The Wish in the Fear

 

 

FRANK’S LEFT UPPER TOOTH HAD BEEN CAPPED in 1970, after he had cracked it by falling flat on his face during a racquetball game. Earlier that year he had seen a man with a broken front tooth on the bus, and had wondered what it would be like to have a broken tooth. It was as if his future were casting a shadow into the past.

At least once a year since then he had dreamed that his cap had come off, because it seemed to him that every year beyond the first ten seemed too many for such a thing to stick to his filed-down tooth. Losing his cap was the one nightmare that continued to convince him of its truth, and he was always grateful to wake up to its unreality.

But this was only one of many trivial fears he would develop. Another involved sharp objects and the hidden nature of accidents. Were they fixed, waiting to happen at the appointed time? he asked himself as he idly imagined putting out his right eye with a pencil. Whether he could muster the courage to do so deliberately interested him, but the more frightening possibility was that a series of ordinary, even logical steps might lead to it surreptitiously, remaining concealed until it was too late. He suspected that there was some train of events that might make it happen, some arcane dovetailing of circumstances that would make it come out that way, or even worse, convince him that it was the necessary thing to do.

As a boy he had gone up to the cliffs that faced the apartment houses in the South Bronx just below the Grand Concourse, and had stood there on the edge of the loose slate piles with his back to the sheer drop, glancing over his shoulder at the empty windows to see if anyone was watching. He did not slip and did not want to, but it was hypnotic to imagine himself lying in one of the backyards below, his broken body motionless in a pool of bright blood on the paving stones. He could still see himself there, balancing on the balls of his feet.

Over the years he became adept at imagining that what he saw happening to other people might also happen to him. He was both attracted to and repelled by most of these reveries, but was unable to shake the foreboding that sooner or later some, if not all, would become realities for him. When he saw any kind of accident overtake someone, it was always a possible harbinger of his own fate.

But he lived a life remarkably free of mishaps. Instead he became a collector of other people’s fears and phobias; and however terrifying they might be while he was in their thrall, nothing ever happened to him. He came to accept this as the way things were with him, and looked forward to the next one as people do to a concert, play, movie, or television show.

His most intense encounters with people stayed with him, becoming a collection of recurring dreams. Each new collision became a candidate for his growing labyrinth of shared fears and phobias. He sometimes suspected that the answer to what made one stay and another flee from his dreams was the secret of his life, the key that would open the door to himself, but he was content to hold it dear and unknown, hidden deep within himself.

 

He tasted the summer rain in his dream as the wind blew drops into the gazebo behind the pool. Everyone at the mountain resort had fled into their cabins and into the main building, but he had stayed out to watch the rain.

He heard the expected footfalls on the wooden steps behind him and turned to see Vera, still dressed in her white blouse, white shorts and sneakers, shaking water out of her shoulder-length blond hair as she looked shyly at him. He was nineteen and in college; she was just going on seventeen. She was here with her parents and brother, and they were all very protective of her developing sexual vulnerability, so he had kept his distance, content to watch from afar her stocky, athletic form filling out her well-pressed shorts and blouse.

“Hello,” he said with a nervous breath.

“Hi,” she answered, smiling angelically, and he felt once again that a hidden script was being revealed for him to speak, one line at a time, so he wouldn’t know what came next, even though he had played this scene with her many times before. The words, expressions, and some of the physical movements varied, but the differences were unimportant.

She leaned back against the railing and took a deep breath. He came over, leaned back next to her and said, “Some rain. It might get cloudy for the next two weeks. That sometimes happens up here.”

“Oh, no. I hope that doesn’t happen.”

He turned and gazed at her. She looked back as if searching his face for something, and he knew that she was afraid of being alone with him.

“I’ve seen you around,” he said, glancing down at her pressed shorts, which stood away from her smooth, still slightly heavy but attractive thighs.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”

“But I like the way you look,” he answered gently, and saw her swallow, and knew that she felt pride and guilt about her emerging good looks. As she matured and gained her full growth, she would become a blond goddess and know power over boys and men; but for now she was still unsure, unable to consciously attract or humiliate, also following an ancient script that startled and intrigued her. “I think you’re beautiful, but I couldn’t tell you around your family.”

She grimaced and smiled, then looked across the resort grounds as if her parents might see her from their cabin, but relaxed, realizing that they did not have a clear view of the pool. He began to gaze at her adoringly, but looked away as she became aware of the desire that was growing in him.

He moved closer to her and took her hand. She tensed, then blushed.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said.

“You’re just saying that,” she whispered.

“No—it’s true,” he said, leaning closer. She drew a deep breath and slid away from him on the rail, trying to smile knowingly, but it came across as sheepish, shy, and green.

He looked at her caringly, and something inside her seemed to break as he moved nearer and was about to kiss her. She took a deep breath and looked away from him.

“No,” she said with a sob, “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Before,” she mumbled, looking as if she might cry, and he felt pity and concern for her, and the impulse to protect her, to hold her, flattered that she was showing these feelings to him. He looked into her eyes and his gaze locked with hers, trapping him in a strange prelude to a dance that she would teach him.

“I went out last year,” she started to say awkwardly, looking at him as if she had to expel feelings that were stuck within her. “He came to dinner at my house. My parents liked him, my little brother liked him, my friends. We went out for a month, and then he broke it off and it was... horrible.” She choked on the last word and tears ran down her face. “And I couldn’t tell anyone that he’d touched me and kissed me, and that I wanted him. I was so afraid. I’d thought he wanted to marry me, to be with me forever, but it was all a lie. I don’t want that again.”

She was silent, and he realized that it had been all or nothing with her, with no in between; and that this demanding familial finality had driven her first boyfriend away.

“It’s okay,” he said, putting his arm around her as she stopped crying, accepting the fact that there was nothing very interesting about her; not her white shorts and tanned legs and arms; not her blond hair or blue eyes. The silkiness of her fled from his mind before her raw need. She was hungry to swallow him. There was nothing personal about what might have been between them, only a role that she expected him to assume; a hundred other boys would do just as well.

As he looked into her disappointed eyes, he saw her family lurking behind them, restricting her freedom, compelling her to think and feel as they did. She was imprisoned within herself. The realization horrified him. He was sorry for her pain, pitying her bonds, but glad that he had glimpsed them early enough to escape.

Are you going to kiss me and hold me? her eyes asked. And how long will it last? Then she saw that he was not prepared to pay the toll and moved away as if she had been betrayed again. He watched her flee from the gazebo and run across the grass in the rain, taking with her every fantasy he had nursed about her, leaving him with a conflicting sense of relief at having escaped arousing her feelings.

The pitiable terror that she had shown him stayed with him permanently, growing more painful whenever he recalled it. Not a month went by in the years since when he did not think about her physical lushness, the smell of her soap, the sexual grasp that he might have awakened in her in a vain effort to dispel the youthful horror that she had deposited in him.

 

He lay half awake, trying again to forget the dream of Vera, knowing that he would never lose it, then recalled Annette, the dark-haired girl in her twenties who had shared a cabin with two men that same summer in the mountains. He had watched her come out after lunch to sit by the pool, and her bikini-clad body had seemed exhausted from lovemaking. She had noticed him, he was sure, and he had felt that she was avoiding his eyes because she knew that everyone knew, but she didn’t seem to care. She was imprisoned by her sexuality, and was giving herself to two young men in a vain attempt to burn it out, to quiet her soul. His very gaze seemed to arouse her, he had felt, and she seemed to cringe under his scrutiny as she tried to ignore him.

So you know, her glancing, dark eyes said. So what. It’s not your business. And yet part of her seemed to say, I’m a prisoner, I’m trapped, and I don’t know what to do. Visions of what they were doing in that cabin preyed on his imagination all that summer. The two men, both younger than her, always slept late....

He sat up out of his dream and looked around his bedroom, wondering if it would be warm enough to go down and sit by the pool. After all, it was late May, and the temperature might get up to eighty, they had said.

He rose, went to the picture window and looked down five stories to the pool. The usual suspects seemed to be gathering at the patch of blue water, harmless types working for small businesses around town, dreaming of going to a big city for a job one day, but too insecure to ever do so. If they had any fears or phobias, they were buried deeply. He had nothing much to fear from going down among them.

He went to his CD player, put on some vintage disco, then went and did some exercises on his Soloflex. When he felt hungry, he went into the kitchen and stuck a complete brunch, coffee included, into the microwave, then wandered over to make sure his team of VCRs was taping the movie and Olympic events that he had set them to catch.

He dressed for the pool, reminding himself that he still had twelve days of vacation time left before he went back to the insurance office. Maybe he’d go somewhere for the last six days.

 

At poolside, he was dozing with his cap over his face when he heard Marianne, his neighbor from the fourth floor, say to her friend, “You’re lucky, your boyfriend’s your pal. You can talk to him.” There was a short pause. “Either you’re lying or just bragging.”

“I’m bragging.”

“I’d need an ass-lift to get a man like that. Don’t deny it, I see how he looks at you.”

“He’s just fooling.”

“He worships your ass,” Marianne answered. After a moment of silence, she asked, “You know Alice who lives up front?”

“I’ve seen her.”

“Well, she’s terrified of being without a man. She almost gets hysterical about it. I don’t understand it.”

“Well,” her friend said, “that’s because you already have a kid, and you’ve rid yourself of a bad guy. You see things from the other side. But doesn’t she have a boyfriend?”

“Sort of,” Marianne said. “He’s a plump guy she doesn’t seem to like much, but she lets him come over. He lives an hour away, somewhere south of here. He rarely stays over. I hear them arguing about it.”

Suddenly the conversation was drowned out by splashing.

“Stop that, Mel,” Marianne called to her boyfriend as he came out of the pool.

He laughed and said, “I heard you talking about chubby! What’s up?”

“Chubby?” Marianne’s girlfriend asked.

“Alice—he doesn’t like her much.” Marianne lowered her voice. “We were together at a bar, before I knew Mel, and Alice came on to him.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Well,” Mel said, “maybe she’d be good for a blow job.”

“What!” Marianne shouted. “Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s okay,” Marianne’s friend said. “Don’t you ever listen when they’re all together watching the game?”

“Who’s gonna hear?” Mel asked. “Hey, Frank, are you asleep?” he called.

Frank decided to act asleep.

“Well, I’m going inside,” Marianne said. “Coming, Estelle?”

“Sure thing,” her girlfriend said.

Frank remembered Alice now. She wasn’t all that bad-looking. Overweight, yes, but erotic in the way heavier women get when they’re losing weight and looking hungry. He had seen her poolside in short, white pants and a flimsy T-shirt, and she had looked attractive. He recalled smiling, and she had looked back gratefully. Rubens would have painted her with delight, even though she wasn’t as full as his usual ones.

Frank dozed for a while. When he woke up and looked around, the deck around the pool was nearly deserted, except for Alice and her heavyset boyfriend coming out of the water. She was heavier than he remembered, and she looked tired today.

Frank sat up as they went by and his eyes met the boyfriend’s. I’m here only to get laid, the man’s eyes said apologetically, so don’t think my taste is this bad.

Frank glanced at Alice. She shot him a look of defeat, and he wished that he had kept his hat over his face as her terror flooded into him—I’m going to be manless, without love or children. I’m going to die alone, an old maid. I’ve put out and gotten nothing for it, and I never will!

He lay back and covered his face, trying to regain his composure, but it was too late; she was inside him, infecting him with her fears.

He peered out from under his cap and saw her boyfriend smiling falsely at her. She smiled back more convincingly, but the turmoil inside her would not subside. At any moment, mantislike, she would reach out and tear off her boyfriend’s head.

Frank felt a migraine coming on, and knew that this newest catch was going to be bad. He should have stayed in bed. He should not have underestimated his neighbors. Still peering out from under his cap, he could see that Alice was watching him, as if a way had opened between them and she could see into him.

It was nothing like that, of course. People imagined things about each other all the time, and the more clues they had, the more accurate their imaginings. People could feel each others’ emotions because people were synchronous with each other, sympathetically tuned, because every human being was more alike than different, shading in and out of each other with no clear break anywhere. It was completely involuntary. Two people sucking each other’s thumbs feel as if they are sucking their own thumbs. A man’s next door neighbor sees a glum look on his friend’s face, and from his years of conversation with him, suspects that he knows what’s wrong. A man shows up at the local grocery when his wife is away, and the clerk imagines that the man’s wife has left him.

The migraine was roaring in now. Frank got up and tried not to look at Alice. She was pitying herself, hungering and mourning at the same time, and he wished that he could stop her emotional bleeding. What he needed was to pick up something else to wipe out her fear and pain. He sat up and got to his feet.

“Hi, Frank!” Alice called, waving as her boyfriend lunged into the pool and made a massive splash.

Frank waved back and started for the gate. The migraine staggered him and he stopped, doubting that he would stay on his feet. It was his own fault for having come outside.

“Are you okay?” she called out.

“Fine,” he said, then hurried through the gate and went into the building. The elevator door was open. He stepped inside and punched in his floor, already feeling better.

 

In his apartment, he looked out the window and saw Alice’s boyfriend swimming across the pool. After one lap he struggled out and sat down in the chair next to her. She looked away. Frank watched them as they sat together, looking anything but together even from this height, settling for each other, afraid to be alone, and he knew that the boyfriend would not be with her long.

Frank turned from the window, sat down in his easy chair, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, then looked around at his living room, noting that the carpet wouldn’t need cleaning for some time yet. He examined his audiovisual system, with its two VCRs, wide-screen television, CD player carousel, turntable, and sur-round-sound speakers. The system kept him from having people over, because he didn’t want to pick up their disdain for his stuff. The only thing he was sure of was that they’d admire his cherry desk. Who knew? They might like his whole place, but why take the chance? This worry had started when he had visited an old college buddy, Steve, and had picked up his fear of having his stuff dissed. The fear had been strong: don’t dis my stuff, don’t tell me, please, that it’s second-rate, that there are better models. Frank had picked it up from Steve. He wished that he could simply pass it on, so that he could invite people again.

“You’ve always got something,” Steve had said to him one day in their off-campus apartment. “We’ve got the same money, but you always have more stuff,” he went on, pointing to Frank’s then very modest stereo hookup.

“So? You get to listen to it.”

“It pisses me off.”

“Why should it? I only try to make the best of things, a little at a time, but it adds up.”

“You’re a pain in the ass. You never stop.”

“Do the same, in your own way,” Frank had advised him.

“And be like you?”

“In your own way, I said.”

“You’ve always got to be in charge,” Steve said, beginning to get aggressively strange.

“So what’s your complaint?”

“You always have your own way with these little... additions of yours!”

“Look—things don’t always go the way I’d like, but the fight is always joined, the victory real, however small. Your trouble is you don’t fight, you don’t struggle, and then you envy others. Cynical and skeptical, you poison your own life. And you’ll never know what fortune might have brought you if you had been there to meet it. Any fool knows that when he goes to the track.”

“You win at the track, Frank?”

“I’ve never been, but here’s the difference between us. Fortune knows that I’m ready to be defeated completely, so there’s not much it can do to me, except reward me enough to keep me playing, waiting for the moment of my ruin. But at that moment, I’ll step aside and refuse to play.”

“You’ll see it coming?”

“I’ll see it coming. I’ve seen it stalking me in countless small ways.”

“You’re a shark, Frank. That’s all you’ll ever be, but you hide it from yourself in a really nutty way.”

“You really believe all this about me?”

“I’m not as sure of anything as you are. Maybe there’s some kind of hope for you, but you’d have to fall flat on your face to find it.”

“And that’s why you’ll never be anything,” he had told Steve, “thinking like that. You’re afraid of everything.”

Today he could more easily see the bad stuff coming at him— especially when someone was ready to pass on a fear to him. They didn’t know they were doing it, and they weren’t really doing anything, of course. It was the small accumulation of information, the placing of three or more points on a piece of paper. Once there were points to connect, a line and a direction were established. With most people it was three scenes or more—situations or moments from their lives, enough for him to pick up the drift of their lives, maybe even sum up a life. They always had elaborate reasons for never becoming themselves. Dismay would flood through him, and shame for the other person, that they had fallen so low within themselves.

As for himself, he figured that insurance executive was about the best he could do; anything more demanding would be sabotaged by his ability to pick up other people’s hurt. It had made him a good, sympathetic insurance salesman for a time, because he had a way of making people feel properly insecure about the provisions they had failed to make for their futures, before convincing them that his company would make things right for them—and keep it right for the rest of their lives. He had helped people to confront their fear of the future; but every sale had given him more than their signatures on the policy. With every “Trust me and sign on the dotted line” had come a new deposit from the damned.

Finally, after nearly twenty years, it was all he could do to control his flypaper innards behind the closed doors of a private office. He never went out into the field these days, and planned to retire by forty.

He got up from his chair and looked down at the pool again. Alice was now sitting alone, upright on the edge of the lawn chair, hands folded in her lap, and he guessed that she had just broken up with her man.

 

He lay down, grateful that the migraine had failed to blossom fully. Still fatigued by the poolside encounters, he tried to avoid fixing on Alice’s terror of being manless. If he could somehow delay his reaction, the fear might die away.

He fell asleep and found himself standing on the second-floor porch of his first postcollege apartment, just as a group of homeless people came by and began to pick through his garbage. He went inside, but one young man came up the front stairs and opened his door.

“What do you want?” Frank called out.

“Ah, come on, Billy, let us in.”

“I don’t know you,” he answered, going inside and locking the door behind him. He went to the phone and rang the police. When they were on their way, he opened the door and found the hall empty.

Rushing to the back porch, he opened the door a crack, peered out, and saw that the man, the old woman, and two teenage boys were still picking through his garbage. The police arrived and began to move them along as gently as possible.

Frank opened the door wide, and the man who had come to his door looked up and shouted, “Thanks for the help, Billy!”

And Frank became Billy, betraying these homeless derelicts. The young man looked up at him reproachfully as the police told him to move along.

Later the cop came up and asked, “Did you know any of them?”

“No, officer,” Frank said with a twinge of guilt, wondering if somehow he had known the man and forgotten, or couldn’t recognize him now. “No, I don’t know any of them. Who are they?” Suddenly he was afraid that the cop wouldn’t believe him.

“We’ve been watching groups of them since this morning,” the cop said. “They seem harmless enough. Good thing it’s warm. The mayor doesn’t want any of them to die while they’re in town.”

“Where will they go?” he asked, but the cop turned away without answering, and Frank woke up to Alice’s fear of growing old alone, drying up and wrinkling, and decided that he would spend the last of his vacation as far away from home as possible, as soon as possible, maybe somewhere in the Caribbean.

 

He heard her speak his name softly as he lay on the beach in the Bahamas. Then she was whispering to him, saying that he could give her what she needed, that she wasn’t unattractive, that she could care for a man deeply and for a lifetime, suggesting to him that she was startling in the nude, that she exercised and kept up her health, that she would give him fine sons and daughters, that he should hurry to her now, before desolation ruined her for him.

He knew that he was saying these things to himself, but they were just as true as if she could reach into him and say them herself, as much as any human being could. He turned over, found his phone under the towel, and dialed his apartment building’s switchboard.

“Henry, this is Frank. Connect me with Alice what’s-her-name. You know who I mean?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks.”

The phone rang three times, then a fourth. He was about to hang up when she answered it.

“Hello, Alice?”

“Yes?”

“This is Frank. You know.”

“Yes, Frank. What is it?”

“Well, I was wondering if I could come over and talk to you when I get back.”

“Get back?”

“I’m in the Bahamas.”

“And you’re calling from there? What’s this about?”

“Uh—I think it’d be better if I tell you when I get there.”

She coughed nervously. “What’s this about, Frank? You’re going to make me wait and wonder—how long?”

“A day or two. It’s nothing bad, believe me.”

“Then tell me now.”

He was silent, knowing that he should not talk to her over the phone, surprised by her alertness and suspicion. Her boyfriend had not left her in a good state.

“Frank?”

“See you soon!” he said, and pressed the button. He was out of breath, he noticed, and wondered why; usually, reaching out to someone calmed him. Then he realized that she had been confused by his call and that he had picked up some of her distress. But she had also been excited and intrigued by his interest, he concluded, and felt calmer.

 

She smiled at him when she opened the door. She was dressed in white shorts, a blouse, and leather sandals. “Come in,” she said, stepping back. She might have been Vera, years later, except that Vera had been pretty.

He came in and she motioned him to the sofa. He sat down. She took the chair that faced him.

Leaning forward with a drawn expression on her face, she asked, “What is it, Frank?”

He smiled. “You do know I like you, don’t you?”

She seemed startled and sat back. “Do I?”

“I’ve been watching you. By the way, where’s your boyfriend?”

“I’m not seeing him now....”

“Good.”

“Good? Why?”

“You didn’t really like him.”

She looked into his eyes, flooding him with her vulnerability and hurt.

“You’re really interested in me?” she asked mockingly.

“Yes,” he said, glancing at her thighs and feeling certain that he would enjoy her.

“Do you have eyes? I’m a well-groomed dog. Why should someone as good-looking as you want me except to play with? Is it a bet of some kind? Or are you a freak?” He could see that it was humiliating her to say the words, but she was determined to protect herself by exposing him before he could trap her. “Maybe you just don’t have any taste,” she said regretfully.

“No, no,” he answered, appalled at how little she thought of herself. He could see her self-loathing turning outward toward him. And yet a part of her had to be hoping that it was true, that he liked her, that at last something good might happen to her, something happy and warm and forgiving.

He watched it all flash through her eyes like a vision of salvation; and then she rejected it, retreating behind her armor.

She stood up, and he felt her strength as she glared at him. “You’re not going to use me. Go away. Get out of here.”

“But why—” he started to say.

“Let me spell it out. You’re too good-looking to want me, so I’m some sort of convenience—right? What are you curious about? You think I’ll be so grateful, I’ll do anything. Is that it?”

“No—” he started to say as he stood up.

“Get out of here!” she shrieked. “You filthy son of a bitch! You think that lying about calling me from the Bahamas would do the trick? What was that all about?”

She was herding him toward the door, her cheeks flushed with rage. He wanted to embrace her, quiet her, but she looked as if she would tear at his face.

He backed away, opened the door and slipped out. She shoved it shut after him, and he heard locks closing.

“You’re wrong, Alice,” he said loudly, hoping to calm himself.

The door opened a crack and she put her head out. “What are you going to do?” she said jeeringly. “Put a ring on my finger? Or just move in for a few weeks?”

“Couldn’t we just get to know each other?” he asked meekly. The blood was pounding in his ears.

“No sex?”

“Sex would be nice,” he said, not wishing to insult her, “but we could skip it.”

“We? Who’s this we? You’re flapping out there, Frank.”

“Why do you think I’m so terrible? I’ve never done anything to you!”

A fearful look came into her face, and he couldn’t tell whether it was fear of him or panic. She was speechless, as if trying to reverse herself, to start over with him, because she knew that she could not afford to pass up the smallest chance. She had to be ready when fortune smiled; but it was too late.

He stood there and smiled at her, trying to look harmless.

“Is this the wise look you save for crazy females?” she said, then moved back and slammed the door. He heard her crying.

Putting his head to the door, he said, “I’m sorry, Alice. Couldn’t we be friends?”

“I don’t want your pity. Go away and find yourself some bimbo. It’s what you really want.”

“Alice—”

“I’ll call the police!”

“I’m sorry I bothered you.”

He felt her hunger reaching out to him, and trembled inside.

“I’m good enough to fuck, but not enough to love,” she said suddenly.

“What? How can you say that about yourself?” he asked, impressed by the conviction in his voice, and felt a growing self-control.

“It’s true. I’ve had it proven to me often.”

“Alice, open the door,” he said sternly.

“So you can be nice to me? What can you do?”

She was right. What could he do? Say that he loved her? That he would treasure her for always? That he would devote himself to making her happy? That’s what she needed, but was he ready to do that? He didn’t know. She was inside him with her pain, twisting. He was infected with her fear, standing on a cliff and unable to back away from the edge. In a moment he would be a bloody mess on the rocks below.

Back away, he told himself. Don’t say another word. Just go away and forget it. He felt calmer.

“Are you there, Alice?”

Mercifully, she did not answer, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he retreated from her door.

 

In his apartment, he stood in the kitchen and considered going away again. Maybe to Hawaii. He could take another week off if he wanted to. Unable to decide, he stripped down to his shorts and went to exercise on his Soloflex, turning on a bit of Vivaldi on the way to drown out his thoughts.

After he had worked up a sweat, he stopped and lay there, cooling down as the Vivaldi went into a slow movement, and realized that the door to his life had had to stay closed. He lived outside himself, afloat in other lives because he had no life of his own. Nothing he had ever feared had ever happened to him—not disease, financial troubles, or lasting disappointments in love, because he had never loved anyone.

He got up from the machine, went out into the living room and looked out the window at the old, wooden house across the street. It was a three-story, gabled structure that would soon be torn down because the landlord was unable to rent it. Suddenly he imagined that he had moved into the second floor with only a bed and a table, because he had lost his job and his possessions. All he had was a bit of money, the bed, and the table.

He imagined sitting at the table, looking out through the curtainless window, looking back at himself across the street, wondering which of them was real, feeling his awareness switch back and forth like a swinging pendulum....

I was something else once, he told himself, suddenly afraid of the wishes lurking in his fears. What did he want to happen? What had he ever wanted to happen to him?

He clenched his teeth, suddenly dismayed by what he had become, and the cap on his left front tooth slipped off into his mouth.

He held the cap in his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue, afraid to spit it out. The ground-down, naked tooth would look like the bottom of an ice cream cone and be discolored from years of being scaled away, someone had once told him. As he touched it with his tongue, he felt the sensitive tooth hanging there like a salty stalactite.

He looked at the building across the street again, and his phone chirped.

“Hi, this is Frank,” his message announced. “You know what to do.”

“Frank?” Alice said softly, and he felt her trembling self-hatred. “You can come over, if you still want to. Now would be okay.”

The vision in his right eye went black; then in his left.

Both eyes cleared, and he longed to escape into the bare room in the old house across the street.

“Frank?” Alice asked with a painful ache in her voice. “Please pick up.”

The beeps cut her off, and he felt his stomach seize up into a solid mass of stone. His breath came with difficulty.

At any moment, if he didn’t prevent it, the black, unforgiving nothing would invade his eyes again. He had to write her a convincing, heartfelt note at once, then go see her as soon as possible.

Desperately, he turned away from the window, went to his small, cherry desk, sat down, pulled open the drawer violently, and began to fumble around in it for a sharp pencil.