A Life Transparent (21 page)

“The last time I saw you, Don Candle, you had a Cretin on your shoulder. You never even knew I was gone. Do you still work for that hideous company?”

He didn’t know what to say to her. For the life of him, he could not remember her at all from the workplace. There was a hazy spot in his memory, like a square cut away from canvas. How many others had he known and forgotten? The implications of the question chilled him.

Michael Candle approached them. He looked confused, and more frightened than he would ever admit.

“Are you two okay?”

“Yeah,” Donovan said, giving Donna a squeeze. “I think so.”

“Good.” Michael nodded. “Now can we get the hell out of here?”

They all agreed it was time to return home. Alice got the key from Joel and led them back the way they came, through the suffocating darkness, up the stairs toward the locked gate. The daylight stung their eyes. Alice kept her head down while she opened the lock.

Michael bounded up the steps to the sidewalk. As Donovan helped his wife across the threshold, he took a breath, relishing the fresh air. Alice waited at the gate, squinting up to the sky. She, too, breathed in the air. It brought a smile to her face.

Donovan took to the stairs, but Donna paused to look back.

“What’s wrong?”

Donna ignored him. “Alice,” she said. “Come with us. I don’t know what’s happened, but maybe we can help you?”

Alice stepped back into the shadows. She closed the gate and engaged the padlock.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Candle. It doesn’t work like that.” There were tears in the young woman’s eyes. She blinked them away. “This is my place now, and it wouldn’t matter if I went with you. Sooner or later, you would forget about me.”

Donna beckoned to the woman beyond the gate, but Alice had vanished into the shadows. Donna looked at her husband, confused, and took her first, reluctant step toward freedom.

When they reached the top, Donovan stopped to look down at the gate. He thought about what Alice said, measuring the weight of her words. He understood them and their heavy implications, and when he looked back at his wife, he realized what he had to do.

Donovan put his back to the threshold and wrapped an arm around Donna.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Donovan Candle’s alarm went off precisely at 6:30 Monday morning. He stirred in his sleep, rolled over and snuggled his wife, who promptly nudged him. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The alarm blared. Memories of the weekend came tumbling upward from a shallow grave, threatening to drag him down into its hole.

Worse than the denizens of the Monochrome were the prospects of returning to an empty job, an empty routine. An empty life.

Timothy Butler and the Tammys didn’t help matters, either.

“Don,” his wife groaned. He smiled, reached over, and turned off the alarm. Donna rolled over, burying her face into his chest.

His thoughts returned to Saturday night, after they retrieved his car and left Sparrow’s rental in the parking garage. They stayed at Michael’s place that night, mindful enough not to wake him as they made love well into the dawn. When they arrived home Sunday morning, Donovan made his wife wait in the car while he collected the remains of Mr. Precious Paws. He buried the feline in the backyard, marking the grave with his food dish. They spent the rest of the day cleaning the kitchen.

Three times that day, Donovan saw the Monochrome side of his own home. Seeing Donna reduced to a dark, transparent ghost left him with a chill that would not relent. After all he’d gone through it almost didn’t seem real, like a dream from which he’d not yet awakened. He wanted it all to be a dream, but the flickering reminded him this was not the case. As he stared toward the ceiling, the room’s color drained away. It lasted only a matter of seconds, but it was enough to reassure him this was far from over.

He recalled Dullington’s task.

Ain’t no better time than today, hoss. Get to it.

Sooner or later he would have to confront the demons that had condemned him for so many years. Today, he realized, would be that day.

Donna lay with her eyes closed. He brushed the hair out of her face. She was so beautiful. He’d gone through hell to get her back, digging to depths of himself he didn’t care to know, and it had been worth every moment—but there was still one more life that needed saving.

Her eyes fluttered open. She smiled.

“Good morning,” she whispered.

“Hi.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Mmm, about what?”

The words were there on his tongue. They’d been there ever since Tuesday morning, but other matters had stolen his attention. Even then, he realized, he wouldn’t have meant them. Not like now. Now he knew the error of his ways, and he owed her an apology.

Donovan leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“I’m sorry about our fight Monday evening. It was stupid, and you were right all along. It’s not about the money.”

He felt the heat of tears in his eyes, and tried his best to hold them back. The look on Donna’s face told him he wasn’t doing a very good job.

“And when I came home the next day, and you weren’t there, I thought I’d lost you forever. That I’d driven you away, and in some ways, I think I did. But I want you to know that I’m going to change all that. Today. Because I love you, because I owe it to you, and because ...”
Because if I don’t, I’ll disappear forever
. The words hung on his lips, and he wanted to voice them, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Just because.”

Donna smiled, wiping a tear from his cheek.

“We’ll be okay, Donnie. We’ve seen worse before, and we survived. And if we can survive this, I’d say we’re damn near invincible.”

“I love you,” he said.

She smiled. “And I love you.”

They kissed. He’d spent over twenty-four hours without her, and it caused him more agony than he’d ever known before. In some ways, losing her proved his love for her, and now that she was back, he intended to embrace her company for as long as he could. The thought of spending the day away from her while he toiled for nine hours in his cubicle sickened him.

“So, Mrs. Candle,” he said. “Would you like to accompany me on a trip to the shore?”

Donna smiled, opened her mouth to speak, but recoiled with a jolt. She cringed for a moment, putting her fingers to her temples.

“Sorry,” she gasped. “It’s this damn migraine. What were you saying?”

But Donovan didn’t respond. He saw all he needed to see in a brief flash of gray. There was a Cretin on her shoulder, its head pointed toward her ear. Alice Walenta’s words echoed in his head:
Sooner or later, you would forget about me.

When the room regained its color, he found Donna staring at him.

“Honey, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Donovan croaked. “I’m fine.”

“You’re very pale.” She put her hand to his forehead. “Doesn’t feel like you’re running a fever, though. What were you going to say a few seconds ago?”

He looked at her for a moment, contemplating what to say. What could he say? And would it even matter? She could still see him, but what about that evening after work? These questions raced through his head. He had to confront Dullington’s challenge, and soon, or else all he’d done would be for nothing.
Define yourself, Mr. Candle
. It was a simple imperative, and yet so daunting. Where could he possibly begin?

Donna looked at the clock. “You’re going to be late for work.”

The answer came to him. He smiled, kissed her, and scrambled out of bed.

•  •  •

He left for work, skipping the bypass and taking side-streets all the way across the city. Along the way he listened to the local rock station instead of his usual talk radio, cranking it as loud as the car’s tiny stereo could manage. His windows and rearview mirror rattled with each bass drum beat. Whenever he came to a stop, pedestrians would turn their heads and stare. He imagined he looked goofy, blaring this raucous music from the meager speakers of his four-door sedan, but he didn’t care. He would use his second chance and beat the flickering.

The gray sight happened only once during his drive, just as he neared his destination. He saw specters walking along the sidewalks. Some of them had Cretins on their shoulders. It comforted him to see that some did not.

When he neared his office building, he felt that unsteady pull at his stomach. It was fleeting. He drove past the Identinel offices and further into the city, ever mindful to take side streets just as he’d instructed Michael. After half an hour, he found himself back at the city park. He parked along the curb, and took a stroll. It was mostly empty at that hour, with only the occasional jogger or elderly person out for their morning walk. Donovan found a quiet spot near the fountain and took a seat.

He thought about Donna, about his job. He’d practically had an affair with Identinel for nine years, yet nothing good had come of it. Sure, he and Donna had their house and their car, but that was all. Their love for one another was the only thing Identinel hadn’t paid for, but over the years Donovan’s commitment to the company had put a strain on that love like nothing else. For that he could not forgive his employers, and he certainly could not forgive himself. Not only had he let Donna down, he’d let himself down as well.

He contemplated Dullington’s question:
Who are
you
, Mr. Candle?

Donovan realized he used to know.
Always wanted to be a writer
, he thought, as he idly plucked blades of grass from the earth, rolling them between his fingers before letting them fall. He’d discovered that desire for the written word during his college years, not long after meeting Donna, and it had been Chandler, King, and Koontz who had nurtured him through the early writing process. When one of his short stories took first place in his university’s fiction contest, he knew in his heart that writing was what he wanted to do.

Back then, he’d had a plan: he’d get his degree, go to graduate school, marry Donna, write a bestseller, and support a family with his earnings. It wasn’t until the end of school that he realized how fantastic it all seemed, and the bitter reality was that this lifestyle he dreamed of living was experienced by so very few. There were no ads in the newspaper reading “Seeking English Majors Fresh From College.” With the job market in such a horrid state, Identinel had been his only choice.

Donovan remembered something else Dullington told him. He’d said it on Friday, when they first spoke on the phone at Identinel.
Actions breed definition
.

He thought about what he’d done to Sparrow, thought of the old man’s accusing glare, and felt a twinge of guilt. The old man had caused to something to surface within Donovan, a violent urge to protect what he cared about, and the means to make a difficult decision when it had to be made. Knowing the kind of person Sparrow was made it easier to make some sort of peace with himself, though he feared what he’d done would come back to him, that he would have to answer for it.

When Joe Hopper, with his gruff, Southern drawl, spoke up, Donovan could almost smell the cigarettes on his breath.
He had it comin’ to him, hoss. You did the right thing. It’s the rest of your life you should be concerned about.

Donovan closed his eyes. What had he done to define himself?

As the world bustled on around him, Donovan realized he’d traded his dreams for dull reality that first day at Identinel. It hurt too badly to think about how much time he’d wasted there.
It’s only temporary
, he’d said to himself as days turned to weeks, and so on. Time eroded, and soon he found himself ten pounds heavier. His hair was streaked with gray. The creativity upon which he’d once prided himself was all but gone. Joe Hopper had finally been born out of a last-ditch effort to prove to himself he could create.

And now that effort had died, just as empty as his own life.

Is this how I want to be remembered?

Donovan stood and brushed grass from his trousers. He stared up at the sky and the surrounding skyscrapers, then back down at the row of trees. The flickering reminded him of his brief chase through the Monochrome. As he walked to his car, he realized that Aleister Dullington’s intervention in his life was, in some ways, a good thing. It was the wake-up call to his future happiness.

His father once told him that to betray oneself was the greatest sin of all, and to forgive oneself was the hardest thing to do. Donovan understood that now.

He started his car and pulled away from the curb. It was after ten on a beautiful Monday morning.
So this is what Mondays are
really
like
, he thought, smiling. He turned a corner onto another side-street and stepped on the gas. It was time to make his life pitch.

•  •  •

He drove back to Identinel, took the parking space closest to the building, and ran inside. Some of his coworkers acknowledged him, stopping to stare as he jogged across the foyer. Their notice was a sign that he was doing the right thing, and he could not hold back the huge grin on his face as he burst into Timothy Butler’s office.

The Tammys sat across from Butler’s desk, their mouths framed wide as they bickered about something. Butler, on the other hand, sat in his executive leather chair with his hands behind his head. All three were startled to see him. He stared at each one, focusing on their faces. The mere sight of them made his stomach churn, but he held his grin.

“Candle,” Butler said, “what is—”

“My name is Donovan. If you call me Candle one more time, so help me, I’ll cram a headset up your ass.”

Fire and smoke spewed from his mouth. He could taste it on his lips. It made him ravenous for more.

“No one gives a shit about your stories,
Butler
. We don’t care. Pay attention the next time you walk into the lounge. Everyone becomes suddenly occupied with other things for a reason, Tim. Think about that.”