Luminarium (43 page)

“Last year around this time,” he said, “I overheard a woman in the booth behind me at a diner telling her friend that her cat chose to die the week before 9/11, ‘because he didn’t want to be a part of all that tragedy.’”

Mira stared at him for a moment. An almost noiseless laugh escaped her.

“Everyone’s got to spread their own miserable little layer of meaning over it,” he said, feeling himself on a roll. “Like that baseball in Indiana the guy kept covering with coats of paint until it was the size of a weather balloon.”

More than once now, Mira had ordered him to keep talking, pretty much whenever Fred had tried to get her to talk. He didn’t really mind. Over the last few months, he’d grown used to monologuing to silent crowds of one. And he was warming to his subject.

“A hundred 9/11 movies. A thousand 9/11 novels. Ten thousand bloviating talking heads. Eight million self-declared victims. Everyone lost something.” He waved his bottle in the air. “Some value in their portfolio. A good night’s sleep. Their innocence.”

He glanced her way again. Her look was stern, like he’d just made fun of a cripple.

“And what did you lose, Fred?”

He put his palms on the bar, staring at the points where his thumbs and index fingers met.

“My innocence,” he finally declared.

A few seconds passed.

She laughed. “Man, are you wasted.”

The door was
now locked, the remaining customers, except for the two of them, kicked out. Penciled Eyebrows wiped tables. Soul Patch mopped. Fred and Mira kept drinking, their shoulders leaned up against each other, in part to keep from falling over.

“Mr. Brounian,” Mira said. “Welcome to my study. If you could, please summarize for me what the hell’s the matter with you anyhow.”

“My problems all began when I slew my father and married my mother. Then my inner child ran amok. More recently, there was the early male menopause …”

As he spoke, she typed his responses into an invisible keyboard on the bartop. Just like in her office, she went on typing long after he’d trailed off.

“Doctor, do you mind my asking what it is you’re writing?”

“My report.”

“What does it say?”

“Mr. Brounian. Fred, if I may.”

“Call me Freddo.”

She laughed, breaking character. “
Freddo?
”

“It’s what all my good analysts call me.”

“All right, to resume then, it is my determination,
Freddo
, that you’re fucked up beyond hope of recovery.”

“Is that so?”

“My recommendation is for you to be removed from human society, remanded to the care of animals, reindoctrinated as a rhesus monkey. Possibly a dolphin.”

“I think I’m going to want a second opinion.”

“Certainly. You’re ugly, too.”

“Thanks, Groucho.”

“Any time. That’ll be five hundred bucks.”

More of her hair had freed itself from the clip, apple mist in the air. The point of contact between their upper arms was spreading an almost intolerable charge through his body—part desire, part fear. He was thinking about George’s Foley catheter and telling himself not to think about that. He was thinking about the exchange with his cyberstalker, the promise that Mira would fall for him, the possibility that it might actually be coming true, then wondering if it was a setup, if she was in on it, if the whole world was in on it, everyone but himself, then telling himself not to think about any of that either, not to give his persecutors that kind of power over him, not to let it freeze him up and sabotage everything.

“Have you ever noticed how proud people are to have them—opinions, I mean?” he plowed on. “It’s like being proud of one’s tapeworms, or pubic lice.”

“Would the analysand care to discuss his longstanding shame associated with his pubic lice?”

“Here’s an opinion,” he proclaimed, surprising himself with his own vehemence. “There should be a law limiting people to one opinion per lifetime. When that kid came up to you in nursery school and asked you what your favorite color was? And you suddenly felt you wouldn’t quite exist if you didn’t have an answer? And so you said, I don’t know, blue? That’s your opinion limit. You’re done. You’re free. No other opinions would ever be asked for or allowed of you.”

She leaned farther over the bar and caught his eyes. “Is that your favorite color? Blue?”

He shook his head. “What if it is?” he muttered.

As he watched, tears, inked with mascara, rolled from her eyes.

By the time the two of them were outside, the tears had been forgotten,
at least, it seemed, by Mira. She’d brushed them away almost as soon as they’d come, dismissed Fred’s inquiries, and was laughing again, first at his inability to walk a straight line, and then at her own wobbling tightrope act down the sidewalk. Upon reaching her building, he made the mistake of stopping an instant before she did. He tried to cover it up by making it look like he’d stumbled. But her look told him she wasn’t buying it.

“Right,” she said, with a slow nod. “Of course you know where I live.”

He was avoiding her eyes, looking up at the dark face of her building. A single light in a fifth-story window went off.

“Hey,” he managed, sheepishly. “What kind of stalker would I be otherwise?” Then he stood there, wishing he’d found a less creepy reply.

“True,” she said. As they stood there facing each other, it started happening again—that impossible light, even more impossible now, by night, on the darkened street, as though the moon itself had been lowered to the point where its pale expanse filled the sky from end to end, its milky light pouring down on them.

“Mira. That brightness to everything from the session. It’s back.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, yes. Right now.”

She stepped closer, those dark, myopic eyes squinting in the light. A foot away. Six inches. He was seeing it as he’d see it in the last minute of brainlife, for the last time. Whether death was the end or but a prelude, this moment would be irretrievable, unchangeable from here on. The light, he at last felt he understood, was a call to action—opportunities were fleeting, he had to lean in and kiss her … right now … without delay …

“Your pupils look a little unevenly dilated,” she said, before he’d moved. “It should go away soon.” She stepped back. “Let me know, though, if it keeps bugging you.”

Bathed in the now meaningless, illusory moonbeams, she turned toward her front steps. A panic seized him.

“You inviting me up?” he asked, trying to make it sound casual.

She shook her head solemnly.

“You’ll need some help getting up those stairs, though,” he suggested.

“I’m not relationship material.”

She watched him, waited for the point to sink in.

“Um … Can I use your bathroom?” he asked.

“Now that’s just pathetic.”

She made for the steps, and promptly tripped on the first. He grabbed her with both hands around the waist and arm, himself almost falling over. With her hip in his palm, the side of her breast against the backs of his fingers, the waves of heat coming off her, his whole body thrummed with a need so strong it ached. She went tense, closing her eyes. Her neck flushed. For a second he thought she might pull away, but instead she leaned into him for a few seconds, before finding her balance again.

“You can use my bathroom,” she said.

They got up the steps. The strange light was gone, but the heat was more compelling still. He could barely uncouple his hands from her and go back down to retrieve his bags once they reached the door.

It was an old building. The entryway, at least, didn’t seem to have been renovated any time recently. Through the steam clouds of his endorphins, he saw her name on a mailbox, her father’s on another. He pointed to the latter.

“Your dad won’t chase me out with a shotgun, will he?”

“Not his style.” She opened the inner door. “He might come at you with a Tesla coil. Or a skull saw.”

On the way up the narrow flights, she gave him a brief, whispered history of her occupancy, how she’d grown up here, how, a few years ago, the top-floor apartment had come on the market and her father had made the down payment for her.

“We were going to fix it up,” she said, trailing off and leaving it at that.

“You and your dad must be close,” Fred whispered.

“It was a good deal.”

“Is your mom—”

“They divorced when I was twelve. She pretty much left us both, went off to find herself. She’s still looking. Hi, Dad,” she said, so casually Fred almost waved too, as he and Mira rounded the corner onto the fifth landing, to find an apartment door open and Craig Egghart standing in the frame. He was dressed in a threadbare bathrobe, looking from Mira to Fred, those seepy-dyed eyes of his large with anxiety, then narrowing to a squint, then popping wider than before.

“But … isn’t he … isn’t he the one from the study?”

It was the first time Fred had heard the man speak. He had the kind of mild voice that only went quieter with strain.
The one from the study
, Fred thought. No sooner had he begun to wonder why Egghart had worded it that way than Mira’s reply scuttled the whole issue.

“Not anymore,” she said.

Fred and Mira’s father watched each other as the confusion shifted from Egghart back to Fred. Then Egghart looked at his daughter again, a warmer look, which only seemed to annoy her. She slipped past him, pulling Fred along, Fred wheeling his bag around Egghart’s feet. Egghart closed the door softly, as Fred and Mira rounded another bend and started up the next flight.

“I had a feeling he wouldn’t be going to sleep tonight,” she whispered, more to herself than to Fred.

They reached the top landing. She fumbled with her keys.

“What did you mean back there?” Fred whispered.

She looked up. “You didn’t really think you’d stay in the study after butting into my life like this, did you?”

He didn’t know what to say. He felt like he’d been nightsticked in the gut. He half wanted to ask her why she hadn’t just told him to go away instead of hanging out with him all night. It seemed a betrayal not only of him but of her study, the study which so clearly meant everything to her. She was watching his expression, seemingly surprised at how hurt he was. She looked hurt herself, and guilty, and offended at the same time. She turned away, got the door open, stepping into the dark hallway beyond.

“Bathroom’s second door to the right.”

She turned left and switched on a light, revealing a long, narrow kitchen with a Formica counter and yellowed white paint, and the living room beyond.

Fred left his bags just inside the door and made his way down the hall. The first door to the right, somewhat ajar, revealed her bedroom—the light was off; he could make out part of a dresser, the usual womanly clutter of little cases and boxes atop it, and the edge of a bed, the sight of which sent another urgent pulse through him. He was still reeling from the blow of being kicked out of the study, still wondering what that last doozy of a session would have shown him. Yet on the other hand, what did it even matter? Hadn’t he been duped and mentally manipulated enough already? What was he really losing? Nothing real, nothing like the feel of Mira’s waist on the front steps, nothing like her hips swaying ahead of him up the flights of stairs.

He was so crazed with lust that inhaling the scent of her shampoos and bodywashes and moisturizing soaps in her little blue-tiled bathroom was almost too much for him. He held his half-erect member, the urine passing through his hypersensitized urethra with something far closer to pleasure than pain. It had been months since he’d been with a woman, with Mel, in that Zeckendorf stairwell. It had gone well in the end, but the whole time he’d been plagued by thoughts of catheters and cancers, and nearly hadn’t gotten it up. His only worry now was the opposite, that he’d explode in his pants. He plunged his face in cold water, the effects of which were immediately counteracted by drying off in a towel infused with the scent of her flowers and fog. He stared at the floor tiles, trying to calm himself, but even those sensible, rectilinear shapes gyrated like a thousand dancing hips.

Back out in the hall, he took a few steps before realizing he’d gone the wrong way. Another door to the right, this one closed. A second bedroom? A study? But no, not a study—her cluttered desk was to his left, through a set of French doors, crammed in alongside a dining table, itself stacked with books and papers. The light was out in this room, but beyond it, through an identical set of doors on the other end, the living room light now shone. He could see a front window; and two chest-high, opened crates; and a splay of packing material. As he watched, through the doubled grids of the two sets of panes, Mira stepped slowly into the tableau, stopping between the crates and staring, with that misted, wonder-filled expression of hers, at something in the corner out of view. She turned her head, toward the other corner, more or less Fred’s way, then saw him and jumped with fright. Once she realized it was him, she shut her eyes for a second, after which he mouthed an apology, but he doubted she could really see his features through the panes with him standing the dark. Rather than open the doors, he made his way back around through the kitchen. A futon couch, some overstuffed bookshelves, and a couple of vintage, silver-bulbed, space-age lamps came into view. Only when he stepped into the living room could he see the objects of her gaze.