Valentine’s Day gift. . . . This illustration is meant for The Godward Sea Book 2 (which is nearly complete). I think this one is the epitome of love: Nodora reading to his faithful familiar, the raven, Munin. It is my most favorite of anything I have done in recent years, inked on Strathmore paper, colored in shades of silver (not gray) and black with prismacolors.
Latest installment of SHELF-LIFE OF A SPOIL, offered to you like a dewy apple off the tree. Writing these characters feels easy, for now. Some of them might seem familiar if you’re a Final Fantasy fan. By chapter 5 the story kind of started writing itself, which is really weird and consists of me going back to read what I wrote the previous night and being shocked.
Without further adieu. . . .
Chapter 1 is here.
Chapter 2, here.
Chapter 3, here.
Chapter 4, here.
and Chapter 5, here.
=======================================
Chapter 6: Where the Fallen Land
When you show hostility to your colleague, hostility rather than accord or apathy or perhaps the easiest thing, simply ignoring them, your jealousy is like a little toilet paper flag stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
I’d gone to sleep confident in my decision to cancel with Lighton. I’d been convinced that none of it felt right, that I’d been wrong, thoughtless. However, I’d had all morning to think about it while I’d cleaned up, read a few pages in a romance novel, munched a pop tart, sipped coffee. Then I’d sat down by the phone, thinking.
I was now convinced that the age difference between Narel and I felt like the boundary between two eternally conflicted yet negotiating territories. There seemed no end to the immaturity I was capable of as opposed to his level-headed steering and navigating through demons large and small, real and imagined, to keep the ship afloat. And he put up with it to no end, seemingly, as if he expected it or maybe as if he needed it in his life. Sure, everyone does, right?
As I sat near the phone, contemplating what I would say to Lighton, I was filled with regret and I felt the distinct discomfort of unfairness as I had never commented on nor had I ever been asked what I thought about any associates of the opposite sex who may have been friends, business contacts or anything else in Narel’s life. I had never expressed jealousy and then drawn boundaries. I knew what the unspoken boundaries were, obviously, and I expected him, if I was indeed his girlfriend, to abide by them, to respect me, and to never fuck me over–the basics of a functioning relationship, essentially. But something felt off. I felt it in my hesitation to simply dial Lighton up and cheerfully cancel with the boyfriend out of town excuse. It occurred to me how insulting that would be to Lighton, seeing as how he was not trying to become my boyfriend, and therefore using mine as an excuse to reject his friendship seemed presumptive, arrogant, and kind of fucked up. The birds bothered me, yes. But being a shitty potential friend bothered me more. I could hide from the crows, turn the music up, avoid windows. I could not avoid myself as my brain would play the same song on repeat until I faced the guilt, or the music so to speak.
I hadn’t been able to do much more than cower in the face of Narel’s anger. I’d understood his anger, and I’d registered my folly. But now, sitting alone by the phone, I registered the entire picture. I’d acted like a child and allowed, no, implored Narel to make the decision for me.
It was 9:45am.
A knock on the door scared my hand off the phone. I had to buzz people in; they couldn’t just come and knock on the door. I peeped through the pinhole in the door and saw a man in a black pin-striped suit, a middle-aged man I’d never seen before.
I opened the door. ”Yes?”
He smiled at me as if fascinated for a moment, gaze searching my face and then my body. He was angular like a rodent, but cleanly shaven and polished. He wore a pin on his lapel, gold angel wings. His handkerchief frothed from his breast pocket, shiny burgundy silk. He laced his fingers together and dropped his hands to rest over his crotch and I caught sight of a Rolex on his wrist and some obviously expensive rings on his fingers. A business man, seemingly enough. Or mafia.
”Can I help you.” I raised a brow at him. He took one step towards me, and I thought he was going to force his way in, but he stopped there. He’d placed his foot just far enough past the doorjamb to ensure I couldnt close the door against him.
“Yes, you can indeed help me. You can help a lot of . . . very important individuals in very high places. You are Kairi Elle, correct? Age thirty, employee at Superior Home Care, artist and writer extraordinaire?”
I made a sarcastic sound. ”What do you want?” His eyes were silver, like coins with pupils within. His jet black hair was spiked into peaks that looked sharp enough to pop balloons.
“I just want to be friends, Kairi. You see. . .” He took a step further in and I took two back. I was angry I didn’t have some kind of weapon, a screwdriver, a lamp, anything, to defend myself with. “You could be the solution, or you could be the downfall. The amazing thing is, its up to you. He left it all up to you, can you believe that?” He was laughing now. “We don’t get any choices, but you, an outcast, a freak, an orphan–you get to decide it all. You don’t mind if smoke, right?” He lit a cigarette then thrust the door open with one arm so forcefully that I stumbled backward and tripped over the throwrug.
I swatted my hair off my face, pushed myself up and stared at him. ”Who the fuck are you. Or what,” I growled.
”One thing he never said, though, or forgot to say, was that we couldn’t interfere. He never said we couldnt affect you, and it looks to us as if that might be the only way to win this thing and kill you for good this time.”
I heard the crows in the corridor behind him and I scrambled to my feet. My heart was drumming erratically and I smelled. . .
I smelled incense. The fringes of my vision were going white as I stared at the man and I knew beyond any doubt that this man had everything to do with the dark birds haunting me. He almost looked like one of them, his long nose and feathered spiky hair.
“You’ve already tasted poison, haven’t you, Kairi. It doesn’t work on you, though. I tried to tell big brother the bitch is too strong for poison, she’s been alive too long, and here you are, healthier and more defiant than ever. And might I say, radiant.” He grinned. “You’ve gained a new name, you know. Poison eater, just like one of those tropical rainforest butterflies. You always did love butterflies.” He chuckled, exhaling ribbons of bluish smoke.
Poison? I’d an odd experience right before Narel came to me. Poison, yes. In California I used to eat at an Italian deli every night after work. I’d call it in on my way home and then pick it up on the way. The last night I ever went there, my food had smelled strange, sour and acrid. I had taken one bite and then another and pushed the rest aside. It’d tasted like it smelled. I’d been too busy with homework to return to the place and complain. Within an hour my pulse increased as though I’d been running at top speed. I heard it rippling in my ears, and my blood burned through my veins, and my heart felt as if it was expanding, trying to burst free from my ribcage. I had concentrated on my well-being, concentrated and prayed, perhaps. I fell asleep, ice cold and twitching, sure I wouldn’t wake up.
When I did wake the next day my mouth tasted sour and acrid like chemical, and it hit me that it had been the food. But I’d no way of knowing, no way of proving that it’d been poisoned. Maintenance had visited the building the morning after I’d eaten the poison. I remember the building cleaning lady; she was El Salvadorean. Brenda. She proceeded to use what seemed like bottles of bleach to clean the halls, and the entire building was saturated with the odor. The odor had made my already punished heart beat too rapidly again. I’d had to leave the building and go to the coffee shop. Later I’d read the label on a bottle of Clorox Clean-up, specifically the red-lettered warning at the bottom of the label: something to the effect that the odor of bleach adversely affected heart patients or people with irregular heartbeats. As I drove out of California, contemplating what had happened to me, poisoned, I couldn’t help but feel that the bleach had been used to finish the job, so to speak, because it certainly had an effect on me, however my body had caught the signal and I’d instinctively escaped to cleaner, bleach-free air.
I’d called Narel and told him I was leaving California; I was going somewhere quieter and less poisonous. I pleaded him come to me, stay with me. I never knew if Narel had truly believed me, but he’d come to me on the next plane. I was fine by the time he arrived, of course, which had been a week after the incident. Despite his urging, I didn’t want to go to the doctor. I just didn’t want to eat out-food anymore. I’d only eaten out-food again, recently, with Narel, and he would always pick the restaurant and I would feel safe. A subsequent exam at the doctor, several weeks later, showed me doing as I always had, which was abnormally perfect, my heart in excellent condition as was everything else, except my state of mind.
My eyes stung with tears as I stared down my intruder. “What do you want from me?”
He scoffed. “Death or cooperation. Ask something more complex, such as how we let you slide for so long or why you’re so important to him.”
He gazed at my apartment walls, at the artwork on the walls, at the thrift store furniture. His gaze darkened when he looked at the chair, Narel’s and my chair. He sniffed in the chair’s vicinity, hard and vigorously, like a dog. He laughed. “So that’s it.”
Before I could react he was in my face, his hands clamped to either side of my face, his cigarette smoking in between his fingers in my hair. I smelled my hair being singed and I struggled, but his grip was rock solid, and the heat in his hands tremendous. The cigarette dropped onto my arm, momentarily stinging, and then onto the carpet, burning. His fingers bore into my temples like he was trying to mold clay. Pressure was building behind my eyes.
”Why?” I whimpered, holding his gaze, ”why?”
”You don’t get it,” he hissed at me. “You don’t get to fuck your way back to Graceland, understand? Everything you do belongs to us, all your fortune and your failure and your blood and bones until such time as you have absolved the debt you owe. If it was up to me I’d smash your pretty little face right now, fingerpaint your dying expression in your sketchbook with your blood and your brains. Little bitch. Fucking whore.” He started squeezing my head, as if he meant to crush it.
I began screaming. At the top of my lungs, with all the strength in my diaphragm and all the fear I’d been storing for years, I bloody screamed.
“Stop it! Stop it, you fucking cunt!” He was shaking me by my head. The entire world appeared to be quaking. I snatched the angel wing pin off his lapel and drove the point under his chin. ”Damn you!” He let me go, flailing, and a hundred crows, a thousand perhaps, poured flapping and squawking through my front door and towards the window in the livingroom, which they smashed through like paper. Their bodies flowed from door to window like liquid pouring into a cup, and the wind from it was enormous, whipping papers and books off of shelves and tables, knocking vases and paintings to the floor.
I think I was still screaming. He was yelling, ”Fuck you, fucking–! Shut up!” He pushed me down with an invisible force from his extended hand, and when I hit the floor he started kicking me. ”Shut the fuck up!” He kicked my neck once and I noted, amidst my choking and sputtering, that he was wearing some very expensive steel-toe shoes.
I let my head loll onto the floor as I coughed and trembled and curled up and braced for more, when suddenly I saw a second pair of boots, another man, entering my apartment. Without words, without hesitation, a brawl ensued between them. It seemed I heard no voices but countless screeching birds, the piercing high shrieks of falcons, the throaty caws of crows, and it seemed, as the world became gilded in white and all the edges glowed and throbbed, that I saw feathers landing on the carpet amidst their battle.
The last thing I saw was the second man, whose hair appeared to be a shocking shade of crimson, jumping out the window in pursuit of the spiky-haired man. I wondered how they would survive the 3-storey fall, and then all my vision was swarmed by light until I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to take any more.
*
I awoke to my landline ringing. The ring was eerie. It echoed and rose in timbre at the end, which I never remembered it doing before. My left side cramped explosively when I attempted to rise. I crawled toward the easy chair and slumped against it, reached the phone.
“Yeah.” My throat hurt, voice rasped. I remembered getting kicked in my throat. I was sure I was bruised inside. I could feel a lump, taste the copper of blood.
”Kairi? You okay?”
The voice was familiar. My mouth opened and nothing came out.
”I’m down here with Dorothy Jane. I just read her a prayer and I was about to leave the hospital, since. . .”
Shit! 2:45pm. Lighton. He’d stayed with Dorothy all afternoon waiting for me. How had he gotten my home phone? ”Uh, Lighton. Hi. Im sorry. Um. I meant to go. I did. I had a . . . visitor at the last minute.”
”Kairi. You don’t sound okay. What’s wrong?” Genuine concern.
“Um. It’s a long story,” I said. My voice was shaking, dammit.
”Care to explain?”
”Well. . .” I didn’t know what to say. I started crying quietly. I couldn’t tell him what happened: Some mafia-type dude in a two thousand dollar suit burst into my home, told me some crazy shit, that I owed a debt, then beat me to the ground, which apparently instigated a fight with another chap who showed up in the nick of time and chased him off. . .?
“Are you at home?”
“Yeah.” I looked around what remained of it. Glass was everywhere, splinters sparkling in the dark gray carpet. Smashed window, front door hanging off the hinges, wallpaper scraped and peeling. The landlady would not approve of this shit. It seemed to me that she would not believe that I hadn’t done it. In fact, I was the likeliest candidate.
”I’m coming over, okay? I know the building, it’s right by the cafe, but I don’t know your apartment number.”
I hardly felt present as I told him the number. After I hung up I lifted my tank top to look at my side. A heavy bruise had bloomed just under my ribcage, purple edged in crimson. Nothing was broken, just on fire. I took four aspirin one by one without water and stared out the broken window. The curtains were ghostly remnants of curtains, ragged and buoyant on the sea breeze. I looked down to the ground where the two men must’ve landed after their exit. Nothing was amiss down below, no proof that they’d been there or that anything had happened aside from the shattered glass on the lawn. I remembered seeing feathers during the chaos. There wasn’t a trace of them now.
I would’ve started cleaning before Lighton arrived, except I think I wanted to know if he saw all this shit, too. I sat far from the easy chair, which I remembered had garnered a strange comment from the pinstripe suit. I sat on the love seat and I left the front door open, as it had been all these hours while I’d slept, and I waited for Lighton.
*
”Why won’t you call the police, Kairi,” Lighton said. He sat next to me on the love seat. He dabbed a wound on my forehead with a cotton ball dowsed in antiseptic. The sting was incredible, but I let him because he seemed angrier than I at that point. He needed to be preoccupied.
”What do I say to them?” I was tired after explaining it all to him. I’d recounted everything so deadpan, so leaden, that I couldn’t believe he believed me, although the state of my livingroom was proof enough that something extremely insane had taken place in it. ”What can they do considering . . . the supernatural implications of my story? They’ll put me in the looney bin, which, you know what, is probably the safest place for me right now.”
”Kairi. You’re safe now.” He looked in my eyes for a moment, then went back to my wound.
”Here?” I said, gesturing around my trashed apartment. ”I can’t even close the window or lock the front door. After she kicks me out, my landlady is going to sue me.”
“Come with me. Just for tonight.” He was looking at his lap, then turned his gaze into mine. He was absolutely serious. And I was still not quite present.
”Really?” I said.
”I won’t let you stay here alone. I’d stay here with you but as you said you can’t lock the door. You can’t even close it the way it is.”
”I won’t interfere with anything? I won’t be a bother?” I was cautious, always, of being a bother. I considered myself such a fantastic one for Narel.
Narel. Shit.
”Let’s pack now before it gets dark.” He was already up, inspecting everything, opening and closing closets, checking. He wandered into my bedroom and I assume he found my clothes and whatever necessities he thought I needed because shortly after he returned with three bags bulging with my things. ”Come on.”
I went like I felt, traumatized and vacuous. He grabbed my hand in the hall outside the apartment, because I stood there blankly, staring through the broken door into my room. I was looking at the easy chair. He squeezed my hand subtly and I squeezed back to let him know I registered it. ”Let’s go. I’ll bring you back in a few days, when you need to come back. I can fix the window, if you’d like.”
”You do that kind of thing?” I asked as we walked towards the stairwell.
He smiled. “I build all sorts of stuff, fix all sorts of stuff. Plumbing, construction, carpentry, I do all that. Whenever I get upset it’s good to go banging around on some wood or some pipes for a couple hours, dispel the rage.”
I knew the feeling although I would’ve rather banged on something else. I decided to spare him this joke, as I wasn’t in the mood and I didn’t want him blushing again. ”I really, really appreciate this, Lighton. You just don’t know.”
“Anything for a friend in need, Kairi.”
The sun was setting beautifully as we exited the first floor lobby. I was starving. ”If we stop by the store for a few things I can make us dinner,” I said.
“You cook, too, huh?”
”It’s one of my talents.”
”I’m intrigued.”
”Good,” I grinned. I felt better the farther we got from the room and the closer to his car.
“Are you up to it, though? I still think we should take you to the hospital.”
“I’m a quick healer,” I said. At his silence I added, “I’d go if I felt I needed to.”
He looked at me critically for a moment. ”Why don’t we both do dinner? I might also know a thing or two about cooking.”
I raised my brows but wouldn’t let him see it. I had a good suspicion the next few days would either be very, very interesting or very, very disastrous. ”So. . .You like Italian?”
The latest installment of subliminal threats and supernatural conspiracies in Kairi’s world.
Chapter 1 is here.
Chapter 2, here.
Chapter 3, here.
and Chapter 4, here.
===========================
Chapter 5: Leash Laws and Collar Etiquette
[. . . In which friendship’s side effects include demonic utterings from Alzheimer’s patients and being pursued by a murder of crows; karate-kicked walls and panic attacks.]
His gaze sought out Dorothy Jane first. I followed suit, gazing with a kind of languid pity at her. She was asleep, the white bedcovers pulled up to her chest. According to the digital monitor beside the bed, which she was strapped to with strands of tubing and wire, her blood pressure and pulse were low while her oxygen was excellent, which was good considering she was attached to oxygen. The bright flush in her cheeks and forehead had receded and she was pale, cross-hatched with wrinkles and dappled in agespots, her skin translucent enough to count the blue veins underneath it.
He looked at me. “Hey,” he said in a near whisper. Hospitals, like libraries, always seemed to require cautious hushed voices. Inside the hospital, however, all the strained quietude seemed proper etiquette for not waking Death who is, as we would naturally assume, a very light sleeper but not a morning person.
“Hi.” I stood and offered him my chair that he might sit bedside. He held up a hand and I caught the scent of green soap as he brushed past me and sat directly beside Dorothy on the bed. She didn’t stir as he leaned down and kissed her forehead, a gesture that I hadn’t foreseen and that karate-kicked an immediate hole in the wall I’d worked so hard to fashion around myself in preparation for him.
He was in his priest garb again, which I wouldn’t have forgiven had I not known that it was Saturday and that I’d caught him at church when I called. Something about those somber clothes unraveled me. I wasn’t sure why, considering Narel dressed in black daily, head to toe. It suited Narel almost maddeningly, however, and he didn’t have the white collar below his Adam’s apple. That seemed the finishing touch to whatever it was unnerved me. I suddenly wished I’d told Narel all about Father Lighton and Dorothy Jane. I wouldn’t have had to feel guilty, and I wouldn’t have fallen back on the old fear and paranoia over a sign as obvious as a priest. His entire presence struck me as an omen. The crows had certainly seemed rather interested in me since that day at the coffee shop. If Narel had known where I was and who I was with I would’ve felt safe, which, I suddenly realized, I always had in his presence
.
We were just looking at each other. He was so pretty. I couldn’t bear it. ”Do you know of any family, besides Yvette and Rena, that should be notified? Anybody that mayve gone to church with her?”
He glanced off thoughtfully. I sat back down. ”She has a son named Chester, police officer in Fish River, I believe. He’s never come with her to church. I’ve never met him.”
”So, no?” I smiled, tired. I heard the crows. I knew the walls were soundproof and that there were no crows outside the door, yet I heard them. I was afraid to turn towards the window.
He’d looked past me and was now staring at something out the window. Blankly, he said, “I can call members of the church that I know she talks to and see what develops from there. She’s got more friends than family but I know they’d all want the chance to visit her.” His voice wavered a little on his last few words. I saw a shadow in him and somehow I knew it was linked to the funeral he’d recently mentioned. Marguerite, the gossip. Given what he’d said about most of his parishioners being little old ladies like Dorothy Jane, and given that her friend Marguerite, also a parishioner, had just died, I gathered in an instant that in his daily life he faced the possibility of burying most the members of his church sooner rather than later. I wondered if it was the result of the younger generations lack of interest in religion and the older generation dwindling by the year.
I turned to the window and met the mocking gaze of the crow then turned back to the Father. He’d watched me look at it. ”Big crows out here, huh?” He smiled. It wasn’t layered with anything, not devious or coy or knowing. I was glad he saw it too. I wondered if he heard it as well.
“All the birds out here are huge,” I said. I was trying not to yell over the cawing. Pretend you are on a cell phone: there’s a mic in the phone designed to amplify your voice so that you don’t have to yell like a moron in public places.
“It’s the vultures you really don’t want to see,” he said. “Theyre real creepy.”
“I’ve seen them. They struck me as creepy, yes. Good word choice,” I smiled and he chuckled.
“So, how are you holding up? Are you okay going through all this?” he said.
“It never gets easier. I wouldn’t want it to, really.”
”Hm.” He seemed to think about that. “Otherwise you’d become numb to it.”
“Right. Being numb kind of ruins all the really awesome sensations.” I said it casually with a shrug. Seconds later, as he reddened, I regretted saying it. Lord.
“I never asked,” he said breaking the weird silence, “how long you’d been in town? Are you going to stay around, or. . .?”
”I’ve been here about a year. I don’t know how long I’m staying, actually. I just wanted a peaceful quiet place to finish out my degree. I guess I’ll at least be here until then.” I hoped I wasn’t talking loudly over the birds. I’d left out, of course, that this place was quiet enough and obscure enough that Narel and I could almost live like a real couple, mostly undisturbed and unmolested by my monsters and his, which included fans and paparazzi gadflies that stalked him all over the world.
Quiet, except for the goddamn crows. I should have brought Narel up; I just wasn’t sure how. Would I refer to him as my boyfriend? I wasn’t certain he would have wanted me to. There were so many things he and I neglected to talk about. However, I had probably coaxed him into no less than twenty different sex positions, and he’d contributed his share of interesting angles as well, so it wasnt that we werent thorough with each other.
”There are some pretty good places to visit and hang out whenever you have the time. I’ve only been here about a year myself. I’m originally from Chicago.”
“Yeah?” I smiled. “What’s with the accent?”
He laughed and reddened but it wasn’t in such an awkward way this time. ”It helps to affect one when you can.”
“So, the sheep in your flock respond to bleating with a Southern accent?” I said. I made my impression of said Southern sheep and we both dissolved. He wiped a tear amidst his laughter. I instantly liked that he didn’t take his position seriously, that I could make fun of him in it. We were so loud we roused Dorothy Jane.
She blinked her bloodshot eyes, which were the 50s Hollywood starlet shade of blue, and she immediately smiled in recognition at her priest. I sat back while the two of them conversed, mainly him assuring her that he was, indeed, there, and that she had not died. When she became extremely disoriented, and he grew nervous at the hurdle of her Alzheimer’s, I joined and began to lead the conversation, and the three of us invoked pleasant memories from her youth and her hobbies, before all the pain set in, and in the midst of that I sensed that Dorothy Jane would live, that she would be different and needier but she would live, and I sensed that Lighton was in no way afraid of pursuing a friendship with me, which in my mind made him quite daring for a priest. It amused me. It humbled me, actually. I couldn’t see how it was worth it to him, which I knew was a failing on my part. I kept going back to the no-sex thing in my mind, which really was ridiculous and inconsequential and immature–as if sex had to be inevitable between men and women, as if we could not simply be friends. And that was what humbled me: that he’d seen something in me that made him want, simply, to be friends. I wasn’t sure why it was so surprising except that it had never happened to me before. Well, maybe it had in elementary school.
”I’m running really, really late,” he said, pausing the conversation to glance at his phone.
“Should you go?” I smiled at him.
He held my gaze. He sighed.
Dorothy had started winding down. I rang for her to have some ice water and she wanted some rainbow sherbet, which I helped her eat while Lighton watched from the chair by the window. There were no crows behind him. They’d seemed to leave when Dorothy opened her eyes.
“You working tomorrow?” he asked me.
I scraped the last spoonful of sherbet from the little white paper cup and fed it to Dorothy. I held her eye contact while I answered him, “No.”
”Will you visit Dorothy?” He sounded quieter, somewhat urgent.
I threw the cup away and returned to Dorothy with a damp towel to wipe her mouth.
“Thank you darling,” she murmured and nodded. She closed her eyes again and I reinserted the nasal oxygen tubes then helped her get comfortable.
“Will you visit her?” I countered. I pulled her blankets back over her chest then turned out the light directly over the bed.
“Yeah. I can drop by tomorrow around eleven,” he said.
I turned to face him. ”Okay,” was all I said.
He laughed to himself, ran his hand through his hair. “Will you come?”
I laughed in a breath, staring at my feet. ”Um. Yeah. Eleven. Okay.” I didn’t know why I’d agreed to such a ludicrous thing. I was thinking of Narel nearly every second of our exchange, and when he finally made to leave I was relieved.
“See you tomorrow, Father,” I said more demurely than I meant to.
“Call me Lighton. Please,” he said lowly. And before I’d a chance to respond, he bent to Dorothy Jane and took one of her hands which woke her. He pulled a very small, very thick bible from his breast pocket and he told her softly what he’d like to read to her and why he’d picked it, a psalm about patience that grew more familiar to me as he neared the end. And I saw her eyes crinkle at the corners in her delight, and she thanked him more demurely than I had, the color returning to her face as he held her gaze. I imagined a gallery of female parishioners before him, all of them rapt with the same vacuous adoration in their eyes. And my mind strayed again to what kind of life that would be, having legions of female followers who grew infatuated and attached to him while he could not respond to his natural instincts and he could only give affection through passages from the bible and through listening to their sins, hopes, and failings. And I admired, fleetingly, his faith that he could place it higher than his instincts. Perhaps I envied him.
He gave her his thoughts on the psalm, that he knew the Lord would end hopelessness in time and remove or place obstacles such as pain when and if they were needed to progress or alter ones journey. The last thing he said was, ”We could all be a little more patient in our lives. Instead we rush towards an end, eager and greedy, and we miss obstacles that are right in front of us and we sometimes stumble on them.” He looked at me. “Patience is pausing to observe the obstacles and plan ways around them. The greatest patience is learning to live with those obstacles and keeping joy and peace within ourselves despite them.” He raised her blankets back up to her chest, kissed her forehead again, then cast a last glance at me.
“See you.” He winked then turned to go. I listened to his heels against the spotless gray floor. Dorothy was already asleep again.
“He is so nice, isn’t he?” It was Dorothy’s ragged drugged voice. I turned to her, again, knowing that a moment ago she’d been snoring lightly. Her eyes were still closed.
”He’s nice,” I answered though I doubted she’d hear me or respond.
“You can’t help but like him,” she said in her slow, slow drawl.
I sort of laughed. “True.”
”That’s just the point. You like the priest, don’t you?”
I frowned. My fingers were hot; my ears too. She appeared, for all the world, to be sound asleep. Her features were slack and her chest moved according to sleep behavior. I moved closer to her. I stayed silent and watched her speak again, the mouth moving as if via an invisible puppet string. The words were slurred like she was drunk:
“Yes. You like him, don’t you. I finally caught you. Now just stop struggling like a silly old fish.”
A crow landed outside the window. And more crows, dozens, were on the horizon soon to arrive. I heard them, scores of them. I shut the blinds which blocked them out and fairly darkened the room. I checked Dorothy Janes vital signs on her monitor, and I felt her forehead, and I used a towelette to wipe the drool off her chin, then I sat down again and, confident she was still asleep, I switched on the television that hung in the high left corner of the room. I played with the Blackberry, downloading apps through an entire episode of Dr. Phil: Teenage victims of stalking and bullying face their demons. Oh, fuck you, Dr. Phil.
I drove home with the stereo cranked to nearly maximum volume. I was in a death metal mood, although usually I listened to love songs and ambiant techno-inspired stuff, mostly Bjork or Sarah Brightman or Tori Amos, sometimes things far more obscure and abstract and too numerous to list here. I could never live without music. I generally liked a collection that was complex and melodic, and I loved pure poetry and stories in lyrics. Classical would do when all else was absent. That said, I had not pulled out a Kittie CD since I’d left California.
Crows landed on nearly every lightpole along the way, or they followed the car in flight, soaring just within view if I looked up through the vaguely blue part of the glass on the windshield. My torso twisted around itself to remind me that I’d forgotten to eat any portion of the snacks I’d packed in my bag this morning. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, actually. Wait; I remembered eating a smorgasbord of Japanese food with Narel the last time hed spent the night. We’d ordered in. Narel had hated the sushi and I agreed; the only good ones were the veggie rolls with avocado in place of fish. The miso soup had been perfect. It’d come in these cute little black bowls designed to look as if they were made of charcoal. I’d washed them and saved them. Had I not eaten for nearly a week? Why I hadn’t noticed until now was beside the point. I needed food.
*
Narel wasn’t answering his phone. I left three texts. I told him I’d be visiting Dorothy at the hospital tomorrow. I wanted to tell him in person about Lighton. I had to tell him. I felt haunted by more than crows. I didn’t have it in me to be unfaithful to him. Even though I knew nothing romantic could ever arise between Lighton and I, I still needed to tell Narel that we were meeting tomorrow to visit Dorothy Jane.
After the sixth try I became impatient with his voicemail answering service and finally left him this message: “It’s 2:00am over here. I’ve called you . . . several times. I just wanted to hear your voice. I wanted, also, to be able to tell you about a guy, Dorothy Janes priest. We met at the cafe on the corner, and then we met again when Dorothy was admitted to the hospital, and were meeting again tomorrow to visit her. He just wants to be friends. Let me r
eiterate that he’s a priest, okay, a Catholic priest. I’ll be there at eleven in the morning, probably be home by 2:00. Um. Let me know what you think; call me back this morning, even if it’s at four or five AM, okay? I’m going to bed. I love you.”
I ended the call, took a deep breath. Mission accomplished. I hoped he wouldn’t actually call back, that he’d heard all he needed to hear and it was all good and I would fall out, exhausted as I felt, into bed and not know a single other thing until the alarm went off at 7:00. I put one of his unwashed t-shirts and curled up, deliciously exhausted, in my bed.
*
I rolled onto my side and stared at the glowing screen of the Blackberry. The ringtone was a fairy bell which, when you were rung up mid-dream at 4:44am, sounded like someone shaking a glass jar of ball bearings. I dreamed that Narel was fighting somebody–or thing–and he kept throwing things at them that he appeared to produce from inside of a hat, and he turned to look back at me for a moment and he said, “Why can’t you ever wear one?” and he went back to the battle until somebody’d started rattling ball bearings near my head. I must have been deliriously tired to believe, even for a moment, that he wouldn’t call me, livid and bloodthirsty at 4:44am.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I kind of whispered to him. I sneezed.
He paused for awhile. I listened to him taking deep breaths. Some of them were trembling.
I was cautious. “Narel. What’s the matter?”
“Kairi, what the hell?”
“Good morning, Narel. You got the message.”
“You met a priest and decided to become friends because you’ve a mutual interest and now youll be using that mutual interest to meet each other again? A priest, seriously. You’ve got a fetish!”
“I do not. That’s . . . a really insane statement, Narel. Have you had a bad day?” I knew that didn’t help. He’d thrown me badly off-guard with that last thing.
How’d you think I’d feel, honestly?” He was so loud I had to turn the phone volume down a few notches. I’d never heard him so loud. Now I was taking deep breaths. ”Would you have agreed to meet him again if I was there?”
I was silent. I put my hand over my heart. It had never pounded so fast. ”Narel. Do you want me to cancel. I will.”
“Now that you know how I feel, do you want to cancel,” he countered.
I sat up against the pillow, pulled my knees up to my chest. “Yes,” I said. ”Of course. If I’d known how you’d feel I would’ve never agreed. I just . . . Nevermind. I’ll cancel. Okay?”
He lingered. I knew he wasn’t ready to stop fighting. I just wanted his softness and his tenderness again. I couldnt bear this. “Your reaction sort of answers my question. . .”
“Which is.” He sounded impatient.
”Whether or not you and I are something, the kind of something that calls itself something. You know, like boyfriend. Girlfriend.” I said that last bit stiffly. “As in, if someone were to ask me, and I were to answer truthfully, I would say . . .” and I trailed off, waiting for him. “Are you pausing this long because you’re mad at me right now or because you really can’t bear to tell me?” My voice had gotten smaller and smaller.
“You’re my girlfriend,” he nearly whispered, ”and what I cant bear currently is . . . the distance.”
”Okay.” I understood him. And I was his girlfriend. The panic in me was no longer on the rise. The shock was, however.
“Kairi,” he said, “even when I’m not there, you’re just as safe as when I am.”
“That’s very profound.” I smiled.
I could tell he was smiling as he said, “As profound as it is true.”
”We’re okay, right?”
”Always.”
After we hung up I nestled back into bed. I had no qualms at all about canceling the afternoon with Lighton. That is to say, I shut out very effectively any qualms about it that I may have had. They were selfish. I knew that. I simply needed to tell Lighton the truth, that I had a boyfriend and I felt uncomfortable seeing him while said boyfriend was out of town. Being friends with him had seemed rational at the time but I hadn’t been thinking rationally at the time; I’d been haunted by crows and a patient near death and eerie coincidences. At the time, I’d thought since the sex thing was obviously out of bounds, was the ultimate nothing because Lighton was a priest, the potential for a sexual affair wouldn’t be a factor in Narel’s jealousy. And I was right, it wasn’t. I knew what bothered Narel from the moment hed said fetish. A priest would, he assumed, become an emotional affair for me. He’d called it a fetish because I’d written pretty priests into more than one of my stories. He’d made fun of me for that and for the way I used religion as a compass for good and evil in my stories. A fetish. He might have been right. There are certain lures that work against me when Im weak.
If I hadn’t felt unfaithful I wouldn’t have told Narel. And I was suspicious, of course; the entire thing, the way Lighton and I met at the cafe and then again at the hospital, seemed as suspicious as the sherbert-green-scrubbed nurse who sang good-bye to me and left Dorothy stroking out this morning. There was something all too weird about that leading up to meeting Lighton for the second time, which just so happened to be right after Narel left town, when, naturally, our relationship would be more vulnerable.
And, the crows had not left me alone since I’d met Lighton. I was thoroughly convinced–either Lighton was a demon sent from hell to destroy us, or I was having a nervous breakdown and I’d suffered lapses in common sense and empathy and commitment.
However, on the bright side, these lapses had finally, finally–after nearly seven months of our secret sleepover marathons–finally provoked Narel to call me his girlfriend.
The Shelf-Life Saga continues. Getting into awkward situations with humiliating results is what Kairi does best.
Chapter 1 of SHELF-LIFE OF A SPOIL is here.
Chapter 2, here.
and Chapter 3, here.
====================================
Chapter 4: Self-CTRL-ALT-DEL
. . . In which Kairi decides to try self-control and is haunted by sinister crows and her own ability to see “signs” that portend of tragedy.
“Angry birds is not a cute or funny game. It’s a demonic joke you won’t understand the significance of until later on.”
It was the first time he’d left me. For six months he’d stayed at my side. Well, actually, he’d stayed within driving distance and I had agreed on the distance because we both knew that for him, professionally, living together would’ve fallen into various categories of unnecessary damage. I’d understood. I’d feared, anyway, that if we lived too approximately, such as if we lived in separate apartments in the same building, that my monsters would make his life, both professionally and personally, a living hell. There were other benefits, too, to staying apart. We were writers, which essentially meant part-time loners; we’d admitted amiably that there were times when you needed no one around. This established the precedent for how we felt whenever we were apart: We did not go insane with loneliness, we did not pine and wonder when we’d meet again; we simply knew we would, and in the meantime we submerged in the separate seas of our work and our art.
I convinced myself that this was the case, anyway. What was more immediate was the making his life a living hell part. I didn’t want him to forsake me completely. I treasured even one night, one afternoon. I was especially happy when we woke up together. I didn’t know what any of it meant to him. I thought I knew. And then over-thinking would ruin it.
This time he’d be gone longer than he’d ever been since he got here, and I felt the rising chill of heartache. Everything in my person wanted him near me, wanted to whisper to him the truth, that I loved him and I knew it was reckless and, secretly, I feared it had been induced and therefore I fought an internal argument constantly as I blamed my fears for preventing us from having a normal relationship, although nothing about it could ever be normal. I wanted to tell him all that. I’d tried to in my last journal entry. Since we’d done very little talking the night before, however, I’d forgotten to ask him if he’d read it.
At least, for a month, my writing would be private. I’d have time to work on my stories without feeling Narel’s enormous author shadow over my puny efforts to mimic him. I would be no one’s muse for an entire month. I felt guilty, though: Narel was gone, and I was relieved, good god was I relieved.
As his plane got smaller in the sky I suddenly knew I feared him. I knew my fear of him was the explanation behind my relief. And I suddenly knew, now faced with the reality that he wouldn’t be dropping in and catching me by surprise for an entire month, I suddenly knew why I feared him. His lack of fear over my monsters and his unsettling acceptance of all the sabotage and conditioning and paranoia I described, even though I knew it sounded textbook crazy, amounted to my undying worship of him and a severe lack of self-control whenever I was in his presence. He had sort of quietly become my definition of a hero, of perfection, exquisite allure. I thought he was fearless and invincible, valiant and perhaps coincidentally a perfect lay. Just glancing at him provoked my lust, just knowing he was in the room. And when we did it, nothing bothered us.
Just like last night: the crows had stopped cawing as he and I started making love–which had been cleansing for me, evacuating all my worries and fears. He had been so good and so exhausting I hadn’t thought about the crows again until this moment. The diversion had appeared to combat the crows, or the notion that they were following me. The diversion had also achieved something for me that nothing else could ever since this whole thing began: Peace. Maybe I was possessed of more lust than was considered, by society’s standards, normal. He’d brought that up more than once, chuckling of course, which is what led me to believe that I was often the aggressor and him the obliging mild-mannered beneficiary. I sorely lacked self-control and it was, fundamentally, his fault. He fit too well inside the hero skin; he was everything I dreamed, come at just the right time. I feared the perfection of it. There was a hole in it somewhere. I wasn’t eager to find it.
I also didn’t understand how he functioned so charmingly under these conditions whereas I needed him all the time to relieve me of the damage, whereas I felt terrorized by big angry birds. It occurred to me that he had not been forthcoming with his investigation and what he’d uncovered thus far, although I hadn’t exactly seemed interested in much aside from organizing a perfect horizontal companionship. I wondered if he was relieved to be free of me for a month as well. When I couldn’t see his plane anymore, a small private affair, I left the airport, returned to the condo. No crows had flown over my car or landed on traffic light-poles.
The first half of the week was uneventful as work began again with twelve hour shifts on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It wasn’t until Wednesday night that things began deviating from the norm. I was called by the agency and asked by my boss to cover Carole for two twelve hour shifts with Miss Dorothy Jane on Friday and Saturday. Apparently Miss Dorothy Jane had asked for me specifically, otherwise the agency would not have handed me twenty hours overtime. I’d have to miss two classes, again, but classes weren’t paying for themselves. I accepted it gratefully and Tianna, my boss, seemed quite pleased that I’d gotten a client to request me personally; it spoke well for business and this and that.
I liked Dorothy, plain and simple. When she ceased to be able to work the fields, she turned the immediate acre around her farmhouse into a lush fairy tale garden filled with azaleas, Easter lilies, roses, all manner of good things vibrant and perfumed. She and I would spend the entire afternoon on the creaky tree swing sipping tea, while she told me about species of birds as we saw them, or about her flowers which she took great pride in. It was actually the perfect way to spend an afternoon in my opinion; anything to get her out of that dismal bed in that dismal room and dismal house.
Yes, where I was apparently wary of all others, I happily liked Dorothy Jane Reebley. She lived alone and had been very lonely since her husband died. Her daughters had their own children, their own lives, and they didn’t come by often, however, she had the finest round-the-clock nursing care, in which we would, in rotating shifts, tend to all her medicinal, dietary, and hygienic requirements, as well as to her loneliness. And there was no one to blame for her loneliness. You saw it all the time. It helped to put into perspective, I suppose, one’s own loneliness which was easier to forget as one attempted to lighten someone elses.
Knowing, then, that I’d be working quite a bit in the coming days and would probably be exhausted each time I returned home, I planned to do nothing but art all Thursday long. I wanted to do things that I could’ve shown people other than Narel. I was mad all Thursday afternoon actually as I looked through recent works and realized how much of it was dedicated to him or founded metaphorically on his heroism or my desire for him. The urge to burn half of it prodded me and taunted, but that was too much effort–coaxing a fire rooted in anger into a vigorous dance that should not, as it desired, torch entire cities of monsters and stalkers and voyeurs and murderers and unfortunately lots of regular innocent people as well, but instead just render a couple of art and writing pieces into the silkiest finest ash you’ll ever rub between your thumb and forefinger ever again. No. Fire ungood. You could, however, legally burn backyard trash in this region, but shredding it wouldve been just as effective and actually, better kindling. My fingertips were so hot I wouldn’t need a match.
I needed to do something to keep myself under control. And this would, I was certain, prove a much harder task than it sounded. However right now, in the clarity of my solitude and this perfect moment with my paintbrush rubbing against the canvas, it seemed it might be easier if I attempted this feat with Narel very, very far away from me–god, only temporarily–even if what I really wanted, or thought I wanted, was to spend every second of the rest of my life with him. We would just be that couple in the park with the black cloud raining forever over us.
*
Narel rang the landline the following night. I’d just gotten home from my shift with Dorothy, from 8am to 8pm and noticed the answering machine’s little red message light. ”Hi. I’m in Amsterdam. In a hotel. Everythings fine. How are you? I wish you’d use the cell I gave you. Call mine when you get this.” My heart quickened at his voice. Words from him sounded edible.
I stood in my livingroom, silent and staring at the lamplit wallpaper as the robot woman in the machine declared no more messages. I’d forgotten about the cell phone he’d given me. I was so used to not carrying one. I should’ve called to let him know I’d picked up two extra shifts and wouldn’t be home all day today and tomorrow, which was Saturday.
I plucked the Blackberry out of the drawer and powered it up. It hadn’t been on for weeks. He wanted me safe, I knew, but our definitions of safe differed as Narel considered the device a way to reach me anywhere, while I considered the device with its GPS capabilities and mic inside a stalker’s haven. He sounded far more sane than I on this front, but I honestly loathed cell phones. I’d destroyed an iPhone after finding out how easy it’d been for Narel to have it hacked. He’d even been able to watch me through the phones camera and spy in real time on my videos and of course all my photos. I’d calmly let him know just how disturbing I thought it was that he could confirm my fears so quickly and thoroughly, and after he went home I disassembled the phone with a flat-headed screwdriver. He’d called my landline first thing the next morning and when I picked up, said, “What happened to your iPhone?”
As soon as I started flipping through the Blackberry’s menus the phone rang in my hands. I answered it automatically since he was the only one with its number.
“Narel?” I said, short of breath.
“Are you in debt up to your eyeballs to a company you don’t even know the identity of? Debt Counseling and Solutions can help you pay down your debts and get those pesky anonymous collectors off your–”
I sighed and hung up. A robo-call. Not sure how they got this number seeing as I never used the phone. I swiped into the contacts menu and found the only one and hit Send. I kind of doubted he would answer at this time of day, as it must’ve been barely dawning in Amsterdam. I think it was tomorrow morning there, if I remembered correctly.
“Kairi?” He sounded wide awake.
“Can’t sleep?” I laughed softly.
“Well, you hadn’t . . .” he sounded annoyed. He took a breath and started again. “I was worried about you.”
“I’m sorry. I miss you,” I moaned. I meant it and my heart ached and my eyes watered saying it. I loathed how angry I’d been at him before.
“I miss you, too. Where were you?”
I told him about the two shifts I’d picked up and he’d rubbed it in that I could’ve let him know. I knew I should’ve. “Aren’t you missing class? he asked.
“Yes, but at least the shifts pay,” I said, knowing he was about to argue.
”You’ve come a long way to stumble now, don’t you think.”
“I thought keeping myself busy with work would make this . . . easier. School just reminds me how lonely I am. Work puts certain things in perspective. It is also important to note that it pays.” I paused. “I wont miss anymore.”
He was silent a moment. ”Do me a favor and leave the Blackberry on. Keep it in your pocket and dont turn it off, okay?”
I gritted my teeth and pushed at a cuticle. ”Narel.”
“Just do it. That way I can text you and you can answer when I call. You can turn the phone off after I come back. And don’t remove the battery. Leave the phone on. Charge it as necessary.”
“I will.” I felt like a spoiled child that he had to give me directions that I wanted badly to disobey. I had been terrorized via my phone before, so it didn’t feel particularly fair to have my fears reduced to childishness. However I understood his reasoning and his concerns, and I let it go. ”Narel?”
“Hm?”
“When you return, might we discuss . . . the living arrangement again?” I sounded meek, on the verge of tears.
“As soon as you want,” he said simply.
“And. . .” The tears had spilled now, and I was trying hard to not sniff so he wouldn’t know. ”I wanted to know. . .”
“Yes, Kairi.”
“Did you read the last entry in my journal the night before you left?”
His voice dropped intimately: ”Yes.”
“Oh. I . . .” I started hiccuping as I wept, trying to keep as silent as possible. ”I really do feel horrible about everything. I love you, Narel. I’ve never loved anyone like you, and I’m trying really hard to be good to you.” He knew I was crying then, he had to. ”And I must be failing so I’m sorry.”
“Kairi.”
“I’ll work harder, I promise. I’ll stop making excuses–”
“Kairi.”
“Yeah.”
“I love you, too. I must.” He chuckled a bit then sighed. “I love you, right?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t forget in three days and accuse me of being out to get you?”
I smirked. “You’ve no idea what it means, what it feels like to hear those words.”
“I do, too,” he said.
“Do you? You’re my best friend, Narel.”
“I should’ve said those words sooner, shouldn’t I’ve?” I heard the sadness in his voice.
“I should’ve,” I said, dimly.
Silence. I sat in the easy chair we’d made love in a few nights ago. I’d never use Febreze anywhere near it ever again.
“Are you going to survive or do I need to come back?” He was smiling.
“Come back.” I grinned through tears.
“Call me in about six hours, okay?”
“Gonna get some rest?”
“Finally now, yes.”
*
On Saturday morning, shortly after I arrived to Miss Dorothy Jane Reebley’s, I noticed that her facial expressions weren’t right; she was too flushed and she was squinting one of her eyes like a pirate. I tried to help her out of bed and her normally reliable legs buckled and swayed beneath her.
“Come on, hon, you can do it,” I encouraged. I stood in front of her, bent, with my arms around her fragile waist. Her arms were around my shoulders. For the first time since I’d met her she smelled of urine. She was halfway to standing but I was supporting nearly all ninety eight pounds of her. ”Put your legs into it, Dorothy, please?”
“No, sweetie. Nope.” She was trembling, her tone adamant. She either refused or couldn’t stand on her own. I lowered her back into a sitting position on her bed and knelt in front of her. I had to bend her left leg under her so she could sit normally. I had a feeling what was wrong with her.
“Dorothy, look at me, in my eyes, yes. Can you tell me what day it is? What month, what year?”
“Today? Fifth of January, 1970,” she said, dreamy and swaying.
I happened to know that was her wedding date. She slipped into the fog, or rather her blood was spreading like fog over her brain, as she explained that she was late to meet her husband at the altar, he’d been calling her persistently, and could I help her get to him. I took the Blackberry out of my pocket and dialed 911.
*
Dorothy was given a room on the third floor. It was quite small and at the moment cramped with ward nurses and nurse assistants who managed her vitals and symptoms, and basically performed the duties I did for Dorothy at home, as hospital protocol demanded that all private nurses not do the staff’s job but instead buzz the callbox for help whenever assistance was needed. Which left me as the odd one out, a sore thumb in my carnation pink and black scrubs ensemble as opposed to the staff’s universal turquoise scrubs. There was generally an unspoken level of tension between hospital nurses and private nurses which was likely rooted in the contrast between safety hazards and salary.
I stepped out of her room to breathe. I checked the Blackberry: 11:43am. My fingertips shook, nearly glowing with strange heat. I shoved my free hand into the pocket of my scrub pants; the other dialed a number on the Blackberry.
I adored this little lady, knew her personally, and they wouldn’t let me near enough to hold her hand and let her know someone familiar was near. I knew it was a stroke or some kind of neurological event nonetheless. I couldn’t help but think, bitterly, that the nurse I’d swapped shifts with this morning mustve seen some of these symptoms before she’d left Dorothy to me. Right before I’d closed the door behind her she’d turned back and smiled and almost sang, “Good luck.” I couldn’t remember her name; she wasn’t the normal night-shift nurse just as I wasn’t the day. Her smile had been strangely inappropriate, a blend of mischief and triumph in hindsight. She’d had short blonde hair, sherbert-green scrubs. I’d never met her before.
I paced the hall, weaving through unconcerned staff and visitors and tried to reach my boss to let her know our client had been admitted to the hospital and that Tianna should, therefore, let the next shift know that theyd report here rather than to Dorothy’s home. There was paperwork, too, that I’d need faxed to me so I could fill it out and send it back.
Tianna was away from the office. As I left the voice mail a message I waited at the window at the edge of the hall and stared at the fantastic view of the bay and the whitish sand of the beach and the tops of all the forest trees. A huge black crow depressed the highest branches of a magnolia near the window and I gasped in the middle of my message. I couldn’t hear it but I saw it cawing.
“. . .So she’s in room 372. No concrete info on her condition just yet. Call me back at this number at your next convenience, thanks, Tianna.”
The bird clearly stared at me. And this had to be impossible because I knew the windows were essentially mirrored on the outside; you could see out but not in. Nevertheless, the bird was close enough that I could see the shine on its gold eyes and scuffs on its beak, and as I backed away, it kept its skeptical gaze cocked toward me. I turned my back to it and dialed Dorothy’s oldest daughter, Yvette, to give her the rundown on her mom’s condition, the room number, etc. Yvette informed me she was out of town, on vacation in West Palm Beach. Shit. I called the other daughter, an elementary school teacher. Rena. It was September so she’d likely be working this time of day. Voice mail. Shit, shit. I knew Dorothy had a son. I didn’t have his number. No other family. Bloody hell. Who else did she have? Her friend Marguerite had just died. . . . Who had told me that?
The goddamn bird was still staring at me. Then another, just as hulking and tousled and prehistoric-looking, landed on the magnolia. The entire crown of the tree swayed under them, slowly back and forth. Their throats constricted and expanded as they appeared to argue, cawing at each other, or maybe summoning more. I stood, dumbfounded. I didn’t want to see these signs, hated them in fact. Whenever I saw them my brain would disconnect from my senses for a minute, or so it seemed, as everything became gilded in a white haze during which I could only observe the sign and my brain interpret it while my pulse ran higher and my fingertips throbbed. Some very particular shit, and it was anyone’s guess as to what, was seriously about to go down right now.
One of the ward nurses brought me out of it with a firm grasp on my wrist. ”She’s losing right now. We were able to get hold of her G.P.; hes faxed her records and prescriptions. Were you able to get in contact with any family? I have no names on file for her.”
”She’s got two daughters.” I knew I looked vacant, tethered to the birds with an epileptic stare. A third one landed. They were all balancing oddly, using their wings to bring them back up each time their branches dipped too low. They stayed in that frail tree, I realized, because it was the closest one to the window, to me. Not a murder, not now. Jesus. ”One of them’s out of town. The other’s a schoolteacher; I couldn’t reach her but left a message. That’s it.”
“Does she have a priest or a pastor?”
My teeth clenched. A fourth crow landed and the entire tree began tipping over. The birds scattered back into the sky.
“Yes, a priest. I don’t know his name but–”
“You might want to get him here, ASAP.” She left me there, staring out the window. The view was empty, just the beach, the water, sky with roiling white clouds and the treetops leaning with a breeze. I suddenly needed to hear Narel’s voice. I didn’t want to call the priest. I certainly didn’t want him here. But who else did Dorothy have? I was fairly convinced that today was fucking with me.
*
I found his card crumpled up in the bottom of my canvas bag, smashed down by my books and snacks but still damnably legible. I was sure I’d thrown it away. I had no recollection of putting it in my bag. I’d had no hope of finding it there, really, I’d just looked and there it was.
I brought up the keypad on the Blackberry then my thumb hovered over the touchscreen. Narel had given me this phone. He could probably remotely check the records, know who I dialed. I wasn’t sure why he would or that he would, but he could. Weird intuition led me to believe Narel wouldn’t take it for what it was, which was nothing, the ultimate nothing, the highest quality of nothing.
I slid past a group of nurses and assistants into Dorothys room. Amidst the traffic of bodies and equipment I managed to find the room phone. It would be noisy on my end, which couldn’t be helped. “Excuse me,” I mumbled after I bumped into an assistant who laced oxygen tubing around Dorothy’s lolling head. The assistant glared at me. I apologized then hunched closer to the phone and dialed 9 and then the number and waited. I was baptized at birth, a Catholic in the time before time, in the long, long ago. It was perfectly normal, I reassured myself, to call on the family priest and request his presence when a member of his church was hospitalized.
“Hello?” I’d never forget that near baritone voice, a voice he seemed entirely too young to have. I imagined that voice booming over the church gallery or speaking intimately and urgently, depending on the prayer.
“Hi, can I speak to, er. . .” I had to look at the card. That was his name? “Can I speak to Lighton, please.”
“This is Father Lighton Aaron, what can I do for you?”
“Hi, Father. This is one of Miss Dorothy Jane Reebley’s private nurses. She’s landed in the hospital today. I can’t get any of her family here, so I wonder if you could–”
“Kairi?”
The way he said my name made me hesitate. Warmth, recognition. Hopefulness.
“Yeah, you remembered. How are you?”
“Hey, I’m glad to hear from you! How is Miss Dorothy? Has her back flared up again?” Such unalloyed pleasant surprise in his voice. I couldn’t help but return the warmth. He almost commanded it.
“No, she’s. . . . She seemed to be having a stroke when I got to her house this morning. She hadn’t gotten out of bed yet, and when I tried to get her up she flat out refused. We couldn’t get her legs moving. She thought it was 1970, the day she and her husband got married.”
“Poor thing, bless her heart. Is she stable now?” He sounded sincerely concerned. I was glad, actually, because she had no one else.
“They’re working on it. She’s on oxygen and a drip and a few other things to bring her back around. But they won’t know the damage for a while yet.” Blood was spreading slowly across her brain; she would need blood thinners to dissolve the clot, most likely; there were two possible medications theyd put her on; there was a high risk for another stroke or several small ones on one of those medications; the other caused bleeding, manageable, for the most part. I couldn’t say those things. I didn’t feel like med school jargon at the moment. It felt condescending and nonchalant and cold. It may have even seemed odd that I knew all that when no conclusions on her condition had been formally reached, or even analyzed at that point. It was too soon. Nevertheless I always knew.
“Shall I come down?” He didn’t hesitate: swift, serious, dutiful.
I was unprepared. ”Well . . .”
“I have a meeting at two, so I’ll only be able to stay for a half hour or so.”
“Well, it might be best seeing as she probably won’t get to church tomorrow. . . .” I think I was trying to convince myself it was alright. My panic wound automatically towards Narel, spiraled itself nice and tightly around him: Should I tell him about this, would he dislike it, would it be my fault if he did.
“What hospital and what room, Kairi?”
I told him. He said it was close to the church. He was leaving now. see you soon. I drank two styrofoam cups of ice water, maybe three.
The chaos in the room had died down and now only two assistants remained. They ensured that Dorothy’s cabinets and drawers were stocked with the appropriate supplies. They gave me a quick tour of the room, revealed the bathroom within a secretive alcove, mentioned there was endless coffee down the hall and a Subway restaurant on the first floor, reiterated where the callbox was, which also happened to be the TV remote, and left. I sat in the chair nearest the only window in the gray sterility. I stared out over the huge magnolia treetops and the pines and I waited for more crows.
I was still waiting for them when he arrived.
lipsonthewhistle 