The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (38 page)

Michael nodded. “That’s right, but when that first realization came, I also suddenly knew we’re allowed to tell one of ‘us’ the secret without their having to figure it out themselves. But only one. After Clinton and I spoke, we decided to choose you.”

“What’s our number? 666?” I am not good at sarcasm but hoped there was some of it in what I said.

“We can’t tell you that, Ingram. You’ll have to discover it yourself. But you
will
in a little while, along with the other powers. Now that we’ve told you this, things will start changing a lot. Right, Clinton?”

The boy snorted and, blowing into his beer bottle, brought up a deep “Toooooot!”

I looked at both of them and licked my lips before beginning. “A complete soul is made up of five parts. Each person has a number or a shape or a colour or whatever, but only some of us realize that. Those who do have to go out looking for their, uh, complementary numbers. Right?”

They nodded.

“But if you don’t ever realize this five-part thing, you go through life feeling lost?”

“Right. Ingram, I swear to God this is the truth. After two realize it and get together, they’re allowed to tell
one
other who hasn’t understood it yet. That’s you. Now we’ve got to go find two others before we’re complete.

“I always thought Clinton had been hexed or something and was following me around for a very bad purpose.”

“And I always thought Mike had hexed
me
and wanted me out of the way. That’s why he made friends with you. To get me.

“But you know what we both figured out the other day? We were having dinner after Mike got it and we suddenly understood who Fanelli was!”

“One of your group? A seventeen?”

“That’s right. That’s why he was always picking on Mike and why I ended up killing him! We three saw something in each other that drove us nuts in different ways.”

“The problem is, Clinton says Fanelli was the last one of us he’s seen, until now.”

“You mean me?”

Michael shook his head. “In almost twenty years he’s never seen another. Now there are three more,
including
you.”

“Who are the others?” Before either of them had a chance to speak, a thought came to me like the sound of tyres squealing before an accident. “Meat Man!”

“Right.”

“You got it, Ace.”

“Who’s the third?”

“Blair Dowling.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“We knew you wouldn’t. That’s why you’ve got to see something.”

“What is it?”

“An ice cream parlour.”

I told you before Michael lived near the Larchmont section of LA, which is a part of town I’ve always liked. There’s one wide street that’s more or less the whole place, but on that street are the kind of stores you remember from when you were a child. A barber shop with a real revolving pole in front, a book and greetings card shop run by nice old women, a crowded pet store full of the familiar yip and squawk of puppies and birds for sale. We had lunch there often and went to the dime store afterward to mail our letters or just wander around and fill up on the place’s 1950s feel.

There’s also a small ice cream parlour in the middle of town that serves pretty good sundaes.

It was around ten thirty at night when Michael pulled up in front of this place. None of us moved.

“What am I supposed to see?”

“Just walk in, Ingram. You’ll know as soon as you’re there.”

I looked at the two of them, and they seemed to have the same expression on their faces:
any minute now you’ll know what we do and it’s astonishing.

I got out of the car and took a few steps, stopped, and looked back at the car. Silence a moment, then Clinton stuck his head out of the passenger’s window and said: “All you gotta do is go in there two seconds and you’ll see.”

“What if I don’t see anything?”

“I’ll give you a million dollars.”

I crossed the sidewalk and opened the door. A small nice tinkle from a bell greeted me. One of the girls behind the counter smiled, said, “Good evening.”

I was about to say it back when I recognized the glow around her. Like the ecstatic moment you understand the necessary balance and magic of how to ride a two-wheel bicycle for the first time. I understood the glow around this young woman without either of us having to say anything. It was bluish and slightly shimmery, like heat waves on a summer road. There was something metallic to it, yet also a softness, as of velvet or suede.

As if to applaud my perception, she dipped her head and smiled secretly. A second later, two other familiar girls came out of the back of the store, two other identical blue auras, glows ... whatever they were.

I stood and watched them, as if they were Egyptian princesses, exotic birds, dreams become flesh. Not that they did anything different. The first asked what I wanted. When I couldn’t say anything, they looked at each other and giggled.

“Is it true?”

The first said only “Yes”.

“Where are your others? The other two?”

“At the movies. They’re off tonight.”

“But why’re you
here
? There are so many other—”

“We decided that as long as we’re here, we’ll make people happy. Ice cream parlours sell nothing but happiness.”

A family came in, the eager children rushing to the counter to peek and point at the different-coloured flavours.

“You’re sure you don’t want anything?”

“No ...”

The young women turned away from me and went back to selling happiness. I walked out of the place with my mind on fire and my hands (with their five fingers) cold as ice cream.

“Now what?”

Michael was driving too fast and Clinton was lighting another cigarette.

“Now we go to Blair’s house.”

“But you said she doesn’t know, didn’t you?”

“No, but Clinton had a very good idea that I want to try out. He thinks if we hang around her place together, perhaps our presence will push her toward knowing. It’s certainly worth trying for a few days.”

“How
did
you find out about Blair?”

Clinton turned and blew smoke in my face. “Oops, sorry! When I saw you and Mike hanging around together, I started following you and finding out who you were. Called up the station, said I was going to start a fan club for
Off the Wall
and wanted to know about you. Things like that. When they told me where you went to school and all, I got hold of a yearbook from there and saw that prom picture of you two together. Etcetera, etcetera. Simple!”

“And that’s why you took me to see her the other day? Hoping we’d recognize each other that way?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her husband like?”

“A lot like you, only straight. He’s made some big money.”

“But he’s not ... one of us?”

“Naah. If Blair’s a seventeen, he’s like an eighteen. Close, but no banana.”

“And what about the Meat Man?”

Every time I used that name, they laughed.

“He’s fucking crazy, man. But the problem is, he’s one of us. So now we’ve got to find a way to straighten him out and bring him over.”

“Why can’t we just find another ... seventeen?”

“Because it’s like Michael said: I’ve known about this thing twenty years but’ve only seen the three of you in all that time. There might be a lot of seventeens around, I don’t know, but the world’s a goddamned big place. Like maybe there are hundreds of us in
Zanzibar
or something, but who’s gonna go there to see? We got our five now. All we gotta do is round them up. Wake them up. That’s why we told you in the first place. This Blair shouldn’t be so hard. It’s Meat Man’s got me worried.”

“Walden Drive, isn’t it, Clinton?”

“Walden. Right.”

“I can’t get over that glow. That blue! That’s what we’ll look like when we’re together?”

“More or less. I’ve only seen complete sets a few times. Once was in Talladega and they were—”

Suddenly something,
someone
big ran in front of our car in a hunch. No more than ten feet away. Stopping a moment in our headlights, she looked our way. Most shocking of all was realizing at a glance it was a woman. Maybe two hundred pounds, a snarl of a face, weirdly bright red hair. Although there was no chance of Michael hitting her, he swerved and brought the car to a jerking stop. The woman scurried away very fast. Too fast.

“Did you see the red hair, Mike? Remember that hair? Holy shit!” Clinton shouted, already throwing his door open and jumping out.

“
Eddie?
That thing was Eddie?”

“ ’Course it was Eddie! Sure it’s her, Mike!
You’re
the one who told me she flipped out in twelfth grade. And we were all in school together, but we never knew! Fanelli, you, me, Eddie. Four! Already four! Oh shit, we never knew then!” Clinton furiously punched the hood of the car and took off after the grotesque hunchback.

I rolled down the window. What were they talking about? Who? The air was chokingly thick with the smell of smoke. Michael watched after Clinton, then spun and started back into the car.

“What’s going on, Michael? Who was that?”

“Your Meat Man, only it’s Meat
Woman.
We knew her in school. She was coming from Blair’s house and your friend’s got big trouble.”

“Why? Why hurt Blair?”

He cursed and spoke rapidly. “Remember the seashell? That part’s true. When you suddenly know, you find a shell in your pocket. But maybe the dark fifth in us always hates finding its shell. Especially our dark part! Hates discovering it’s only one piece of the whole. We never thought someone would find out but
hate
the knowledge. And then hate the other parts too for making it that much less. Eddie Devon! Eddie Devon is going to go get all of us!”

We saw the smoke before reaching Walden Drive. Blair’s house was a blooming, burning bouquet of yellow flames. Someone somewhere screamed. There was an explosion, then the crackle and hiss of what was left.

Last night, for want of something better to do, I reached into death and tickled my father. He hated it. His corpse lay in the same position it’d been in when I’d last seen him, at his funeral. So solemn. So final-looking. Eyes closed just gently enough to give the feeling they might open any moment, mouth straight as a ruler line, cheeks with a blush of peach still on them.

He’d always been ticklish. You could touch him anywhere and he’d laugh. But touch his ribs and he went crazy. Even in death he jumped and his cold hands flew up, groping to stop mine. Even in death.

You can do those things when you’re “connected”. Once you’re part of your whole, joined with your other four, abilities and insights come. Obviously, tickling the dead is not one of the important ones, but when I heard it was possible I had to give it a try. The others approved. We enjoyed his confusion. We enjoy anyone’s confusion.

Besides, there are so few chances
to
enjoy. Who said the truth shall set you free? When Eddie Devon learned the truth about her incestuous family twenty years ago, it drove her mad. It drove her to an asylum, and to two hundred pounds, and into the kind of human being who writes with shit on another’s walls. When Clinton Deix found the shell in his pocket and realized he was only a fifth of a whole, he didn’t go out looking for God or his other fifths—he became a whore. He says he doesn’t understand why. Eddie doesn’t say anything. But we’ve talked about this and realized they both probably sensed something the rest of us didn’t. Something that kept them from telling what they knew. Particularly Eddie. She fought so hard to keep away from us, to keep our connection from happening. Her anger and illusiveness were brilliant. I only wish now they had been more successful. She fought so hard to keep away from us, but in the end we caught her and brought her into our camp like a ferocious jungle animal hung upside down on a stick. Even after we dragged her to the ice cream parlour to show her those other five glowing so heavenly blue, she screamed and spat and did all she could to fight us from connecting with her. But we “won”.

I remember the moment before it happened, the looks of pure triumph on our four faces—Billa, Blair, Clinton, myself. I thought, my God, we all have the same expression—what will it be like when we’re connected? Will we glow blue too, or something altogether different? Every colour has its own beauty. I loved and envied these people their blue, but what if, once joined, our own colour transcended theirs? Flew off the end of the spectrum past white, past anything imaginable? We had spent two years waiting. Waiting for Blair’s burns to heal and then for her to understand what we were about. Then working out and implementing a way to trap “Meat Man” and force her to come in. That and other things had taken two years, but connecting took less than a second.

How we screamed! How we cried on realizing the agony of
our
truth, the hideousness of our colour. Everyone wants to go to Heaven, and everyone wants to glow heavenly blue. But truth isn’t just or considerate. And there are a huge number of us who, finding our colour, are exiled in it rather than welcomed.

M
Y FATHER WAS A
careful man. He taught us to count our change before leaving a store, check the tires on our bikes before taking them out of the garage, to brush our teeth in an up and down rather than side to side motion.

Because he was careful and because he handled other people’s money as if it were his own, he became successful and wealthy and we lived well. He was the man you see raking leaves in front of the nice Connecticut house on an orange and brown fall day. Or the one at the A&P with a couple of his kids picking up supplies for the barbecue—ten pounds of briquettes, corn on the cob, a couple of steaks as thick as telephone books.

The only thing that was odd about him was he was cursed with increasingly bad insomnia as he got older. One of my vivid memories of childhood is waking up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom, or downstairs for something to eat. He was always up, either reading in the living room or standing at the kitchen counter eating an egg and onion sandwich which for some peculiar reason, he said helped him to sleep. He was always happy to see me and now with an adult’s understanding, I’m sure it was because he was glad for the company even if it was only for a few minutes before I went sleepily back up the stairs to bed.