Hetty, says Luscious. We will have coffee, please. And perhaps cake.
Horatio lounges in his chair, withered and delicate in his blankets. The cigarette I gave him has shrunk to a nub, and there are ashes scattered on his chest like dirty snowflakes. He closes his eyes and Hetty leans over him to pluck the butt gently from his mouth and for a moment I think she will breathe into his mouth the way animals pass predigested foods from their mouths to the mouths of their feeble young.
thirty-eight.
When I was a small child, says Horatio. My father took the three of us to Rome. It was one of the few times we did anything as a family, a normal family.
It was soon after your mother passed, says Gore.
It was September and gray and one day we had breakfast in a little plaza near the Colosseum. There were a thousand pigeons flapping about, pecking for crumbs you know. They were fearless, and they would take bread from your hand if you sat very still.
They were vicious beasts, says Gore.
Horatio ignores him. There was a photographer there, and he offered to take our family portrait with the birds. Don’t you remember, Father? The photo used to hang in the guest bathroom.
I remember, says Luscious. I remember well.
Anyway, says Horatio. My brother and sister were older than me and they had no trouble coaxing the wild pigeons to eat from their hands. And in the photo they each have birds on their outstretched fingers, the wings a mad blur. My father, too. But I was so young, so impatient that the photographer had to place a tame pigeon, a pet bird, on my left arm. And it sat there as if it were nailed there, as if it were stuffed. In the photo, my bird appears to be dead, and every time I look at it I think I am cursed.
That’s ridiculous, says Luscious. It’s morbid and adolescent.
Hetty returns, pushing a little table on wheels. Her arms tremble as she silently serves around coffee in small white cups. I am tempted to ask if she needs any help, but I’m sure that Luscious would frown on it. She places cream and sugar in the center of the table, then gives us each a slice of black bundt cake.
I’m curious, says Jude. If your kidneys are failing, shouldn’t you be hooked up to a machine?
I like you, says Horatio.
She smiles, eerily flirting.
But yes, he says. The dreaded machine. I’m shackled to it for hours at a time. Maybe you would like to watch television with me later, if you can stand it.
I would be happy to, she says.
The machine has seen its last days, says Luscious. He takes a bite of cake and his sharp teeth flash. Jerome is arranging for the purchase of a replacement kidney, as we speak.
That’s fantastic, I say.
Jude claws at my leg.
It’s a waste of money, says Horatio. And I doubt he will ever come back.
Why do you say such a thing? says Luscious. Why can you not be silent? He bites his words and the veins rise in his blackened face.
Father, he says. Jerome is a plunger. He’s a hyena. He will take the money you gave him and run like the wind.
Perhaps, says Luscious. If I had sent him to buy a car, yes. But this is different.
Horatio mutters. And why do you suppose Isabel has disappeared?
Damn your eyes, says Luscious. You wretched boy.
Jude had finished her cake and now begins to eat mine, which I have barely touched.
I am feeling suddenly weak, says Horatio.
Let me ring for Hetty, says Luscious. His voice becomes so gentle.
Jude grips my right hand and whispers for me to relax. She’s crushing my fingers and I love her strength. But there is something sharp poking through my shirt, like a needle or tooth. I look down and she is pressing her sharp little dentist’s tool into the narrow space between my second and third rib. I glance into her pretty green eyes and I recognize her, I do.
Excuse me, she says.
Luscious Gore turns his dead eyes toward her.
If I offered to give you a kidney, what would you say?
Are you joking, girl?
I cough. She has almost no sense of humor.
Hypothetical, she says.
There would be a question of compatibility, he says. My son has a rare blood type.
Jude shrugs. This is make-believe.
Then I would say thank you, if it were a gift.
And if it wasn’t. If it was expensive? she says.
Then I would be the man dying of thirst in a lifeboat, he says. He blows imaginary dust from his fingers and smiles crookedly. Because I have no money left.
Horatio spits. Excellent metaphor, Dad. But wouldn’t I be the one in the lifeboat?
The old man turns slightly green.
My apologies, says Jude. I was only curious.
Silence.
Jude blows into my ear and I remember to breathe. She slips the stinger into my pocket and places her slender, empty hands alongside her plate. The palms turned upward in a sweet, meaningless gesture. She is sure she can kill me with her bare hands.
I’m actually aroused, I mutter.
Don’t go to sleep on me, she says softly.
Whispers, says Gore. I hear whispers.
I wonder, says Horatio. Would one of you mind helping me to my bed.
You are so trusting, says Jude.
Should we not trust you? says Gore.
I want to help you, I say. I want to be trusted. But my muscles fail me. The table is two miles wide and the sun is shrinking in a blue sky. The boat drifts and everyone is staring at me.
Jude pushes back her chair. Let me do it, she says.
Thank you. I am so tired of Hetty’s cold hands. Horatio smiles, his lips thin as paper.
Jude wipes her mouth and I watch silently as she lifts Horatio from his chair as if he’s made of straw. His arm swings free and it’s so thin it doesn’t look human. Lucy was never that skinny. Even on her worse days.
I try not to stare at Luscious Gore. I’m sure that he can sense it, that he can reverse my thoughts and send them back at me, twisted and viral. He has loomed so long at the edge of my consciousness, hideous and bloated and vaguely imagined as my own private Jabba the Hutt. I expected to hate and fear him at once. He set the machine in motion that summoned me here and he doesn’t even recognize me. He doesn’t know me. He released Isabel and Jerome into the world like chaotic birds of prey and they fell on me purely by accident.
I have heard stories about you, I say.
He makes a wet sound in his throat, an approximate laugh.
The truth pales, doesn’t it?
He sighs and pushes aside his plate.
I must be off to bed, he says. Hetty will show you the guest quarters.
What century is this? I say.
He peers at me.
Do you offer a bed to every unwashed stranger that turns up on your doorstep?
He laughs softly. It is irregular. We don’t often have visitors, here. But you are hardly a stranger.
Do you know me?
No, he says. But you are Jerome’s friend. You told me so.
This staggers me.
Besides, he says. I have nothing left to steal, and death already lives in my home.
I feel slightly unhinged and I can’t decide if I would rather punish this man for his faith, or prove myself worthy of it. I wish Jude would come back. Luscious rings the silver bell. He waits a moment, then rings it again.
Oh, bother.
What’s the matter?
Hetty has gotten so deaf, he says. And the battery is rather low in my chair.
May I help somehow?
If you could give me a push, he says. That would be tremendous.
No problem.
*
The main hall is silent and shadowy, a few gas lamps flickering. I push the heavy chair along a thick burgundy carpet. Luscious is nodding, half asleep. He points to a door on the right. I stop and wait as he pushes a button and the door swings open. His room is dark and cold. Soft electric lights come
on automatically as we enter. The room is minimally furnished. There is a huge bed with numerous pillows, a chest of drawers, a dressing table and mirror, a sink and toilet with handicap rails. Everything is very low to the floor. There is a lot of scattered artwork: dozens, possibly a hundred charcoal drawings of the crucifixion on yellowed paper and three abstract iron sculptures of Christ on the cross, dying alongside two anonymous thieves.
Well, then. Good night, I say.
Just a moment, he says. If you could just help me from my chair, and onto the bed. I am feeling terribly weak. It will only take a moment.
Yes. Of course, I say.
It’s awkward, but I lift him from the chair in a fireman’s embrace. His legs are weightless, barely there. His pants are soaking wet. I lay him down on the bed and stand up.
Your pants are wet, I say.
So they are. I suppose I lost control of my bladder, over coffee. It gets more difficult every day. We shall have to change them, won’t we?
I can only nod and smile, a thin bloodless smile.
Thank you, he says.
It’s nothing, I say. Really.
Luscious manages to unbutton the pants himself, but getting them off is another thing. I kneel on the bed and peel them off him like the loose skin of a banana. His legs are rather shocking. They are not legs at all, but the boneless, unformed tentacles of some sea creature. They are blue and gray and hairless. I glance away and take a small breath. His penis appears normal and is quite large.
There is a long silence.
I understand, says Luscious. That masturbation can be a man’s single greatest pleasure.
My mind spins weightlessly. Oh, I say. It is a reliable source.
He lifts his head to gaze forlornly in the direction of his own awesome appendage. I can manipulate it and ejaculate with some success, he says. But I can’t feel anything. I cannot even see it.
I stand over him and try to think of something, anything to say. I’m not unsympathetic.
It’s lonely in this house, isn’t it?
Terribly so.
The room is shrinking and I stand there nodding like a puppet.
I will just run along now, I say. If there’s nothing else.
But I do need a diaper, he says. Isn’t that a thing of poetry? A man like myself, of wealth and power. To sleep in a diaper.
I thought your money was gone.
He gives a dry chuckle. Quite right.
Where are the diapers? The sweat slides down my back.
They are beneath the bed, he says.
I crouch and pull out one adult diaper. With a little difficulty and coaching from Luscious, I wrestle him into the thing and fasten the sticky tape. I only pray that he doesn’t ask me to powder his bottom. As I lean across him to adjust the tape he whispers in my ear.
My son is dying, he says. He’s dying very badly.
I shake my head. What is a good death?
It isn’t comedy, says Gore.
Haven’t you read Shakespeare?
Gore smiles. Othello is rather funny, I suppose.
I sit reluctantly at the edge of his bed.
What happened to your family? I say.
He frowns. How do you mean?
This house, I say. It’s like a crushed skull.
It’s gloomy when my daughter is away.
She isn’t coming back, I say.
Gore sucks at his teeth. What?
Trust me.
How do you know?
It’s just a feeling.
Isabel will be back, says Gore. She adores Horatio.
There is a long, widening silence. Lucy and Isabel slither around in my head, sleeping restlessly and twined together as if their arms and legs were one. I stare at the dull black crucifix over Gore’s bed and I wonder if he has any funny ideas about the nature of his own firstborn son.
What about Jerome?
My pride, he says.
But he’s flawed.
He has fears, says Gore. The same as you.
I laugh softly. Jerome is not like me.
But you are friends, are you not?
Again, silence. I feel vaguely unclean.
How did Jerome burn his hands? I say.
Gore licks his lips with a long gray tongue. He breathes.
When you were a child, he says. Did you ever play with fire?
Of course.
I used to collect cars, he says. The most beautiful cars. I had five vintage Corvettes and several old Thunderbirds. A red Cadillac convertible from 1965. They were like a ring of jewels around my house, glowing in the sun. My wife was still alive, then. There were rosebushes everywhere, red and white. Three lovely children and I had more money than God. I bought cars that I never intended to drive. The boys often played in them. Jerome called the Cadillac his castle.
American cars, I say. Henry would approve.
Thirteen years ago, says Gore. Thanksgiving Day and the sun was shining. I was asleep in my chair. A football game on the television with the sound off and I woke to hear screaming. Horatio was playing in the Cadillac when it caught fire. He was three, perhaps four. Jerome saved him.
Was the boy hurt?
His hair was barely singed.
But Jerome’s hands were ruined, I say.
Terrible third-degree burns, says Gore. From the tips of his fingers to his wrists.
He set the fire, I say. He had gasoline on his hands.
Perhaps, says Gore. I choose not to think so.
He wants the boy to die.
It doesn’t matter what he wants. The boy is dying nonetheless.
I turn and walk away as he wriggles under the sheets like a snake. The lights dim as I leave the room, and the door closes with a whisper behind me.
thirty-nine.
I hurry down the narrow hallway and the carpet is so soft I can’t hear my own footsteps and I’m sure that I will soon turn a corner and wander into a labyrinth. That I will be lost for days and when I find my way to the surface and into the sun, I will have clawed out my hair and Jude will have vanished. She will have left me.
Back through the kitchen.
Hetty has not yet cleared away the coffee and cake. I stop and pour myself a cup of the cold coffee and drink it quickly. My hands are not shaking, and I don’t think I’m seeing things.
Maybe I’m through the worst of it. Maybe not.
If Jude offers to shoot me up again, I might rip my skin open looking for a vein.
The library still flickers with candlelight. The wide-screen television is on, low and murmuring. A commercial gives way to an old episode of Star Trek, and the color is very bad. Mr. Spock’s face is green, his shirt gray. Horatio is a fetal lump on the hospital bed, white as an egg but for the black cord that extends from him and hangs limply between the bed and a humming machine.
*
Jude sits in a stuffed chair, a book open on her lap. It’s too dark to read, however. She stares blankly at Horatio, at me. I sit on the arm of her chair and we simply hold hands. As if we are home for the holidays and after a day of spooky relatives we are finally alone.
I liked your little puppet show, I say.
Jude exhales. You weren’t afraid I would gut you at the dinner table?
Not really.
Trust, she says.
A wasp crawls along your arm, I say. And you sit perfectly still, telling yourself that he won’t sting you unless you flinch, unless you try to kill him. You hold your breath and hope he won’t sting you and probably he doesn’t want to. But that’s not trust, is it. It’s fear and fascination.
I want to get out of here, she says.
I’m not stopping you.
She frowns. I want you to come with me.
Not yet. My voice is cracking.
What’s wrong with you? she says.
I feel sick.
You owe these people nothing, she says. Nothing.
This kid wanted to borrow life from me.
Jude laughs. You’re a stranger,
she says. You are no one to him.
I’m the stranger.
The fragile new scar around my torso feels so cold, as if it’s blue with electricity. I clutch at the skin of my stomach and stare at the television without really seeing it. The candles stink of eucalyptus but surely that’s my imagination. Jude puts her arms around me. She touches my face and I shiver from the cold. I take her ring finger between my lips and suck at it like an anxious child. She smiles and strokes the edge of my teeth.
The kid is beautiful, isn’t he?
You shouldn’t confuse sympathy with desire, she says.
I can’t help it.
Jude doesn’t smile. She wonders what will become of us. In my adolescent daydreams I see us walking back to the highway in a cool rain. Jude steals a car and we disappear into Mexico. The sky is always blue and we have sex three times a day. In a month or so we run out of money and we get bored with sex. Jude suggests a simple bank robbery. But something goes wrong and one of us is killed, probably me. Jude will mourn for two short weeks, then flee to Paris and become a very expensive assassin. I shrug and light another cigarette. There are four left, and I tell myself to leave at least two of them for the boy.
I want to leave in the morning, she says.
Okay.
Will we leave together?
I don’t know. Will we?
Probably not, she says. Then laughs at my expression.
The shadows are stretching around us as the candles burn down to nothing. Jude’s face is now completely in the dark and she easily sinks into it. She’s happier not being seen.
This kid. He breaks your heart, doesn’t he?
No, she says. But he surprises me.
He’s unafraid.
She smiles. And he makes me laugh.
You never laugh.
Anyway, she says. Your kidney would have been wasted on him.
What do you mean?
He wants to die, says Jude.
Horatio is still asleep. The light that flickers around him is from the television. I wonder if he’s even breathing, if he’s slipping away, unnoticed.
This is a good episode, I say.
I move over to the television and it takes me about five minutes of muttering and fumbling to find the volume control. I tell Jude how Captain Kirk and the lads find this orphaned kid named Charlie on a wrecked ship and he seems like a good kid. He’s nervous and shy and anxious to please and he follows everyone around like a cowardly dog but really he’s a time bomb. He’s tangled up in puberty and flooded with terrifying desires and he’s surrounded by women in very short skirts and leather knee boots. And he also happens to have telekinetic powers that he can’t control and in one scene that I can never forget he zaps an anonymous female ensign who has spurned him and she sinks cut in half and rising out of the floor.