Orfyn

 

 

Bat is in a painting, but I don’t recognize it.

He’s on a cold-looking beach. There are some differences, but it looks a lot like the one I painted. Strange coincidence? Bat isn’t sure, either.

He’s part of a crowd looking at an enormous beached whale. Bat told me it’s called View of Scheveningen Sands, and it’s famous because when they cleaned the painting, the whale was uncovered. Years after it was completed, some idiot painted over the whale, erasing van Anthonissen’s depiction of a once-in-a-lifetime event. Who’d be that arrogant? That’s even worse than getting my work tagged over, because I never expected mine to last.

Bat waves his hands, and the whale vanishes.

“Hey! Put that back!”

Bat claps his hands twice and the dead, gray whale reappears. “What’s up with you today?”

“Sorry. I’ve been worried about Lake.”

He waddles to the front of the painting. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She forgot an entire conversation.”

“Is she the only one?”

“I don’t think the others are forgetting stuff, but Alex can barely breathe, Marty is a wreck, and even Stryker, who usually shows less emotion than my dirty socks, is losing his cool.”

Bat frowns, which transforms his face into a person I barely recognize. “Are the doctors doing anything about it?”

“I’m not sure.”

He leans in closer and studies my face. “Anything wrong with you?”

“Do you mean, aside from an annoying craving for grape soda?” I joke, hoping I’m not getting his meaning.

He doesn’t chuckle, like I expect. “Let me know if you start feeling strange, okay?”

I’ve felt strange since the moment I passed through The Flem’s wooden doors, but I don’t think that’s what he means. “I’m good.”

“The thing with health is, you never really know,” Bat says.

A single thread of uncertainty wraps itself around my confidence and binds itself with a sturdy knot.

Bat picks up a stone and attempts to skip it. It warbles through the air, making it six feet from shore, then plunges into the ocean skip-free. The water splashes, and the cold light shimmers through the water drops. “I found a live starfish!” He picks it up and trudges to the edge of the shore, places the starfish in the surf, and lets the waves return it to its undersea life. “This is the first time I’ve been to the beach in years.” He falls backward and his butt dents the sand.

“Because you were sick?”

He shakes his head. “That happened later. I couldn’t leave the house. Whenever I went past my stoop I’d start shaking and couldn’t breathe.”

I look around his basement with fresh eyes. “Was it always like that, Bat?”

He sweeps his legs like a windshield wiper. “It wasn’t so bad before my mom died.”

“How long ago was that?”

“What’s the date?”

I tell him.

“Eight years, two months, and six days.”

He was basically a prisoner. “That’s why you’re creating your program.”

He nods. “Now I can go wherever I want.”

And Bat doesn’t have to be the only one. If we create this game for real, everyone could experience a world beyond their four walls—a world as painted by centuries of artists. That’s not a fake goal like saving the humanity in Art. It’s something that would truly change people’s lives. Everyone could travel everywhere. Go back in time. See anything. That’s a real purpose.

Bat pulls the pink robe’s edges over his belly. “It’s getting cold. I’m coming back.” Within a blink, he’s in his recliner.

He had to have been so lonely all those years. Even worse than how it feels to paint in an alley in the middle of the night. Now, neither of us will ever be that alone again. I wish Sister Mo could’ve met Bat; she would’ve liked him.

“It’s time for you to go,” he says.

Sometimes you’ve got to ask, just to make sure you’re wrong. “I don’t need to be worried about the others, right?”

“Who knows what’s going to happen the longer we’re here.”

My stomach flutters. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

“It’s simple probability. You never get it perfect the first time. Sometimes it takes a second or third or fiftieth attempt.”