Feral Boy Meets Girl Page 6

  Grayson put down his glass. “And you’re past it.”

  “Yep,” he said, his eyes beginning to itch; he slid the goggles up to his forehead and rubbed them. “Forgive and forget.”

  Grayson nodded in agreement. “You’re more forgiving than I am. If it were Marjorie...I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “I don’t imagine anyone does,” Tate said. The itch in his eye sockets began to burn like insect stings, and he felt the heat against his fingers. “Oh, dear,” he said, pulling the goggles back down over his eyes in preparation. The lenses glowed red, and the rows of bottles shattered one by one, blue flame erupting on the counter. “Not again,” the bartender said as he tried to put it out with a wet towel, but the fire spread too rapidly.

  “Oh shit,” Grayson said. “Come on.” He pulled Tate out of his chair and dragged him toward the door, the bartender and the regulars right behind them. “What was that?” the bartender asked, too shocked to notice one of the patrons pointing a drunken finger at Tate.

  The bartender called 9-1-1. Grayson stared at Tate while the bar burned, pity in his eyes. When the firemen and police arrived Grayson gave them a short statement: there was a spark from the overhead lights, he said, and one of the bottles caught fire, spreading to all the others. The policeman raised an eyebrow at his explanation, but Grayson just shrugged.

  They walked back silently, Tate bent like an old man, his head low. Finally, when the edge of campus was in sight, Grayson shook his head sadly and said, “I can’t lie for you again, Merv. You have to deal with this.”

  Tate mumbled, “I will,” in response, and they parted at the curb.

  As Tate drove home, he rehearsed the forthcoming exchange. His tone would be slow, measured, free of anger; he would be blunt, tell her that he wanted to forgive her, but could not. He would be generous, offer her whatever she wanted. At no point in the conversation would he actually name her past indiscretion.

  The burning itch in his eyes had returned before he ever climbed into his car, building as he made the short trip home. He caught his reflection in the rear-view; he swore he saw two dull points of orange light reflected in his lenses.

  He pulled into his driveway; his key was hot to the touch as he slid it into the lock, burning his fingers, but he did not care. He took off the goggles as he entered, let them drop to the floor. Evelyn was sitting at the dining room table, reading a copy of Rachel Ray Every Day, and looked up at him with a smile when he entered. “Hello, dear,” she said, and then the smile quickly left her face. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “Nothing,” he said, the hot pressure still building behind them. He hoped for some sudden wave of affection and forgiveness, a flood of tears drowning the fire in his pupils. But none came. “We need to talk,” he said.

  Small beads of perspiration formed on Evelyn’s forehead and neck. “About what?” she asked.

  “You know what.” He sat down next to her on the couch, looking her in the eye; she began to fan herself with her magazine.

  “I thought we’d been over all this,” she said, for the first time looking fearful. “I thought it was all over.” She wiped her brow. “It feels awfully warm in here all of a sudden.”

  His gaze fell hard on her. He could see steam rising off her skin, smell her evaporating sweat.

  “You’re acting very strangely,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

  “No, dear,” he said. He felt the fire gather in his eye sockets, waiting in hot orange balls behind his pupils. “I’m afraid it isn’t.”

  He stared long at the hideous tablecloth, the gaudy place settings, and after a second they went up, crumpling from the heat. Evelyn jumped up from her chair and tried to smack out the flames with her magazine, but they began to spread across the whole surface of the table. The persistent chirp of the smoke detector stabbed his eardrums.

  Still Evelyn did not give up, throwing a blanket over the table to smother the flames. It went up too, and all she could do was back away and watch. She looked up at him. “Call 911!” she shouted, but he didn’t move. In a moment Evelyn would give up, run for the door, dragging him behind her, but as the black smoke filled the house and made his eyes water, snuffing out the fire beneath them, Tate stared at the flames and the smoke, inhaled deeply, and smiled. The smell was good.

  Mannheim the Miraculous

  Simon Mannheim, world-renowned mentalist, is livid. His show ended two hours ago, and the call-girl he fucked without enthusiasm has left. He is lying atop the hotel comforter in bikini briefs and black socks, his tuxedo in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed, watching an exposé on cable news decrying his craft as a hoax—timed, no doubt, to follow his recent pay-per-view spectacular. He watches clips of himself explaining that all things are connected, his power a simple matter of harnessing the natural electrochemical energy of the brain and projecting it outward, touching the aura of objects, people, even the very air, and gently pushing until they conform to his will. The segment edits in the phrase “conform to my will” five different times, as if to make him look like a madman. Then, a lengthy narrative on a twenty-year-old University of Minnesota student who was killed drunkenly attempting Mannheim’s “train trick” just after his St. Paul show a week ago. Marty, his agent, sent him the link to the story this morning, hailing it as free publicity, but it had pretty much ruined his day.

  Mannheim’s abilities, says the investigative journalist, are mere illusions, easily explainable: the pencil rolled across the table by quiet breath, the spoon bent by a strong thumb, the door opened and closed with thin fishing line, the freight train slowed by transparent netting.

  Mannheim watches and drinks, the whiskey bottle poking its neck from a crumpled paper bag. He knows he should not; the consequences for one with his condition could be grave. Mannheim does not care.

  When the host compares him to the huckster Yuri Geller, Mannheim turns off the TV, gulps down the rest of his Wild Turkey. If he cannot feel good, at least he can feel nothing.

  All they saw were parlor tricks, he thinks, as he lies atop the comforter, concentrating on a tiny spider skittering across the ceiling. They didn’t listen to a word I said.

  Mannheim calls Marty, asks why he was not allowed to respond to these charges. Marty tries to assuage him: it just means he’s made it. And that stupid kid would’ve found some other way to off himself.

  The windows begin to rattle.

  “You’re fired, Marty,” Mannheim says, and hangs up before Marty can finish shouting, “Go fuck yourself.” He lies back on the hotel bed in complete silence, staring at the textured ceiling. He does not sleep.

  In the morning he sends his crew home, makes some calls, cancels the rest of his tour. Then he goes on the Internet, posts something on the social networking sites. It is long and rambling—Marty was the wordsmith—but it will do. The last thing he writes before clicking “Share” is a date and an address, and “Join me.”

  He shuts down his laptop, lays his head on the pillow, and for the first time in a week he sleeps easily.

  Day 1

  They come—sixty in all, gathered within the dingy white plaster walls of what was once Irving’s Mattress Superstore, in a dilapidated section of Aurora, Illinois, mostly full of boarded-up shops and abandoned gas stations. Outside, the ground is covered in pristine snow, broken only by the tracks that run in front of the old warehouse, and when the freight trains pass, the windows rattle. Mannheim bought the place for a song last year thinking he would turn it into an auditorium, but the renovation costs were too high. Inside it is cold and dim, the fading sunlight and a pair of generator-powered space heaters providing lukewarm heat.

  They are mostly college students or recent graduates, though there are a few silvery heads among them. They sit cross-legged on blankets, tattooed and pierced youngsters next to men in blazers and ties, women old enough to be their mothers. An icy draft pricks at their skin, but they do not mind, because he is here.

  Mannheim com
es downstairs from his quarters in the old manager’s office on the second floor, wire-rimmed spectacles teetering on the edge of his nose. He is neither sleek nor polished: his shaggy reddish-brown hair falls over his eyes, and a coarse, prickly beard obscures his face. In place of his customary tuxedo is a black turtleneck, black chinos, black wingtips, a blue plaid scarf wrapped round his neck and tossed over his left shoulder.

  They really had expected the tuxedo.

  After realizing that, yes, it is Mannheim, they applaud.

  Mannheim saunters to the middle of the warehouse floor, hands in his pockets, and sits down.

  “Hello,” he says. “Thank you for coming.”

  They clap again, almost in unison. Just for a moment, he nearly tears up.

  He recovers, smiles serenely. “You’re all here because you sense there’s something more than this...” He pinches the flesh of his forearm. “You know it’s there, but you can’t see or touch it. Not yet. It took me years to grasp.” He smiles again. “If you stay, I’ll teach you to sense it, harness it, and use it.”

  One young woman in particular, a reed-thin ginger girl named Alison Finkel, weeps at his words as he explains the principles of what he calls “The Miracle”: sensing, touching, moving. This, she instantly decides, is the greatest moment of her life; she is face-to-face with a visionary on the order of Benjamin Franklin, Roentgen, even Einstein. “You’re on your own this time,” her mother had said when she left, but the words fall away in the presence of the master. The Prophet at the RV encampment in Phoenix had made promises like this too, but she’d been there less than a week when two men in black, sent by her parents, smuggled her out in the night. A month later all her new brothers and sisters had hanged themselves, if the reporters were to be believed.

  But this is different—there is real science behind it, which makes it irrefutable. Alison knows beyond doubt that this is where she is supposed to be, and when her training is done and she goes home she will show her parents the truth, and they will be amazed.

  “I don’t want you to think this will be easy,” Mannheim concludes. “Some of you will get frustrated and leave.” He shoots an accusing glance across the room, and each person instantly resolves that it will be someone else who fails. “But for those who stick it out, the rewards are extraordinary.” He closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and suddenly an intricate web of Christmas lights on wires, strung all along the walls, blinks to life, and the warehouse is cast in brilliant blue and gold.

  They gasp. Tears well up in Alison’s eyes. This isn’t like Phoenix.

  “Teach us the train trick!” shouts a fat boy with thick glasses and a Doctor Who tee.

  Mannheim glares at him. “No more parlor tricks,” he says. “We’re here to learn.” He smiles again. “Let’s begin.”

  Day 3

  Despite the space-heaters and cots and blankets, the warehouse is cold, the windows covered in thick frost. Mannheim’s pupils sit cross-legged on heavy moving blankets laid out on the floor like yoga mats. Two slipped out during the night, their cots conspicuously empty in the middle of the warehouse floor. Their names were Ted and Jamie, Alison thinks, and from overhearing their conversations she could tell they had only come to learn the Jedi mind trick, probably as a precursor to date-rape. Once she explained to them the difference between telepathy and telekinesis, they left. She expected to encounter at least a few who were here just for a lark.

  There is a black van parked across the street outside, which Alison noticed yesterday morning—meant to be inconspicuous, she is sure, but as they filed in she noticed a cameraman and a reporter in a long trench coat climb out and film something. Their intentions, no doubt, are to mine the dregs of the networks and torment the master about that poor, untrained dead boy in Minnesota. As if something like this could be learned overnight.

  Mannheim, in a long gray Army surplus coat, wanders across the floor carrying an aluminum tea tray in one hand, an apple at its center.

  “Let’s start again,” he says. “Before you can even think about moving the apple with your mind, you have to sense it—to be aware of the apple and the space around it, to understand its basic apple-ness.”

  Their eyes focus on the Braeburn, pale red with a thin swath of green running down one side. Alison does not know what it means to sense its “appleness,” but she is determined to try. Faith demands it. She squints, scrunches her brow, tries to touch its smooth red skin with her mind. After five minutes her senses reveal nothing more than an apple. Clearly the failing is hers.

  A few minutes later, a fat middle-aged man in a yellow cardigan asks, “When are we going to move it?”

  Mannheim looks annoyed. “When you understand it,” he says.

  After some awkward grumbling and a few unkind stares, the man reddens, sits down. Alison pities him.

  “Tell me about the apple,” he says.

  “Sweet,” says a young man of about twenty, with thick glasses and unkempt black hair falling over one eye.

  “And a little tart,” says an old woman.

  Mannheim nods: finally, he thinks, they might be starting to get it. “What else?”

  “Firm,” someone else says.

  Mannheim nods. “And?”

  Alison thinks hard, concentrates so hard on the apple that her forehead hurts, but nothing comes.

  “There’s a little worm inside it,” says a girl of about twenty-two with a bleached pageboy-cut, wearing a tight black camisole and thin sweatpants despite the cold. Her name is Mandy, and Alison instantly dislikes her.

  Mannheim smiles, closes his eyes tight. “Yes,” he says. “Very good.”

  The pupils start to grumble.

  “It’s all right,” he says to them. “You just need time and patience.”

  Alison is near tears but resolves that next time she will be the one to sense the worm, or whatever Mannheim puts in front of her. Next time.

  Day 7

  Mannheim has no idea why this is not working.

  People are beginning to get impatient. Five more have left; some slid off their cots and slipped out during the night, while this morning one married couple called him a snake-oil salesman to his face before storming out. Mannheim forgets their names instantly—they were only there to learn cocktail party tricks. Those who remain understand he is getting at something greater.

  Still, a week of staring at apples, carnations, and cacti may be wearing thin, so to keep them engaged he decides it is time to try moving a few small objects. Most will fail—but a few, particularly Mandy, by far the most receptive, might manage a dramatic wobble. For the past few days Mannheim has found himself thinking of her a great deal, his eyes fixed on her when he delivers his daily lesson. Sometimes, during the night when everyone is asleep, he peers through the plastic blinds in his quarters and watches her. She sleeps all stretched out across the cot, one leg hanging off, her breasts rising and falling slightly with her breath. She is young, and healthy, and so very much alive.

  He finds himself drawn down the concrete steps, through the maze of snoring people, to her cot. Mandy opens her eyes, smiles when she sees him.

  “You’re almost there,” he whispers. “Would you like a little more practice?”

  “Sure,” she says sweetly.

  He takes her hand and leads her quietly upstairs to his quarters. There, he motions for her to sit on the edge of the rollaway bed and bids her to focus on a paperclip he has placed on the TV tray at his bedside. “Just concentrate on moving that,” he says.

  As she squints at the paperclip, Mannheim lets his mind wash over the soft curves under her sweater, feels her body tense with effort.

  “It’s not working,” she says, trembling.

  “Just give it time,” he says. He sits close behind her, takes her right arm and extends her hand toward the paperclip. “Focus.”

  Another minute goes by, and his hand is still on her arm. He smells her vanilla-and-lilac body spray over the faint traces of concrete dust.


  Mannheim decides to cheat, just a little—without a slight boost in confidence she might give up. He stares at the paperclip, winks his eye; it wobbles, slides a half-inch toward them.

  “There,” he says, smiling. “You did it.”

  Mandy throws her arms around him. “I did it! I really did it!”

  “Well done,” Mannheim says. “I knew you’d get it.”

  “Thank you!” she says, then kisses Mannheim hard enough to make his teeth hurt. He knows he should pull away, send her back to her cot. But his room is stark and lonely, the eggshell walls so dull they numb his brain. He should at least have had the contractors paint, but at the time he fancied himself in simple, unadorned quarters like a Zen master. He feels the warmth from her body. Her skin is soft, touchable. He kisses the back of her neck. He knows he shouldn’t. The others might accuse him of playing favorites. But his erection is stiff and painful, and before he knows what is happening, he is on top of her, peeling off her sweater and bra, cupping her firm breasts, his tongue sliding over the tip of her right nipple. She starts to moan. He shushes her.

  Mannheim reaches up with his mind, turns out the light.

  On her cot on the warehouse floor, Alison watches until the lights go out, balling up the corners of her fleece blanket in tight fists. She tries to reach up with her mind, up the concrete steps and through the steel door to where they are, but it’s no use. She wonders if there have already been others, if Mannheim has been calling them in the night, his will pulling them up the concrete stairs to his room. And if so, she wonders why he has yet to choose her. The Prophet had passed her over as well, many times, and when she climbed into his trailer on a cool night, he rolled off a busty blonde, his purple sweatpants bunched around his ankles, and said, “Next time.”

  Just after three, Mandy tiptoes down the stairs and across the concrete to her cot, smelling faintly of man-sweat. As she passes, Alison whispers, “Whore,” and glares in the dark.