TEN

Marion has spent three days in her car. For a great deal of this time she’s examined the console: its ledges, its pleasant lights, the advance of its gauges. Across the top, at the base of the deep swell of the windshield, it is beige and looks softer, more forgiving looking than it actually is. A shallow beveled pan is sunken on the passenger side, and on the driver’s side there’s a swooping curve that rises over the instrument panel in front of the steering wheel. There is a twilight of colour under here, an arrangement of distances and horizons that evokes a holographic postcard — three wise men on luminescent camels under a twinkling star in the desert.

The speedometer is wide and sparsely signified, with slim glowing bars radiating along the turquoise dust of a vanishing point. The needle, a red, trembling heart beat, is lying still against a tiny perfect post. A window is open near the bottom: it reads 70,122. The lower half of a two and the upper half of a three are also visible in another red and black panel. The next gauge is smaller than the speedometer and turned ninety degrees on its end. It’s portioned in fractions that grade from E to F. An attenuated red triangle drifts past the E and concludes beyond its range. A white needle rests at a post that is, if possible, even tinier and more perfect. The soft lights fall off the ledge beneath the tilted glass and form a broad white elliptical glow that appears to reflect back to something a great distance away — a radio signal stirring in the dust, sent by a remote star; the short flight of sand at the edge of a camel’s hoof.

Marion is holding a fingernail painted dark burgundy against the illusion of upholstery. She is watching a bar of white glue fill a ridge in her nail. She presses down on the pad of her finger and the bar dips away. It returns when she rocks her finger forward as a yellow sombrero, tilting into the dead skin folded against her cuticle. Someone raps on the window and Marion drops her hand quickly to her knee. The Mayor is standing beside the car, turning his finger in circles. Marion glides her window halfway down.

“Marion. Please let me sit in there with you for a second. I have to talk to someone. Please.”

Marion is startled by the disheveled look of Robert — there are stains on him, and he is covering his teeth with his hand. A blackness is ground into his knuckles. Marion pushes a switch on her door panel and all of the locks clunk open.

“Marion. I have a problem.”

The Treasurer rotates the car key, shutting down the power to her lights.

“I don’t even know what to say. I think everyone thinks I’m goin’ crazy. Oh shit. If I talked to anyone about this they’d know that I really am goin’ …”

Marion folds the hem of her dress in over her knees, then lifts it and lets it drift back beyond them.

“I gotta tell someone … something. I think I’ve been hiding things from myself, and I know I’m drifting away, I can feel it.”

The Mayor lays his hand on the back of Marion’s wrist and she freezes.

“I’ll tell it this way. This way. Marion, you know that I’ve lived in the same house all my life. My mother and father, well, they’ve been dead for eight years now, but I guess, they were never much company. Anyway, I’ve been alone in that house for eight years, Marion. Eight years. It wasn’t so bad at first. I kind of liked it. For the first few, for the first few. Walking from room to room. Sitting on the floor sometimes. Eventually, I didn’t notice it, but months went by and I was losing touch with things. Small things. Like I started forgetting when I was asleep.

“That’s how it started, that’s what I noticed first. I started falling asleep at odd times, in strange places, not noticing. And I would do things in my sleep, meet people at the door, invite them in. For months I thought that I was living with a woman. God. I’m still not certain that she isn’t at home right now. I even remember getting used to her being there. She anticipated the things I would say. She would, I’m sure of it, she’d remind me that the hydro bill was past due. We talked about the money we could save by paying our bills on time. I had a list of things that I knew she wanted for her birthday. Her birthday, Marion. I know the date so well, but I can’t say for certain what the date was. Funny, I don’t remember the date, because, of course, because she never existed. Maybe I always knew that — I probably did know that, right? Or I would have talked about her to people. And I never did. So I must have known that she was — that she wasn’t there. I know that now. For certain. I’ve known it for certain for about six months, I guess. It just broke in on me one day, so casually, so real: she was never really there.

“That’s when things started going very badly. Because, because I missed her. I still miss her bad. I have memories. Not memories really, but feelings. Strong feelings. The feeling of knowing her. Of her knowing me. Feeling that it was going to last forever. We used to laugh about things together, and I can’t bear those feelings now. I can’t walk through my front door until they go away.”

The Mayor is crying, not touching the tears that are spattered beneath his eyes, pooling at the soft fans on his cheeks where his wrinkles diminish. He is looking through the windshield, intense and confused. He opens his mouth to speak again but emotion rattles along his tongue and he clenches his teeth to stop it.

“Oh Robert. I could tell you — things. I should. I should say, Robert, I should say that I’m so sorry. You poor man. What should I say? Should I say: ‘Oh well, that’s the way it goes’?”

Robert laughs, grateful, and feels enough relief, enough of something normal, to wipe the tears from his cheeks. Marion snaps open the purse at her feet and gives him a Kleenex. The tissue is soiled by the wet grains of muck that the Mayor’s tears have flushed across his skin.

“But, I also know … what do you say? I also know about, you know, when it isn’t the way it goes.”

Robert drops the visor and looks into the small mirror. He touches the hard wave of blond hair across his brow. This wave of hair is the one thing that has not lost its shape.

“I feel a bit better, Marion. I still think I’m crazy, but now I’ve said it. Christ, at least I’m something. At least I can say that something happened.”

Marion drops her head back and carefully unhooks the wires that dangle large ivory plates from her earlobes. She places them on the dash and separates and straightens them with a long fingernail.

“You know, Robert, things for me, right now, aren’t good either.”

She turns to face him. Her expression is frank and emphasized by the thumbnail she draws backward through the short bristle of her eyebrow.

“Oh, I know Marion. Jesus, I’m sorry, I could tell. I just didn’t want to ask. I figured you might just say something.”

“Well, Robert, since you’ve been so brave, and you feel so much better, I think I will tell you.”

Marion whips her hands to the top of the steering wheel and presses her lips against the grip exposed between her fingers.

“OK. OK, Robert. Things with me and Barry aren’t so good.”

The Mayor reaches up and strokes the steering wheel.

“Oh dear, I kind of thought it was something like that.”

Marion reaches down quickly and clutches two of the Mayor’s fingers together.

“No. No, I don’t think you thought it was anything like this. The problem isn’t with us really. The problem is with me.”

A strong odour suddenly stings the Mayor’s nose. He attempts to contain it but can’t with Marion pulling at his fingers. He tries to slip them away, but she grips tighter.

“Robert, I love Barry. Well, at least I don’t know any other way of putting it. So I say I love him. We’ve been married for twenty-seven years. When you’re married that long you start to become, I don’t know, like each other. You start thinking alike, maybe not agreeing so much, but, how do I put this, it’s only ever like arguing with yourself, really. Anyway, I think it was like that for, well, I don’t remember if it was ever any different. Only lately, lately, I’ve had the terrible feeling that he has been, uh, controlling my thoughts.”

Robert skips air through his teeth. He makes a face that Marion doesn’t see, that he doesn’t want her to see.

“But that’s just the beginning. I found I was sort of OK when I wasn’t around him. But with him I get the strange feeling that he’s part of something bigger. Robert, do you remember all those people who drowned last winter, all those snowmobile accidents?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, he wanted them to die.”

“Hmmm?”

“He said they’d die before it started happening.”

“Hmmm.”

“Do you remember the name Al Glindy?”

“No.”

“Well, Al Glindy drowned sometime in February. And the night before it happened Barry said Al was going kill himself.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, if you rearrange the letters in the name Al Glindy it spells ‘all dying.’”

“Does it?”

“Yes, it does. After that Barry started talking about all kinds of crazy things. How the anti-Christ was teaching piano in Newmarket. All kinds of crazy things. I struggled not to believe him, but, like I said, I felt like I was arguing, struggling with myself. Then one morning I stepped into the kitchen and he looked over his paper and his face was made of aluminum — shiny and silver. And he was laughing. Oh God, I just screamed and ran out. To the car. Right here. And I haven’t moved since.”

“Uh, Marion. Wow. That’s quite a story. You, uh, you don’t actually believe it though, do you?”

“Well, I believe it less out here. But still, I feel very shaky. I don’t trust myself to talk to people.”

“You’re talking to me aren’t you?”

“Yes. But, Robert, I have to tell you. I’m aware that you brought him here.”

“Huh?”

“When you were talking earlier I saw him in the rearview mirror, and I saw you whisper something to him. When you dropped the visor, there. When you pretended to fix your hair. I saw you signal to him.”

“I didn’t Marion.”

Marion is becoming agitated and she pulls hard at the bottom of the steering wheel.

“Yes you did, Robert! Yes you did!”

“Marion, that’s crazy.”

“Crazy? Crazy? I let you be crazy! I let you.”

Marion slaps the Mayor on the arm and begins pumping furiously at the gas and brake pedals.

“I just want somebody to let me be crazy for a second! Why is it so goddamn important that Barry isn’t hiding in my glasses?”

The Mayor is frightened and he folds his arms to protect himself.

“I let you have your scary shit, Robert. I let you have it.”

Marion has broken down. She sobs with her forehead hanging off the top of the steering wheel.

“Oh God. OK Barry. OK, I’ll come home.”

Robert reaches his hand across Marion’s back, as much to console her, though he is repulsed by her, as to prevent her from suggesting again that she — that he — should go home.

Marion opens her eyes and through tears she can see three men, in heavy robes, climb down off their camels. The one in the lead turns his back to her and points upward. She looks into the sky and sees what he sees.

A long luminous coffin is hanging at an angle against the stars. Just above it, like a headstone, is a tall, sleek 80. Marion concentrates on the bottom loop of the 8 and finds that it has depth, a smooth valley or riverbed that runs deep beneath the stars. She places her foot on the edge. It is firm, so she stands up inside it, looking over her shoulder to an image of Robert that is distant and flowing, scattering across a faraway field of light, an aurora borealis. She walks toward the end of the wide gully and, as the moon peeks above her head, a yellow pearl in the cross of the 8, she feels that all the time and all the space in the world have fallen and left her here. Here, with two arms and two legs and a tickle in her throat that she coughs to clear.