Elvissey (8 page)

"Her own world," our host corrected. "If you do return,
be mindful," he added. "Whoever passes, changes."

We followed him through a passage lined with old gray engravings of Manhattan scenes, etched as if with needles of
smoke, capturing glimpses of our own lost world. Even at
their moment of existence those places and people were
made of stuff less lasting than what had seized their shadows;
concepts of the other world never seemed less empirical, nor
more evanescent, than the irreality of our own.

Luther slid open a door at the hall's end. Beyond was a
darkened room, full of light. Twenty wall-installed monitors
girdled his wife, each set to different channels. Each set's
volume was audible enough that thirty babblebits of language might be misunderstood simultaneously. Luther's
wife sat statue-still in a chair, facing most of the screens, her
eyes so unblinking as theirs. Multitone spectra rainbowed
her black face.

"Wanda, honey," Luther said, kneeling beside her. "You
hungry?" She muted, too enraptured by her visions to heed
the world beyond her illusionary ring. "Wanda," he repeated. "Chowtime, honey. Open wide."

He lifted a strip of potato impaled on the tines of a fork
to her mouth, prodding her lips apart; she made mouthmotions as if, drowning, she wished to suck in more water.
Luther's wife never took her look from the sets as she admitted the fork; when he extracted his instrument, she chewed
what he'd given her with care, as if she were conscious
enough to want to avoid biting her tongue, or lip, or the
inside of her cheek.

"That good?"

She nodded. Momentslong he knelt there, free of word; it
evidenced that his attentions redirected themselves solely to
his wife, when they were bound in one room. He smiled,
regarding her with television eyes, skycolored and endowed
with induced life. I fancied that after endless exposure to
unspeakable broadcasts, he'd settled upon this single channel, one showing all he could still bear to see.

"I'm so sorry," I said.

"Why?" Luther asked, plainfacing puzzlement over my offering; his voice's tones placing inexpressibly distant as
they landed in my ears. "She's happier." His wife laughed;
she'd seen something funny on one of the screens. "Don't
bring souvenirs, if you return," he said, losing his smile.
"Nostalgia's worse than any drug."

"You anticipate with pleasure a trip unassuring guaranteed
return?"

"Not unassuring hope," I replied. A crack, ceilingways,
appeared to my upturned eyes as a hair in milk. A chlorine
scent permeated the room, as if it had contained a pool
recently drained.

"Because return isn't guaranteed?"

"Nada," I said, correcting; regathered my thoughts and
expressed something I believed I knew, at least until the
moment I expressed the belief. "I've no wish to suicide."

"Your negatives are most positive."

"My husband so wishes."

"You think he wishes to die?"

"An unwavered yes." Unwavered; still, I could answer true
for only one of us. Vizzing downward, I regarded the space
between my feet. The clock's readout awared me that this
final session was but half-done. Drafts rustled the wall-cloaking drapes that muffled all outroomed sounds.

"Why suspect your husband of thanautopian desires?"

"His actions evidence plain, as recounted timeover. Expressed thoughts and deeds demonstrate as well. His words
and facial affect hold a matching slackness evident to all."

"As you interpret."

"As they reveal," I said. A poster of a Magritte work affixed to the curtains on my right reproduced the artist's
green apple filling a tiny room. The wording announced a
retrospective at the Postmodern, two years earlier. I'd not
attended; surrealists' work was too mindfully suffused with
tradition to suit my preferences. There were throughout
Dryco's building, along with portraits of incompany notables departed and present, multicultural artworks of five
centuries, all selected by Mister O'Malley, each possessing
some private relevance; creating in toto once their details
were examined and collated-or so Judy informed me-a
pattern overt to none save Mister O'Malley.

"This depresses you?"

"Overmuch," I said, "sans relief."

Throughout those quarters buzzed a barely-heard hum,
semblancing lifesound more effectively than white noise
generally did; sounding as bees in a nearby yard, a sick
kitten's purr, neighbor's latenight noise discerned through
the bedroom wall or the digitalized aspiration of artifical
lungs.

"A pleasurable depression, or one best avoided?"

"Depression can be pleasurable?" I asked.

"For some, when enhancing dreams of self-enacted conclusion."

"I take no such pleasure."

"So stated. This belief impresses full?"

"As a song in the brain."

"Who does the singing?" I was asked. "Depression scores
its own fantasia, with fortissimo drowning truest truth. In
such a state imagined leitmotivs, previously unheard, swell
up from the noteflow. How does the listener know if they're
truly in the score?"

"Unknown," I said.

"Self-analysis's perils proven."

"Doubtful, regardless."

"Attempt another approach. What is your fantasy about
your trip?"

"You mean what I hope will happen, once we're done? Or
while we're there?"

No response forthcame; lying on the couch, seeing in the
ceiling, as in clouds, faces of loved and hated alike, I wished
as ever for an ever-absent clarity.

"Which?" I asked. "What's meant?"

"What is your fantasy about your trip?"

Before answering I closed my eyes; considered my most
honest response, if not the one I'd have preferred to give.
"To reengrave our image," I said. "Make all that was, whole
again. The attempt matters. True?"

"What is your fantasy about your trip?"

"Why was what's said inapplicable?" I asked; again, silence. "I only want us bettered. Of late we've only worsened,
seeming with our wishes. A remade life, that's what's desired.
But it'll never pass if="

"Your fantasy? Your fantasy? Your fantasy?"

Troubled by my interrogator's new-erupting obsession, I
turned over to confront fullfaced, wanting to disturb it as I
had been disturbed; saw phrased onscreen unexpected, unsurprising, words:

DOWNBLOCK ERRORED / SYSTEMIC FLAW /
ANALYSIS PROCEEDING.

"Your fantasy. Your fant-"

My analyzer continued its rewrought analysis, so unwitting as any patient of its most obvious compulsion. A frayed
wire, or encased dustmote, prevented me from goodbyeing
one who'd so kindly simulated care. I'd allowed this particular chain to enwrap me so close that now, loosed so unexpectedly, I felt no freedom; only bereftness.

Would my husband miss his chains more than me? What
if I were the one who loosed them? My head ached as if it
were being hollowed out from within. Uncouching myself, I
left the office, shutting the door behind me.

In the lobby I met John, embraced his stillness, shivered
at his chill. The light crimsoned us, and, standing there, I
wondered how long we had left to bleed.

For two hours that afternoon we reresearched, reassuring
familiarity with the construct of E: instilling ourselves thriceover with given truth gleaned from memoirs of cousins,
guards, percussionists, psychic hairdressers, and all those
who, while earthed, remained close to the heavenly one;
reheard tales told of the Dutch Devil, recounted by Goldman (the more respectable sects of the C of E, thinking
themselves freethinkers, referred to the latter only as the
few); reexamined news accounts entered into computer files
so obsoleted that only Alice was enabled to rosetta their lost
linguas; reread sources deemed apocryphal by the faithful,
telling of revelations so unlike accepted texts, and so unsettling to fundamentalists, that even sans critique they held,
for infidels, the greatest credence.

During our training John and I daily monitored, drenching ourselves in image, studying eleventh-generation footage; vizzed fuzzedged clips stolen from a black and white
youth, eyed midcareer films so faded as to limn his skin
orange, his hair blue. Vids shot during his penultimate
months most disconcerted, ambering onstage moments
when-as went the word of Elvii-holy spirit so infiltrated
his being that, mid-song, he would segue into drooling glossolalia. In those most special moments E did appear possessed; by what, I hesitate to say.

Yet in his essence was a mystery barely theological. E's
musical expressions-the sole hard reality we had of him,
however secondhand-were consistent; but never in either print or image did the same E twice appear. Both the Elvii
and those opposed advantaged this, timeover. That the am-
bulatorially-unabled might walk, the visually-challenged
see, the speech-inhibited shout when he beheld them
seemed, to many Elvii, undeniable; skeptics viewed him as
the Confederacy's final, and most effective, blow against the
Union. Those needing E most-including Dryco-came to
him freighted with preconceived notions of his anatomy,
that they might thereupon fashion a skin most preferable to
lay over those unavoidable bones; an act of creation not so
dissimilar from fetal art, it occurs to me now.

Does a beloved's actuality matter, while the image carries
comfort enough? In such circumstance is actuality ever admitted, or even recognized? Who suffers profoundest regret,
then, when truth rears ugly head: the worshiper, or the
worshiped?

John and I disbelieved in E's divinity; doubted even his
worth. That served as demonstrable asset when Leverett assigned us. Still, during our training, while E's presence was
daily extruded into our lives, it unavoidabled that we be
baptized in his flood, however unwillingly. Feeling myself so
drown, my surety sometimes wavered: it uncertained,
whether if in so unyieldingly admitting my chosen messiah,
I'd needlessly lost the grace of others more saving; I wondered whether my messiah as chosen had the look I wanted,
or the one I needed.

John's eyes no longer held any look; could either of us still
save the other? Did we still want to? Pick messiahs, and
spouses, with care.

"How powered?" John asked, standing with me that afternoon as we examined our trip's transport; the garage was
several levels beneath a generating plant, five blocks off
Pelham Park Boulevard. Tak, the engineer-a slender man,
Korean-descended, who evidenced only teenage years opened the auto's hood, that we might admire his work, and
placed his hands into a shiny box to let its air shake loose
their grime. The engine seen was a relic, agleam with mirrored flatware, with gray metal spotted and dabbed with
white ceramic, spaghettied round with blue and red wires.

"Employs standard batteries set, normally moded," said
Tak. "In third gear, mainline engages, assuring full thrust.
Speed one-twenty, top. Miles, mind, not k's."

"The potemkin's single-batteried," said John. "It's car-
buretored. The look's Smithsonian."

"You're vizzing style sans substance. Actual motor secludes beneath in order to fool casual onlookers. Doubled
weightload resulting, so adjust as needed when circumstanced, as on wet roads."

The car's diamond eyes and metaled smile recalled an
idol's look; I considered the sacrifices that must once have
been offered unto it. As I circled its shell to open the driver's
door, I gazed at the roofs parabolic slope, the chromestreaked sidewalls and black leatherette innards. "It's a total
recreation?" I asked.

"Only within," Tak said, wheeling himself within his
handiwork. "1953 Hudson Hornet body, provided from the
Dryden collection. Steel, coldrolled. Two tons' fun. Rustproofed. Reconditioned especially for the trip."

"And bedecked in Brazilian funeral colors," John said.

"Huescheme's reproduced from period ads. Blame's not
mine." The car was duotoned bruise-purple below waistlevel, breadspread-yellow above; it resembled one of those
tropical beetles occasionally used by jewelers.