The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (11 page)

He motioned Barney to seat himself. Barney shoved the Band-Aid and the piece of paper into the pocket of his robe. Settled himself in the chair and awaited the Handyman’s verdict.

“How did I do?” Barney asked finally, breaking the silence, the Handyman having outwaited him.

“You did fine, my boy,” the Handyman said. “It was we, perhaps, who were amiss.”

Amiss.
A strange, goose-bumpy word. What did he mean by it?

“We miscalculated.”

Miscalculated.
A word worse than amiss. Don’t tell me any more, Barney wanted to say, while knowing that he had to hear more, had to find out what the Handyman meant.

“You mean by having me out for two days instead of a few hours?” Barney prompted. By
out
meaning lost, blank, a cipher.

“Yes. That. Although I must admit that we decided to administer additional sedatives to keep you immobile for a while.”

“Why was that necessary?” Barney asked.

“At one point during the questioning you exhibited signs of anxiety.”

More word games.

“You mean I panicked?”

“We did not realize we would be so successful. You are an admirable subject, Barney, with perfect responses. Because of this, we detained you perhaps too long. The neurons involved—”

Barney stopped him. A word like
neurons
set off alarm bells in his body. “In plain English, doctor.”

“Yes, of course,” the Handyman said apologetically. “We are seeking to determine whether memory control can be pinpointed, whether one facet of memory can be removed while others are not. In other words, a carefully selected erasure. In fact, think of this therapy as erasing part of a video tape.”

“Were you successful, doctor?” Barney asked, feeling beads of perspiration gathering on his forehead and the back of his neck.

“Eminently,” the Handyman said. “During questioning—which, of course, you cannot remember and are not meant to remember—the control was precise. To an astonishing degree, my boy.”

“Why did I begin to panic?”

“You became fatigued. We were so caught up in your responses that we extended the interrogation beyond our original schedule. We then made a judgment that you needed a transitional period before being restored to normalcy.”

All these words gave Barney the chills, caused the sweat on his flesh to turn cold.

“Am I normal now?”

“Completely, Barney,” the Handyman said heartily. “I must point out, however, that there will be aftermaths.”

As if the Handyman possessed some terrible power of suggestion, Barney was suddenly swept with dizziness, the desk between them shifting as sands shift in a windstorm. He grabbed the edge of the desk for support, afraid he might pitch forward.

The Handyman moved quickly. Up from the chair and around the desk, quicker than Barney had thought it was possible for him to move. Barney felt strong hands grip his shoulders.

“Vertigo?”

The Handyman’s voice boomed in his ear.

“More than that,” Barney managed to gasp, gripping the desk tightly, seeing his knuckles turn bluish white.

“What, my boy?”

“I can’t remember all of a sudden,” Barney said.

“Can’t remember what?” The Handyman’s voice low, almost intimate in Barney’s ear, but loud at the same time, reverberating in Barney’s mind like an echo growing in volume instead of diminishing.

“Everything. Who I am.”

He turned to the Handyman in sudden confrontation, saw his eyes like green moons, the pores of his flesh like mountain craters.

“I’m Barney Snow. I know my name. But nothing else. I don’t know anything else.” Lost in a void, in an aching emptiness. Panic whistled through him. He wanted to run, get out of here, away from the Handyman and those eyes. “Where did I come from? How did I get here? Who am I?”

“Think,” the Handyman commanded. “Concentrate.” His voice snapping against Barney’s ear, sharp and crackling. “Think of your mother. She …”

His mother’s face blossomed in his mind’s eye, so beautiful, so lovely. And the tinkling bracelets that accompanied her wherever she went.

The tinkling bracelets filled the emptiness in his mind: He could almost hear them. He also felt the hot sting of the needle in his arm and realized that Bascam had entered the room and had somehow rolled up his sleeve and given him a shot while the Handyman held him firmly on the other side. He let himself go limp, to flow with whatever was joining his blood from the needle—tempo, rhythm—clinging to the face of his mother, her tinkling bracelets, closing his eyes, letting his mind fill with her so that everything else could be obliterated, especially the panic.

After a while he felt his heart beating normally. He looked lazily around for Bascam but she had departed, as silently as she had arrived. The Handyman was once more behind the desk. Barney sought his eyes, was glad to see the doctor regarding him in his usual manner. Emergency over, if it had been an emergency. Whatever it was, done with, for now anyway. The sense of well-being he had known this morning on awakening filled him again, a feeling of drift, letting go.

“Now what were we talking about, doctor?” he asked, languid, the words coming out of his mouth like bubbles from a toy pipe.

“We were just finishing, Barney,” the Handyman said. “I had been saying how well you performed during the test.”

Barney remembered now, played back in his mind what the Handyman had been saying about erasing tape, his memory like a tape being erased. But it didn’t matter, really, nothing mattered as he remained in the chair, but not completely in the chair because part of him was floating beautifully and languorously somewhere else. Crazy, of course, but he let that other part of himself float away if it wanted to.

Later, when he had returned to his room, he bent over to take off his slippers and he was in the car again, behind the wheel, the wet street slanting before him, the cobblestones glistening with pelting rain, windshield wipers slapping back and forth, the motor roaring in his ears, lights flashing, horn blowing, louder than before, louder than ever, and then that figure stepping off the curb as the car approached and he pressed the brake pedal but nothing happened, the car would not stop, was gathering speed until …

He found himself face down on the bed, clinging to the pillow, gritting his teeth, tears running down his cheeks, his hands aching from holding the steering wheel so tightly, fingers singing with pain from clutching the wheel.

He stayed that way until sleep finally came with enfolding arms and his mother’s face passed before his eyes just before he trickled off into sleep like rain sluicing off a sloping roof.

“Y
OU
have a visitor.”

Barney looked at Bascam in surprise, testing her words, stalling before making a response, adjusting himself to the morning light that filtered through the slats of the Venetian blinds. He dimly remembered falling asleep the night before after the nightmare of the car—he would definitely speak to the Handyman about it today—but remembered nothing else. The digital clock said it was 8:45. Late for him.

“Who is it?” Barney asked, knowing visitors were not allowed here, although an exception had been made for Mazzo. Another exception seemed unlikely. Especially for him.

Bascam managed a dim smile. A feat for her.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Barney was mystified and a bit apprehensive as he followed Bascam down the corridor, which was quiet and hushed in the morning hours when wasted bodies were preparing for another day.

“Is it an emergency?” he asked.

“Not an emergency,” she answered.

Who could it be? He wasn’t like Mazzo, had no mother
out there or a sister like Cassie. Tempo, rhythm, he told himself.

“Is it bad news?” he asked, trying to keep up with Bascam’s brisk stride.

“Depends what you mean by bad news,” Bascam answered glancing briefly over her shoulder. Poker-faced as usual, impossible to tell whether she was serious or not.

Bascam left him at the end of the corridor without another word. Barney walked toward the reception room near the exit to Section 12. He nodded at Old Cheekbones, who merely stared at him as usual and then resumed whatever she’d been doing at Barney’s approach, bending over the papers on her desk.

Barney turned the corner into the reception room and there she was.

Cassie Mazzofono.

His heart leaped. Literally. Rose in his chest, taking his breath away. She stood there, sun catching her blond hair, spinning it, making it dance on her head, which was ridiculous, of course. But Cassie Mazzofono was so beautiful, so vibrant in that beauty, that she made Barney think crazy thoughts like that, made him glad that he had somehow found his way here to the Complex.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said in that husky bantering voice. She was wearing blue again, a light-blue raincoat, unbuttoned to show a blue blouse and dark skirt. Her blue eyes were warm, inviting.

“And don’t look so worried, either,” she said. “I’m not going to bite you.”

“You looked as if you wanted to bite the other day,” he said.

“That was the other day. Come on in, sit down.”

“I’d rather stand,” he said, unsure of himself, delighted
with the fact of her presence but also wary, on guard. “Does the doctor know you’re here? We’re not supposed to have visitors.”

“He knows I’m here,” she said, removing her raincoat and folding it over the back of a chair, every movement beautiful. “He’s not happy about it, but he knows.”

“Why isn’t he happy?”

She sighed. “Because I’m indulging in a bit of blackmail. My mother made a substantial donation when Alberto was admitted here. And she’s still providing funds. A place like this always needs money.”

“And you told the doctor that if you couldn’t visit here, she’d stop the money,” Barney said, still standing there, wondering what to do next, what to say next.

“Well, I didn’t put it that bluntly, but yes, that was the message,” Cassie said.

“He didn’t say anything to me about a visit.”

“He agreed only last night. It was probably too late to notify you. And I came here early today before he changed his mind.”

“But what do you want with me?” Barney asked. Wanting to know and yet not wanting to know too, simply because as long as he didn’t know, anything was possible. She could say: I fell madly in love with you at first sight the other day. Age doesn’t matter. I want you to perform heroic deeds for me. Impossible, crazy, Barney told himself. But she was here in this room, wasn’t she? Which he would have considered impossible yesterday.

“Relax, Barney,” she said. “You don’t mind if I call you Barney, do you?”

He shrugged, feeling inadequate and defenseless standing here in his robe and slippers, still shaky from the last merchandise.

“Call me Cassie.”

“Cassie,” he said, the name light and bright on his tongue.

“Come on, sit down,” she urged.

She led him to the chairs near the window in the full morning sunlight. The chairs were uncomfortable kitchen-type chairs and the room bare of adornment, like his own bedroom, dingy walls, curtainless windows, Venetian blinds fully opened to let in the daylight. She made the room seem anything but dingy, however. He sat across from her, conscious suddenly of his body, his hands and feet, as if he’d just learned he had hands and feet, wondering what to do with them.

She shivered a bit, hugged her arms to her chest. “God, I hate this place,” she said. “It gives me the creeps. It’s the last place on earth I want to be.”

“Then why did you come back?” he asked, honestly curious.

“To see you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re different from the others here. Everything and everyone is so hopeless here. But not you. I sensed that right away in Alberto’s room. And later he told me you weren’t like the others. You’re here for different tests.”

Barney soared with delight. She had recognized him for what he was, different, his own person, not anyone else. But he was still puzzled. “And that’s why you’re here? Because I’m not like the others?”

“It’s kind of complicated, Barney,” she said. Then paused, shook her head the way a puppy shakes off water, touched her cheek with fingers that were surprisingly small and blunt. He loved to see her move, every movement
graceful and endearing to him. “Okay, I hate this place but my brother’s here. And he won’t leave this place alive. You’re here, too. Alberto said you’re a fixer. He told me about the telephone deal you arranged for that boy in the wheelchair. He also said you’re a tough guy.”

“I’m not so tough,” he said. “But in a place like this you have to protect yourself. So you act tough sometimes. The doctor says we have to live in separate compartments, that we shouldn’t get to know each other. A guy by the name of Ronson died a few days ago. But it wasn’t too bad because I never got to know him. Didn’t let myself get to know him.”

“But you got friendly with the boy you arranged the telephone for,” she said. “You found out how much he wanted a telephone.”

Barney felt uncomfortable. “Billy needs cheering up sometimes. But I don’t let him get too close.”

“How close would you be willing to get to my brother?”

That was it: the windup. And then would come the pitch. He felt let down. She was not here to see him, after all, just as he had known it from the first moment.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, would you visit with him, get to know him better, become friendly with him? Cheer him up?”

“Nobody can cheer him up,” Barney said. “He doesn’t want to be friends with anybody. Me and him, we don’t even get along.”

“Would you try to get along with him if I asked you?” Her eyes were fastened on him, the gorgeous eyes that opened up worlds for him. “Actually, I don’t know how communicative he will be. He seems to have taken a turn for the worse since I first saw him here. Feverish, barely talking. But, would you try?”

Barney wanted to say: I would do anything for you. Especially if you looked at me the way you looked at him, as if I was somebody special in your eyes. Hell, she didn’t have to love him. Just admire him a little, trust him.