The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology

by Chamber Four

  Ricardo had watched Javier Castillo disappear many times. In many ways, he had studied this affliction, timed it. He visited the library once to look through books on physics. Sitting in the stacks on the newly installed carpets, the fumes from them like a tranquilizing gas, he had tried to read them. None of them had any information on this means of travel, or none that he could make out from the photos and diagrams. That Javier Castillo could fade away, find himself somewhere else, Ricardo was fairly certain. Javier Castillo had told him how during his teens he had gone to Singapore, French Polynesia, Egypt. It was then Ricardo really discovered the extent of Javier Castillo’s affliction. He would go to other places for a few hours or a few days. He had spent an entire week in Toronto wandering through Chinatown. Ricardo knew this but could not believe it. Ricardo felt the overwhelming need to test Javier Castillo. He needed something more than observation of the disappearing act and the stories then recounted to him later. He needed proof. And so, one afternoon, Ricardo wrote four numbers on a piece of paper and left it on the chest of drawers in the bedroom. He was convinced the numbers, which he had seen on television, were clues to picking the right horse. He convinced Javier Castillo to go to the horse races that afternoon. Shortly after finding their seats, Ricardo told Javier Castillo about the numbers, that he had written them down but had forgotten to bring the paper with him, that he needed them and couldn’t remember them. Javier Castillo excused himself. He went into the men’s room, entered a stall, locked the swinging door, and disappeared. When he reappeared in the stall a moment later, he went to find Ricardo. While at the house, Javier Castillo had written the numbers down on the back of his hand with the black sharpie marker left next to the scrap of paper Ricardo had forgotten, the marker left there intentionally by Ricardo. And when he showed Ricardo all four numbers on the back of his hand, Ricardo said nothing. Ricardo didn’t even say thank you. Ricardo wondered why Javier Castillo had written the numbers on the back of his hand instead of simply bringing the piece of paper back with him. Surely this meant something about the affliction. Surely a clue was to be found in this action, the paper still on the chest of drawers but the numbers retrieved and inscribed upon his hand.

  Ricardo never knew what to say to Javier Castillo. Can you blame him? I wouldn’t know what to say to a man who could disappear. But in Ricardo’s case, it wasn’t that he couldn’t find the words. It was just that Ricardo never felt the words would be taken seriously. Why ask a question? Why try to discuss things? Javier Castillo always seemed to know the answers. I would have had many questions for Mr. Castillo, I think. I would have spent far too much time wondering about how it all worked. But Ricardo? Ricardo wondered if the affliction gave Javier Castillo special knowledge beyond that of travel, if somehow, when in that space between disappearing and appearing, there were answers. But this thought was too complicated and Ricardo, despite trying to formulate the right questions, simply remained silent. What he said to Javier Castillo, instead, was something about dinner. In the dimly lit Italian restaurant, the backs of his arms sticking to the fake leather booth, Ricardo stared at Javier Castillo, smiled, but said nothing. Ricardo thought about ordering pasta, the one that looked like little ears, but he didn’t know what they were called. Javier Castillo ordered that pasta for Ricardo without a single word passing between them. Yes, somewhere in that space between disappearing and appearing, there must have been answers, but Ricardo had no idea how one reached such a place without the affliction. Ricardo worried that one day Javier Castillo would go in search of answers and never return.

  Ricardo first met Javier Castillo while working his evening shift at LAX. Ricardo worked a second job each evening as a skycap. In the gray space of the baggage claim, in the gray space of the check-in area, Ricardo had watched face after gray face arriving and departing. Javier Castillo was there to see his aunt off. Ricardo watched him the way he watched all people who were at LAX but neither arriving nor departing by plane. Accessories to travel, Ricardo had thought, accessories. They were not really people but means of transportation to or from the airport for these other people who were traveling by plane. Even years later, Ricardo could not explain why he continued to stare at Javier Castillo that night. It was not that Javier Castillo was a handsome man. He was, in many ways, rather ordinary in appearance. Javier Castillo had looked at him and said “Buenas noches.” They began to talk. Ricardo noticed the way in which Javier Castillo’s eyes were dark, a dark brown flecked with gray. That Javier Castillo had spoken to him in Spanish didn’t bother Ricardo. Many people spoke to him in Spanish, could tell from his face and dark skin that he was of Mexican descent. They exchanged small talk, nothing remotely exciting. And despite this, Ricardo had felt his heart panic in his chest. Ricardo left the airport with him. He never went back. He never went home. He never called his wife and family. He couldn’t think of what to say or how to explain Javier Castillo to them. He left the airport with him and drove for hours. In a corner of his mind, he believed he was being abducted, but he had not been abducted. He had asked Javier Castillo if he could come with him. And in the sun visor mirror, Ricardo noticed his own eyes were a different color green. His eyes were more of a dark forest green, darker than the usual pale green he had seen in the mirror all of his life.

  Once, after almost three years of living with Javier Castillo, Ricardo felt the sudden urge to press his hand through him just before he completely faded away. He wanted to see if he would also start disappearing. The affliction. What must it have felt like? Could Javier Castillo actually feel himself dissolving? The hands, finger by finger? But Ricardo knew that when Javier Castillo disappeared, he did so evenly. It was not as if the chest dissolved leaving the heart exposed and beating. He just slowly faded into a shimmer, and then a shadow, and then air. It was gradual. There would be a man, and then a man seen through but still there, and then the dingy, yellowed wallpaper clinging to the wall behind where Javier Castillo had been standing. Dingy and dirty: the wall would suddenly be more sharply in focus, its browning yellow like the nicotine-and-tar-stained filter after smoking a cigarette. And though Ricardo had no explanation, he knew the disappearing happened faster at times, slower at others. He wanted to pass his hand through the shadowy Javier Castillo, the one about to become air. But he could never get himself to do it. Javier Castillo was always watching him carefully, and Ricardo feared that Javier Castillo knew what he was thinking.

  What must such a life be like? Think about it. To live with a man half shadow, half something, something that you could not explain to someone else, much less yourself? Even after three years of living with Javier Castillo, after lying in the one bed next to him night after night, after sitting out on the balcony and smoking cigarettes watching the smoke coil into shapes that only disappeared, Ricardo did not understand Javier Castillo. Ricardo never asked any questions. He just didn’t know how to do so. He simply lived there, simply existed. He did not work. He did not worry about money or his wife and sons. The time simply passed, and the man known as Javier Castillo moved in and out of air. And finally that day arrived, the day that Ricardo could not recall with any great detail—Javier Castillo faded away and did not return.

  Ricardo thought nothing of it at first. A week passed, and then a month. Ricardo had no money to pay the light bill or the utilities. He had no money to pay for anything. He had never questioned the fact that Javier Castillo always had money, was always able to pay for anything they needed. Two whole months passed before Ricardo realized Javier Castillo was not coming back. Without electricity, Ricardo walked around the dark house occasionally flipping switches to see if something would happen. The air was still most nights, the heat of the desert coming in through the windows carried along by the echoing howls of the coyotes hunting the nearby canyon. Ricardo was alone and without a dime. Within a day or two, he began to wander the streets. He did not remember how to go home, and he wasn’t sure how he would get back to Los Angeles. He wandered into the parking lot of the Trave
l Lodge just as I was stepping out of my rental car. I don’t usually talk to homeless people. It isn’t that I am afraid of them, but that I have no idea what to say to them. But Ricardo’s eyes were green, that dark forest green, and he looked haunted. I don’t really remember what I said to him, but he followed me, asked me if he could come up to my hotel room to take a shower, promised me he would not rob me. I have no idea why I agreed. He showered and then came into the room and sat staring off into space. I offered him some whiskey, and we sat and drank it. I told him stories I had heard in my years of traveling as a salesman, told him stories of the small island in the Caribbean where I had grown up, the people there, the way we swore the cats were spies. We sat in our jockey shorts and t-shirts drinking whiskey. We lapsed into and out of Spanish. It seemed as if we had known each other for a very long time.

  Over the past three years, I have heard much about Javier Castillo, too much, really: the disappearing, the timing of it, the various places he had visited. I have never actually seen Javier Castillo, but there are times when I feel quite certain I know what he looks like. And Ricardo, though he never says so, sits sometimes staring at the chair in my bedroom as if waiting for Javier Castillo to appear. Do I believe in gods? In angels, in miracles? No. No, I never have. I am more like Ricardo than I want to believe. Before he goes to sleep most nights, Ricardo says the very same thing to me. He says: “Carlos, sleep now. Sleep.” Night after night, he says this, says it faithfully. And it makes me wonder if he had instructed Javier Castillo to go to sleep in much the same way. Lately, at night, lying in bed, Ricardo breathing deeply the way he does when he is lying down, I cannot sleep. I find myself staring at the empty chair. I half-expect Javier Castillo to appear. I would love to be able to say I just want to make sure the chair is empty or, at most, the place where I left one of my old pairs of jeans. “Carlos, sleep now. Sleep,” Ricardo says. But falling asleep is the least of my concerns. I know I will sleep eventually, much the way I know that one day soon I might... I am concentrating so hard. I am concentrating on another place, another town. “Carlos, sleep now. Sleep.” Yes, maybe I could disappear. Vanish, gone, in thin air, nothing left but the room, the bed, the chair. But I am no Javier Castillo, right? I am definitely not like Javier Castillo.

  Bad Cheetah

  by Andy Henion

  from Word Riot

  My mother, in bra and pantyhose, is kicking another man out of her life, only this one we like. His name is Roland Reynolds but everyone calls him Cheetah: a tall, easygoing long-hauler with big cats on his forearms. He sits with a sleepy smile on his face and his feet up on the recliner as my mother rages, her finger inches from his handsome face.

  Cheetah, it seems, has offended.

  “That shit may fly with the truckstop crowd,” my mother crows, “but not with me, asshole.”

  My best friend Gordon and I watch the carnage thigh-to-thigh from the couch. Gordon is enjoying this immensely, I know, based on the fact that my mother is panty-free under the flesh-colored hose. When Sarah gets going like this, she’s oblivious to anything but the focus of her wrath.

  “Pack your crap and be gone when I get home,” she says. At this point the banished beau typically begs for forgiveness, but Cheetah simply winks in compliance, and Sarah sighs and turns to the sofa.

  “Joey, there’s lasagna in the fridge and pop in the garage. Call me if you need me. And Gordon? Quit staring at my crotch, son.”

  * * * *

  We’re sharing a joint in my basement bedroom. Cheetah and I sit on the bed while Gordon stands ready with the crossbow. Lined up against the wall is a series of mannequins from the department store my mother manages. The first six have photos of former boyfriends taped to their plastic skulls and are in various stages of degradation. One has steel wool for pubic hair and a crude vagina carved into its crotch; others are covered in happy faces and swastikas. All are pierced with arrows from the crossbow.

  We’ve attached a digital image of Cheetah’s face to Mannequin No. 7. On its arms, in brown and yellow marker, I’ve replicated the cheetah tattoos. Cheetah squint-eyes my handiwork and christens me a damn fine artist. Gordon pats him on the back and tells him it will be a damn fine honor to perforate his sternum.  

  Once we finish the jay, Gordon goes into his routine. He raises the weapon, closes an eye and spends long moments regulating his breathing. “I love Sarah Jane Arnold,” he whispers finally, and fires an arrow midpoint into the mannequin’s torso. Gordon is a crack shot with the crossbow, even stoned.

  Cheetah grabs his abdomen and makes a choking sound, falling back on the mattress with a laugh. I survey the damage. The steel tip of the arrow has pierced the cement wall deep enough, I know, to draw moisture. About a year ago I put a padlock on my bedroom door, and so far, at least, Sarah is respecting my privacy. But if she ever gets a wild hair and busts in here and sees the watery, moldy mess we’ve created, she’ll kick my ass, a scenario that causes frequent and extreme consternation. When I’m not baked, that is.

  * * * *

  We kill the lasagna and watch reality television well into the afternoon. Then Cheetah takes a private call and proceeds to invite us along for a ride. He loads his few personal belongings into a box and we pile into his rig, a shiny black Peterbilt with a large compartment for sleeping or, as Gordon surmises, canoodling with truckstop whores. Cheetah laughs and shakes his head. But Gordon has turned serious, the way he does when he’s coming down.

  “So. Roland. You’re pretty blasé for a man been kicked to the curb.”

  Cheetah’s sleepy smile doesn’t change. It never seems to change.

  “Take life as it comes, Gordo.”

  This kind of reasoning doesn’t hold up for Gordon, I know. He comes from one of those make-your-own-destiny families, with an ultraconservative father who put himself through community college and made a mint in commercial construction. The truth is his old man is wound pretty tight (who gets their kid a freakin’ crossbow for his birthday?) and sometimes I think the berry hasn’t fallen far from the bush. Gordon gets these singular obsessions and just will not let go. In middle school it was Bruce Lee and all things ninja; for two years solid it’s been my mother.

  Gordon turns in his seat to face Cheetah. I sit between them, not wanting to be here. I’m not one for confrontation.

  “You upset a wonderful woman today,” Gordon says. “You screwed the pooch, Long Hair. Perhaps you’d like to bare your soul before it’s too late.”

  Too late for what? I wonder, and apparently Cheetah is thinking the same thing. His brow arches as he smokes a cigarette and works the gearshift.

  “Thing you’ve got to learn,” Cheetah says, “is that women like their men dangerous until they show a hint of danger.”

  “Danger?” says Gordon, and now he’s nearly yelling. “And what so-called danger do you—”

  “Hey,” I interrupt, “where we going, anyway?”

  Cheetah pauses before answering, finishing his cigarette and flicking the butt out the window. Gordon continues glaring but is smart enough, at least for the time being, to keep his mouth shut.

  “Gonna see a guy,” Cheetah says, “about a thing.”

  * * * *

  Turns out, Cheetah’s guy manages the adult superstore out on Interstate 69. He’s a short, fat specimen with beady eyes behind rose-colored shades and black sideburns that run to his lips. He’s leaning on the counter of the otherwise empty store as we file in.

  “Ain’t got much time, friend,” he says. Cheetah spreads his arms and makes a what-can-I-do face, and the two of them look down at us.

  “Gentlemen,” says the fat man, “we need to talk in private. Help yourself you my personal viewing room.” He sweeps his hand toward a door in the far corner of the store. I shrug and head that way, psyched at the prospects, while Gordon begins his protest.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. If you think I’m—”

  I keep moving. Gordon will come eventually. He makes this show
of being disgusted by porn, but in the end he’ll sit and watch just about anything you put in front of him, complaining the whole time about the exploitation of women, the end of civilized society, so on, so forth. He used to fuss about weed the same way.

  I open the door to a bank of flat screens. One of them has the still image of a bare-chested brunette pointing at someone off-screen. I sit down and hit Play. The brunette is actually summoning a man and his hardened member while straddling another man on a bed. My cell rings. It’s my mother.

  “Hey Ma, how was work?”

  The brunette puts the man’s member in her mouth.

  “It’s after seven, where the hell are you?”

  “With Cheetah.” There’s no sense lying; Sarah would sniff it out in a heartbeat.

  “Oh my fucking god. Where?”

  “We’re fine Mom, no big—”

  “Where, goddammit?”