Carol O’Connell - Shell Game

What would Louisa have him do now?

Ob, of course.

Private Malakhai picked up the small body, which weighed nothing, and turned his back on the dark smoke and twisted metal, the charred uniforms and dead boys. He made his way across the white field newly dusted with snow, following the small tracks of the littlest boy.

The young soldier walked with uncommon grace upon frostbit feet, moving slowly toward the farmhouse where the child’s footprints had begun.

Mallory was bored with the wall where Oliver Tree was being murdered again in a larger-than-life projection.

She ejected Louisa’s Concerto from her computer. A portable CD player lay on the desk. The old batteries had been tossed out long ago, and now she hunted through all the drawers, searching for the new ones. Where were they? The movers could not have lost them. She had packed the contents of this desk herself and carried the box in her own car.

No batteries – no matter. She connected the CD player to an adapter for the wall socket, then draped a bulky audiophile’s headset around her neck. Tethered by a wire, she passed in front of the projector’s lens. The moving pictures wrapped around her body, and flying arrows moved silently through her hair.

She opened the closet door and pulled out all the neatly folded cartons. One corner of the den had been cleared for use as two of the walls in a Korean prison cell. She reconstructed the packing boxes into large cardboard building blocks for two more walls only five feet high. When she was done, strips of masking tape ran from the top of one cardboard wall to the opposite wall of plaster – a reminder that there was no room to stand upright. The tape roughly effected bars across her view of the ceiling.

Pulling the last of the boxes into position, she sealed herself off from the rest of the den and sat cross-legged on the floor of her cell, five feet square. After a few minutes she was aware of small noises never noticed before, the tick of the wall clock and rain pelting the window glass. Tinny music from a strolling boom box wafted up from the street. But the enclosing walls were at least devoid of Oliver’s flying arrows and his death. Mallory looked up at the faux bars of paper tape covering her new minimalist world. She put on the form-fitted headset, and its cushion blocked out every sound beyond the cell.

Perfect peace.

This was not what she had anticipated. There was no discomfort, though she could not see the door or the windows. Perhaps it was her absolute trust in the alarm system.

No, it was more than that, something familiar. An old memory was surfacing.

My little house.

Mallory had re-created a piece of her childhood, a refrigerator carton that had once been home to a ten-year-old fugitive. Her cardboard house had been a peaceful sanctuary from the insanity of city streets, the roller coaster of emotions from flight to fight.

She felt safe here.

And Malakhai had done this for a year of solitary confinement. She would almost welcome such a sentence. But what had Malakhai done with his time, besides listening to interior music in his memory and reconstructing a dead woman?

Mallory picked up the CD and set Louisa’s Concerto on replay so it would repeat endlessly. The stereo headset created the illusion that the orchestra played in the center of her skull. But there was nothing for her in this music, no ghosts from 1942, only notes chaining into one another, strings blending with horns.

Malakhai, what did you do with all the days?

Well, he had retained every detail of Louisa’s corpse, the blue dress, the blood behind her eyes and the pink froth at her lips. He must have replayed her death a thousand times inside his head.

Mallory ceased to pay any attention to the music. She concentrated on an image of Faustine’s Magic Theater – Malakhai’s version, not Oliver’s. She decorated it with cafe tables and wine bottles, peopled it with civilians and soldiers, then filled the air with smoke. The chandelier dimmed and the stage was lit with a row of candles. Standing on the stage beside her was a red-haired girl, who held a violin. Mallory stepped into the girl’s skin and turned Louisa’s head toward young Malakhai. The boy stood in the wings, hidden from the audience by the edge of the curtain and awaiting his musical cue.

Mallory’s hand was rising, lifting the violin to cradle it between her shoulder and her chin. Then Louisa stroked the strings with a bow that smelled of rosin. Hidden beneath the instrument was the arrow meant to replace the bow at the end of the act. Mallory turned her eyes back to Malakhai.

Do you see him yet, Louisa? Do you see the uniform?

No, not yet. And only Mallory could see the arrow loaded in his crossbow. Louisa’s eyes were closed. She was so involved in her music.

This illusion was Max Candle’s routine. But tonight, Malakhai holds the weapon on her – on them.

He’s so young. Eighteen years old, all new again. The pistol grip of the crossbow was in his right hand, and his eyes were shaded by the brim of an officer’s cap. The crossbow pistol was rising.

The uniform’s material was gray, the buttons were silver – and the collar was red. No detail should be lost. She looked at young Malakhai through Louisa’s eyes. The handsome boy wore fine black boots. His crossbow pistol was aiming at her now.

What was Louisa thinking? It was easier to creep inside the mind of a killer – so difficult to be a victim in the crosshairs of a weapon sight. First she saw the uniform, and then she saw the SS insignia. Malakhai?

Yes, she knows him now. She was moving past her fear of the uniform. Louisa looked at her old love. His ringer was on the trigger. Was she wondering why Malakhai was doing Max’s routine? Yes.

Why isn’t Max here?

Max can’t shoot you, Louisa. Only Malakhai could do that – because he had loved this girl since they were children.

Mallory waited for the boy to deliver the missile. Did Louisa still believe that a silk scarf would fly – harmless silk on a wire that she could wind round the hidden arrow? Franny Futura had spoken of her surprise. No, Louisa had no idea what was coming. She turned away from the audience, revolving as she played, to hide the switch of the violin bow for an arrow. She was going through with the act that had opened every show.

Why do you trust him, Louisa?

I’ve known Malakhai all my life.

Mallory, less trustful, looked at the boy. His dark blue eyes were on Louisa’s face, probing, touching – the last caress of a distance. His finger pulled the trigger.

Foolish, Louisa.

There was no time for her to cry out with surprise. The shaft from the crossbow was buried in her shoulder, so deep, such pain. The violin and its bow fell to the stage. The hidden arrow dropped from Mallory’s hand. How could this be happening? Louisa stared at him as he turned to run. Why? Why did you hurt me?

He was running away from her. Louisa was falling, and Mallory’s cheek was pressing to the cool wood of the stage. His boots made a pounding sensation that Louisa could feel through her skin as she lay on the floorboards.

Over the next hour, Mallory played the scene over and over again. In one scenario, she left Louisa falling to the stage and ran away with Malakhai, weaving across the room, upsetting tables and startling patrons. Then they were outside the theater and breathing deeply, Malakhai and Mallory. It had rained that night. The air was damp and cold. Malakhai looked up the street and down, but Mallory saw no one on the sidewalk. In the cover of rain, the cover of night, he tore off the outer layer of his uniform. Beneath it, he wore street clothes. He ran back into the theater. Only a few minutes had passed by, not the fifteen he had estimated, not even ten. He was so young, time would crawl and drag for him, but only a few minutes were passing by.