Sam Weller - Shadow Show

“It’s real,” she said. Her smile showed pure delight. “It’s marvelous!”

He nodded, but Silvie was less happy a while later when a storm blew in, and the boat capsized, and all the tiny people were pitched into the merciless, shark-filled sea.

“Sorry,” MacGregor said, and Silvie opened her book and read a chapter.

The following night MacGregor posed in front of the mirror, and together they watched a silver airplane take off and soar out of the atmosphere. It made its way around the moon. MacGregor allowed himself to feel a little proud. Madame Needles had seemed unsure whether the tattoo would move the way he wanted it to, but it was working. The ship soared with the sun glinting off its wings until it exploded without warning. A dozen bodies were strewn across space.

“I don’t like this story,” Silvie said, and turned away.

MacGregor did not want to stop watching. He wanted to see how the story really ended, what might give meaning to the tragic demise of the astronauts who had died during their mission. The tattoo seemed to have doubled in area since the story began, and MacGregor wondered if the Illuminated Woman had started out with a small tattoo as well. While Silvie got ready for bed, MacGregor watched the last remaining astronaut plunge toward Earth. When he hit the atmosphere, he became a bright stream of light, a falling star.

Across his skin, MacGregor felt the movement of the explosion and of the man’s falling, but that wasn’t the extent of it. The pictures showing on his chest were like the mushrooms growing atop the soil, connected by tendrils to the greater body under the surface. If this were a projection of images, they came from inside, not out.

“I know you wonder why I read romance novels,” Silvie said, turning to him later in bed. “You think they’re written for foolish girls.”

“No,” he said, though he did wonder. He had tried to read one of her novels, but he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the first chapter.

“It’s because all day long I have to make critical decisions. There’s money, livelihoods, resources at stake. I act with confidence, but I can only hope my decisions are the right ones. When I come home, I don’t want to worry. I want to know that everything will turn out well and that everyone will be happy and that justice will be served.”

“Thank you, Silvie,” MacGregor said. “Now I do understand.”

She needed life outside of work to be worry-free, and he would make it that way for her as best he could. She already did so much for him. When he was at a business meeting or a cocktail party and veered off onto the wrong track, Silvie would guide him back. He wanted to do the same for her.

One Saturday morning in March, MacGregor woke breathless from a dream of flight, still feeling the joyful energy of soaring above his house, moving at the speed of cars over the street below. He listened to the purr of Silvie’s snoring. He smelled her perfume from the day before and slowly turned his head on the pillow to gaze at her smooth face in the gray predawn light. She stayed over every Friday night, and in two months she would be there beside him every night, forever. Beyond her, on the nightstand, lay her current novel, silhouetted against the window. The pages were fluffed out prettily, suggesting that her book was part of her decorating scheme, which included the handsome off-white window dressings, the ribbed bedspread, and the new, slightly luminescent paint on the walls. She said remodeling made the room belong to them. This had been his parents’ bedroom, and MacGregor didn’t care what it looked like. He had grown up an only child, and the most important thing to him was having another soul lying beside him, sharing his life. He would go along with any remodeling Silvie wanted.

MacGregor’s chest prickled. Silvie had recently suggested he keep the tattoo covered all the time. She had walked in on him watching a story at work more than once, and she was concerned about the hold the tattoo had on him, how it was distracting him from more important things. He couldn’t argue with the truth of the matter, that the work of being president was tiresome to him, and he had taken to hiding out in his bathroom to revive himself. He had managed to resist looking in the mirror for more than a week now, until this morning, when a vision of flying without aid of any machine had invaded his dreams. If he hadn’t felt the urgent prickling, he would have remained in bed, absorbing the pleasures of lying with Silvie, would have wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. Instead, he slipped out of bed, tiptoed to the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the light. Silvie had helped him to quit smoking, but giving up cigarettes had been easy compared with resisting his compulsion to look at the tattoo. He turned the lock on the door and stuffed a bit of tissue into the oversized keyhole. His heart was pounding as he looked around the small tiled room, at the modest claw-footed tub, at the old-fashioned light fixture covered with a frosted seashell glass shade. The old bathroom mirror had a funhouse quality; he and Silvie had stood beside each other in front of it and laughed at their distorted reflections.

MacGregor pressed his ear against the painted wood of the door. Silvie’s snore was one of his favorite household sounds, along with the toaster popping up and the dryer spinning. In the world outside, he loved the sounds of jets and rockets taking off, though he’d only heard the latter on television. MacGregor unbuttoned his pajama shirt. He slid his arms from the sleeves, and when he looked in the mirror, the color in the playing-card-sized tattoo dazzled him. He took a deep breath and let the tattoo expand and rush to fill the smooth skin of his chest. The first mysterious effect of the tattooing process had been that he had lost the modest amount of hair he’d had there, and it had never grown back. He took a deep breath and inhaled the colors, which smelled of air so rich and oxygenated that it filled not only his lungs but his whole being. When he exhaled, all the stress of the week fell away at once, and the picture of the bird and the branch and the stream and the sun began to change.

A rocket sat on a launchpad surrounded by complicated machines. The machines were operated by white-coated scientists whose faces glowed with intelligence and focus. MacGregor took another deep breath, and the men and women began to move, to tap their fingers on their whisper-thin handheld computers, to point out and discuss objects of interest around them, to compare calculations. As MacGregor’s focus returned to the rocket ship, he saw it increase in proportion to the scene, and the scientists disappeared from view. Somehow, as MacGregor’s heart pumped blood out through his arteries and back through his veins, the point of view moved so he could see inside the capsule atop the boosters, where two women and three men in silver suits were making final preparations and buckling themselves into their seats. To MacGregor they seemed perfect human specimens, strong-bodied and healthy, and their eyes showed a love of adventure. Or was there a shadow of something sinister crossing one man’s face? Did the fifth astronaut have an ungenerous spirit, a tendency toward cruelty or sullenness? Was his desire for space less pure than the others’? MacGregor’s concern faded as he felt the collective excitement of the other astronauts. He also felt their fear and sadness and understood that they were leaving behind their loved ones in order to journey into the unknown.

One of the men in the capsule resembled MacGregor, with blue eyes and thick eyebrows and dark, unruly hair. So much so that MacGregor was almost sure it was him. Neither of the women resembled Silvie, however. He knew Silvie wouldn’t venture into space, not even with him at her side, reassuring her. She didn’t like not knowing what was coming next. She was most content when she was following her routine of work and relaxation, having coffee on the patio in the morning or taking a brisk walk in the early evening. She was continually opening windows to let in breezes and wouldn’t like the cramped quarters of the space capsule, in which everything was designed for efficiency and maximum function.