Michael Langlois - Bad Radio

“Even Chuck? Because if you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re doing it wrong.”

“Yes, even Chuck. I saw the way you looked back in the kitchen. I don’t know if Greg noticed, but I could tell you were afraid. I just wanted to say that you don’t have to be. We’re going to be fine.”

I gave her hand a squeeze and lied. “I’m not worried. Piotr’s an old man now. We’re going to kick his ass.” The words were ashes in my mouth. Even though he was old on the outside, whatever was driving him from the inside didn’t care about age. It didn’t slow down or weaken or lose focus. It just burned. “How’s your nose doing? Can you warn me if something gets close tonight?”

“I think so. This place still reeks, but I’m sure I can work through it now.”

“Okay.” I closed my eyes and tried to put tomorrow out of my thoughts. “Night.”

She stayed close, pressed against my side. “Night.”

We slept like that until morning noises from the kitchen woke me. Anne was curled up on her side facing away from me, so I slipped out of the covers and grabbed a quick shower. When I got back, she was still asleep.

I knelt down and gently shook her. She didn’t wake. I walked around to the other side and pushed her hair out of her face. Her features were pinched and her lips were twitching, like she was almost speaking. The bones in her neck stood out and she was rigid. As sensitive as she was, I should have realized that sleeping this close to Piotr’s operation would affect her. Fear made my heart race.

“Anne. Anne! Wake up!” I shook her again, this time harder. Her eyelids scrunched down tighter as though she were trying to shut me out. I put my hands on each side of her head and put my forehead to hers. “Anne, it’s Abe. I’m right here. Wake up.”

“Abe.” It was a faint whisper.

“It’s me. Time to wake up.”

She sucked in a huge lungful of air and her arms shot out and clutched me tightly. “Oh, God, Abe.” She gasped a few more times like she couldn’t catch her breath, and I realized belatedly that she was crying. I had no idea what to do, so I just held her until she calmed down and pulled her face out of my neck, now wet with her tears.

“Bad dream, like before?”

She swallowed a few times before speaking, her words coming fast and tumbling over each other. “Worse. So much worse. I was in the air, way up high above Belmont. It looked like regular air but it felt all oily and greasy, and it wouldn’t let me fall. I was just kind of sliding around on my stomach and on my back, flopping around. It was horrible. I kept trying to stand up, but I couldn’t get my balance. You know how sometimes in dreams you do things without knowing why? It was like that. I kept trying to stand up and then falling down, over and over again.

“And it hurt, but not like physical pain. It was like failure and loss and four-in-the-morning loneliness all at once. Does that make any sense?” I held her hands and nodded my best understanding nod. Most of all I tried to offer her my calm reassurance, because right this instant, huddled with her on the floor in a stranger’s living room, she radiated a kind of brittle madness.

“Way down below I could see the town lurching back and forth underneath me as I flopped all around in the air. God, it was so mixed up, like being a cat in a dryer or something, tumbling end over end and trying to see what was happening on the other side of the glass.”

A harsh little bark of a laugh escaped her lips. I glanced over at the kitchen to see if anyone had noticed. “You know what else? The houses weren’t really houses. They were roundish and swollen and you could see right through them, like if you blew up a bladder or something and shone a flashlight through it. Some of them, they were healthy looking. Pink. But some of them had worms in them, curling around each other inside. Those houses looked saggy and full of, I don’t know, brown jelly.” She squeezed my hands. “You wouldn’t believe how many of them were wormy, Abe. Dozens of houses, maybe hundreds. The whole town is sick. Rotten.” She hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear. “I think it was real. I think that’s how bad it really is.”

We sat like that on the floor for a while. She stared into space while I rubbed her cold arms and hands. She was trembling.

Chuck peeked out of the kitchen door behind Anne’s back. I shook my head and he gave me a silent nod and disappeared.

Anne sniffed a little and pulled away. “Thanks. I think I’m better.” She gave herself a shake. “It was so intense. Thick, like being steeped in cloying rotten sickness.” She stood up and scrubbed her face with her hands. “I really need a shower.”

“I hate to ask, but do you think you could remember where some of those houses were? Maybe mark a map?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I could see the houses, but they didn’t look like houses so I wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them. And I have no idea where in town I was looking at any given time. I don’t know any of the landmarks or streets. It was just this endless tumble across the sky, over unknown territory. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m sorry you had to go through it.”

“Thanks, I’ll be back.” She got up and practically ran into the bathroom.

I thought hard about Georgia and her paintings as I folded the blankets and rolled up the sleeping bags. Anne was strong. I had to believe that she could handle this.

Having restored the living room to its original state of disarray, I went into the kitchen for some of the coffee I had been smelling for the past twenty minutes.

Mazie and Chuck were sitting at the table not talking. Chuck was eating a bowl of cereal and reading his paperback, and Mazie was reading the paper. I helped myself to a cup and gave the cereal box on the counter a shake. “Morning. You mind?”

Mazie spoke without looking up. “Help yourself.”

The cereal appeared to be made entirely out of spun sugar, so I put the box back down. It looked like the equivalent of eating a can of frosting for breakfast. The coffee would have to do. I’d have killed for a couple of eggs or some of Henry’s grits, but a quick search of the pantry and refrigerator turned up a bleak landscape of pre-packaged boxes full of dried things that you added water or milk to. Astronaut food, Maggie used to call it.

The newspaper crackled as Mazie folded it back up and pushed it to the center of the table. “Chuck said your girlfriend looked pretty upset this morning.”

“Nightmare.” Mazie glanced at Chuck, who was peering over his book, but didn’t say anything.

“Who had a nightmare?” Greg swept into the kitchen with an ugly plaid robe, frayed into softness by time, flapping around him. He started groping for a mug in the cabinet.

“The girlfriend,” said Mazie.

“I see.” Greg poured. “A bad one?”

“Looked like it.”

Anne came into the kitchen, hair still damp and brushed smooth and gleaming. She took my coffee out of my hands and had a sip. “You ever have good ones?”

Greg chuckled. “I guess not. What was it about, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Why, are you a psychiatrist?”

“Okay, sorry. You hungry?”

“Ugh, no. Thanks.”

Mazie stood up, making her chair squeak backwards against the linoleum. “Seriously, it took you like five minutes to get it together when you woke up. What was it?”

Anne stuck her chin out, which I had learned was a bad sign. “What’s your problem? If this whole situation isn’t giving you nightmares, then maybe something’s wrong with you . You think of that?”

There was more going on than just morbid curiosity about a bad dream. I watched the wary, expectant expressions on Mazie’s and Greg’s faces, and then things clicked.