The Glittering World (3 page)

He joined her and led her in a provisional country waltz—not too terribly, though Elisa was intent on correcting his form at every turn. They were a long way from their days as fixtures in the New York club scene. Day shifts working at Pat Field’s and Liquid Sky and later in the clubs themselves, nights wrecked as all get-out, dressed like mental patients on the dance floors of USA and Palladium and Tunnel, their MDMA fog not worn off until sometime after their lunch break. A lost decade of tarnished glamour held together with duct tape, spirit gum, and daydreams. It was where he had met Elisa, and what he liked to remember of that most hazy time was pure rapture.

The ceilidh danced on, Blue and Elisa along with it. They tried and failed to coax Gabe out of the kitchen to dance, then Jason, who waved them off and sat on a patchwork leather
couch next to a gaunt and elderly man in a burgundy cardigan and black square-framed glasses. Jason was drawn to strangers—in taxis he was fond of the front seat, where he could talk politics with the driver; in diners, the waitress-trafficked counter; he even chatted up token booth clerks. None of them minded either. And he’d successfully pursued Elisa, hadn’t he? Picked her up in a bar, no less, no mean feat considering she’d probably been hit on a thousand times in a thousand bars by better-looking men, with better game. None of them had Jason’s dogged determination, however, and certainly not his christlike patience. Blue often suspected there was something about him too good to be true.

As for Elisa, if you had told Blue that she would ever get married in the first place . . . And to a man who was stable and secure? A newly minted therapist, well versed in the everyday neuroses of the born-and-bred New Yorker such as herself? Not in the forecast. Yet there Blue found himself not one year ago at the Central Park Boathouse (his date an elfin redhead named Zoë he’d happened to take home the night before), as noted Jewish intellectual and Columbia Law professor Lawrence J. Weintraub walked his daughter down the aisle—handing her over to a man who not only was a gentile but was actually churchgoing! A black (or more specifically, black and Korean) man! Probably not in Professor Weintraub’s future projection. But even her father couldn’t question Jason’s particulars, himself awed in the face of that firm handshake, that quiet confidence, those teeth . . . Jason was everything Blue was not. He was, in a word, husbandly.

“This is Donald,” Jason said, already familiar, his arm around the older man’s shoulders. “He’s Maureen’s husband.”

“Nice to meet you,” Blue said. Donald’s handshake was too
hard, Blue’s fingers mashed against one another so roughly he flinched, though he tried to mask it. “Thanks for having us.”

“It’s past my bedtime.” Donald turned to stare across the room, head weaving as if searching someone out. “But I haven’t gotten permission yet, so . . .” His cadence was melodic, with a storyteller’s inflection. Blue looked to Jason, who winked at him.

“I don’t think you could fall asleep if you tried,” Jason said. “The music’s pretty loud.”

“I can sleep through anything,” Donald said. “During the war they would call me Charlie, because I was the only one who didn’t get up for reveille. ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie, get out of bed,’ ” he sang, straining to be heard above the din. “ ‘Oh! Charlie, Charlie, get out of bed!’ At least that’s what I’m told.”

The glassblower wandered over and launched into an extended monologue about a visit he and his wife had made to Ground Zero. But Donald only stared at Blue, until he leaned over and whispered, “I know you, don’t I?” in Blue’s ear.

“Oh. Uh, I don’t think so. Unless it’s from the past few minutes, that is.”

“Well, time is a most peculiar mistress,” Donald said. His eyes receded behind his thick plastic lenses, until his whole expression was a blur. “Especially amongst the fairies. There’s no such thing as time with the Other Kind. Though I suppose you know that already, being fey yourself.”

“Excuse me?” Blue let out a startled laugh.
Did this dude just call me gay?

“Well, you’ll be going down, then, won’t you?” Donald said, leering and newly agitated. “Down and down and dowwwwwn . . .”

Their small circle fell silent. Jason, placid, patted the man
on the knee, though he also tilted his head in a gesture for Blue to take off.

“Better keep an eye on that guy,” Jason said to Donald. “He’s nothing but trouble.”

“Hilarious,” Blue said, but he bristled. He gave a little salute, and negotiated his way across the crowded room. Time for some more booze.

After refreshing his drink he headed out onto the side porch to smoke. Maureen soon popped her head out, took a quick look back, then tiptoed conspiratorially to his side. “You have an extra one of those?”

“Of course.” Blue handed her a cigarette and lit it for her. “This is quite a ceilidh,” he said, faux authoritative.

“That’s what we do.” She exhaled a sigh of pleasure. “Hey, your friend is some dancer.”

“Isn’t she? She used to be serious about it, but she kept hurting herself. Recently she’s taken up photography. Less chance of injury, I suppose.”

“Good for her. You two looked so happy together dancing. You’re both glowing.”

“We’re just friends. Old friends. Elisa and Jason are married.”

“Oh, I know. I already cornered your boyfriend and got the lay of the land.”

“Boyfriend?” He winced. “I’m not . . . Gabe and me aren’t together.”

“No? I thought— Well, the way he was looking at you, I just assumed.”

“It’s okay.” Blue snorted, smoke escaping his nostrils. “I’m not offended. Believe me.”

Maureen and Donald must have figured they were two couples on holiday. And how far was it from the truth? There had
been that one night, after all, a misguided attempt at providing Gabe a modicum of real tenderness. But that kind of justification had gotten Blue in trouble countless times; you’d think he would have learned.

“Gabe’s a puppy dog, you know?” he said by way of explanation, not to mention rationalization. “He’s had a hard life, not that he talks about it. I’m protective of him. Maybe too much.”

“You care about him.”

Blue nodded. “So, what did he tell you exactly?”

“He said that you’re very kind, and that you like to pretend otherwise. And that you make the best food he’s ever tasted.”

“That’s nice of him to say.”

“I believe it. You’re different. I can tell. Like I said, you got the glow.” She sipped her drink. “Elisa’s glowing too, of course. But her glow is common enough. Any idea where yours might come from?”

“Uh, couldn’t properly say, really.” He blushed and looked away. “Maybe it’s the sangria.”

She laughed. “You never know.”

They smoked in silence. Blue suppressed a yawn, faced the woods, and listened to the sounds of the party blare from the open windows: the creak and slam of the screen door, a cacophony of voices, music, clapping and stomping. He turned to find Maureen gazing intently inside, at Donald, who’d gotten up from the couch and was busy collecting bottles and glasses from the coffee table. “My husband,” she said, her tone neutral.

“He’s an interesting guy,” Blue said. “Very spirited.”

“He has Alzheimer’s.” She stubbed her cigarette out on the inside of a mussel shell set out on the porch railing. “He was diagnosed last year. But I could tell for a while already. I knew.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, that’s one of the perils of marrying someone twenty years older, I guess. Not that I was ever the marrying kind. But after a few decades of take-a-lover, leave-a-lover . . .”

“Is that what you were like?” Blue noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring, nor, he had noted, did Donald.

“That’s what a lot of us were like, up here. Our little lost land, back when we still pretended to have ideals.”

“There used to be a commune up here, right?”

“Something like that. Where did you hear about that old place?”

“Someone mentioned it before,” he said imprecisely. “Were you and Donald living here back then?”

“Sure we were. Donald was actually one of the founders of the Colony. Not that he moved here for that purpose, exactly. He was an entomologist turned rubber-booter, came up from McGill to study ants, of all things.”

“Ants? Is there something special about the ants up here?”

“There’s something special about
everything
here,” she said with a wicked grin. “This has always been a singular place. Not just for the indigenous people, Mi’kmaqs like me, but for everyone who comes through. And that vibe fit the ‘live off the land’ era just perfect, you know? We had quite the good time. Many years’ worth. But if you would’ve told me then it would come to this . . .” Soundless laughter, a quick jerk of the head. “I’ve had better years, that’s for sure. I just hope they’re not all behind me.”

He offered her another cigarette, leaned in to light it against the swelling breeze. They separated slightly but stayed close, shoulder to shoulder. “Donald can’t read a clock anymore. He knows what the hands are, but not what they mean . . . I have to leave him little notes all around the house. ‘This is the oven. It
gets hot. Don’t use it without Maureen.’ ” She exhaled through her teeth, smoke scattering in the dim shine from the porch light. “In the spring he found me in my studio and said, ‘I have to talk to Maureen about the oven.’ I said, ‘Okay, what do you need?’ and he said, ‘No, not you, I have to find Maureen.’ I said, ‘Darling, I
am
Maureen.’ He kind of grumbled and walked back to the house. I figured out what was going on a few days later, when we were going to bed and he said, ‘Good night, Barbara.’ That’s the name of his first wife. She died forty years ago.”

“What did you say?”

“ ‘Good night, Donald. Sweet dreams.’ ” She stubbed out her barely smoked cigarette, then pocketed it. “Thanks for the smokes,” she said, and squeezed his arm.

“Anytime. You know where to find me.”

She walked back inside, the snap of the screen door absorbed into the wall of noise. He watched her through the window as she gave her husband’s arm the very same squeeze, and Donald shuffled off to the kitchen, his hands and the crooks of his arms heavy with beer bottles and stacked glasses. Maureen joined some of her friends in the front room, where they swallowed her into their orbiting circle.

Blue retrieved his drink from the porch railing. The sangria had gone lukewarm; it tasted a bit like blood. He kept at it anyway, the alcohol going to his head, the surface of his skin. He rested his elbows against the railing and listened to the cry of the fiddle. This was followed by applause, then a hush from the house, as if the party was a radio play that had been abruptly muted. The wind whistled through the trees, knotted boughs discernible in the moonlight before a cloud lumbered over the cove. He closed his eyes.

A powerful sense of being watched shocked him to
attention. Had he caught a strand of movement in the woods? Probably his imagination, but gooseflesh prickled his arms nevertheless. He kicked back a slug of wine, wiped his mouth, and lit another cigarette.

A light flickered in the trees. A lightning bug? Something alive and in motion, whatever it was, though now it was still, glowing like an ember. Blue stepped off the porch and walked a crooked line to the edge of the lawn a dozen yards from the house, and as he did the light appeared to approach in kind. The densely packed pines rustled, their limbs swaying overhead like water swept by an oar. He squinted into the night, as if he could glean meaning from the forest simply by staring hard enough into its dark and mysterious heart.

The light was gone, but he could hear—no,
feel
—a presence within the woods, accompanied by a wet earthy scent, powerful and fecund. He covered his nose, the cigarette paper a bright stain between his fingers, and the spark of light appeared again like a beacon. The source of the smell was extremely close, within arm’s length, perhaps; its proximity left him simultaneously repulsed and intoxicated. He could feel something reaching out to take his hand, stroke it like a lover would. Blue’s eyes narrowed, and his trembling fingers spidered forward, as if upon silken strings.

He could see himself. Right there, standing a little way into the woods, the dark surface of the forest freshly and impossibly reflective. There was his own startled face, backlit by the house and the candlelit glow from the windows. The light in the woods, it was the burning tip of the cigarette in his white hand, fingers extended in communion. Was he staring into a mirror?

He stepped forward, and now he could see right through this other self. On the other side of his reflection was the ghost
image of a balsam fir, its needled branches held back by a hand. The hand that held back the branches, though, that was not his own—indeed, it was like no hand he had ever seen, the fingers bone-thin, and long, and deathly gray.

In a nauseating flash, it came to him: he wasn’t seeing his reflection, nor was it some estranged identical twin. Rather, he was seeing himself
through someone else’s eyes
. He was at once inside his body and outside of it, watching from beyond the sheltering trees. He saw himself as he was.

His sight refracted, the branches in his periphery a kaleidoscope of shadow and moonlight. A split-apart image of the forest floor and he listed, then steadied, his vision a mirror fragmented into shards. He pressed his eyes shut but the fractalled images didn’t yield, only multiplied into differing angles. He thought of the compound eyes of the praying mantis sculpture he’d glimpsed inside the house as he saw himself from deep in the woods, as well as closer by; a splinter of his chin captured from ground level down the hill; a sliver of the back of his neck viewed from the treetops. He saw himself through a multitude of eyes, all watching from the woods.

His curiosity swelled, then turned to fear, then excitement, rapid pulsations that bled together until one emotion was indistinguishable from the next. His very being cried out in surrender, and he hungered to be disassembled into nothingness, his heart pounding so hard he thought his chest would burst. And all the while the whine and burring of insects, the call of predatory night birds, and the screech of the fiddle in one long and discordant stroke, the final note of a song that refused to end.