The Radio Magician and Other Stories (15 page)

“Is this to be a business correspondence?” said the pen. “I can suggest several good salutations if that is the case.”

“How about letters to distant boyfriends?” The pen clicked open and closed again under her thumb. “No, forget it. I’m thinking.”

She looked at the clock on her desk that she’d brought from home when she took the job caretaking for Stella. It was an old clock. Pre-sentient. Practically an antique. Thirty minutes until she could go home for the day, the glowing numbers told her. It could talk, though, if she asked for the time. So it could listen. Corey wondered if Stella could access it from the other room. Was it listening to her right now? Could she hear the breathing? The pen clicking? The oddness of her thoughts?

Corey put the pen in the middle of the blank paper, pushed away from the desk. Maybe Stella needed company. Poor woman. On death’s bed with no one to sit with her. Harlow was her only relative, and he came by twice a week. What must it be like to be in her place, tied by gravity and age to the bed?

Stella’s consciousness hovered in the middle of the room. She upped the sound reception on the coffee pot, and it seemed she moved toward it. When she zoomed in on the television, she moved there. In the bed, she giggled, and the giggle echoed in the microwave and the sink and the telephone, her voice leaking from each.

She peeked at herself from the television. Old woman, still beneath the sheets. Could that bag of infirmity really be her? Straining, she raised her hand off the blanket and wiggled her fingers in a weak imitation of a wave. Her arm struggled to hold the hand even in inch in the air. Her shoulder ached, and the muscles in her back were within an instant of cramping. She dropped the hand back to the bed.

A brush of air touched her. But it wasn’t her skin that felt it; it was the much more sensitive light switch. She could feel more than pain again! Stella turned the television on its gimbal so she could see the door. Corey walked in, quietly, but her shoes scraped loud enough for the microphones in the room. Stella listened mightily. Yes, she could hear the young woman’s breathing, the rustle of her skirt against her legs.

Stella said from the microwave, “I’m awake, dear.”

“I was trying to be quiet.”

Corey stopped at the medical readouts displayed at the foot of the bed. Stella felt around in her head until she found the readouts too, clear in her mind, pulse, temperature, blood pressure, chemical balances, respiration. She held her breath to see the breathing stop. Soon, the pulse accelerated.

“Ma’am?” Corey said, a touch of concern in her voice.

Stella released the pent-up air in a whoosh. “Oh, this is fun.”

“Fun?”

“I’m mobile again.”

“I don’t understand.”

Stella wished there was a camera on her bed so she could see Corey’s expression, but all the eyes in the room were behind her.

“I told you,” Stella said. “The seat of my consciousness is on the move.”

Corey shook her head.

“The seat of your consciousness is where you picture yourself. It’s where you feel the center of who you are emanates. Where is the seat of your consciousness, dear?”

The young woman sat in a chair next to the bed. Now the side of her face was clearly in view. Fine, blonde hair that fell to just above her shoulders. High cheekbones. A mouth that turned down when she wasn’t smiling, so she often looked pensive. Stella tried to remember when her own face was so unlined.

“In me?” said Corey.

“Yes, but where within you? Try this. Close your eyes and just listen. Where are
you
, your essence, the seat of your consciousness?”

For a minute, neither woman made a sound.

Corey laughed. “Between my ears, just behind my eyes.”

Stella sighed. “Yes, that’s where it would be. But what if you couldn’t hear or see? What if your only sense was of touch? Would the seat of your consciousness be in your hands then?”

Corey’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She stood. “The night nurse and your dinner will be here soon. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”

“No, dear. I’m enjoying my independence,” she said from the medical sensor.

A voice Corey didn’t hear often said inside her ear, “This is the mattress speaking. The sheets are soiled and need attention.”

After the night nurse came and they changed the sheets—the old woman seemed almost weightless as they transferred her to and from the bed—Corey put on her coat. Her hands smelled of antiseptic. The nurse, a solid-looking woman with sturdy calves, stood in the doorway into Stella’s room, her arms crossed. “I don’t give her a week at this rate,” she said. “Nutrients aren’t being absorbed. She dehydrates easily. Next coma will be her last.”

Corey felt a sudden itchiness in her eyes, but she resisted the impulse to rub them. “I know.”

“I’ve got another patient signed up in her spot at the end of the month. It’ll be a scheduling problem if this one hangs on that long.”

It wasn’t until Corey reached the park across the street from the building that she let herself cry. The park bench said, “You are upset. Can I contact a counseling service for you?”

Corey blew her nose. The air smelled of elm and warm streets, and the afternoon sun cast long shadows of buildings and trees across the lawn. Traffic hummed quietly on all sides. A few feet in front of her, four small gray birds pecked at the sidewalk. They moved in little hops from one spot to the next, tapping for a moment, then straightening to look for threats. Corey leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, a tissue hanging from one hand.

One of the birds hopped toward her, its black eyes like pencil tips glistening in its feather-smooth head. The bird cocked its head to one side, then the other, looking at her. It pecked at a seed on the cement, then looked at her again. Corey half expected the bird’s voice to erupt in her ear. “What are you staring at?” it might ask, or “Any bread crumbs?” But the bird was mute. The tiny intelligence functioned on its own. Corey pressed her palm on her belly. Still flat. The doctor had said there was a heartbeat, but she couldn’t feel it. The doctor had said, “We’ll throw it away. Just a handful of cells. An annoyance, no more.” How big was it growing inside her now? Was it as big as a wren? Where was its voice?

When Corey went to bed, she stayed awake for hours watching the shadows from the tree outside her window play across her ceiling. As she finally grew drowsy, the shadows took the shape of small gray birds, hopping from tile to tile.

Stella didn’t feel tired in the least. If she concentrated, she realized she could identify a sound’s location. All she needed was to triangulate from the microphones. A minuscule scritching sound behind the closed doors under the counter told her a mouse was hard at work. The night nurse’s steady tapping of the pencil on the table while she contemplated a crossword puzzle seemed as distinct as a bell. She heard the pencil’s beat echo from the walls, and without accessing video, she could see the room like a bat, each tap clarifying the dimensions.

Stella chuckled. Maybe what she could do would be to order a remote control sensing device. Something she could direct through the interface. She could walk the streets again, or at least her senses could go.

The medical sensor clicked. A valve opened inside to release a dose of something from Stella’s I.V. line. She moved her consciousness into the sensitive machine. Of all the devices in the room, the medical sensor provided the most information. Her own pulse was a sound, a feeling and a color, throbbing like a dull red sun. Her breathing rasped in rainbow hues, dazzling in the medical sensor’s perception. Her body’s temperature registered in numbers and grid lines, the coolness of her fingers and feet, the warmth of her chest and stomach.

She watched herself on the bed, probed her organs, listened to the crackle of air through her nose, the snap of her lips as they separated for another breath, the gurgle of her intestines.

After a couple hundred steady beats of her tired heart, Stella realized the sound of her breathing had changed. The snore vibrated in the room, stopped for a moment, resumed.

The mouse paused in its investigations in the cabinet. The night nurse kept tapping.

I’m sleeping, Stella thought. I’m wide awake and sleeping. How interesting.

The tram from Corey’s apartment to work was only half full. Across the aisle, a man, a woman and a five-year-old girl hunched over a coloring book. The girl said, “I’m making the sky purple because purple is Mommy’s favorite.” The woman smiled. She wore a yellow blouse and pants that left most of her midriff bare. No lines on her slender belly. She’s never been pregnant, Corey thought. Pregnant. The word itself felt alien in Corey’s head. No queasiness for the yellow-blouse lady. Of course not. Corey couldn’t picture what it would be like to sit on the tram, her belly gravid and alive with motion. She’d read that a pregnant mother could feel the baby kicking inside. What was that like? Little fleshy earthquakes. People would stare. She shuddered.

“I like purple too,” said the child.

The man tousled the girl’s hair. He was Harlow’s age. How had the man and woman got together? Had his wife said I love you first? Did she know then that she loved him?

Corey closed her eyes and rested the side of her head against the window until she reached her stop.

The family exited first. Corey gripped the handrail near the door, waiting for them to leave. The little girl turned and held up a broken crayon to her dad. He took it, shrugged, and dropped it in a waste bin on the sidewalk.

Was it alive? Corey thought. Did it have a voice, and what was it thinking now, laying in the dark among thrown away paper and empty soft drink containers? Did they talk among themselves, the tiny voices, the thrown away, knowing the recycler would pick them up soon?

“Good day, ma’am,” the waste bin announced in her inner ear when Corey touched it.

She snatched her hand back.

A voice mail awaited her in the office. “I’ve had a cancellation, so we can schedule your procedure for tomorrow if that would be convenient,” said her doctor. “If you don’t mind, a couple of interns have expressed interest in observing. Your condition really is quite fascinating.”

The night nurse came in from Stella’s room. “She’s gone under for the last time. Another coma,” she declared as she put on her coat. “I’d give her twenty-four hours, tops.”

Corey felt her shoulders drop, a physical unleashing, as if the muscles had died. “No.”

The nurse buttoned her coat, her face a closed door. “We knew it was on the way. She was used up.”

When the nurse left, Corey sat in her chair, her hands resting limply on her legs. She realized she’d been staring at them for some time, when a thin keening voice echoed in her ear. Not words, just a long howl of grief and loss, but so quiet she thought at first it might be a subconscious sound, a part of her imagination.

She found the pencil in the bottom drawer, but instead of the length she’d left it the day before, it had been sharpened down to its last inch. There was almost more eraser than pencil. From end to end, it didn’t reach to both sides of her palm.

“What happened?” she said.

The sobbing continued. It would be so easy for her to block it out. A simple adjustment and the pencil would no longer be able to talk to her. Harlow could do it. He walked through a world of tiny voices screened to silence. But she didn’t. She waited until the cries settled down.

Finally the pencil gasped, “Crossword puzzles.”

“Huh?”

“All night, crossword puzzles. The nurse writes and writes and writes, then resharpens. Always, always resharpening. I’m a splinter away from annihilation.”

“Toss him in here,” said the trashcan.

“No, don’t,” said the pen from the desktop. “The pencil’s a good egg. Do you know there’s a couple thousand jokes stored on his chip? And he makes up new ones all the time.”

“My pencil makes up jokes?” Corey rolled the wood between her palms.

“I have skills,” said the pencil. “I have other interests.”

“Well, let’s hear one.”

The pencil hesitated. “Okay. How about this? Did you hear the joke about the pencil?”

Corey shook her head and then said, “No.”

“Never mind. It’s pointless.”

The pen snickered.

Corey looked at the pencil incredulously. “That’s terrible. I can’t believe I listened to that.” She put it on the desk and stood.

“Maybe this one will be better,” said the pencil. “Where do pencil vampires come from?”

Corey picked up the pen and put in her blouse pocket, then moved to the doorway between her office and Stella’s room.

“Pencil-vania,” the pencil said across the distance.

If anything, Stella appeared even smaller than she had yesterday. Her mouth hung open; her chest was still. Corey stepped toward her, then Stella gasped and sucked in a raspy breath.

Red lights flashed on the medical sensor. Electrolytes dangerously low, read one display. Blood oxygen dangerously low, read another. Brain patterns indicate serious distress, reported a third. Corey tapped the communication interface. Hospital contacted and no heroic measure order confirmed said the note. Stella’s heartbeat pinged forlornly from the medical sensor.

Corey’s hand quivered when she touched Stella’s forehead. “Where are you, Stella? Where’s the seat of your consciousness now?”

But Stella couldn’t process the question. She heard the words without sorting them into meaning. Colors pressed in on her, and sounds, and the shape of smells, all confused and muddled. This is death, she thought. I can fight it, if I can just find myself. So she moved as best she could through the forms and notes and blustery textures that batted against her. I’m dying! My mind is collapsing upon itself. She could see an abyss around her. A sucking blackness just beyond the chaos on every side. Maybe I’m already dead! She tried moving her hands, but she couldn’t feel them. She felt nothing at all. A tumbling. A falling down. An endless repetition of glassy ringing like crystal wind chimes behind cotton walls.

Stella would have wept if she could, but she fought instead. If I can grab something. If I can center myself, all will not be lost. And the ringing continued. Was it a voice echoed and transformed? Was it the sluggish firing of her last brain cells like a Fourth of July sparkler nearly gone dead?