The Delphi Room (24 page)

V: Please answer me! What’s happening?

B: My mother is gone. She smiled, like I have never seen her smile, and then she disappeared. Sensation beneath my bellybutton growing stronger—someone peeling an apple inside me. Apple in my centre turning faster and faster—unloosing its peel in a tingling spiral.

V: Pointless to plead but—Don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go! I don’t want to be alone here. And I want to meet you! You know everything about me. Put your hand against the grate and I’ll put mine there too.

B: And you know everything about me. Did you feel my hand? I felt yours—my fingers started to tingle. Now both hands are electric. And my scalp feels as though it’s sprouting wires. Light is dimming inside. Outside the window—it glows on.

V: Let’s sing a song.

B: We can’t hear each other.

V: Doesn’t matter. I’ll know you’re singing.

B: What shall we sing?

V: How about “Moon River”?

B: Perfect. Now?

V: Yes.

V: I think I felt your hand on the grate. There’s a warm spot on my palm.

B: Mirror is rippling, a pool, a wishing well. Circles within circles—on and on. I am wishing for your face. Writing this by the glow of the colours outside. Light inside gone. Struck by absence of terror. Calm and clear. Tingling and hot everywhere. Spinning pulse in my centre.

V: Hold my hand in your mind as you go.

B: Velvet—I am leaving. Can scarcely hold pen. Window and bars gone—entering tube. I’ll be seeing you . . .

V: Brinkley?

V: Brinkley?

V: Brinkley?

Hands and mouth pressed to the grate—a creature’s night-cry. Mouth-mash, bloody lips. Frayed my throat with banshee cries, coughed blood. Eyes salted and burned, lungs wrung. Rocked, rocked, rocked—a madwoman’s comfort. Rolled onto my side, in a baby’s curl, dulled and stilled. After a while, the body can’t keep up with the shriek of the heart.

Out into the bright-as-ever light in my room and over to my desk, pen in hand. Took out the legal pad-with-one-page-left. Sat down and started to write.

Dear Brinkley,

This is the last piece of paper in my room, and when I have filled it with words, I don’t know what I will do. I suppose I could write on the walls, but with no one to read my story, I’m not much inclined. My pen moves so slowly now, because I’m afraid of what will happen—or not happen—when I stop writing. It is nothingness we fear, isn’t it? But in this place of nothing—here you were. Life finds its way into the oddest corners.

What can I say? You were the best next-door coma neighbour a gal could have. So unexpected are life’s shapes, colours and textures, twists and turns, magic tricks and sleights of hand—even to me, a haunted girl of broken faith, a girl who stood in a bathroom and threw up her hands.

I can’t die yet, Brinkley. I haven’t been given colours, my window hasn’t been opened. Maybe those who take themselves out of the game with a belt and a bad makeover feel compelled to return to square one. I don’t think I want to die yet, even though I want badly to meet you. If I am given the choice to go back, back into the life I kept messing up—I think I’ll take another crack at it. A lot of it sucked, true. But since you had the courage to face down the Shadowman, I think I want to try. I want to do what you did—punch him hard in the face.

Thanks for being my friend. You’re right: we are different from most people. But having met you, and knowing that you see what I see, and I see what you see . . . well, you make me feel braver. Brave enough to try life again, if I’m given the chance.

I will carry you with me, Brinkley, if I go back. While I’m busy writing my novella, serving curries and reorganizing my closet, I’ll be dreaming of meeting up with you after I’m done with this life, in a Heavenly swimming pool worthy of our favourite movie stars, floating mattress and margarita included.

So the guy I love went off into the sunset, just like in the movies.

Sincerely, Velvet

At the grate, I pressed my mouth to the letter for a long time. Watching it disappear into the wall, my heart squeezed and released, an opening flower. There. It was done.

I stayed and stared and stared, even though I knew no note was coming.

When I began to wonder why it was so dark, I realized I had my eyes closed. On opening them I saw the underside of the bed—I was lying on my back, arms and legs spread mid-snow angel, with no immediate recollection of how I got there. My limbs were awkwardly attached dead weights: turning over was like hauling coils of rope. No letter from Brinkley. Pressed my hands to my eyes and rolled into the light.

I wondered if Brinkley would get a
Children of Divorce
mouse pad in Heaven. I decided that he would.

The room was as changeless as ever, undisturbed by emotion or need: bed, desk, chair, closet, Chinese screen, door, mirror—all constant and faceless as the moon. White, too, was a constant beyond the window, white and more white, full of pain caused by the absence of celestial bodies burning in their own dust, reminding you of home.

My hanging self was gone from the mirror. There stood my alien, baby-headed self, beseeching my oracle with the eyes of a Dickensian street urchin from Mars. How many times in all my life had I stood before a mirror in supplication, hoping that the sage I thought possibly lived behind my eyes would spell an answer on my forehead?