Weatherhead Read online

  “In the land without summer,” she sang softly.

  “Summers don’t last anywhere. Are you seriously bringing this up?”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t beat you up about it. I never have. Why start now? It’s too late for that, I guess.” Exactly four months from now, she’d be dead and the snow would be dyed second layer red, third tier tear. “Say you love me,” she said suddenly.

  He stared at the tangled wreck of her hair. The red had faded after the fourth bottle of wine, but maybe that’s just his eyes—wealthy misery—“Wait,” was all he could say, something had just flown and fell just below his throat, ghost out of a catapult. Darker hands than his were moving across the snow. The snow was black and her blood was so, so white. His fingers brushed against something familiar.

  An ear. Somehow there was still a tress tucked behind it. Her hands were laced behind her back. Maggie Machine, born scion of a priesthood of momentum. His hand thickened the space closing over these hands, but there was nothing more to cling to. It would take a scab the size of the world to cover over these wounds. She didn’t turn around. Though she could feel the space between them diminish to nothing, she recognized it only as a vast abyss that no amount of twirling dress edges could bridge. She had learned that long ago, the right shoulder slightly lower than the left told him.

  “I love you,” someone said then. Was it him or her? He couldn’t remember. All he could think of were those white and red hands folded together.

  He wok with a sob. Some wag had filled his stained sleeping bag with puzzle pieces during the night and when he swung his feet out to cringe across the cold cardboard floor they scattered across the room. He bellowed a primal curse, ones that tongues have forgotten, a kind of lowing rage that keened against death in certain pitches. Maggie, he cursed. He laid there crying in hollow waves for some time, before pulling himself up.

  There was a certain supremacy to suicide, the triumph of one’s own empire in bringing about one’s extinction. The true crime was the subjects’ ignorance, as always. But it was also their complicity. He dragged himself to his feet. The mirror that’d hung in the bathroom had been replaced with a pathetic flap of cellophane so he used his hands as eyes as he had in that snowfield and resurrected his appearance. He had quite a growth of beard now and he could just see it out of the periphery enough to tell it had become streaked with gray. Dust or insanity, he couldn’t tell. But his beard was his only marker of time. They hadn’t thought of that here in Weatherhead. Ha!

  Happy No Year, he said hollowly to the empty prop house. Today he was going to register his pitch at last. Yesterday’s encounter with the devil pretending to be his wife had turned his journey here from an epic of sorrow to a desperate, doom-laden series of castrato prophecies and severe beatings.

  “Would you go turn on the happy lights, please?” He went from room to room, filling all the dark bits with something else entirely. He returned to her. She had something in her hands. A pad of paper.

  “Whatcha got there?” Whatcha got there? He went through the motions of the memory like wine without blood, stripped of spirits, but at essence scripted as it always had been.

  When he spoke, she acted as though she’d thought she was alone in the house, so startled did she look. How long had she been standing there? “Oh!” She folded her body around this pad.

  “What is that?” he asked again.

  “S’where I keep track of the weather. I was just lookin’ up some sunny days. Stupid, right?”

  She was lying. He’d never seen this book before. She meticulously recorded the weather on graph paper: one letter or number per square. He’d marveled over this on the few occasions when he’d actually seen her do it. What she held now was a drawing pad or something—

  Later, he found it and understood everything.

  What if I’d just taken it then? Even if it split and fell and the pages went everywhere, all out of order? I’d rather’ve gone down on my hands and knees picking those up than—

  Her.

  He was struck by another thought as he walked through Weatherhead. That’s it, he thought, picking up the pieces of a script tossed carelessly aside and sifting through it out of order. Is this what memory always is? Like Maggie’s puzzles. Horror turned the inside of his mouth black. He was the blindest man ever born.

  She tightened her grip on it. “No. I changed my mind.” About what, he had no time to ask. “Wait,” she told him and left the room, returned open-handed.

  Who had said I love you? “Ready?” She’d leave his keys by the door, next to his snow boots, like she knew.

  “For what?”

  “Our great and secret show.”

  51 weeks finished in this place, she reminded him, and exactly midway had been their fail on the boat. She cut off his apology. Forget about it. It’d been a ship keel-deep in blood. All the happy lights were lit for her second attempt at midnight sun on the bottom of the calendar this time. She brightened, led him from room to room. He’d never paid it much mind but as she guided him through the exhibit she explained what he hadn’t noticed before: that every week she’d put up, in a series leading through the entire house, a single frame. She’d once owned a frame shop, she explained, (she was pretending she didn’t know him and really she didn’t), and had had a regular, loyal, and obsessive customer who wanted the same spot captured in time over and over again for he believed, this customer, that he could be in that spot if every single pinprick of its existence—

  “Tell me about the time you sent the frame to Randy Johnson again.”

  She tried to ignore him, disguise a snort of laughter in her arm as a sneeze, and went on, afraid to look at his inquisitive, goofy grin. See how the artist had re-envisioned the same thing here, but instead of moments each frame represented a week in the life following the travails of a tired, sad young couple.

  He’d finished walking his fingers through his beard. By the door leading out into Weatherhead was the verysame table where her meteorological prophecies dictated his daily accessories, where suicides left the keys convenient. She must’ve thought he was off that day, left the keys to expedite things. Didn’t matter, he’d’ve found her first no matter what. He had a map in his heart that had a big ol’ X over Maggie Mechaine. He just couldn’t remember, who said I love you—

  He looked down the track of frames and saw what he already knew if he didn’t understand the purpose, the function. They were all empty. Just like always. He became angry then, might have even shouted in her face, but all he remembered now was her “Don’t” and she walked him through each one, putting a curator’s hand to each edge and offering a brief commentary on each suicided slice of their life. She encouraged him to lean in and study the details in this one, note the expressions on the faces in that one, the fall of the light on the fall of the shadow on those two—

  “This is not right,” he stormed at her, “maybe this is all we ever were to you—“

  She turned her head away from the wall. “You still don’t get it.” Her eyes were rimmed with blood.

  There is little more to untravel as far as distances go, she’d told him on one of their walks through the city. These words were recalled to him by the memory of this New Year’s, barely a year ago if he reckoned right, their last.

  He demanded, “What was in that book you just had? Huh?”

  “I told you.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “I don’t have a lot of practice like you do, that’s right, but I ain’t lyin’.” She started packing a bowl. He dashed it out of her hand. It shattered across the floor. He grabbed her by her arms and slammed her backwards into the wall. Her head knocked against the wall, two frames fell. She spat in his face.

  “Fuck you, Maggie.” Something chimed midnight. She died four months later, but she never hung another frame again.

  ⧜

  He was troubled by a tic where this spit had landed.

  After hours searching and asking aro
und, he’d finally found the place where one registered one’s pitches. It was a bombed-out truck dealership, judging from the husks nearby and the floor-to-ceiling windows set on tracks. The back section of the place had caved in but the front was intact. He recognized Maggie’s economic, straight-edged hand on the unobtrusive little sign hung on the door. It read merely: Pitches. Above it she’d drawn a curious symbol: ⧜.

  He went in. There was a stiff official, a woman, sitting behind a counter, almost a bank counter, the only piece of furniture still intact amidst the devastation. She was dressed in severe, professional whites and greys, a very formal office kind of attire, a smart beret topped her pinned-up hair. She was almost a flight attendant, one of those old school ones he’d seen in old magazines with her skirt, white blouse, and prim, perfect grey jacket. It was Maggie Mechaine. She was writing something on her arm, didn’t even look up when he entered and stared at her cautiously.

  He moved forward and placed his palms on the counter. Hello again, he said. He looked about. The place was quite empty save for them. This was an office? She kept scribbling away on her arm for a moment and, without looking up, she said, giving no sign of having recognized him, Stand in place, please.

  Huh? He looked back. A few feet away from the counter was a black rectangle fashioned out of four pieces of black tape laid at right angles. Someone had written Your Place across the top of the square. He gingerly stepped inside it. They remained like this for god knows how long, she head down, arm filling with words, he rocking back and forth from heel to toe in his little box. He recognized the beret she wore. It had once been his. He’d bought it in Paris during weekend leave, this was before he even knew Maggie Mechaine—those years when war sucked everyone in through its teeth—and what could be more French than a three dollar beret bought from a one-eyed old woman at the foot of the Eiffel Tower? Maggie loved this story and she loved the hat. When he got promoted to detective, she’d stolen this beret, replacing it with a deerstalker bought just for the occasion. Maggie Mechaine, she of the hoodie, the heavy metal t-shirt, fashion’s bane, loved this hat. She told him once that she loved the fact that it was never quite even no matter how much you scrunched its lumpenness. She wore it once when they made love, wore it to her batting cages, jammed down over her red—

  She spoke against the stitch in the side of memory as it ran: Now, she set down her pen. It was the first one he’d seen in Weatherhead. They were forbidden, someone had told him, so that the dead will be forgotten. You are here to register your pitch, sir?

  She was pretending she didn’t know him, he saw immediately, but that sir rang with her menace, the very bite of the word at her ear infuriated her, he could see. Or was that part of the play?

  Yep. He remained in place.

  Follow the exes, then. Approach. He studied the floor. He hadn’t noticed them before, a line of tiny red exes dotting the white concrete floor. They led right up to her counter.

  She shuffled a stack of papers, sifting through them with an arched eyebrow and pursed lips until finally, Ah! Here! Foreigner’s provisional submission to and adherence to the laws of Weatherhead. Sign here, here, here, here, and here. She handed him her pen. Proof of residency?

  He patted his pockets full of poor. Proof—

  Her daylong vowels hung in the air between them as she recited a list of acceptable proofs. Sorry, he replied, he didn’t have proof of anything, save the beatings.

  She scanned a paper. Physical proofs. Yes, that’s fine. She rose off her stool and with the end of her pen turned his face this way and that studying the still livid bruises and cuts he’d received at her hands. Satisfied, she finished putting graffiti on herself and, with a flourish, spun around on her stool and waved a finger in the air: You’ll now need to speak with the chief of police.

  She took off the beret that had once been his and replaced it with a washed-out version of his octagonal cap. She had all his hats here, somehow. She ahemed and stood and unbuttoned her vest and untucked her blouse and walked around the counter. Follow the exes. Another trail led to where she stood in a small black square labelled Law. Just a moment— she plucked up her policewoman’s hat and with her free hand mussed up her hair until it simmered around her head. She jammed the hat back down. Her face contorted into sudden, apoplectic, red anger.

  Crime, she barked.

  He looked around him. I’m not—I told you I’m here to register—

  What is it, then? You lot are all the same, she growled, spiritual exercises? Hera say? Blast feemin’? Calendaring? Unconfessed rape? Rapes have to be registered— Her eyes went to the dark desk where the paperwork for this dwelt. I’m not here for any of that. Look, you can’t expect me to believe that you’re someone different all of a sudden because you’re wearing a different hat. This is ridiculous.

  Where’s the manager?

  She’s, er, busy.

  She’s standing right in front of me, isn’t she?

  I’ll have you know, I’m armed. She was fierce of face.

  Ok, ok, I get it. I’ll play along. Uhh—lessee—my crimes include adultery—

  Ooooh, the chief of police cooed. Her eyes brightened.

  Statutory rape—

  She raised a finger. Hold it. You raped a statue? Were you stoned?

  It’s why they put them in boxes in the winter, did you know? All that white brings out the white in a man.

  You will be a worthy contributor to the culture and arts of Weatherhead, my fine-feathered friend! She clapped her hands together and beamed up at him. No murder, though? That’d be the pick of the pancake.

  Murder? He didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure how to answer that. She flapped a hand at him and went on, Not a problem. Nothing we can’t rectify. After all, trucks don’t drive themselves! Now, repeat after me: ‘I make now all proper disclosures and discomfits that so-and-so on such-and-such in the boroughs of Weatherhead doth affirm and attest to all of the above crimes committed, appended, dreamt of, sneezed at here in the presence of the Law of Weatherhead and the uncensored self-same Me and that the above referenced so-and-so doth confirm the purity of his allegiance to Weatherhead—

  She prattled on and on. He stared down at the tips of his fingers. Why were they always black, oily grey? Smudged with something? Had she taken his fingerprints? No. She was still reading out the oath. He yawned.

  Repeat!

  Oh—ah—I make all admissions and discomforts that me sign here—

  Fine, fine. Sign these. She flung the stack of paperwork at him. The bulk of it struck him in his wide chest and confetti’ed all about him. Oops, she remarked drily. He knelt down to pick up the scattered pages. As he lifted each one, which were, in fact, blank, he noticed they’d fallen with precision over a random series of green exes across the dusty floor. She pulled out an ancient-looking pistol and pointed it at his head. Chin up! she barked. He obeyed. She pressed the muzzle there, just above his Adam’s apple.

  Please, god, no, he collapsed inside. Eyes clenched shut, he heard the sickening sound as the chamber clicked empty six times. He opened one eye. She examined the pistol, grunted, and threw it aside.

  Nurse! She dove behind the counter then reappeared wearing all white save for the track of bloody handprints down the front, dressed in an old nurse’s costume. All that white—

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to sit in that much light. Sez here in the booklet—“

  “Only,” she said from under her concentric haloes,” if you’re light sensitive.”

  “Does light make you cry? Is that what they mean?” He looked up at her. She was surrounded by more white than he’d ever seen, not quite a silhouette—more like she was sitting against a backdrop of bandages, her hairthe blood soaking through from the wound. Field of white, he remembered. He’d crawl across one to salvage her under a chain-link wind.

  Her hair was inches from his mouth. Her fingertips commingled with the hair on his chest as they sought purchase. She’d remained silent since she’d b
ecome a nurse, meekly avoiding his steady gaze. The nurse had wheeled out a sinister apparatus. It was a concatenation of what he took to be two wild incompatibles: the engine block of a car or truck and a pump organ. It did, though, seem to serve the same purpose, but on a larger scale—why scale might matter, he wasn’t sure—as the small bellows pump that Rapey had used on him those two times before. A series of limpid coils ran off the cylinder plugs on the top of the engine and into the back of a small keyboard. She unwound a set of small clamps and attached one to his bottom lip and another to a pinch of flesh at the centerrtain of his palm. She hummed quietly to herself as she worked, flipping toggles and switches, adjusting knobs, leaning over fluttering radar screens, dopplers, whatsits. Finally, she sat down at the keyboard and worked the pump pedal with both feet. He felt a slight pressure tug on his lip and hand, something loftier than gravity.

  She was biting his lip—No, she was standing back in front of him. She’d left the keyboard. Had he blacked out? She was disconnecting his lips from the machine. She had to stand on her tiptoes to get her eyes level with his mouth as to not injure him.

  So? What’s the pitch? Or key?

  She blushed. Her demeanor had switched once more. E flat. Sir must be in love, she said with a slyness extinct, almost saurian.

  E flat. This is what Rapey had first measured when they first brought him here. This time he didn’t hesitate. If Maggie Mechaine, wherever she was, needed to hear it, then she would. Yes—yes, I am. He cleared his throat. Her eyes flitted downward.

  Chastity has its own antidote—note, she quickly corrected.

  This coquette seemed amenable. The nurse’s cap suited her. What does it mean, these pitches and notes? He knew enough about music from his childhood to know that pitch was something determined as ‘high’ or ‘low’. It had nothing to do with the note. What are you registering?

  The key, she told him, and its fall or rise in relation to the frequencies of Weatherhead was crucial in maintaining sin crony and concordance. A dissonant note or a missed pitch could have disastrous effects.