I Am the Messenger (20 page)

Apparently, we won the game, and there’s a victory party at big Merv’s place. Marv rings me in the evening and orders me to go since everyone voted me best player for ironing out old Mimi.

“You have to, Ed.”

So I go.

Again, I stop by at Audrey’s on the way but she’s not there. I assume she’s out with the boyfriend. It almost turns me off going to Merv’s, but I find my way there and go in.

No one recognizes me.

No one speaks to me.

At first, I can’t even find Marv, but he locates me later on the front porch.

“You made it. How you feeling?”

I look at my friend and say, “Better than ever.” Behind us, we can hear the drunk people yelling and yahooing, and there are people in the front bedroom doing what people do there.

We sit awhile, and Marv describes the later events of the game to me. He wonders where I disappeared to, but I only tell him that I felt sick and couldn’t go on. We talk at length about the hit I put on Mimi.

“It was glorious,” Marv confides.

“Why, thank you.” I try to push the edges of guilt back to my stomach. I still feel for him, or her, or whatever.

After another ten minutes or so, I detect that Marv might want to head back inside.

In my pocket, I have the new card.

Ace of Spades.

It makes me look deeper into the street, trying to find the future events in store. I’m happy.

“What?” Marv asks. “What are you grinning at, bore?”
Bore,
I think, and we both laugh and connect for a moment. “Come on,” Marv goes on. “What is it, Ed?”

“Time for digging,” I say, and walk off the porch. “I have to go, Marv. Sorry. I’ll see you later.”

I feel bad because all I ever seem to do is walk away from Marv these days. Tonight, he allows me some room. I think he finally understands that what’s important to him doesn’t have to be to me.

“Bye, Ed,” he says, and I can tell by his voice. He’s happy enough.

The night’s dark but lovely, and I walk home. At one point I stop under a blinking streetlight and examine the Ace of Spades again. I’d already looked at it several times, at home and on Merv’s front porch. I’m most confused about the choice of suit because I’d expected hearts. Hearts would have followed a red-black pattern, and I thought spades, being the most dangerous-looking suit, would be last.

The card has three names on it:

Graham Greene

Morris West

Sylvia Plath

The names are familiar, although I’m not too sure why. They’re nobody I know, but I’ve heard of them. Definitely. When I arrive home I look them up in the local phone book and there’s a Greene and a few Wests but none with a
G
or an
M
before it. Still, there might be other people at those addresses with those names. I make up my mind that I have to travel the town tomorrow.

I relax in the lounge room with the Doorman. I’ve made chips in the oven, and we share them. I can feel my body developing some extra soreness from the Sledge Game, and by midnight I can barely move. The Doorman’s at my feet and I sit there, waiting for sleep.

My head rolls back.

The Ace of Spades slips from my hand to a crack in the couch.

I dream.

It’s a long night, where I’m trapped inside a dreamworld and can’t decipher whether I’m awake or asleep. When I wake up near morning, I’m still in the Sledge Game, and I’m chasing the woman who brought the card and arguing with the kid. Bargaining.

Later, I dream that I’m in school again, but no one else is there. It’s only me, and the air in the classroom is dusty yellow. I’m sitting there with books strewn on the desk and words on the board. The words are in running writing, and I can’t decipher them.

A woman walks in.

A teacher with long skinny legs, black skirt, white blouse, and purple cardigan. She’s nearly fifty but sexy in some way. She ignores me for the most part, until a bell rings, loudly, as if it’s right outside the room. That’s the first time she even acknowledges my existence.

She looks up.

“Time to start, Ed.”

I’m ready. “Yes?”

“Could you read the words behind me please?”

“I can’t.”

“Why in God’s name not?”

I focus harder on the words but still can’t make them out.

She’s shaking her head at me now. I don’t see it but feel the disappointment as I glue my eyes to the desk. I stare for a long time and actually feel upset that I’ve let this woman down.

A few minutes later.

I hear it.

A whipping noise followed by some creaking reaches into my ears.

I look up, and what greets my sight is a shock. It boots the breath from my lungs—the teacher is hanging from a rope in front of the blackboard.

She’s dead.

She swings.

The ceiling’s gone and the rope is tied tightly around one of the rafters.

Horrified, I sit there, suffocating on air that seems to have no oxygen as I breathe it frantically in. My hands stick to the table, so much that I need to pry them off when I stand up and attempt to run out for help. My right hand hits the door handle when, slowly, I stop and turn again to the woman hanging from the rope.

Slow.

Almost creeping.

I walk over to face her.

Just when I think she looks even vaguely peaceful, her eyes shock open and she speaks.

It’s strangled and coarse, her voice.

“Recognize the words now, Ed?” she says, and I’m left standing there, looking beyond her at the board. Now I see the title at the top and understand what it says:

“Barren Woman.”

That’s when the body tumbles to the floor at my feet, and I wake.

Now it’s the Doorman at my feet, and the dusty yellow air is in the lounge room from the rising sun outside.

The dream lunges at me a few seconds after I open my eyes and I see the woman, the words, and the title again. I feel her falling at my feet and hear what she said.
Recognize the words now, Ed?

“‘Barren Woman,’” I whisper.

I know I’ve heard it before. In fact, I know I’ve read a poem called “Barren Woman.” I read it in school because I had a depressed English teacher. She loved that poem, and I recall some of the lines even today. Words like “the least footfall” and “museum without statues” and comparing her life to a fountain that rises and falls back into itself.

“Barren Woman.”

“Barren Woman.”

I rise fast when it comes to me. I nearly trip over the Doorman, who, by the way, is not impressed. He gives me a look of
You just woke me, pal
.

“‘Barren Woman,’” I tell him.

So what?

I repeat the title, and this time I grab him joyously by the snout because now I know the answer to the Ace of Spades. Or at least I’m on the way.

The poem “Barren Woman” was written by a woman who committed suicide, and I’m pretty sure of it—her name was Sylvia Plath.

I search the couch for the card and see her name again, third on the list.
They’re writers,
I think.
They’re all writers
. Graham Greene, Morris West, and Sylvia Plath. It surprises me that I’ve never heard of the first two, but then you can’t know of everyone who ever wrote a book. But I know for sure about Sylvia. We’re even on a first-name basis now. That’s how proud of myself I am.

I rejoice in the moment for quite a while, feeling like I’ve unlocked some great mystery by accident. I’m incredibly stiff now and my ribs are killing me, but I’m still able to eat cereal with milk that’s dubious, to say the least, and loads of sugar.

It’s around seven-thirty when I discover that I’ve only solved part of the problem. I still have no idea where I have to go or what messages I need to deliver.

I’ll start at the library,
I think. It’s a shame it’s Sunday. It won’t open till later.

Audrey comes over.

We watch a movie she highly recommends.

It’s good.

I refrain from asking where she was last night.

I tell her about the spades, the names, and that I’m heading over to the library in the afternoon. I’m pretty sure it’s open on Sunday between twelve and four.

When she drinks the coffee I made, I look at the redness of her lips and wish I could just stand up, walk over, and kiss them. I want to feel the flesh of them and the softness against my own. I want to breathe in her and
with
her. I want to be able to put my teeth to her neck and have my fingers touch her back and run them through the lovely, mild yellow color of her hair.

Honestly.

I don’t know what it is this morning.

But soon I understand why I feel like this—I
deserve
something. I’m going around fixing people’s lives, even just for a moment or two. I’m hurting people that need hurting, when inflicting pain goes against everything that comes naturally to me.

I at least deserve
something, I reason.
Audrey could love me just for a second, surely.
But I know. Without doubt, I know nothing will happen. She won’t kiss me. She’ll barely touch me. I’m running all over town, getting trodden on, beaten up, abused, and for what? What do I get out of it? What’s in it for Ed Kennedy?

I’ll tell you what.

Nothing.

But I’m lying.

I’m lying, and I vow, right this instant, to stop. I’ve been through all this and thought I’d really turned a corner after the Ace of Clubs.

I stop.

Stop everything.

And I do something stupid.

I stand up completely on impulse and walk over to Audrey and kiss her on the mouth. I feel the red lips and the flesh and the air inside her, and with my eyes closed I feel her for just a second. I feel all of her and it rushes past me. Through me and past me and over me and I’m hot and cold and shivering and shot down.

I’m shot down by the sound of my mouth slipping away from hers till silence staggers between us.

I taste blood.

Then I see blood on Audrey’s lips that are on Audrey’s surprised face.

God, I couldn’t even kiss her properly. I couldn’t do it without opening up and bleeding on her.

I close my eyes.

I clench them shut.

Soon I stop everything and say, “I’m sorry, Audrey.” I turn away. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m…” And the words stop now, too. They cut themselves down before it’s too late, and the two of us stand in the kitchen.

We both have blood on our lips.

She doesn’t want to feel that way about me, and I can accept that, but I wonder if she’ll ever know that no one will love her as hard as I do. She wipes the blood from her mouth, and I say again how sorry I am. Audrey is as gracious as ever and takes the apology, explaining that she just can’t do that sort of thing with me. I think she’d rather do it without any meaning or truth. Just what it is, without the risk of any of that. If she doesn’t
want
love from anyone, I have to respect that.

“Don’t worry, Ed,” she says, and she means it.

One great thing is that Audrey and I are always okay. Somehow, we manage it. It doesn’t seem to matter what happens. I consider this fact for a moment, and to be perfectly honest, I wonder how long it can possibly last. Surely not forever.

“Give us a smile, Ed,” she says later, when she’s leaving.

I can’t help it.

I give her one.

“Good luck with the spades,” she says.

“Thanks.”

The door closes.

It’s nearly twelve now, and I put on my shoes and head for the library. I still feel stupid.