Authors: Emily Schultz
Back on floor twelve, Gordon fumbled for the wall switch. He found it, and the squashed room was illuminated by a hollow radiance. He put the key, pilfered from Bentley’s podium, into his pocket. The first file he pulled was his own, but soon the stories of others were falling open across his lap.
Rachel: ruptured appendix. Erika: peanut allergy. Jill: crushed in collapsed shopping mall, failure of engineering. Fleur: alcohol poisoning. Fiona: murdered by spouse. Veronica: killed in action. Carma: impaired driving. Manos: death by anaesthesia. Miranda: cancer. Titus: blunt force trauma, suicide suspected. Dave: asthma attack. Chandler: blow to brain, long-term coma, unplugged by family. Gordon: toxification, suicide suspected.
Gordon’s own death sounded vaguely familiar to him, as if he were looking out a window he had gazed from every day, this time through a sheer curtain, able to identify the outlines of the trees and roofs even though they were obscured. He could almost recall falling asleep for the last time, the view out the window across from the bed. It was the others that weighed upon him. He rose from the creaking chair, took a few steps, and stood holding the folders, some at the end of each fist, against his pant legs, shoulders pulled down by the pages. Then he folded at the knees, let his backside hit the tiled floor, where he sprawled in the dust, files blanketing him from wrists to shoelaces. He stared at the rows of cabinets before him, drawers crammed with the names — so many names — of those he did not know.
17
He could remember the windows.
The windows had tipped forward, striving toward a triangle of wood that pointed upward, a prow, and behind it a ship of glass. The galley was done in redwood, the mates dressed in autumn brown, name-tagged, with vests and headsets — urban sailors in a sea of humans. He recalled with some effort that it was not a ship at all, but a bookstore, a gleaming mega-chain, and he had been outside it looking up.
That seven-dollar-an-hour crew had politely attempted to restrain, impose rules, as they hooked and unhooked chrome-knobbed coils of yellow rope. Chaos, that was their job: to hold back the throng of schoolteachers and nurses, social workers and househusbands, spectacled psychologists and pinstriped grocers, jacketed reviewers and gingham mums with tots in tow. That had been the breadth of Chloe, Gordon told himself, a testament to her, a lineup of absolute love — if not for her herself then for all that she had done. The assemblage wove its way around illuminated pillars and lowboys spread with candlesticks and aromatic pillows, Clancy and Kafka propped up on gravestone-like pedestals, improbably side by side.
From his angle the stairs had been visible, curving round, a spindle of sweaters and coats, of hands clasping the rail and unclasping it, of feet half here and half there, edging their way up with slow eagerness. Desire was audible. The panes conducted it, buzzed with it, with whispers and thrum, so that even there, outside, Gordon had heard the seashell-like roar of an ocean of fans. They were flipping pages of Chloe’s first book back and forth, some finding favourite passages, others as-yet-unplumbed depths. In each hand, the same beginning sentence, the same end, the duplication of Chloe’s thoughts in the thousands: a tome. A thousand tomes, each with a thousand pages, standing in line.
Past the cappuccino machines on the upper level the figures had wound, pressing on to the prow, where, between the glass panels, Gordon had been able to see her — the Author.
Chloe. She was nodding, her hair like a leaping fire that had been forcibly stapled down to her head by some assistant, some publicist, some well-meaning man-boy in a loose button-up. Gordon recalled thinking that he was permitted only this: her neck, its red-blond stitches, and the curled backs of her ears, just beyond the bow of the book boat. She had floated in a wonky triangle surrounded by sky, or so it had seemed to him then. The occasional black suit had stepped in to add another stack of titles to the diminishing display. It was a new edition of her old book, the one she’d penned with him, dressed up anew — a movie edition with Cate Blanchett on the cover.
Commanding this much attention,
he had marvelled silently where he stood. Beyond the legions of loving faces stretched shelves and shelves of books that Gordon had known would go unread, spines adorned with lesser names, with the slim logos of nearly anonymous publishers, the skeletal works of unloved authors, among them Small: S-M-A-L-L, Gordon.
He had waited for the author to turn and recognize him, knowing with each breath that she wouldn’t. That it was over. It had been a full-bright afternoon, the third week of fall — almost eleven years to the day since they first met. Ten years, eleven months, and a week to the day since he had first read her. Gordon had wished then that he could undo it, unlove her. Beyond her, on the same side of the glass as Gordon, a plane had excreted a milky trail across the sky to the right of her temple. She’d closed another book, complete with autograph, and handed it back. As she’d cocked her head to one side, Gordon had thought he saw just the nib of her smile.
Below Chloe, he had stepped from foot to foot, pocketed his hands and then unsheathed them again, knowing exactly what came next. When he had waited long enough, the sun slanted and his reflection was caught between her ankles, tossed back at him. Truthfully, she had probably moved from her station and the ankles were in a backroom with cheerful employees, where she was being poured coffee or wine before signing a few extra copies and saying goodbye. Gordon’s eyes and lips were colourless, limp with acidity, like garnish fruit that had been twisted dry.
There had been a pharmacy up a block and across the intersection, right beside the subway’s red mouth. Gordon had headed for it, cutting through a covered parking lot, blinking at the sudden dimness, turning his body sideways between cars as if he might set off their alarms by walking too close. Each spot in the vicinity was taken up, presumably by those inside the bookstore, still reluctant to leave. He had stared directly down as he walked; the lines underfoot were neither white nor yellow, Gordon had decided, but the exact colour of bones. A chill had greeted him as he entered the store — central air. He cruised across the ends of the aisles. He had long ago grown accustomed to the Portuguese hanging signs that his neighbourhood
farmacia
favoured. What he was looking for was in English, but it took him longer to find: Sleep-eze, a purple package sprinkled in pinprick stars.
Extra-strength, Gordon had selected. For a second he had held the box in his palm, gazing down at it, enjoying the touch of the cardboard against his skin. He had known that each capsule inside would be wrapped in foil, lying within its own plastic pod. Second thoughts. He had removed another brand from its place. With a flick of his finger it had tucked easily into his other palm. With one in each hand he’d taken both boxes to the young cashier, who was ponytailed and wore a slim cross on her slim neck.
“Are these different? Which of these works better?” He had displayed them, then reluctantly set them before her.
She’d picked up both of his selections and turned them over.
“This one’s extra-strength,” she’d said. “I guess it depends on your condition.” Absently she had placed the boxes back on the counter, a row of lottery tickets encased in a see-through tray beneath them.
Flamingo Bingo. Lucky Gold.
“I probably shouldn’t take more than I really need.”
When Gordon had looked up at the cashier again, the small gold cross around her neck had crept its way into her mouth, half under her tongue.
“It might be good to have this one on hand, though, just in case the regular doesn’t work.” Gordon had felt a grin hardening on his face. His smile fake, he had been certain she would see he was lying.
“Sure,” the cashier had said. The gold trinket had bounced back to her chest when she opened her mouth. A droplet of saliva dotted her clavicle. She was looking out the window as she added, “Better safe than sorry.” She had dropped his two bright boxes into a white paper bag.
It would be wrong to continue to speak in generalities about the past
, Gordon typed across his Heaven monitor
.
Speak to whom? Gordon admitted he was not certain. There were times he believed he was writing into a void, and still others when he was convinced there was indeed some hovering spirit or knowing eye, some Great Creator, present either in or outside the seventy crystal floors of Heaven. But to whomever Gordon was writing, whether it was book-club member Mrs. Mabey in Minnesota, his team of unsuspecting co-workers, the still-living Chloe Gold, or himself alone, he did so because he sensed that the worlds of the dead and the living were not that far apart.
After all, Gordon had arrived by public transit, or at the very least some dream of public transit, something far more fathomable than the route of birth itself. The idea that somehow he and Heaven’s staff could shuttle missives — and even fully produced romance novels, complete with sales reports — back and forth between the living and the dead, whether by post, fax, e-mail, or some system of faith, seemed to Gordon as believable as anything else he had encountered in his short time on Planet Earth. Consequently, these were the dynamics Gordon played with in his very loose “fiction” (so loose even Gordon imagined it inside a large set of finger quotes). This fiction involved a hero named Graham and a heroine named Zoe.
To find myself here, in this place, writing this, seems as plausible as the fact that my name is Graham and I topped at five feet ten after arriving in the world at a mere eighteen inches. That I should have been born on this continent and not one of the other six. That by the age of twelve I discovered, like so many who went before me, that a part of my anatomy could suddenly double in size in the presence of the feminine form — amazing! That my heart was the size of a fist but felt like a watermelon for the first two-thirds of my life, only to shrink down to a grape seed one day. That any woman, let alone Zoe, deigned to love me — love with the whole soul — deigned to think of me at all, to call me and wait for me, to want to hold my surely reptilian hand, let alone hold me upon her sinuous tongue inside her mouth’s arching cathedral.
As believable as the fact that Zoe went for me hook, line, and sinker, leaving me messages and, when — to my own surprise — I didn’t call back, leaving me more. That it took us two months to be alone together for more than our first rushed half-hour of small talk. That when we finally did connect, she fed me cappuccinos until I shook, and then we lay very still — or as still as possible, given my jitters — in her bed together, she in a pair of long johns and me in my T-shirt and boxer shorts. That we spooned as tentative snow fell outside her window on a tree that looked like it had been scythed clear down the middle. That a shellac of sleep dampened her skin and I climbed into each breath she offered and stretched out inside it. That we slept this way — or lay without sleep in my case, as I counted each glimmering flake beneath the streetlight — for three consecutive nights before I finally had the guts to sweep her hair aside and place another kiss across her neck. That she turned to face me and disposed of my T-shirt and boxers with a ferocity that chilled and, at the same time, fevered me. That she left small marks up to my ears, biting and nipping at my jaw and not letting go, even when I grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away in pain. That this was before serenity took over her life, before the driftwood and the semiprecious stones, the herbs and pennyroyal teas, the chunks of crystal, the incense sticks and candles, the seashells like old bones lining the windowsills.
That there were days when she invited me out to galleries and introduced me to other young men, who painted themselves blue or wore lipstick and eyeliner or dyed their manes candy-floss pink, who pierced their tongues, who wrote letters to institutionalized serial killers, or who were working on stage adaptations of Leonard Cohen’s
Beautiful Losers
. That Zoe would once do anything for a kick, for attention. That she was Zoe of the turquoise toenails, and, like all the henna girls, vainly ironed her naturally red-and-curly to hang down her back. That she took to wearing the masks of
bonheur
and
tristesse
on her fingers in sterling silver, and drove reckless and drunk sometimes, and would phone me late at night playing needy games on the other end of the line. That she and I married at all, let alone dated. That there was a justice of the peace quoting Langston Hughes, and Zoe’s younger sister as witness, and a video that zoomed in on the $3.99 daisies I had bought on our mad dash there — because Zoe was always late — from a woman on the main street with a blanket and a black plastic bucket and no teeth. That I do, you see, remember it after all, in moments when I’m not looking. That in the first year in our house there was unkempt passion that now I only read about.
That, like the Aries she was, she controlled our Saturdays and Sundays and every spare weekday minute with her plans, plans, plans. That she had this need to control. That it was wondrous and savage and gave shape to my otherwise aimless, head-bobbing life. That I occasionally railed against her for the fun of it, playing the devil’s advocate to see how she would twist her own arguments to be right. That there was a certain way to salt eggs. That there was a specific time to take out the recycling at night. That we so often collided mid-argument, and found each other’s mouths. That Zoe’s mouth had no end. That she was exultant when naked and oftentimes crass, ecstatic, forceful, frivolous, or full of fart jokes, difficult to pin down but always there, and wholly so, eager for everything that came her way. That she would turn around afterward, defensively, and claim I had no idea — no idea at all — what to do with a woman. That her mouth was still there, again, again, and again.