Authors: Jason McIntyre
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In the days following his departure from the hospital, a stay that began when the ambulance flipped over and killed him, then letting him come back anew, he sat in the quiet.
There was a little light, but the days and nights blurred together nearly indiscernible from one another while he tried to work through his loss. The loss of his boys, and the loss of Katie Becks.
He ate, and he drank, and he smoked. And he slept.
And when sleep came, the dreams came with it. Only they were larger now, more complete. They were visions he had tried to push out of his head for a long, long time.
There were flashes of a dark roadway, the tight curves and jagged face of rock and ice to his right, and a gleaming metal guardrail that caught the beams of his headlights through falling snow to his left. There was also the sight of another vehicle followed by a topsy-turvey framing of everything violently spinning.
And then there was that infamous view—of his car’s front bumper, an old rusting Thunderbird, pointing like a last citadel of hope from foaming waters.
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When Sebastion finally came back to reality, the curtains were no longer orange. From his hospital bed, he saw them split down the middle, making a bright shaft of light which pierced the room. But they were white again, a subtle shade of off-white actually. He discovered at that moment that they weren’t completely void of color as he originally thought.
Someone had given him a shot of morphine, he felt a small sting in his arm where the point of the needle had gone and he relished the feeling of it, as it fell away and then as all the rest of the pain did too. With it went the memory of the orange drapes, the bolts bursting in every extremity, and the repetitious
Exit Music
from behind his ears.
Next he saw Malin sitting in a corner of the room, her tranquil shape diffused by the soft light. And he remembered bawling to her, lying on the floor near the spot where she sat now. It was strange, but there was no embarrassment, almost as though his capacity for that was gone.
Slipped out in that crack between the off-color curtains, maybe
, he thought.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked him.
“Well. I
was
in
Hell
, but it seems I’ve come back. Or is this Hell instead?”
She smiled a little. His sense of humor was dry but she was starting to get it. “Can we talk or are you not up to it today?”
He started slowly at first, still unsure of his own voice, “No, no. You’re here. I don’t want to waste your time. Ask.”
“How do you feel?”
“‘
How do I feel?
’ That’s an interesting one. No one’s posed that one in a good long time.” She continued to look at him, waiting for more. And so, with the pain lessening, he obliged.
“You know that old folksy song?” he asked her. “
The Sound of Silence
? Hello Darkness, my old friend, and all that?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, just kept on. “Well, some days are better than others. Some days are like the opening piano chords of
Love Lies Bleeding
—that old Elton John one that dad used to play. Some days are like the folksy lyrics...or the lyrics to that one about love and bleeding. Interesting predicament, that one, the music is a triumph—particularly the opening. But the lyrics drag you through the mud.
“Other days are unclear. More indistinct than
that
, you want to ask? Yeah. Some days are that other one of Elton John’s, the one without a title. Just words and a tune. And other days don’t even have the words. Sometimes it’s just color. A Willem de Kooning painting—maybe...
Whose Name Was Writ in Water
. Did you ever see that one?—”
“—No.—”
“It’s quite spectacular actually. You should look it up. Most days, though, most days in the last several months—since Fall I guess—I feel almost nothing. I sleep a lot. I watch TV...”
“Sebastion, you’ve come through a huge ordeal. And, I think this morning, you’ve finally come to terms with some of it. Do you know how you feel about what happened? About, well, about where you’re at now?”
He looked towards the window.
Then he asked if Malin would mind getting up and opening the curtains so he could see what shade the sky was. She did, then returned to her chair in the glowing corner of the room. She sat in silence. Still staring at the window, never taking his eyes from the sky, he began.
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Do you ever see a strange light shining on the wall? Like, you know, there’s some sunlight reflecting off of some object in the room, but your mind doesn’t immediately know what that object is—the one that’s causing the strange or interesting pattern of light. It looks like magic to you, like that piece of light is itself an object—just floating there in the room for your own bemused, if sudden and unannounced, appreciation. It’s a strange happenstance of geometry, you just know it. Your mind tells you that it must be so, logically. It’s a light from that pane of glass at such and such and angle catching the glass part of that remote item on that dresser in the farthest corner at another such angle...But you’re curious, you can’t just let it be nonspecific like that; so you move your hand around in front of that pattern until the light is broken by it, until you can essentially
see
your
self
in the light...and then it becomes clear, behind you, maybe a little off to the side—oh yes, yes, there it is, that little trinket by the picture of mom, I remember it, it sometimes does that, sometimes makes those little dancing lights on the drywall—and you realize that it wasn’t magic at all.
“I do. I see that kind of thing all the time. And it fascinates me. I search and search until I find that little trinket...and then I go over to it, pick it up, whirl it around and make new patterns on the wall, bigger ones, smaller ones, on my own face even. Sometimes I play with it until dusk, sometimes until the sun is completely gone from the sky and the room is dark.
“This is a bit like that.
“Except that this little trinket doesn’t exist. You can hunt and hunt and hunt for it, but you’ll never find it. Because it’s just not there. That light, up there on the wall, that interesting pattern that looks a little like some things and a lot like others, is just, sort of,
there
. Do you know what I mean? It’s just there. And you’re just here. And you’re just looking at it. And there’s no sense in discovering the trinket...because that’s just wasted time.”
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Malin shifted in the wooden chair. It spoke a wry ticking squeak. She teased him with a playful smirk. “Sebastion,” she said, “One ambiguous answer is interesting,” and then after a moment of looking indirectly away, she added, “Two does not make you twice as mysterious.”
“Do you think I’m flirting with you?”
She got up from her chair. “No,” she finally answered, “At least I hope this isn’t what
you
call flirting.” She flashed another of her brilliant smiles, then turned, and walked out.
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“Well if it isn’t Red, the Towel Snap Champ.”
Sebastion always took the subway to work because he was never up and ready by the time his father was. He would get on at Finch Station and ride with the throng of early-morning commuters, usually all standing silent or reading newspapers or staring discontentedly at the swoosh of a dark blur speeding past the windows. No one ever made eye contact.
That Monday morning had been one of only a few occasions when the train had been late, later than he ever remembered it being before. Sebastion had stood back from the increasing mass of people, leaning against a white-tiled post and tracing with his eyes the outline of the word
Finch
on the tile wall across from him overtop the track’s sunken gutter. Black tiles floating in a big space of white ones that had begun to yellow. He took diligent note that everyone seemed to pace forward in turns, past the red line drawn on the concrete, where they would each surreptitiously lean forward and look down the darkened tunnel, as though looking there would actually provide some clue as to why the train was late.
The funniest bit, Sebastion decided, was that when one person leaned forward and looked, a bunch more would do the same—as though the first, having seen the train coming, would be able to keep it a secret for more than about four seconds. Do all those people really believe in will power? If each of them looks down the tunnel intently, will the combined force of their wishes make the train come
sooner
? And perhaps more importantly, are they really that anxious to get to their jobs?
Sebastion, though, reveled in it. He knew he would be late and there was a joy in that. But though he was late for a valid reason—the subway train was twenty minutes behind—and though he didn’t like this behavior or see any reason for it, he still walked quickly when he got off at King Station. Down King Street he went, like every other day, past the Bay intersection where four tall glass bank towers loomed over traffic, asphalt, steel and concrete. They were lofty, overpowering idols, reflecting the sky and the sun downwards like fire on the people scurrying below.
As with every other day, he rushed into the lobby of his similar glass skyscraper, hurriedly packed himself into the crowded elevator, and headed up into the sky where Whitman, Merridew and Redfield Financial Services now occupied three whole floors.
He took an early coffee break that Monday, to help stretch out the morning—the late train had already helped it so much—and he wasn’t too surprised to find some familiar faces on the fourth floor, a few even from that early morning subway platform. He slipped out when he could manage and planned to stay gone for a while, pushing the limitation of the God-given coffee break right. He sat now in the fourth floor food court sipping something Caeli would have liked. His surroundings made him feel like he was swimming in a giant fish aquarium—the only things missing, he thought, were giant faces all google-eyed watching him at one of the panels stretched up past the interiors of the fifth, sixth and seventh floor walls.
And, in the middle of it all—the phony light, the fake fig trees and white lampposts made to look similarly like those on a sidewalk café in Paris, his thoughts of a giant spectator leering in at him, and of simple good-fortune provided by a late train— it was Riley Fischer who pulled up a chair beside Sebastion that Monday morning. As he said his hello he actually slapped Sebastion on the back. Fish was all grins and Sebastion found he was too.
He was simultaneously stunned and happy to see this strange face from the past. It made sense in that moment, he thought.
I mean, hey, here we are in the aquarium. What better place for the slippery Fish to show up, right?
He asked Riley to sit and the two actually fell into a pattern of reminiscing. Sebastion supposed that was just inevitable. Fish’s hairline had begun receding a little but neither of them was old. Far from it, only creeping up to twenty-three each. But time had passed, enough time to actually make memories a little more valuable. Time marches on, canceling itself out. Single days become less important. Eventually they all start to look exactly alike. Days in the past—like the odd one now that has a lagging subway train to distinguish it—become little gleaming gems on a beach of dry sand.
The only shared memories the two had were of the towel snap thing and Vivian’s party in the woods—and neither of them brought that one up. But they each discovered they had the same memories of some of the bigger events, just never from a matched point of view.
Fish had run off to Europe for six months after graduation at Wilt Marin Comp. He returned and took courses at the University of Toronto for a fraction of what it cost Oliver to send Sebastion to York. All the while, he told Sebastion, he was playing in a band, getting laid every weekend, and paying some kid from the sticks to write his papers. And here he was, working at the same company as Sebastion for the same pay.
“Yuh,” Fish said, leaning back in his chair and folding his fingers behind his head, “The old man knows John Merridew pretty well. Got me in lickidy-split.”
Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice. With a smile he added, “Actually, I think my old man had some dirt on ol’ Johnny.” He gave Sebastion a wink and was off.
Three months following his spring convocation ceremony Sebastion had started full time at Whitman, Merridew and Redfield, at the insistence of his father who had been a full partner for a few years by then—though there was still some inequality in the ranks—it was sensed and felt yet not overt. Sebastion worked every morning at eight until every evening at five, sometimes six, sometimes even as late as nine. It wore him out. And it made him lose sleep. He would get home at night and see numbers spinning around in blackness when he closed his eyes. He could never quite grab hold of them and he wondered if his dad saw the same,
had
seen the same for the last twenty-five years or so.
He thought the madness of those numbers was going to do him in, until the firm finally hired someone—Riley Fischer—and the numbers seemed to make a little more sense. Of all people, it was
Riley Fischer
. He was without his School—Rudy Dunlop and Simon Caulder—swimming along behind him, but was markedly unchanged despite it.
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The denial of something, especially when you know it to be true, makes it all the more pronounced. Speaking freely to this Malin Holmsund from Houston came easy. He didn’t expect that. And he certainly didn’t expect, especially after it started so easily, that crawling out of his comfy little denial-hole would be so hard.
It wasn’t the label,
psychologist
, that made him so comfortable. It wasn’t the idea that she, through some vast experience and understanding, based on her title or accumulated as the result of such a title, could offer any hope to him. If anything, those things might even have been a deterrent for his candor. Instead, it was something in the way she listened, that allowed him to keep talking. And he assumed that kind of thing was more or less inherent or discovered, rather than
learned
at a university, or practiced in the field. Lying in his bed over the next day or so, spurred little by prompts or questions, he told her about Synaesthesia—though she was already familiar with the affliction enough for a general grasp, more than anyone he had spoken with in a long time. There was an honesty in his voice, which got less and less hoarse—not more so—with each passing hour. It was almost as though he was finding it again.