That final and hung in the air, like a promise unfulfilled, like the flash of lightning before the thunder explodes in the sky. But she fell into silence, didn’t keep the promise, no thunder, either.
He sensed a mystery about her and pondered this after she left the place, and he stood there watching her going down the walk, sorry to see her disappear into the evening’s darkness. Why did she really come here day after day? What was she looking for?
Sometimes she seemed weary, appeared distracted, listless, asking the questions as usual but mechanically, as if she were only going through the motions. In those moments her eyes also seemed lusterless, as if covered with a film that dimmed their brightness. Other times her eyes had that shattered look. Once he asked: “Another migraine?” She seemed startled, surprised. “You told me about them, remember?” he said. And she admitted that yes. she had another migraine, the Complex seemed to bring them on. But she couldn’t stop coming, she said.
“And you, Barney, how are you?” she’d ask on occasion, and he was thrilled when she turned those eyes on him, as if no one else in the world existed except him and Cassie there in the dusk-drenched room.
“I’m okay,” he said.
His big fear was that an aftermath would seize him in her presence. He wanted to be strong and brave for her. Most of all, normal. Once in a while he’d become light-headed and hold his breath, afraid that an aftermath was on its way. Occasionally the car slanting down the hill would flash across his eyes and he’d hold himself rigid, not moving, saying tempo, rhythm, hoping his body would not betray him.
“How are your tests going?” she’d asked. “What are they, anyway?” She had a habit of asking a string of questions all at once, like when she inquired about Mazzo. “Are they painful?”
He answered only vaguely, telling her that they were tests involving memory and they were not painful, merely weird, made him dizzy sometimes. He hurried to change the subject, afraid she might pounce on him with her unending questions and he’d be unable to resist answering, telling her everything she wanted to know. He didn’t want to reveal himself for what he had become, some kind of guinea pig here in the Complex.
His body betrayed him once as they spoke. One minute they were speaking about the Hacienda. Barney had built up to it carefully, framing the question in his mind and then asking it: “Are you going back to that place … that Hacienda?” He hated the thought of her shut away in a convent.
“I’ve taken the semester off. To be with my mother and Alberto.”
“You said once that you didn’t go there to be a nun,” Barney reminded her. Hopefully.
“I don’t know what I want to be,” she said.
At that moment dizziness assailed him, his body suddenly light and weightless, and he rose to his feet, the room whirling, nothing to hold on to. Floating above the floor,no feet, Cassie’s face floating with him but fragmented, broken into tiny pieces. He clutched at the chair for support, reaching blindly for it. Where are my feet? “What’s the matter?”
Her voice from far away. Light years away.
He worked to move his mouth, tongue, vocal cords, to do what seemed impossible: tell her what was happening.
“Reaction,” he managed to gasp at last, squeezing the word out painfully. “Aftermath …” Didn’t know whether she could hear him, whether he was whispering or shouting.
A moment later—or had it been hours?—he found himself in the chair again, Cassie’s hands holding his, her face so close he could see the tiny pores in her flesh, the smell of soap clean and sweet in his nostrils. The spinning had stopped, his feet had been rediscovered and touched the floor, and his hands tingled at her touch. He wanted her never to let go.
“I’m okay now,” he said, voice functioning again but a bit fluttery. “That was a bad one. They’re usually not that bad.”
“What kind of stuff are they giving you, anyway?” she said angrily.
“That memory drug. It has aftermaths, reactions. They come and go.” Damn it. He was angry, at himself, his body, the Handyman, the merchandise, for making him collapse like that in front of her. Her, of all people. “Nothing serious,” he said, forcing a smile. Had to keep it light.
Cassie withdrew her hands, and he wanted to grope for them but let his own hands remain in his lap.
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” she said, smiling thinly. “Me with my migraines, you with your aftermaths.”
Thinking of Alberto and Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon, he looked at her.
“I know,” she said, voice husky and low, barely discernible in the half-light. “We’re the lucky ones.…”
I’m lucky to know you, he thought.
Later he stood by the doorway, watching her going down the walk, disappearing into the darkness, heard the car roaring away, tried to create the ghost of her outside the window, smiling at him, waving a greeting. No one there. He tried to conjure her face. But couldn’t. What did she look like? Her face a blank spot in his mind, like the time he couldn’t bring back the image of his mother’s face. Cassie’s face was now like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
He hurried to his room in blind panic, sweeping by Allie Roon standing with mouth agape in the hallway. As he entered his room and snapped on the light, Cassie’s face emerged in his mind once more—blazing blue eyes and lovely curve of cheek—and he sighed with weary relief. He flung himself onto the bed, dreading the next merchandise session—what if something went wrong and Cassie was wiped from his memory and his life forever?
The Handyman summoned him to the Hit Room the next morning after breakfast. Barney entered the office warily, hoping that the Handyman wasn’t planning more merchandise this week.
Sitting behind the bare wooden desk as usual, the Handyman seemed affable and in good humor.
“How are you getting on with Miss Mazzofono?” he asked.
Barney felt his cheeks grow warm.
“Fine, just fine,” he said. Let’s change the subject, doctor.
“As you know, Barney, I am not a great disciplinarian, and I allow reasonable freedom here. In fact I encourage everyone to move around, go outdoors, to the best of their abilities. But I must tell you that I do not entirely approve of these meetings. Ours is a closed society here. She is a disruptive influence.” He didn’t seem angry. Sad, maybe.
“Your Miss Mazzofono is indulging in a bit of blackmail. Sweet blackmail from her viewpoint, I think. But blackmail all the same.”
Barney waited, didn’t know what to say anyway.
“She may have told you, Barney, that her mother is an important benefactor of ours. And we are in need of bene-factors. That is why I’ve allowed Alberto to become a resident here.” Resident instead of patient. “Why I allowed his sister to visit. Do you see?”
Barney nodded, still wordless.
“This Cassandra Mazzofono, she’s a beautiful young woman, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Do you enjoy her visits?”
Another nod, not trusting his voice, afraid he might betray how he felt about her.
“This troubles me, Barney.”
Barney’s hopes began to capsize. He was afraid the Handyman would end the visits.
“I would not want you to form attachments, Barney. An attachment that may later cause unhappiness. You are the subject of delicate proceedings.” Proceedings instead of experiments. “It would be unfortunate to upset your delicate balance.”
“What do you mean—delicate balance?”
“In matters involving the mind, Barney, one cannot discount the emotions. Your emotional well-being is as vital as your mental and physical states.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Barney asked, scared of all this mumbo jumbo about physical states and emotional well-being.
“I want you to be careful, Barney. Do your duty, what this young woman asks of you. But keep yourself remote from her. In your own compartment. Remember that you are a resident here and she is from the outside w
orld. There will come a time eventually when she will have no need to visit here.”
The preciseness of the Handyman’s manner of speaking kept Barney alert to his words, and his words seemed to doom him now. He knows, Barney thought, he knows I love her, live for her visits. From the beginning he had seemed able to read Barney’s mind. Now he could read his emotions. Yet the Handyman’s words didn’t contain a threat, did they? They were more like a warning, a friendly warning, maybe.
“You may go, Barney.” His voice almost gentle.
On his way back to the room, going along the corridors in a haze of uncertainty, he wondered about this strange doctor who was the Handyman. He’d always been almost like a robot, hiding deep within his own compartment, and today he had seemed human. As Barney had closed the door, leaving the Hit Room, he had seen a sad and lonely look on the Handyman’s face. He wondered who the Handyman felt sad for—Barney, Cassie, Mazzo, or even himself.
12
BILLY the Kidney was taken to Isolation the next morning for another session with the merchandise. Hooked up to the wires and tubes, pinned down by sensors and clamps, all the doodads necessary for the tests, he looked forlornly at Barney, who was watching through the Observation window. Barney made a thumbs-up gesture. Billy had been confined to bed for more than a week, his condition worsening, all his tests suspended. Maybe these new tests meant that he was getting stronger. Wasn’t this a good sign? Then he remembered the Handyman’s admonition: This is not a place for hope or miracles. Barney turned away from the window. For a moment he had pictured Ronson lying on that same table, trapped and helpless, like a specimen in a grotesque exhibit.
Allie Roon was waiting in Barney’s room, sitting patiently in the chair next to the bed. He smiled at Barney’s arrival, the weird smile that split his face in half, one cheek twitching furiously, the other cheek wrinkled like a withered apple.
Allie made an effort to speak. His tongue flicked in and out of his mouth, spit flew in all directions. “L … l … l … e … e … t … t … ’s … s …” Barney realized finally that Allie was trying to say: Let’s go. Out. Out there into the real world. Barney nodded, took his jacket from the closet and led the boy through the corridor to the exit.
May dazzled his eyes with its brilliance, the grass soft and spongy beneath his feet. He paused and looked toward the street, half hoping to see Cassie emerging from the car she drove to their meetings. He was impatient for the day to pass, hopeful for her arrival, impatient to see her again. Allie tugged at his arm, dancing at his side. “Okay, Allie, let’s go,” he said.
The breeze was warm and gentle on Barney’s face and he took deep breaths, drinking in the air and the scents of the season, scents he couldn’t identify but filling his nostrils with pungent aromas. He and Allie Roon made their way to a lilac bush heavy with clusters and fragrance. As they got closer, Barney saw that the lilacs were already past their prime, beginning to shrivel, the season passing too quickly for them to survive, remain living. Spasmodically, Allie pointed to a small flowering tree. Tiny pink blossoms danced on its branches. Barney didn’t know what kind of tree it was, realized he knew nothing about nature.
“N … i … nice …” Allie sputtered.
Barney looked from the tree to the lilac bush, considered how one was dying and the other shimmering with beginning life. And a while ago the tree had been stark and lifeless while the bush was exploding with beauty. Sad somehow, one life ending while another began. But he drew a kind of comfort from this knowledge, seeing for the first time the continuity of life, nature at work in the world, providing a never-ending process of life in all its forms. Maybe there was some kind of continuity in people, too. Nature at work in people. Or was it God? He shivered at the thought. An old prayer leaped to his lips. “Our Father,who art in Heaven …” He couldn’t remember the last time he had prayed. He used to say his prayers every morning and night but had somehow lost the habit. Tempo, rhythm.
Turning away from the tree, he looked at the bush once more and the dying purple clusters. The bush, though, wouldn’t die. Just as the flowering tree hadn’t really died during the winter but had slumbered on through the seasons, withstanding the rain and the cold. Were people like that, too? Death only a sleep from which they eventually awakened? Not the body, of course, but the soul, soaring into eternity, joining others there.
He raised his head to the sky as if he could find eternity in that endless blue. He thought of Cassie, how she had made him feel again, as if she had roused him from a long sleep, sharpening his senses, making him aware of life’s joys: his own beating heart or the blossoms on a flowering tree. He shivered with pleasure, glad to be here, his feet on the spongy earth, this same earth Cassie traversed when she visited him.
Allie called to him in an explosion of vowels. He was standing at the fence, pointing to the top, his arm suddenly straight and still, index finger pointing like a pistol.
“What do you want?” Barney called.
But he knew what Allie wanted. He wanted, impossible, to climb the fence.
“Come back, Allie,” Barney yelled.
Allie kept pointing, the arm twitching now, his mouth working. “Y … y … yo … you,” he called, his eyes bright with anticipation, mouth trying to smile or laugh.
“Ah, hell,” Barney said. Realizing what Allie really wanted. He wanted Barney to climb the fence.
“Come on back, Allie.”
Allie shook his head and stayed at the fence, no longer exuberant, arms twitching at his sides, half turned away from Barney.
He walked over to the boy, angry, not wanting to climb the fence, not wanting to risk injury or being caught by the Handyman or a nurse. He didn’t want to do anything that would threaten his meetings with Cassie. Had to play everything safe, not break any rules.
But when he arrived at Allie’s side, he saw the disappointment on the boy’s face. What the hell difference did it make to Allie Roon if he climbed the fence or didn’t climb it? He knew the answer, however. He realized that when he climbed the fence, he was acting for Allie, doing what Allie couldn’t do, and somehow Allie was doing it, too.
“Okay, okay,” Barney growled, scowling. He measured the distance to the top. It seemed higher today than before. Allie danced a ridiculous jig, his eager old man’s face full of hope and anticipation.
Barney found himself scaling the fence, going up faster than he’d intended, renewed strength in his bones and muscles. The wind caressed him as he climbed, as if someone stroked him in his ascent. Allie crooned encouragement from below. If Cassie could see him now. At the top he swung his legs around. Clinging precariously but triumphantly there, he looked down to see Allie trying to clap his hands, missing most of the time, slapping at air, but a wide smile cracking his face open.
The junkyard looked the same to Barney, a forlorn battlefield untouched by spring and the change of seasons. If anything, the ruined vehicles seemed to have shrunk further into the ground. The MG gleamed in the sunlight, a small riot of color in all that drabness and desolation. In his mind’s eye he saw the car speeding along the highway, Mazzo at the controls, a white scarf billowing in the wind, and he and Cassie crowded beautifully close together, laughing and singing as the car sped along. But the MG in the lot was only an illusion, not really a car. Like his dream of Cassie’s love. Both not real, false and fake.
He looked at the Complex, which seemed to tower menacingly above him. A place of secrets under that slanting roof. In a corner of Barney’s mind the glimmer of a vision winked, like a star’s quick glitter from afar. He held his breath waiting for the glimmer to grow. Glancing again at the MG, he let the vision burst full flower. He saw for the first time the flight of the Bumblebee, although Cassie had not yet provided him with the name.
Mazzo’s condition seemed to improve—temporarily, of course, Barney realized, remembering the Handyman’s words—and Barney found that the visits to his room were almost pleasant, as pleasant as any trip to a sickroom could be.
Although Mazzo still brooded a bit and seldom initiated a conversation, letting Barney carry the ball, he didn’t mind answering questions. About his prep-school days, baseball and football and mountain climbing, the mountain in question Katahdin up in Maine. Mazzo’s eyes came alive when he told Barney about the game Stanley Prep won in the last half of the sixteenth inning, a night game, at three o’clock in the morning.
“I suppose you hit a home run to win the game,” Barney said. “The big hero.” Kidding him a bit.
“Look, Barney, I was good,” Mazzo said. “I don’t take credit for it. I was a natural athlete. Born that way. All Idid was use that talent. The lousy thing is to have talent and not use it.” And his face turned dark. “Or not be able to use it.”
Eventually, all the conversations ended that way, on a bitter note, but before that happened Mazzo seemed to enjoy reminiscing. Barney listened, bored sometimes but disguising the boredom, waiting for an opening in the conversation to ask about Cassie. When the opening came, Barney moved in quickly.
“How about Cassie?”
“Cassie?”
“Was she good at sports?”
Mazzo shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. She was a funny kid.”
“What do you mean—funny?”
“I mean, she wasn’t just one thing. Sometimes she was full of fun and doing crazy stuff. Like all kids do. And then she’d be up in her room, alone. I was away a lot. She’d go on different kicks. She was a vegetarian for a while. Drove Mrs. Cortoleona—she was our housekeeper, chief cook and bottle washer—up a wall. Then that phase passed and she became a radical. At fourteen years old. Actually walked in a picket line downtown, some crazy protest in front of a supermarket. My mother almost flipped her lid.…” Mazzo laughed. Sort of laughed, that is, making a sound that was half laughter and half sigh. “My mother. I used to feel bad for her sometimes. Very proper lady, my mother. Every hair in place. Old New England family. And she’s caught in this family—Papa, the wild Sicilian, and Cassie who was always changing from vegetarian to radical and then getting religion. And me. Wrecking a couple of cars, getting suspended from school—good thing they needed me in the backfield or at the plate, or I wouldn’t have survived.…” He fell into one of his brooding silences.