The Marbury Lens

by Andrew Smith

  I walked from the Tube stop in the rain. It felt good, warm and thick, like blood. By the time I got inside the hotel, I was completely wet.

  The room was a mess. My clothes, the entire contents of my pack, had been scattered everywhere—on the floor, the furniture. Conner was gone. I remembered something about him telling us he was going up to York to be with Rachel. I ached, wished he was here so he could maybe help keep Jack from slipping away entirely.

  I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I still had her brother’s wet shoes and clothes on, didn’t care. And, for the second time in the past few weeks, I seriously thought I wanted to die, to actually kill myself. I couldn’t see any way out of the hole I was in, believed that nothing was going to get better or fix itself. Probably the only reason I didn’t have the guts to off myself at that moment was that I was concerned about it being too much of a burden for Conner, Stella, and Wynn to deal with: my being over here, alone in London, and all.

  How thoughtful of you, Jack.

  But Jack doesn’t cry.

  So I drank a beer.

  Let me tell you what Jack believes about Marbury and the Marbury lens.

  I keep going back to this idea of Stella’s nesting dolls: that there are things inside of things that, in turn, are contained within still bigger things. I can’t guess how many times. I think there’s something called M Theory, in theoretical physics, that says eleven. Dimensions, or whatever you want to call them. I could go with that number, but I don’t really care, either.

  And I see Jack as a kind of an arrow shaft that shoots through every layer, simultaneously, the point directly piercing the exact center. I think everyone’s an arrow like that, too, aiming into their own centers.

  So the Marbury lens is a kind of prism, an elevator car maybe, that separates the layers and lets me see the Jack who’s in the next hole made by the arrow.

  And that hole is Marbury.

  The one sure thing about Marbury is that it’s a horrible place. But so is right here, too. And there’s a certain benefit in the obviousness of its brutality, because in Marbury there’s no doubt about the nature of things: good and evil, or guilt and innocence, for example. Not like here, where you could be sitting in the park next to a doctor or someone and not have any idea what a sick and dangerous sonofabitch he really is. Because we always expect things to be so nice and proper, even if we haven’t learned our fucking lesson that it just doesn’t work out like that all the time.

  Henry believed that Marbury was a world out of balance.

  He needs to take a closer look at this one.

  I opened another beer and sat back against the headboard on the bed. When I moved my pillow, I saw the note Conner had left for me the other night when I’d gone out to meet Henry. I turned it over in my hands, not really wanting to unfold and read it. It would be just like all those missed calls, I thought, just one in a series of messages about how Jack was fucking up his life and needed to get his shit together.

  The phone vibrated in my pocket. I let it go for a while, and then, somehow, I got brave enough to fish it out.

  Brave and considerate Jack.

  I didn’t look at the number.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you now?”

  It was Nickie.

  “I’m at the hotel.”

  “Stay there.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t stand this. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  So the new, braver Jack decided to open Conner’s note, too. But then again, I realized that it’s fairly easy to be brave once you give up caring about how bad things can really be.

  Hey Jack,

  This feels really awkward—writing a note to you. Imagine me feeling awkward around you about anything. Anyway, you’re closer to me than the people in my own family, so I have to tell you that there’s something wrong, dude, and I think we need to do something about it. I’m not sure what we need to do, but we need to do it together. So you should think about it and let me know. And you know I’ll be there for you. So if you want to go see someone about working things out in your head because of what that guy did to you, I’ll go with you, just like I told you I would. And if you don’t want to tell anyone else about it, you know I’m good with that, too. I’ll even go with you to the cops and tell them the truth about what happened if that’s what you need. But the main thing is I just really hope you find a way to stop letting this eat you up like it’s doing.

  I don’t know what the story is with those glasses. It’s like I said, that guy is just trying to somehow fuck with people’s heads to see what they’ll do about it. You have to admit that’s the truth. There can’t be any other way to explain it, but the way you were acting about those things was really kind of scaring me. ’Cause it’s just some fucking glasses that you never even saw till you got over here, and I’d think you could just let it go. Jack, we’ve hung out together just about every day since we were pissing in paper diapers, so the only explanation I can come up with about how mad you are is that it’s about what that dude did to you, or tried to do, I don’t know.

  I hope you don’t get pissed off at me for saying it.

  Anyway, Jack, I am really sorry. And this is hurting me, too. I hope we can forget about all this shit and just be like we used to be. I think you want that, too.

  I have to tell you that after you left, I went out, too. I saw you at that pub, Jack. And you didn’t even look at me. You were talking to yourself like there was someone there, but you were all alone, just staring at a pint of beer sitting on the table in front of you. It freaked me out, Jack. There was no one else around you.

  Don’t be mad about that, but it’s true.

  So, after I got back, I called Rachel and I’m going up to York for a few days on Monday morning, so I won’t be hanging out with you and Nickie that day, not that you’d want me to, anyway. Don’t worry, I can tell you’re sick of me right now. If I don’t make it back before then, I’ll see you at the airport on Friday. It’s really been a great time over here, even with all this shit going on right now between us.

  Just so you know, I’ll do anything you need me to do, and like I said, I love you, Jack. (I am not gay. Well, at least not as gay as you ha ha.)

  Conner

  He’s lying to you, Jack.

  He followed you.

  Conner’s turning into your enemy here, too.

  Fuck you, Jack.

  How did he not see Henry sitting with me? We were there until the place closed.

  This is real.

  But Conner had seen Henry before. He’d pointed him out to me in that picture of Nickie and me in the Underground.

  My camera.

  I dug through the stuff that was scattered all around the floor. I found my camera, turned it on, and hit the preview button.

  This is real.

  It said, “Camera contains no images.”

  I need help.

  This can’t be happening. Maybe none of this has been happening, and maybe Jack is still tied down, drugged out of his mind, rotting on some creep’s bed in California.

  Henry isn’t real.

  Conner isn’t real.

  Nickie isn’t real.

  Marbury is.

  I kept playing with that lens in my pocket, flipping it over and over again through the thick denim of the jeans. But I was too terrified to touch it, knew that in my weakness, if I did, Jack would be gone again; and I’d completely destroy any slight chance I’d have of rebuilding things between me and Conner, between me and Nickie.

  I couldn’t help it. I wanted to go back to Marbury so bad that it was starting to hurt again, so I tried to do anything I could to distract myself. I folded Conner’s note and put it inside my pack; then I started picking up the clothes I’d thrown all over the floor, shoving them into my pack. And all the while, I’d stop from time to time and just listen, because I was really expecting Seth to come around and tempt me with those little noises he’d make, to l
et me know it was time for me to go back to Marbury.

  But he never did.

  I tried to stop thinking about the lens in my pocket, to stop worrying about Griffin and Ben.

  When I felt the sweat coming on again, I even opened another beer, forced myself to drink it.

  Then I lay down on the bed and called Conner.

  The brave Jack.

  “Hey, Con.” I know it’s hard to really hear yourself, but to me, as I lay there on the bed, I sounded lifeless. Miserable.

  “Jack! Where were you?” Conner seemed genuinely happy that I called.

  Happy.

  But I honestly didn’t know where I’d been, so I tried to play my way around the question.

  “At Nickie’s. Hanging out. Nowhere, really.”

  “She told me you broke up with her.”

  Everyone knew more about Jack than I did.

  “I must be out of my mind, Con.” I tried to joke, but it didn’t sound funny. “But she’s coming over right now.”

  “That’s better,” he said. “Dude, I am, like, totally in love with Rachel. I’d marry her right now if I could. And we haven’t even had sex yet, either. It’s like, I can’t believe I’m actually talking about me. Virgin Saint Conner. Ow! Okay, I’m sorry!”

  I could hear Rachel laughing in the background.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at her parents’ house. In Harrogate. It’s really nice here, Jack.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Conner said. “So let’s go out tomorrow night for our last night, Jack. It’ll be fun.”

  “Yeah.” And then I said, “Conner, I’m sorry about how I’ve been acting and stuff. And what you said in your note to me is right. I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe you can help me when we get back, okay? I’m fucking scared.”

  “We’ll get it fixed, man. I promise.”

  “Con, do you know what happened to the pictures in my camera?”

  “No, dude. What?”

  “It’s all empty. We took pictures, right?”

  “Yeah.” I heard him pause. “It’s no big deal if you don’t have pictures of St. Atticus to show off to Wynn.”

  “It was all real, right?”

  This is real.

  Conner exhaled.

  I asked, “What are you doing right now?”

  “Sitting here, watching TV with Rachel.”

  “Tell her I said hi.”

  “Okay.” Then Conner cleared his throat. I guess he must have thought I sounded insane, because he said, “Jack. Don’t do anything dumb, okay? Just relax, and wait for Nickie. Wait for me, tomorrow, and everything’s going to be good, okay?”

  “Okay.” And I said, “Call me tomorrow when you’re almost here and I’ll come meet you at King’s Cross. I miss you.”

  Conner laughed and said, “You are so gay.”

  “All right, Con. See you tomorrow.”

  Then it was deathly quiet, and I just stayed there, stretched out on the bed, waiting, like he told me to do. And I could feel that goddamned lens in my pocket like it was a living, pulsing organism, giving off heat. Whispering to me like Seth did. I knew that if I so much as touched the bare skin of a finger to it that I’d be gone again, so I just concentrated, saying, “Nickie, Nickie, Nickie,” over and over in my mind.

  And I watched the clock beside me until I fell to sleep.

  Midnight.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Fuck.

  I opened my eyes, sat up.

  Just the door. It was Nickie.

  Dizzy, I got up from bed, me and the blankets, all damp from the rain, still fully dressed, wearing her brother’s tennis shoes.

  My hair hung down in front of my face when I opened the door. I didn’t swipe it back with my hand; it was an old defense of Jack’s when he didn’t want to look Wynn or Stella in the eyes. And I was kind of embarrassed about seeing Nickie in my pitiful state.

  She flashed a careful smile when she saw me. She held a blue nylon bag that she dropped at my feet.

  “I brought your clothes back,” she said. “I’ve laundered them all.”

  Nickie kept her arms straight down at her sides, waiting, just beyond the threshold. And I was so stupid and confused that I didn’t really know what to do, so I kept my eyes down and said, “Thank you.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Wait.”

  I went into the hallway after her, but she kept walking away from me.

  “Nickie?”

  “I really do think we should leave one another alone now.”

  I began to panic. It felt like everything was giving away beneath my feet. I stumbled toward her as she paused at the elevator.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said.

  “Neither do I, Jack. And I don’t believe you know how much I care for you, either. But I wonder what happened to the boy I was so taken with to make him turn so selfish and cruel. I’m tired of feeling like an idiot, and I’m scared for you. I can’t be a part of your self-destruction.”

  All I could say was, “I’m sorry. It’s not me, Nickie.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s turning you into a monster.”

  The elevator opened and Nickie stepped inside. I wedged my hand against the door.

  Her eyes flashed anger. “Let me go. I’m tired.”

  She meant it.

  I moved my hand.

  The door closed.

  I leaned against it, holding myself up, wondering why I would just stand there doing nothing, and let Nickie sink away from me.

  I couldn’t remember anything about the Jack she met on the boat, about the Jack who told her she shouldn’t see me again. And I couldn’t come up with any reasons why I was letting this happen, here and now.

  Why I was turning into a monster.

  So I ran after her, flew down the stairwell, and caught her on the street outside.

  “I’m so sorry, Nickie. Please come talk to me.”

  “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Nickie. I promise…”

  “You promise what, Jack?”

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  She left me there.

  I sat down on the side of the road and watched cars that drove past the hotel.

  At that moment, I thought about the ways things could have been different, the other places I could have been—or not been. It would have been so much easier if I had simply said, “Yes, Dr. Horvath, I do want you to kill me right now.”

  But I fought back instead.

  And now here I was, sitting on some rain-pissed road and arguing in my mind about whether I should go back upstairs and find my goddamned phone so I could call Henry Hewitt and ask him—again—if any of this was real; or if I could get up off my ass and try to find Nickie one last time.

  I ached.

  This is real.

  The doorman stood there watching me.

  He wore glasses.

  Stop fucking looking at me.

  I ran.

  And with each step, every breath, I whispered in the back of my throat, This is real this is real this is real. I couldn’t let her go, couldn’t let myself push her away. Nickie was the only thing I could hold on to, the only thing that would keep Jack from floating into Marbury and never coming back.

  Panting, miserable, wet, I found her sitting on a bench in front of Baker Street Station.

  “Nickie?”

  I scared her.

  I didn’t want to scare her anymore.

  “I can’t let you go like this,” I said. “I can be the person you think I am. I am that person, but I need to hold on to you.”

  She’d been crying.

  “Will you help me, Nickie? Can I talk to you?”

  She nodded.

  In the dark, we lay together under a single thin sheet. And I’d gotten up from bed to open the window so we could hear and smell the rain.

  Nickie put her head on
my chest, her hand stroked my belly, just like she did that first night we were together in Blackpool.

  “I can hear your heart,” she whispered.

  “What’s it sound like?”

  “An angry little boy.”

  “Does it?”

  “Well, he acts angry about all sorts of things, but to me it sounds as though he’s hurt.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “He’s not a very good pretender. He’s just afraid that it’s not very manly to be hurt, so he cheats at acting angry.”

  “He should stop telling you things about me,” I said.

  I held her so tightly.

  “I think I know why I told you that I couldn’t see you again, Nickie.”

  I felt her hand tense against my skin when I said it, like she’d been burned.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t even remember how I ended up wearing your brother’s clothes. Because I don’t know where I was the entire time between Saturday night and when I called you from the Underground in Green Park.”

  She was silent. I could feel her breath on my chest.

  “There’s something wrong with me, and I’m afraid.”

  Freddie Horvath did something to my brain, and I’m going to hurt you, Nickie.

  I felt my throat constricting.

  Jack doesn’t cry.

  I said, “I just don’t want to hurt you. Because I really love you.”

  “You won’t hurt me, Jack. Let Conner help you. I talked to him about it. He wants to help you work things out.”

  “I don’t want to hurt him, either.”

  She inhaled. Her breath made a cool whisper of wind on my chest. “You were in Ander’s clothes because you showed up drenched from the rain on Monday evening. You’d gotten lost trying to find your way. You looked quite pathetic. Not the best first impression for my parents, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh God.”

  She breathed a silent laugh. “They’ve since adjusted nicely to my American friend. And you stayed the night, as well.”

  “With you?”