– Hell yeah, baby.
I pick her up and put her in the wheelchair at the foot of the bed.
And the night nurse is gone from her desk, hiding. And the intern in the elevator ignores us and leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes. And the security guards on the ground floor are all outside looking for the gutshot woman who climbed off her gurney and threw one of them into a wall and ran out the door and drove off in an old Cadillac and must be on more PCP than the devil. And the cabby that stops for us doesn’t know how to fold the wheelchair and neither do I so we leave it at the curb and when he drops us off on Little West 12th Street I carry Evie in my arms to the door and kick it until someone slides it open and I stagger in on a ruined leg and someone catches me and takes my girl from me and I try to take her back and Daniel cradles her gently and smiles.
– Simon, you made it.
– L’chaim.
I take the Dixie cup of blood from Daniel.
– Is that supposed to be funny?
He hands the small pitcher of blood back to the Enclave who gave it to him.
– Sorry. Was that in bad taste? After your story, I couldn’t quite resist.
I drink the blood and tear the cup in half and run my finger over the insides and stick it in my mouth and suck it clean.
– Glad I could lighten your load.
He blows out his sunken cheeks. -
He holds a hand to the candle that sits between us on the floor and his skin goes translucent.
– My load is amply light these days.
I crumple the cup and drop it.
He points at my knee.
– Any better?
I give it a poke with my index finger and the pain jumps up my spine.
– Feels like a hot-water bottle stuffed full of broken seashells.
His eyebrows rise.
– Oddly, I have no idea what that would feel like. May I?
I shrug.
– It’s your place.
He pokes my knee. I flinch. He smiles.
– You know, I think you’re right.
– Want me to stick a finger in the hole in my neck and come up with a nice simile for that sensation?
– No, no. I’ve had my hands in plenty of open wounds. I know well enough what they feel like. But let’s take a look in any case.
He picks up the candle and holds it close to the crusted bullet hole. He hums and taps the side of my head and I tilt it away from the wound and the scabs crack and ooze.
– Well, I won’t say I envy you, but it will heal.
He points at the knee.
– This could be more of a problem. The bone will knit, but it won’t reform itself. You’ll have a nasty limp.
I look at the swollen purple mass.
– Care to take a crack at it?
He sets the candle down and places his hands on the knee and probes it, and waves of pain and nausea roll over me and he digs his fingers in and shoves and presses, and chips and flakes of bone scrape and snap into a new arrangement and he takes his hands away.
– Not as designed, I’m sure, but a little better. Maybe.
We sit.
Around us the Enclave are moving about. The blood is being passed up and down a seated line of them. Some taking a slight drink, others fasting. A few push big brooms across the floor. I pick up my crumpled cup and toss it into the heap of dust one of them is moving down the length of the warehouse. A couple of them descend the steps from the loft that runs the back of the building.
Somewhere up there, that’s where they took Evie.
– So how about it, Daniel?
He’s picking at an old spot of dry paint on the concrete floor.
– Hm?
I dig a finger into the wound on my neck. Feel it hurt me.
– How about we go take a look at my girl?
He drops his head far back and stares up into the darkness above us.
– There are skylights up there. We painted them black, of course. But we never covered them over. It was discussed. Common sense suggested we should lay some sheets of plywood over them. Tarps at the very least. But someone, it may have been me, argued against it. Our home is so ordered. Disciplined. By necessity. We starve ourselves to the edge of reason. Beyond. Without structure, rigidity of manner, it would devolve to chaos and bloodshed here. Very quickly. But it’s not natural. Proper, yes. But not natural. An element of the random, danger, no matter how remote, seemed like a nice touch.
He rises, still looking up.
– So every once in a while, a bird dies in midflight. An owl, of all things, once shattered two panes and landed at my feet just a few yards from this spot. Snow and ice built up another time and brought down an entire skylight. A bullet someone had fired into the air. The wind. A flaw in the glass suddenly exposed. All these have happened. Each time we’ve repaired or replaced the broken glass, painted it black, and left it uncovered. Each time it causes great excitement. Most every other physical aspect of our lives being all but utterly predictable.
He looks at me.
– And you know, not once, never, have any of the accidents occurred by the light of day.
He looks up again.
– I don’t know what that means. But I find it a bit of a disappointment.
He bends at the waist and puts a hand alongside his mouth and whispers.
– There have been more than a few Enclave over the years who I would have given my eyeteeth to see hit with a sudden blast of sunlight.
He straightens and looks around at the white figures bustling about.
– Prigs most of them. Unseasoned. So little sense of proportion. That’s one of the dangers of the cloistered life. An expansive sense of the universe, sure, but try having a conversation about art or music or a woman’s legs and they have nothing to contribute at all.
A strand of tendon in his neck starts to jump and he claps a hand over it.
– Hm. Yes. Seen. Things.
He takes the hand away. The tendon is still.
– Do you remember, do you remember the Wraith, Simon?
I look elsewhere.
– I was out of my skull, man. I don’t know what I remember.
– Don’t lie. It’s beneath you.
I almost laugh at that one.
He does laugh.
– Alright, yes, lying is far from beneath you. Little is beneath you except the floor. I surrender. But. The Wraith. Something for you to think about. It came from somewhere.
– If you say so.
– I do. It came from somewhere. I know. We asked it here. From somewhere else. But, Simon, that doesn’t mean I know what it is. I do have a theory.
