The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (22 page)

They burst into laughter, joining together in sudden rowdy merriment, sharing the vision of the bumblebee in flight and the fake car shooting down the corridor. Cassie bent forward, her hand touching Barney’s knee, setting him on fire.

“I’ll push you, Barney Snow,” she said. “I’ll give you a ride in your Bumblebee.”

“It’s not for me,” he said, the words coming out of his merriment and her touch on his knee, his guard down once more.

“Who’s it for, then?” she asked.

Barney didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. He’d said too much already. And he was getting tired, weary, a small headache pulsing above his eyes.

“You’re always doing things for other people, aren’t you? The telephone for Billy. The visits with Alberto for me. And now stealing that car for somebody else.”

She looked at him with admiration in her eyes, as if he were a knight in shining armor.

“It’s nothing,” he said, determined not to tell her, afraid that he might tell her everything. And she’d laugh.

“You’re one of the good guys, Barney Snow,” she said, taking his hands in hers, clasping them tightly so that he didn’t know where his hands began and she herself left off.

A moment later she was gone, taking back her hands,
calling “Good-bye, Barney” over her shoulder, her smile radiant, as if for him alone. He stood without moving in the failing afternoon light, his love so huge that he felt he couldn’t contain it and would explode at any moment into a thousand beams of light.

He had begun a special kind of vigilance, on the alert, on the watch. Object: his body and its functions. He checked himself constantly for signs and symptoms, clues, changes in his body’s behavior that might signal that remission had ended and the invader had arrived. He called it the invader, this thing that was dormant now inside him and could leap to life at any moment. Hadn’t the Handyman said that even emotions played a part? He had asked the Handyman what the symptoms would be when remission ended. “It is best if we do not anticipate,” the Handyman had said.

Barney was studying his arms when Bascam appeared at the doorway. “He wants to see you,” she said, inscrutable as ever. He was thankful for her inscrutability, would have hated to see pity in her eyes. Maybe her coldness was a blessing, after all, a gift she bestowed upon the patients here.

The Handyman sat as usual behind the desk, fastidious, hands clasped, unmoving.

“I’m afraid, Barney, that we are past the moment for choices,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I told you earlier that we do not have the facilities here for providing the care you require, both at the present time and later. However, I felt it possible for you to remain here for a time. I know you have your friends here and the visits from the young woman. But it is beyond my
control now, Barney. The authorities have decreed that you must leave for a more hospitable environment.”

“I don’t want to leave, doctor,” Barney said, panic rising in him.

“There is nothing we can do to prevent your departure,” he said, his voice gentle. And the gentleness made his words more terrible.

“This is the only world I know,” Barney said. His past a blank and his future blank as well. Tempo, rhythm, he told himself. Past, tempo. Future, rhythm.

He saw a flicker in the Handyman’s eyes at the same time he realized he was pronouncing
tempo rhythm
silently. Had his lips moved? He said the words aloud: “Tempo. Rhythm.” On a hunch.

“What is this you are saying?” the Handyman asked.

“Tempo, rhythm, doctor. I say these words, tell myself to keep tempo, rhythm, when I start getting panicky. When I start thinking about where I came from or my life before coming here. Are they screens, too, these words?”

The Handyman lifted his shoulders and let them fall as if in surrender. “Yes, Barney. It was decided to experiment with auditory screens—the bracelets, of course—as well as the visual. In order to give you more protection when the memory of your condition encroached upon you.”

Barney felt as if he had been manufactured here, like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster, assembled from bits and pieces like the car he was assembling in the attic, only he was not made up of pieces of wood like the car or parts of bodies, like the monster, but of pieces of tape and film, images printed on a screen, sounds burned into his ears.

“What else did you do?” Barney asked.

“Nothing else,” the Handyman said. “Believe me.”

Maybe he was lying. Maybe a lie was better than the
truth. Maybe he was better off not knowing everything they had done.

“Barney, let me tell you something, although I may be overstepping my bounds in doing so,” the Handyman said, looking down at the bare desk as if what he wanted to say was written there. “You asked me a moment ago: What else did you do? I did nothing, my boy. You were sent to me from that other place. Dr. Croft and I did our best. But the decision to use you in the experiment was not mine. We carried on the work that was started elsewhere.”

Maybe he wasn’t a monster, after all.

“You have always had my complete sympathy,” he said.

“Is that why you gave me the run of the place? And allowed Cassie Mazzofono to visit?” Barney asked.

The green eyes were still cold as always as they looked at Barney. But his voice was gentle as he said: “I can say no more, Barney.” Maybe the eyes weren’t the windows of the soul, after all.

“Thanks for whatever you did, doctor.”

The Handyman became businesslike again, sitting erect at the desk, clearing his throat. “This new facility will provide you with all the comforts, Barney. Please trust me in this.”

“But all my friends are here, doctor. Why can’t I just keep on living here?” Barney asked, shooting the works, not wanting any more merchandise but willing to take that risk if it meant remaining at the Complex.

“We have procedures we must follow, rules and codes,” the Handyman said. “I told you this long ago. Those in authority are unwilling to put you to further risk.”

I’m not going, Barney said. But not aloud. Said it silently to himself like he said tempo, rhythm. I’m not going. He was tired of being controlled by other people, faceless
people whose names he didn’t know, whose faces he couldn’t recall. He would play the game of leaving but he would not go.

“When do I have to leave?” he asked. Asking for the sake of asking. Playing for time.

“In two or three days, perhaps. Arrangements are now being made. Papers being processed.”

“Is it far from here?” Keep talking, keep asking, use the words as screens to block the Handyman from finding out what he was going to do.

“A few hours,” the Handyman said brightly, obviously relieved at Barney’s show of interest. “A city north of Boston.”

“I see.”

“I think you will like it there.”

“I hope so.” I’m not going.

The Handyman stood up, as if to terminate the conversation, but then sank down again in the chair. “Barney,” he said, hesitant. “Would you like to see a priest before you leave? No doubt there will be priests in that new place, but I have a friend here who could visit with you, give you reassurance.”

Startled, Barney said: “Why?” and saw what the Handyman was getting at. “You mean because I’m a Catholic?” He winced, closing his eyes. Of course he was a Catholic, had a faint recollection of candles burning, the peculiar taste of the wafer in his mouth, the Body and Blood of Christ, the priest at the altar and then: nothing. Trying to grope for the memory but encountering blankness, terrifying blankness, like snow, suffocating, obliterating snow. Tempo, rhythm, he cried, hearing his voice—had he spoken aloud? His eyes flew open, establishing himself here in the Complex. Tempo, rhythm. That was his religion
now, the religion that had been created for him in the tests. Instead of a prayer, tempo, rhythm. He looked at the Handyman, shook his head. “No, I don’t need a priest.” Glad to hear that his voice was steady, did not betray the panic inside him.

As he left the office, he realized that he would never know whether the Handyman had been his friend or his enemy. Maybe neither one. And what was he to the Handyman? A subject. A project. A mouse in a maze. A piece of tape. A slice of film. In other words: nothing.

He completed the Bumblebee that night. The final hinge attached, the final screw in place. The car stood erect, garishly scarlet in the merciless light from the unshaded bulb in the ceiling but beautiful all the same.

Billy the Kidney whistled with delight, sitting in the wheelchair, the footrest holding the elevator doors open, gazing at the car in wonder.

“You did it, Barney. You put the car together.”

“The Bumblebee,” Barney said.

“There you go,” Billy said, “still not calling things by their right names.” But too happy to be annoyed.

“A bumblebee is not supposed to fly, Billy. But it does anyway. It flies all over the place.” He stroked the hood of the car lovingly. “And this car is like that, a bumblebee.…”

That vision in the junkyard, like the winking of a far-off star, leaped to his mind’s eye, quickening his pulse. He looked down at this marvelous object he had taken apart and re-created, this Bumblebee of his own making. And he knew now what that last wild ride would be.

T
HAT
night he didn’t swallow the capsule. He tossed it into the toilet bowl and watched it swirl away into the bowels of the building. He had been afraid to sleep, afraid the invader would come, find its way through his body while he slept. He felt that he could keep it away if he stayed awake, on guard, alert. He tossed on the bed, images flashing in his mind, faces he didn’t recognize, dream figures that were probably from another time and place or maybe screens, and he didn’t know which was which, his mind a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, impossible to put together.

Two or three days, the Handyman had said. He had to play a delicate game, make his move at exactly the right time. But not too soon. He needed to see Cassie again. Tomorrow and the next day, at least. And if he was lucky, the day after that. Then what?

He wondered what it would be like to be dead. Blank, zero, nothing. Wasn’t he blank now, a zero, a cipher? But not dead, of course, because his heart plodded on within his chest and his breathing went on, inhale, exhale. And anyway, death meant either heaven or hell, didn’t it? Heaven and hell and purgatory. The nuns had taught him
that. What nuns? Where? When? A face flashed before him, pale face enclosed in some kind of starched white collar that concealed ears and hair, and lips moving, saying something about heaven, hell.

He leaped from the bed, afraid, afraid of thinking. Christ, afraid to sleep, afraid to be awake. Stood up uncertainly, put on his robe and slippers and fled the room. Two o’clock in the morning, slipping down the silent corridor, a wraith in the night, past the closed doors and the red lights, shivering in the heat of the Complex, crazy, but everything topsy-turvy. Paused at Mazzo’s door. Why here? Because. Because he felt close to Cassie when he stood near Mazzo’s bed, saw echoes of her in Mazzo’s face and eyes.

Mazzo moved spasmodically beneath the sheets, restless and agitated. As Barney drew near, Mazzo peered at him balefully, as if looking out of a dark and forbidding place.

“What do you want?” he rasped, insolent and hostile, like the old Mazzo, Mazzo the bastard.

Shit, Barney thought, I should have stayed in my room.

“How are you?” he asked, trying to be light and bright as usual and wondering why he tried.

“How the hell do you think I am?” The words came through cracked and swollen lips, carried on a breath that was rancid and foul, causing Barney’s stomach to lurch.

Barney looked around the room, waiting for his eyes to get accustomed to the darkness so that he could find what he was looking for. Finally, he saw it: The tube like a thin black snake between Mazzo and the machine.

“How long would you live if I pulled the plug?” he asked, leaning into that foul and soiled breath.

Mazzo laughed, a bitter bark that brought up phlegm
from his throat. He spat into a small basin tucked under his chin.

“Couple of hours. Maybe three,” Mazzo said. “Anyway, that’s what they said. Then I’m blown away.” Coughing now, struggling, chest heaving. “You going to pull it?”

“I might surprise you sometime,” Barney said. He was appalled to find Mazzo looking so bad, at the end of his rope, sweating and struggling to breathe, funny sounds coming out of him as he struggled to speak. How long could he last, even with the machine plugged into his body?

“Get out of here,” Mazzo said. “You don’t belong here anyway.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re crazy, staying here. Is that how you get your kicks?” Eyes blazing with anger as well as fever.

“I belong here, Mazzo. With you. And Billy and Allie and all the others, whoever they are, in this rotten place.”

“Go away,” Mazzo said, hunching his shoulders, shifting his body, adjusting his bones and muscles to the spasms that gripped him as he moved, or made the effort to move.

“I can’t go,” Barney said. “Not yet. Because I’m like you, Mazzo. Like you and Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon. Can’t you hear what I’m saying? I’m dying, for Christ’s sake, just like you.”

He instantly regretted the words. Terrified. As if speaking them had put the final seal on his doom. Until he had uttered the words, a small part of him had cried out his immortality, and now it vanished, like smoke pulled into tatters in the air.

With effort, with groans and twisting and fartings, Mazzo drew himself up on his elbows, squinting through
fevered eyes, face wet with perspiration, hollow cheeked, breath foul.

“What in the hell do you mean—like me?”

“Just what I said. I am dying. What do you want, a written guarantee?”

Mazzo’s eyes glittered in the dim light. He raised himself on the bed, gathering himself somehow to a half-sitting position. His fetid breath filled Barney’s nostrils but Barney didn’t move, tried not to breathe it in, impossible, waited there for whatever Mazzo wanted to say.