Out there, p.14
Out There, page 14
I’m gathering my meager possessions—leather handbag containing wallet, house keys, phone, magnetic keycard to my room in the extinct Landover Hotel—when I hear a rumble of footsteps in the stairwell beneath me. I freeze, stooped over, one hand still groping inside my purse. I could hide in the bathroom. I could go into the kitchen, crawl in with the corpses and wait for the intruders to leave. But they are too close, coming too fast. Before I can move, the door is thrust open, easily toppling my blockade of chairs. A soldier enters in combat uniform, flanked by a team of six or eight identical men, and behind them a petite woman in her forties, wearing an expensive-looking gray suit. The soldiers see me and raise their pistols. They push the woman behind them protectively, but she elbows her way to the front and begins shouting at me. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?” She pauses, then says, “What on earth is that horrible smell?”
Two of the men force me to the ground. They wrench my arms from under my body and pull them behind my back. Electric pain shoots through the muscles of my chest. The handcuffs’ chilly teeth scrape my wrists. The other soldiers fan out into the restaurant, guns drawn, while the woman demands to know who I am and why I’m here. I know the words I should say, the ones that will calm them, make them treat me civilly and shepherd me back to the living world. But these words catch in my throat, flaring and sputtering like wet matches. One of the men has his fingers wrapped in my hair and is pressing the side of my head into the carpet. I watch their feet—the men in tan combat boots, the woman in black velvet flats—stepping all over my sculpture, flattening the figures, having not noticed a thing. In the moments before I lose consciousness, I wish only that I could be allowed to render this final scene, what I now know was always the nucleus of my model, its secret heart hidden from me until the end.
Dating a Somnambulist
One night your boyfriend sleepwalks to the kitchen and brings a handful of M&M’s back to bed. You wake to bleary chocolate splotches on the sheets. You’re annoyed because they’re your nicest sheets. Your boyfriend says he’ll buy a replacement set with a similarly high thread count. This makes you feel better. It’s kind of cute, after all, that your boyfriend eats M&M’s in his sleep.
Each morning you wake to a new object. A pinecone. A snow globe. A plastic lawn goose.
On the fifth night, something soft and warm tickles your calves. In your fumbling dream-state, you think it’s the black cat you had as a child. Her name was Midnight and she liked to hang out under the covers. You lift the sheet to pet Midnight, but the furry mass turns out to be the raccoon you’ve seen rooting through bins in the trash atrium. The raccoon bites your finger, then scurries into the closet.
While you wait in the emergency room for a tetanus shot, your boyfriend agrees to go to a sleep clinic.
The clinic is blue-walled, piped through with piano music. The doctor is a small, nervous man with white hair and wide dewy eyes. He asks your boyfriend pointed questions about his somnambulism, a fancy word for doing weird shit in your sleep. He prescribes your boyfriend drugs to deepen his slumber. You’re both in good spirits on the drive home. You hope the drugs will fix everything.
The next morning, the sleep clinic doctor is nestled in bed between you and your boyfriend. The doctor is bound and gagged, his moist blue eyes blinking up at you. Your boyfriend must have sleepwalked to the car, sleep-driven to the doctor’s house, and sleep-kidnapped the doctor. Presumably he first had to sleep-look-up the doctor’s address.
Your boyfriend allows you to shackle him to the bed frame with handcuffs, but he winds up sleep-picking the lock with an unfolded paper clip like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. On the seventh morning, you wake to a brand-new microwave. From the receipt taped to its side, you learn that your boyfriend sleep-drove to the twenty-four-hour Walmart and sleep-chose the model of microwave that would best suit your needs. You’re still disturbed, but pleased that you now have an easy way to heat up leftovers.
On the eighth morning, you wake hugging a famous urn from the Asian Art Museum. You’ve seen pictures of this urn on the sides of buses. You are worried about the criminal implications of a sleep-museum-burglary and suggest that your boyfriend stay at his own tiny, windowless apartment until his somnambulism settles down. Your boyfriend admits that he started renting it out on Airbnb, since he’s always at your place anyway. A middle-aged German couple is presently staying there. Additional European couples have booked the apartment through July.
On the ninth morning, the bed appears empty. You and your boyfriend celebrate by heating frozen mini quiches in the new microwave. But when you make the bed, you discover, tangled in the sheets, a highly venomous box jellyfish native to the tropical Indo-Pacific. Your boyfriend puts on yellow rubber gloves, removes the dead jellyfish, and feeds it into the garbage disposal.
On the tenth morning, you wake to frantic nudges from your great-aunt Renetta. You haven’t seen her in fifteen years. She is disoriented and upset. You take her to dim sum, show her your city, then buy her a plane ticket back to Pennsylvania.
Your boyfriend finally remembers to pick up his sleep prescription at Walgreens, but the drugs only make his nightly acquisitions more bizarre. An airplane flight recorder, battered and corroded by seawater. The slashed silver top worn by model Gisele Bündchen in Alexander McQueen’s groundbreaking spring 1998 fashion show. Three passports of Americans born on August 18, 1973.
On the fourteenth morning, you wake to a wormhole squirming at the center of your mattress. Lord knows where your boyfriend sleep-acquired a hypothetical feature of space-time, but there it is, a roiling purplish vortex the approximate diameter of a basketball. You climb out of bed, careful not to touch the wormhole’s iridescent rim.
You and your boyfriend spend the rest of the day sealing the bed and its wormhole in a wooden box. While you build the box, you drop tools and planks of wood into the wormhole. You imagine these objects will pop out in a parallel universe and prove useful to parallel versions of yourselves. You imagine your parallel self is like you, but better. She probably bakes gluten-free pastries that taste just like the real thing. She probably makes her own dresses and has a killer record collection.
You consider jumping into the wormhole and emerging in a universe where your boyfriend doesn’t bring terrifying things to bed in his sleep. But the parallel boyfriend might have some other, even more upsetting defect, such as snoring, so for now you stay where you are, in a sleeping bag on the floor, waiting for your boyfriend to sleep-ferry home another object that will make you shudder at the arcane puzzle of your own existence.
Moist House
The house needed moisture. So Karl was told.
He sat in a landlord’s office in a strip mall off the interstate. The landlord, Franco, was known to rent out houses that were undesirable as a result of their peculiar needs and could be had for cheap. Franco was in his forties, a thickset man with plump fingers and wide, colorless lips. He wore aviator-style glasses with gold rims, and sat behind a gray metal desk, a hulking piece of institutional furniture whose severity seeded in Karl a strange docility, a readiness to take what came.
Franco leaned back in his swivel chair, appraising Karl. “It’s a very special house,” he continued. “Other men have attempted to care for it, with limited and temporary success. The house is very dry, and only the most diligent tenant can provide it all the moisture it needs.”
Karl wanted to laugh. “Have you tried a humidifier?”
“It’s not that kind of dryness, I’m afraid.”
“I can keep the house moist.”
“You say that now.”
Karl shifted in his seat, noting that the office was cold. The room was empty, walls unadorned, scarred desktop bereft of computer or phone, and Karl wondered how long Franco had worked out of this space. He’d been referred here by his mother, who now lived in Argentina with her younger boyfriend, a retired soccer star who modeled in billboard ads for vitamin supplements and sweat-wicking sportswear. Karl’s mother had known Franco’s father in the seventies, in Berkeley, her radical days. When she and Karl last spoke on the phone, she referenced this man in the misty, oblique way she employed when recalling a former lover.
Franco had brought out a thin manila folder and was examining a document inside it. “I won’t charge you rent,” he said.
Karl was taken aback. “Thank you so much.”
Franco snapped the folder closed. “Your gratitude is misplaced. I am hiring you to care for the house that needs moisture.”
“I understand.”
“I’m afraid you don’t,” Franco said. “I doubt you’ve encountered a house such as this one.”
“Well, I’m eager to learn. My options are limited at the moment. I don’t know what my mother told you about my…situation.”
Franco waved his hand dismissively. “The house doesn’t care about your past life. It cares only about the moisture you can provide it.”
He led Karl to a supply closet. “The house is accustomed to this type of lotion,” he said, hauling out a five-gallon bucket by its wire handle and placing it at Karl’s feet. “It will stave off the worst of the dryness, but you must apply it many times daily.” He ran his palm up his forehead, slicking back the thin hair. “In fact, you must apply the lotion almost constantly. And in the meantime you might devise new ways to keep the house moist.”
Karl smiled. Now that the initial shock of Franco’s temperament had dulled, he found the man’s devotion to the house endearing. He reasoned that landlords were often eccentric. “How moist does the house need to be, in ideal conditions?” he asked.
“There is truly no limit.” Franco told Karl he could have this first bucket of lotion for free, but would need to procure his own going forward. It would be a considerable expense, but an acceptable one, as he’d be paying no rent. Karl agreed, thinking there was no way he’d stay in the house long enough to exhaust the first bucket of lotion. He doubted he’d bother with the lotion at all. He only needed a few weeks of shelter, in order to regain his bearings and find a new job.
Karl signed the lease and shook Franco’s hand. He conveyed the bucket of lotion to the passenger seat of his Subaru, securing it with the seatbelt. He was in high spirits, feeling like he’d pulled off an incredible scam. He examined the bucket more closely. Advanced Therapy Massage Lotion, the label read. The word “massage” roused in Karl’s mind the image of youthful female bodies splayed on his bed, their backsides gleaming with the freshly applied lotion; girls like Tatiana, though of course not Tatiana herself, after what she had put him through.
The turns on Karl’s GPS brought him through redwood forest, then to narrow roads etched into cliffs overlooking the sea. In a small town ten miles south of his destination, he stopped at a market for provisions. As he surveyed the prices on the dusty shelves, Karl cursed himself for not having gone to the Safeway by Franco’s office. He had to be frugal with the nine hundred dollars remaining in his secret Wells Fargo account. In his shopping basket, Karl placed a two-pound sack of rice, six cans of black beans, two cans of chickpeas, and a lemon to fortify his immune system. He felt rugged and resourceful as he made these selections. The cashier, an old woman in a bulky wool sweater, offered Karl no bag. Her indifference wounded him. She was perhaps the same age as his mother. Unlike the cashier, however, his mother had refused to relinquish her beauty as she aged; in the pictures she sent over email, selfies with the soccer player while they hiked or drank juice with their beach volleyball club, she appeared toned and tan, her hair dyed the same auburn Karl had always known.
“Thank you very much,” Karl told the cashier, ostentatiously. He slowly gathered the groceries in his arms, making it out to be more difficult than it was in order to spite the woman for her rudeness. Back in the Subaru, he plunged into more redwoods, careening around blind twists until the road climbed again and broke onto an open plain of grass made tawny by recent drought. One last turn, onto the narrowest road yet, a single lane of mud sprinkled with gravel. In the distance, on a plateau halfway up a knob of mountain, sat the white cottage, a cube of sugar spotlit by the sun. The road terminated in a bulb-shaped patch of dirt to the right of the house, which was where Karl parked.
Karl stepped into the brisk sea air. He walked around the house, inspecting it from all angles. It was indeed a perfect cube. Its exterior was whitewashed, like the cottages he’d seen on a trip to the Irish countryside as a teenager; he’d gone with his mother, who was studying IRA tactics with her boyfriend at the time. Its slate roof sloped gently, so that any precipitation would roll over the edge overhanging the front door. The door was painted red, like a mouth with lipstick. Karl was charmed by the house’s simplicity. It was like a drawing he might have made as a child, after learning to render three-dimensional shapes.
Karl paused at the front of the house. He turned to face the ocean, and was overcome by vertigo, feeling he might tip forward and tumble over the cliff. He was struck by the desolation of the region, this house the only dwelling for miles on all sides, and he imagined he was the last person left in the world. If his enemies wished to find him here, they would have to work hard to accomplish it.
The door opened with a shucking sound, like the lid peeling from a vacuum-sealed container. The interior air of the house was thick and yeasty, forming a second skin on his face. He was glad, however, to find the room clean and sufficiently appointed. A single bed was pushed into the far corner, covered by a white quilt. A table and chair were placed beneath the south-facing window, alongside a shelving unit that housed a microwave and a mini-fridge. Karl had assumed he’d have a full kitchen, and saw he’d have no way of cooking the overpriced rice he’d bought from the hateful old hag at the market. Through a doorway in the east wall, Karl found a small bathroom with a stall shower, toilet, and sink. He stood at this wall and ran his palm down its surface, which appeared to have been freshly painted. The wall seemed fine to him, not at all dry, and again Karl felt like he’d gotten away with a crime. He almost felt guilty for taking advantage of Franco, whom he’d begun to suspect was mentally ill.
Karl brought in the groceries, along with a duffel bag containing a few changes of clothes. He sat in the chair and looked at his phone, but found he had no service. No sign of Wi-Fi in the house, either. This was a relief; even if he felt tempted, he couldn’t go online and see what new lies had been spread about him. It was after 6:00 p.m. and the sun was at a forty-five-degree angle, golden light pouring through the windows, so that Karl felt enveloped by a harmless fire. He watched one patch of the north wall, upon which a trapezoid of sunlight was projected. Drops of water began to sprout and gather within the golden shape, the area surrounding it taking on a sheen of condensation. The sight unnerved Karl. Wary of mildew, he brought the single beige towel from the bathroom and wiped down the wall. Franco had gotten it wrong. If anything, the house appeared overly moist.
When the sun was gone Karl turned on the lamp beside the bed. He poured a can of beans into a ceramic bowl and microwaved it. He ate the beans with a spoon, then washed the bowl and spoon in the bathroom sink with liquid hand soap. He lay on the bed, watched a few clips of pornography he’d saved on his phone, and fell asleep holding his cock.
Karl dreamed the house was speaking to him. “Dry,” it said, again and again, until it screamed the word, and he woke. It was morning. The room appeared transformed. Its formerly smooth walls were now rough and flaking. In some places, the dryness looked painfully deep, tinged red, like scraped skin. The patch above the bed, the same area he’d wiped with a towel the night before, appeared driest of all. Karl ran his palm down the cool surface, loosing a shower of white flakes that were sharp to the touch. He was alarmed by the condition of the walls, and wondered if the house was afflicted with a novel form of mold.
There was no harm, Karl reasoned, in applying lotion to the walls as Franco had advised. He brought the bucket in from the car and got to work, beginning with the spot above the bed. Karl gathered a handful of lotion and transferred it to the wall, then rubbed in the lotion using the pads of his fingers. The lotion slicked the flakes down to the wall’s surface, and Karl realized he’d need to “exfoliate,” a verb Caroline was fond of. He wiped the first coat off with the towel, bringing the flakes with it. He then slathered an additional coat of lotion onto the exfoliated wall, after which it appeared healthy and glowing. He recalled the serums Caroline would apply to her face before bed, and was surprised by a rush of longing for his wife, while at the time he’d found her habits tedious.
Karl stood back from the patch he had moistened, which appeared fresh and gleaming, in contrast with the dull area surrounding it. The walls’ dryness now seemed obvious. Karl didn’t know how he hadn’t perceived it before.
He moved all the furniture to the center of the room, then brought the chair to the corner where the bed had stood, and climbed up with cupped palms full of lotion. He worked his way across the east wall, applying lotion, then rubbing with the sodden towel before applying still more lotion.
By the time Karl finished moistening the walls, it was past noon. He’d planned to drive to a café in town so he could use the Wi-Fi to search for jobs. But he saw the moistening of the house was a far greater commitment than he’d anticipated. Already, the top corner of the east wall had gone dry again. Karl shivered, troubled by the thought that Franco was not insane after all. The house needed moisture, all right.
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