Louse (22 page)

The elevator opens onto a small entry that leads to a narrow corridor. There are no intercoms and no one is present. The only presence is the red blinking lights of the surveillance cameras. I step into the entryway, and as I do the elevator doors close. I walk down the hall. After a short distance I turn a corner that leads me to a door marked “Contents of 747 Romaine,” the name of the vault from which they say they retrieved all the names of the accused. I try the door, but find that I am unable to open it. I tug a few times and realize it is impossible. When I give up I turn around to see, on the opposite side of the corridor, a few feet down, a large green metal door marked room 3033, which is open a crack. I step down to it, take hold of the handle, and gently pull the door toward me.

A storage room stretches out as far and wide as the Great Hall. The walls and the ceiling are made of industrial gray steel and the space is cluttered with an amalgamation of wood scraps, machinery and tools, plastic tubes, drafting tables. The room is sectioned by walls of all this stuff and much more. Mazelike passages of discarded junk lead to both the right and the left and wind around to places I can't see.

“Hello!” I call out.

No one responds.

I wander off to the right and begin winding around one of these passages. It leads me into an area in which I recognize many objects similar to those I know I have seen in Poppy's study. There are rolls of old Asian rugs stacked into pyramids, and sofas and chairs piled on top of each other. Marble statues with broken arms and legs lean against other marble statues. Severed marble heads are strewn about the floor along with shattered watches whose inner coils and springs prick out like coarse ingrown hairs. They make a path to a line of coat racks covered in white sport coats, double-breasted suits, and robes with the monogram HHB on the chests. Piled to the side of the coat racks is a huge mound of brittle-looking leather flight jackets covered in dust. Beside this are broken-down wheels, rusted propellers, and wing fragments of an old plane, as well as instrument panels and other cockpit gadgets. I step over dozens of trampled Stetson hats and find, against the wall, a sail boat's mast that reaches as high as the ceiling; it rests beside old golf clubs and mortar shells pointing upward, and piles of defused grenades and trundles of a tank. Leaning against stacks and stacks of yellow legal pads are posters promoting EKG Productions and Transit Air; one of which showcases a young Poppy sitting at his large desk with a model airplane. There are old movie projectors, cameras and screens, movie facade doorways to old buildings, more posters of such things as satellites and rockets and space shuttles lifting off in front of large bodies of water. There are framed news clips captioned “Einstein at Manhattan Project,” “Allied Forces storm the beaches of Normandy,” “Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in Yalta,” “Mushroom cloud over
Hiroshima,” “Oppenheimer before Congress,” “MacArthur on the move,” “MacNamara on the front,” “Armstrong: ‘One small step for man…' ”

I weave in and out of these things, trying not to step on anything, realizing that it is all familiar and realizing why the objects in the study always felt familiar. It was more than just my daily trips to deliver Madame's butterflies. It was more that I knew of these things intimately, of these things and this place.

“Hello!” I call out again. I turn another corner into a new passage where I'm confronted with three full length portraits of Jane, Kathryn, and Betty. Unlike the holograms in the bathrooms that only reveal their upper torsos, these extend to their feet, where at the base of each, in gold stenciled letters, it reads “Jane Kathryn Betty Blackwell.” They all stand at the same height. Their hands, though slightly aging a little more in each of the paintings, are the same shape. I now see their resemblance, in the broad ovals of the eyes and the cheeks, and for some reason I know that this was Mr. Blackwell's mother; I now feel foolish that I couldn't even recognize them as being the same person. If I think hard enough I can remember these features in my memories of Poppy's younger faces. If I extract the light and the feminine qualities, they are there, broadened and proportioned to suit the face of a man. I feel dumb that I haven't lifted the shadow of this earlier. It's been before me the entire time, calling attention to itself, if I could only see.

“Hello?!” I call out again.

Still no one responds.

“What would you have me do?!”

I slowly wind my way back through a passage in which I have to walk over old black and white photographs. They are dull and
yellowing at the edges. Some are of overcast oil fields full of Eiffel Tower–shaped derricks. But mostly they are of Poppy as a young man. I stop momentarily at a picture of him in a tuxedo. He is at a party, encircled by women in low-cut dresses. Dr. Barnum stands in a corner balefully staring down into a martini glass. I work my way down the passage, tiptoeing over images of sports cars and parades, Poppy dressed in leather flight jacket, ascot, and goggles. And then, one of Poppy sitting in a wheelchair beside a crashed plane. His legs are extended in casts, his arms bandaged. He is looking away from the camera, squinting at the horizon. I see sticking out from under this photograph, something that momentarily makes my heart stop. It is the image of the view I initially saw in my memory when I hummed the melody in Poppy's study. A white sun spreads over a dark tinted window that reveals small areas of mountainous terrain. I hastily kick the picture of the crippled Poppy aside to find an image of the man I saw in Poppy's chambers sitting in an ornate plastic-covered chair looking out the window of a train. And I remember seeing the same view as I drove in my car off the highway when I first arrived at G. Over his shoulder, in the corner of the image, is the profile of Dr. Barnum smoking a cigar. Reflected in the window is an image of Mr. Sherwood with a camera that covers half his face.

I turn another corner and come face to face with a mannequin cloaked in Madame's black dress and veil. I nearly knock it over as I make the discovery. The hands are plastic, the eyes missing, the entire thing a rigid artifice. I touch the material of the dress and feel its silky texture.

Behind the mannequin's head is a thin burgundy sheet hanging from two hooks on the wall. It ripples against the current of the
air conditioner. As the bottom corners sway and flap up a little, my temples begin to swell and I can feel some anxiety spread through my chest. For I realize where I'm standing.

I walk past several more mannequins to the nearby wall and pull the sheet from the hooks. Before it wafts to the ground, I can suddenly see the corners of tinted glass. When the material falls to my feet, I find myself staring at my reflection in the window. As in my memory, the scrim isn't down; it is never down. The window reflects the small frame of my body. I walk toward the glass until my reflection is large and wide and dissolves into the expanse of desert outside. A hair-thin line of lavender light outlines the distant rock formations on the horizon.

I used to stand here. I used to stand here with the man and watch his face in the window, his and others, just before sunrise. Although he never said what he was thinking I knew he was dreaming of leaving this place. And I… I was here because he wanted me here, me and the others.

I walk back across the workshop, through the maze. I pass the mannequins and the portraits and go to an old wing of a plane leaning lengthwise against a wall where a narrow passage leads to another large room with stark white walls. Several human-sized models of what look like space stations are mounted at the center of the floor. They rise up on beams that are stationed on what looks like a merry-go-round. The models are made of wood, Styrofoam, and clear plastic tubing, through which I can see small figurines tending to gardens and computer terminals, communing at meals in large banquet halls. Figures are suspended in midair dressed in space suits. Each of the structures spins slowly. Their central points face a giant wheel of fortune
suspended from the room's high ceiling. The wheel of fortune spins as well, and as I step under it, it casts a breeze onto the top of my head.

I notice that each station is named: Jane, Kathryn, and Betty. At the base of it is a flimsy sign reading “Paradise Beyond Paradise.” As I get closer I can see there is a miniature facsimile of Poppy's chambers set within the center of each module. His chambers are exactly the same, though instead of tin foil on the windows there are pictures of space, the moon and the earth on either side, the same constellations I can see from the skylight in my quarters.

The closer I look at each model I find that there's even a small figurine for the attendant in the corner, and a television monitor at the foot of the bed. There are three corridors leading to small space ships; and another three corridors leading to his bathrooms. There are miniature facsimiles of the bathrooms as well. Jane Kathryn Betty Blackwell glows above the sinks and faces the toilets. They are perfect little replicas of the holograms.

“Hello, Mr. Blank,” I hear.

“Mr. Blank,” I say as I hear it. I look at the briefcase in my hand, then look at the door beyond the models from where the voice is coming.

Standing in its threshold is…

“Hello, Mr. Louse,” I say without thinking, surprised that I am saying this, but knowing that it is his name, that I have had his name, Herman Q. Louse. Mortimer Blank, I think to myself, Mortimer Blank, and try to remember.

I walk around to the other side of the stations, taking notice of all the small, intricate gadgets working together to make them
spin and coexist on the same geometric plane. It looks like a solitary universe unto itself, one into which I wish I could jump, to hide, to disappear.

“Would you mind giving me that piece of paper in your pocket?” he nearly mumbles.

“No, not at all.” I reach into my pocket, hand him the piece of paper, and am happy to be rid of it.

He carefully looks at the paper and sticks it into his pocket.

All of a sudden I can hear a man's voice coming from behind the door, from behind Mr. Louse.

“Bring them this way,” the voice says. “Stand against the wall. We'll be taking your statements shortly.”

I move closer to the door, to the man I knew as the intruder. The silent fuzz of a low level static hovers as I observe him standing before me. His sandy blond hair is brushed out of his eyes and is combed back above his forehead. He looks at me and then looks over my head to the models.

“You remember me now?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“In a way I was hoping you wouldn't just yet,” he confesses, looking shamefully down at his shoes. “I suppose you remember who you are and how you arrived here as well?”

“Yes, somewhat,” I say. There is part of me that wonders why he is seeking this conversation with me. But I can see he is ashamed. Or so it appears.

“And how are you feeling in general, physically?”

“Nauseated,” I say.

“It will diminish,” he assures me. “Sooner than later.”

“I don't understand. What is it that's making me feel this way?”

“You're going through withdrawal. You and the others. You've been injecting yourself with a placebo for the past several nights. That's why you've begun to remember.”

All I can think of is how my last dose of pharmaceutical made me feel dizzy in its usual way. I wonder when I finally remember who I am if the veracity of my own character will be anything worth being proud of.

“Has all the scandal been over this?” I ask, pointing back to Paradise Beyond Paradise, looking upon it with Mr. Louse.

“In some ways, yes. In some ways, no.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Yes, I'll tell you everything I can in a minute, Mr. Blank.”

“Good,” I say, “because I want to know.”

“Come along, Mortimer,” he says as he takes me by the arm and pulls me through a vault-like door into the hall. He locks the door behind him. We walk through a long, dark, and narrow corridor filled with mirrors and glass museum cabinets overflowing with Poppy's paper planes. The planes are piled on top of one another like molting moths. I can't help but wonder what the repercussion will be when all those people lining the halls and the offices awaken and remember everything from square one.

We pass more and more mirrors and my image begins to multiply, as does Herman's. We walk toward an open shaft of light that distorts our images, doubling them from what they just were.

“I said not to move!” a voice bellows.

“I didn't move. She moved.”

“I didn't move. He moved.”

“I didn't move. She moved.”

“Enough already. Mr. Blurd, you're first!”

And there is a loud clanking sound, followed by clomping shoes and a series of heavy thuds. We step through the light into darkness, where I notice we are standing inside the large office with the wall full of monitors similar to that of Film and TV. The sounds I have been hearing are coming from the Accountants' interrogation. They are now lying on top of each other, passed out, with the hoods over their heads. Their interrogator has fallen down as well. The only one standing is poor Mr. Lumpit who keeps walking against the walls and cursing his ill fate.

Otherwise, I can see much of G. on the other screens. It is at rest. Hundreds of piles of people in the wings, a rebroadcast of Ms. Berger's correction playing to a sleeping audience in the Great Hall, the motionless gaming room, Mr. Lutherford and Mr. Heinrik lying on top of Ms. Morris in the kitchen, Mr. Crane asleep on his bed, his neck stretching toward the peep hole into my quarters where Mr. Bender has fallen over my desk. Dr. Barnum and Mr. Sherwood sit slumped at Mr. Sherwood's office desk, their necks craned forward, their mouths open. Poppy looks blissful as he lays prostrate in his bed. Ms. Lonesome is there in the chambers. I notice she has rolled his wheelchair up beside the western night table and laid out a set of clothes.