The Experiment of Dreams (16 page)

“I hope you two understand the importance of the task I gave you. Kalispell Industries must produce Lucy. The company’s name is at stake. The company my father began, and which my brother and I now run, it is my father’s name; it is his legacy. It is my own name, and it will be my legacy. I will not see it tainted by failure. Lucy is the future of Kalispell Industries; it is what will live on long after all of us are dead.

“You are part of this, Iain, Michael. You helped create Lucy, and now you must help protect it. You must work very carefully; there is no room for doubt or error. Your decisions must be carefully thought-out and absolute. Iain, I give you and your men complete authority to do whatever is necessary to resolve this situation, no matter how it dirties your hands. I will wash them clean. We cannot afford to let this project come crashing down on us. All of our livelihoods are at stake. The production of Lucy is going to be a huge monetary gain not just for myself, but for you two as well. I assure you.”

He paused and the air grew still.

“That will be all.”

Iain and Michael stacked the papers and folders, and snapped the clasps of their briefcases shut. They left Mr. Kalispell’s office without uttering a word or making a sound, closing the door behind them. Halfway down the hallway, Michael let out a sigh and Iain put a finger between his neck and collar.

“You look pale,” Iain said.
Not to mention fat. Soft.

“I wasn’t expecting this—another incident, another setback. Everything was going great this time.”

Iain forced a nervous laugh. “We’ll figure it out, Mike. We did before. We always do. Things could be worse.”

“Yeah, we could be back in Afghanistan.”

“Come on now, this is nothing like Afghanistan, Michael. This may be worse.”

“Why do you have two of the same painting?” Sophia held the unframed painting of the cabin in the woods, raising it up to the identical copy that hung from the wall.

Ben didn’t feel like explaining.

“They look identical.”

Ben was in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine and unwrapping a piece of incredibly soft Camembert cheese that Sophia had snuck in her baggage. Sophia knew Emily’s story as well as Ben could tell it, and occasionally Ben was open to discussing it further. Today was not one of those days. Sophia knew the subject was painful, so she never pushed the conversation.

“It’s, a … Emily painted it. Many years ago.”

He came out of the kitchen holding two glasses of wine.

Sophia stood next to the painting, her hair tied high in the back, and for a moment it was not black but brown and curly. Her long thin body turned curvy around the hips. He saw Emily standing there with her back to him, looking at the painting, holding it up by the edges of the frame. They were back in the studio, his old house and life. She stood from her stool, the painting complete, and Ben at the doorway. She didn’t hear him, she didn’t see him, and he stood there watching her as she gazed upon her finished painting, holding it up to the light. Then he shifted, leaned his body against the doorframe, and made a noise. Her paint-freckled face turned, startled …

“
Emily
…” Wine circled in the glasses, jumping out over rims.

“What?” Sophia turned and her face was hers, Sophia Lorenz. Her hair was straight and black, her body thin and delicate, and they were in his apartment in Fells Point, Maryland. Ben shook his head. He put the glasses on the coffee table and went to get a napkin.

“What? Nothing. I’m sorry. Emily painted that years ago.”

Sophia looked at the painting on the wall, then at the other in her hands.

“They are so identical,” Sophia whispered to herself. “Why—
how
—did she paint it twice?”

She put the copy down.

“It’s very good,” she said.

Despite their plans to travel while Sophia was visiting—go to Manhattan, or see the shore at Ocean City—they spent most of their time in Ben’s apartment, drinking wine and talking and laughing.

The days flew by, and before Ben knew it, he was back at the airport. He stood at the terminal, watching her off, waving as she disappeared toward her gate. He was grateful at having just spent a few days with her, but felt deep reluctance to see her go.

He parallel parked on his street, again not noticing that the dark Lincoln Town Car, which had tailed him the entire time Sophia visited, was now passing him as he walked toward his door. The delivery van he’d seen parked on the block dozens of times, for months now, was parked right before his apartment. Rose’s Roses, or something. Catchy. He didn’t give it a second thought.

He climbed the stairs to his apartment and opened a bottle of whiskey once inside. That feeling arose in him, the numb pleasure that could only be achieved through alcohol and dwelling on the past. That feeling of both pleasure and pain that felt so damn good. Ben sipped the whiskey and his body flushed, sending warmth coursing through his veins, pulsating pleasure from his stomach to the corners of his body.

No matter how detrimental this sort of behavior was, drinking and dwelling on the past was Ben’s way to relieve his immediate pain and suffering. He knew it was unhealthy and addictive, but it felt great to wallow and cry. It numbed the pain and made him feel both better and worse. Stopping the experience was unfathomable. No matter how many mornings he woke up hung-over, promising himself,
No more booze. From here on out, I’ll never touch the stuff again. I’ll stop dwelling on Emily,
he would only stay sober for a day, maybe two. He could not stop torturing himself with memories both real and imagined. It was a temporary cure for a long-term illness, and it prevented him from healing properly. It kept his wounds fresh and painful, and that was something Ben found hard to admit.

In one gulp he finished the glass and poured another.

After some time, he stood from the couch and walked to the painting. A light wind blew from the open window nearby, moving the thin curtains rhythmically. The breeze felt cool on his skin.

There it was. The cabin. Same as the day it was painted. It would stand the test of time. It would exist longer than he, and perhaps one day end up in a yard sale—or maybe a dumpster—but it would still be intact long after he was dead.

The breeze blew over Ben’s face, over the swirls of paint in the sky, the blues and oranges and yellows, the whites … and …

Wait …

The paint … it moved with the wind … the colors swayed and swirled with the breeze. The smoke from the chimney, brown and grey, rose in the sky to dissipate with the oranges and blues. The bushes and trees swayed, and the grass moved like waves in an ocean.

The painting—it was different.
How is it …
? Ben looked away, blinking rapidly. His hand twitched and a significant wave of whiskey splashed over the rim of the glass, falling over his fingers to the floor.

He looked back at the painting. The oils on the canvas swirled much faster now. The clouds rolled in the sky, bright and incredibly vibrant, as if he were watching a time-lapse video. Whites and blues swirled with oranges and reds. A turbulent world, despite the sunny blue sky. Ben stared, entranced, his mind becoming numb with radiant pleasure. His thoughts lost. He fixated as the swirling paint entranced him in hypnotic rapture …

… and then …

he …

… touched the painting—the canvas—his face only inches away, his finger just gracing the swirling sky. It was cool along the surface, and soft. The top layer rebounded at his touch, resistant, like the skin on pudding. He pushed harder, and his finger penetrated the soft skin of the paint, popping through, sinking to the first knuckle and then to the second.

The paint was warm underneath, another world entirely, and it swirled rhythmically over his hand, now up to the wrist and inching higher the more he pushed into it. His forearm, lost forever in the flowing sea of paint, his flesh and bones melting, becoming the paint, swaying and churning.

His mind went blank, stopped processing basic thoughts—or any thoughts at all. He felt numb pleasure and nothing else. He wanted to be inside the painting, enveloped by the warmth. The paint moved outward from the wall like something alive, cupped over his shoulder in a warm embrace, and guided him in. His other hand grew weak, and the glass of whiskey fell to the ground, shattering silently in a circle around his feet.

There was no noise.

The room was a void of reality and time. The image of the cabin stayed on the painting all the while, enlarging, stretching and contorting to engulf his body. Sunlight and clouds swirled together against the canvas of blue sky: oranges, whites, blues—always swirling, always changing—as it enveloped him. The paint guided him in, gently, reassuringly. It crept over his shoulder blade, stretching toward the square of his back like something alive. His nose touched the cool outer layer, slightly resistant like the skin on pudding about to break …

Wait
…

A voice spoke to him from somewhere else:
This isn’t real, Ben. This isn’t real. Look around you.

He pulled his nose off the warm outer layer of the paint and looked over his shoulder. The apartment was his, but the kitchen—it was larger than it should be … and the couch and lamps, they were different. Everything was hazy, as if a layer of steam sat heavy in the air.

I’m dreaming.

He looked back to the painting, next to his enveloped arm, the swirls so vivid and bright. The door of the cabin began to open an inch before the pupil of his right eye, making a creaking sound that broke the stillness of the room. He looked back and forth between the painting and the room, and each time the room behind him changed ever so slightly—the kitchen counter a different color and the walls shifting in size and proportion.

Than all at once, everything changed. He felt like he was on a rollercoaster, his stomach fluttering, his head spinning, his body going a hundred miles an hour just standing there. Blurs of color streaked by in circular arrays. He clenched his eyes shut. He wanted to scream, but the only sound he made was a quiet,
Hhhmphhh
.

And just as suddenly as it began, the sensation stopped. His mind and body went back to being stationary. He blinked his eyes open. The room was not his apartment anymore; it was the studio in his old house—Emily’s studio. He blinked several times, fluttering his eyelids. His eyes were wet. The room stayed physically the same, yet was becoming brighter, more vibrant, with each passing second. The film of haze over his vision cleared, the steam in the room dissipated, and he could see the room as it was—as it is. A drop-cloth spread over the floor like a carpet, with Emily’s easel at the very center. It was dark outside the wall-size windows, and the glass was black and reflective.

The painting still embraced Ben’s arm, up to his shoulder, his hand departed to some other dimension. And then the world began to spin again in endless loops. His eyes fluttered closed, and when he opened them, he was laying on his back, the drop-cloth beneath him, and warm tears streaking down his face.

A person sat on his chest, laughed a muffled laugh while pinning his arms to the ground. The face was blurred beyond recognition—blank, like a thumb smeared over wet ink. But he knew her voice, could hear Emily’s squeaky laughter behind her obscured words. The smudge of paint on his nose felt warm—hot even. He wanted to scream, “Emily! Emily!” But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He felt his face contort unnaturally, the muscles twitching and flexing.
My god,
he thought,
I’m having a stroke … am I having a stroke?

The blurry face came down, smearing burning hot paint on his cheeks and chin, and laughing, and he felt warm lips touch his own. Fireworks went off in his body, and his blood thumped fierce in his veins.
Where is my body, my real body? Am I twisted on the bed, choking on my blankets? Am I dying?

Ben heard flowing water, then felt warm liquid on his feet, and then his legs, soaking through his pants, making his skin tingle. The liquid spread fast, covering his ears, creeping up his face.

He couldn’t move.

Emily was still on top of him, laughing, and talking, but the words were jumbled beyond recognition. Ben could not turn his head, but in the corner of his eye, he saw his grandmother looming large above him, shaking her head, standing shin deep in a tidal pool of red water. The warm liquid was over his neck, over his stomach, up to his chin. It was touching his lips, tickling his nose.

“G-g-grandma!”

The liquid covered his lips, and his breathing became fast, nearing panic levels. It splashed in his nostrils and he huffed it out in horror. It covered his eyes, red as blood, and then it covered his face entirely. All Ben could see through the red haze was the outline of Emily, still playing around on top of him, still laughing and mumbling words. And then he couldn’t see or hear anything at all. He held his breath, with his heart thrashing against his ribcage.

It might have been an eternity that he was submerged, drowning, and he could only hold his breath a second more. His lungs and head felt ready to burst.

Then he opened his mouth and the fluid raced down his throat, shooting down his esophagus. It was like breathing in broken glass.

Ben began twitching his head like he taught himself to do, and immediately the room around him vanished to absolute darkness, as if sucked away by a vacuum. He was still deep down, lost somewhere inside himself, and he continued to twitch his head. The horizon quickly became brighter, like a train coming out of a tunnel.

His eyes darted open. He was staring up at the slow moving ceiling fan blades going around and around above his bed.

Holy hell.

He sat on the edge of the bed. It was still dark, but the appearance of blue out the window suggested morning was near. His mattress was soaked with sweat, and the air was thick with the pungent smell of sleep.

Ben shuffled to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and urinated for a long time. Thick waves of delta were still being produced in Ben’s brain, and he felt wobbly, almost hallucinatory. He stood over the sink and splashed handfuls of cold water over his face. His mind throbbed.

Jesus … what a dream.

The best thing to do, he thought, would be to go back to sleep. His eyes were so heavy that he saw floaters in his vision—little blue spots, sometimes white, that suddenly appeared, moved around, and then fizzled into thin air. The sun was nearly up, and the sweet morning air came filtering in through the blinds. Instead of going back to sleep, he made coffee. He walked over to the painting. He was afraid to look at it, but he did anyway. And there it was: the cabin in the woods. Snow was on the ground, and the paint remained solid and dry on the canvas, cracked in spots. Just like it should.

Relief washed over him; obviously, the painting was not going to come to life before his very eyes as it had in his dream.

The painting looked the same as always … except, Ben squinted, moving his face closer. He knew every square inch of that painting by heart—by memory; he could read it with his fingers like brail. That little white spot should not be there.

“Sophia, you better not have smudged—”

Then there was another white spot and another, and they floated down the canvas.
It must be the floaters,
he thought, and closed his eyes. Occasionally—and especially when he was very tired—Ben got white floaters in his vision that streaked across his eyes, from the top going down, like bright shooting stars. Dr. Stuart Wright told him they were nothing to worry about, as long as they did not happen very often. It was not a torn retina or anything serious. This time, as he closed his eyes, they disappeared. But when he opened his eyes again, the white spots were still on the canvas.

It was snowing.

A wind blew. Ben could feel it against his face, but not from the window. It came from the painting. The air was frigid. His breath clouded as it neared the canvas, and little white flecks came trickling over the frame, blowing outward onto his face and skin, and melting away to little wet dots. The painting came fully to life before his eyes: the dry paints were now fluid and wet, swirling among each other to form a three-dimensional reality, just as in the dream.