Glimmering (17 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Hand

BOOK: Glimmering
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In the doorway a figure loomed. He was cast of light as a shadow is drawn of darkness, light everywhere, so that he seemed to be aflame. Jack recognized the unruly crest of white hair above a broad high brow, the proud beaked nose and the eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, icy blue, deep-set. His grandfather’s mouth opened as though to speak. A roaring filled Jack’s ears. His grandfather smiled and stepped into the room. Jack strove to rise but all strength was gone from him. He lay limp abed like a sick child, staring.
“
Jackie.
”
That deep voice, with its slight smoker’s rasp. He thought he would swoon as the old man drew near the bed. Upon Jack’s brow was the touch of a hand, cool and dry as paper. A blurred shadow moved before his eyes. He gazed up and saw what, as a sleeping child, he had always missed: his grandfather standing there with tears in his eyes, gazing down upon him.
“Jackie.”
Something brushed his cheek, like a moth or leaf blowing past. The voice came again: what his grandfather had always said when Jack left Lazyland to return to his own home.
“Jackie-boy. Be well.”
Like rushing water, air filled his lungs again. Jack gasped, found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, sweat-soaked, the damp covers tumbling to the floor. About him the room swam with gold and emerald. Greenish sunlight streamed from the window with its small, neat bull’s-eye. From downstairs echoed the old grandfather clock striking seven.
Jack dragged a hand across his brow. He was trembling fiercely. “Another fucking dream.”
It was only when he stood, tugging his pajama sleeve from beneath his pillow, that he saw in the hollow where his head had lain a small parcel wrapped in tissue.
Be well
. . .
His heart began to thump as he picked up the parcel and unraveled the thin paper. He turned to the window and raised his hand, so that sunlight nicked what he held. A small glass bottle stoppered with lead and wax, and the label:
FUSARIUM APERIAX SPOROTRICHELLIA
FUSAX 687
 
 
CHAPTER FIVE
 
Iconography
Their second day in Boston, after their very last tour performance, Trip woke and thought his room was on fire.
They were staying at a church-owned hostel near Cambridge. The rooms were spare but many-windowed, the obsolete unfiltered arches facing southeast across the Charles River. Trip’s bedside cabinet held furled copies of
Guideposts
,
The Screwtape Letters
, a tiny book of meditations. The only television was in the common room downstairs, beneath a framed photograph of the president. And a hostel prefect at the inaugural ball held by the Christian Majority Alliance/United We Stand for Freedom. The television, when it worked, was tuned to JC-1, so that now and then Trip heard his own voice echoing from downstairs. The entire house had an agreeably antiseptic smell, not the cloying sweetness of Viconix but the old-fashioned scents of pine deodorizer and ammonia. Trip’s bed was narrow, the coverings clean and cool and white. It all made him think of the single summer he had gone to camp down in Union, Maine, before his father died. The night after his performance he lay in bed with his eyes closed and tried to project himself back to Alford Lake, with loons wailing instead of sirens, water lapping softly at Old Town canoes and Sunfish.
It didn’t work. Instead a dream of burning desert sand edged Trip into wakefulness. He blinked, staring confusedly at the tiny room. Suddenly he sat bolt upright.
“What the—!!”
Flaming columns rose from floor to ceiling. They flickered from crimson to gold to the lambent white of an empty IT disc. With a cry Trip started for the door, then stopped.
The room was filled not with flames but light, so brilliant he had to shade his eyes. Even the floor glowed, plain pine burnished to molten bronze. From the corridor he could hear excited voices.
“What is it?” Trip asked breathlessly as he opened the door. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Jerry Disney yawned, running a hand across his shaven forehead. He was standing with one of the hostel’s prefects still in her bathrobe. “The glimmering. Sunspots or whatever it does. Everything’s down again. Go back to bed.” He turned and shuffled down the hall to his room.
“Robert’s checking on his shortwave.” The prefect was more excited than Jerry, her face rose pink in the shifting light. “I mean, it’s four A.M., and it looks like broad daylight! Isn’t this terrible? Last month we were without electricity for almost a
week
. Did you all get that?”
Trip shook his head. “We were in Dallas. But I heard about it.”
“Were you supposed to leave today?”
“Tonight, I think.”
“Well, don’t bother packing. I’ll let you know if Robert patches into any news.” They were stranded for a week. Power was disrupted across the entire northern hemisphere, knocking out computer networks, satellite links, airports from Greenland to Norfolk. The oceanic system of telecom cables was already weakened by an increase in volcanic activity since the Ross Ice Shelf disaster. Now the increased demands for power crippled it still further. Communications were scrambled worldwide. Several air crashes occurred, as the shift in the magnetic field played havoc with automatic flight systems. There were riots on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. In Durham, New Hampshire, seventeen people died in the city hospital when emergency generators failed. Outbreaks of
E. coli
bacteria left dozens of children dead; in Boston, the National Guard had to assist the Red Cross in getting potable water to the South Side.
Word of the extent of the disaster gradually filtered into the hostel in Cambridge, where they made do with camping equipment left over from happier times. Coleman stoves and lanterns, wool blankets and water purification kits for what they could hand-carry from the green and viscous Charles. Except for a few group forays to the river, Lucius Chappell made the tour members stay inside—he was terrified of riots.
“Scared shitless of Negroes and
fellahin
,” sniffed Jerry Disney. He looked over at Trip and grinned. “Probably thinks
you’ll
just book.”
By Thursday rudimentary power was restored in some places. At the hostel they still ate by candlelight, working their way though canned soups, canned beans, freeze-dried pasta dinners. Now the only television station they could pick up was an equal-access cable hookup from MIT, staffed mostly by wild-eyed cranks who could be glimpsed inhaling bluish powder on camera.
“Boil water, avoid brownouts, stay indoors, don’t run that A/C, folks,” a girl said, giggling as she read from a torn page. She glanced at a bearded young man beside her who was shouting into a cell phone. “A/C. What’s that?”
“Air conditioning,” he replied.
“Jesus, air conditioning!” She twirled a plastic Frank Sinatra mask, knocking over a bottle of diet soda and registering more alarm than she had while reporting a fire downtown that had killed six people. “
Shit!
That was my LAST ONE—”
Through it all, Trip seldom ventured from his room. He slept with a towel over his eyes, to shield them from the glowing crimson ribbons streaming down through the windows day and night. His dreams were troubled. He wanted to dream of Alford Lake. He wanted to dream of the blond girl. He never did, but he thought about her constantly, masturbating even though it left him feeling more depleted and depressed than ever. When they left Stamford, he’d crammed a small canvas bag with lilac blossoms. The flowers had since crumbled into brown fragments, but they retained a sweet faint smell. Hour after hour he lay in bed, pressing handfuls of perfumed dust against his face as he tried to summon up the girl’s wan image, her twilight eyes. He refused meals and company, pleading sickness; but John Drinkwater at least wasn’t fooled.
“You want to talk?” he asked once, standing in Trip’s doorway and staring worriedly at the pale figure hunched beneath the blankets.
“No. Tired, that’s all.” Trip thought of his mother, saying the same thing over and over in the months following his father’s suicide. When she finally got out of bed it was to go to Roque Beach and the whirlpool at Hell Head. “I think maybe I need some time off from touring.”
John gave a short laugh. “Well, you’re getting it. But Peggy said she thinks she can get a doctor to come by tomorrow, someone with the church—”
“I’m
fine
. I told you, I’m just tired—”
John stared at him measuringly. “Well, I hope so. God forbid you got something from that guy at the airport—”
“You don’t get petra virus that way. Look—”
“Forget it.” John turned to go. “But if you
want
to talk to someone—well, you don’t have to talk to
me
. There’s Peggy, or Robert. And the minister’s coming by tonight. Just keep it in mind, okay?”
Trip forced a smile. “Okay.” When John left he burrowed deeper into his bed, his legs and chest and groin matted with dead lilacs.
By the weekend, a few airports were open, accommodating those passengers (and airline crews) willing to risk traveling. Jerry and the other band members were impatient to leave. Even Trip was ready. But John Drinkwater refused.
“You guys crazy? It’s going to be a madhouse at Logan, might as well wait a few days until things ease up. We’re just going home, so relax, okay? Pretend you’re on retreat.”
“More like freaking house arrest,” Jerry muttered, and for once Trip nodded in agreement.
The next morning Trip got a phone call. On his private number; it woke him, and he had to dig through mounds of sheets until he found his phone.
“Yeah?” he said guardedly.
“Trip, Nellie Candry—”
A flash of panic: she knew! The girl had told her—
“—how you kids doing up there?” Her cheerful voice sounded impossibly small and far away, a ladybug’s voice.
“Uh—we’re fine. I mean, the same as everyone, I guess.” He moved around the room in hopes of improving the reception. “How’d you find me?”
“Remember? You gave me the number. At the hotel that night—”
“I mean how’d you find me
here
. We haven’t been able to talk to anyone—”
Her laughter tinkled from the phone. “Sweetie! I’m GFI—we talk to
Elvis
! We
never
shut down! But listen—you’re in Cambridge, right? By MIT?”
“Uh, yeah,” Trip said warily. “I think.”
“Well, I need you to go there. I’ve set something up for you—they have a studio, they’re like the only people who’ve managed to stay up all week. Did Ray Venuto get in touch with you?”
“Who?”
“Our contracts lawyer. He was supposed to fax you—”
“No. I mean, it’s a mess up here. Hardly anyone’s been able to call in or out.”
Pause. Then, “Well, okay, that’s okay. I still think we can swing this. We’ve got Legal behind us, in case there’s any question. But probably you shouldn’t talk this up yet, ’cause it’s just gonna be you. I mean they don’t want the rest of the band, not this time.
Capisce
? I want
you
to go to MIT, Trip: just you. The studio’s at the Atkinson Center, I have no idea where that is, but I’m sure somebody can get you there—”
Trip stared bewildered out the window. “What? When?”
“This afternoon.”
“But I don’t understand. I mean, I can’t do a recording without a band. Plus there’s no power up here, not for stuff like that—”
“Believe me, sweetie, the world could end and MIT would not lose power. They siphon off the grid: as long as
someone’s
got power, somewhere, they’re okay. And it’s not a video. It’s an IT studio. Since you haven’t actually signed the contracts yet we’ll call it an independent demo, just in case anyone gives us a hard time later—”
Trip shook his head, a little desperately. “But—”
“But they won’t! I
promise
you they won’t.” Nellie’s voice faded into static. Relief flooded him, but after a moment she was back, her tone lower now, conspiratorial.
“Listen, Trip—the truth is I ran into Leonard Thrope the other day, down at Hellgate. I told him you were signing on, and he got real excited, I mean I haven’t seen him so psyched about something for a while. I told him I wanted you to do an IT and he told me about the studio at MIT; he’s friends with some guy there and he wants to shoot you, Trip! An icon and some stills, I mean, can you believe it? Leonard fucking
Thrope!
”
Trip bit his thumb. “Who’s Leonard Thrope?”
“What, they keep you guys under a news blackout?” Nellie laughed. “Actually, Leonard Thrope is probably not your basic Xian poster boy. He’s a very,
very
famous photographer—he founded the mori school, you’ve heard of that, right?”
Trip grimaced. “That guy who makes movies of dead people?”
“
Mors Ultima.
Yeah, that was Leonard. But he does other stuff, too, fashion shoots, a lot of stuff for private patrons. He’s on Radium all the time, you
must
have seen his stuff—”

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