Fade (10 page)

Pete and Artie paid no attention to the departure as they concentrated on their game while David Renault finished his ice-cream cone, the last piece disappearing into his mouth with a satisfied smack.

Andre and Theresa continued down Third Street, in and out of the shadows, caught in the glare of a streetlight for a moment and then becoming lost in darkness. I saw them duck into an empty doorway.

Should I follow?

Should I watch them wherever they went and spy on what they did?

I looked around, at the three-deckers on the other side of Third Street, opposite the stores, saw the lights in windows, glimpses of people sitting on the piazzas in the cool evening air.

I could go anywhere, I thought. Into any of those tenements. Spy on whomever I chose. Watch them talking and arguing and making love. See the women take off their clothes as they went to bed. Stand close enough to touch them. I could slip into parlors and bedrooms.

I was lifted on a wave of possibilities and thought of all the possible heavens at my fingertips.

Why was my uncle always so sad when he talked about the fade?

The cold was still with me as I left Pete and Artie to their card game with David Renault as their solitary audience. I walked in the direction Andre and Theresa had taken, uncertain of my destination.

At Dondier's Market, I saw a light burning inside and Mr. Dondier at the cash register tallying the day's receipts with pencil and pad, touching the tip of his pencil to his tongue as he always did, so that his tongue had a permanent dark spot at its tip.

Mr. Dondier, such a serious man, seldom a smile. I wondered if I could make him smile.

Better yet, could I play a trick on him, among the fruits and vegetables and canned goods, something I never had the courage to do until this moment?

The fade now gave me courage.

I opened the door and closed it carefully. Mr. Dondier looked up, pencil poised at his lips, the overhead bulb shining on his bald head. He looked at his watch.

The store smelled, as usual, of coffee and oranges and pungent odors I could not identify, odors that clung to Mr. Dondier himself the way the smell of celluloid followed my father.

His pencil leapt across the pad as he resumed his work, and I advanced stealthily. Moving closer to him, amazed at my boldness, I watched as he tabulated the figures, his lips moving with his calculations. I shivered a bit.

He raised his head.

“Who's there?” he called.

He looked directly into my eyes and for a frantic moment, I was again afraid that the fade had failed and I was visible, standing directly in front of him. Then I reasoned that he would not have asked “Who's there?” if he could see me.

Wetting his lips, he bent again to his work, small beads of perspiration on his forehead, like dew on a melon. He looked up again, eyes slitted, scrutinizing the store, trying to see into all corners, muttering words under his breath that I could not understand.

He looked so apprehensive, so weary and haggard, that I knew I could not play any tricks on him.

Finally he placed his pad and pencil in the little box next to the cash register and walked to the front of the store, peered out at the street through a window, and then snapped the lock in place. Glancing over his shoulder, he walked urgently through the narrow aisles of the vegetable section to the back room. I waited a moment near the meat counter before following him. I was barely aware of the cold now.

In the back room, he had turned on the gooseneck lamp that threw a flood of light on the clutter of account books, papers, and pencil stubs on his old desk. Taking a small key from his vest pocket, he inserted it delicately in the bottom drawer. He pulled out the drawer, reached inside and brought forth a quart bottle of whiskey. He lifted the bottle, drank from it in huge gulps, gasped, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and placed the bottle on the desk top.

Looking around, he called out again: “Anybody there?”

He uncapped the bottle and drank again, his eyes watering from the sting of the whiskey. Shuddering, he sat down on the old piano bench that served as his office chair. He replaced the bottle in the drawer and sat with head bowed. He did not move for several moments and my legs began to ache. I turned as someone rattled the front door and knocked on the window.

Mr. Dondier leapt to his feet and made for the doorway, so swiftly that I had no time to draw back and he almost brushed me as he passed.

I watched his progress to the front door, saw a slender figure faintly through the windowpane. Mr. Dondier unlocked the door and drew it open.

Theresa Terrault stepped inside, hurriedly, glancing over her shoulder as she entered.

“I thought you weren't coming,” Mr. Dondier said, locking the door behind her, “so I closed up a few minutes ago.”

“I couldn't help being late,” she said, her voice like a little girl's. She
was
a little girl, despite the flashy sweater and the budding breasts.

“I heard some noise in here,” he said. “I thought you sneaked in early and was playing a trick….” As they came toward the backroom he touched her cheek, then her breast. “You wouldn't play tricks on me, would you, Theresa?”

“No, Mr. Dondier,” she said shyly.

I stared at Mr. Dondier and Theresa in disbelief. His daughter, Clara, was in my class at school, a happy girl who laughed quickly and easily, and blushed as often as she laughed. She was the same age as Theresa, but Theresa was a poor student who hated books and homework and had been kept behind. Now my cheeks burned as I saw Mr. Dondier, who collected at the ten o'clock mass on Sunday mornings, pull Theresa to him and run his hand over her breasts.

“Wait a minute,” she said, drawing back, extending her hand.

Mr. Dondier fumbled in his trousers, took out his wallet and extracted a bill whose denomination I could not see. One dollar, five dollars? He placed it on the desk, his hand trembling. “It's yours,” he said. “After …”

She giggled as he raised her up, lifting her under the arms and setting her on the desk, facing him. She pulled back her skirt, revealing knobby knees.

Mr. Dondier sat down on the piano bench, his face red and sweating and his eyes strange and staring, as he raised her legs onto his shoulders and plunged his face between her legs. He moaned and his shoulders jerked violently as he burrowed between her thighs. Theresa looked down at his bald head, still moist in the light of the gooseneck lamp. Her eyes were vacant, lusterless, as if she were not really there, as if Mr. Dondier were using someone else's body.

“Oh, Theresa,” Mr. Dondier moaned, his voice muffled as he gasped her name and reached around now to clutch her buttocks.

Vomit rose in my throat, my heart pounding so dangerously that I backed away instinctively, my cheeks hot and pulsing.

I had to get out of there.

As I headed for the front of the store, the image of Mr. Dondier and Theresa Terrault burned in my mind, like the dancing spots that linger after you've stared too long at a bright light. Blinking away the image, I made my way through the aisles, careful not to upset the displays of merchandise.

I opened the door quietly and slipped out, hugging the shadows of the entrance, waiting to see if the street was empty. A car passed, headlights dim, the driver a shadow behind the windshield. The cold was intense again. I hurried down the street, my sneakers gliding over the sidewalk, trying to outdistance my thoughts.

Later, in the shed at home, I endured the pause and the flash of pain as I forced the fade away and saw, to my relief, first the vague outlines of my body and then my bones and flesh. Then the clothes I wore. I stayed there a while, sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to my chest, exhausted, body limp, as if I had traveled long distances.

Glancing out the small, dusty window, I saw the moon hanging remotely in the sky. I concentrated on the moon, filling my mind with it to blot out the memory of what I had seen in Mr. Dondier's back room. But what about the others I had spied on earlier? David Renault and Artie and Pete Lagniard, my best friend. And the people in the three-deckers carrying on their lives behind the walls of their tenements. If I had followed any of them, spied upon them, entered their homes, would their private lives have also revealed secrets? Dark and nasty secrets it was better not to know about?

Finally, the moon was gone and I slipped into the house, past my father dozing in his chair near the radio, my mother already in bed. I stood for a moment in the doorway to my bedroom, looking at my father, listening to the small sounds of the tenement, and I seemed like an alien to those sounds, a stranger to this place that was my home. I was filled with guilt and shame, as if I had committed a terrible sin. I undressed and slid into the bed but did not sleep for a long time.

That was the second time I summoned the fade.

The first time had been in the presence of my uncle Ade-lard in my grandfather's house on a Saturday afternoon when everyone was gone and he tilted his chair back against the wall, and gave his command:

“Do it.”

He had given me careful instructions. Told me to lean against a wall that was not there, to close my eyes to shut off distractions, concentration coming easier in the darkness. Told me to expect what he called “the pause.”

Now I closed my eyes and leaned against the invisible wall, body taut, elbows bent, legs stiff, prepared to withstand strong winds, hurricane, rain, sleet, thunder.

Suddenly, there was nothing.

I was in that pause he had mentioned, all sensations gone, breath caught and held, my entire being a void, a blank in space. Was this what dying was like? I wanted to scream, cry out in terror, but before I could do anything at all, pain flashed throughout my body, a stinging, savage pain that found its way into every part of my being. I heard a moan, like the sound of a wounded animal, and knew the sound came from me although it was not like any sound I had ever made.

I opened my eyes and saw my uncle on his chair at the same moment that the cold invaded my body, exploding from inside and spreading through the same bones and sinews that were singing with pain.

Then, without warning, the pain stopped. Did not recede gradually or diminish in its impact but simply stopped. And the cold was balm after the searing pain.

My eyelids fluttered and I realized I had not actually opened my eyes to see my uncle—I had seen through my eyelids. My eyelids were gone, not there. Just as the rest of me was gone.

“How do you feel?” my uncle asked. There was an abundance of sadness in his eyes, the sadness I had seen that first day on the piazza.

I was surprised to find my voice normal when I spoke. “Fine, now. It was terrible for a few minutes, all those sensations.”

“Seconds,” he said. “Three seconds, maybe.”

“That all?”

He nodded.

I lifted my hand, held it in front of my eyes, and could not see it. Studied the space where my hand should have been, where my hand actually
was.
Not there.

Uncle Adelard squinted at me, then nodded his head in satisfaction. “Perfect. A perfect fade.”

“Why do you call it ‘the fade’?”

“Because you have faded away. Like color gone from an old piece of cloth …”

I shivered with the cold. As I hugged my arms to my chest for protection, I could feel my shirt, the cotton fabric and the buttons.

“My clothes,” I said. “They're in the fade. You can't see them, can you?”

“No. Anything within the immediate energy of your flesh, even a wristwatch or a ring, goes into the fade with you. But anything you touch or pick up will not be affected, will still be visible.” His eyes narrowed. “You're cold, aren't you?”

“Yes,” I said. “As if it's suddenly winter.”

“The cold remains with you during the fade. But after the first few minutes, you adjust to it, get used to it. And remember this—it won't always be hard to go into the fade. Yes, there will always be the pause and the flash of pain—but this happens so quickly that sometimes you'll slip into the fade easy, the way a knife slips into a sheath. …”

“How long does the fade last?” I asked.

“As long as you want,” he said. “Until you force it away.”

“I'm afraid, Uncle Adelard.”

“Of what?”

“Everything. Moving. Walking. Right now, I'm afraid I might lose my balance and fall down if I try to walk. Does that sound crazy?”

He shook his head, smiling. “It's what happens the first time. Trying to walk on legs you can't see. How do you know they are really there? But trust me, they are. Trust yourself, too.”

I looked down and saw nothing. Only space. Although my body retained its weight, I felt a sensation of lightness, as if my body could soar through the air.

“Take a step or two,” he suggested.

Those steps were like a child's first steps, faltering, wobbly, my body unbalanced, in danger of falling, as if I were walking a tightrope and could not see the rope. I placed my hand on the back of a chair for support, surprised at the solidity of wood in my grasp. As Uncle Adelard promised, the chair remained visible.

Walking tentatively across the room, I gained confidence. Went to the window and looked out at the world of Eighth Street, a world that seemed very far away. I made my way cautiously, dragging my feet a bit, toward my uncle. Stood a few feet away from him.

“Some precautions, Paul. Sometimes, the fade comes without invitation. There'll be a warning—your breath will suddenly become short, which means the pause is about to begin. You won't have much time before the fade begins. If you are in public, you must get away, seclude yourself as soon as possible.

“The fade will also take away your energy. After the fade, you will feel wrung out, tired. Not so much at your age, perhaps, but as you grow older. The longer you are in the fade, the bigger toll it will take on your body.”

He held up his hand, as if to detain me, perhaps sensing the panic that was growing in me.

“One more rule,” he said. “Stay away from cameras. Avoid having your picture taken when you are
not
in the fade. Cameras will not capture your image. Other times you will appear on film. There are many things I can't explain to you about the fade, Paul, and this is one of them. This camera thing is maybe something to do with light and how it affects film. I don't know. So, you must avoid having your picture taken….”