Orpheus and the Pearl & Nevermore (8 page)

When he walked out of the restroom, Jean was
waiting in the Arms’ entryway. “You’re clearly a mess.”

“
You’ve done it again.”
Malcolm gave him a thumbs-up.

“
Really. You’ve tried to go on
like Leo just stopped existing, but no one’s buying it. Have you
talked to him at all?”

It sounded like there might be genuine
concern in Jean’s voice. Malcolm softened a bit. “Not since he told
me.” He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t want to know anything, Jean.
Not from you.”

“
Who says I know?” Jean
shrugged. “Leo hasn’t said a thing. And I don’t think he
will.”

Malcolm really didn’t want to know who it
had been. But he’d always known it might have been a mutual
acquaintance, and upon hearing that Leo still hadn’t disclosed the
name, Malcolm’s heart sank. Had to be a friend. Perhaps even
someone who had offered their sympathies over the past five
weeks.

It had been two months
after it happened before Leo told Malcolm. In hindsight, he had
spent those months building up to it—making confessions in the form
of what-ifs or would-yous. All the hypotheticals, even accusations,
but Malcolm hadn’t wanted to see it. More so, perhaps, he hadn’t
believed it was
possible
.

Yes, things had cooled
between them, and both had acknowledged that, but he hadn’t known
it was over. That was just it—it
hadn’t
been over, not until Leo’s
drunken call. He’d been in a tearful panic, and Malcolm had at
first been concerned, but Leo’s insistence on coming over before he
explained what was wrong had been what did it.

Malcolm had known then, and had said, “Tell
me now or I’m hanging up. Tell me now, or I won’t talk to you
again.”

“
Malcolm,
please!
”

“
Tell me!”

And he had. And Malcolm had hung up.

“
Listen,” Jean said
softly. “I’m not going to mess around in Leo’s head. But you
deserve to know. There are things I can do to help you—”

“
For
Christ’s sake,
don’t
,” Malcolm snapped. “Treat me with some goddamn
respect.”

Jean flinched away. “I mean it. I can help
you see.”

Jean was only making him angrier at Leo.
That it had come to this! The thought of overtures and mea culpas
was heading right out the window. Still the man persisted. “You
know I mean it!”

“
I don’t think I know
anything about you.”

“
How will you find out the
name, then? Your lawyer brother? Or maybe Bonnie? She’s a cop,
right? She can look into it.” He snorted. “Do you get what I’m
saying? I have the tools for this work, and I’m willing to use
them. As a friend, Malcolm.”

He just couldn’t stand being told no. He
preyed on desperate hope. Malcolm walked past him and out of the
restaurant.

“
Where are you
going?”

“
Smoke,” he said, probably
too low for Jean to hear, but he didn’t care.

It was dark, but the rain hadn’t yet come.
As Malcolm crossed the parking lot, pulling out a near-empty pack
of Marlboros, he heard a voice call: “You said you were
quitting.”

Saul smiled in the halo of light from his
Bic. “Same to you,” Malcolm said, and went over.

“
Well, it was true when I
said it.” Saul offered the flame to him. “Jean followed me out to
wait for you...did you talk?”

“
Yeah. I guess he’s trying
to help, in his way. I’d prefer he didn’t.” Malcolm shoved his
hands into his pockets and stared at the blacktop. “I was actually
starting to appreciate how oblivious he can be.”

Saul coughed and leaned against his Taurus.
Some wit had printed WASH ME on the dusty door, and he struck the
words out with his fingertips. “Well, I’m no greater a sage than
he.”

“
I know,” Malcolm said.
“Still thought I’d ask - why are we here?”

“
Nature abhors a vacuum.”
Headlights panned over Saul’s smile and vanished into the
night.

Malcolm wished he could ask a real question,
but he knew Saul didn’t like playing the role of wise King Solomon.
Saul loathed stereotypes as much as he did—and Jean was bad enough
for both of them—but Malcolm had always looked up to him in some
way, and had envied that mentor relationship with Jean. He tried to
emulate it with his students. Most of them didn’t need it, though.
They had dads and all the rest of it.

Didn’t I promise myself
one more drink?
Malcolm stubbed his
cigarette out on the asphalt and picked up the crumpled butt. “Want
to head back in?”

“
Sounds good.” Saul
pinched his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Malcolm
stopped. Saul winked at him. Then the cigarette was
gone.

Jean was back in the booth with Ray and
Bonnie, and pointed sideways at the tumbler by Malcolm’s plate.
“Got you another.”

“
Thanks.” Malcolm sat down
beside him. “Really.”

“
Least I could
do.”

Ray and Bonnie were on their second round,
and had moved closer to one another. Malcolm reached for his drink,
but Jean turned and dropped a finger into it.

“
What are
you...?”

Jean placed his wet finger against Malcolm’s
forehead and swirled it. It felt like he was writing something.
“What are you doing?” Malcolm murmured.

“
Lensing your third eye.
For sight.”

Malcolm swatted his hand away angrily.
“You’re fucking impossible.”

Jean didn’t react to his glower, merely
pushed the glass toward him and said, “Have at it then.”

Just for that, Malcolm took a thick gulp. It
tasted slightly sweet. He looked into the glass. “What’s with
this?”

“
It’s scotch.” Jean looked
at him. “What do you see?”

“
I see you,” Malcolm
muttered.

“
Hmm.” Jean sat back and
yawned. “I am very drunk.”

“
You good to drive?”
Malcolm asked Ray.

“
Sure. You ready to call
it a night, then?”

“
I think so.” Malcolm got
up and fished for his wallet. “I had a nice time. I did. It’s
fine.”

“
I’m going to come by
tomorrow,” Bonnie said, but Malcolm knew she was coming for Ray,
and offered only a sullen nod in response.

The sky split the moment they walked
outside. Malcolm was soaked to the bone before he made it to the
car.

“Are you really okay?” Ray asked.

“
As good as it gets.”
Malcolm fell onto his bed and pressed his palms to his temples.
“You sure about taking the couch?”

“
I sleep on the couch in
my office most nights,” Ray said. “Do you drink that much very
often?”

“
Never again,” was all
Malcolm said. “Never again.”

The door closed. “Never again,” he
whispered, and slipped into a sea of black clouds.

11:07 PM

His first awareness was of the fact that he
was dead.

It was a simple truth, and
he could not articulate in his thoughts how he knew, except that he
knew he was nothing
but
thought. There was no sensation. The darkness of
sleep had given way to a storm of white light, light he wasn’t
really seeing so much as he was being permeated by it. What
substance he had was less than a mote, and the light had absorbed
him.

He knew he was dead, but
he didn’t know where he was, or if
here
was even a place. There was no
point of reference, no sense of orientation. Maybe he didn’t exist
in places anymore. Maybe he was reduced to something that had no
fixture in any dimension. Maybe he had joined a great
nothing.

But the light was there, and it was real,
and then there came a dull sense of something behind the light, a
rising cacophony that unsettled his awareness. He couldn’t
concentrate on whatever it was, couldn’t discern its nature or
source. All was chaos. If he could have, Malcolm would have
screamed.

No senses. No body. He was
suddenly keenly aware of the lack of
Malcolm
. No prickling flesh, no
tired bones, no pulsing veins or swelling lungs. There was no
pounding heart or surging adrenaline. He supposed that was why he
felt so still despite his utter confusion.

But that thrumming chaos
was building around him, and unease was growing in his being. It
was a discordant sea of sound—
sound!
It was sound he perceived,
vibrations bombarding him from every direction, as with the light.
The sound of the living world. He had it now: a ticking clock. The
settling building. The changing pressure in the walls. Mites
scrabbling through carpet fibers. And falling rain.

He focused on the rain, giving him a point
of reference. Rain on the roof overhead. Slowly but surely, those
less significant noises retreated into the background. It felt like
he was really hearing the rain now. And the particles of light
about him began to fade.

His mental focus was giving him sight now.
He recognized the outlines of his bedroom. His perspective was at
eye level, as if he still had eyes in a head on a body. And, though
his focus was narrowing, he sensed that he had a full 360-degree
view of the room, if he wanted it. Malcolm wondered at it all. If
he’d been screaming, the scream would have died, and been replaced
by a gentle, disbelieving laugh.

He was at the foot of his bed, and there
before him lay his dead body.

The clock read nine past eleven. He wondered
how long he had been dead. Time seemed as alien to him now as
gravity or temperature. As alien as the sack of flesh lying prone
on the bed. For the first time he saw himself as others must have.
His still-clothed body lay atop the covers, and he was able to
appraise its form without relating it to himself.

There were jowls, which formed with his head
propped up on the pillows, and settled against a neck that he’d
thought was thick but seemed slight and frail beneath that bloated
head. His hair was big and messy and sat on his scalp like a
toupee. He’d had beautiful eyelashes, at least, and nice hands. One
lay to the left of his head, palm turned upward, fingers
half-closed.

Malcolm studied his dead face. It was pale,
waxy. Reminded him of something, or someone. His former skin
glistened with shrinking beads of sweat. He couldn’t have been gone
long.

At 11:11 his body sat up.

Malcolm was frozen in
place. He wanted to leap back, to push himself away from the
staring face that had once been his own, but he couldn’t. There was
no way to move, no physiology—he was trapped! Fear swelled in him,
pure emotional terror—and unfiltered light and sound began
encroaching on him once more as he lost focus. He could still see
the body, rising now to stand beside the bed, limbs stiff, eyes
unblinking. How? Everything else seemed to make sense, but this was
wrong, he knew it with absolute certainty.
How?

The body walked to the door and fumbled
awkwardly with the knob. The door opened just wide enough for it to
push through. Malcolm lost sight of it, as he was losing sight of
everything...

Ray!

He tore through the
distortion and was back in the room. And, distantly, he felt
something like feet planted on the floor beneath him. It was
another dull impression, but it was certain. He was standing on the
floor, and though he saw no feet there, nor were any of the
carpet’s threads flattened by any sort of weight, he did see
something.
Two
somethings. Dark, glistening stains, like footprints.

He heard his brother murmur his name. It
sounded as if he’d just been roused from sleep.

And then Ray screamed.

Malcolm tried to move but
there was nothing
to
move. He’d reconnected to the physical, now how was he
supposed to pull himself across its plane?
Ray! RAY!

Ray let out a terrible,
wounded yell, a sound Malcolm had never heard from his older
brother. And whatever was happening, that walking corpse was doing
it—did Ray think it was Malcolm himself? Of course he did!
Meanwhile Malcolm was frozen in space mere feet away!
RAY!

He looked at the floor
again. In the air between his point of view and the stains on the
floor, he saw other dark splotches simply hovering. He realized he
was looking at the backs of two dangling hands. How was he giving
form to himself? How did he use it? Ray sputtered and cried,
“Mal—
”

A wet, heavy sound. Then silence.

He didn’t know what this
dark matter on his surface was—didn’t know what his surface was—but
it was eroding before his sight and he felt as if he were coming
un-tethered from the world. Light swelled around him again.
Focus!

He focused on Ray, and the shadows of the
room returned. He thought about Ray, not about what state he might
be in, but getting to him, and he sensed feet on carpet again. He
saw dark syrup pooling in the air beneath him. He saw strange, thin
limbs taking shape as the syrup spread—legs, not fully realized,
but enough to give him confidence. He tried to take a step. Nothing
happened.

No. You can’t walk. That’s not how it
works.

His focus had generated this weird substance
where he imagined his legs and feet to be, so he focused himself
forward. And he was fifteen inches closer to the door.