Mary rosenblum, p.1
Mary Rosenblum, page 1
MARY ROSENBLUM
AFTERIMAGE
I’m walking down the street, and I’m wet. Rain is running down my face, and my T-shirt is sticking to me. Even my underwear is wet, and I think stupid— you’re gonna get there looking like you drowned. And then I think…
…get where?
And I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going and it’s like a black hole inside my skull. I stop — forget the rain — because I’m scared. Because it’s like the old days, only then I used to let the blackness in with a needle.
I didn’t do a shot. I mean, I think about it sometimes, you know? Like when you wake up and you figure there’s got to be a reason you’re alive, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t come up with one? Nothing that really matters anyway. I think about it then. Yeah. But I didn’t do one.
Daniel would kill me.
I recognize the sub shop on the corner, and I know where I am anyway. I’m either on my way to Daniel’s place, or to see Hammer and Keri. At the corner, my feet take me left, away from the river, toward Hammer’s. And that tells you right there that I’m not really sure I didn’t do something. When I climb up the stairs to Hammer’s loft I have to pound on the door, because his bass is shaking the whole building. Which doesn’t matter because the building is empty, and Hammer’s only there because the owner likes the band and lets him live rent-free as the official caretaker.
Dicey finally yanks the door open. “Hey, Ian,” he says and backs off giggling.
He’s got a half empty bottle of tequila in his hand, and he’s making faces at me. Which is normal for Dicey. He’s nuts. Hammer only puts up with him ‘cause he does the drums like a slumming angel. Or the devil. “Hey, Hammer,” I say.
Hammer’s stroking these dark chords out of his bass, and he doesn’t look up. The notes make me shiver. There’s an old lantern burning on the coffee table —
something Keri found in a junk store— and that’s all the light there is. Which means the place is full of shadows and I think they’re kind of moving with the music. Hey, you can’t not move when Hammer plays.
“So it’s all a joke, huh?” Dicey flops down on the cushions that are about the only furniture in the place. “Heaven, hell, all that stuff. It’s all shit, huh?
You just keep on keepin’ on.” He sucks at his bottle again. “Jeeze, what a joke.”
“What’s up?” I say to Hammer, ignoring him. Something’s wrong. Weirdness is crawling up and down my spine and I wonder what happened that I don’t remember.
“Where’s Keri?”
“She left.” He doesn’t look up from that blood red bass of his. The chords change, hitting me like big hands now, shoving me toward the door. I stumble over a cushion. “What’s wrong man?” I say, really scared now. “What’d I do?”
“Ask Keri,” Dicey snickers. He’s sprawled on his back, the tequila bottle balanced on his skinny chest. “Hey,” he says as I open the door. “I want to know what it’s like.”
“What about Keri?” I’m asking Hammer, but the music is a wall between me and him, and he doesn’t hear me. “What’s what like?” I say to Dicey.
“Being dead.” He swigs from the bottle and cheap tequila dribbles from the comers of his mouth. “What’s it like being dead, man?”
I slam the door behind me, and I wonder if this is a dream, because nothing makes sense right now. I look at my arms under the one bulb that still works in the fancy ceiling fixture. The old tracks are there—knotted strings counting off a bunch of days I don’t remember all that well. Heaven, sometimes. Hell the rest of the time. Not much in between. The scars are white and old. Nothing fresh. I didn’t do it long enough that I was shooting anywhere else, so…I didn’t do a shot.
Hammer’s music comes after me through the door, dark and angry like claws at my back, so that I run down the stairs to the street. No wonder they’re so hot—
with an album out already. Hammer can hurt you with that music, man.
I go to Daniel’s.
I guess I always go to Daniel. Sometimes — in the bad days — I crawled. He’s doing a degree in architecture because he says you can achieve God in a building. I wouldn’t know.
The stoplights are bleeding into the empty puddled streets, and I’m shivering hard by the time I get to Daniel’s place. He lives over this storefront down by the rail yard and the river. This old guy — Chinese I guess— has a shop where he sells herbs and paints scrolls for people. If you don’t have a key, you got to pound on the front door, and the old guy wakes up, cause he sleeps in his shop. So I always go up the fire escape.
I make a hell of a racket going up, but Daniel’s light is on and I don’t really care. Hammer’s angry music is chasing me like a bunch of ugly crows, and I still can’t remember, and I’m really spooked. I clatter up onto the landing outside his window. It’s open. The curtains are wet and water’s dripping in onto the floor because it’s still raining. Daniel’s asleep at the huge old dining room table that is most of his furniture. And there’s a vodka bottle by his elbow.
Mostly empty. And the hair stands up on my neck because Daniel doesn’t drink.
Not even beer. Bad history, I guess. His dad was a drunk. He doesn’t talk about it much.
Dead, Dicey’s voice whispers in my ear and I realize I’ve been hearing it all the way over here, backed by Hammer’s bass line. I climb through the window and Daniel wakes up. He stares at me for a second, his face all blurry with booze and sleep. Then he gets up and his chair falls over. “You’re dead,” he says. And then he passes out.
It’s so fast, I almost don’t catch him. But I do, all off balance, and my feet slip on the wet floor and I crack my head on the edge of the table on my way down, and all my muscles go loose. So I land flat with the wind knocked out of me, and Daniel like a thousand-pound weight on my chest. He twitches and after a minute gets off, but I’m too busy trying to breathe to care. My head hurts like a son of a bitch.
“Ian?” His voice sounds thick and weird.
And I should be scared, because Daniel isn’t Dicey, but my head hurts too much to be anything but mad, and when I touch the place where I banged the table, I feel sticky blood. “Do I sound dead?” I sit up and shove my bloody fingers under his nose. “Do I look dead? Do I look like I just dug myself out of a fucking grave?”
“I don’t know.” He looks like he’s going to pass out again. “I watched them…shovel dirt onto your coffin, man. One day you’re here. Then you’re just…gone. A stupid hit and run in front of a Seven Eleven. After you got clean and everything.” He looks away, up at the bottle on the table. “You used to tell me that nothing really mattered. I guess you were right.”
“Stop it.” He’s really scaring me, now. “You sound like me.” I try to make it a joke, but shivers are running up and down my spine. Because I remember something
— a car — shiny red paint and sun on glass. “You used to kick my butt when I talked like that.”
“You’re really here?” Daniel starts to touch me, then pulls his hand away.
I grab his shoulders and shake him. “Yeah, I’m here. Snap out of it, man.” I shake him again, hard. Like he used to shake me when I was trying to get off the needle and thought I couldn’t do it anymore. “You hear me? Whatever’s going on, I’m right here, and if I’m dead, nobody told me.” But I’m looking into his eyes, and I’m seeing it there— that yeah, he watched them bury me. And it comes back in bits like broken glass on the sidewalk — car hood, windshield, all coming too fast. I can almost see the face behind the sunbright glass, and…I remember how it felt — the impact. No pain, but it was like I could feel my self getting knocked right out of my body. My soul, maybe, if you want to call it that. Me, anyway.
“You remember,” Daniel says softly.
“Yeah.” The word comes out like a sigh. I let go of him and stare down at the white rosary of old dead days on my forearms. “Sort of.” The car, nothing after.
“How long?” I ask and I hear the tremble in my voice. Because that black hole is there inside my head and I’m teetering on the brink.
“Two weeks. Nobody but us came to the funeral. You really don’t have any family, do you? You know, you don’t even smell bad.” Daniel’s laugh is shaky and I can smell booze on his breath.
“No, I don’t have any family.” Not anymore. “So I’m a ghost.” A ghost that bleeds. “Why?” The word comes out a whisper.
“The world’s full of ghosts.” Daniel gets up and goes over to pick up the vodka bottle. “Just look out at the street. I see too many of them. That’s why my old man started drinking. The ghosts. They followed him back from Vietnam. You can make them go away if you drink enough.” His lips pull back from his teeth and he throws the bottle through the window. A moment later glass tinkles in the alley.
I touch the cut on my scalp again, and it’s not there— the cut I mean. Although drying blood still sticks my hair into clumps. I shiver. And for the first time it hits me — that I’m…different.
I really am a ghost.
“There’s got to be a reason. I’m back here to do something, Daniel. Avenge somebody. Save somebody.” And I feel it like a shot — all warm and bright, running through my veins. “I know it,” I say softly.
He touches me finally — hands light on my shoulders. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am.” The words come out a whisper, and I think suddenly that I’ve just said a prayer — the first one I can ever remember saying. And I’m shivering again, because Daniel’s plac
Then somebody knocks on the door, hard and sharp. Daniel jumps and I jump and we look at each other. “Your spirit guide,” Daniel says. And he laughs, but it’s a nervous scratchy sound like fingernails on a blackboard. Whoever it is knocks again, and Daniel is looking at me like I should answer it, but I can’t move. It hits me— that I don’t know the rules. If there are any. Anything could be out there on the other side of that flimsy door. Daniel gives me this look and goes over to open it. “Wait,” I say, but it’s too late.
“My God.” Keri is standing there, with her hair all tangled like she just jumped out of bed. “He wasn’t kidding. Ian…” And then she throws herself at me so that I have to put my arms around her, and she’s babbling in my ear about the car and saying thank you over and over, and she’s crying too.
And Daniel is leaning against the door watching, and it hits me suddenly that I’ve never seen him look so sad. And for a minute I think I hear an echo of Hammer’s dark chords, but that’s just me remembering, because there’s no way you could hear him all the way over here, no matter how loud he cranked that killer amp of his. “Keri, hang on.” I push her gently away. “Take it easy, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure, Ian.” She sniffs and wipes her face on her sleeve.
She’s wearing a too-large T-shirt over sweatpants, and I guess she just did get out of bed. Raindrops sparkle like diamonds in her dark auburn hair but she’s barely damp, although rain is still pounding on Daniel’s window. Even the rain is nice to her, I think. “Who told you I was here?” I ask her.
“Dicey called me. Ian…” She reaches for my hand. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I couldn’t…live with myself after. Because it was my fault. Why…how are you here?”
Her fingers are twined with mine and I catch a whiff of her scent, and I get dizzy. And the car is roaring down the street like an attacking shark, and she stands there, just beyond the parked cars that hide her, frozen in place, like a deer caught in the headlights of a midnight truck, frozen even when I scream at her to watch out… “I ran into you at the store.” I swallow, remembering that terrible impact. “You bought eggs.” They had fallen in slow motion — bright white grenades spilling out of the carton, exploding into flowers of yellow yolk on the gray pavement as I dove for her… “You and Hammer…?” My tongue feels thick and clumsy. “You moved out?”
“He was a jerk.” She flushes and looks away. “He said…. He was wrong! And you saved my life.” She trembles briefly. “Ian, how can you be…back?”
“We were just asking ourselves that question.” Daniel’s tone is flip and bitter.
“Got any suggestions?”
“No,” she whispers.
She won’t let go of my hand. I feel really strange, because Keri is one of those people who are kind of larger than life, you know? Like Hammer. Only with her it’s not music. It’s not beauty either. It’s like everything works when you’re around Keri — like the rain wouldn’t have soaked me either, if I’d been out there with her. And there’s no way ever that this lady could be interested in me. She and Hammer were perfect, man. A pair.
“You know who might know about this?” She’s looking at Daniel now. “Dicey.”
“That weirdo?” I laugh.
“Yeah, he might.” Daniel is frowning. “I don’t know, though.” He shakes his head. “He bothers me.”
“I know. I wish Hammer hadn’t let him into the band.” She’s got this stubborn look on her face. “But you want to know, right?” She looks up into my face, still pale and worried.
“Yeah.” I want to know what I’m supposed to do. This time I reach for her hand, and she smiles.
“They’re playing Luna Two tomorrow night,” she says. “We could go talk to Dicey then.”
I almost tell her that Dicey is over at Hammer’s, but he’s probably passed out drunk by now. And she probably doesn’t want to go back there.
That’s not the whole reason. That music scared me.
Keri’s looking over my shoulder and I turn around to see what she’s staring at.
It’s getting light out. Dawn. And she looks at me and smiles and her face lights up. “What? You thought I was gonna disappear in the daytime?” I laugh, but I shiver a little, too. Because like I said, I don’t know the rules. And I yawn, because all of a sudden I’m incredibly tired.
“Okay.” She laughs. “I’ll take the hint and let you get some sleep.” She looks at Daniel, her smile fading. “I’ll come by this afternoon, okay?”
He shrugs and lets her out.
“What’s eating you?” I say as he locks the door. “You act like you’re pissed at Keri.”
“You’re eating me.” He stomps over and flops down onto his futon. “Hey, you’re walking around without even a damn bruise, and Keri is coming on to you, and everything’s fine, huh?” He glares up from beneath the black fringe of his bangs. “Something’s really wrong here, you know?”
“I know.” I sit down beside him, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. “I guess I’m just trying not to think about it — what this means.” I touch my still-wet jeans. “I mean…this can’t really be happening, but it is,” And it hits me again — that bright warm shot-feeling. “This is my chance, Daniel— my chance to mean something in this shitty world. This is it.”
Daniel puts his arm across my shoulders — hesitant, like he expects me to shrug him off. “There’s a lot of power in the world.” He’s still staring at the wall.
“Don’t you feel it when you walk down the street, or walk into a crowded room?
It’s like currents in the air— warm, or cold. Sometimes freezing.
Sometimes…ugly.”
And I shiver, because he’s looking into the air like he’s seeing stuff I can’t.
“Hammer’s powerful,” I say, and think about the bass chords shoving me out the door.
“Yeah.” Daniel nods. “And Keri, too, in a different way.” He frowns. “You know, when you save somebody’s life, you kind of own it. That’s a lot of responsibility.” He’s looking at me sideways, frowning. “I wouldn’t want it.”
He’s talking about Keri. “I don’t own her,” I say. “What about Dicey? He’s such a loser.”
“Maybe he just acts like a loser.” Daniel crosses his arms on his raised knees, and leans his head on them. “I feel like shit,” he mumbles.
“You’re hung over.” I look at the empty table and something hits me. “Where are all your books — for your classes, I mean?”
“I took ‘em down to the bookstore. They pay for used textbooks.” He’s speaking so softly that I can barely hear him.
“You quit?” I grab him by the shoulder. “You can’t quit. It really mattered to you.”
“Not anymore.” He doesn’t lift his head. “Why look for God in a bunch of steel and concrete? Why bother?” He dips his shoulder to shrug off my hand. “I’ve got to get some sleep before Keri shows up again.”
He stretches out on the futon and I drape the quilt over him. He’s asleep in about two seconds, snoring a little. I’m not sleepy. I’m not cold anymore either. My jeans are still damp, but my T-shirt has mostly dried. I borrow Daniel’s comb and I make faces at myself in his bathroom mirror. I look the same. I don’t know if I feel the same or not. I pick up Daniel’s razor and touch the thin steel blade with my fingertip. Then I put it away and go out.
The little old Chinese man is up already, whisking dust off stacks of china bowls and tea cups with a duster that looks like a rooster’s tail. He stares at me as I go past, like he’s heard everything we said. I can almost feel him looking as I let myself out, and I wonder if he’s one of Daniel’s powerful people. Then I’m out the door and into the early morning streets.
I’m not tired, and I’m not hungry. I go downtown, where the streets are full of hurrying men and women wearing business suits and busy faces. They don’t look at me, or if they do, they look away fast, figuring I’m going to hassle them for spare change or something. Sometimes, I brush close enough to feel cloth or get bumped by a swinging briefcase full of appointment calendars and important papers. Once I get yelled at by a guy delivering boxes of cut flowers to a florist shop because I’m in the way.
