Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

Sally got up from the couch. “Gann always keeps it dark in here,” she said. She pulled open the window curtains and the light blasted her in retaliation; she put her hand in front of her eyes and stepped sideways into the obelisk’s shadow. She returned to the couch and sat down, the obelisk still casting its black denial across the top of her face. It nearly obscured how sad she appeared, sitting beside Etcher on the couch. She looked as though she would break if she learned one more secret, which was why he didn’t tell her about the entry in the book from the archives, or if she suffered one more betrayal, which was why the news was on the tip of his tongue. He thought the most tragic thing about her was how her sorrow made her more beautiful. It seemed the worst trick of her beauty, that the chemistry of sorrow would make it so much more luminous. Her touching sweet smile was most lovely as the smile that obviously masked heartbreak; it was when her heartbreak was unmasked, as when the shadow of the obelisk dissipated into a gray twilight pool that poured from her face and flooded the unit, that her beauty somehow defied either the rules or definitions of the earth. Etcher could neither bear to look at her nor bear not to.

“Well,” he said, “that was what I wanted to tell you.” They sat on the couch a moment in silence and he thought he should get up and leave. He pointed at the drawer of jewelry, the necklaces and earrings. “Did you make these?” he asked.

“Yes.” She picked up one of the necklaces and held it against her brown neck.

“It’s nice,” he said. At first he was being polite. But he reached over and touched the necklace; she placed it in his hand. He’d never seen a necklace like this. Strange charms and primitive symbols hung from its links. “Have the police ever searched you during an alert?” he asked, and realized how abrupt the question sounded.

“I … don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to be sure. When you’re in the altar room you never know if they’re here or not. No one knows if they even come out to this zone.”

“This is the kind of thing they would confiscate. You should hide it,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Are you from here?” he said, and that sounded abrupt too.

“No.” The certainty of her answer wavered in the air. “Are you?”

“I come from a village far away to the north, up in the Ice.”

She said, “I come from somewhere else too.”

“Have you been in the city long?”

“I — Awhile. As long as we’ve been married, anyway. A couple of years, anyway. We married when I became pregnant. Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have children?”

His mouth was dry. “Yes. May I have something to drink?”

“OK.” She stood and got him a glass of water and brought it back. She sat down and said, after a moment, “How many?”

“What?”

“Children.”

“None,” he shook his head.

“Oh,” she said, “I thought you just said you had children.”

“No, not at all.”

“I thought you did.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“Two.”

“Did you tell me that before?”

“I said we got married when I became pregnant.”

“What’s her name?” he asked, although he knew what her name was.

“Polly.”

He drank his water. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything. I can go.”

“Gann was just taking Polly for a walk.”

“I hope it’s not a problem, my coming here.”

“No. I’m glad you came.” It immediately sounded to both of them like a strange thing to say. They were moved by it, and uncomfortable. “Have we ever met before?” she asked.

“At the archives,” he nodded, “about three weeks ago.”

“Yes, of course,” she laughed. “I mean, did we ever meet before then?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you want to have children?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because we were talking about children.”

“Tedi wants to have children.”

“Does that mean you want to have children?”

“Uh.” He took another drink of water. “I promised.”

“You promised?”

“Tedi. My wife.”

“That you would have children?”

“Yes.”

“Because she wants it?”

“Yes.”

She looked toward the front door. “You should be sure about what you want,” she said resolutely.

“Maybe you’re never sure what you want,” he said. “When I got married I thought, No one’s ever sure until they do it. If you wait until you’re sure, you never do it.” He realized he had just made his marriage sound less like a capitulation and more like a grand gamble.

“Are you sure now?”

“No.”

“But more sure than you were.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean — Well, it’s strange to be having this conversation.”

“I should probably go.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I think I said the wrong thing.”

“No. I came by to say I’m sorry about the other day.”

“We’re both sorry a lot.”

“Well, let’s agree not to be sorry anymore.”

“All right,” she laughed.

The altar alert came on.

They were both startled by it. “Is it that late?” she said.

“I forgot about it,” he said. “Most of the time I’m working in the archives and I just hear it in the distance.”

“I guess all the priests don’t have to run into their little rooms like the rest of us,” she smiled.

“No,” he agreed. She got up from the couch and walked over to the back wall and opened the altar-room door. “Your husband and child?” he said.

“Who knows,” she said. She stood in the open doorway. “You can come in if you want.”

He got up and went over to the room, and she closed the door behind them.

In the dark he felt, with a lurch, what he thought was a spider’s web brushing his face. But it was a string, which Sally pulled to turn on the light overhead. This altar room was even smaller than most. On the floor against one wall was a mattress. There was a pillow. There was a little pink horse with a saddle and long green hair, and children’s books in the corner. There were a couple of other books that didn’t appear the sort Primacy approved; Sally retrieved them quickly as though to hide them from view, though there wasn’t anywhere to hide them. There was also a half-drunk bottle of wine, which she now regarded with mortification. She glanced at Etcher.

“Let’s drink some wine,” he said.

“Really?” she said. They sat on the mattress. She handed him the bottle. An altar was in the corner. It was a very unorthodox altar, like the jewelry Etcher had seen in the front room, filled with primitive icons and forbidden fetishes he didn’t recognize. In the center of the altar was a black wooden box with a rose carved on the top. Etcher had been studying the altar awhile when she said, “Probably not what the Church has in mind.”

“It’s not your regulation altar,” Etcher admitted. He took a long drink from the bottle. It was the first drink he’d had in several weeks, and he found very satisfactory all the possibilities that washed into his mind with the wine. He realized he’d been sitting there staring at the altar for some time when he said, “We forgot to hide the jewelry.”

“It’s just jewelry,” Sally said, somewhat defensively.

For the first time in a long time, the tide of wine brought the possibilities into Etcher’s mind rather than taking them out. “I’m not the Church,” he said to her.

“What?”

He offered her the bottle and she took a drink. “I’m not a priest. I don’t care about the books,” he said, nodding at the books she had tried to hide. “I don’t care about the wine. I buy my own from a bootlegger.” He waved it all away. “Don’t care about the altar either,” he said, amazed at what the one drink had done to his head. “Do the cops come out to Redemption?”