The Delphi Room (22 page)

Alfalfa. That was the only word to describe the remaining sprouts of white-blonde hair that dotted my skull. Interesting it was, to see one’s skull for the first time, the shape and texture of it, its secret marks and bulges. I noted an infant’s pliability, a delicate doughiness.

Though my lack of hair may have made them more striking, there could be no doubt: my eyes were huge, much bigger than any drugstore kohl pencil had ever made them appear. It was as if the rims were drawing back, and the other-planetary aquarium-blue was ever more revealed. I was becoming E.T.

The voices had stopped, but bursts of static now and then displaced the quietness, jolting me and reminding me of the times Davie and I had sat at the beach at night, in his falling-apart car, watching the moon disturb the tide and listening to music on his terrible radio. The static in the room sounded just like that radio, but it didn’t come with any songs.

I crawled under the bed and pressed my hand to the grate.

V: You’re not a murderer, get that through your bald head. You put her out of her misery, which is more than I would have done, and sent her off right with chow mein and fortune cookies. Will you press your hand to the grate? My hand is here, and I want us to be palm to palm, as it were, for a moment.

B: I am right here, and because I can see you so clearly in my mind, I can feel you. There are coloured lights outside my window.

V: I don’t have any lights. What colours?

B: Every colour. And some—I do not think I can name them.

V: You’ve never seen them before?

B: They are impossible to describe. It is every colour we have known, and others we have not, all swirling together. A sight that makes a regular sunset wan by compare.

V: A sunset on acid.

B: So beautiful it hurts.

V: I’m not beautiful. The oldest infant I’ve ever seen, or the youngest old person. Bald, an alien.

B: So am I, and shrunken. Clara would be horrified at the sight of me.

V: I think I look kind of interesting and probably so do you. Frightening, but interesting.

B: I have the sense that we are dissolving. Perhaps I will join the colours outside.

V: Don’t leave me.

B: I won’t.

V: Promise me.

B: I promise.

V: I am a selfish woman.

B: You’re not selfish. Who wants to be alone? I was mostly alone, but I had Clara, and she was enough for me. Alone with Clara Bow, I am okay.

V: I wish I’d met you back in life. You get me. You know how terrifying the Shadowman is. I wouldn’t have been lonely if I’d known you.

B: If the Shadowman comes back, tell him I will break his face.

V: I will. That’s comforting.

B: I feel brave, all of a sudden. What a nice feeling.

V: I should’ve been braver. Maybe if the Shadowman comes back, I will be.

B: I am certain of it.

V: How kind of you to say.

B: You are most welcome.

Lying under the bed, I ran a hand over my head. The last sprouted-grain tufts of hair came off, floated down onto the carpet. It was easier to experience such a thing in the relative dark. Skull so smooth, a warm orb under my hand. My arms and legs were satiny too, and I thought of the hundred dollars I had saved, back in my other life, hidden in the top drawer of my writing desk, to be allocated to my laser hair removal fund.

Voices fluttered in and out of the room, moths that flitted off as soon as you could almost understand them. Females mostly, but sometimes a male. The same male, I suspected.

Angels crossed my mind, but then I realized that if this was Hell they were automatically out of the picture. And, anyway, none of the sound clips I had managed to decipher lately—
blood, eat, colour, pressure
—resonated much like I imagined celestial-speak would. And angels ought to unlock the damn door and come inside, not stand in the ether sending coded messages.

I felt safer under the bed than in any other part of the room, a child in body, drawn up in a fetal curve. Pieces of torn paper were spread around me like large, dry snowflakes. Face to the grate, Tiny Tim outside a toy store.

V: So do you still think we’re in the process of being reincarnated?

B: I do hope we look this terrible for a good reason.

V: I don’t mean you return as a goat or some species of insect.

B: I know. Unless the Buddhists are correct. In which case I am about to sprout a tail. I hope we meet. And I hope I see Clara again. I miss her.

V: Maybe you’ll make new friends that aren’t time travellers. You deserve to have lots of friends.

B: So do you. But I think that we are different from other people. Which makes it hard to have lots of friends.

V: But maybe next time we would fit in. Do we really want to be dropped off—back into life?

B: Of course. That is an endless—omnipresent—hunger.

V: Why—God is a recidivist?

B: We are.

V: Yes. And now we’re here.

B: God must hate me. I hate me. My mother hated me. The only person who loved me was Clara Bow.

V: And now me! No God I could ever know is capable of hating you. And while I have not been blessed with any sign of hope—except for your letters, which, when I think of it, should be enough—the same can’t be said of you. The colours at your window—a surprise hope.

B: True.

V: I’m still waiting for my damn colours. Desperately trying to conjure Rainbow Brite.

B: When will I be taken back to where I came from, in the beginning?

V: You promised not to leave me.

B: We will go together.

V: What about your mother in the mirror? Illusion?

B: I am hoping so.

V: You think this is temporary, then? A waiting room.

B: Perhaps. A man of mercurial moods, am I.

V: If you had lived, what would you have done?

B: I don’t understand.

V: What would you have done with your life?

B: I always wanted to go to Coney Island. Clara Bow worked at a hot dog stand there when she was a teenager.

V: Anything else?

B: I would have liked to run a little shop, in truth. A shop that sold movie memorabilia, and household items with a cinematic twist.
Nosferatu
lunchboxes,
The Sheik
hairdryers,
Casablanca
place mats. Of course, my favourite item would have been the
Children of Divorce
mouse pad, a tribute to Clara. But Clara does not compare to you. I admire you, Velvet.

V: You admire a suicide?

B: No, I admire you. You are very brave. The Shadowman is terrifying.

V: Thanks. But I’m still a suicide. He got me in the end.

B: Some cultures consider suicide a noble act.

V: You are better than I, Brinkley. What I did was not an act of love.

B: Not better, the same. What I did was not an act of love either. I did not really want to set my mother free, I wanted to set myself free.

V: We all need someone to get lost with, right? And a roadside attraction at which to ask for directions. Maybe you’re that person for me.

B: You’re that person for me too.

V: Wouldn’t all this make an amazing novel?

B: ’Twould put my Harlequin romance to shame.

A volley of voices broke through the static.

V: Can you hear that?

B: I hear the sound of a lawnmower. And someone is reading. Dostoevsky, I think.

V: I heard: “Don’t forget to wash her feet.” And: “What a beautiful day!” I miss the sound of lawnmowers.

B: They’re reading
Crime and Punishment
. A Judgment on me?

V: Then the Judgment will be for us both.

B: Could our mirrors be oracles? If so, then is your life my future? Please let it be so, not my mother’s angry face.

V: Yes, oracles of the past—modern Greek tragedy, sans poetry, and with some lovely costumes. We’re in
The Delphi Room
.

B: Most definitely someone is reading from
Crime and Punishment
. A woman. She does not sound threatening. But under such circumstances—could be taken as last rites before eternal flames.

V: If we were going to be flambéed, it would’ve happened already. There will be no forever of flames. You’re stuck with me forever.

B: Good. That makes me believe in a God . . .