Subdivision, p.5
Subdivision, page 5
I wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, but I found myself agreeing. “I suppose so,” I said.
“You’re welcome to remain in Mercy, if you like,” the Judge said, not without a touch of skepticism. She had poured the tart filling into the shell, and now shoved it roughly into the oven. When she bent over, her upper body swung through a great deal of space, like an old garage door. “Or you could pick another room, if you don’t like the one you’re in.”
“Except for Duty,” Clara added. “We’re putting the new guest there.”
“On second thought, I think Mercy is the right room for you,” the Judge said suddenly, wiping her hands on a dishcloth, before I could consider my reply. “Although would you please take better care not to leave the bathroom in such a state?”
I couldn’t imagine what the Judge was talking about. “Of course,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d—That is, I must have forgotten to tidy it.”
“It’s not important,” the Judge said, though her tone suggested otherwise. “Just … flush the toilet. Wipe off the countertop. We can’t clean in there every day. We’re busy women!”
I wanted to defend myself against her accusations, and maybe would even have done so if the kitchen doorknob hadn’t rattled, then turned, and the door slowly swung open, revealing a sullen, hirsute man in late middle age. He wore a dark green trench coat despite the warmth of the evening, and despite the copious perspiration that shone on his face and neck. He was burly, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders, and he clutched the handles of a bulging floral-patterned carpetbag, the kind you might expect to see an immigrant woman struggling to carry in an old movie. This man, however, held the bag effortlessly, keeping his body ramrod straight despite the bag’s size and obvious weight. His large brown eyes darted from Clara to the Judge to me, appraising us with unfriendly, unsexual intensity. We were all alarmed, it’s safe to say.
“You must be Mr. Lorre,” Clara chirped.
The man nodded.
“Clara will get you the key to your room, if you like,” the Judge said, waking from her stupor.
Mr. Lorre peered into the living room, then into the depths of the kitchen, as though looking for something. He didn’t reply.
“Why don’t you follow me,” Clara said. “You can get settled upstairs, and we’ll call you down when the food’s ready.”
The Judge and I watched the two of them pass through the living room, then listened as they climbed the stairs and walked down the hall. A key jingled, a door opened, and Clara said something that sounded like a question. No answer was forthcoming, though, and the door slammed shut.
When she returned, Clara appeared calm, but her voice sounded shaken. “Well. He’s a brusque one.”
“Perhaps our two guests ought not to share the second floor,” the Judge said. “Perhaps we should move her to Justice.”
“Oh, it’s no bother,” I said quickly, though the idea of putting some distance between me and Mr. Lorre had its appeal. I was given to wonder why I’d just refused an implied offer that would benefit me. Then I realized: it was because of Cylvia. Cylvia had said she found her side table to be “satisfactory.” I liked the thought of her sitting there by the window, fully charged and ready to answer my questions, and I didn’t want to have to move her, at least not right now. I sort of missed Cylvia, in fact, and longed to go upstairs and listen to her talk.
Clara, the Judge, and I busied ourselves in the kitchen. Because they needed to prepare food, Clara and the Judge had moved their books and papers from the butcher block to the table. Now, because we intended to eat at the table, we moved the books and papers to a desk in the corner. I wasn’t sure why the books and papers weren’t always on the desk, since it was plenty large to do work on, and looked out, through a small window, over the back yard, with its bird feeders and birdbaths. But it was none of my business.
I portioned out my salad into four bowls and placed them on the table. I also poured water into glasses and lay forks and knives down on carefully folded linen napkins. Clara cut up some cheese and fruit, and the Judge removed her tart from the oven, sliced it neatly, and distributed it onto gold-rimmed white china plates. I found a candle and matches in a drawer and, unprompted by the ladies, lit it and placed it in the center of the table.
“Four places?” the Judge asked, with an edge to her voice.
“Well, yes,” I said. “There’s the two of you, me, and, I presume, our new guest. Won’t he be joining us?”
“Not five, then,” the Judge said.
“Are you expecting someone else?”
Clara cleared her throat and chirped, “No, no one else! I think the Judge was miscounting in her head—weren’t you?”
The Judge merely snorted in reply. She turned to me, then, and said, “Would you mind fetching down Mr. Lorre?”
“Of course.”
But Mr. Lorre, I quickly discovered, was already down. He was standing in the dining room, glaring at the unfinished puzzle. Freed from his trench coat, he appeared drier, though sweat still darkened most of his chambray shirt and the waistband of his dark olive trousers. He stroked his mustache in a manner that suggested he’d been trying for years to figure out how to get rid of it.
He looked up at me and sourly said, “No TV.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m the wrong person to ask about that. I’m a guest here too.”
“Radio’s just a lady talking,” Mr. Lorre added, scowling. He turned and lowered a meaty finger to the table’s surface, to a spot inside the puzzle’s still-incomplete frame. He looked up at me, thumping the spot with his finger. I didn’t know what he meant to tell me with this gesture.
“You’re encouraged to work on the puzzle anytime,” I said.
“What’s it of.”
“The puzzle? I don’t know,” I said. “Some kind of outdoor scene.”
“Where’s the box.”
“They don’t have the box.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot while he stared at me. “Anyway,” I said, “it’s time for dinner.”
Mr. Lorre scowled again, or rather intensified his extant scowl. After a moment, he moved past me, toward the kitchen. I followed, but not before seizing and pocketing the eye piece I’d returned earlier in the day. I’d wanted it there with the rest of the puzzle when it was just the ladies and me in the house, but now that Mr. Lorre was staying with us, I’d changed my mind.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Lorre seemed dissatisfied with dinner. He tasted each item deliberately, and not without a bit of theater, masticating in a circular, bovine movement as he stared at a spot somewhere over my right shoulder. He seemed to like the salad more than the Roquefort tart, the cheese less than the apples. Clara said to him, “Mr. Lorre, what’s your line of work?”
“Drive a truck.”
He sounded somehow disappointed, hearing himself say this. It wasn’t clear whether his disappointment was with his job, or with the fact that he wasn’t presently doing it. Either way, his tone seemed to preclude further conversation. I got up and began to wash the cooking dishes. The Judge gazed at me mournfully. Perhaps she’d been planning to employ the same escape tactic. It seemed that when it came to the Judge, I just couldn’t win.
Luckily for all of us, though, my departure from the table seemed to signal an end to the meal, and Mr. Lorre got up to leave, upending his chair in the process. It barked and clattered against the linoleum floor and he looked at it with shocked dismay, as though it had offended him personally. He grunted, righted the chair, and exited the room without saying good night.
Seven
I lay in bed, listening to Mr. Lorre preparing himself for sleep. He spent a long time in the bathroom—bathing, shaving, and relieving himself, by the sound of it—and then an equally long time in Duty, pacing, rearranging things, and flailing around in bed. Despite his complaint about the radio, he had left it on; I could just make out the sound of a woman’s voice cheerfully narrating a story. Mr. Lorre continued to grunt and talk to himself, wordlessly, in a tone somewhere between puzzlement and fury, and I heard the squeak and pop of a liquor bottle uncorking, and the nervous rhythm of its mouth chattering against a glass.
I don’t think I would have been able to sleep even if Mr. Lorre hadn’t been making noise across the hall. The day’s events kept replaying themselves in my head, inviting me to second-guess my every action and reaction. Each instance of social intercourse made me doubt my decency and personal worth. Had I offended the drugstore clerk? Had I been inadequately respectful of Justine’s impressive work on the apartment? What had I said or done to displease the Judge? Even my memory of the demonic badger hissing at me from the curb engendered feelings of shame and inadequacy. Had I led him on with my girlish swooning over his enchanted bungalow and seductive human form? And, if so, wasn’t he now my responsibility?
Somehow, though, I managed to feel worst about my treatment of Cylvia, who stood silently on the table beside me. I’d harbored such doubts about her, when all she wanted was to assist and protect me.
“Cylvia, I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
It took a moment for her to wake. She flickered pale blue before settling back into her usual peachy glow, more subdued now that it was night. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand. Please repeat your request.”
“I was just saying I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Cylvia said. “I don’t understand that command.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry, that makes no sense.”
“I’m sorry, did you want me to perform a task for you?”
“No, I’m sorry,” I said.
I lay in silence for a few minutes. Cylvia remained powered-up and alert, as though anticipating my inevitable change of mind.
“Actually, Cylvia,” I said, “would you please tell me a story?”
Cylvia glowed blue again. She said, “Here’s a list of breaking news stories. LOCAL BUSINESSPERSON WINS RELIGIOUS AWARD. AUTOMOBILE MORATORIUM TO REMAIN IN EFFECT. STUDY SHOWS EATING BOTH HEALTHY AND NOT HEALTHY. ROAD TO CITY TO REMAIN IMPASSABLE. AREA BIRD LAYS UNUSUAL EGG.”
“Not that kind of story,” I clarified. “You know, a story. Like, a fictional narrative. The kind you get in a movie or book.”
“Fictional narrative is not among my functions.”
“I bet you can do it,” I said, turning toward her and propping my head up with my hand. “Go read some stories. Or scan them or input them or whatever. Then just do what they do.”
“One moment, please,” Cylvia said, and began to pulse blue. She brightened and dimmed, slowly at first, then more and more quickly, until the pulses turned to flashes and the flashes to a dull and constant shine. I could feel—more than hear—a hum emanating from her body, a musical note changing in pitch and timbre just below the range of human perception. It was as though she were singing to herself, in a register only she could hear. Then the blue disappeared, and Cylvia returned to her default peach, and said:
“Happy families had gone too far. Its walls had been behaving. The rest of his face was a wheelchair, and in the forest? Howard said that the housekeeper was a leaden mask. The sun did not deny that he should be subjected to hanging, and a faded red bathrobe was almost impossible to perform. So from the fourth side, the bones fell on the rug, purple-nailed, folded loosely on the land. I sat there with Sally, unhappy in its own way, alone in the face by the sodden leaves. A French girl had been thrown down, forming at one point a mound, and everything was confusion in the street. We sat in the same house with the poor woodcutter, and if the Potters had a small son, too, then the rest of his face was a delaying tactic. Some of us had been lined with human remains, and everything was in confusion. The sun did not like it! And then, in a space of hexagonal flags, we sat in the hail and she announced to her husband that she could not go on living. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Colby said, ‘we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one piece of bread more, and then we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one piece of bread more, and then we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one piece of bread more, and then we will take the children out into the forest, and lay promiscuously on the bones.’ A few locks of dry white hair clung to his wife, and she said, ‘How I wish we had something to do!’ And the Dursleys arrived in the fashion of an orchestra, the sun sat in the circumscribing walls of solid granite, and the children ran wild over what the music was going to be. The end.”
For several seconds, I remained silent, digesting what Cylvia had recited. Then I said, “That was perfect. That was a wonderful story.”
“Would you like to hear another?”
“Just a moment,” I said. I went to my duffel and took out my pajamas. After changing into them, I crept to the bathroom for a glass of water and brought it to my room. The glass was approximately the same size and shape as Cylvia, and I placed it on her table’s twin, on the other side, beside the radio. I pulled back the covers, switched off the lamp, and climbed into bed.
“All right,” I said. “Go ahead.”
With her first few words, I began to feel sleepy, and before long I couldn’t distinguish story from dream. Cylvia’s voice was calm, lilting, as though scientists had discovered the secrets of a summer breeze, reproduced one in a lab, and installed it inside her.
“… if you really want to hear about it, my parents were occupied in front of the staircase, making rapid crosses in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper, and the flame of the other tributes could have been sent by first-class mail for three cents. So his high-crowned hat and his bedroll have broken many laws, and I can sprint faster than powerful fists …”
I didn’t know how long I’d been sleeping, or how long Cylvia had been talking, when I was violently awakened by a pounding on my door.
“A visitor,” Cylvia said, blinking bright red. “A visitor. A visitor.”
It certainly wasn’t a squirrel this time. The pounding continued. I leaped out of bed and, without thinking, flung the door open.
In the hall, his heavy face as open and innocent as a child’s, stood Mr. Lorre, trembling. Only now that he had come to the threshold of my room, and appeared so frightened, did I realize how small he actually was. His grouchy personality and burly form belied his true size: I had a couple of inches on him, really. He wore a pair of boxer shorts and a stained sleeveless undershirt.
“Mr. Lorre!” I said. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes wheeled untethered in their sockets. There was a word for this, I remembered reading somewhere, and that word was “nystagmus.” He apprehended my small living space, and his breaths were quick and shallow. He said, “Where am I? What is this place?”
“Mr. Lorre, you’re dreaming,” I said.
“There’s no mirror. Why aren’t there mirrors?”
I laid a hand on his bare shoulder, which was wildly twitching and flexing. “Let me get you back to your room.”
“Who are you?” he said. “I know you!” And he muscled past me and into my room.
“A visitor! A visitor!” Cylvia said.
“What is that!” Mr. Lorre demanded. He was crouched in a wrestler’s stance, his fingers clenching and releasing. “This is familiar. I know you! Where’s the truck?”
“What?” I asked.
“Downstairs, on the table! They took the truck out!”
“I need to ask you to leave, Mr. Lorre. Come on.” I maneuvered around behind him, took him by the arms, and tried to push him through the door. He resisted, but his dream-state made him weak, and together we made slow progress into the hallway.
“A visitor! A visitor!” Cylvia cried.
“That thing is talking.”
“Yes, Mr. Lorre—you can have one, too, if you want. But right now, you need to sleep.” I led him through his open door into the dark of his bedroom. It smelled of whiskey and muscle balm. The covers of his bed were bunched up at the foot. I pushed him against the edge of the mattress until his body folded over and lay down. Then I pulled the bedclothes up over him. He looked incongruous there, under the flowered sheets and duvet. He was blinking rapidly, and his mouth worked wordlessly, but it was clear that peaceful sleep was about to reclaim him.
“There you go, Mr. Lorre. Go back to sleep,” I said.
But he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me nearer to him. I gasped.
“I saw your face,” he whispered.
“Please let go,” I said.
In the end, whatever it was that had seized him released its hold, and his hands released me. He hiccuped, moaned, and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was gently snoring, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
●
I woke early, tiptoed across the hall to the bathroom, and bathed in haste. Back in my room, dressed in my most businesslike clothes, I laid Cylvia gently in my bag, grabbed the ladies’ map, and headed to the bakery they’d said had frequent job openings.
It was located in an area of one-story houses with a pleasing view of the hills to the southeast, and was called Open Your Eyes Bakery. Its hand-painted sign depicted a woman with a smiling cartoon sun rising behind her; a mug of coffee in the foreground gave off an aroma, indicated by three squiggle lines, that the woman inhaled in a state of shut-eyed bliss. The woman, though crudely drawn, had a familiar air; I thought I’d seen her wide nose and neat bangs before. As I gazed up at the sign, the front door opened before me, causing a small bell on a string to chime. A balding, bespectacled man exited the place carrying a greasy paper sack and a large coffee in a white paper cup. He didn’t seem to notice me, and I had to lunge forward to keep the door open. Once he was out of the way, I slipped inside.
The place was small and homey, with a few mismatched tables, each attended by a few mismatched chairs. A harried-looking middle-aged woman was at work behind the counter, operating the steamed-milk nozzle of a gigantic espresso machine. Just a few feet away, at the table nearest the machine, a small boy sat, bent over a coloring book. He had a large box of crayons, the kind with the built-in sharpener. He’d taken a number of colors out of the box, and they lay scattered on the table. As I watched, he thoughtfully scanned the miniature grandstand of colors, and selected one from the crowd. He filled in a section of the image with meticulous care, making sure to stay inside the lines.
