Three Miles Past (17 page)

Now
, now collect your laptop, tuck it under your arm, and, working calmly, as if you’d really rather leave it here in the disaster, wipe the moths from your briefcase handle and pull it up, shake it once, dislodging what you can of this morning’s disaster.

Some of the moths will fall to the low-rise institutional carpet, but the bulk of them will find their wings, flutter up into the projector’s light.

In that mild panic that’s soon to dissolve to embarrassed laughter—they’re just
moths
—slip out. Keep going, your pace unhurried, your lips pleasant.

Your eyes, though.

Some things even you can’t help.

~

Because the cleaning lady’s still in your room, judging you, using scotch tape to capture any hairs you’ve left, her apron lined with evidence baggies—all cleaning staff is like this—retreat to the parking garage. Take the stairwell up into the sky.

The moths don’t follow.

If they found you by scent, then there’s too much out here. Or maybe their eyes aren’t ready for the sun.

Check your briefcase now, yes.

Spin to that magic date, pop it open in your lap.

They’re still there. Just the same, the internal fabric seams of the briefcase caulked with children’s glue—all they had at the store down the way. And these eggs, these seeds, they’re glistening and regular in their sausage sheath. Dab at a fleck of the lotion. Caress it in deeper. Watch it disappear under your finger, a missive from you to them: it’s okay, it’s okay.

Take your heartbeat down, now. Let yourself rest, go cold at the extremities, calm at the center. Picture the cleaning lady’s head in the paper bag of her vacuum cleaner, looking out through the zipped-open birthing slot. Hide the rest of her in the dresser drawers. Fold her between the pages of the directory, alphabetized in a way the next cleaning lady will recognize. Force her through the grate of the heater. Call her kids so they can hear her not say anything anymore ever again. Call Thomas so he can whisper to her.

Your brother, yes.

He would know what to say to her, wouldn’t he?

It’s because of where he lives now.

There’s a different language, there. You know there has to be. One that goes directly to the spine. To the tight muscles at the base of the jaw. To the heart that’s deeper than your real heart.

Thomas.

It’s okay, nobody’s up here, and you’ve already rolled the briefcase’s lock to random numbers, so, if you die right here and now, of happiness, nobody will know what you were thinking when it happened.

What are they saying to you?
Stick Man had asked.

Fuck him.

He didn’t know anything, didn’t know that you always tried to protect him, Thomas. Not because of blood, but because people said you looked alike. But you knew better, were already studying him then. How he only had a few of your features, like he got the leftovers in your mom’s stomach, wasn’t as prime a specimen. Or, like you’d taken all the good, didn’t know anybody else was coming through. So, you were always making it up to him, day by day. Apologizing that he didn’t come out right. As right as you did, anyway. As pure.

It was the least you could do.

But you had to sleep at some point, didn’t you?

Back then you did, anyway.

And that was when it happened.

He didn’t run away because he was petulant or ill-behaved or a miscreant, though, like your mom would say to the police later. It wasn’t even the right park. Didn’t they know anything? Weren’t they the
police
?

No, the reason he ran away, it had to do with the seed pod you’d finally managed to sneak home. She found it under Thomas’s pillow, the most obvious place, but he was just a kid, too. Had probably meant it as some sort of trade for the Tooth Fairy. Or left it there just so he could sneak touches up to it all night. Whisper secrets to it. Make promises. Lick it clean when nobody was looking.

But she found it like she always did, like she could detect each flake of skin in the house, each mote of dust, each bad thought, and she marched the two of you out front to dispose of it in the trash can, to lecture you about cleanliness and foreign bodies and little stealers, each of you in your underwear.

And you didn’t punch him for sneaking your pod from your secret box in the closet. But you might have broken your own rules and pinched him as if he were your equal, as if he had the faculties to control himself, wasn’t just falling victim to being put together from pieces that hadn’t been good enough for you.

And he didn’t tell on you for the pinching, that was the thing. He loved you too much to get you in trouble. Or, he knew he deserved it, was probably pinching himself under the covers as well.

What he did to make up for it, then, it probably made perfect sense in his head. To his way of thinking. After lights out eyes shut, he creaked his way to the front door, let himself out into the night, to get you another seed pod. He left to somehow walk all those miles to the park, come back with an impossible prize.

And that’s where they found his light blue windbreaker with the darker blue tiger stripes on the side like ribs: at the top of the slide at the park. The wrong park. The one just down the street, not all the way across town.

How old he was, he probably didn’t even understand that there was more than one park in the world.

The jacket was hanging on the tallest pole, a flag. Up where Thomas couldn’t have even reached, and why would he have taken his jacket off in the first place? To sit on it to make the slide faster, maybe, or to keep the dew from his jeans. But not because he was hot. It never broke fifty degrees that night.

No, that jacket, there. They were supposed to find it.

This language, these signs, they already came so naturally to you, didn’t they? You knew the fundaments of this life already. The real way of speaking. The only way that matters.

What you didn’t tell the police was that the jacket was supposed to make it look like Thomas had climbed the ladder in the dark, sat down to ride through that brief tunnel, then never made it out the other side. Like the night had just gulped once, swallowed him whole.

Which is exactly what it did.

Which was so much better than knowing, than finding, than seeing pictures. Because then you got to imagine. In high detail. Every time you closed your eyes. A thousand sordid lives for Thom to live out. To be pushed headfirst through, screaming the whole while. But the more variations you could think of, then the longer he was alive, right? And being alive’s better. Being alive’s the best.

It wasn’t easy, thinking of all that all the time, but it’s not like your mom was going to do it.

And it’s all been worth it, too. Now—after all this time, you’ve finally cut deep enough into the world that it had to give up one of its secrets. One of its most dear secrets.

Thank you.

~

By the time you cue into the footsteps approaching behind you, the footsteps that don’t care if you hear them, the footsteps that don’t hesitate, that don’t even know hesitation, your hands are of course slick with your own saliva. Because you didn’t have any more hotel lotion to rub into Stick Man’s intestines.

Just close the briefcase like you’re filing a paper, though.

Don’t wipe your hands on the concrete, because that’ll leave a dark smear.

And, most important, don’t run, never run, running is a temporary solution, but don’t come up fast either, leading with the edge of your briefcase. Though you could. You definitely could. And who would know.

The footsteps scrape to a stop behind you. Waiting.

Smile to yourself because they don’t know anything.

The shadows falling to either side of you are one blocky male, one tall female. Man, woman, and, between, your own sitting shadow, like a child.

Not for long, though.

Look to your right sharply, as if to the sound of a door closing, a car only your keen senses can detect, but keep your eyes on the silhouette those two faces can’t help but cut, what with the sun still low, coming in at a harsh angle.

Like you were dreading, two classical profiles look to their right with you to that make-believe sound. Two Roman Centurions, on guard.

And you, you’re just a businessman, of course, a representative for your company, up for some fresh air, some sun, some distance from this debacle of a presentation you just tried to lead. Some space to mourn all the sales you just lost, all the commission you were counting on.

And your hands, they’re almost dry, now. Just tacky.

Don’t smell them. Maybe just a little, to be sure.

The man coughs into his hand, announcing himself like a butler. The woman’s still looking to the right. As if seeing something there after all.

Or else she’s trying to get you to look that way again as well.

“Shit, I forgot to turn the projector off—” you say with a startled grin, standing and facing them in one casual, non-threatening move.

They just stare down at you.

You’re tall, but they have maybe four inches on you—even the woman, as if the only real difference between the two of them is their sex. If that. Their haircuts, anyway. Their clothes.

And there’s that direct way they have of settling you in their line of sight, their eyes forever separate from each other. Like they’re grazers.

Making you what in relation to them, right?

Don’t grin. Keep it inside. Open and close your hand in anticipation of a possible meet and greet. If your palm sticks to them, then your face will probably stick in their heads as well. And you can’t have that.

But there are ways, of course. To scoop memories out. And a lot else besides. Right now, though, your ‘projector’ is still hanging in the air, the slowest butterfly. But still, they’re waiting.

“You are from the front desk, aren’t you?” you say, switching the briefcase to your other hand.

The woman smiles a tolerant smile here.

“You mean you’re—you’re not with the hotel?” you say. “I’m sorry, I just . . . Downstairs, my meeting room, it was—hardly interesting to you, I’m sure.”

With that, nod once, start to slide by.

Except the man has his long fingers to your bicep, now.

“Scotch, right?” the woman says.

It’s what you were drinking last night. What you still haven’t made up for properly.

And the man’s fingers, even through the sleeve of your suit jacket, they’re cold, they’re marble.

“Don’t listen to them,” the man says to you then, his voice safe like a preacher’s. “You can’t listen to them.”

“I think you’ve got me . . . ” you say, speaking slow to show your honest confusion, feeling your way through the word. Moving around the tall man’s hard fingers one by one. Getting the sun behind you.

“It’s too late,” the woman says to the man, lowering her face to look into your eyes as if you’re a specimen. As if she wants to look through, into your head.

Do they even blink?

“Scotch,” you repeat, turning your face away from her penetrating gaze. From the individual fibers of her iris, which were—but they couldn’t have been—in motion. Crawling.