The Marriage of Sticks Part 19

"I gotta tell you, lady, this ride's gonna cost you money. It's about a half hour, forty-five minutes from here."

"I understand that. Could we go now?"

"You betcha."

We had been under way a few minutes before the cab driver spoke again. "You ever heard about bed mites?"

"Excuse me?"

"Bed mites. Ever heard of them?" We traded looks in the rear-view mirror. "Neither did I till the other day. Was watchin' this doc.u.mentary on TV about allergies. Ever notice how people think they're intellectual because they watch the Discovery Channel? Not me; I just like finding out about the weird way the world works.

"Anyhow, there was this show on about human allergies. They got a new theory that things called bed mites cause a lot of them. They're these microscopic bugs that live in our beds and pillows, the sheets.... They're not dangerous or anything, but they leave droppings, if you know what I mean. And it's the droppings human beings are allergic to. Strange, huh?"

Taken aback, I couldn't stop myself from rudely blurting, "Did you make that up?"

"Nah, really, I saw it on this show! They suggested all these ways of protecting yourself if you're allergic. Wrap your mattress and pillows in plastic, get an air cleaner to catch any droppings that might be floating in the air... No, it's really true."

Again we looked at each other in the mirror, and he nodded enthusiastically.

"That's horrible!"

"Not for the bed mites."

I laughed. Then I couldn't stop thinking about them, despite all the chaos surrounding my life at that moment. I envisioned a beautiful woman getting into a freshly made bed and falling asleep. And then, like a scene in a David Lynch film, the camera goes in close on her pillow. Closer and closer until we see thousands and thousands of tiny white insects scurrying around, living their lives despite a huge human head in their midst.

I knew from high school biology cla.s.s the world is infested with horrid microscopic creatures living happily off and in and on human beings but, thank G.o.d, we never know the difference. Yet sooner or later some of their droppings or their germs or their simple existences do touch us. If we're lucky all we do is sneeze. If we're not, they kill us. The metaphor, especially at that moment in my life, was clear and forbidding.

All the conscious lies and forgotten promises we breed, the cruel gestures, small and large. The lack of grat.i.tude and unwillingness to share, the kindness not repaid, the slight returned. The selfishness, the chosen ignorance, the pointless theft, the f.u.c.k-you-I-come-first att.i.tude that taints so much of life. All of them are bed mites we create. Growing up, we're taught to accept them as a given. Age-old. Been around forever. They're part of life. But they aren't because in most cases when we stop and think, we're instantly aware of how to avoid producing more of these revolting bugs and their s.h.i.+t.

As far as other people's behavior is concerned, we learn how to "wrap our mattresses in plastic"-we learn how to protect ourselves. But more important is filtering our own words and conduct so that our "droppings" don't enter others and make them sick.

What I had learned in one hideous moment at the stadium was that life is not usually ruined by any one crowning blow, KO punch, or single act of savagery. It is ruined by the thousands of "bed mites" our cruelty, indifference, and insensitivity breed in the beds of those we love or know.

"Do you have any music?"

He looked down at the seat next to him. "I do, but I don't think you'd go for it. I got Voodoo Glow Skulls and Rocket from the Crypt."

"Could you turn on the radio?"

"Sure."

Thoughtfully, he searched through the channels till he came to cla.s.sical music. Berlioz's "Roman Carnival" was on, and for a while it calmed my heart. The night landscape did too as it slipped by outside in intermittent patches of glitter and dark. Towns at rest, people going home. A man leaving a liquor store. A boy on a bicycle rode furiously in front us on the road, turning again and again to see where we were, trying to keep ahead, red reflectors on the pedals. The lights in one house came on like an eye opening. A van pulled into a driveway, its exhaust smoke gray over night black.

"That's funny."

"What is?"

"The drive-in movie over there. They usually stop running it at the end of summer. Who wants to go to the drive-in this time of year? It's too cold."

I looked where he was pointing and what I saw meant nothing for a moment. On the giant screen, people bustled around inside a busy store. Then Hugh Oakley entered the picture. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, he tried on a baseball cap. It was the day we almost slept together for the first time, when we went to the Gap store in New York instead and made out in the dressing room. I come up behind him with a pair of trousers in my hand and say something. He nods and follows me to the back of the store.

At a drive-in theater in Somewhere, New York, a scene from a day in my life was showing on a screen forty feet high.

"Look at that, w.i.l.l.ya? No cars in there! Who are they showing the movie to?"

The parking lot was empty.

"Could you turn the music up, please?"

The parking lot of Fieberglas Sanatorium was not empty. We arrived around nine at night, but there were still many cars parked. We pulled up to the brightly lit front door. I looked at the building and was surprised at the stillness in my heart.

"Are you visiting someone in there?"

"Yes. An old friend."

The driver ducked his head so he could see the building better through the winds.h.i.+eld. "Must have money to be staying in a place like this."

I looked at the back of his head. The hair had recently been cut-it was all precise angles against perfectly white skin. From behind, he looked like a soldier or a little boy. "What's your name?"

"My name? Erik. Erik Peterson. Why?"

"Could you wait here while I go in, Erik? I'll pay you for your time."

"You know, I was planning on waiting for you anyway. Didn't think you'd want to stay around here very long, especially this time of night. You'll be going back to Crane's View?"

He turned and smiled at me. A neighborly smile, nothing behind it but a kind and considerate man.

"Yes. Thank you. But I might be a while."

"No problem." He held up a Watchman miniature television. "The last episode of Neverwhere is on in ten minutes. Gotta see that."

I got out of the taxi and started toward the door. Behind me he called out, "What's your name?"

"Miranda."

"I'll be right here, Miranda. You take your time." I took a few steps and he said, "When we drive back home, I'll tell you about hyacinth macaws."

"Are they related to bed mites?"

"No, they're birds. Another doc.u.mentary I saw after the bed mites." He looked down. The dancing gray-blue flicker of the television screen reflected off his face. I was so glad he was there.

Opening the heavy front door this time, I was immediately struck by how quiet and empty the place was. My leather heels on the stone floors were a riot of noise. A middle-aged nurse sat at the reception desk reading. No one else was around. I walked over and waited for her attention but she didn't look up. Reading a page of her book upside down, I saw it was poetry. The first line of one poem read: "Bend your back to it, sir: for it will snow all night."

She continued to ignore me.

"h.e.l.lo? Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"I would like to see Frances Hatch."

"What room is she in?"

"I don't remember."

The woman sighed mightily and consulted her computer. She said the room number and immediately went back to her book.

"That's a nice line."

She looked up. "What?"

"'Bend your back to it, sir: for it will snow all night.' It's a nice line. It pretty much says it all."

She looked at me, her book, me. She snapped it shut and grew a suspicious look. I walked away.

The elevator arrived with a ping and the doors opened on Frances's doctor. "You're back."

"Yes. I have to talk to Frances. But first I have a question: Could you tell me, what exactly is this place? Who is it for?"

"It's a hospice. Of sorts."

"People come here to die? Frances is going to die?"

"Yes. She's very weak."

"But why here? She loves her apartment so much. Why would she come here?"

"Do you mind if I go up with you? Just up to her floor? Then I'll leave you alone."

"All right." I stepped into the elevator. She pressed the b.u.t.ton.

When the door closed, she turned to me and asked in a low voice, "Do you know about your lives?"

"Yes."

"Would you tell me how you learned?"

I briefly described returning to the house in Crane's View, the fire, the stadium, and the word Declan had used there that explained everything. I said nothing about Hugh's and my baby. While I spoke, she crossed her arms and lowered her head almost to her chest. When I finished we were standing near Frances's door.

The doctor slowly shook her head. "Extraordinary. It's always different."

"This is common?"

"Miranda, everyone here has experienced the same thing as you. It simply manifests itself differently every time. All of your lives have led you here. Now you must make a great decision. You can stay here as long as you like and you'll be safe. That's one of our purposes-to protect you while you decide. The other function is to care for those who have made the decision and choose to end their lives here.

"Hospices for people like you have existed for as long as recorded history. A hotel in the Pyrenees, a youth hostel in Mali, a hospital in Montevideo. There is an inscription over one of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt-"

"What decision are you talking about?"

"Frances will tell you, but I think you already know. All of those people in the stadium hated you because you took something essential from the life of every one of them. People use the word vampire because it is something so foreign, so impossible to imagine really existing that we s.h.i.+ver at the thought and then laugh it off as idiotic fantasy. Dracula? Sucking blood and sleeping in a coffin? Silly. But if you look up the definition it says 'one who preys on others.' Everyone does that, but we have nice rational explanations for it. Until you look more closely.

"I think you must talk to Frances now. She'll answer the questions you have." She turned to leave. I touched her arm.

"Wait! But who are you?"

"Someone like you. I was in the same situation as you are but made my decision a long time ago." She touched my hand. "At least you'll have clarity now. I learned how important that is, no matter where it leaves you in the end." She walked soundlessly down the hall and out the door at the other end. The same door Hugh's son had used earlier. Today. All this had happened in one day.

I knocked softly on Frances's door and pushed it open. The first thing that hit me was the perfume. An aroma like the most wonderful flower shop. I hesitated in pus.h.i.+ng the door further. The flood of colors and shapes drowned the eyes. For a second I couldn't even find the bed. When I did I had to smile because Frances was sitting up straight reading a magazine, looking totally oblivious to the paradise surrounding her.

Then I heard music. It was cla.s.sical, lilting and summery, something I had never heard before. It reminded me of Saint-Saens's "Aquarium." Before speaking, I let my eyes and ears calm down.

Still flicking through her magazine and without lifting her eyes, Frances said, "Close the door, girl. I don't want people seeing me in this nightgown."

"The room is so beautiful, Frances. You always know how to do up a place."

"Thank you. Come in and sit down. There's a chair in here somewhere. Just s.h.i.+ft some flowers."

"Who sent them to you?"

"The s.h.i.+ts. But we have other things to talk about. I a.s.sume that's why you're here in the middle of the night?"

"Yes. But could you turn off the music while we talk?"

She stared at me blankly, as if I had said something complicated in a foreign language. "The music! No, I can't do that. It's piped in. There's no control."

"What if you don't want to hear it?"

She started to say something but stopped. "You grow used to it. Forget the music, Miranda. Tell me what happened to you. And give the details-they're very important."

I told her everything, including seeing Hugh and our child. It didn't take long. It was disturbing to finish as quickly as I did. In the end, each of us has only one story to tell. It takes a lifetime to live that story but sometimes less than an hour to tell it.

The only time Frances showed real emotion was when I told her about Shumda. She grilled me on what he looked like, what he said, how he acted. Normally very pale, her face grew redder as I talked. Eventually she put a hand over her mouth and kept it there until I finished describing the last thing he said to me before walking off the porch. She stared at the window and seemed to be putting both her thoughts and her emotions together.

"Your name in Vienna was Elisabeth Lanz. Your death was the most celebrated scandal of the day because so many people were in the theater when you fell. Shumda was a great star then. People came from all over Europe to see him. The chief of police was in the audience that night and personally arrested him.

"The Landesgericht. Shumda used to like to say that word to me when I visited him in his cell. He spoke perfect Hochdeutsch, of course. He was a superb ventriloquist because he loved languages. He spoke four. He could be happy just saying words in different languages because they were so delicious to him. Some people love the taste of chocolate; Shumda loved the taste of words. Landesgericht, crpuscule, piombo, zvinka. I can still see him: lying in bed after we'd made love, rolling difficult words off his tongue and smiling. He liked to talk as much as he liked to screw.

"He had led a charmed life, so he never truly believed they would punish him for your death. But it was a political year in Vienna and politicians love a scapegoat. Here was this showman, a ventriloquist from Romania, who had killed one of the city's young flowers in front of hundreds of people. The case against him was clear. There was no question they would have executed him if I hadn't saved him."

"How did you do that?"

"I traded my life for his."

"How did you... What do you mean?"

"Look at your hand, Miranda."

I looked but saw nothing.