GLASS SOUP Page 15

  At the terrifying center of that last nightmare was Sunday Suits. Haden had no idea where its strange name came from. But here it was again, gliding past him toward Mr. Nabisco.

  “Wuzzup, Haden? Got a little business to take care of here.” Its voice was low and seductive, confident. “Stick around though—I want to talk to you after I’m done.”

  I want to talk to you… The phrase was like a finger jabbed in his eye.

  The monster moved on to Mr. Nabisco and without pausing, wrapped itself entirely around him and began to squeeze. The man didn’t even have a chance to run. A snake coils around its prey. Sunday Suits, Haden’s last dream beast, was much worse than any snake.

  The teacher’s Beatles hair whipped back and forth as he tried frantically to free himself to breathe, to get air into his lungs. A strangled dry cry sounding more birdlike than human scratched its way out of his throat.

  Responding to this cry, the students attacked Sunday Suits. From everywhere in the gym they came running. Those closest leapt straight onto it, only to be swatted off as if they were gnats. Fearless, they got up and went right after it again. The ones farther away raced toward the creature with no hesitation. All of this happened so fast that Haden forgot running away and stared, awestruck.

  Kids large and small swarmed the thing, tearing at it, pulling, biting, punching and clawing. Some of them made noise while they did it. One girl kept screaming “Mama!” over and over again in a high mad whine as she stood knee-deep in Sunday Suits, trying like the others to kill it.

  Some were silent, but all of them fought in a violent frenzy to stop it, to destroy it. When the monster realized that they weren’t afraid, weren’t going to give up, and that more and more of them kept coming, it dropped the limp teacher on the ground and turned full force on its attackers.

  There were sixty-two students at the dance. No matter how fearsome Haden’s nightmare creature was, being attacked by sixty-two enraged, fearless, sugar-stoked, adrenaline-pumped twelve- and thirteen-year-olds was a challenge.

  The fight was fierce but astoundingly even. So many kids ganged up on Sunday Suits at once that it couldn’t focus on any of them and was thrown totally off guard. It was like being attacked by a swarm of five-foot-tall bees. Almost the only effective thing it could do in response was twist and turn and swing its limbs around, trying to knock as many of them away as it could. The problem was for every one that fell, four pounced.

  There were blood and screams. Those it hit or grabbed were doomed, but there were so many of them that it almost didn’t matter. Sixty-two children wanted to slaughter it. Sixty-two children were trying.

  Haden watched as if a brutal car wreck were happening right in front of him. Then he saw the blue mask. The fight was fantastically colorful because most of the kids wore Halloween costumes. There were bursts of jungle green and saffron, silver… all in motion, all at once. But the African mask was such a singular brilliant blue that his eye saw it immediately when it fell. Next he saw Suzy Nichols lifted into the air and snapped back and forth like a flag at the finish line.

  Thirteen-year-old Haden who worshiped Suzy Nichols and was totally unafraid of this creature awoke in him and moved to save her.

  Forty-year-old Haden, terrified of Sunday Suits and so much else, froze.

  He could feel both of his selves pulling powerfully in opposite directions.

  The man knew so much. The boy knew no fear.

  When he felt the other’s scared resistance, the boy stepped out of the man he would some day be and went to save Suzy by himself. But of course that wasn’t possible. Two steps away, energy poured out of him like blood from an artery. He was barely able to turn to the older Haden and wheeze “Help me!”

  The man saw his younger self being brave and magnificent and foolish. But that boy wasn’t him anymore, those qualities were long gone. How many years had passed since he’d been courageous?

  Then he watched as the boy staggered and called for his help. Haden knew he must try and save him. He had to save that brave and hopeful heart.

  While he tried to figure out how to do it, Haden stiffened. Out of the blue he suddenly grasped that the boy and Sunday Suits were here together now. His past self and present nightmare stood together in front of him at the same moment. Forty-year-old Haden was a few feet away from thirteen-year-old Suzy, their eighth-grade classmates, et cetera. All of them were here together—now.

  Haden the man had dreamt about Sunday Suits. Haden the boy had dreamt about being exposed in front of Suzy Nichols. Each of them thought the other’s nightmare was ridiculous. The boy had no fear of Sunday Suits because such a being frightened only adults. And the man thought that a dream about his penis sticking out with a parrot sitting on it like a perch at a school dance was goofy, not shameful.

  “There’s no time here. Everything is right now.”

  At last he understood that in death, time as he had always known and lived it was gone. Beginning, middle, and end were finished. There was only now, but a now comprising every second he had lived. So Haden the man and the boy coexisted now. All the Hadens who had ever been since the moment he was born—their experiences, knowledge, strengths and weaknesses—all of them existed now.

  Without hesitating, Haden willed the boy everything that he was. He gave up owning the moment and handed it freely to his thirteen-year-old self. At once the energy that had bled out of the boy flooded back in. He rose from the floor and with only the briefest look back, moved to join the fight against Sunday Suits.

  It ended very soon after that because none of the children had any fear of this adult nightmare. Grown-ups forget what it is like to have no fear.

  A monster is not a monster if it does not scare you.

  Broximon and Bob the polar bear were sitting in a diner having strawberry frappés when Haden sauntered by outside. Broximon saw him first and slowly slid the straw out of his mouth. Bob saw the surprised look on the little man’s face (Brox stood on the table so that he could drink from the glass which was taller than him, and look at the bear while they talked).

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Check out on the street.” He gestured with his head.

  Bob looked and saw Haden who was wearing an expression that said he’d just won a jackpot. Both silently watched him pass.

  “That was fast.”

  “I told you the man wasn’t dumb.”

  “Yeah, but come on, Brox, that was way too fast. I mean, really…”

  “Sometimes it happens that way, Bob.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “From what I know of Simon Haden, boy and man, he is not a ‘just like that’ guy. It’s more like he needs a road map to find his shoelaces most of the time. How old was he just now? I couldn’t tell.”

  Broximon smiled. “Me neither, but that’s no surprise. He’s probably trying on all his ages again—like they were different clothes. Mix and match.”

  Both of them looked out at the empty street. A round cartoony automobile with fat black balloon tires, like a vehicle R. Crumb would draw, toodled past. It was filled with large palm trees sticking out of every window.

  Bob shook its head. “They have to be helping him. Simon couldn’t have worked it out by himself so quickly—it’s just too difficult. They need him now, so they fixed it so that he would understand. There’s no other way he could have figured out the time thing so fast.”

  Broximon had known Bob for years. The two of them had first appeared together in a Haden dream when Haden was thirty-eight. They’d always gotten along well. Broximon instinctively felt he could trust the bear. “Bob, I know we’re never supposed to ask each other about these things, but I’m going to do it anyway because I am fed up with being in the dark.

  “Do you know what’s going on here? Because I don’t. I know this much.” It held up his little finger.

  Bob answered without hesitation. “Chaos has become conscious. It’s learned how to think and knows what it wants. What
it’s trying to do now is take over.” He picked up his glass and looked into it, thinking about what to say next. “Always before, chaos just was, like a stone or a wave. But somewhere along the way it grew a brain and learned how to use it. Now it wants to be the boss.”

  “But what about this—” Broximon gestured at the world around them. “Isn’t this chaos? You and me drinking strawberry frappés and having this conversation, a car full of palm trees?”

  “No, that is imagination, not chaos. Human imagination can be chaotic, but most of the time it’s man’s only constant proof of God.

  “If Chaos wins and takes over, then you and I will disappear. That’s a given. Simon and his imagination, which created us, will get sucked into its whirl and crushed up together with everything else in there. You’ve seen what’s left after a tornado moves through a town.”

  Broximon was appalled but not surprised. He’d had inklings and connected some of the dots between things he’d heard and recent events. It had all pointed vaguely in this direction, but hearing it explained now put everything into clear, ugly focus with a thick black frame of dread around it.

  “What’s being done to stop it? Can it be stopped?” Halfway through the two questions, Broximon heard his voice become plaintive. It sounded like a scared child’s asking a parent for reassurance.

  “There’s a woman named Isabelle Neukor—”

  “I know Isabelle. We met. I was told to keep her away from Haden because he’s supposed to find her. That’s all. That’s all I was told.”

  “Then you know she’s pregnant. They believe her child will be able to help fight Chaos if it’s given the proper education.”

  “It’s Haden’s kid? They didn’t tell me that.”

  “No, it’s another man’s. The father died but was brought back to life to help teach this child.”

  Broximon touched his forehead in disbelief. “What? That breaks every rule in the book.”

  Bob smiled for half a second. “There is no rule book anymore. Only survival of the fittest and no more rules. Chaos saw to that. It’s why I’m telling you these things; I never would have been allowed to before. You know how the system worked. But now all bets are off and whatever help they can get, they’ll take.”

  Broximon moved his index finger back and forth as if it were a windshield wiper. “Okay, there’s Haden and pregnant Isabelle: What’s their big connection?”

  “Simon often dreamt about Isabelle when he was alive, so Chaos keeps bringing her here into his dreamworld. It’s trying to figure out how to force her to stay and have the baby.”

  “Bob, that’s not possible. She can’t give birth here—this is death. The child would be born dead.”

  “That’s exactly what Chaos wants.”

  “Whoa! And how does Haden figure into this?”

  “This world is his creation. He’s the only one who can keep her out of it.”

  A Paper Trumpet

  None of the people who knew him now were aware of the fact that not long before, John Flannery had been one of the richest men in America. You had to look hard to see any remnants of that wealth, but some were still there. He wore a plain-looking George Daniels watch that had cost $107,000 at a Christie’s auction. A Creditanstalt bank book taped to the bottom of a dresser drawer carried a balance in his name of 839,133 euros. One of his dog’s eyes was false. The substitute was an ingenious feat of American bio engineering and one of a kind. Flannery was an exceptional cook who had once made a simple meal for Flora using ingredients that were obscenely expensive. Not that she knew it. Her only comment was that everything in it tasted almost as good as sex. He served the leftovers cold to Leni the next day.

  He enjoyed doing that sort of thing; liked tickling people’s noses with a secret feather only he knew existed. Once after they had made love, Leni picked up his watch from the bedside night table and examined it closely for the first time. He could see appreciation rising in her eyes and that made him happy. She wasn’t a total loss.

  “This is a beautiful watch, John. I mean it’s really beautiful.”

  “Thank you. It belonged to my father.” He slipped it gently out of her hand. He did not want her to notice or remember the name of the maker. If she became too curious about it, she only had to look up the brand name on the Internet to discover some eye-opening information about Daniels watches, not least of which was how much they cost. Then Flannery would have real trouble explaining to her how he could own one of the most highly treasured watches in the world. You could never be too careful about these details, no matter how stupid humans were. Strapping it on, he looked at it fondly. He knew exactly what to say to get her mind off the thing. “Did I ever tell you about my father?”

  Her eyes left his wrist and moved to his face. He had never said anything to her about his family. This was a first. She was definitely intrigued. “No, never. Tell me.”

  Opening the door to his apartment today, Flannery called out her name and was somewhat surprised when she didn’t answer. She wasn’t here? He looked at his watch. Two hours had passed since they spoke on the phone and agreed to meet here in one. Hmm. Leni was never late. Something serious must have happened. She was such a good little Girl Scout. He was sure she would either show up at his door with an excuse in her hands like a trembling bouquet, or call as soon as she could to explain why she was late. In the meantime, he decided to celebrate his new car with a small glass of whiskey.

  He’d ordered a new Porsche Cayenne right before being reassigned by Chaos to Vincent and Isabelle. It was one of the few things he regretted about leaving his previous post. The vast money and power he’d left behind were no more than a shrug to Flannery. But he had wanted to see how well Porsche made its first four-wheel-drive car, and was vaguely sorry at the time that he had to forego the chance. Now he would know. Celadon was a bad color choice that made him wince a bit when he pictured it. But the car was new and he would be using it only a short while.

  He was thinking about the Porsche and a glass of good whiskey when he turned the corner to the kitchen and saw Leni sitting at the table. She was staring directly at him. Luba the Great Dane was asleep at her feet.

  “Hey there. How come you didn’t answer when I called?” He started for the cupboard and the unopened bottle of 1967 Glenlivet. Halfway there he stopped on realizing that she still hadn’t said anything. “What’s the matter?”

  Leni lifted one of her hands off the table. Beneath it was a four-inch-long toy miniature of the automobile John Flannery had just stolen. It was even painted celadon. The color more than the toy beneath her hand told him what was going on.

  Chaos was here in a whole new form. Somehow, somewhere, Flannery had made a serious mistake without knowing it and it had come to straighten him out. Or worse. He fell to his knees and stretched his arms above his head, prostrating himself in front of this Leni Salomon replica. He was not afraid because fear is a combination of what is and what could be. Chaos is not a combination of anything—it simply is. Flannery was only angry at himself for having unwittingly done something wrong. He was usually so good at his job. It had often commended him.

  When the real Leni figured she had waited a long enough time, she opened the bathroom door as quietly as she could, thrilled to have pulled off her surprise. She’d heard John come in and call her name. Like a little girl, she had put both hands tightly over her mouth and tittered.

  She wore the sheer white cotton robe that she’d just bought and nothing else beneath it. John had often joked about her one day greeting him at the door wearing a drink and nothing else. Well, today his fantasy was going to come true. It had taken longer to buy the robe than she had planned because the saleswoman at the Hanro store kept showing her one more beautiful, sexy piece after the other and it had been so hard to decide. White finally won over black, but it was an erotic white, almost entirely transparent. If they’d had to give that color a name they should have called it “who are you kidding white.” Leni was also a few days
away from having her period, so her breasts were heavy and full which looked great beneath the tease of white in the robe.

  She was at first disappointed when she arrived at his apartment and discovered John wasn’t there. But then she realized it was good because it would give her time to prepare. If Flannery came in while she was getting ready then he would just have to wait. It would be worth it. Today Leni felt like eating him with a spoon.

  She went into his bathroom and took off her clothes. Naked, she looked in the mirror and pretended to give herself a wolf whistle. Next, she ran her fingers over his colognes on the shelf above the sink and wondered if she should put one of them on. But John often said that he loved the smell of her body and that it turned him on. He asked her not to use deodorant or bathe right before coming to meet him. I want to smell you, not Éstée Lauder. When he had first said that it made her uncomfortable and embarrassed, but later the thought was incredibly alluring. No man had ever said anything like that to her. It made her feel secretly wicked, as well as much more sensual and feminine. Sometimes when they were in bed he would run his tongue all the way up her hip and side to her armpit. There he would stop and she could feel him, hear him, breathing her in.

  Now standing in the doorway to the kitchen, ready to give him everything, Leni finally saw John. Back to her, his face was down on the floor as he appeared to be worshiping… her. An identical Leni Salomon was sitting across the room at the table, dressed in exactly the same clothes as she had worn earlier.

  Now that it was capable of thought, Chaos fancied itself witty and very amusing. Usually it visited Flannery in its own skin. But this time it decided to do something different and funny. Flannery was fucking this crippled woman? Well then, today the cripple would fuck him.

  So it sought out Leni and found her in the lingerie shop. It watched her confusion as she tried to decide which robe to buy. With that impression of her fresh in mind, it went to Flannery’s apartment and re-created the Leni Salomon it had just witnessed. On entering the kitchen, John saw Chaos living in the confused body of his lover. Without hesitating he fell to his knees and bowed to his creator.