High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel (26 page)

The guide went on as if he’d not heard the kid’s question. “She’ll be back in working order soon enough. The fancy parts all fixed. But it’s a slow and very expensive process.”

A freckled boy of about sixteen quickly took off his headphones. “How much?”

“A lot.”

“But how much? A million?”

I was sure at this moment that raising a teenager must be a hellish thing.

The guide brushed at the arms of his suit, facing away from the group. “The chandelier, I’m afraid, is a nagging question. It’s not of Howard origin, and we’re not sure where it comes from.” He turned and faced us. “We’re in the business of restoring the original state and spirit of a place.” He waved us toward two doors in the center of a rounded wall. “And now we have the Great Room.”

He opened the doors. And there it was. I swooned.

How many times in a life do we swoon? I can think of only a few, and this was one of those: a major swoon. I had to grab hold of the wall because my stomach was flipping and I thought I might vomit. Then it stopped. I realized it was also because of the stink. Burning hair.

I asked him, “What’s that stink?”

“Sulfur. We’re raising the foundation some. Found a pocket way below. Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Room. Feel free to move about the balcony.”

This was beyond déjà vu. It was dream leakage and it physically moved me. I had to step back out into the hall for a second. And then I stepped back onto the balcony of the Great Room. And that same odd rush of memory and oversensation rivered all around me: the ceiling, the stage—I saw him clearly down there, little boy Josiah, little me. Behind the microphone, and standing still. The audience wondering if I’ll finish. Is the boy finished? I watch him lower his arms and bow. A long second passes and it’s clear:
It is finished, the boy is finished, and the audience explodes with applause, four thousand clapping their hands, and they raise their arms, clapping above their heads …

“Sir?” The guide was standing next to me.

“I’m fine. I’m just—” I knocked on the door, inspecting its hinges. “Beautiful work.” The headache reared up, reminding me it was still there.

Satisfied, he pressed his hands together in a prayer formation. He bowed. “We do our best.” He approached the edge of the balcony and gripped the brass handrail. “The ceiling, of course, is why we’re here. Note the surface.”

We all looked up, fifteen or twenty feet above our heads, where the ceiling was a steely gray. It had really faded. Some roundish silver and white static stars like milk splashes decorated the surface, a chipping and powdery plaster shown in blanched swaths from underneath. Then the stars began to glimmer and glow. They shook with a slight and unstable radiance, and they went out.

The guide was waving a large flashlight at the ceiling.

He said, “Voilà! You get the general idea.”

He turned and cast the light onto a greater expanse of the ceiling, where it dissipated into an ecliptic glow. “Now imagine the entire ceiling all lit up with stars and planets and shooting stars. All semifunctional until about fifteen years ago. And by then the Skyrograph, our very wonderful projector, was already sixty years old. She is right now, even as we stand here, being restored off premises. One of very few in the world, and did basically,
very
basically, what I just did with this flashlight. Only more. Who sees the moon?” He pulled the pant fabric up from his knees, and crouched. He said in higher register to the small children, “Hmm? Who sees the moon?”

I asked him, “What about the bridge?”

“Well.” He straightened. “It’s a real bridge, a small-scale replica of a famous bridge, the Rialto in Venice. There were clouds.” He pointed with the flashlight. “Usually there and over there.”

A real bridge, the Rialto. All this time I had no idea.

The freckled boy asked, “Can we walk on it?”

“Insurance says not right now. But soon.” Like the boy, I wanted to walk on it.

The guide continued, “The Howard has passed through many hands. The last owners being a church group who lovingly restored much of the interior and exterior, I have to say. And to whom we are much indebted.”

I felt like some of them were eyeing me suspiciously. I thought of Dad; was he sleeping, was he awake?

“Unfortunately, said group was no longer able to afford the building and so they sold the Howard to the city. We wish them well. It should
also
be said the original murals downstairs in the foyer were summarily, and dare I say unnecessarily, painted over when said group purchased the property. Previously, the panels beautifully depicted scenes from classical mythologies. We have promotional literature from the original period with detailed pictures. And we’re handling the issue as we speak. You saw the scaffolding, and so…” He motioned toward a tall scaffold erected in the Great Room over the seats.

I saw that the balcony was bookended by a pair of opposing red velvet ropes, blocking access to two closed doors.

“Now, prior to the Howard’s previous owners, the site was primarily used for entertainment. Onstage theater, and of course”—he presented the stage with an outstretched hand; in that hand was a remote control—“they showed movies.” On cue, a massive white screen descended from the ceiling above the bridge. “The last showing was in 1977, the fantabulous age of grindhouse.” He paused, appeared to make some decision, and continued speaking. “Do we know the term ‘grindhouse,’ hmmm?”

I wanted to know everything, all of it, and I was sure the more I knew about this place the more I would know about me. I saw the bridge was hidden behind the screen.

He said, “The last showing was a typical double feature. Deodato’s super-gruesome cannibal horror,
The Last Survivor
. And a sci-fi classic,
Logan’s Run
.”

The children looked at each other. There was visible interest in the word “cannibal.” I edged away from the group, physically compelled to see the bridge.

“Who here has seen
Logan’s Run
? Hmm? Anyone?”

I dropped to one knee behind a row of seats, and pretended to tie my shoe. I untied the laces for effect.

“Let’s take a look from the main room floor, and we’ll get the full picture from there.”

There was a shuffling of feet. Busy noises from the foyer came in through the open doors as I played with my laces.

“Every last inch of copper has been hand buffed by toothbrush.…”

Heels clicked on the marble stairs.

I looked around, stood up after tying my shoe. I rushed to the right side, sidling behind the red velvet rope, where the way led into a narrow hall that ramped upward and curved leftward so I couldn’t make out exactly where I was headed. The hall maybe went where I wanted, I was hoping, and I continued along the rise of the ramp in the narrow white hall and I kept on walking until I saw a great wash of whiteness: the movie screen.

It was enormous, a giant’s bedsheet.

It dawned on me: I’m out there.
Now.
I’m standing on the bridge
right now.
I lightly stamped my feet. I leaned forward and looked down at the decorative wood, at the latticework.

Then there was a crash of loud static.

A pure static sound came flooding from everywhere and filling up the hall and the whole Great Room, and the white screen suddenly went gray. There were flecks of black and gray, dark, and some darker, all of them dancing on the screen. Then the lights in the Great Room went out. And what was maybe a thread, or a maybe stray hair on a film cel, lashed across my vision like a long whip or a black lightning bolt from above. And the screen filled up with a giant image: a tall cross inside a large circle at least two stories tall. The image joggled and it jerked. There was a loud clicking sound in the static. The cross was there in the circle, and then it was gone.

Then just as fast, the image next took the form of a number, the number 5, a monstrous and backward 5, looming there twenty feet tall.

Then there was a 4, a backward 4 …

3 …

2 …

I didn’t look away. I extended my arm and stood on my toes. I slung a leg over the bridge. I reached out, trying to touch the screen, which now was just a few feet away and hanging from the ceiling. I stretched myself and saw the individual white nylon fibers. I stretched myself and touched the colossal on-screen image of the 1. The lights came on, showing everything, the bridge beneath my feet, and the countersunk screws holding all of this together, the formed wooden joists above my head. Right there, beyond the reach of my hand, on the very outer edge of the ceiling, where the ceiling abutted the wall, and not so far from a small Saturn’s wobbly faux rings, was the neatly scripted signature:
Harold Lowell, 1965
. One of the painters had signed his name. Then the screen slowly lifted until every seat below sneaked into view. And then I could see the rest of the ceiling, and every faded body of light, every last crack in the plaster, the scratches, bruises, and pockmarks that inevitably come with age.

I walked along the sidewalk sipping yet another coffee, wanting to share with someone the strange dreamy feeling I was having. I got her voice mail and didn’t leave a message.

I walked for a long time through the neighborhoods, past the apartment buildings and the two-family walk-ups, the brick houses so close beside each other, a border space of six thin inches between, the pigeon shit in dry white drips staining the ribbed aluminum drainpipes. Past the cell-phone shops and the Laundromats, the overcrowded railroad apartments one flight up and overhead, and Stinking Lizaveta’s Famous Best Russian Emporium. I walked by a large gated mosque, aqua-blue minaret and dome shining, and I remembered there was a Russian Orthodox church just a few blocks away.

As I walked by the church, the doors slowly opened and out came a mass of people, some laughing and cheering down the stairs. It was a wedding. I stopped and watched them for a while. The white flowers adorning the railing and the long limousine parked at the curb. Bells were ringing, and the bride and groom wore red ornate crowns on their heads and they were both quite serious and also just short of cracking up. The older ones were stoic and congratulatory and appropriately delighted, and the younger ones in dress shirts with no ties or jackets, collars open at the neck, carousing and acting so healthy and happy, so outwardly and openly, that the whole street came alive with new life. The trees tossed pale green and yellow flowers from their arms and the light breeze made my hair move. I walked on past the Irish bars and the Italian delis until I found myself under the elevated N train.

I stood there beneath the high-up tracks. Shadow planks on the street and sidewalk as the train rattled by overhead blocking the sun and letting the sun through intermittently between the railcars. I thought again of my father, and of how many different kinds of people there are in the world, and I felt terrible for enjoying being away from the house for so long. Across the street was an abattoir for chickens in an extra-wide two-car garage. Steel shutter doors were rolled down halfway. There were feathers in the hot air, limp floating on the exhaust fumes, spinning and darting about in the traffic gales. I smelled metal and blood, and heard the buzz of bone saws, but not the cluck of a single chicken.

There was a buzzing at my waist. It was Sarah, and I broke into a sweat.

I said, “Okay. First. Let me say I’m sorry, but it’s been an emotional trip. And I keep calling and hanging up and calling again because I know I need to stop calling you. And I was going to leave a message—”

“Forget it. I’m calling because I want to know about your father.”

“So far, a very odd trip.” A tall, zaftig woman in peach velour crossed the street while nibbling on a hot dog. I was still hungry, and this made me think of a knish. I wanted a knish. And maybe another aspirin.

“So talk,” she said.

A city bus bulleted beside me, only inches from the curb.

“Well, to begin with, he’s sleeping in the bathroom.”

“What does that even mean? You need to give me more information.”

“Sorry, it’s noisy. Hold on.” I left from under the train and walked along the block. “He sleeps in a little red cave.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Everything’s gone to shit. And I mean shit. The house is, I don’t know what.” I took a breath. “A giant litter box, cat shit everywhere.”

“He has cats?”

“He’s become one of those cat ladies with crap and litter on the floor.”

“What else?”

“The house is a wreck, I can’t do it justice. He weighs fifty pounds. You were totally right. He’s in a very bad way. Never goes upstairs, I don’t think he even has the strength to go upstairs, and he’s living in the downstairs bathroom. I know this sounds like, What am I talking about? Give me more information. But I don’t have much more information. Are you there?”

“Okay, slow down, slow down. You okay? I don’t want to worry about you, too.”

“He sleeps on a cot in the bathroom. All day. With a cute red night-light so it’s extra fucked. And he says he talks to God in his dreams. They have conversations. He sits in His lap. He sees my mother, and kisses my mother. He’s sleeping all day. And it’s not like I think he’s crazy. I don’t know what I think. And he’s buying things on the Internet, I don’t know what besides toothbrushes and wine and cat food, and I had an experience today like I’ve never had before, like I’m the one going crazy.”

“Why the bathroom?”

“I don’t know. There are rules. He fills up the tub. And this is why I called you, I mean, why the messages. I want a knish.”

“Mmmm.”

This is the secret for walking in cities against the oncoming crowd: look down and pay no attention to others. Walkers parted like the Red Sea in front of me.

I said, “What’s amazing is I can go for days, weeks in Otter and not see as many people as I’m seeing right now. And I think he’s in pain. He’s not eating, not a bite since I got here.”

“So what exactly is he doing?”