The Snow Queen

  “Hi, Barrett,” she says. Her voice, high-pitched, girlishly offhand, does not match the rest of her. A softer, simpler girl speaks from the raptor’s face and body. Who knows which is the truer?

  Andrew, the host of this small, mysterious party, says, “Thanks for coming, you guys.”

  “Hey, it’s a nice night,” Barrett says. “It’s one of the last ones. I mean, that low rumble you hear? It’s winter. It’s only about a mile away.”

  “Yeah, totally,” Andrew says.

  Barrett is aware of Sam, standing quietly, wondering, in all likelihood, what exactly he’s doing here; how this has happened to him.

  “So,” Barrett says. “Should we go somewhere for a drink, maybe?”

  “We don’t really go to bars,” Stella says.

  “Well, then,” Barrett says. “What if Sam and I go get us a bottle of wine or something, and bring it back?”

  “We don’t drink,” Stella says.

  Barrett says, “Oh, well, that’s good. Drink is bad for you. I myself drink, I admit it, and just look at my life.”

  Stella stares with predator’s attention at him, as if he has made a literal statement. It would seem that she, like Andrew, does not speak irony or wit—it’s a dialect unknown in their region.

  Barrett glances over at Sam, promises him, with his eyes, that he’ll get them out of here as soon as it’s humanly possible.

  Stella says softly, more in Barrett’s direction than to Barrett himself, “You’re going to see something miraculous.”

  Barrett turns back to her. He’s aware of her physical insubstantiality, a quality that’s not delicate or frail but ever so slightly translucent, as if her flesh itself were made of a substance more pliable, more prone to bruises and scars, than that of most people. It’s as if she has not quite thoroughly, physically imagined herself.

  Barrett asks, “What do you mean?”

  Stella’s expression of vague semi-attention does not change, nor does the low, incantatory aspect of her voice.

  She says, “You’re going to see something miraculous. Soon.”

  “What do you think it is?” Barrett asks.

  She shakes her head. “I have no idea,” she says. “I’m just a little bit psychic.”

  With that, she returns from what had been … not a trance, nothing nearly that dramatic; she returns from her stoner’s aspect of fixation on the empty air that hovers before her eyes.

  They’re high, aren’t they, she and Andrew. How could Barrett have failed to notice it? He’s had, God knows, enough practice with Tyler.

  “That’ll be nice,” he says. “I look forward to that.”

  Andrew breaks in. He might be a bored husband at a dinner party, some guy who’s finally had his fill of girlish banter and decides, with a certain glad-handing force, to bring up the question of asphalt versus wood shingles, or the superior virtues of his sound system.

  He says to Barrett, “Man, okay. There’s something I want to tell you. And, you know, I didn’t want to say it over the phone.”

  “What is it?” Barrett asks.

  “And I thought, hey, what better place to tell you than Central Park.”

  “Great. Let’s hear it.”

  Andrew glances at Stella and Sam, tentatively but conspiratorially—Don’t worry, these people are okay, these people can be trusted.

  He says to Barrett, “I saw the light. I mean, the one you told me about.”

  Barrett has nothing to offer by way of an answer. He looks again in Sam’s direction. Sam has no idea about the light. Sam seems to find himself among foreigners, who speak a language he doesn’t understand, and so his only option is to stand, cordially half-smiling, wearing an expression of benign semi-comprehension.

  “Last night,” Andrew says. “I was coming home. I was just, you know, walking along Utica. We live in Crown Heights now.”

  Stella says, with proud defiance, “We live in this humongous apartment. With a whole bunch of people. Nice people.” She might be defending the virtues—the simple customs, the deeper humanity—of a small, internationally negligible, country.

  “Right.”

  “I looked up,” Andrew says. “It was like, something told me to look up. And there it was.”

  “The light,” Barrett says.

  “It was kind of … twinkly,” Andrew says. “It was right there. Like this little handful of stars. But lower than stars. Green. Closer to, you know, the earth. Than stars are.”

  “You really saw it,” Barrett says.

  “He did,” Stella says. Do not doubt the word of my mate.

  “I wanted to tell you that,” Andrew says to Barrett. “I saw it too, man. And hey, what better place to tell you than here in the park?”

  “That’s … amazing.”

  “It was totally beautiful.”

  “Yeah.”

  Barrett is surprised to realize that he’s trembling. Is it possible? Yes, it is. It might be possible. Wasn’t Andrew the first person he told? Didn’t some instinct compel him? He’d thought it was lust, and cocaine. But maybe, maybe, he knew, he somehow knew, that Andrew, simple beautiful Andrew, was the only person of his acquaintance who might be … innocent enough to believe him. Who might, as it now seems, be innocent enough to see the light, himself.

  There was Liz, too, of course, but Liz insisted then, and insists today, that it was imaginary.

  A new, improved reality begins, tentatively, to assert itself. There exists, on earth, a small cohort of ordinary citizens (hasn’t God always favored the ordinary citizens?) who are prone to visions.

  What if Barrett (and Andrew, and maybe even cynical Liz) are on the brink of revelation; what if they’re among the first to know that their maker is coming back for them?

  It’s possible. It does not, at the moment, seem impossible.

  Barrett manages to keep his voice steady. He says to Andrew, “So. A little handful of stars.”

  “Yeah. Kind of turquoise.”

  “And did you … feel something?”

  “I felt the eye of God, man. Just kind of checking me out.”

  Yes. Wow. These straggly pilgrims, receivers of a celestial wink …

  Barrett says, haltingly, “I know. I mean, I felt it, too. This … watchfulness. Aimed at you.”

  “Totally.”

  “This is … This is amazing.”

  “It’s totally amazing.”

  A silence passes. Barrett does his best to remember Sam, poor Sam, standing aside, wondering what the hell, but Sam will understand, he’ll have to, Barrett will explain it all to him. Barrett isn’t crazy, he’s not deluded. Some gigantic, hitherto unknown parent has decided it’s time to let the children know that they’re seen, they’re accounted for; they haven’t, after all, been lost in the forest all this time …

  “So, listen,” Andrew says. “I’ve got a little favor to ask.”

  “Okay. Sure. Anything.”

  Andrew pauses, produces the grin again, that immaculate smile, devoid of artifice or intention; just pure boy-delight.

  He says, “I’ve got a little problem going on. A little bit of a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s kind of about money.”

  “Oh.” Barrett can’t seem to register anything but “oh,” and can’t seem to inflect that monosyllable with anything better than puzzled disappointment.

  Andrew withdraws the grin. There’s something unsettling about it, the swiftness with which he’s able to make it disappear. His face darkens. Here, again, is that aspect of nascent ravishment, of a condition about to exhibit its first, subtle symptoms—the rash on the verge of surfacing, the cough deeper and damper than an ordinary cough.

  Andrew says. “I owe a guy some money.”

  “I see.”

  Barrett waits, he can only wait. Something terrible is coming, he can feel it, a tidal surge; a strange, opaque greening of the water on what’s been, until this moment, a summer day at the beach.

  “I g
ot a little carried away,” Andrew says. “You know how you can get carried away, right?”

  “I do.”

  “And this guy. He kind of wants some money from me. That I owe him.”

  There’s a guy to whom Andrew owes money. The guy probably wants it sooner, as opposed to later.

  “I see,” Barrett says.

  “So I was wondering. Do you think you could loan me a few bucks?”

  “Loan you a few bucks.”

  “I mean, we’ve both seen the light.”

  Barrett can’t seem to answer. He’s not ready, not quite, to enter this new revelation—this un-revelation. It’s a scam. Andrew hasn’t seen anything in the sky. Andrew is merely hustling. He’s chosen Barrett as his mark because Barrett is prone to delusion, Barrett is a zealot of sorts, Andrew has always been exquisitely aware of his effect on Barrett (why would anyone imagine that beautiful children live unaware of it?), Barrett will contribute to the Guys Who’ve Seen a Light Foundation.

  Stella has been put up to it. Stella has been instructed: toss him a psychic “prediction,” so you can claim surprise when you learn that you had the phenomenon right but the time wrong.

  “You’re my friend, right?” Andrew says. “I’m in a little bit of a fix, right now, I mean I need a friend.”

  Barrett hears himself say, “I don’t really have any money. I don’t exactly make any money. I work in Liz’s shop.”

  And then, on Andrew’s face—a look of haggard desperation. A version of his face Barrett has never seen before. Andrew is, suddenly, the haunted one, yearning from a front porch on a hot August day, watching the world stroll by, astonished by its apparent ability to do so well without him.

  “Man,” he says, “I’m not talking about a lot of money. I’m in trouble, here. Do you get that?”

  “I do,” Barrett answers. “I get it. I don’t think I can help you, though.”

  “I saw a light. I got the wink of holiness. That matters, between us, it’s got to matter, right?”

  “You didn’t really see anything, did you?”

  “Man, I just told you …”

  Sam says, “How much do you need?”

  The coffee shop is a box of strident light. Tyler holds his coffee mug in both hands, enfolds it. Liz ignores entirely her little pot of tea.

  “Can you believe I’ve never been to California?” Tyler says.

  “All kinds of people have never been to California.”

  This particular coffee shop, on one of the darker blocks of Avenue C, is patronized by people for whom it seems things aren’t quite working out. A woman with blindingly orange hair asks more loudly than necessary what the soup of the day is. Two men, both wearing sunglasses, argue about whether there’s a difference between cement and concrete.

  “There’s a town called Castroville,” Tyler says to Liz. “It’s the artichoke capital of the world.”

  “That’s the main attraction, for you?”

  “No. It just seems so … California.”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Every year they have an artichoke festival. There’s a parade. There’s a queen. They dress her up in a gown made of artichoke leaves. And guess who was once the artichoke queen? Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Where do you get things like this?”

  “I’m a news junkie.”

  “This was on the news?”

  “We’d be in California for the election,” he says.

  “We would.”

  “Maybe it’d work out so we’d be at the artichoke festival, we’d be watching a girl parading down some little street in a gown made of artichoke leaves when we find out it’s McCain and Palin.”

  “That would be a big coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. I just feel like, I don’t know, there’d be some sort of fucked-up comfort if it were possible to find out that the country was finally, really and truly going to destroy itself while we were watching a pretty girl in a dress made of artichoke leaves, waving at a crowd.”

  “You’re obsessed.”

  “Uh, excuse me? ‘Obsessed’ is for minor passions. Obsessed is people with seventeen cats. Obsessed is people who own every video game ever produced, since Pong. I’m interested in the fate of the world. Does that strike you as eccentric?”

  She says, “If you were coming to California with me, I’d need you to stop doing drugs.”

  “I’m not doing drugs.”

  All she has to do is level her eyes at him.

  “You think you know everything, don’t you?” he says.

  “No. I just always assume the worst, and sometimes it looks as if I know everything.”

  From three booths away, one of the men in sunglasses says, “Cement has a higher sand content. That’s why all those buildings in backward countries collapse. They use cement.”

  Tyler gazes into the black circle of his coffee. He says, “I’m done with drugs. Really and truly.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, then. That’s good.”

  She knows, of course she knows, that he’s lying.

  “When I was doing drugs,” Tyler says, “it was to get to the music. I couldn’t seem to do it with my naked unaltered brain.”

  “Do you have any idea what an addict statement that is?” Liz asks.

  “Right. I know. It’s so much better, all clean and sober-like.”

  “That’s the general idea. Among the population at large.”

  Tyler says, “The thing is. When you’re doing drugs. There’s this feeling that you’re trying to find a way to get to the place where the music is.”

  One of the sunglasses-wearing men, the other one, says, “You’re crazy. It’s just two words for the same thing.”

  “I understand that,” Liz says. “I used to do drugs to feel connected to Andrew. By way of example.”

  “Uh, right. Me trying to write a decent song is like you trying to get through an evening with a boy who’d need a minute to tell his right hand from his left.”

  “Okay. Bad example. I’m just trying to tell you something about how, if you were doing drugs again, I’d understand. I’d still want you to stop. But I’d understand.”

  Tyler nods, as if agreeing to an old truism he secretly knows to be false.

  This would be the moment to tell Liz the truth.

  The moment passes.

  “I’m done, though,” Tyler says. “I’m all done. It’s rough. I mean, I’m alone with the music now.”

  She says, “What if that mattered less?”

  “Come again?”

  “What if your whole life wasn’t about writing songs?”

  “I don’t like the sound of that, frankly.”

  “I don’t mean give it up. I mean, what if you were a man who’s living a life, and writing songs is part of it?”

  He says, “Step away, devil.”

  She laughs. She knows enough to laugh.

  The orange-haired woman announces to the waitress that she’ll try the cabbage soup, but warns her of the very real possibility that she’ll feel compelled to send it back.

  Liz says, “You thought you could write music that would save Beth’s life. Don’t you think so?”

  “That would be delusions of grandeur.”

  “Or it would be some kind of frankly very touching idea you’ve got that you can do more than human beings can actually do.”

  The first of the sunglasses men says, “Why would there be two different words for the same thing? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Tyler says, “There’s this thing I’ve been thinking, lately.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “It’s not even a real thought, exactly. I mean, I haven’t phrased it, not even to myself. It’s like the still-forming molecule of a thought.”

  “Too new to talk about?”

  “I’m going to take a shot at it.”

  “By all means.”

  “I’ve been wondering,” he says,
“if trying to write songs matters more to me than the songs themselves.”

  “I get that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  “It’s like, what I really love is the anticipation. I love the idea of the song. Then, when it’s finished …”

  “Even your YouTube hit?”

  “Even that. It feels sort of … disembodied. Like an artifact from some lost civilization nobody misses all that much.”

  “It is, in fact, a good song,” she says. “Just FYI.”

  The orange-haired woman says, to no one in particular, that cabbage sometimes gives her gas.

  “That doesn’t seem to matter, exactly,” Tyler says. “I still have to finish the album. One more song to go.”

  “Maybe you won’t finish the album.”

  “I have a contract.”

  “Who gives a shit about a contract?”

  He nods. Who does, in fact, give a shit about a contract?

  She says, “There are redwood forests in California.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “There are waves crashing up against cliffs, with eagles circling in the sky.”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  “But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t go to Castroville, too,” she says. “If you really want to see a girl in a dress made of artichoke leaves.”

  “I can’t go,” Tyler says. “Not now. I’ve got to finish the album.”

  He places his hand, palm down, on the tabletop. Liz looks, scrutinizingly, at his hand.

  “That’s what you should do, then,” she says. “You could meet me in California later. If you want to.”

  “And we could go to Castroville. For the artichoke festival.”

  “We could. I mean, we’d have to find out when it is. That would matter.”

  “Very Google-able,” he answers.

  “I’ll be in California,” she says. “I’ll let you know where to find me.”

  “That’s good. That’s good to know.”

  After a moment, she puts her own hand on top of his, as the waitress arrives to ask, with an ancient and grudging cordiality, if they’re finished, or if they’d care for refills.