Borderlands 5 (5 page)

“Two. Sandy’s friend and the guy outside the Sparta.”

He shook his head. “
Five
, Joel.” He held up his hand, fingers spread apart. “Five. And one of them—
not
the fellow outside the restaurant, by the way—would have already snapped and be torturing a child nearly to death right now if it weren’t for the ninety seconds they spent talking to you.” He went back to the case. Four sections became eight. Eight became twelve. Twelve became sixteen, each section attached by hinges to those above, below, and on either side. Already something that should have only taken up maybe six square feet covered at least fifty. Had he been unfolding some massive quilt I wouldn’t have felt like the world was disintegrating around me. But this thing was making confetti out of the basic laws of physics. I was standing in the middle of a live-action Escher painting.

Sixteen sections became twenty-four. Twenty-four became thirty-two. Every compartment covered in black, creating a square, bottomless dark pit.

“What are you?” I asked.

Thirty-two sections quickly became forty-eight. “
What
, is it? Not w
ho
. You catch on fast. Yes, I was being surly. Apologies.”

“Are you going to answer the question or should I just wait for a postcard?”

Forty-eight sections were now sixty-four. “Consider me a reconstructive surgeon. My area of expertise is, of course, the face. One in particular.” With a final flurry of hands and flipping, the sixty-four sections became seventy-two.

“There,” he said, standing back and admiring the massive obsidian square which lay where the ground and grass used to be. “Whew! Sometimes this really wears me out.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Funny you should mention Hell. I had to go there in order to get a few of these—and don’t think
that
wasn’t a bushel of dreadful fun.” He pulled aside one of the black compartment covers and the rest, like slats in Venetian blinds, folded back to reveal what lay underneath. “I don’t have all of them yet. Counting yours, I still have eleven to go.”

In each filled compartment, nestled in a thick bed of dark felt, was a glass mask. Several were full-face, while others were half or three quarters, but a majority were of isolated sections: the forehead and nose; cheeks connected by the nose bridge; the lips and chin; temples and eyes; the cheeks alone; and one mask, looking like one of those optical illusion silhouettes you see in Psychology textbooks, was of the forehead, nose, lips, and chin only. No cheeks, no temples, no eyes.

“I
thought
this one would interest you,” said Listen. “Not that there’s anything especially significant about it for you, but something about its shape I knew you’d find fascinating.” He pulled on a pair of the whitest gloves I’ve ever seen and removed the mask. On closer inspection, as the sunlight danced glissandos over its shape, I saw it wasn’t made out of glass but some thin, transparent, seemingly organic material that held the shape and acted as a prism on the light.

“Okay. Time you knew the rest. Have a seat.”

“Jesus, Shakespeare, Buddha—all of their faces recognizable even though none were ever photographed. Yes, there’s an element of the collective unconscious and the archetype involved, but it’s a little more complicated than that. People recognize those faces because somewhere in the back of their minds that’s what they
want
them to look like. Jesus should look benevolent and spiritual, Shakespeare intelligent and creative, Buddha wise and all-knowing. Everyone has these characteristics in mind when picturing them, and so they are always present in portraits and sculptures and sketches. Consensual reality, to over-simplify it: ‘I believe this is what it looks like, so that is how it appears.’ The same holds true for the face of God, Joel. But just as the portraits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Da Vinci, Galileo and the rest change from likeness to likeness, just as any human being’s face changes over the course of a lifetime or a even a day—your happy face, your leave-me-alone face, your confused face, et cetera—the face of God changes. And it’s not supposed to. But He doesn’t have the advantage of an archetype buried in peoples’ minds. That’s where I come in.” He squinted at the mask, blew on it, then used his fingertips to brush away some dust or pollen. “I keep forgetting what dirt magnets these things can be. Where was I? Ah, yes: the face of God. Have you ever noticed how the horrors of this world seem to never cease coming at you? Hideous mass murders, bombings, wars breaking out in distant countries, rapes, missing children, mutilated children, men walking into fast-food restaurants and opening fire with automatic weapons … the inventory is inexhaustible. There’s a reason. Simply put, it’s because no one has even the
slightest
idea what God’s face looks like. Everyone guesses, and though some of those guesses might have a particular element nailed down,
none
of them comes close to the real thing, because there
isn’t
one. That’s why there’s this gaping hole where that face should exist. So, a while ago, God—Who wouldn’t know Vanity if it bit Him in the soft parts—consented to allow me to build a face for Him. Being an overly-curious sort, I naturally had to inquire why He’d never made one for Himself. It turns out that He did, but he gave it away. It was the last thing He did on the Sixth Day. He divided His face into seventy-two sections and scattered them into the Universe.”

It took a moment for the full impact of this to hit me. “So you’re saying that … that
I
—?”

“Possess a missing section of God’s face, yes.”

I looked at the masks displayed before me. “How did you manage to find
any
of these?”

“It would bore you to death.”

“Give me the
Reader’s Digest
version.”

“Prime numbers. Seventy-one—the number of faces you wear in a lifetime—is a prime number, so I took a shot in the dark and began with that. All the digits of your birthday are prime numbers which add up to the same: 7-13-59. Every genuinely significant event that’s occurred in your life has happened when your age was a prime, today included—remember, you’re still forty-one. It took me several thousand years to figure this out, but once the equation revealed itself, the rest fell into place. I took the true age of the Universe, divided it by seventy-one, divided that sum by seventy-one, and kept repeating the pattern until I was left with a sum of one. I then divided each of the seventy-one individual sums
by
seventy-one and … you’re way ahead of me, aren’t you? There was much more to it—factoring in alterations made to the Earthly calendar for solstices and, of course, that pain-in-the-ass Gregorian business—but in the end I pinpointed seventy-one specific years scattered through all of history, and in each of those years, using the prime number formulae, I pinpointed one person whose life not only fit
exactly
the numerical pattern that had been discovered, but who had been blessed—or cursed, depending of course on your point of view—with ‘one of those faces.’   That’s the short version and believe me, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds.”

“What happens if I say no?”

“I thank you for your time and go away disappointed. I provided for the possibility that at least nine of you would refuse. I can reconstruct most of His face with what I already have, and guess the rest with a large degree of accuracy. But I’m stubborn, Joel. I am so close to having all of the sections. It’s been my life’s work and I will not be stopped. I won’t resort to Inquisition or Gestapo or Khmer Rogue tactics in order to achieve my goal—even though I
could
.”   He held up the mask. “So—”

“—you need my decision.”

“Not until you know what will happen if you say ‘yes.’  ”

“I assume that people will stop singling me out like they’ve done my entire life.”

His eyes narrowed into slits. “Don’t let’s be flippant, dear boy. Think about everything you’ve learned today.
Think.
” The notebook.

I pulled it from my pocket and looked at the pages. “Oh, no …”

“Oh, yes. People will no longer single you out. Your face—which you’ve always thought was so very nondescript—will become just that. Someone meeting you for the first time won’t be able to remember what you look like ten minutes after you’ve parted ways. You’ll be just another faceless face in a sea of faceless faces. Now, being the social butterfly that you are, that’s probably not going to bother you too much. However—”

I held up the notebook. “The stories.”

“Exactly. Since you will have given me your First Face, those same people who won’t be singling you out also won’t be telling you their stories. And because they won’t be doing that, there are going. To be. Consequences. Do you understand?”

A tight, ugly knot was forming between my chest and throat. “I understand,” I whispered. “Is that all?”

“No. There’s one last thing, and it might be the deal breaker.” He told me.

I listened carefully.

Thought about everything I’d learned. And said yes.

“Lean back.” He placed the first mask on my face. It weighed no more than ether. Then, one by one, he removed each successive mask and layered it on top of the one before until I wore all of them.

Have you ever used one of those sinus-headache masks? The ones that have that icy blue glop inside? That’s what it felt like. An overpowering wave of cold spread across my face, seeped into my skull, through my brain, and formed a wall of frost in the back of my head. I shuddered and reached up.

Listen grabbed my arm. “Don’t touch it. You’ll lose your hand.”

Soon it became a pleasant liquid numbness. I sighed and maybe even smiled.

“Feels better now, does it?”

“… yes …”

“Then it’s done. Keep your eyes closed, dear boy. When you open them again I’ll be gone. It’s been genuine pleasure meeting you, Joel. You’re a decent man who still has a lot to offer the world. I fervently hope you’ll believe that some day. Now take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds.”

I heard something click a moment later. When I exhaled and opened my eyes, Listen was gone. I touched my face. It felt no different.

Back in my car I adjusted the rear-view mirror and caught a glimpse of myself.

Then wept.

I
find it difficult to watch the local news or read
The Ally
these days. Every time I come across a story about a murder, a sexual assault, a beating, suicide, or any one of a thousand commonplace horrors we’ve grown so accustomed to, I wonder if the person who committed the act might have done otherwise if only they could have found some stranger to listen to their story.

It’s not that stories like these never appeared in the paper before, it’s just I don’t recall there having been so
many
of them.

I don’t sleep as well as I used to.

I
received a postcard from Listen:
Having a fun time—wish you were wonderful! (A joke, dear boy.) Nine to go. I think this turned out rather well. You were still wearing it, by the way.

On the other side was the photograph he’d taken of me in the park that day. I am leaning against the picnic table with my eyes closed. My face seems to glow in the sunlight which whispers a thousand soft colors of thanks. It is a peaceful face. A beautiful face. A compelling, kind, compassionate face.

It belongs to a stranger.

T
he question that keeps nagging me is:
Why?

Why, in order to know the face of God, must the same horrors caused by our having
not
known it be perpetuated?

You could argue that these horrors on the local news and in
The Ally
border on the insignificant when compared to the holistic catalogue of human misery. You would be right, I suppose. Unless you suspect you’re the cause. And, no, filing it under “Sins of Omission” and going out for sushi doesn’t help much.

I miss being asked to pose for pictures, be them of myself alone or in a group. I miss
not
being asked, just having someone click away. But mostly, I miss having complete strangers come up to me with their stories. I didn’t think I would, but since that day with Listen I’ve come to realize just how much that meant to me.

Like I said, I don’t sleep so well anymore.

T
he people I know and work with treat me differently. So do the members of my family. Nothing major, mind you, but there’s a certain caution in their eyes whenever they’re around me.

A few nights ago, after Amy, Tommy, and I had gone to a movie (I see the two of them nearly every day now), we went for a pizza. While waiting for it to be delivered to the table, Tommy begged some quarters to play a video game. He smiled when I handed him the money, then exchanged a “You-Gonna-Ask-Him-Or-Not?” look with his mother before sprinting over to the machines.