Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (13 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A woman brushed past me laden with presents. Church carillons drifted from several blocks away. I looked up into the steady snowfall. If they were stellar, sectored, or dendrites, I couldn’t tell. They were cells in motion; their shapes vanished as soon as they met my skin, much like the rest of the world.

But as I said, I wasn’t going to feel sorry for myself and I wasn’t going to subscribe to Harold’s storybook Christmas, the one he’d read aloud, sanctifying Dickens’s mythic three spirits —Scrooge and all that nonsense— because both he and I knew —though we never discussed it— that there was nothing more pervasive than loneliness at the holidays,
fueled
by the myth of family. Nevertheless I could get behind the idea that people
wanted
to see beauty in each other. Even my homeless Charles Dickens left me with that impression. Whether that desire was biological or some randomly scattered instinct, I couldn’t be sure, because it apparently had no roots in my family.

I did know all things were energy. That C.P. Snow’s law of thermodynamics applied. And that pain, like happiness or hunger or hysteria, could be described as a set of atoms, moving at a certain speed, bouncing in a certain way. And I admitted to myself that I was embarrassed by my mental battles.

Antidote: a trauma-free childhood; really, it’s in the research. Good attachment to parents.
Crap.
Problem solving.
Check.
Moderation in needs and desires.
I was giving it a good try.
Control over emotions.
To be determined.
Optimism. Optimism?
Just make rational decisions.

Stepping off the curb a horn blared and a taxi shook the air, narrowly missing me. The most sensible thing to do was to continue to cross, to isolate factors and keep going in one methodical direction. There was objective normative data for ear length, palm length, canthal and philtrum distances. There
would
be for facial beauty.

***

“Sam,” I said as soon as I was in the apartment, “you know I’d set you free if I could.”

I raised him out of his cage and stroked him. Any minute the shadows would erupt with inmates’ voices, trying to tell me something. Sam gave me a steady blank stare.

“I mean
really
free. But rationally, you wouldn’t survive. Even in Central Park. There are predators everywhere. You’d be a fish out of water. You wouldn’t last twenty-four hours. I’m sorry.”

I lowered him back into his cage. I lit a few candles. Sam got his food pellet, half the size of a checker, and a carrot. For me, tomato soup from a can. Crackers. No voices. A clear view across to the East Side. The evening was uneventful. Beautiful.

“Thank you.” I shut my eyes, acknowledging goddess Freyja, goddess of beauty and sexuality, magic . . . and death.

“Enough of that.”

I opened the Life & Style Weekly to Jennifer Anniston, an expose of a
real
goddess. I felt sorry for her. She was probably a nice woman. And stunning.
Why don’t they leave her alone?

Momma was doubtless reading the same article. Put. The magazine. Down.

So I wrote in my journal:

“Harold,

I’ve had an experiment in mind. If I use the normative data for 25-year-old male and female facial structure (for instance skull length 22.410±0.197, height 9.673±0.106 and width 10.513±0.115), as well as the other norms, and I use the computer software and printer at work, I can create a 3D normative face (or pretty darn close) for each sex. Then, using the lab staff as respondents, I can isolate preferences (by offering different hair color, eye color, lip options, etc. on those normative faces). I’ll have to be careful because I doubt Warring will authorize it, but . . .

What do you think?”

Harold. The stack of books Eliz had pulled from his box waited on the counter. I placed them there, neatly, with the intention of reading:
David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times
, Poe’s
Tell-Tale Heart & Other Short Stories, American Notes
.

But I was indifferent. No, I was resistant. Because, Harold, I’d given you too much credit for having the answers. You’d only cause me more pain. But okay, I picked up
American Notes for General Circulation
. I re-read the passages from Dickens:

“One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different public institutions . . . One of them is a Lunatic Asylum . . . capable of accommodating a very large number of patients.

. . . In the dining room, a bare, dull dreary place . . . a woman was locked up alone. She was bent, they told me, on committing suicide. If anything could have strengthened her resolution, it would certainly have been the insupportable monotony of such an existence.

. . . The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled, so shocked me that I abridged my stay . . . and declined to see that portion of the building in which the refractory and violent were under closer restraint.

. . . this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded humanity . . .”

Atoms are ageless; they’re forever, until they’re not. Inside it was modern, but the container was more than 150 years old. Could a beautiful molecular structure like The Octagon maintain ancestral scars? Walls weren’t supposed to breathe, but if I focused . . . I could imagine them exorcising me. And I knew Harold had read those sections to me.

Coincidence or mathematical probability? Either was plausible. Too many choices. The hand sanitizer wasn’t in reach. Nor would Elizabeth be.
Stop
. Fatigue washed over me. I closed the book; its draft wafted past my chin and cheek. I snuffed out the candles. I slipped into bed. I tossed and turned.

I found myself walking into the lab. Someone had already lowered the lights. Every cage was open. Every cage empty. Where were the inmates?

The door to the lab closed behind me. I hung up my coat. I peered into the first row of empty cages and walked deeper into the room. Heart rate up.
Adrenalin energizes the body. Leave.
Make rational decisions.

Growing quickly but indistinguishable from my heartbeat, was a rumble. Mechanized. No, on closer attention, small feet. Millions and millions of small feet. A shrilling. Like locusts billowing up over the countertops, a gray wave of rodents of all sizes climbed my legs, ran up my arms, dropped from the ceiling into my hair, screeching, tearing at my flesh. Eating me alive.

I woke in a sweat. Sheets adhered to my skin, an unwanted cocoon. It wasn’t yet sunrise.

“Sam! Sam, what do you want me to do?”

I switched on the light next to my bed, unglued the bedding from my arms and thighs. Naked across the room, I turned on the light in the kitchen illuminating Sam’s cage. He lay motionless in the center —on his back, capsized, tiny claws curled. I’d done it again.

“Sammy!” I flung open his cage. Nothing. I held him in my palm. Rigor mortis. “Oh no, no, no, please no. Sam, what have I done now?” I propped myself against the counter, numb, but not the way I liked.

My phone buzzed. It buzzed again, a message. I stared at Sam, much as he did at me. Vacantly. I tapped the phone and retrieved the voice message:

“Eunis. Carol Warring. I’m sorry to call you so late. I need you to come in tomorrow morning. I know you don’t work till the evening, but we need to discuss some things. This is mandatory. Promptly at 9:45 AM, please.”

There was something in Warring’s voice, an edge that made me stretch my shoulders. Me being oversensitive.

“I let you down, I let you down, Sam. I’m sorry, Sam, I’m so sorry.” The apartment grew smaller, that slow almost imperceptible breathing. Pacing from one wall to the next, around the circumference, it was a quick trip, fussing with my fingers. Disinfectant didn’t protect those
I
touched.

“You deserved at least one day of freedom, Sam, even if it would have killed you.” I caught my own thin reflection in the window, fiddling nervously. I clasped my fingers, held them tightly. I squeezed them until they throbbed, until no blood moved.

Okay
. Too much noradrenalin means panic.
Breathe.

They were going to try to take me down at work. They knew about Sam. Maybe Elizabeth said something. Maybe the hospital tracked me down and Warring heard what I’d done, what I’d
thought
about doing. I wasn’t going to hurt myself. It was just a thought, like so many others. I was responsible. I was self-reliant. Sam was only a dead rat, after all. He would’ve been dead soon anyway. He stared at me from the countertop.

I poured through the kitchen cabinets, one after another, pulling out several plastic containers, sizing them up for Sam’s burial.
Not righ
t. I put it back.
No, not that one either. No, wrong effing size, damn it! No! No! No!
I watched myself hurl the last one against the cabinet, where it ricocheted into the glass by the sink, shattering it.

“Shoot! Shit!
Shit!
”

I barreled to the high-backed chair and flopped into it, pissed out of proportion with myself. Even as I knew I was overreacting, I couldn’t pull myself out of it. I couldn’t seem to do anything right. I sat for almost half an hour, until the pale morning sun reached across the East River, extinguishing the city lights and eventually fetching me back to the surface.

The red cedar box sat on the triangular table to my right. I removed my journal. Cupping the box in both hands, I ran my fingers slowly over it and raised it to my nose, drew in the rich cedar aroma. It further relaxed me.

“Harold, forgive me. I can do better. I
will
do better. Starting now.”

“This is where you will rest Sam. Harold gave it to me. It’s precious.” But again, I questioned myself. “Or would you prefer simple earth around you?”

There were so many answers. I needed to find those that fit.

***

I walked out of the elevator holding the cedar box. I wore my dark glasses but not the hood. I marched, head up, through the Octagon rotunda, past other congregating tenants jiggling their baby strollers and sorting through their mail. Seeing me for the first time, they gaped. I tossed my hair. What the hell.
At least one day of freedom
.

Down the steps and into the park, the morning chill roused me. “Well,” I said aloud, “I feel better already.” Two women on a bench turned in response and then continued their conversation. It wasn’t so bad.

Just before the cobblestones surrounding the lighthouse, a tree stood in a patch of open ground that wasn’t deep in snow. Kneeling, I placed the box to my side and began digging, bare hands. A few passersby noticed.

An elegant older woman with a walking cane stopped to watch me. “Did you lose something, dear?”

“No, I’m fine.” I turned to acknowledge the woman and startled her.

“Oh my.” She moved on as quickly as possible. And that, I realized again, was how it was going to be.

The ground was simply too hard. My fingernails were caked in brown and broken, my hands raw. I leaned against the tree. “Okay, Sam, I’ll find you another burial plot. Better.”

With the cedar box back in my arms, I moved toward the lighthouse, thinking aloud as I went, scattering the few passersby. Not my problem.

I tugged on the heavy metal lighthouse door. Padlocked, it didn’t budge. I banged on the door. “Charles, Charles are you in there?” No reply but the morning wind which had become kinder around the island’s rocky point. Too many locked doors. It was my job to open them.

I removed my dark glasses. The few remaining spectators scuttled briskly away.

I don’t know if it was the clean air or the sun turning the horizon sapphire blue that inspired me, but I took it all in. Right there, I decided Warring wasn’t the enemy; that I was grateful for my job, my apartment and the chance to start anew. Turning in a complete circle, across the river to Queens, across the quarter mile to New York’s east side and then to the path back to The Octagon. I kept spinning in circles, again and again, until I was dizzy dancing. The giggle in Momma’s hallway closet came to mind.
Was it
the joy of hiding or the anticipation of being found?
I thanked Sam for what he had taught me: at least one day of freedom.

“You seen somebody?” said a city sanitation guy, coming from behind the lighthouse. “Cause somebody been in there, somebody been foolin’ with the locks.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Elizabeth was leaving Mrs. Warring’s office just as I arrived.

“I’m sorry.” Eliz brushed by, awkward and hushed, as Warring checked her watch, hustled me into her office, and closed the door. I’d decided to replace my large dark glasses with the gray tinted ones the optometrist gave me before leaving Bemidji.
Head up.

“Sit, please, you’re almost late.” Warring had a particular guise when she was afraid or angry —they were almost the same— and she had it this time. “What’s in the box?”

The cedar box! I was still cradling it.
Shit
. “Aah . . . something I intended to drop off before coming here. I’m not used to the early mornings.”
Already excuses
.

“Eunis, please take off your sunglasses.”

“It’s the light.”

“Yes, I know.” Warring closed the blinds. “Does it affect your writing?”

“Excuse me? No.”

She motioned to me again, with more impatience. “Your glasses, please.”

“Sorry.” I removed them clumsily and the cedar box fell off my lap with a clatter to the floor. I dropped to the ground, all fours. The box hadn’t opened.
Thank god
.

Warring dwelled on my face, the split lip, my swollen cheek, then studied my filthy chipped fingernails. “Please sit.” Her irritation filled the air.

I sat, leaving the box at my feet.
Breathe
.

“Okay, well let’s get to the point.” Warring remained standing. She patrolled, then anchored herself, a straight arm on her thick oak desk, the same type of desk my teachers perched on in elementary school as they lectured, the same sort from which Harold threw himself off. “There are anomalies in your lab’s results.”

“Anomalies?”

“Yes, a number of irregularities.” She opened a small drawer and shuffled through it, then gave up and slid it closed.

It unsettled me, perhaps because the teacher’s desk was wrong in this room. Incongruous. Annoying. “Enzyme reports? Hormones skewed?” I asked.

“I’d rather not say until the Lab Supervisor finishes his investigation. Is there any way you can explain what happened here?”

“Well, if I knew what —”

“I told you that’s not possible. I just thought you might remember having trouble reading data correctly — perhaps because of your eyesight or —”

“No, no. My eyes are okay. It’s only the light. I see up close.”

“Yes, we’ve already gone over that.”

“None of the rats have gained weight. I haven’t seen any itching.” I nudged the cedar box at my feet.

“Hmm.”

“Could be valid data shifts.”

“Could be, but doubtful. You’re using clean syringes? Sure of the doses?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”

“I understand that you’ve been overseeing some of Elizabeth’s colonies.”

“Yes.”
Elizabeth!

“Do you treat them with the same care as your own colonies?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” Warring studied my bruised purple face. “You know you’re still on probation for another two months or so.”

“I love this job,” I said. But I wasn’t sure that was still true.

“But you have
other
goals, I understand. Lab work is merely a beginning.”

“Well, I—”

“What happened to your face?”

My first reaction was to cover myself but I let my hand drop. “Slipped outside of Macy’s.”

Warring gazed at the ceiling; didn’t appear convinced. “Are there any colleagues you might suspect of being sloppy?”

“No.”

“No drugs?” Warring stood her ground. “No one drinking or otherwise compromised?”

Elizabeth’s warped, drunken face. “No.”

“No. Well, let’s let the investigation play out. Just be mindful of the details, okay?”

“Always.”

“That’ll be all. Thanks for coming in.”

I walked to the door.

“Don’t forget your box,” said Warring picking it up off the floor as the lid began to open.

I turned in terror and grabbed it from her with both hands, sealing it shut. “Thank you.”

Suddenly I was bone dry and suffocating.

“You’re welcome.” Warring’s gaze was suggestive of Dr. Saverino’s at the hospital. Dubious.

***

At that mid-morning hour, quite a few more people filled the streets. The sun lingered for the first time in days, peeking from behind skinny stratus clouds. Even with my new gray sunglasses I attracted a few stares before heading into the subway, only to find that I’d have to route through Times Square due to a stalled train.

A litany of Elizabeth’s potential remarks to Warring filled my head. I knew then I couldn’t poll my lab mates; too risky. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. I couldn’t afford to change apartments. And I couldn’t trust Elizabeth. Lacking control, a straightjacket of options. I slammed the red cedar box, then felt guilty for battering Sam’s lifeless body.

“Are you getting off or not?” asked the large black woman shoving past me. “Let’s go.”

My first reaction was to shove back but instead I welcomed the flow. “Ah, thanks.” 42
nd
Street.

I tagged behind her, no choice as the crowd herded me up the stairs. At the top she disappeared into a mass of heaving bodies.

“C’mon, c’mon,” a man behind me said, and before I knew it I’d been jettisoned into Times Square. I’d never been there, not above ground. I stood in awe as the crowds pummeled me left and right. The smell of burnt chestnuts, recycled steam, bus exhaust swirled the air, but it was the lights, everywhere! Huge images flashed all around me.

“ . . . And it looks like quite a few days of in-and-out sunshine,” read the scrolling caption below the four-story high weatherman, identified below his waist as Gordon Mingle, Meteorologist.

I squinted. It
was
the same Gordon Mingle. Not as geeky. Not as stiff. Taller. Well,
much
taller. I went to high school with him, as much as I’d gone to high school with anyone. Gordon Mingle. On TV, sixty feet tall.

That’s when I got the idea.

***

“Eunis?”

“Couldn’t miss me, right?”

Zoe was a young twenty-something, with large-rimmed glasses and a lazy eye. “What do you do to it?”

“What?”

“Your hair, it’s an incredible color, and so lustrous. I just love it.”

“It’s just . . . me. Thanks. Please.” I offered her the seat, still unsure how she’d accept my proposal. “I took the liberty of ordering you that latte.” I blew across my cup, the size of a small swimming pool.

“Thank you.” She took a sip and assessed me over the rim. She’d almost be attractive if not for that distracting amblyopia. Think Marty Feldman. Eyes going in different directions.

I removed my shades for a moment, so she could see my eyes stutter, so she knew we had something in common. I’d requisitioned a table, thankfully, in the corner by the window so I could still sit mesmerized by Time’s Square’s vibrating lights and color, the magnitude of it exploding all around me.

“You found me through Hunter College?”

“Yes, through a series of inquiries and investigations, I hope that wasn’t too intrusive, and thanks for coming so quickly.”

“I work round the corner. I take lunch early.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And
intrusive
, no, I’m intrigued. Besides, there’s no privacy anymore.”

“Good. So what exactly is computer science?”

“Anything we can now do or might do with computers in the future. Social media, of course, but also psychology, biology, geography.” She glanced out the window too, toward the kaleidoscope of light. “It’s something, isn’t it? Wallscapes, sky murals, LED ribbons.”

“Branding.”

“Yes.”

“I gather you know quite a bit about this. Computers run most of those signs out there.”

“They do.”

On the sidewalk, despite all the movement, people pointed and stared at the overwhelming messages. “Four stories high.”

“Ten thousand square feet or more on some, yup. Digital billboards, six square blocks of them, twenty-four hours a day. They’re called ‘spectaculars.’”

“You’ve studied this.” I pointed to an undulating image of Kate Upton.

“Yes.” She snickered. “I work it, part-time. Helps with tuition. I’m learning a lot. The psychology interests me.”

“Well, that’s why I called you. These ‘spectaculars,’ do they run off basic video files, like After Effects animations?”

“They do, most of them.”

“And roughly speaking, how many people see one of these messages a day?”

“Up to one point five million.”

“No,” I rephrased, running my fingers over Sammy’s cedar box, “a day.”

“Yes, one point five million. A day.”

“And tomorrow night, say for approximately an hour?”

“Christmas Eve, that’s a lot of eyeballs. Maybe a hundred thousand.”

A hundred thousand!

***

At my stop I ascended the unusually long escalator. Opposite me, on the way down the other escalator, presumably coming from her night shift at the rehabilitation hospital, was the young tattooed orderly who assisted Dr. Saverino, the one who’d groped me. She recognized me, looked at me with
those
eyes. A thick, damp heat coated me.

I turned away and, reaching the top of the escalator, walked into the sunlight. It’s what Momma and the teachers and even the doctors told me never to do.
Sunlight will kill you.
I stood there for an instant, experiencing it. I’d rarely been in the island’s daylight and never when the sun shone. My choice. My skin breathed. A fine day.

I walked the mile to The Octagon, stopping occasionally to window shop — at a clothing boutique, a chocolate shop, though I’ve never liked chocolate, and a small art gallery — something I’d never done before.

As I neared The Octagon, a familiar voice hailed me. “Eunis.” Jerrod sat on the bench at the bus stop.

Suck it in and move past him
.

Not possible. He stood in front of me before I’d made it halfway to the Octagon steps.

“Now what?” I said, keeping my head low.

“Can we sit for a few minutes?” He motioned to the bench.

“I’ve got a lot on my plate today.”

“Maybe, but this is important.”

“More important than my schedule?”

“Please. Just five minutes.”

“I thought you lived in New Jersey.”

“I brought Syd back this morning. Please.” He ushered me to the bench in the soft morning shadow of The Octagon.

“Jerrod— ”

“Roddy. My friends call me Roddy.”

“Okay.”

“I — we — want to make it up to you, for what happened the other night.”

“No need.”

“How’s your face?” He touched my cheek again.

Inappropriate! I looked up at him, fiercely. He was a bit taller than I’d remembered. Broad shoulders. Kind eyes. Symmetrical features? I’d lingered too long. I focused on the cold stone Octagon over his shoulder. I saw a lot more with my new shades. “I heal quickly.”

“She has a problem,” he said.

“Apparently.”

“She knows it.”

“Then she should do something about it.”

“I agree. It’s one of the reasons she and I aren’t together anymore.”

“Does she take it out on Sydney? Kids can get the worst of it.”

“No. Not that I know of. Not that Syd has ever said. I’ve asked her.”

“Good.”

“You were very generous under the circumstances.”

“Anyone would do that.”

“They would not. Please look at me,” he said, his voice plaintive.

The Octagon’s shadow couldn’t prevent the brush of wild blue sky, the unseasonable warmth of the sun or the benevolence of his mouth, which seemed to smile without actually doing so, a crooked smile. Like he bit down too hard on a sweet cherry and met the pit. Rugged without knowing.

“I’m a lawyer, I see people acting out all the time. It’s not pretty. What you did was kind.”

“They’re hurt. People hurt.”
And your soon-to-be ex-wife is among them.

His face became soft and generous. His eyebrows and cheeks met midway, folding his eyes into miniature pocket smiles. “Exactly,” he said. “You understand. Would you take off your sunglasses?”

“No. Are we done?”

“No, we are not. I insist that you let me do something for you.”

“You
insist
? I don’t need anything.”