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Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
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about and it and I didn’t really want to press her. The dynamic was clear enough.
She was kinder than Carolyn had been, and for that I was grateful.
I won’t chronicle the history of our breakup. You know how this goes. Phone calls less often, fewer visits; then times when the messages I left on her machine went unreturned, and a penultimate moment of drawing-room comedy when Roger picked up her phone and kindly summoned her from the shower for me. (I pictured her in a towel, hair dripping while she made her vague apologies—and Roger watching.)
No hostility, just drift; and finally silence.
Another spring, another summer—the Eta Aquarids, the Delta Aquarids, at last the Perseids in the sweltering heat of a humid, cicada-buzzing August, two and half months since the last time we talked.
I was on the back deck of my apartment when the phone rang. It was still too hot to sleep, but by some miracle the air was clear and dry, and I kept the night watch in a lawn chair with my binoculars beside me. I heard the ring but ignored it—most of my phone calls lately had been sales pitches or marketing surveys, and the sky, even in the city (if you knew how to look), was alive with meteors, the best display in years. I thought about rock fragments old as the solar system, incinerated in the high atmosphere. The ash, I supposed, must eventually sift down through the air; we must breathe it, in some part; molecules of ancient carbon lodging in the soft tissue of the lung.
Two hours after midnight I went inside, brushed my teeth, thought about bed—then played the message on my answering machine.
It was from Robin.
“Mike? Are you there? If you can hear me, pick up … come on, pick up! [Pause.] Well, okay. I guess it’s not really important. Shit! It’s only that … there’s something I’m not sure about. I just wanted to talk about it with someone. With you. [Pause.] You were always so
solid.
It thought it would be good to hear your voice again. Not tonight, huh? I guess not. Hey, don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. But if you—”
The machine cut her off.
I tried calling back, but nobody answered the phone.
I knew her well enough to hear the anxiety in her voice. And she wouldn’t have called me unless she was in some kind of trouble.
Robin, I thought, what lens or window did you look through? And what looked back?
I drove through the empty city to Parkdale, where there was no traffic but cabs and a few bad-tempered hookers; parked and pounded on Robin’s door until her downstairs neighbors complained.She wasn’t home, she’d gone out earlier, and I should fuck off and die.
I drove to Roger’s.
The tall brick house was full of light.
When I knocked, the twins answered. They had shaved their heads since the last time I saw them. The effect was to make them even less distinguishable. Both were naked, their skin glistening with a light sheen of sweat and something else: spatters of green paint. Drops of it hung in their wiry, short pubic hair.
They blinked at me a moment before recognition set in. I couldn’t recall their names (I thought of them as Alpha and Beta)—but they remembered mine.
“Michael!”
“Robin’s friend!”
“What are you doing here?”
I told them I wanted to talk to Robin.
“She’s real busy right now—”
“I’d like to come in.”
They looked at each other as if in mute consultation. Then (one a fraction of a second after the other) they smiled and nodded.
Every downstairs light had been turned on, but the rooms I could see from the foyer were empty. One of Roger’s
icaros
was playing somewhere; the chanting coiled through the air like a tightening spring. I heard other voices, faintly, elsewhere in the house, upstairs.
Alpha and Beta looked alarmed when I headed for the stairs. “Maybe you shouldn’t go up there, Michael.” “You weren’t
invited.”
I ignored them and took the steps two at a time. The twins hurried up behind me.
Roger’s ghost
She was kinder than Carolyn had been, and for that I was grateful.
I won’t chronicle the history of our breakup. You know how this goes. Phone calls less often, fewer visits; then times when the messages I left on her machine went unreturned, and a penultimate moment of drawing-room comedy when Roger picked up her phone and kindly summoned her from the shower for me. (I pictured her in a towel, hair dripping while she made her vague apologies—and Roger watching.)
No hostility, just drift; and finally silence.
Another spring, another summer—the Eta Aquarids, the Delta Aquarids, at last the Perseids in the sweltering heat of a humid, cicada-buzzing August, two and half months since the last time we talked.
I was on the back deck of my apartment when the phone rang. It was still too hot to sleep, but by some miracle the air was clear and dry, and I kept the night watch in a lawn chair with my binoculars beside me. I heard the ring but ignored it—most of my phone calls lately had been sales pitches or marketing surveys, and the sky, even in the city (if you knew how to look), was alive with meteors, the best display in years. I thought about rock fragments old as the solar system, incinerated in the high atmosphere. The ash, I supposed, must eventually sift down through the air; we must breathe it, in some part; molecules of ancient carbon lodging in the soft tissue of the lung.
Two hours after midnight I went inside, brushed my teeth, thought about bed—then played the message on my answering machine.
It was from Robin.
“Mike? Are you there? If you can hear me, pick up … come on, pick up! [Pause.] Well, okay. I guess it’s not really important. Shit! It’s only that … there’s something I’m not sure about. I just wanted to talk about it with someone. With you. [Pause.] You were always so
solid.
It thought it would be good to hear your voice again. Not tonight, huh? I guess not. Hey, don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. But if you—”
The machine cut her off.
I tried calling back, but nobody answered the phone.
I knew her well enough to hear the anxiety in her voice. And she wouldn’t have called me unless she was in some kind of trouble.
Robin, I thought, what lens or window did you look through? And what looked back?
I drove through the empty city to Parkdale, where there was no traffic but cabs and a few bad-tempered hookers; parked and pounded on Robin’s door until her downstairs neighbors complained.She wasn’t home, she’d gone out earlier, and I should fuck off and die.
I drove to Roger’s.
The tall brick house was full of light.
When I knocked, the twins answered. They had shaved their heads since the last time I saw them. The effect was to make them even less distinguishable. Both were naked, their skin glistening with a light sheen of sweat and something else: spatters of green paint. Drops of it hung in their wiry, short pubic hair.
They blinked at me a moment before recognition set in. I couldn’t recall their names (I thought of them as Alpha and Beta)—but they remembered mine.
“Michael!”
“Robin’s friend!”
“What are you doing here?”
I told them I wanted to talk to Robin.
“She’s real busy right now—”
“I’d like to come in.”
They looked at each other as if in mute consultation. Then (one a fraction of a second after the other) they smiled and nodded.
Every downstairs light had been turned on, but the rooms I could see from the foyer were empty. One of Roger’s
icaros
was playing somewhere; the chanting coiled through the air like a tightening spring. I heard other voices, faintly, elsewhere in the house, upstairs.
Alpha and Beta looked alarmed when I headed for the stairs. “Maybe you shouldn’t go up there, Michael.” “You weren’t
invited.”
I ignored them and took the steps two at a time. The twins hurried up behind me.
Roger’s ghost
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