Close Encounters (19 page)

When he was little he used to dream that, when he turned around, people would disappear. Even if he could hear them clearly, talking, laughing behind him, he knew that when he turned to face them, they would be gone. And if he made the mistake of turning around, he could not turn back, because those people, from whom he had just turned, would also disappear. He began to learn, while dreaming, to focus ahead, to not get distracted, to worry about whatever was in front of him and nothing more. He could not find out what would happen if he were utterly alone.

He picked up the phone, called Bruce's voicemail at work, and told him he would not be in the next day.

“David, I'm going to my mother's.”

He looked at Sara from his laptop, not sure whether she wanted him to try and detain her. He personally wanted to be left alone, for he had a lot of work to do, but he thought he understood the subtle diplomacy of marriage well enough to know what was expected of him. “Don't go.”

“I'll be back around dinner.” She turned to leave. “I thought we would go out. Do you think you can be showered and ready to go by seven?”

“Yes. Have a good time. Tell your mom I said hello.”

He returned to his internet search. It would take him days—weeks—to isolate his illness and identify a treatment. The trips to the doctor these past few months were worthless—they didn't listen, didn't know where to look, and most of the time tried to send him home with a prescription to placate the drug companies. They had given David a clean bill of health and yet he knew better. He had begun to observe it a few months back, when his pinky finger began to fade slightly. This led to a complete physical and bloodwork, which were unremarkable.

“I can't really begin to know where to look, David,” his last doctor had explained. “Unless you have some symptoms.”

But the symptoms that began in the infancy of any illness were vague and undifferentiated—fatigue, anxiety, headaches, pain—and David knew that to receive specific tests—biopsies, imaging, and the like—he would have to take a shot in the dark, fake some symptoms, and see whether the tests turned up anything.

But where to begin? Cancer? There were so many cancers and not many of them running through his family. His father's mother had died of brain cancer. He randomly looked at cancer sites, trying to find symptoms or a cluster of symptoms, for he would need to be diagnosed soon if he were to have any chance. Headaches. Maybe he could tell his doctor he had terrible headaches. Blinding headaches. They'd tell him he had migraines. Or nosebleeds. Sinus irritation. Or terrible stomach pain, throwing up blood. Ulcer. Crohn's. Overwhelming fatigue. Stress. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Maybe he should just tell the doctor he was dying. Mental illness. Nervous breakdown. Delusions of grandeur.

He looked at his pinky finger, resting on the edge of the mouse. It didn't feel any different. Maybe it wasn't faded. Maybe he didn't know what he saw anymore. Whatever he saw, it was consuming him. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. He barely left the house, except for rare occasions like tonight, when Sara forced him. He typed the word disappear into his search engine and hit enter. Dead Sea to disappear by 2050…How to Disappear in Six Easy Lessons…Learn How to Disappear Completely Without a Trace. He put his laptop aside and reclined on the bed. Sara would be home in a few hours. Time would elapse, slowly, quickly, depending on one's perspective, and some of his life would elapse also, while he slept, while he did nothing. Sara would come home from her mother's and try not to be cross at the fact that he was still not ready, but he would throw on some clothes and run a comb through his hair and offer to drive and more of his life would escape with little protest from his mind, his cells.

“Where do you want to eat?” he asked. He watched the road carefully, noticing the flat pebbles that, under their tires, gave them the illusion of solidarity and safety.

“I thought we might try that new place, the Irish pub—what is it called?”

“Hmm…OK.” He knew that the atoms inside the asphalt, the car, their bodies, were mostly empty space, and if they slowed their progress enough, perhaps the organism would cease to exist. It would be absorbed into the environment, into other configurations of air and gasses and space.

“What? You don't want to try it?”

“I'm sorry; what place did you want to go?”

“The pub—you know, the new Irish pub.”

“Oh. It's just…like every other place we go to.” He was slipping away, every second, every minute of this empty time, empty time in transit, transit from one memory to another.

“Well, we won't know unless we try it, right?”

“Yes, but…I just want to try something completely different. Why don't we just drive around until we see something?” He felt his finger tingling, but he could not stand to look and see.

“Umm…we can. But I'm kind of hungry now.”

“OK, we can go to the pub.”

“No, no—you're right. We've been stuck in a rut.”

David pointed the car in the direction of the interstate. If he did not have to see his house, his job, this town again, it would be a blessing. He could not discern the reasons why these things were like carcinogens, even if he knew they were. What had started all of this? What would stop it? It would never stop. He would always be dying, quickly or slowly, depending on one's perspective.

But he had to do something. He could be a better person, surely.

He could eat better, continue to exercise, try a new line of work. Maybe he'd sign up for classes, become an architect. Enough of this business culture. There were so many things he could do while dying.

“David, I think we should separate.” Sara's voice was far from him, as if it came from the car speaker. He could not believe it had come to this. Could he not see this coming? Did he know Sara, or not? Did he know himself?

He turned to look at her, but she was not there, only a faint outline, and he exhaled quickly. She was not supposed to disappear. He was the one, all these weeks, who had been slowing fading, and she had not. There was no indication, no warning. But now here it was. David did not have a second more to speculate. It was coming to an end, his life unraveling, sooner, sooner than he could ever have expected because now, when he looked down, he was also disappearing sooner rather than later, like water escaping from an overturned glass. The only permanence in their lives was the car around them, which, in David's confusion, had taken a new course. Gradually, it moved over the centerline of the highway, and a car in the opposite lane was coming toward them, faster and faster and yet in slow motion—a blur, but with a solidity and force, motion, and grace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEN MICHALSKI'S work has appeared in
McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Hobart Pulp, The Sommerset Review
and many others. She lives in Baltimore.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Some of these stories have appeared previously, in
Failbetter
(“The Movie Version of My Life”),
Unlikely Stories 2.0
(“In Fetu”),
Swill Magazine
(“The Assistant”),
The Pedestal Magazine
(“Discount”),
Thieves Jargon
(“Our Place in the World”),
Lily
(“The Situation”),
McSweeney's Internet Tendency
(“Whitney Houston Commencement Speech”),
Bending Spoons
(“In the Waiting Line”), and
Split Shot
(“The Disappearers”)

Copyright © 2007 Jen Michalski

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5443-3

A Dzanc Books r
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