Shatterday

we spent together.”

“Gifts.”

“Yes, gifts. Touches. Hugs and kisses and smiles.”

“Purchases. You tried buying her.”

“No, never that.”

“Rented, then. It was the same.”

The young man clenched and unclenched his hands. They seemed to have movement directed from somewhere outside him. The hands moved and seemed to want to strike Moth. The man in clown-white could not have failed to notice, but he did not flinch, did not move away. He sat waiting for the next assault, willing victim.

“How did it feel when you found out she was sleeping with him?”

“It hurt terribly. Worse than anything I’d ever felt. There was a ball of pain in the bottom of my lungs, like something inside breathing, a second heart. I don’t know; and every time it breathed, the pain was worse.”

The young man sneered. “And what did you do about it, big man?”

“I wanted to kill him.”

“Why him? He was only picking up on the available goodies. You leave something lying around unused, there’ll always be someone who’ll put it to use.”

Moth sat forlornly, “It was the way she was doing it.”

The young man laughed nastily. “You ass. There’s always some stupid rationalization cuckolds like you fasten on to make it seem dramatic. If it hadn’t been this way, it would have been another; and you’d have found some aspect of that in bad taste. Can’t you understand it’s all excuses?”

“But when I found out, and asked her to leave, she said she would go to stay with her family, to think it out. But she moved in with him.”

The young man moved suddenly. He leaned across and grabbed Moth’s shirt. He pulled him halfway across the table and his voice became a low snarl of hatred. “Then what did you do, hero? Huh, what happened then?”

Moth spoke softly, as if ashamed. “I loaded a gun and went down there to his apartment and kicked in the door. I put my shoe flat against the jamb right beside the lock and pulled back and slammed it as hard as I could. It popped the lock right out of the frame. I went straight through the living room of that awful little apartment and into the bedroom, and they were on the bed naked. It was just the way I’d been seeing it in my head, with him on top of her, except they’d heard the lock shatter and he was trying to get untangled from the sheets and I caught him with one foot on the floor.”

The young man shook Moth. Not too hard, but hard enough to show how angry he was, how disgusted he was. Beyond them, the megaflow took on a scar-tissue appearance, inflamed, nastily pink with burned blue tinges. He continued shaking Moth gently, as if jangling coins from a small bank.

“I rushed him and shoved the gun into his mouth. I heard him start to moan something and then his teeth broke when the muzzle of the gun went into his mouth. I pushed him flat on his back, down onto the bed, and I kneeled with my right leg on his chest, and I told her to get dressed, that I was taking her out of there.”

The young man shoved him back. Moth sat silently.

“What a stupid, miserable, pitiful little mind you are. None of that is true, is it?”

Moth looked away. Softly, he said, “No. None of it.”

“What did you do when you found out she was with him, after four months of marriage?”

“Nothing.”

“You loaded the gun and did nothing.”

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t even bring yourself to make the act real, could you?”

“No. I’m a coward. I wanted to kill him, and then kill myself.”

“But not her.”

“No. Never her. I loved her. I couldn’t kill her, so I wanted to kill everything else in the world.”

“Get away from me, you pathetic little shit. Just get up and walk away from me and don’t talk to me any more. You ran away. You’re running now. But you’re not going to escape.”

Moth said, “In time, I’ll forget.”

“You’ll never completely forget it. Time will dull it, and maybe it’ll be supportable. But you’ll never forget.”

“Perhaps not,” Moth said, and stood up. He turned away, and as he turned away, the light that had blazed madly in the young man’s eyes dimmed and went out. He turned back to the scar-tissue of the megaflow and stared at nothingness.

Moth walked through the lounge, breathing deeply.

He passed a beautiful woman with pale yellow hair and almost white eyebrows who was sitting in company with two nondescript men at a table for four. As Moth came abreast of her, she reached out and touched his arm. “I feel more sorrow for you than animosity,” she said, in a gentle and deep voice. Her words were filled with rich tones.

Moth sat down in the empty chair. The two men seemed not to see him, though they listened to the conversation between Moth and the beautiful woman.

“No one should ever be judged heartless because he tended to his own personal survival,” she said. She held an unlit cigarette in a short holder. One of the men in attendance moved to light it, but she waved him away sharply. Her attention was solidly with Moth.

“I could have saved one of them,” Moth responded. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, as though seeing again a terrible vision from the past. “The fire, the Home ballooning with flames from the windows, the sound of their screams. They were so old, so helpless.”

The pale yellow hair shimmered as the beautiful woman shook her head. “You were only the caretaker of their lives; it wasn’t written on stone that you had to die for them. You were conscientious, you were a good administrator; there was never the slightest impropriety in the Home. But what could you do? You were afraid! Everyone has a secret fear. For some it’s growing old, for others it’s snakes or spiders or being buried alive. Drowning, being laughed at in public, closed-in spaces, being rejected. Everyone has something.”

“I didn’t know it was fire. I swear to God I didn’t realize. But when I came down the hall that night and smelled the smoke, I was paralyzed. I stood there in the hall, just staring at the wire-screen door to the dormitory section. We always kept it locked at night. It wasn’t a jail… it was for their own protection: they were so old, and some of them roamed at night. We couldn’t keep watch all the time, it just wasn’t feasible.”

“I know, I know,” the beautiful woman said, soothing him. “It was for their own protection. They had their television in the dorm, and bathroom facilities. It was lovely up there, just the same as the private rooms on the lower floors. But they roamed, they walked at night; they might fall down stairs or have an attack and there would be no one to help them, no call button for you or an orderly nearby. I understand why you kept the screen locked.”

Moth spread his hands helplessly. He looked this way and that, as if seeking a white light that would release him from the pain of memory. “I smelled the smoke, and as I stood there, not knowing what to do, almost ready to rush forward and unlock the door and go inside, a blast of heat and flame came right through the screen! The heat was so intense I fell back. But even then… even then I would have done something, but the cat…”

The beautiful woman nodded. “It was the sight of the cat that terrified you, that made you suddenly realize it was rue that hid down there in your mind, waiting to possess you. I understand, anyone would understand!”

“I don’t know how it got through the screen. It… it strained itself through, and it was on rue, burning, one of the old woman’s cats. It was on fire. The smell of the fur, the crackling, it was burning like fat in a rue. It screamed, oh God the sound of the screaming, the tail all black and the parts of it