The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (36 page)

“It will. Some day soon you’ll put your hand in your pocket and one of these’ll be there. Maybe tomorrow, but for sure sometime soon. You’ll think ‘Where’d I pick
this
up?’ It’s only a shell, so you forget about it and drop it back in your pocket. But that’s when it begins; the day you find it, you’re there.”

“I’m
where
? What does this have to do with meeting Blair and Michael?”

He’d ordered a glass of iced tea and took a long, thirsty swig before speaking. His cheeks sucked in over his teeth but he looked at me while he drank.

“All right, look, Michael calls it ‘The Essential Time’. He didn’t call it anything when we were kids, but now that he’s an ‘adult’ that’s his word for it.

“It’s like, everyone has this special time in their life when they’re absolutely most themselves. You know what I mean? For example, like, Hitler might’ve had his ‘essential time’ when he was fifteen. Not when he was grown up and leader of Germany or anything. Maybe it was when he looked at a Jew for the first time and knew he hated him. Hated the whole fucking bunch of them.

“From what I understand, this ‘essential time’ is when you are more
you
than at any other time in your life. A lot of people have it when they’re on top. You know, like the kid in school who gets all As and is captain of this and has a great girlfriend. Everything that happens to him after is a let-down. He graduates from school Mr Hot Shit, but then ends up selling headlights or basketballs. For a year or a month, or I don’t know how long, this guy ...

“Michael always used to say it was like when you look through a pair of binoculars and have to keep adjusting them before you get a focused picture. Once in your life you’re a focused picture. It comes at different times for different people, but it always comes. Sooner or later every person on earth finds a shell in their pocket. Even if they live out in the Sahara Desert or something! But no one can tell how long this moment’s going to last. Michael said for some people it goes on for years, but for others it’s only a short time. For some it’s only a couple of
days
.”

What disturbed me most about what Clinton was saying was how closely it segued with the things I’d been thinking about Blair when we visited her half an hour before. The idea of an essential moment wasn’t anything new; we all know there is a time in our lives when we shine brighter than at any other.

But that wasn’t what he was talking about. What he went on to stress in example after example was how we weren’t always our truest ... selves on reaching those cherished, shining times in our lives. More often than not, the “essential moment” comes and goes without our ever knowing it. That’s why so many of us are lost and unhappy: it is our life, but we have
no idea
of its real highs and lows, the moments of real triumph or defeat, or real awareness.

Yet, like children, we are even given shells in our pockets to tell us it’s here. Take advantage of your true self if you can! Do it correctly and the rest of your life will be different, profound. The only thing I can compare it to, from the things Clinton told me, is the brief moment after orgasm when we stand outside our bodies and see where we are and why we’re there.

“And Michael could see this in people?”

“Not only did he see it, but he knew how to freeze them there. Like he was doing you a big favour, right? Freeze you right in the middle of your big fucking ‘essential moment’ and let you stay there and rot for about a thousand years—”

“ ‘Freeze’ in what way?”

“How do you
think
I mean freeze, like an igloo? No! He does something and it makes you just stop. You’re living and everything, but nothing more happens to your body; you don’t grow no more. You don’t get any older. I’ve been fifteen, I mean, like I’ve
looked
fifteen, since the day I aced Fanelli.

“Can I have another iced tea? Look, I shot that prick and then ran away. I’d been running away from my old man all my life, so it wasn’t anything new. I went to New York. You can make money there if you let them do what they want to you. Then when it got cold, I’d hitch-hike down to Florida. Florida and New York were my two places, you know?

“But then I didn’t grow for, like, years. My feet didn’t grow and my clothes didn’t get any smaller; I didn’t get any taller and finally even dumb-ass me knew something was heavily wrong. I was big. I’d always been big till then, but suddenly nothing was growing any more. And my face stayed the same; I mean, I didn’t ever have to shave or anything.”

The second glass of tea came and a grilled cheese I’d ordered. I was hungry but the sandwich sat there while he gulped the new drink down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“So, to make a long story short, I met this guy Larry in Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. He looked older than me and we started talking. This was like two years after Fanelli, when I was around seventeen, I guess.”

“Didn’t you ever worry about the police coming to get you for the murder?” I picked up the sandwich, looked at it, put it down.

“I was getting to that. At first I did, but then nothing happened; no cops came, no one hassled me and I sort of forgot about it, if you can believe that. But you know why no cops came? Because of Michael. He knew where I was and what I was doing the whole time. He protects you after he freezes you. That’s what I call it—freezing. He might need you later for something, so he doesn’t want anything to happen. You gonna eat that sandwich?”

I slid the plate over to him. “Why should I believe anything you’ve said?”

“Oh, hey, I haven’t said anything yet! Why should you believe? You don’t have to believe nothin’. I’m just telling you for your own good.”

“What do you care about my good?”

A wise-ass smirk that looked comfortable there rose slowly over his face. “I’m not—I’m worried about
my
own good. Let me finish this story.

“So I met this Larry in the New York bus station and we started talking. All of a sudden, he takes out this shell and asks if I have one like it. That’s a pretty weird question, but I said yeah, I had one a long time. So what? So he asks me if I know a guy named Michael Billa! Can you imagine what
that
question did to me?”

“He was one of Michael’s?”

“That’s right. He was one of Michael’s and had come to tell me. Said he recognized me as soon as he saw me. And you know what? He wasn’t lying—after Michael freezes you and you understand what the whole thing’s about, you
can
recognize others.”

It was my turn to smirk. “How come I didn’t recognize you?”

Anger was all over his face in an instant. Cruel, blade-out-of-nowhere rage that was frightening to see come so quickly. He put both hands on the table as if he were about to rise.

“Look, mother fucker, don’t believe any of this. But listen to me: if he freezes you, you’re finished. Know what’ll happen? The same thing that happened with me and Larry. Know what I did to him? Killed him. That’s right. I had to do it. Know why? Michael. He wasn’t even
there
and he made me do it.

“
That’s
why I’m here. I don’t give a shit about you, man. I don’t wanna die. But I know you’ll come for me if he freezes you. Michael only needs one at a time. When he’s finished using you—or Larry, or me—he just sends his next after you and that’s it.”

“Why did he need you?”

Clinton shook his head like I was the stupidest man on earth. “Because he was one pathetic fuck as a kid. Needed a big brother, guardian angel, Gardol Shield and everything else all rolled into one. I just happened to come along at the wrrrrong time, folks.”

“Who was this Larry?”

“Michael’s protector before me, when he lived in another town. You know what the guy was? His third-grade teacher!”

“Why did you kill him?”

Before Clinton answered, he reminded me of a just-squashed cigarette in an ashtray—still lit and smouldering, but on its way out in a minute or two.

“I had to. Michael made me.”

I knew something was wrong almost as soon as I opened the front door. The smells of home are both instantly recognizable and inviolable. They change to some degree, depending on what you’ve been cooking or how recently the place was cleaned, but even onions or new floor wax can’t disguise the fragrance of your every day; the colour we’ve painted the air we live in.

My first reaction was to snap my head back: the last time the smells were different here, shit was over everything. But once the initial shock passed, my brain clicked in and I recognized fried olive oil, oregano, garlic. The smells of an Italian restaurant—warm, rich and sexy.

Since I began living alone again, I keep a hunting knife in a vase by the front door. Not that it would do any good if I were to go one on one with a thug, but I liked having it there. Taking it out of its hiding place as quietly as possible, I walked towards the kitchen.

The lights were on, the kitchen table set for one—black place mat, white napkin, wine glass, bottle of Chianti. Off to the side was a large earthenware bowl filled with one of my favourite meals, “shell salad”. The pasta shaped like small sea shells, the kind my mother always used when she’d make it when we were young.

That wasn’t all. Moving slowly and warily through the rest of the apartment, turning on lights, looking in corners, I found sea shells everywhere. Three medium-sized ones on the dresser in the bedroom. A giant nautilus, like you hold to your ear to hear the rush of the sea, was placed in the middle of my bed. A sign for Shell Oil leaned up against a wall.

My apartment looked like a lunatic’s shell museum. Real ones, plastic ones, and smart jokes that made you think a while before seeing the shell in them.

For a long time that night, I moved around my small apartment hunting for the many other shells which, like an Easter egg hunt, had been cunningly hidden in strange, zany places: the tubes of the extra toilet paper in the bathroom, under my pillow, on page 1084 of the dictionary: home of the word “shell” and its many definitions.

Without being really aware of it, I became so adept at finding them that after some time, like a good chess player, I’d stop and think, where will he move next? How can I beat him to it? And if I thought of a nice odd place to put one but nothing was there, I was pleased. How quickly we take on another’s obsession.

Whoever had hidden the many, many shells must have been in there all afternoon.

Driving to work two days later, I got caught in a traffic jam that threatened to last indefinitely. One of the nice things about owning a motorcycle is, in a jam like that, you can usually weave your way in and out of cars or slide slowly along their right side to freedom. But this time even those tricks only lasted a few cars, and then I was as stuck as the rest of them.

After making sure there were no policemen around, I did a nono: took the bike up onto the sidewalk and rode there until I reached an alley I could use to make my getaway onto a parallel street.

Extremely pleased with myself, I cruised down Detroit Street and came to a proper standstill at a stop sign; always the law-abiding citizen.

When the car passed in front of me, it took a moment to realize Blair Dowling was in the passenger’s seat and that it was the same car I’d seen parked in her driveway the other day. A man was driving who I naturally assumed was her husband. He wore sunglasses and had a crewcut. I couldn’t see much more, although I certainly wanted to; wanted to see the man Blair had chosen to spend the rest of her life with. The man who’d made lots of money but hadn’t succeeded in making my old girlfriend happy.

Neither saw me as their anthracite-blue Mercedes passed regally by. On the back bumper was a sticker for Andover Academy.

I stayed at the intersection watching the car until it disappeared. Despite Blair’s dissatisfaction, how enviably safe and balanced her life seemed at that moment. Compared to my own, it was the difference between their car and my motorcycle. One was impressive and trustworthy, albeit vaguely boring; the other
looked
wild and adventurous, but was uncomfortable for any length of time and sure didn’t protect you from any of the elements.

When I got to the radio station, my producer came up to me and dropped the bomb.

“You know that kid who was here the other day looking for you? I saw him and Michael Billa last night having dinner together at Lawry’s. Who is that kid, anyway? You know, that’s a pretty nice restaurant, but he was in that same football jersey he wore when he came here. Doesn’t he have a change of clothes?”

“
Together
? You actually saw them together? Having contact?”

“Together? Hey, Ingram, the two of them were tucking into the biggest pieces of prime rib you ever saw. And when they weren’t eating, they were laughing. Looked like they were good friends.”

I pride myself on generally understanding and sympathizing with people. When you do a talk-show as strange as
Off the Wall,
you realise others’ perception
isn’t
often the same as your own. Also, life itself is only as orderly as it wants to be from day to day: maybe only from hour to hour.

When we read about people cutting the heads off children, or dying with a thousand others when a boat capsizes in Bangladesh, we shake our heads at the lunacy of humanity or the folly of life.

But let’s face it, down deep we
know
our lives are made up of one heart-stopping near-miss after the other. There is no justice or understandable framework; there are only delays.

Sooner or later everyone hits the wall, or runs a traffic light and collides with a truck we always knew was coming. Write the word “Cancer” or “Pain” or “Loss” on the side of that truck. Pray you survive the crash. That’s what prayer is in the end—“Oh God, please protect me from the inevitable.”

When the earthquake came and I pulled Glenn from the wreckage of our house and life together, one of my inner voices was as calm as sleep. It said “So? Your time has come. It had to happen.”