Feral Boy Meets Girl

by William Jablonsky

  The townhouse was empty when he entered, a note from Evelyn on the refrigerator:

  Went to pick up stuff for dinner—be back???

  —E.

  This was a relief, as he did not want to explain why he was home two hours early. He called his doctor’s office, demanding that the receptionist schedule him immediately. When she insisted there were no available slots until tomorrow, Tate was livid, but acquiesced; his only other option was the ER, where he would be transferred to the psych ward within five minutes. He thanked the nurse with mock sincerity (though she was probably too dim to recognize it) and hung up.

  He took a deep breath and attempted to reason away the panic: if he could not get immediate help, he needed something to tide him over until Dr. Carville could examine him. He climbed the stairs to his study and attempted to research his symptoms on the Internet, but found only references to an obscure comic-book character called The Crimson Flame, a muscular, gaudy figure in a red unitard and goggles, whose sole power seemed to be spewing red blasts from his eyes. He immediately thought of his son’s comic book collection stowed in the attic; Aaron was supposed to pick it up when they moved in three years ago. It pained him to look for answers in that mind-killing drek, but there was no other option.

  Tate climbed the pull-down stairs into the attic and dug out the long cardboard boxes, shuffling through the plastic-wrapped issues looking for a cover illustration similar to his situation. After a few minutes he found it: The Crimson Flame #1: Secret Origin Issue. The cover was unremarkable—the title character on his knees in anguish, eyes glowing behind the red lenses that held back his deadly power. Tate pulled it from its plastic sheath and thumbed through the pages: cursed with his terrible ability since a childhood encounter with radiation, the goggles, made of some imaginary element, were the only thing that contained it. Ridiculous, for so many reasons. But it gave him an idea.

  Tate rolled up the comic, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, and ran downstairs.

  His hands trembling on the wheel, he drove to the hardware store. Inside, he combed the aisles until he found just the right approximation: a pair of black welder’s goggles with thick, dark lenses, and a can of clear flame retardant.

  “Doing some welding?” asked the cashier, a scruffy, T-shirted young man of about twenty who looked like he’d never seen a college classroom.

  “Yes,” Tate said. “Need to fix the springs on my mattress.”

  The young man chuckled. “With a blowtorch? Good luck.”

  “Just ring them up,” Tate said.

  Once home Tate sprayed down the goggles with the fire-retardant and let them dry in the tub. When he was sure it was safe, he put them on, glancing at himself in the mirror. The goggles made him look like a B-movie villain, someone James Bond might toss out of an airplane at the movie’s climax, but he felt safer.

  He had just come downstairs when Evelyn’s key turned in the door.

  “Oh, hello, dear,” she said, looking at him for only a moment before hanging her jacket in the closet. “What on earth are you wearing?”

  He slid the goggles up over his forehead. “There was a solar eclipse this afternoon,” he said. “I wanted to watch it.”

  “I wish you’d told me,” she said. “We could’ve watched it together.”

  “It was just a partial one,” Tate said. “Nothing spectacular.”

  She reached up and attempted to take off the goggles, leaning in to kiss his cheek. Subtly, he sniffed the air around her—only a faint trace of her glycerin soap, the same as she’d smelled when he left that morning. At the first touch of her fingertips he reflexively blocked her hand.

  She frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “They stick to the skin, so you have to be careful.”

  “Oh,” she said, then paused as if she thought a fight was imminent. “I thought I’d make osso bucco tonight. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said. He turned away subtly and closed his eyes until the sensation passed.

  “I just thought it’d be something different. For a change.” She nodded toward the new tablecloth and place settings. “So? You never got back to me. You like them?”

  They were tacky, like a cheap shower curtain, replete with a gold mermaid candelabrum. He didn’t care. “Mm-hmm,” he said.

  Tate went upstairs to his study while Evelyn cooked, her obsession for the last six months: multi-course meals that took hours, served on the good china with napkins folded like doves, as if they were having a dinner party. He would have preferred to eat a frozen dinner in front of the TV, but said nothing.

  She called him down just after eight. They ate quietly, the tinkling of forks against porcelain the only recurring sound. Tate noticed she was staring at him.

  “Good?” she asked.

  He nodded through a mouthful of veal.

  Trevor. The bartender’s name was Trevor.

  “Anything interesting happen today?” she asked across the wide oak table.

  Tate stopped chewing, wondering if he ought to tell her. He almost wanted to. Then he felt something hot and prickly behind his pupils. He closed his eyes until the sensation passed, and finally swallowed.

  “Nope,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  Tate’s eyes itched so much he was afraid to fall asleep, lest he wake from a troubling dream and set the whole townhouse on fire.

  Evelyn was not helping matters, snoring next to him, flopping all over the mattress. At one point she nearly rolled on top of him, into the deep indentation down the middle of the king-sized mattress, which he did not cross and was careful never to lie in. In her sleep she draped her arm over his chest; gently, he swept it off him and wondered how he would face the next day.

  The next morning Tate arrived on campus early, an old fedora and greatcoat obscuring his face to hide the goggles. His office phone was lit up with voicemail alerts about Maggie’s disappearance, detailed descriptions of her, calls for information on her whereabouts.

  A few students laughed when he entered the lecture hall wearing the goggles. “Eye surgery,” Tate said brusquely. “Now open your books.” Tate did not look up from his ancient, yellowed copy of Howards End, straining to read his ancient penciled notes through the goggles. The classroom was eerily quiet during his few pauses but for the sound of heavy breathing, and he had no doubt that at least a third of his students were asleep. For once he was fine with that.

  Later, in his office, Grayson came knocking, his face somber. “The police are involved,” Grayson said grimly. “And it’s made the local news.”

  Tate nodded. “And if they ask, what will you say?”

  Grayson laughed joylessly. “Beats the hell out of me.”

  Tate ducked out of his office earlier than usual and headed for the clinic, sitting goggles-on in the exam room until Jeanine, the nurse, took his blood pressure and hurled the gown at him. Somehow, she managed not to laugh. The gown was a size too small, clinging tightly to his chest and shoulders. He waited there for nearly twenty minutes, until Carville finally arrived, his face a permanent scowl.

  “Jesus, Tate,” he said. “What the hell are those?”

  “Just a precaution,” Tate replied, sliding off the goggles.

  “For what?” Carville said.

  Tate told him everything.

  “Hmm,” Carville said. “Sounds kind of batshit to me.”

  Normally Tate found his doctor’s abrasiveness charming—he detested doctors with too familiar a manner—but this time he shrunk back, his face red and hot. “It’s all true,” he protested.

  “Put your clothes back on, you damn fool,” Carville said, the disdain in his voice causing Tate to tremble. “What you need is a shrink.”

  Tate felt the heat build behind his eyes like steam and attempted to slide the goggles back on, but he fumbled them, and they fell to the floor. A thin line of fire shot from his eyes; Carville’s clipboard sparked, flame appearing right
above the doctor’s hand. “What in the name of....” he said, as he dropped the clipboard and stamped out the fire with his expensive loafer. Slowly, he looked up at Tate.

  “What the hell was that?” Carville asked, his over-tanned face turned ashen, forehead crinkled like a cauliflower bud.

  “Sorry,” Tate said.

  “All right,” Carville said. “Guess I’d better check you out.”

  The doctor examined Tate with unsettling enthusiasm as he asked him about his condition: what he felt before it happened; had he been suffering from headaches, nausea, hot flashes; if it was always a line of fire like a laser, or if things sometimes just went up without warning; could he do it on command, to get a picture?

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Tate said.

  Carville seemed disappointed. “Well,” he said, “nothing really stands out. Best get some tests done—EEG, CAT scan, the works.”

  “Of course,” Tate said.

  “I’ll write up the scripts,” Carville said. At the doorway he stopped, turned back halfway. “You sure we couldn’t get a picture? For proof, I mean?”

  Tate shook his head.

  “Ah, well,” Carville said on his way out. “Nobody’d believe me anyway.”

  When Tate arrived home, he took off his goggles and peered through the living-room window at Evelyn, a cigarette in her fingers, the newspaper unfolded before her. He used to watch her there before coming in: relaxed, beautiful, settling gracefully into later middle-age, she often had her shimmering silver locks drawn up into a loose bun that might at any moment collapse in fine curls over her shoulders. But, perhaps due to the haze, her features were obscured, lusterless, the orange head of her Winston the only thing he could focus on. As he entered, the smoke stung his eyes.

  “Oh, hello,” she said. “You’re home late.” Cigarette still in hand, she got up to kiss him; he took it on the cheek.

  At first, he felt a vague desire to tell her the truth, but it was too complicated, too unbelievable, too personal. “Meeting with the dean,” he said. “Nothing important.” His eyes fell on the yellow glass ashtray on the coffee table: beside all her white-filtered butts lay two speckled brown ones. His eyes began to tingle.

  “Was someone here?” he asked.

  “Rhonda came by earlier to borrow my Moroccan cookbook,” she said. “And then we got to talking, and before we knew it she was here for over an hour.”

  He blinked once and the tingle was gone.

  She stretched her thin arms over her head. “I could use a nap,” she said. “I was out digging up the squash all morning—thought it might make a nice soup. Want to lay down with me?”

  “No thanks,” Tate said. “Work to do.”

  Evelyn’s smile faded slightly, as if she were trying to maintain it. “We haven’t snuggled in a long time,” she said. “And the therapist said little things like that would be good for us.”

  “I know,” he said. “I was there too. I have papers to grade. Maybe later.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Tate hung up his coat, poured himself a Scotch, and trudged upstairs to his study.

  He thought of Maggie, wondered what he might say if the investigation reached him. The indignity of being hauled away in handcuffs, in front of all the gawking students, was too appalling to even think about. Perhaps the judge would consider his condition a mitigating circumstance. Or, he thought, as the Scotch began to work its magic, perhaps the government would spirit him away, study him, use him for some nefarious purpose. He pictured himself, gray-headed, pudgy and slightly bent, in a suit of crimson spandex, charring a foreign cityscape with his newfound talent. He almost laughed.

  The next morning Tate arrived at the hospital early, smiled as the tech positioned his head in the donut-shaped CT scanner, and later fixed sensors to his head with hard thick glue. He felt his heart race at the strobe test, feared another incident, but it only made him dizzy. The EEG technician asked why he was so cheery.

  Tate grinned. “No reason.”

  When the tests were done, he picked the hardened glue fragments out of his hair and drove to campus. For the first time since the incident, he was hopeful; if the tests found something, he could have it cut out, or dull it with medication.

  All over town he saw the MISSING posters: Maggie smiling in polka-dotted pajamas, holding a teddy-bear dressed in matching attire. They started about a mile from campus, their concentration increasing until they reached their zenith at the library, where they hung in every window. Worse, the Channel 8 news van was parked in front of his office building; the reporter held a microphone in front of Grayson, who stared somberly into the camera. Tate stayed in the car until they were finished. He imagined himself on the evening news: microphone in his face, camera capturing his goggled visage as tiny points of orange fire appeared beneath the lenses, the microphone and camera erupting in brilliant flame.

  He snuck inside, unseen.

  His morning class was uneventful; the novelty of the goggles had worn off for his students, and while he struggled to read his notes, the tingling heat did not return. His anxiety began to fade.

  Just before noon his phone rang.

  “Got some bad news for you, Tate,” Carville said, his cigarette-and-whiskey voice more somber than usual, and Tate’s first thought was, brain tumor.

  “I see,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Best I can tell, nothing,” Carville said. “There was a little extra spike on the EEG, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Tate found it difficult to exhale. “So now what?”

  Carville sighed. “I can refer you to a good neurologist. Beyond that...I just don’t know.”

  “Thank you,” Tate said.

  “And Tate,” Carville said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. Maybe you ought to see a shrink. For all I know it could be psychosomatic.”

  “I’ll do that,” Tate said, and hung up, certain that he would not—talking about his affliction was difficult enough; confessing it to a total stranger was even worse.

  He walked to his noon class in a mild stupor, wondering who would be next: some irritating colleague at a faculty meeting, the dean, an alumnus donor visiting the campus.

  When his students asked him about “that girl,” wanting reassurance, he stared back at them through his goggles and said, “The police are doing all they can.”

  “Do you think they’ll find her?” a girl in maroon pigtails asked after a long silence.

  “I don’t know,” he lied. “I hope so.” He suddenly felt the buzz of his cell phone against his hip. He pulled it out of his pocket—it was Evelyn, though she knew very well not to call him during class. As there were three minutes left, he walked out into the hallway and answered it.

  “Hi, dear,” she said. “Could you be a pet and pick up some eggs and butter on the way home?”

  “M-hmm,” Tate grunted.

  As he was about to hang up, she added, “I think we need another appointment with the therapist.”

  “Whatever you want,” he mumbled, and hung up, then walked back into the classroom and slammed the phone on the lectern. As he looked up to take attendance, he felt it again; the computer projector on the ceiling emitted a hail of sparks that fell over the whole room and began to burn. A few seconds later the fire alarm went off throughout the building. Tate sighed and gestured toward the door. The girl in pigtails—Abigail, if he recalled correctly—stayed behind, looking at him with wide, terrified eyes.

  “That means everyone,” he said.

  Abigail continued staring as if she hadn’t heard. “Your eyes—right before the projector blew up...”

  “Probably just a short in the wiring,” Tate said, attempting to sound as smug and unconcerned as possible.

  Abigail’s face turned grim. “I know what I saw.”

  Tate did not know if another episode was forthcoming, and a second student disappearing right after his class would land him in custody. “Outside,” he said. “Now.” H
e pulled down his goggles and glared at her over the top; fear in her eyes, she turned and joined the throng filing out of the building.

  Outside he saw her babbling to her classmates, but their blank expressions suggested he had nothing to fear.

  He felt a strong hand clasp his arm. It was Grayson. “Your handiwork?”

  “Afraid so,” Tate muttered.

  “We won’t get back in for at least an hour,” Grayson said as the fire engine pulled up to the curb. “Let’s go have a drink. We have to talk.”

  They wandered over to a tavern a few blocks from campus; Tate thought he had been there before, but the décor had changed.

  “Nice shades,” said an olive-skinned bald man in a flannel shirt and ancient overalls. Tate ignored him.

  Grayson ordered two Manhattans without consulting him. They nursed their drinks in silence for several minutes, until Grayson finally spoke. “This can’t go on, Merv. Before too long you’ll set fire to a whole building and kill everyone inside.”

  “I know, Charlie,” Tate said, staring into his glass. “I’m sorry.”

  Grayson downed the rest of his drink and ordered another. “I can’t cover for you forever. If it happens again, and the police get wind of it, we’re both done for.” He ducked his head and his voice went low. “I mean, Jesus, Merv—I’m an accessory to murder. Or at least manslaughter.”

  Tate sighed. “I know. And I’m grateful. I really am.”

  “Just tell me what’s going on,” Grayson said. “I haven’t seen you like this since that trouble with Evelyn. You’re not on the outs again, are you?”

  Tate was going to say, None of your goddamned business, but Grayson did not deserve that. “Same as always,” Tate said.

  “That’s good to hear,” Grayson said. “So she isn’t still—”

  “No,” Tate cut him off and finished his drink in one gulp. “Not in three years, as far as I know.”