Max Collins - Majic Man

“Hopeless?”

She nodded, shivered, and sat in the middle of a floral-upholstered love seat angled toward the fireplace, smoothing the skirt of the powder-blue dress, both feet on the ground, knees together, prim, proper … provocative. I moved to an easy chair opposite her, similarly angled. She sat hugging her bare arms.

I nodded toward the fresh wood in a brass bin. “Want me to make a fire?”

“I do feel a chill.”

As I built the fire, we made casual conversation. I asked her if she’d gotten herself a room.

“No. You don’t think there’ll be a problem …?”

“Not as underbooked as they are. I stopped by the desk, to get you some complimentary toiletries. Somebody ought to be around with ’em, soon.”

Her expression was warmer than the fire I was lighting. “Are you always so thoughtful, Mr. Heller?”

“Unfailingly … except around Christmas, when I get distracted-you know, all that stopping by orphanages handing out toys, and hitting hospitals, caroling.”

She didn’t laugh this time, but she did smile, and it was a surprising smile, one that made her little-girl vulnerability disappear; she had rather large teeth, very white, a smile almost too big for her face, an overpowering smile, not unattractive exactly, but turning her into someone else, momentarily.

“It’s a defense mechanism, you know,” she said, as her smile dissipated and the big blue eyes again became her dominant feature.

The fire was going now; I sat in the easy chair across from her. “What do you mean?”

“The jokes, the wisecracks. You hide behind them.”

“Everybody hides behind something.”

“Why is that, d’you suppose?”

“Well, the alternative is being seen as we really are-and nothing frightens us more than that, does it?”

The fire, cracking and snapping to life, was casting its dancing shadows on us, throwing warmth and color, tinting her a burnished amber. “You’re surprisingly deep, Mr. Heller.”

“I was trying for refreshingly shallow.”

“I’m surprised. I didn’t expect to like you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know … Mr. Pearson is kind of … smarmy.”

“Ever meet him?”

“No. Just talked to him on the telephone.”

“Well, it’s worse in person. So, you figured anybody working for him had to be a jerk?”

“I guess.”

“Then why cooperate with him?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why not?”

Her expression darkened. “… I gave my solemn oath to Mr. Pearson.”

That meant he was paying her-a journalistic taboo that probably got violated about as often as your average parking meter. Judging by this girl’s apparent conservative nature, I figured she probably had some family problem, a mother with a bad heart, father in an iron lung, brother in a wheelchair, that only money could cure. Even a prospective nun can fall into the end-justifies-the-means trap.

“We should probably get started,” I said. “You mind if I take notes?”

“No …” Her brow furrowed. “… but Mr. Heller, let’s get something straight between us, right now.”

That had already happened, a couple of times; she just didn’t notice.

She was saying, “I’m not going to tell you anything unless you take a sacred oath, too.”

“About what?”

“That my name will never be mentioned.”

“That’s fine with me,” I shrugged. “Have you broached this subject with Mr. Pearson?”

“He’s given me that assurance. Can I trust him?”

“On this score, yes. One person he won’t betray is a source; I believe he’d go to jail for contempt first.”

“Well, I could get into a lot of trouble … I was warned to forget everything I saw. There’s still pressure-talk of a transfer, and I like it at the base. Anyway … think how I’d look.”

“Look?”

She folded her hands in her lap. “Mr. Heller, I’m going to tell you my story, and before this evening is out, you’ll wonder if I’m a liar, or a lunatic. And those may seem to you the only reasonable choices … and there’s not a thing I can do about it.”

This was setting a ponderous, even foreboding tone that would not be conducive to a good interview; something had to be done.

I leaned forward, gave her my most ingratiating, unthreatening smile. “Mrs. Selff … would it be all right if I called you ‘Maria’? And you maybe call me ‘Nate,’ or ‘Nathan’? I feel like we’re hitting it off pretty well, and this ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ stuff is for the birds.”

“That would be nice … Nathan.”

“Before we get started, would you like something to drink? I can call room service.”

She perked up. “Don’t bother-there are soft drinks in the little refrigerator behind the bar; I’m afraid I snooped a little, before you got here.”

“For shame.”

“Shall I get us something? To drink?”

“Please.”

Then she was back behind there, calling out, “Coca-Cola or 7 UP?”

“Coke.”

“You know, I think I noticed an ice machine down the hall …”

Soon I’d returned, handing Maria a brimming bucket of ice and a small plastic bag of toiletries.

Accepting them like awards, she asked brightly, “What, are you a magician, Nathan?”

Out in the hall, I’d intercepted the maid delivering the complimentary toiletries.

“Yes,” I said.

The ice was broken, or anyway cubes of it were floating in our respective glasses of Coke, and we returned to our seats in the warm orange glow of the fire, and I got out my spiral notepad and pen.

“I’m not going to be shocked by what you tell me, Maria, and I promise I won’t be judgmental, either. I’ve already heard our mortician friend’s account, including what you told him at that officers’ club, over lunch, the morning after.”

She smirked, humorlessly. “Over lunch is right … I couldn’t eat a bite. You know … it’s funny. I don’t think I’ve eaten right, or had a decent night’s sleep, since it happened.”

“I need you to tell me about it, Maria. Tell me what happened at the hospital-on the evening of Saturday … July fifth, is it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Day after Independence Day. But the Fourth of July couldn’t compare to those fireworks….”

Maria Selff said that she had been performing perfunctory duties in the emergency room when she entered an examination room, to get some supplies from a cabinet, only to stumble onto a bizarre tableau. Two doctors were performing preliminary autopsies under rather makeshift conditions; she didn’t recognize either of the medics, and she certainly didn’t recognize the three bodies they were working on, “foreign bodies,” laid out on gurneys. But even before the strangeness of the corpses could fully register, the first thing that hit Maria was the overwhelmingly foul odor.

“Such a horrible stench … you just immediately gagged. It was hot in there, because the air-conditioning had been turned off-the smell was so terrible, the doctors were afraid it might spread throughout the hospital. It was almost impossible to stay in that room and work … I didn’t last long, and some of the doctors staggered out of there, too-at least one passed out in the hall.”

“You called them ‘foreign’ bodies, Maria … but you don’t mean they were foreigners, do you?”

She frowned. “You know I don’t. Glenn told you.”

“Please. Don’t think about Glenn’s story; give me your account of the events, as you remember them.”

“I tried to turn around and run out of there-I don’t know what kept me from screaming, unless that stench immobilized me…. Then one of the doctors told me to stay and assist them, and take notes … but I didn’t take many notes. About all the doctors were saying were things like, ‘This isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,’ and ‘There’s nothing in the textbooks like this.’”