Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (15 page)

***

The match ignited. I lit the candle. The matchbox given to me by the albino Jamaican woman went back in my pocket. Christmas Eve atop the world, and I could enjoy the colors. At last something to celebrate!

The numbers on my laptop had stopped spinning. Zoe hadn’t given me the full thirty minutes, but I had feedback from close to 20,000 respondents! 20,000! My heart swelled, my eyes tingled with . . . dare I say it, joy. On the TV there was no mention of anyone hacking into Times Square. By then Zoe should’ve been safely at home and the only evidence destroyed.

Data partied in my head like drunken sugar plum fairies. I was consumed with corralling and evaluating it, but as I settled into the high-backed chair and watched the flickering light dance across my apartment, the stench emitting from the red cedar box on the kitchen counter distracted me, the dirty, proliferating stench. It reminded me of how I’d failed him —of my many failures, really— and I wanted to be rid of them. But the seed of freedom that Sam had planted was strong too.

“Sammy.” I walked over to him. “I’m sorry. I can’t bury you properly. I wanted something beautiful for you. I don’t want to incinerate you . . . like the others.”
Like Harold.

It was the practical way, the antiseptic way, bleaching out all impurities but . . . I was going to have to do something soon. The pong of Sam’s rotting carcass spread into the air and forced my head to jerk away.
Tonight, of all nights, let me do something right
.

A proper burial, Momma would warn . . . or else. To me it became a simple matter: basic cleanliness demanded it. I pulled on my overcoat and, keeping the box at arm’s length, I left the apartment.

I pressed ‘down.’ The doors closed and the elevator descended. But at the eleventh floor it glided to a stop, surprising me. I questioned the floor indicator. The doors slid open and, despite the late-late hour, a well-dressed older woman wearing expensive jewelry, a red and white Santa hat, and carrying a laundry basket, stepped in. Of course my face jolted her, but the smell collapsed her expression and immediately repelled her.

“My god!” the woman said angrily. “You’re disgusting!”

The woman bolted. The elevator door slid shut. I smothered my laugh. The elevator started down again. I
did
feel free.

Once I was out of The Octagon’s glare I removed my tinted glasses and appraised the darkened path to the lighthouse. The day’s warmth had contracted the mounds of snow, but the earth, lampposts and railings were frosted with crystals as the post-midnight temperatures again plummeted and bewitched the landscape. Momma, unable to see crystals as the multi-dimensional ordering of atoms, saw them as sprites and nixies, members of her unpredictable family of spooks. Notwithstanding her foolishness, I was oddly revitalized by their familiarity and by their certain return, drop-by-drop, to the rivers and oceans. That night they would honor Sam the Shadow.

As I approached the lighthouse at the end of the island, I wondered about Charles Dickens — the writer who traveled that island of outcasts, who saw that very lighthouse almost 200 years earlier, and who was unafraid to speak out concerning the inhumanity he saw there.
Yet he was also an imperialist.
I’d asked Harold about this contradiction when he read it to me. He shrugged, that annoying shrug.

Wasn’t it Dickens who wanted to eradicate the East Indians?
Conquerors take the vanquished.

He nodded.

“Where’s the humanity?” I’d asked.

He had no answer.

And where was my humanity?
Ahead in the dark watchtower, I envisioned the destitute Charles Dickens and how I’d failed the poor man. But I still had time to make good on my other promises and I was grateful for that.

My fingers ran along Sam’s red cedar coffin. Best to go by water. With so little light I still saw remarkably well. At the tip of the island, behind the lighthouse, where once I’d considered slipping into the water —
you
did
consider killing yourself, Eunis, stop pretending
— I climbed over the railing, careful to keep a grip on the cedar box. Perhaps due to the heady response in Times Square, I felt nimble as I climbed deliberately over the rocks to the choppy water’s edge.

“Stop,” said a voice above me. “Don’t!” The man was clumsy, scampering down the slope to me before I could even respond. It was Charles Dickens.

“Take my hand,” he said.

“I’m okay.”
And he was alive!

“Take my hand.” He was a bit shaky but seemed more lucid.

“Charles, it’s me, I’m okay.”

“Who?”

“Charles Dickens. That’s you right?”

“No. My name is Malcolm. Let’s talk about this up there away from the water. C’mon”

“You don’t remember me?”

“I do not.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then come up there with me.” He pointed to the base of the tower.

“Not before I bury my friend.”

“In the box?”

“Sammy.” I pulled the matches from my pocket and, holding the flame steady, lit the top of the cedar box on fire. Fire
and
water, complete purification.

“Oh,” said Malcolm. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No, please stay. He was a rat among many. But I knew him better than most.” The box held the flame. The sweet cedar smoke consoled me. I placed it on the water, gave it a shove.

“Sammy?” he asked.

“Sam, Sammy.”

“How old?”

“About two and a half.”

Reverence rose in Malcolm’s eyes. “This is grand, like the Vikings; a burial ship. May your soul be peaceful, move on, and return. See you soon, Sam.”

It was stately, even if it was only legend. “Thank you.” I nodded at him. “That was very nice.”

The cedar box bobbed in the choppy waters but stayed afloat and on fire. We stood on the shore watching the blazing box drift into open sea. All connected: Sam, Harold’s gift, Malcolm, the water and me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sam’s funeral pyre finally disappeared into the charcoal mist. I turned to Malcolm who had not taken his eyes off the flaming box. I climbed the rocky slope to the lighthouse.

“My hand,” he said leaning over the railing, arm extended, his stained brown overcoat riffling in the night breeze and his shin-high military boots partially laced and firmly planted. “Take my hand.” I did, then considered where I could wash it.

Back on solid ground I asked again, “You don’t remember me?”

“Should I?”

“We met a few nights ago.”

“Same place, same time?” He smiled. His teeth needed work. He’d been discarded too long.

“Yes, almost.” I returned the smile. “Are you in the lighthouse?”

His eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“Do you like Charles Dickens?”

“I do, very much.”

“When I met you the other night, you quoted him.”

His grin folded. “Did I say something wrong? Dickens . . .” He scratched his grimy head, his eyes heavy. “Sometimes . . . I don’t know where it comes from. Sorry.”

“No, no. What you said to me was important.” Perhaps he was an emissary, a connection, someone who could point me more clearly to Dickens, to Harold, and —given his comment regarding
reason and beauty
—even to Dickens’s principles or codes of beauty.

“It was?” His face lightened a little.

“Yes.” How would I explain it all? I couldn’t. “Why do you stay in the lighthouse?”

“I’m good with my hands.” He grinned proudly, referring to the jimmied lock with a twist of his wrist. “Don’t need to sleep on the streets. And here I am, ready for my morning intake at the hospital. Most people spend a small fortune to live on this island. I’m gentry, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I guess you are. But isn’t it cold?”

“Sometimes. Don’t you like the cold?”

“I do.”

“So there. It makes me feel alive. As long as it doesn’t kill me.
That
will come soon enough without my help.”

“You could crash at my apartment. It’s warmer.”
Had I offered that?
To a man who almost frightened me to death a few nights earlier? “At least for tonight.”

“I told you, I like the cold.”

But he had saved me,
hadn’t he
? “Just tonight. For a few hours.”

He deliberated. “You’re not afraid of me? What I might do?”

“What would you do?”

“I’m not always clearheaded.”

“No, neither am I. Come on. I live over there.”

“You’re sure? Just tonight.”

“Sure.” I wasn’t. But it was time.

***

Once more I lit candles. Would Malcolm hear the voices I heard? How exactly could I fashion questions around Harold’s death and my hope that the Dickens books held answers? It was unreasonable of course. Yet at this point, why not.

At the same time, I dwelled on my idle laptop and itched to start tallying and correlating the data from my grand experiment. Consensus —particularly consensus from 40,000-50,000 people— could be the means toward finding beauty’s coordinates.

I offered Malcolm the old chair but he crossed his legs and sat against the bottom of the kitchen counter, as Elizabeth and I had done only a day or so earlier. In a way, I was glad. He was filthy.

“Would you like some food?”

“Water, please.”

When I brought it to him his smell overwhelmed me; worse than the alleyway garbage. Much worse. He needed a bath. “Would you like to take a shower?”

“That bad, huh?”

“Well . . .”

“I used to be respectable, you know.” He finished the water. Set the glass down slowly, unsure where the air met the floor.

“I’ll get it warmed up. Get you a towel.” In the small bathroom I put away my toothbrush and toothpaste and water cup. My washcloth too. Otherwise, as I scouted around, it was tidy as should be, and safer this way.

I pulled a towel from the small linen closet and turned on the shower. My ears started reverberating. “Oh god, it’s starting again.”

I held onto the washbasin and waited for the voices. But instead a lustral sensation overtook me. I had no desire to push against it. It held me for only a minute or two, then passed. One breath and I returned to the living room. Malcolm slept against the counter, snoring loudly. The canyons on his face had softened. If not for his clothes, he could have been a contented family member sleeping off holiday festivities. I touched my heart where his calm had surfaced in me.

I turned off the water and carefully stepping over him I grabbed my laptop and organized myself on the bed. The anticipation made me giddy; a rising elation, not unlike the afternoon I knew I’d consummate my relationship with Harold. Or anytime I was about to slip into water. The results were easily parsed and by a little after 2 AM the results were finally in. They were disappointing.

Experiment & Observation: comparing normative male and female faces for attraction variables
.

Total Respondents [18,668]
:

72% women [13,441]

28% men [5,227]

Female respondents (most attractive male):

Blonde hair/blue eyes [23%]

Blonde hair/green eyes [27%]

Dark brown hair/blue eyes [28%]

Dark brown hair/green eyes [22%]

Male respondents (most attractive female):

Blonde hair/blue eyes [26%]

Blonde hair/green eyes [27%]

Dark brown hair/blue eyes [22%]

Dark brown hair/green eyes [25%]

Even calculating for standard margin of error, it was a wash.
A wash!
Back to square one. I fell asleep on my computer.

***

“Where am I? My god, my levo!”

I woke on my bed, wrinkled, still in my clothes.

Malcolm disoriented, draped in the same blanket I’d wrapped around Elizabeth, stumbled to the door. “What have you done? What about my levo?”

“Malcolm, it’s okay.” I tried to calm him but he struggled with the door, unable to open it. Panic set in.

“If I’m not there, I won’t get my meds. They’ll cut me off, they’ll cut me off.” He made croaking other-worldly sounds and started to cry.

“I’ll get you there. When do you need to be there?”

He blubbered. I couldn’t understand but one word in four. “The Metzinger?” I asked and he nodded as mucous poured out of his nose, spittle from his mouth. I didn’t want to touch him but I had to. “Take my hand. I’ll get you there.”

“It’z too late,” he moaned. “Too late.” He bent over, disintegrating.

“No, Malcolm. C’mon.” I stood him up and towed him through the door to the elevator. On the eleventh floor, it stopped.

“Damn it!” I propped him up
and
pounded the buttons to keep it moving. He drooled and keened and then, with the sound of wet rubber flapping against a wall, he shit himself.

“Oh no.” The stench of diarrhea rose quickly, overtaking the space. The elevator doors opened and the same well-dressed, older woman started to get on. She gagged, clutched her mouth and started retching, then stumbled out. I pounded the buttons. The doors closed.

He was much heavier than I’d imagined and I could barely hold up under his weight. Alternately I held my breath and sucked in the nauseating stink sagging and saturating his pants. As we exited the elevator, past the usual gaggle of mothers and babies, we left a slippery trail of yellowed excrement across the rotunda floor.

I dragged him out the door and down the steps, toward the hospital across the way.

“They tried. They tried,” he sniveled.

I moved him as quickly as I could but it was like pulling a cadaver. “What did they try, Malcolm? What did they try?”

“Tri, trihexy. Phenidyl, and now without, oh my god, without  . . .” He collapsed at my feet, soiling my legs and shoes in his shit.

“We’re almost there. C’mon Malcolm, you can do this.” I helped him to his feet, turned him around in the right direction. “C’mon.” We started again.

“Tell me,” I said trying to sober him as we moved and hoping that he’d remove some of his weight off my shoulders and back. “Tell me about your family. Do you have family nearby? Anyone I can call?”

“I’ll never die.”

“What?”

“Never die. Never on the street.” He waved his arms in ballet arcs. His right hand covered in his own shit. “Die with family.”

“We’re here. Malcolm, see.” We busted through the hospital doors into the lobby. I screamed for help. Malcolm skated on the excrement still oozing from his pants to his boots, and as he did he collapsed on top of me, knocking me over. I fell like a freshly cut pine, twice cracking my head on the lobby floor. I was a rag dolly of jaw jolting, teeth rattling timber. The room spun, turned taffy. Malcolm covered me in warm vomit, and I swallowed it.

***

First my tongue. Metallic. Throbbing. Gums swollen. Teeth vibrating . . . in waves. Feces, feces stinging . . . my eyes. Dry. Caked. Binding the skin, my knuckles. A curdled mouthful. His puke, his grit. I passed out again.