Read Online Our Ecstatic Days by Steve Erickson - Free Book Online
Authors: Steve Erickson
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breaks the surface of Lulu’s nights. Lulu wakes from her bed just long enough to sit up and catch sight ofKristin flitting around the corner of the bedroom door, before Lulu falls back to sleep; but then the next night Lulu wakes right before dawn and Kristin is sitting in the corner of the dark bedroom, naked and wet, and she says, Why did you leave me?
“I couldn’t stand to be you anymore,” Lulu answers, “couldn’t stand to be Kristin
… you left him in the fucking boat in the middle of the lake.
Why did you do that, or … why did
we
do that … leave him there like that?”
Doesn’t matter anymore why, Kristin answers in the corner. There’s some serious point-missing going on here if you don’t know that by now.
“I don’t care about you or me anymore,” Lulu says.
Me neither.
“All I care about is him.” In the dark, she starts to cry.
Then go find him, Kristin says.
“I don’t know,” really crying.
Look, Kristin says, pointing to the front door that Lulu can see from the bedroom, and Lulu gets up and goes out onto the porch, and the lake is black and still and the light of the sun is just starting to pale the sky a dark dawn-blue over the east hills, and Lulu turns to stare back into the house where Kristin was a minute ago, but then she hears the lake bubbling again, although she’s never had a vision at dawn, and Lulu stares into the water black with sunrise and hears from its bubble a small faraway sound and takes the telescope that hangs from the beam of the porch and looks through it down into the bubble into the funnel of the lake and what she sees in the reflection of the barely paling sky makes her pull away as if the telescope is enchanted and she doesn’t trust what it shows her.
At first she thinks it’s an airplane, which in itself is startling because there haven’t been any airplanes in the skies of L.A. for a long time. But when she squints she sees it’s not an airplane rather it’s something very little, flying deep down in the sky of the bubble. She looks back into the telescope.
II Duce, bigger now of course than when she last saw him five years ago, pointing this way and that, talking with his arms and hands, conducting his higher mathematics and dividing night-robots by day-robots, directing the aging owl that still holds him in its talons. A battalion of owls wearily follows. Go this way, go that way! happily snapping orders at them, go up, go down! with great delight while the owls appear to be, oh, a little beleaguered maybe? to her untrained eye, of course … what does she know from beleaguered owls? But as if they’re thinking maybe this is a classic case of having bitten off more than they can chew, although she supposes just letting go of him is out of the question, against an owl’s owlish nature.
She doesn’t hear her Kierkegaard saying “please” either, she notices that right off. What happened to his manners I taught him, is all she can think.
Eight days she waits. Eight days she waits for another vision. Eight days she sits by the lake hour after hour, more passing boats muttering at the spectacle of her. Eight days she waits, heartslowly sinking at the idea that it was only a new dream, worse than the old. Eight days she barely moves from the porch, staring at the lake when she’s not searching the skies with her telescope.
On the sixth day, as she waits she hears it, for the first and only time since she first heard it riding the bus on a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that doesn’t exist anymore. A DJ from one of the pirate radio ships broadcasting out on the lake plays it, and Lulu is a little surprised at how exactly she’s remembered it, when she might have done almost anything to forget it: a snake of subtle Spanish horns playing a vaguely Middle Eastern melody
if there’s a higher light,
let it shine on me through the trees
and she pulls up her dress
‘cause I know this sea
wants to carry me
it’s a sweet, sweet
“I couldn’t stand to be you anymore,” Lulu answers, “couldn’t stand to be Kristin
… you left him in the fucking boat in the middle of the lake.
Why did you do that, or … why did
we
do that … leave him there like that?”
Doesn’t matter anymore why, Kristin answers in the corner. There’s some serious point-missing going on here if you don’t know that by now.
“I don’t care about you or me anymore,” Lulu says.
Me neither.
“All I care about is him.” In the dark, she starts to cry.
Then go find him, Kristin says.
“I don’t know,” really crying.
Look, Kristin says, pointing to the front door that Lulu can see from the bedroom, and Lulu gets up and goes out onto the porch, and the lake is black and still and the light of the sun is just starting to pale the sky a dark dawn-blue over the east hills, and Lulu turns to stare back into the house where Kristin was a minute ago, but then she hears the lake bubbling again, although she’s never had a vision at dawn, and Lulu stares into the water black with sunrise and hears from its bubble a small faraway sound and takes the telescope that hangs from the beam of the porch and looks through it down into the bubble into the funnel of the lake and what she sees in the reflection of the barely paling sky makes her pull away as if the telescope is enchanted and she doesn’t trust what it shows her.
At first she thinks it’s an airplane, which in itself is startling because there haven’t been any airplanes in the skies of L.A. for a long time. But when she squints she sees it’s not an airplane rather it’s something very little, flying deep down in the sky of the bubble. She looks back into the telescope.
II Duce, bigger now of course than when she last saw him five years ago, pointing this way and that, talking with his arms and hands, conducting his higher mathematics and dividing night-robots by day-robots, directing the aging owl that still holds him in its talons. A battalion of owls wearily follows. Go this way, go that way! happily snapping orders at them, go up, go down! with great delight while the owls appear to be, oh, a little beleaguered maybe? to her untrained eye, of course … what does she know from beleaguered owls? But as if they’re thinking maybe this is a classic case of having bitten off more than they can chew, although she supposes just letting go of him is out of the question, against an owl’s owlish nature.
She doesn’t hear her Kierkegaard saying “please” either, she notices that right off. What happened to his manners I taught him, is all she can think.
Eight days she waits. Eight days she waits for another vision. Eight days she sits by the lake hour after hour, more passing boats muttering at the spectacle of her. Eight days she waits, heartslowly sinking at the idea that it was only a new dream, worse than the old. Eight days she barely moves from the porch, staring at the lake when she’s not searching the skies with her telescope.
On the sixth day, as she waits she hears it, for the first and only time since she first heard it riding the bus on a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that doesn’t exist anymore. A DJ from one of the pirate radio ships broadcasting out on the lake plays it, and Lulu is a little surprised at how exactly she’s remembered it, when she might have done almost anything to forget it: a snake of subtle Spanish horns playing a vaguely Middle Eastern melody
if there’s a higher light,
let it shine on me through the trees
and she pulls up her dress
‘cause I know this sea
wants to carry me
it’s a sweet, sweet
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