De Tooth was on the table, his stubby arms outstretched, the worn soles of his black shoes in the air, swimming his way toward Lack. His blond wig sat beside his open briefcase on a chair in the corner. When I entered the chamber he pushed himself backward off the table and onto his feet. I closed the door behind me. De Tooth twisted his disheveled suit back into place, smoothed down his tie, ran a pincer-like hand through his thin, gray hair, then scurried to retrieve his wig. Only after it was screwed back into place did he turn and face me
“You too?” I said.
The small man turned bright red, fastened his lips together, and said nothing.
“Do what you like,” I said. “I just need a few minutes alone with Lack. Then he’s all yours. Or vice versa.”
De Tooth picked up his briefcase and executed a militarily crisp pivot on the ball of one foot, to march past me to the door.
“And give me a sheet of paper and a pen while you’re at it.”
He escalated his eyebrows into his wig, fished in his briefcase for the paper and pen, then turned his back to me and disappeared.
I was alone with Lack.
I took De Tooth’s paper and pen and pulled a chair up to Lack’s table. The steel was still warm from the deconstructionist’s body. I folded the paper into a series of lengths, creasing it between my fingernail and the hard surface of the table, then carefully tore it apart along the creases. I piled the strips into a bundle and ripped it in half to create a supply of cookie-fortune-sized slips. On the first slip I wrote:
DID YOU TAKE EVAN AND GARTH?
I slid it across the table, past Lack’s lip. It rose on a cushion of air as I released it, then, fluttering down into Lack, vanished. I stood up and peered around the edges of the table. It was gone. Lack had taken the slip of paper. He’d found the question palatable. But what did it mean? I pulled another slip and wrote:
IF YOU TAKE THE SLIP DOES THAT MEAN YES?
I slid it across, into the gulf. The gulp. Crossing the line, it was snuffed out of existence. I still didn’t know what it meant. Lack might like the paper, the ink, my handwriting. But it was possible we’d established a link, a common language. I was impatient for more answers, too impatient to quibble. I wrote:
ARE THEY STILL ALIVE?
I handed it across the line, where it was extinguished. Three in a row. We were talking. Lack had taken the blind men. He’d swallowed them up. And now he was confessing it to me. But they were still alive, wherever they were. Wherever it was that Lack led. Alive as Lack defined it, anyway. In a spell, I wrote:
WILL YOU EVER TAKE ALICE?
Fingers trembling, I pushed it across. It disappeared. This time I wanted to check again. I got out of my seat and went around the table. A part of me insisted that the slip—all four of the slips—should actually have swirled to the floor like maple-seed pods. But no. Nothing. I got down on my hands and knees, under the table. All I found was a single long strand of Alice’s hair, left over from her self-scalping.
I went back to my seat, heart pounding. Lack would take Alice, he said. The worst possible news. At the same time, I was flattered by Lack’s cooperation. I had a scoop. Lack was a Ouija board, and I was the medium. I felt possessive. This was the first time Lack had aimed his seductiveness at me directly. I understood Soft, and Braxia, and De Tooth, and even Alice, a little better.
I couldn’t underestimate this enemy. The temptation I felt was proof of his power. I looked at the blond thread of hair in my hand. He’d already removed Alice from me, I reminded myself. And now he’s promising to finish the job, to remove her from the world as well. I laid the hair aside, picked up the pen, and wrote:
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT SHE LOVES YOU?
I offered Lack the slip, and he took it. This time I didn’t bother looking behind the table for something that wasn’t there. The question was meaningful to him, and the answer was yes. He knew. Alice had managed to make her feelings known. I shuddered. I took another slip, and wrote:
ARE YOU WAITING FOR HER TO CHANGE?
Lack took that one, too. My worst fears confirmed. Lack was aware of her attempts to change herself for him, and he was judging her. So Braxia was wrong; Alice would be Lack’s first reversal of policy, his first acceptance after refusal, after revision. Because she tried so hard. He was charmed, like a heartless mythological god with a mortal admirer. Imaginary bastard. I hated him. I jotted out:
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I LOVE HER?
I pushed it across. In it went, engulfed, devoured. It was like he wanted to eat my love itself. Each answer was more cruel than the last. Holding my breath, I wrote:
IF YOU TAKE HER, WILL SHE BE HAPPY?
Lack sucked it away. I sat blinking, stymied. Was that better, or worse? Which answer was I looking for? Should I act selflessly now, urge her back up on the table? No. I’d guard that information jealously. Why had I been so stupid as to ask?
I picked up another slip. I had a thousand urgent questions. Then a vague suspicion crept over me. My pile of slips was half gone, and I still hadn’t received a single no. Was I leading the witness?
I had to test him. I wrote:
WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE RED PARTY HAT?
The idiotic question was taken. Engulped. I picked up the blank slips that remained and hurled them toward Lack. As they fluttered chaotically across the line they each, in turn, were spirited silently away. Extinguished. Only one fell to the side, just missing the entrance. The rest were welcomed as gladly as my careful questions.
Lack was just a girl who can’t say no. He liked freshly torn paper, or irregular rectangles. He liked fucking with my head. I picked up the slip that escaped, and wrote:
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I HATE YOU?
I tossed it into Lack’s maw as I got out of my seat. Bull’s-eye, a perfect strike. I was nearly to the door before it fluttered past the end of the table and landed, with the lightest possible sound, on the floor.
31
I felt responsible for the blind men. It couldn’t be Alice, not in her state. And Cynthia Jalter didn’t live with them. They’d given me warning, too. I’d heard them yearn for a divorce from a reality that, despite their tabulations, always slipped through their grasping fingers.
I got back in my car and searched for them, pretending I didn’t believe Lack. I followed the route of their walks across campus, and into town. I felt sure I’d turn a corner and see them, in their twin black suits, cocking their heads at a sound, or arguing the location of some phone booth or bus stop. But I didn’t. The darker it got, the more possible it seemed that Lack was telling the truth. That he’d gobbled the blind men.
I exhausted the routes, but I kept on driving, repeating my path. I was mapping. It was like an incantation to bring them back.
Finally I drove back to the apartment. Alice was gone. I didn’t care. I went in and turned on all the lights, trying to chase out the silence with light. I switched on the television and sat on the couch. No one came home. No moths were drawn to my little flame. The refrigerator hummed into activity, a life-support system for mildewed cottage cheese, stale muffins, encrusted, forgotten spreads. Outside, students walked the pathways, shattered by their attempts at last-minute term papers, pacing off the effects of powdery drugs consumed in the cause. I curled up on the couch and slept.
32
The apartment spilled over with sunlight. I was still alone, still on the couch. I looked at the clock. I’d slept
