The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (59 page)

After having eaten the piece of the building, Alan Harris was transformed. Others were not so lucky. In the months that followed he saw many come to work on the scaffolding but who were soon sent back to their lives with no explanation as to why they had failed.

When he asked about this, he was told that people were given two days to work. If they did not discover their piece of a building to eat in that time, they were sent away, all memories of the last forty-eight hours erased from their minds. When they got back home they told their relieved families that they had no recollection of where they had been. Thank God they had found their way home again. They were welcomed and kissed and feted. They returned to their lives only grateful and happy that they had survived. These rejects still enjoyed looking at buildings that were being repaired but it never went deeper than that. They remained fans, like someone with time to kill who stops a while to look at a busy construction site.

From that point on, Alan never got tired and never was hungry again. He and the rest of the crew labored day and night until the regular restoration on the building was completed, and then their bosses moved them to another one across town that had just had scaffolding erected on its face in preparation for renovation.

Their crew always blended in with the normal ones that had been hired to restore the different facades. When you see someone on a construction site wearing the same kind of clothes as you, carrying the same tools, wearing the same hardhat, and doing the same kind of work, you don’t ask what are you doing here? You assume they belong.

But what was it exactly that Alan Harris and the others in his group were doing? In the beginning he constantly asked that question of his fellow workers but they all had different answers. They argued about it constantly. One of them said that they were looking for something lost in the various pitted, crumbling facades they helped repair. It was like archaeology. Their supervisors knew what it was and once it had been found everyone would be told. So far though it had eluded them and that was why they kept being moved from building to building.

Another man, a tall Azeri-Turk with a weak jaw and ferocious brown eyes who used to run a thriving tailor shop, swore that they were rebuilding the City of God as St. Augustine had originally envisioned it. In a voice that both accused and taunted, he demanded to know if Alan had read
The City of God.
The lawyer sheepishly admitted that he had not.

“Well find a copy and
read
it! You’ll see exactly what I am talking about. We are here because we have been chosen to do God’s work on earth.”

Some workers laughed when they heard that, others smiled dismissively. Because everyone on Alan’s crew had their own idea about why they were here and what this labor meant. They unanimously agreed on only one thing and that was how lucky they were to be there. Nothing any of them had ever done in their lives had brought them so much pleasure and fulfillment.

Periodically one or another of them disappeared and were never seen again but no one made a big deal of it. Inevitably someone would ask, “Where’s Lola? I haven’t seen her for a while.” Those nearby would pause a moment to look left and right and then shrug. Lola (or Ron, Chris or Dorothy) was somewhere but where wasn’t their concern. Within days, a new member would replace the missing worker.

One early evening in the middle of cold winter sleet, Alan was cleaning a gargoyle high up on the face of an ornate apartment building. He used a well-worn wire brush and a bottle of bleach. Now and then he had to stop, walk to the edge of the scaffolding and turning away from the building, look out at the city for a while because the fumes from the bleach were overpowering.

He was thinking about the first night when he’d met Lyle Talbot. As he scrubbed decades of embedded dirt and pollution off the ugly stone face, without knowing it he began to hum “Home on the Range,” which was the song Lyle had sung. When he became aware of this, the sleet was turning into hard rain. Quietly and with a smile, Alan sang “Home, home on the rain—” Then his voice petered out into silence because that’s exactly where he was—at home on the rain in the winter in the evening in the middle of the greatest mystery he had ever known but didn’t need to solve because it lifted and cared for him and made his life so much better.

In a small receding part of his heart Alan Harris acknowledged that his abrupt disappearance was now likely to be the greatest mystery in his wife’s life. She deserved an explanation but would never get one. Anyway, what could he have said—after I ate part of a building it kidnapped me forever?

“What
would
you tell her if you had the chance?”

Alan was very high up on the scaffolding. No one else was around. The others were working on the other side of the gigantic building. When he heard the voice behind him he knew it could have come from only one place. Turning to look, he saw that the gargoyle was watching him. It blinked its blank eyes.

“Come here.” The gargoyle was a grotesque mix of monkey, Fuseli dwarf, and something even the artist couldn’t have described. Its face was threatening and funny at the same time. It was an “Either I’ll kill you or I’ll make you laugh” face.

Without hesitation Alan walked back to where he had been working. The gargoyle’s face was just above eye level. “I don’t know what I would tell her. I hope she’s all right. That’s the only reason why I’d ever go down again. Just to see if she’s all right.”

“You
can
go down. You’re finished here.” Those words, even coming from a gargoyle, were like a sudden punch in the stomach.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve got what we want from you. And we’re grateful, so we’re giving you a choice: You can go back to your life and try to work things out with your wife, or you can move along. Move up to the next level.”

“And what’s that?”

The gargoyle shook its head. “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. It’s impossible to describe.”

“Can’t you give me some kind of hint or an indication?”

“No. But you’ll have to choose right now.”

Alan thought about his good wife and his dry life and the view of the world from behind a tenth floor double paned safety window. He loved the mystery of what had happened to him. That more than anything made him decide.

The gargoyle had long monkey’s arms crossed so tightly over its broad chest that they were almost invisible. Those arms snapped out now and with fearsome strength, shoved Alan off of the scaffolding.

He did not have time to be afraid. As he was pushed, his mind was still on the enigma his life had become and how much he loved it. When he realized what had just happened to him, this expanded into a kind of all-encompassing WHAT? And as he fell backwards through the rain he thought only “Okay.”

When he landed some seconds later with a flutter of wings and a nonstop burbling and cooing, he was a gray speckled pigeon with empty golden eyes and a brain the size of a sunflower seed. He strutted back and forth, trembling his wings back into comfort. Down at the other end of the windowsill he saw what looked like something to eat so he walked over to investigate.

On the other side of the window a woman sat alone at her kitchen table drinking steaming tea. She had a date tonight and was thinking about what to wear. She saw the bird on the windowsill and wondered what it was like living outside on a rainy December night like this. For one second, no more than two, the woman and the pigeon looked directly at each other. The bird’s gold eye was as blank and mysterious as death. The woman’s was as full and mysterious as life. The bird bobbed its head then, tapping its beak along the sill for food like a blind man tapping his way home.

“H
E’S NO FILET MIGNON;
he’s not even
steak.
He’s chuck roast, maybe. London Broil at best.”

This is how it began for Edmonds. It was the first thing he’d heard that morning after he sat down in the blue chair and looking out the window, asked himself what the hell am I doing here? But he knew the answer to that question: it was either get on the bus, or go home and kill himself. The choice was that stark and simple.

The big yellow and white bus sat parked at the curb, motor running, gray exhaust fumes puffing out its pipes. The driver leaned against the side of the bus by the open door, smoking a cigarette and incuriously watching the crowd. A large group of old people stood on the sidewalk nearby waiting to board.

Earlier while walking down the street toward them, Edmonds smiled for the first time that morning when he noticed how dressed up all those oldies were. The women had high frozen hairdos like spun glass that clearly indicated they’d just been to the hairdresser. Most of the men wore brand new shoes with no creases or scuffs on them, dark suits or perfectly pressed sports jackets, and all of them appeared to be wearing neckties despite the fact it was only six o’clock in the morning and their days of going to an office were long past.

Someone from the neighborhood had told Edmonds that once a month a bus parked at this spot, loaded up, and then rumbled off for a day’s outing arranged by the town or a local senior citizen’s club. It took these pensioners to neighboring towns with museums or historical sights worth visiting. Sometimes they motored into the nearby national park, had a hike around, lunch, and then returned to this drop off spot with some sun on their cheeks, tired legs, and the good feeling of knowing that their cameras were full of new pictures and the day had meant something.

Approaching this crowd now, Edmonds was hit by thick waves of warring perfumes. He could imagine every woman there spritzing on her favorite fragrance as she prepared to leave her house earlier this morning. Did the single women put on more perfume, hoping to catch the attention of the available bachelors who would be on the bus? Or was it the married gals who drenched themselves with scents so strong that they almost physically stopped Edmonds when he was ten feet away? Were there many single people in this group? If so, were there more men or women? When you are 65/70/75 ... are you still looking for a life partner or just a nice companion for the day?

The sight of all those dapper old timers eager to be off on their day’s jaunt, wearing their wide neckties and thick-as-lead perfumes, combined with the thought of actually
having
a partner on a trip when you were 75 years old almost cut Edmonds in half with grief and longing for his lost beloved wife. The impulse to go home and just do it, end it, was ongoing and very powerful. End this unrelenting suffering and just go to sleep forever. He had a friend who was a cop. This guy said when done correctly, hanging yourself was the best and most painless way to go. After a few too many beers one night, he even demonstrated how to do it; not noticing that William Edmonds was paying very very close attention.

Edmonds would be alone when he was 75, he was certain of it; if he even lived
that
long. There was the very real chance he would contract some monstrous disease before then that, like his poor wife, would painfully devour him from the insides before killing him.

Passing the door of the bus now, he suddenly veered hard left and climbed on. The driver saw this but said nothing. Why did Edmonds do it? Who knows? Self-preservation, or just
why-the-hell not
? Maybe a blissful unexpected moment of sudden lunacy? Who knows?

He was the first passenger to enter the vehicle that morning. Walking down the narrow aisle he chose an empty seat, plopped down into it and turned to look out the window. The cold stale air in there smelled of cigarette smoke and some kind of tangy industrial something—cleaner? Or the synthetic cloth on the seats?

People began to appear at the front of the bus. Some of them glanced at him as they passed; others eased themselves slowly and carefully into seats. Many of them softly grunted or puffed while doing it, their hands and arms shaking as they gripped seat backs or armrests, performing the twists and turns that were necessary to make in order to land their stiff bodies in the proper place.

Edmonds too had reached an age where he found it harder to get into and out of chairs, cars, bathtubs, and other places where his body needed to bend at unnatural angles in order to fit. He often groaned unconsciously now when he sat down—either from gratitude or weariness. Vivid signs that he was getting older and the wear and tear of time was beginning to show itself in earnest on his body.

“He’s no filet mignon; he’s not even
steak.
He’s chuck roast, maybe. London Broil at best.”

A portly woman was walking down the aisle, her man right behind talking loudly to her back. When she reached the two empty seats directly in front of Edmonds she glanced at him, moved sideways into the row and sat down by the window. Her husband followed and took the other seat. You could tell by the fluid way both of them moved that they were very used to this seating arrangement.

“I don’t know why you think so highly of him,”

“Ssh, not so loud. The whole bus can hear you.”

Her husband half-turned, glared at Edmonds as if he were to blame for something, and then turned back. “Okay, all right,” he lowered his voice a tad. “But really, tell me what it is about him that you like so much.”

The woman took her time answering. “I like how dignified he is. I admire the way he hides his pain. It’s very ... noble. Many people who lose their partners want you to know how hard it is for them being alone and what they’re going through every day. They want your pity. But not Ken; you know how bad he’s hurting and what a loss it was for him. You can’t be that close to someone all those years and
not
suffer when they die. But he never shows it; never burdens you with his pain.”

Edmonds frowned. Who were they talking about?
It all sounded pretty damned familiar.

The husband started to mumble something but she cut him off with an abrupt, “Ssh—he’s coming. He just got on.”

Edmonds looked up and saw a nondescript old man moving slowly down the aisle towards them. On reaching the couple, he stopped and smiled. “Good morning, you two. Are you ready for a little walking?”