A Certain Slant of Light (10 page)

  
I couldn't actually hear anything except the shriek of the
wind and all that it carried, but I knew that someone was calling
me. I looked around and on the street corner, I saw a figure. He
put a hand up to his head, perhaps blocking the wind from his
eyes. No, he was holding back his blowing hair. He started run
ning toward me. When I saw that it was James, I struggled up but
was thrown into the madness of the dance and caught in a tree
over his head. I saw James stop on the sidewalk below and look
about as if I had disappeared.

  
I was then sucked into the sky, and I could see nothing. All I
could hear was wind and all I could feel was wind, but I was thinking over and over, seven twenty-three, seven twenty-three.
Finally, I smashed into the grass of a small yard. Ivy shook on a
pale blue wooden wall, and then James was standing beside a fig tree that was jerking in the wind. He was scanning the street, but
as I pulled myself toward him, he caught sight of me and stared.

  
I crawled closer, trying to keep myself from sliding down the hole
in the earth that dragged like a whirlpool at my feet. He seemed
terrified. I must've looked like a monster, covered in mud, tearing
at the grass. He held a hand out to me, but I didn't want to pull
him in.

  
He dropped to his knees and tried to clutch at me with both
hands, looking panicked when he couldn't. Finally he threw him
self on me, and I couldn't help but embrace him. Don't let me
pull him down with me, I was praying. A moment later the wind
had softened to a mild hiss.

  
Kneeling beside me, he waited until I looked at him, then he slowly rose and began to move backward toward the small blue
house, one foot behind the other, like a tightrope walker. I rose as
well, concentrating on the wind ruffling his hair. With my other
salvations, it had always been clear, the uniting of spirit and host.
This felt different. I followed, so weak I felt as if all the color had
been drained from the world. He climbed the porch stairs back
ward, one step at a time, and I followed. I kept my eyes on his
face, perfect as a sculpture. He opened the door and backed in,
then moved to one side and beckoned me to enter, as I had longed for Mr. Brown to do. I followed him into the house, and he closed
the door.

  
It was only then that I noticed the noise. There was loud music
and many voices, much smoke, and little light in the small living
room. A dozen men and women, all holding bottles of beer and burning cigarettes, moved about in unsteady, sweating clusters,
swearing and laughing and taking little notice of James. Only
one of them, a strong, tattooed man with no shirt, looked over.

  
"Where'd you go?" he called.

  
"Nowhere." He had to yell to be heard over the din.

  
"Do your homework," the man called.

  
"It's Friday."

  
"What?" The man frowned, holding his beer-bottled hand to
one ear.

  
"Okay!" yelled James. He ducked down the tunnel of the hall.
He stopped at a door with a hole as big as a baseball almost bro
ken through it. He opened the door and waited until I had glided
in before closing it. It was a small room, lit with a dim overhead
light. There was a large square bed, far too big for the cramped
space, a tiny desk and chair cluttered with magazines, clothes and
cans, and the walls were almost completely covered with pictures,
mostly from magazines, but there were also some larger pictures pinned and taped up, even on the ceiling. Some pictures were of
almost nude women, some were of guitars and musicians, some
of cars, and a few of athletes caught in midjump. The space over
the desk was papered, every inch, with cartoon drawings of dragons, insects, and monsters. Each was signed with the initials BB.

  
I knew that these walls were full of color, but everything
seemed gray. James watched me look about. He still seemed to be
trembling, though the wind was far away now, only a tame howl
outside the closed window. Even the overpowering squeal of mu
sic from the other room was just a muffled hum. This space
seemed so alien, I had to stare.

  
"This is Mr. Blake's home," I said.

  
"Did you leave him?"

  
The truth was more that I had lost Mr. Brown than left him,
but I didn't want to say it out loud. I felt a brick-heavy sorrow in my chest threaten to take me over, until James smiled.

  
"Haunt
me"
he said, and he shrugged in such a light, odd
manner, I felt instantly as if I must be taking myself far too seri
ously.

  
"Don't be foolish," I told him.

  
He pulled his book bag off the desk chair and motioned me
to sit.

  
"I'm your host now, aren't I?" he asked.

  
"I suppose that's true." My host. My James. "I don't know
what to do now, I confess," I said. "It doesn't seem quite proper,
this
..."
I was at a loss.

  
"I don't know much at all about anything," said James. "But I
know we should be together, you and I. That's all I can be sure of."

  
Together, he'd said. I wanted to know exactly what he meant.

  
"How could we not?" he asked, sitting on the rumpled brown
blanket on his bed. "It's as if we were the only two of a species or
the only two people on earth who spoke the same language. How
could we not be with each other?"

  
I was shocked at his words, the last of a species. There was
something carnal in the sound.

  
"I've never cleaved to a host that
..."
I hesitated. "Well, that
was aware of me."

  
This made him smile.

  
"You'll tire of me," I said, afraid all at once of being hated. "I
couldn't bear that."

  
"Miss Helen," he laughed, "you must be joking." But then he
thought on it again. "You may tire of me," he said. "That's far
more likely. Are you afraid of that?"

  
"No, not of that," I said.

  
The door banged open with a flood of reckless music, and a
woman staggered in, with a man following. The man put an arm
around her waist and a hand into her shirt. She wore a short
black skirt and a black lace blouse that was smoke thin. She
blinked at James. "Hey, Billy."

  
"Hey, Rayna," said James, sounding tired all at once.

  
The man looked over her shoulder and frowned at James, not bothering to remove his hand from her breast. "Goddamn it."

  
"Do you mind?" said James.

  
"Sorry," she laughed. "We can go somewhere else."

  
"Like where?" asked the man. He had one earring and a
beard like a pirate.

  
"How about the bathroom?" said the woman, as she closed the
door again.

  
"I apologize," James said to me, blushing. He went to the door
and put on the chain lock. He sat back down on the bed with a
sigh.

  
"Which ones are in your family?" I asked.

  
"Only the man who spoke to me when we first walked in.
That's Billy's brother, Mitch. He doesn't talk about it, so it's difficult to know, but I think our mother died and our father's in jail."

  
"I see." It seemed like such a bleak life, but who was I to
judge? I was not much more than a wisp of vapor. "I'm sorry,"
I said.

  
He smiled. "It's all right." Then he looked around the room. "Last week I tried to change the pictures and clean up the mess,
but when Mitch saw it, he thought that I was having a mental
breakdown and was so upset, I went back to the clutter."

  
I laughed at this, feeling more comfortable whenever James
seemed happy.

  
"I have a secret treasure, though." He pulled a box out from
under his bed and opened it. "Promise not to tell."

  
"I do."

  
He took out one item after the other and laid them on the
bed. A copy of an art history book with a sticker reading $1.00. A
tattered photography magazine. A worn paperback of short sto
ries. A dog-eared copy of a collection of Robert Frost poems. Lastly a journal with a feather as a bookmark and a dark purple
pencil stuck in the elastic band that held it shut. I laughed in
recognition of what a treasure ought to be.

  
"I'd like to smuggle in my own favorite music, but Mitch sold
Billy's stereo and computer to pay for the emergency room when the boy almost died, so
..."
He shrugged.

  
I noticed then a piece of lined paper folded up in the treasure
box. I could tell from a few handwritten words visible there that
it was the page on which he and I had written. I was aflutter with
pleasure—
I was part of his secret treasure.

  
An odd thing happened then. As James was looking at me, his
face went pale. He seemed ill. He went to the door and took off
the chain. He came back to the bed and carefully returned the
treasures to the box.

  
"I'm afraid I was being selfish," he said at last. "This must be
like a prison to you."

  
He looked in my eyes and realized that I didn't understand.
"You lived in a world of books and beautiful music and paintings
on the walls at Mr. Brown's house, didn't you? I must be mad to
think you'd want to stay with me in this cave. I'm so sorry."