Glimmering

“She doesn’t forgive me. I mean, she doesn’t blame me, I wasn’t driving the car that killed her. But all this shit now, my drinking, all that—she doesn’t forgive me, Jackie. She doesn’t forgive me.”

Jack glanced up. He saw Jule’s face, not slack with alcohol but hardened by it, calcified; his eyes dry and glittering as quartz. “Does—have you told Emma about this?”

“Sure.”

“What does she think?”

Jule shrugged. “She doesn’t believe me. She thinks it’s the DTs or something. Actually, what she thinks is that I haven’t processed through my grief. She thinks I’m still in denial.” He stared at Jack measuringly. “I mean, you think I’m nuts, don’t you?”

Jack took in his friend’s haggard unshaven face, the carpet of bottles and empty Thermoses covering the floor. What would be nuts right now would be to get into an argument with Jule.

“I don’t think you’re nuts. I think Emma’s probably right—you’re still grieving, or—”

A delivery van pulled in front of them. Jule beat on the silent horn. “Of course I’m still grieving. You’re still grieving for that guy Eric you were in love with, aren’t you?”

Jack stiffened. “Yes.”

“And Peter and all those other guys?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it doesn’t ever really end, does it?” Jule’s voice dropped. “It’s like you wake up one day and they chopped off your hand. Maybe sometime it stops bleeding and scars over, but you don’t grow a new one.” He added matter-of-factly, “I know Rachel’s dead. I never said she wasn’t dead, I’m not denying that she’s dead. I just said I see her sometimes. She comes…”

Jack’s heart welled as he watched his friend tighten his hold on the steering wheel.

“She comes. Right there, where you’re sitting. The first couple of times it was at night—I just looked over and there she was. She’d say, ‘Hi, Daddy.’ I almost went off the road.

“And now she’s here all the time. I mean, no matter what I do, if I drink, if I don’t drink: she’s still there. Afterward, it always seems like maybe I was dreaming; but then she always comes back.”

Unexpectedly he grabbed Jack’s shoulder. “And she doesn’t forgive me. I thought maybe if I explained things, maybe she’d understand. But it doesn’t work that way. I guess they have their own itinerary. Their own way of doing things.”

“Who?”

“The dead. Like people always think they can be summoned, with a Ouija board or a séance or whatever; but really they just do what they want to. Just like us. It’s not even like they have some message. Sometimes they just want to be with us, I think.”

Jack recalled the sound of his grandfather’s tread upon the stairs at Lazyland, the smell of cigarette smoke and Irish whiskey and his touch upon Jack’s cheek, cold and feathery as snow. Before he could stop himself he blurted, “I know—I know what you mean. A few months ago I had this dream, about my grandfather. Only it wasn’t really a dream. He was really there, and he—he gave me something.”

Jule nodded. “What did he give you?”

Jack hesitated. For one moment he considered telling Jule about the Fusax.

“It was just something I’d lost,” he said at last.

“Like your mind? ”

Jack forced a grin. “Something like that.”

Around them vehicles slowed as though stuck in quicksand. They were in midtown. A few blocks to the south glittered a vast triangular complex of buildings, glass-and-steel walls shining gold and green and red like some monstrous Christmas ornament. From one side bulged a huge glass-domed arena, ovoid, still fluttering with orange construction tape and DANGER: KEEP OUT signs: the site of the millennial ball two days hence. High overhead, an array of solar shields blinked from black to silver, turning this way and that in an urgent search for light. There were bristling antennae like the spines of some huge undersea animal. Satellite dishes and windmills vied for space with hotel and television logos, a neon sign for a restaurant named Pynchon. Across the central pyramid’s surface, rippling letters splashed bright as water.

Jack gazed awestruck. Jule laughed.

“Don’t get out much, huh?”

“It’s been a while.” Jack smiled sheepishly. “I mean, they built that thing so fast… I remember when this was all live sex shows.”

“Oh yeah. The good old days.” He stared up at the monolith with its swags of Christmas lights. “Fucking Christmas. I hate fucking Christmas. And this place,” he said. “I really hate this place. Because they think it makes up for all that other shit, you know? They think you can walk inside and forget about everything here—”

He gestured fiercely at the flaming sky that could be glimpsed between the buildings. “They think we’ll just forget. Like with their fucking blimps. They think we can just pick up the pieces and start over again…

“But I’ll tell you something, Jackie.” Jule’s words were like granite falling. “You can’t ever start over again. Not once you’ve crapped in your own mess kit like we have. You don’t get a fucking second chance. That’s not how the world works, Jackie. That’s not how it works anymore.”