I was still naked.
Chapter 10
My phone was ringing, harsh, discordant and insistent. Shaking so hard my teeth chattered, gooseflesh like braille on my skin, I stood. Immediately, the floor shifted beneath me. My stomach lurched, too.
I made it down the hall to the kitchen where I plucked the phone from its base and held it with a shaking hand to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, honey, it’s Mom. Listen, I was wondering if you had that black dress we got for you to wear to that Christmas party a few years ago, because I’d like to borrow it.”
I swallowed against a surge of bile. Sometimes I came out of a fugue with an upset stomach or a sharp headache, but this didn’t feel like that. This felt like terror.
“Mom?”
“I checked your closet for it, but I couldn’t see it, so I thought maybe you took it with you.”
I slid down the wall and ended up on my cold kitchen floor, my bare ass freezing. I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them and put my face down. The phone pressed into my ear. I swallowed again and again before I could answer.
“Yeah, I think I have it. It might be in a couple of things I haven’t unpacked yet.”
“Do you think you could look for it?”
“Right now?”
“Well, whenever you get the chance,” she said.
“Sure.” My voice sounded rough and raspy. I cleared my throat. “I can do that.”
“Good. So, what else is exciting up there in the big city?”
My stomach was settling, my headache fading. I was still freezing but not quite ready to move off the floor in case I set myself off again. “Nothing. The usual. Nothing, really.”
“Well, maybe you can come down next week,” my mom said. “You can bring the dress and we’ll get some dinner. Maybe see that new Ewan McGregor movie. I hear he shows his butt.”
My laugh came out a little strangled but genuine. “He shows his butt in every movie.”
“Gotta go. Dad’s waiting. Bye, honey, love you.”
And like that, just like that, she hung up on me. My mom never hung up on me without asking me if something was wrong. Without worrying just a little.
I got up off the floor. I put the phone back in the base. I went upstairs and ran the shower as hot as I could stand it. It stung when I got in, but I was still so cold I needed the heat. I rubbed my hands together under the spray, then hunkered down in the center of my shower and let the water pound over my back until I stopped shaking. I stayed in there until the water turned lukewarm.
By the time I got out, I felt better enough to wrap myself in a thick robe and go down to my kitchen for something to eat. Toast, jam and tea. An invalid’s dinner. I didn’t feel sick. I was no longer in pain. Hell, I could barely remember how it had felt when I went to my hands and knees in my entryway, naked.
Belly full, I searched my entryway. No clothes. Hesitantly, I opened the front door and looked there, but if I’d somehow gone outside starkers and run around the neighborhood, I hadn’t left the clothes conveniently on the front porch. I’d left Johnny’s house just after 8:00 p.m. The phone showed my mom had called at 8:17. Considering the walk should’ve taken less than five minutes, I’d been dark for fewer than another ten. Not long enough to get into much trouble or get very far, and yet though I checked behind the bushes on either side of my front porch, all I turned up was some rotting leaves that hadn’t been covered by snow.
I’d stepped through my front door and, the next thing I knew, was naked just a few feet inside it. I stood in front of the door, my robe dragging on the ground, and looked around. My unused formal living room to the right, stairs immediately in front of me, the hall to the kitchen and dining room straight back. How long would it take me to strip, make a trip to some other place in my house, and make it back to the front door? And why would I have done something like that?
In college, I’d had a friend who liked to drink too much. He didn’t just pass out, he blacked out. He could be up and talking to you, holding a perfectly rational conversation, and not remember a word of it. He could go from alert to unconscious in seconds. Sort of like me and my fugues, except while I often had vivid, rich fantasies during them and knew I could react to my environment even while dark, that was only for a few seconds and only if I wasn’t down too deep.
I’d never, not so far as I could remember, been dark for longer than a minute or two while also maintaining the appearance of consciousness. And while I might’ve been able to answer simple questions, enough to keep the person I was with unaware I was having a fugue, anything more complicated than “yes,” “no” or “uh-huh” quickly revealed the truth. I’d certainly never gone and done anything while I was dark for longer than a few minutes, and even then, it was never anything more than sitting down or taking a few steps.
I counted the steps and the minutes from my door to my living room. To the kitchen. To my bedroom and back again. No clothes. No signs I’d been staggering around, making mischief.
I went back out onto the front porch and looked at the sidewalk, unsure if I hoped to catch a glimpse of a pile of clothes under the streetlamp or not. All I saw was Joe, the guy who lived with his wife one street over and who liked to walk his dog around the block. Plastic Baggie in his hand, he waved.
I pulled my robe closer around my throat and waved back. The frigid air was sucking all the heat out my front door. My feet were bare, so I couldn’t go to him. I had to holler.
“Hi!”
“Hi, Emm. How’s it going?” Joe looked cold.
The dog, Chuckles, stopped to sniff my lawn and lift his leg against one of the raggedy bushes I’d eventually have to remove. I didn’t really mind. Even if his dog pooped on my grass, Joe always picked it up.
“Good. Fine. Um, have you been out at all tonight? Before now?”
Joe looked down at the dog, then back at me. “You mean with Chuckles?”
“Yes. Around the block?”
“Yeah, I’m just heading home now. Why?”
“Did you…see me?”
Joe said nothing for a few seconds as my face heated, feeling extrawarm against the chilly wind. “Should I have?”
I forced a laugh. “Oh, no. I was just wondering if maybe you saw me someplace else other than my house tonight.”
Joe hesitated again. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, sure, sure.” I flapped a hand as though greeting a semi-stranger in my bathrobe and bare feet on a glacial winter’s night from my front doorstep was entirely normal. “I was out for a walk earlier, that’s all. I thought I saw you guys but I waved and…it wasn’t you.”
“Oh.” Joe tugged the dog’s leash to keep him from going into the neighbor’s yard, because she did mind even the tiniest sprinkling of pee. “Nope. Not me. It’s too cold to be out here for long.”
“Right. Well. I guess it was someone else, then. Sorry!”
“No problem. Good night.” Joe waved again and set off down the sidewalk.
“Night,” I called after him faintly, and shut my door.
The credit union had a generous sick day/vacation time policy, and though I hated using up time I could’ve spent at the beach lying in my bed instead, I called work the next day, claiming I had the flu. I did feel feverish and achy, but not really sick. I couldn’t stop thinking about the night before.
Even when they’d been at their worst, I’d always counted myself fortunate that my fugues weren’t harmful. They could’ve been dangerous if I went dark while I was driving or operating machinery or something like that, which was why I hadn’t had a driver’s license for much of my adult life. But no matter how frequently I went dark, no tests had ever shown any evidence of further brain damage. I remained a medical mystery, files thick with test results and reports, but no real conclusions. My brain had intermittent, irregular and unpredictable erratic activity that seemed controllable with medication and alternative medicine, but nobody had ever found evidence it was getting wors
e.
So. What had changed? Had the stress of moving out on my own tipped me somehow into another level? Had something burst, a clot or aneurysm? In my bed, covers clutched to my chin, I shuddered. Would I know if something like that happened? Would I have pain?
Maybe I’d just go dark and never come out of it.
Maybe I was overreacting, taking a page from my mother’s book. I forced myself out of bed and into the shower where I ran out the hot water again. Then I made myself eat some soup and toast, more sick food, though I wasn’t really sick. After that I made myself a plate of my mom’s homemade macaroni and cheese from the store of containers in my freezer she’d sent along with me. And after that, tummy full of carbs and fat, I felt a little better.
I knew I should call Dr. Gordon and get in for some tests, just as I knew that no matter what they showed, she’d feel obligated to make a report to the state. There went my license for another year. And yes, I knew it was irresponsible of me not to tell her, but I could take public transportation to work and most other places I needed to go, thank Saint Vitus, the patron saint of epileptics. Except I didn’t have epilepsy. I didn’t know what I had.
I was hardly ever home on weekdays, so the rattle-thump as I passed my front door scared me until I realized it was the mailbox outside. I opened the door, catching the mail carrier halfway down the sidewalk. I grabbed the yellow package slip from the box and waved it, catching her attention.
“Hi!”
She smiled. “Oh, you’re home. Lucky you. I have a package for you that won’t fit in the box. I was going to take it back for pickup later.”
“Lucky me.” I handed her the form. She gave me the package, a flat-rate envelope with an unfamiliar return address. “Thanks.”
Inside, I ripped open the envelope. A DVD fell out into my palm. Night of a Hundred Moons. My stomach dropped a little, just like it did on the crest of a roller coaster’s first hill. I studied the front of the case. It looked photocopied, and poorly not professionally produced. I flipped it over. Same on the back, the art and text a little faded and askew. Inside, the disk was plain silver with a printed label affixed. Huh.
I hadn’t looked too carefully before buying it, but Jen had said it was a really rare and hard-to-find movie. I didn’t like the idea that I’d somehow purchased a pirated copy, but it was too late now. I could only hope it would play in my DVD player.
I should’ve called her. I’d promised to. But Jen would be at work now, and I was home alone. Sick days were meant for watching movies all day long in bed, and with this burning in my hand, there was no way I could even wait until tonight to watch it with her. I was sure I’d want to see it again, anyway. She didn’t have to know it would be my second viewing. Or hell, I was sure she’d understand. She’d watched all of Johnny’s movies long before she got me hooked on them.
Upstairs in my bedroom, I finally set up the DVD player my parents had bought me this Christmas just past, a present meant to celebrate the fact I was moving out and would need my own appliances. I’d ended up taking along their old one, too, since I’d bought them a Blu-ray player. Since moving into my house, I’d only ever watched movies in the living room, determined to live like an adult and not some lame-ass still living in her parents’ basement.
I didn’t feel lame now. I felt decadent, actually. Owner of two DVD players, two televisions, home on a workday and ready to lounge around in bed watching art films. It was so far from last year at this time when I’d still been sneaking in after midnight as though I had a curfew and refusing to let my boyfriend sleep over. Well, now I had my own place and no boyfriend, but I thought it was a good trade-off.
I got myself some ice cream—double chocolate fudge—and tucked myself under the thick comforter with the remote in hand. I settled back onto my pillows.
I pressed Play.
I knew that house. I knew that kitchen. I knew those people. Candy, Bellina, Ed, even Paul. And Johnny, oh, Johnny, wearing a tank top and jeans that should’ve looked outdated and ridiculous but fit his ass so right I had to appreciate them.
They sat around his kitchen table, smoking and talking, while the camera cut from one face to another. The sound was awful, the music tinny and out of sync. The continuity was bad, too, like they’d simply shot the scene once but from all different angles, and bits of conversation had been dropped while the camera shifted. There was a plot, at least, or some semblance of one, even though they all spoke in stilted sentences that sounded nothing like their actual conversation.
I stopped, ice cream melting on my tongue. I put the bowl on the nightstand and turned up the volume. I recognized these people from seeing them on the internet, didn’t I? In still shots from this very movie. And my mind had filled in the rest. So I couldn’t know how they actually sounded, none of them but Johnny, and he was a better actor than any of them and the only one who could really pull this off.
With the movie on pause I could study the scene more carefully. I didn’t know that clock on the wall, or the number of cabinets, but I hadn’t counted them, had I? Hadn’t paid much attention to anything but Johnny during the fugue, because he was who my brain wanted to create. The rest of this was all…
“Shit,” I muttered aloud. “Shit, shit, shit. Where did I see this? How did I see it?”
I took the movie off pause and hopped out of bed to get my laptop. I searched the film and found the site I’d ordered it from, along with a few other obscure sites I hadn’t read as thoroughly before. With one eye on the TV screen, I scrolled through pages of horrible light on dark text and blinking .gifs I had to make sure not to stare at too long. They’d have given someone without brain injury a seizure.
According to one site, Night of a Hundred Moons had been a staple of late-night cable during the eighties, particularly popular with shows like Up Past Midnight, which I could vividly remember watching at every sleepover I’d ever had even if I didn’t actively recall any of Johnny’s films. I paused the movie again, comparing it with one of the still shots on the site. I knew that table, that kitchen, those people, but of course I did. I’d seen them before, some time I didn’t remember.
I let out a chocolate-scented breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. My brain took bits and pieces of whatever I’d experienced and wove them together into fiction. It was what happened. This was no different than any of the others, just more vivid and realistic because of my crush on Johnny. I wanted it more, that was all.
It still didn’t explain how I’d ended up naked on my floor, but I didn’t want to think about that now. I put the laptop aside and concentrated again on the movie. In it, Johnny had left the kitchen for what must’ve been the back garden and a swimming pool I hadn’t known was there. He stripped down, naked, tipping his face to sunlight that turned him golden.
The camera fucking loved him. Loved fucking him, too. Whoever had filmed this looked at Johnny with the eyes of a lover, traveling over the length of his body and lingering on all the places I wanted to kiss and bite and suck and lick—for real, not in fantasy. He swam the length of the pool, body not obscured by crystal-clear water, legs scissoring and muscles flexing.
This part of the film seemed to be better edited, shots not just cutting at random but flowing. He came out of the water in slow motion and flipped his hair back, off his face.
I came a little bit, with a groan that would’ve been embarrassing if I hadn’t been alone.
I frowned in the next minute. Sandy, wearing only a skimpy T-shirt and a pair of panties, was waiting for him when he came out of the water. She’d pulled the hem of her shirt up and through the neckline to bare a belly I was catty enough to notice wasn’t flat and firm. I’d done the same with my shirt when I was a kid running around in the summer, but never as a woman. I reminded myself this movie was easily thirty years old and being a bitch about a woman whose tits were surely now someplace around her belly button would only come back to haunt me later.
“Hey, Johnny,” Sandy said in that same irr
itating nasal voice she’d had in my fugue.
Fuck, it was annoying. Of all the things my brain had had to retain, why that? On the other hand, I thought, watching as Johnny hoisted himself out of the pool, I guessed I had to take the good with the bad.
“Hey,” Johnny said.
“Come outta there, I wanna talk to you.”
Johnny didn’t move, just looked her over with one eye squinted shut against the sun. “What do you want?”
“C’mere.” She reached to toy with his hair, and though I knew it was a movie, I was glad to see him pull away.
“Leave me alone,” Johnny said. He jerked away when she reached for him again, but when she slid down behind him and wrapped her arms and legs around him, her fingers tweaking at his nipples, he didn’t try too hard to escape. “I said leave me.”
“No.”
They tussled a little, but she didn’t let go and he didn’t get up. Her hand drifted lower but he stopped it by slapping it flat against his belly and holding it there. Smiling, she nibbled at his neck. He didn’t smile. Johnny looked stone-faced, water dripping down his temples and cheeks to hang off his chin in shimmering drops.
“Being around you makes me feel so sexy, Johnny. I feel so sexy now.”
“Good for you.” He wasn’t budging.
Not when she licked him, not when she tweaked his nipples, not even when she slid a hand below camera level into his lap.
“I said no.” Johnny’s face twisted in an echo of my current expression. He shoved her off, finally, and got up to stalk naked to a chair and grab up a towel.
I was hard-pressed to find a reason for this scene. Knowing Sandy was his wife, or ex-wife, whatever, only made it worse. I was jealous. I laughed out loud at that, though it sounded shaky and nothing like my regular laugh. I was jealous of something that had happened in a movie filmed before I was born.