But Gretel couldn’t even see him once he’d walked down the driveway. Not that she was surprised. It was amazing how quickly someone could disappear into the night when he had a craving for destruction and a few dollars in his pocket. Since Jason didn’t have money for his own car and no one with any common sense would lend him one, he walked three miles in order to score, even though snow had already begun to fall. Halfway there, he felt he was being followed, but when he turned, the street was empty. He went on, though the mark on his chest had begun to burn. As he neared the turnpike, the shirt he’d been wearing for days suddenly darkened, as though it had been singed, and then, without warning, the fabric ignited. There on the sidewalk in front of houses where families were safely asleep in their beds, Jason tore the shirt from his body. It burned down to ash on the asphalt and left nothing but fiery dust. By then, Jason was broiling and freezing at the very same time, and he felt true fear. Clearly, a warning had been tossed down before him on the dark and empty street. All the same, he stared up at Pegasus, which was now in the western corner of the sky.
“You can’t stop me,” he said.
Jason’s words went upward into the icy night and disappeared, swallowed by the cold. He went on, half naked, so spent and exhausted he collapsed when he reached his destination—a basement apartment he knew of where a man could buy just about anything, from heroin to a clean shirt; here, Jason could crash for a while, as long as the money held out.
The apartment was exactly what he thought he’d wanted; there was no longer anyone to tell him how to live and what to do. But each time he got high the fiery creature appeared again, back to torment him. Time after time, he had to fight for his life just to return to that basement, where mattresses were strewn about and no one ever discussed the future. After a while, he began to spy the creature even in the first moments of the day, when he was completely sober and straight.
Did you see that? he’d say to whoever else was hanging out, as though he were a madman who needed validation from any passing junkie. The basement’s other inhabitants stared at him with contempt, and even worse, with pity. Couldn’t anyone tell that sparks had scorched his eyelashes and his hair? When he removed his boots he often discovered a phosphorous element inside, which glowed with a faint yellow light. The air around him was brutal and hot. Were they blind to all this? Were they too far gone to see? Seriously, he’d ask anyone close enough to listen. Did you feel that?
Sure, buddy, people would answer, to humor him or simply to get him off their backs. We feel it.
When it came down to it, Jason didn’t care what they all thought or what they believed. He knew the truth: Something was waiting for him. At night he peered out the window to look upward; even in this dank apartment, he could read his fate in the stars. Still he fought; if anyone came up behind him, he was likely to strike out from pure instinct. He had a wild countenance, that of a man who can find neither courage nor rest; he made certain to lock every window and door. He stopped sleeping, because the creature was there in his dreams, sitting on his chest, aflame with incredible light; on the occasions when he dozed off, he’d awaken to find a thin layer of soot on his skin.
The weather had turned even colder, and Jason had developed a terrible cough. All the same, when his money was gone and he had borrowed and begged far too much, they threw him out of the basement. It was a dreadful night, with ice on the roads inches deep and a gray unforgiving sky, but Jason really wasn’t concerned. He’d been pilfering heroin from his host, and he had more than enough to get him through the night. He went down by the parkway, then kept on walking, to the stretch of woods that was still forest, where a man could find some privacy. But his destination was so far and he was so tired he stopped to rest beneath an overpass. He got high right there, like the abandoned souls he and his friends used to laugh about back in high school. He knew he was alone and desperate, but he didn’t care. The world had retreated into a single action, getting high, the nadir of all misery and desire.
Jason lay down, his head resting against the tunnel. He was shivering so badly that his head banged against the concrete and he bit his own lips. His fingers and toes were numb and his stomach ached, as though he had consumed nothing but ice and stones. He waited, ready to fight, certain the thing that had been following him would come. But this time when he felt the creature upon him, Jason was grateful for the warmth. The cold he’d experienced was truly horrible, and it was a relief to encounter so much heat. There were flames around his elbows and his ankles which could melt anything: ice and flesh, bone and blood. Despite the sulfur and the ash, Jason embraced his enemy, and as soon as he did he discovered that its appearance mirrored his own: the same blue eyes, the very same smile. He could still see the constellations, even though his eyes were closed; he could see farther than he’d ever imagined possible. He’d thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was all around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.
Examining the Evidence
The evening was clear, without storm clouds or thunder or any sign of rain, but when Margot Molinaro looked out her kitchen window, she noticed that a glowing object the size of a billiard ball was traveling along the metal fence in her backyard, moving more and more swiftly as it gathered momentum, throwing off sparks that flew out in every direction. Margot barely had time to move away from the window before the thing leapt into her house uninvited, stinking like sulfur and stopping the hands on the clock above the sink. The electromagnetic field inside the house went berserk; wires popped within the walls and every fuse blew.
As Margot watched, shoeless and completely surprised, the ball of lightning moved about the room at only a few inches above the floor, slowly, almost thoughtfully, as though searching for something it couldn’t seem to find. The lightning drew nearer and nearer to Margot’s bare feet; she closed her eyes, expecting to be burned alive, but the glowing ball suddenly veered away, then picked up speed, and with a whoosh, it hit the refrigerator. The lightning collapsed in a sputtering gasp, like a pan of overcooked rice, falling onto the vinyl tiles, where it left a gaping blue-black mark which sizzled like melted tar.
This strange and luminous phenomenon, which was reported the following day in all the local papers, along with a photograph of Margot looking puzzled and pale, had done as much damage as a small, contained hurricane. Margot had never been a good housekeeper, but now her place was such a disaster that she sat down and cried in the dark, a true necessity as the electricity was no longer working. When she’d pulled herself together, and had washed her face with bottled water—the electromagnetic force had also rattled the pipes, allowing only rusty water to come out of the tap—Margot lit a candle and made a list of things she now must do:
Repaint over the singe marks on the kitchen walls.
Hire an electrician.
Find a plumber.
Figure out why things such as this only happened to her, when every other house on the block was perfectly fine and everyone else in the neighborhood had experienced nothing more unusual than dusky twilight and the call of the warblers, who sang at the very same hour each day.
The following morning, Margot went down to the hardware store and bought a gallon of yellow paint and a box of self-adhesive tiles for the kitchen, then headed over to scan the message board beside the door in search of a half-decent handyman whose services she could afford. Probably the best she could do was Johnny Rickets, who was well known in the neighborhood for his shoddy welding and even worse wiring, but as she took Johnny’s card from the board, the owner of the hardware store approached. Like everyone else in town, Mike Sutton had heard about the ball of lightning, and he was eager to see its effects. He took Johnny’s card from Margot’s hand and ripped it in two.
“Don’t hire that crook,” he told her. “Hire me.”
Mike showed up the following morning at seven, while Margot was out in the backyard boiling water for coffee on the barbecue, since the electric stove was on the blink
. When Mike saw the devastation in her house, he was truly impressed. He accepted the cup of Sanka Margot offered, then went to examine the black marks on the wall. “These were some abnormally powerful electrical currents. I’ll bet your radio doesn’t work.”
“Nothing works,” Margot said. “Take a look at this.”
She picked up a corner of the throw rug she’d borrowed from her cousin Franny, to reveal the tarlike consistency of the vinyl tiles.
Mike knelt to study the floor. “Must have been a geomagnetic storm.” Although he had inherited the hardware business from his father, Mike was much more interested in science, and most especially in the stars. People in town would see him on the roof of the store on summer nights, so intent on his telescope he didn’t notice when anyone waved or called out his name.
Margot spent the next few days painting and tearing up her old kitchen floor. By then Mike had completed the rewiring and fixed the sink; he assured Margot the mess was far easier to repair than it had looked to be, and he’d send her the bill in the mail. He must have fiddled with the radio and the refrigerator as well, because they were operating perfectly now, as was the stove. All the rest of that week, Margot cursed her fate as she put down her new kitchen floor. Her cousin Franny often came over in the afternoons, to keep Margot company; she’d pull off the paper backing on the tiles and carefully hand them over to Margot, even though she should have been home in bed. Franny had had the worst luck in the world, and although Margot had had the second-worst luck, it was difficult to complain in Franny’s presence.
“So how much did all this cost you?” Franny asked, for in fact when the floor was finished the kitchen looked far better than it had before lightning struck.
“I don’t know exactly. I haven’t gotten the bill yet.” Margot poured them both iced tea. She didn’t say a word when Franny took out a cigarette. They both knew that Franny’s prognosis was terminal; certainly, after all she’d been through, she had the right to enjoy the time she had left.
Franny breathed out smoke and thought this over. “Mike Sutton did all this work and he didn’t send a bill?”
Unless Margot was mistaken, her cousin was actually smiling.
“Don’t worry. He’ll send one.”
But before he could, Margot had to call him back. This time she awoke on an ordinary Tuesday to find that her yard was covered with an odd gossamer netting. When she opened her back door she saw that the wispy stuff was made out of thousands of webs, each a parachute of sorts for a small brown spider. Mike came over that afternoon; he sprayed the lawn and all the shrubbery with a power hose to wash the webs away, but he insisted the spiders were harmless.
“An unusual infestation,” he admitted. “Just be thankful it wasn’t Japanese beetles.”
Margot stood on her back porch to watch Mike collect the last of the webbing, which was drifting from the low branches of a willow tree; she had chills up and down her legs, even though the weather was fine. When Mike started loading up his truck, she followed him out to the street.
“Has this happened to anyone else?” she asked.
“No. Not in this neighborhood. But think of it this way: You probably won’t have any mosquitoes this summer.”
Did you get the bill yet?” Franny asked the following week. Margot was working in the garden and Franny was lying on the chaise, covered by a wool blanket even though the day was unusually warm. Franny wore a hat and gloves, and shivered whenever a cloud drifted over the sun.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get charged,” Margot assured her cousin.
Margot had on a sleeveless white shirt and a pair of old shorts; her hands and legs were patchy with dirt. She was still pretty, even without her makeup, but what good would that do her? She used to care about her appearance, she used to be wild with hope, but now she worried too much. So far she had found close to a dozen brown spiders in her perennial bed and the soil felt odd to the touch. She dusted herself off, then came to sit on the edge of the chaise, placing Franny’s feet in her lap. “Maybe there’s a blight on this house. Maybe it was built over an ancient graveyard.”
“It was built over a potato farm,” Franny reminded her.
“I don’t know.” Margot sighed. “Things come in threes.”
“You had lightning and insects. What comes next?”
They looked at each other and considered. “Floods,” they agreed.
To see if there was any way to work against her fate, Margot went down to the basement and turned off the water pressure. She emptied the bins of ice in her freezer and called to cancel her usual delivery of spring water. All the same, she awoke one night with a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was a clatter above her, as if stones were being thrown at her windows and walls. Her heart began to race, as though she were under attack. It was a warm spring night and the crickets were calling. Margot peered out her bedroom window; the neighborhood was peaceful and dark, but her own lawn and walkway seemed oddly shiny and bright. When she looked more closely, she saw that her property was covered with hailstones the size of eggs. The hail had torn through her roof and collected in piles in the attic; by morning the melting hail had leaked through the ceilings, leaving inches of water on the floor.
Mike arrived while Margot was mopping up the living room. She had preserved one hailstone in the freezer, carefully packaged in plastic wrap, so no one would dare call her a liar. The hailstone weighed four ounces and had a dark blue center. Mike looked it over thoughtfully, and while he did, Margot took a step backward; she had a rattling feeling in her chest, almost as if the hailstones were still falling.
“There must have been an atmospheric disturbance right above your house,” Mike Sutton said. “A small, distinct field of concentration.”
When he went up to patch the roof, Margot fetched the pot of split pea soup she had made earlier, and walked around the corner to Franny’s. Margot had brought over dinner for the past few nights, and now her cousin Gretel met her at the side door.
“I don’t know why you do this,” Gretel said. “She’s not eating anymore.”
Gretel had spent the past year caring for her mother, but now a nurse had been hired to assist her in the evenings. Still, Gretel only left her mother to go outside and smoke a cigarette or to cry. She didn’t care about lightning or hail, and she cared even less about soup, but Margot kissed her anyway and took the soup inside. She ladled out a bowl for herself and one for Franny, then brought a tray into the darkened bedroom.
“It’s okay,” she told the nurse, who had risen from the rocking chair to help out. “I can manage. Why don’t you get yourself some dinner.”
No one but the nurse would ever eat the split pea soup, but that didn’t matter. Sometimes things happened for which there was no rational explanation and the best anyone could do was record and remember.
“Did you have the flood?” Franny asked when Margot came to lie down beside her in bed.
Margot crawled under the covers and took Franny’s hand. “It was hail. It came through the roof, then melted.”
Franny laughed. “That was tricky.” Her laughter was sweet and thin, like a blade of grass found in the backyard. “That was a good one.”
“So what do you think?” Margot said. She was crying, but she tilted her head so that Franny wouldn’t see.
“You know what I think,” Franny said. “It all adds up.”
They held hands until Franny fell asleep. By the time Margot walked home, the sky was already darkening. Dusk fell onto the asphalt like a curtain or a dream, then spread over hedges and lawns. All the same, as soon as Margot turned the corner she could see Mike up on her roof, and try as she might, she couldn’t think of a single reason not to run home.
Devotion
That year the month of July was so beautiful people became lazy and stopped going to work. They sat out in their backyards, amazed by the heat and the blue sky; they wept at the sight of sunflowers and hollyhocks. It was a time when even the greediest and mo
st self-centered felt lucky to be alive, and paused to appreciate the sheen of the poplar trees at twilight or the call of the crickets, which lulled small children to sleep. People ate their suppers set out on picnic tables, dreamily passing around cups of lemonade and fresh corn on the cob; they napped on front lawns, dizzy with sunlight and the sound of bees.
There were some people, however, who experienced July not in their own backyards but from behind a wall of glass. Yet even from the vantage point of the hospital windows, Frances Samuelson could see that the clouds resembled sheep and the roses had enjoyed an especially good growing season. Three years earlier, the doctors had advised Franny to get her affairs in order and had given her six months to live. She had lost her breasts and her hair, she had lost both a husband and a son, but she had proven the doctors wrong, until now. Her oncologist, Jack Lerner, felt it wouldn’t be long—the cancer had spread to her spine and her brain and she had begun to collapse, her back riddled with pain. Franny, however, knew she was approaching the end of her life because her connection with the world had somehow altered. Objects were not as defined or as singular as they once had been. An apple was as beautiful as a kiss. Her daughter’s face was no different from the moon. There were times when Franny could peer right through the present and see layers of the past: She could drink a glass of cool water fetched from her own kitchen sink and at the very same time be a baby rocked in her carriage. She could cry out in pain and still be a young woman choosing her wedding dress or a mother whose child has taken a first step.
She stayed at home for as long as she could, but when her strength was gone, when she was too weak even to worry if her sweet daughter Gretel would inherit her fate or if her beloved cousin Margot would have to continue to sleep on the floor beside her bed, Dr. Lerner suggested she come to the hospital, and Franny agreed. She had always been a woman who took care of details; she wouldn’t think of going out of town without leaving an itemized note for the paperboy. Now, she didn’t even collect her toothbrush and nightgown; she let them take her by wheelchair, relieved that she could close her eyes and rest. She had become too weak to get to the bathroom on her own or speak a full sentence, but she had been taking care of other people for so long it was difficult to give it all up. How odd to be drifting into this realm where she had no control, where a sob was not so very different from a smile. She had never in her life believed in medication and had rarely taken an aspirin, but now she was attached to a morphine pump, as was the woman in the bed next to hers. But that was a bit of good fortune: at least they were in this together.