Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys Read online

  Looking back up to the roof, it didn’t surprise him that the creature and little boy were no longer there. Still, he was grateful for the gift, for having been allowed to see them.

  Lowering his head, Martin saw that only one building had any lights on at this hour, and most of those were restricted to a few rooms on the ground floor. He would later wonder if he hadn’t subconsciously driven this way on purpose; there were, after all, at least three other routes he could have taken to get on the freeway from downtown. But then he’d have missed the Great Rooftop Detritus Dance of the Hopping Beaked Camera. Sounded like an attraction P.T. Barnum would have hawked, back in the day.

  It occurred to Martin that he’d never been to a circus. Oh, well . . . .

  He stared at the lighted office window, realized what it was, and began moving toward it, stopping only long enough to grab the grocery bag and watercolor from the front seat of his car. As for the car itself—fuck it. He had the keys in his pocket, zippadee-doo-dah. The bag was the important thing. And the yummy pudding. And the spoons. Mustn’t forget about the spoons.

  He tried to remember the last time he’d tasted cotton candy, or eaten a funnel cake, wondered where in hell that thought had come from, then decided it didn’t matter.

  Entering the small building that housed the offices of the Cedar Hill Crisis Center, he stood quietly at the front desk while the receptionist directed a phone call to one of the counselors elsewhere on the floor. When she finished transferring the call, she began turning toward the other woman sitting farther back at another computer console, but that woman shook her head and pointed toward Martin, who the receptionist hadn’t noticed.

  “Yes?” said the receptionist. Not Good evening or May I help you?; just a simply, weary, wary “Yes?”

  Martin considered just turning around and leaving—the receptionist seemed like she didn’t want to be bothered—but he was suddenly so tired, from the top of his head all the way down to the ground tired, he just needed to stand still for a few moments, and since he was already standing here he might as well say something, right? It seemed the polite thing.

  “‘I have been half in love with . . .’” He couldn’t seem to

  (You do remember that poem, right?)

  recall the rest of it.

  The receptionist scooted her chair back ever so slightly. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I suddenly have no idea why I came in here. I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?”

  Jesus! Was it hot in here? He could feel the sweat rolling down his face. He tried lifting one of his hands to wipe it away but neither of his arms would respond to his brain’s commands. Maybe his body had turned into a camera box and he didn’t have arms any more. Did that mean he had wolf’s feet and wings? Maybe he could fly if he gave it a shot. Cool beans. He could go to a circus now—hell, he could probably join a circus, get in on some of that cotton candy and funnel cake action.

  He blinked, looked at the woman in front of him, and said, “Yes . . . ?”

  The receptionist tilted her head slightly, looking between Martin and the other woman as she spoke. “Look, we, uh . . . we don’t really deal with walk-ins here. If . . . uh, if you want, I can give you our call-in number . . . there’s a pay-phone right across the street, or if you have a cell—”

  “—I haven’t had any phone calls or messages for five days,” he replied. “Not since I started my vacation from work. I know that doesn’t constitute much of a crisis, but it got me to thinking . . .” He finally managed to get one of his arms to respond, and reached up toward the sweat on his face. “. . . got me to wondering how long I’d be missing before anyone took serious notice. This wasn’t self-pity, you understand? It was just . . . y’know, a question. One of those dumb little weird little silly little questions that crosses your mind sometimes.” It hadn’t been self-pity, that was true; it was, rather, one of those dazzlingly dreary moments of clarity wherein you realize that just maybe you’ve been skimming across the surface of life, leaving barely a ripple in your wake, because to do otherwise would mean opening yourself up to the kind of genuine human intimacy that you profess to long for but that secretly scares you to death; so one day you wake up and realize that you’ve seen a lot of good movies and read a lot of dandy books and listened to a lot of sock-o music and it all amounts to zilch because, ultimately, none of those things are real, they exist only to help with the delusion that the time you spend apart from the rest of the human race is being used wisely and well; after all, you’re reading, you’re watching, you’re listening, you’re enjoying, right? That gives a life meaning, right? So what if you don’t have anyone to share it with at the end of the day because you’ve been too much of a coward to make an honest or lasting connection with anyone; at least it all helped fill the time. That ought to count for something.

  “See, the thing is,” he continued, “I . . . uh . . . I wanted to call someone, I really did, but there’s nobody home anymore . . . and DeVito’s is gone . . . .”

  The receptionist was no longer looking at him but staring dead-on at the other woman. Martin noted this but thought nothing of it. At last his hand reached his face to wipe away the sweat, but his forehead was dry, so were his temples and the bridge of his nose, so that must mean that he was . . . what? . . . crying?

  Odd; he didn’t feel like he was crying.

  Huh. Wasn’t that interesting? Live and

  (Now more than ever it seems rich to die . . .)

  learn.

  What had he been thinking, anyway, coming in here like this? This would throw off the schedule. Postpone the pudding. Delay the spoons.

  (. . . cease upon the midnight with no pain . . .)

  That wouldn’t do; wouldn’t do one little bit.

  “Sir,” said the other woman, now standing beside the receptionist. “Are you all right?”

  Martin looked up, one hand covering his mouth, wanting to shrug, to give her some sort of physical response, but he couldn’t think of anything to do or say.

  The other woman came around, slowly opening the small waist-level door that separated the reception office from where Martin was standing. Moving toward him, she carefully raised her hands to her sides as if preparing to either catch something or grab him. Maybe she wanted to dance a waltz; who knew? “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

  “Huh? Oh . . . stuff. Pudding cups. Medicine.” He realized that the watercolor was still tucked under his arm, and set about slipping it back into the bag.

  “What kind of medicine?” asked the woman.

  “Just . . . y’know, medicine. Doctors gave it to me. I mean, some of it was Mom’s, some of it was Dad’s. Most of it was stuff the doctors gave to me after my folks died. To help me sleep, calm me down, blah-blah-blah, cha-cha-cha, so on and so forth.”

  The woman stopped a few feet away from him. “What’s your name?”

  “Martin Tyler.”

  “My name’s Barbara Hayes, Martin.”

  Why couldn’t he stop sweating? Crying. Whatever. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Can you tell me what you’ve taken, and how much of it?”

  “Not really. I’d have to check . . . check the schedule.” The watercolor safely back in place, he tucked the grocery bag under his arm and searched through his pockets for the piece of paper on which he’d written down everything. He located it at last, unfolded it, and found that he couldn’t get his eyes to focus; something was making his vision blurry, like he was underwater.

  Why was it so damned hot in here? He’d never sweated—

  —not sweating, pal; try to keep up—

  —like this before.

  “I can’t seem to . . . to read my own handwriting.” He offered the paper to Barbara Hayes. “Can you give it a try?”

  “Yes,” she said, taking it from him.

  “I’m a custodian,” he said, suddenly feeling as if he needed to explain himself to this woman. “But I’m really good at it. I wanted to be a writer once, I even studi
ed English and American Literature for a couple of years at OSU, but I dropped out . . . can’t remember why, not just now. I figured that I could always go back to school but then . . . things happen, you know? Dad died last June and then Mom died this April and I thought I was doing okay, all things considered, I mean, considering what a hoo-ha blue-ribbon year-or-so it’d been, and I kept thinking that it wasn’t so bad, y’know, they’d both been really sick for a while and I was expecting them to die—Dad had cancer that spread from his prostate to his liver to his stomach and finally to his brain . . . Mom’s bad heart just gave up the fight, which wasn’t a big surprise after spending so much time helping me take care of Dad, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t ready for it, understand? I was doing okay, really, I was, but each time one of them died I’d have to gather up all their stuff and I wound up with all this medicine and couldn’t sleep for shit and I was nervous and shaky and it seemed like every time I turned around some doctor was giving me a prescription for this kind of sleeping pill or that kind of tranquilizer or some other kind of goddamn anti-depressant happy-happy-joy-joy pill and I woke up this morning and couldn’t remember if I’d turned the ringer off on my phone, so I checked it and the ringer was on but I checked my voicemail, anyway—it’d been five days, after all—and there weren’t any messages and I just got to wondering about how long I’d be missing before someone noticed and . . . .”

  He stopped, bored with the incessant droning monotone of his voice, but the woman standing across from him, Barbara Hayes, Dr. Barbara Hayes, a practicing psychiatrist who volunteered at the Crisis Center two nights every month, did not hear a droning monotone; what she heard was a man speaking in a rapid, deadly cadence, whose voice was so tight with hysteria that the words tumbling out of his mouth hit the floor like shards of shattered glass.

  She read what was written on the paper, then looked back up at him. “This is very organized, Martin. Extremely well-researched and well-planned.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How long have you been planning this?”

  A shrug. “Three, four months. Off and on.”

  She nodded. “And all this medication was either leftover from your parents’ treatments or prescribed to you by other physicians?”

  “I bought some of it off the Internet. It was easier than I’d thought it’d be. Expensive, but easy.”

  “Martin?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why do you want to die?”

  The unexpected directness of her question seemed to jar something loose inside him; he blinked, wiped his eyes, then pulled in a slow, hard, snot-filled breath, considering his reply. While he was doing this, Dr. Hayes looked at the receptionist, who nodded her understanding and hit the speed-dial button.

  Martin was peripherally aware of the receptionist whispering to someone on the phone—maybe she was calling her boyfriend, making arrangements to meet for a late dinner or a snack or something when her shift ended (that was nice that she had someone to call, he bet they were a cute couple), but mostly he wanted to give the correct answer to the other woman’s question.

  “I don’t know that it’s . . . it’s so much I want to die,” he said. “It’s just that I really don’t think I’ve been alive for a while, just sort of . . . breathing and taking up space, so . . . if there’s a third alternative that I’ve . . . overlooked, I’m all ears.”

  “Why do you feel this way, Martin?”

  Nibby, isn’t she?

  He looked down at his hands. Where was the grocery bag?

  He looked up again. Barbara Hayes was holding it. When had he given it to her? He should have given her the spoons. She couldn’t chow down on the pudding without the spoons. Well, he supposed she could, but it’d be kind of messy, and she didn’t look like the messy type and . . . hadn’t she asked him something?

  “. . . were both sick for so long,” he heard himself saying. “If I wasn’t at work, then I was driving one of them to or from their doctors or treatments, straightening up the house—did I tell you that I’m a custodian? And a pretty good one. I always kept their house clean, their medicines organized—got some of those pill containers so I could put each day’s dosages into separate compartments in case one of them lost track of what they were supposed to take and when and . . .” He looked directly into her eyes for the first time. “You know, if you’re looking for a reason, just one, some Holy Grail of reasons . . . I can’t give it to you.”

  “There usually isn’t just one reason, Martin.”

  “Barbara?” said the receptionist; then, to Martin: “I apologize for interrupting you.”

  “. . . s’okay . . .”

  The receptionist turned back to Dr. Hayes. “They’re expecting you.”

  “Thanks. Martin?”

  Woozy . . . damn but he was getting woozy. “Yes?”

  “Did you drive yourself here?”

  “Sort of . . . I mean, yes. I mean, I wasn’t really driving here, I was gonna go to

  . . . piss on it—my car’s outside. I left it parked over by the light.”

  “May I have the keys, please?”

  He handed them to her without question or argument.

  “Do you mind if I take you someplace, Martin? Someplace where there are people who can help?”

  He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a good idea, her getting into a car with a stranger, what was she thinking, but then a door opened behind him and a large, well-muscled man came into the area. “Is this him?” the man asked Dr. Hayes.

  “This is Martin,” she replied, a hint of reprimand in her voice. “Martin, this is Craig. Craig is one of our volunteers. He’ll be riding along with us, if that’s all right.”

  “. . . more the merrier . . .” He was feeling very . . . shiny. And dizzy. And woozy and weak. This might actually be fun if he was eating a pizza and watching Yellow Submarine.

  Dr. Hayes went out to get the car and Craig took hold of Martin’s elbow. “What say you and me step out for a little air, Martin? How’s that sound?”

  Sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me is what he thought; what he said was:

  “. . . okay . . .”

  Outside, he almost tripped over the body of the camera creature that now lay in the middle of the sidewalk, its body smashed and broken in half, one brass eye blown from its socket, trailing wires, connectors, and blood; its lower half had been split open, spilling a grotesque snarl of intestines: cogs, gears, looping tubes, and something that looked like raspberry jelly; one of its wolf’s-legs had been wrenched too far forward, the bone broken, one jagged edge pushing up through the fur; and the remaining wing, barely attached now except for a few strands of sinew and wire, jerked and shuddered. Scattered elsewhere were sections of beak and splinters of wood and other things that had once been part of its body; things mechanical, things organic, things that looked like a glistening amalgamation of the two. Some of it had spattered against the windows and walls of the buildings, and was now slowly crawling down toward the pavement, leaving a slick dark trail in its wake. Martin felt both nauseous and sad as he looked at the demolished pulp of the creature’s remains.

  Something had torn it apart in a rage, then thrown it from the rooftop.

  Martin looked up and saw the six-year-old boy he’d once been sitting on one of the fire escape landings, grasping two of the horizontal railing bars, pressing his face between them and sniffling. His eyes were red and puffy. His expression told Martin everything he needed to know: It wasn’t me, and it didn’t fall.

  “What happened?’ Martin asked aloud.

  “Dr. Hayes went to get your car, remember?” replied Craig. “You just take it easy, we’ll get you all taken care of.”

  Martin ignored him. Up on the roof, passing under the glow of the streetlight, he caught sight of something massive and closed his eyes; though he’d glimpsed it only for a second—part of a shoulder? the back of its head?—whatever: it was fifty miles past ugly. It had made a deep slobbering sound, radiated an ai
r of threat and corruption, one that Martin could feel even now, covering his face and hands in thin patina of dread and

  . . . rot.

  Yeah, that was definitely the word for it: rot.

  Then Dr. Hayes pulled up in Martin’s car and Craig was pushing him into the back seat, sitting next to him as Dr. Hayes pulled away and asked Craig if he’d brought it, and Martin wondered what they were talking about, then Craig said yes and pulled a small bottle of something out of his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Martin as Dr. Hayes asked how long ago he’d taken the first dose of pudding and pills, and Martin said he wasn’t sure, maybe forty minutes ago, probably less, and Dr. Hayes said all right, he needed to drink that right now, please, and Martin realized that he was thirsty, so he brought the small green bottle to his lips and chugged it—it tasted like castor-oil crap but he didn’t care, it was cold and wet and felt good going down—then he thanked Craig and handed the bottle back to him and lay back his head, closing his eyes, trying to shake off the feeling of decay and corruption that still clung to him, trying not to think about the little bit of the thing that he’d been able to see, wondering where the little boy would go now, and for a few moments (minutes? . . . hard to tell) he just enjoyed the ride, responding to questions every now and then when Dr. Hayes asked them, telling her his doctor’s name somewhere in there, then his stomach rumbled and he got that funny swelling feeling in the middle of his throat that quickly rose into his mouth and he managed to say, “I think I’m gonna be—” before Dr. Hayes pulled over and Craig threw open the door and Martin fell out on his hand and knees, vomiting up what felt like everything he’d put into his stomach since he was three, vomiting with such force that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see his shoes come flying out, but it was done soon enough, it was finished, and so was he, he knew it, and next thing Craig was helping him back into the car, wiping off his mouth and chin with a handkerchief, and they were off again, and when they arrived at The Center everyone there was very nice and very helpful, Dr. Hayes talked to them, and Martin signed something about agreeing to the rules and treatment, he gave them all the contents of his pockets and they told him the items would be returned to him after he’d been processed, then Dr. Hayes gave him a shot and one of the staff took him back to his room that had a single bed, a chair, an empty student desk with a clip-on lamp, and the staffer helped Martin into bed, and for the first time in his life, he was, literally, asleep before his head hit the pillow.