when she got pissed about my job and ran back to her mom’s, like I could really give a shit about some stupid furball. It kept buggin’ me when I was tryin’ to watch TV, climbin’ up on the Barcalounger and meowin’, lookin’ at me all sad. Finally I picked it up by the fuckin’ neck and squeezed it, and it felt good, so I kept squeezin’ till it didn’t move. So then she comes back the next day, and she’s all, “Where’s my cat?” and I told her the fuckin’ thing was dead, and she got all pissed, started screamin’ at me like it was a real pet, a dog or a turtle or somethin’, said she was movin’ back to her mom’s for good. I was too wasted to argue, and that was that. So what about Lisa, your perfect woman? How did that go south?”
The shift in topic caught Ray unprepared—he wasn’t ready to answer, not after the cat thing. He bought time by mouthing his beer, then stammered out a response. “Man, I, uh, don’t really know. I think she got pissed over my lifestyle, working on my thesis all the time. She just wasn’t ready to be with a serious academic. One day she came home and just started crying. I tried asking her what was wrong, but she locked herself in the bathroom for a whole hour. When she came out, she told me we needed time apart. Just like that. No explanation. Then she packed up her shit and split. That was it. Haven’t heard from her since. She hasn’t been back to her job, either. I don’t know where she went.”
Which wasn’t really true. He was pretty sure she was shacked up with Luke in the City. Luke who conveniently wasn’t answering his calls either. But Ray wasn’t about to let the conversation stray in that direction. Instead he rose, mumbled, “Man, I gotta take a leak,” and made his unsteady way to the restroom. At least it was true.
When he returned, Danny took a deep pull from his beer, looked across the table at Ray, and said, “She came here for awhile. Right after Colleen left.”
“Who came here?”
“Lisa.”
Ray gaped. “You’re fuckin’ shittin’ me, right?”
Danny shook his head, “No man, seriously. She was here. Her and Luke. She needed someone to talk to, so we all got together.”
“Did she talk about me? What’d she say?”
“It wasn’t all about you. She kept saying, ‘I know it’s me, but . . .’ Her but’s were mostly about how she felt jealous of the attention you were givin’ Poe and all these frogs you’re into—but she knew your thesis was important—but you were losing touch with reality—but you were ignoring her, etcetera, etcetera . . .”
“She never said any of this to me.”
“What she told us was she didn’t feel like she could talk to you about it. Said she tried but you didn’t listen.”
“Man, that’s bullshit. I always listened to her.”
But had he? How many times had he blown her off for the work, for another session with Roche and his copy of the Robert et Collins Dictionnaire Français-Anglais? “So how long did she stay? And what was going on with her and Luke?”
“I know what you’re thinkin’ man, but that wasn’t it. She just needed friends, and we were here for her, like always. That’s all.”
“Bullshit. I know Luke’s been after her for a long time.”
“Yeah, maybe, but not this time.
“Whaddaya mean: ‘not this time’?”
“Nothin’ man, give it a rest. She ain’t fuckin’ Luke. I guarantee that.”
Their pizza arrived. Gray Danny regarded him across the table. “You still havin’ those anxiety attacks, man? ‘Cause you look a little pale right now.”
Deep breath. He’d mentioned the attacks to Danny over the phone. “Yeah, but this isn’t one. They’re just something I’ve been getting on and off since my dad died. They don’t last long. Nothing to sweat over.” Yet he already felt a cold, greasy sweat leaking over his body from every pore.
“You oughtta get seen to man, that shit can’t be good. But not now, huh? For now, dig in. A full stomach’s just what you need.”
With trembling hands Ray nodded and tore loose a slice of the lumpy, pus-colored pizza. The waitress returned with a fresh round of Coronas, and Ray took a deep pull from his to wash that first pasty mouthful down.
They ate and drank for several minutes without further conversation. The bland waitress brought more Coronas even before their last round was empty. Danny must have told her to “Keep ‘em comin’, honey,” while Ray was in the can. That was okay with Ray. All he wanted was to get tanked. But then, Danny had convinced him to come here for more than beer . . .
“So Dan-man, where’s all the chicks you said would be here? ‘Cause I’m not seeing ‘em . . .” Fewer than a dozen other customers were visible. None were unescorted women. The bar was empty.
“I dunno man . . . must be an off night. Most nights this place is crawlin’ with chicks.”
“So . . . are we just cursed or something? I mean, c’mon, seriously, this is pathetic.”
“What about the waitress? She should be gettin’ off soon, and she looks kinda game . . .”
“You’re kiddin’ right? Game? She looks half dead to me . . .”
She returned even as Ray spoke, however, and he examined her again. Lank, dark hair fell evenly around her face from both sides, maintaining the almost parallel lines of her figure. Almost sexless. But she did have tits, suppressed and taut within the white men’s dress shirt she wore. A plastic rectangle engraved with her name rode askew above her left breast. Rochelle. He imagined her coming to life in a threeway: Danny, her, him. He never had a threeway. Maybe that’s what he needed to cheer himself up.
Danny faced her, a sagging pizza slice held aloft in his left hand. There was something wrong with his eyes, but Ray couldn’t place it. Too sunken, too glassy, the pupils too wide . . .
“So my buddy here was wantin’ to know where you’re from,” Danny said to Rochelle.
She turned her head slowly, right, left, looked at them each in turn, then replied, sans inflection, sans expression:
“Scranton.”
Ray sp
uttered into his fist and glanced at Danny. Their history was filled with hundreds of moments like this, secret in-jokes mutually acknowledged and achieving fruition at some third party’s expense. Ray could not hold back. He expected Danny to bust out too, but his friend just stared, his glassy gaze the same—as Rochelle’s.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked, her voice even colder, if that was possible. Danny said no, they were okay, and she walked off toward the kitchen.
“Dude, I was looking at you, trying to tell you not to laugh. But you blew it.” Danny shook his head. His timing and rhythm the same as Rochelle’s . . . and the same as the motions of the “eyelab” sign outside. Except Danny’s head didn’t float off into the night. Ray watched to be sure of that.
“Sorry man. I couldn’t help it.”
“Well, we ain’t nailin’ her now. I don’t know what’s wrong with this place tonight. There’s usually lots of chicks.”
“I find that hard to believe, myself. This is some pathetic town you’ve found yourself in if this joint is the best you can do for a singles bar.”
“Don’t knock it, man. I tell you, livin’ here has changed my whole outlook on life. All that study, study, study, work, work, work—it doesn’t really matter. None of it matters. I got a different way of seein’ things now.”
Ray was lost with this line of reasoning, but he didn’t much care. At this point, his only plan was to get drunk and ask Danny to fix his car in the morning so he could get the hell out of Lansdale, before dark, if possible. He’d pretty well accomplished the first part already.
They both drank on in silence as beads of suspicious moisture oozed from the cooling cheese on the half-eaten pizza. By the time Rochelle brought the check, Ray was pretty much shitfaced. He paid it, just as he had expected he’d have to. Even flipped her a fiver for a tip, he didn’t know why. The booze, no doubt.
