Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

“I thought we were going to talk to your sister.”

“Forget my sister. Forget everything.”

“What did you find in the mail, Ike?”

“Would you please get out?”

“Where did you put it, whatever it was?”

They stare at each other. The room fills up with the sound of the talk-show host lecturing:

HOST: All right now, I’ve had enough of the stupidity. I’ve had enough of the inarticulate talk. Very simply, I’m asking you to frame your questions before you dial the number. There is no need for this. But what it does display for me, in crystal clarity, is the depths that this once-great country has descended to. By allowing Marxism in our schoolrooms, by allowing unchecked immigration across our borders, by allowing a blatant, flagrant abuse of a welfare state designed to propagate lives of drug dependency and casual sexuality, by allowing, allowing, allowing would be the key word here, my friends. Where has discipline gone? Where has consistency escaped to? In what dark bowels does respect for law and order and our unique system of democracy now reside? Let me mention a phrase here, people, a phrase that blazed a fire in the minds of men like Washington, like Jefferson. That phrase is new world , my people. A world that once, long ago, was untouched by the decadence of the Continent, of a Europe so in love with itself that it fell, as long-told prophecy said it would. This very land, the soil, the physical earth that stretched in a rich and wild run from Atlantic to Pacific, was once the last bastion, the refuge, the last possible paradise on an orb gone sick. It was a pure and final chance to forget the past and try again, start anew, build a civilization based on a consensus of values and good family morals. And what did we do in this damnable century of blinding technological advancement? We spit on it. We balled it up and tossed it down like a piece of festering garbage. We said NO! We shall not be pure! We shall not fulfill the dream! We handed the promises of this green land over to a satanic horror with many names: Liberal Humanism. Moral Relativity. Leftist Ideology. Castrating Feminism. Darwinistic Thought. Socialistic Atheism. New Age Heathenism. I could go on. Believe me, I could continue all night and into tomorrow. But I need no further proof of the futility of my cries than your phone calls. The pathetic ramblings of my audience tell me to throw in the towel, abandon the good fight. How much further can our intelligence be eroded? Will we move back into the caves of our forebears, draw on the walls, live with the wild dogs, eat with our fingers? [ There’s a small breath of dead air, and then : ] While you ponder the answer to those questions, I’ll take a short break for a word from tonight’s sponsor, the Loftus Funeral Home, specialists in your prepaid burial needs. Remember, there’s no need to burden those left with your final duty.

The advertisement begins with the whine of maudlin violins and Ike looks at Eva and says, “Listen to me. There was a box in today’s mail. Just like last time. It was addressed to box nine. It was wrapped in plain brown paper. There was no return address. I cut it open.”

He pauses. A voice from the radio is saying something about when the time comes, we’ll be ready.

Ike takes a breath. “Now listen to me. It was a box full of human fingers and blood.”

“Jesus Christ,” Eva says, hands going up to her mouth.

“The sight of it made me faint. I was on the floor for a few minutes, I guess. When I woke up, the box was gone. And there was no one else in the room.”

“Why didn’t you come and get me?”

Ike stares at her.

“You think I took the box?”

He doesn’t say a word.

“You think I sent the box? You think I’m involved in this?”

He sinks down slightly into the bed.

“For God’s sake, Ike, how can you suspect me? Don’t do this, Ike. I can’t be alone on this.”

“I’m going to try to sleep now,” Ike says, drawing the covers up to the fold between his neck and shoulder.

Eva stares down at him. The ad on the radio finishes and the host comes back on, his voice sounding refreshed.

HOST: We are back and our caller is Lois.

LOIS: Yes, hello, Ray. Let me tell you a little story about how these skinheads accosted my mother downtown last week, right on the common, near the reflecting pool …

Eva eases her shoes off her feet. She stands and begins to undress. She quickly folds each item as it falls away from her body and places it in a neat pile on the floor. When she’s naked, she takes a corner of the sheet and quilt and yanks it back from the bed.

Ike’s eyes snap open and she lets him take a long look at her. She drops hold of the bedclothes, places her hands lightly on her hips, model-like, and does a very small twist from side to side, to indicate she’s on display, to give him a full chance at observation.

“Eva,” is the only thing he can manage to say and it comes out as a stunted question.

She raises an index finger to her lips and gives the ancient quiet sign.

“You don’t want to talk,” she whispers, “we won’t talk.”

She climbs into the bed and advances at once, pulls her body across the mattress until its full length is parallel with his. Then she puts her arms around him, cradles him, pulls their chests together, flattening herself. She intermingles their legs and can already feel him growing against a thigh. She’s pleased, bordering on being something like proud, comforted by the fact that he’s getting hard in spite of his shock and depression and paranoia and confusion and terror.

They fumble, pull him free from sweatpants, T-shirt, underwear, all the while kissing, wet, breathless, tongue-crazy.

The only noise beyond their breathing and muted, guttural groans is the talk-show host, Ray, starting up again, voice rising in both pitch and volume, building another ranting theory, preaching his endless warnings of decay.

Lenore sits in the Barracuda for a few minutes. She’s parked across the street from Rollie’s Grill. It surprises her how much she can see through the front windows of the diner. It’s like a little diorama, a small scene enclosed in a porcelain-framed case. An intricate picture of dozens of interacting parts becomes clearer the longer you look. She can see that half the booths are filled. She notices an enormous customer in mechanic’s coveralls perched on a counter stool. She spots one of Harry’s cousins, possibly Lon, clearing the empty tables. She can see Isabelle behind the counter stirring the contents of the big kettle. And Harry is next to her, his mouth moving, jabbering a story as he chops peppers.

She thinks that Harry and Isabelle have always struck her as an odd but instantly appealing and attractive couple. And now it dawns on her why. At first glance, their glaring disparateness, most obviously, but not limited to, their racial difference, makes them seem like such separate entities. But then, constantly on the heels of that observation, there’s the indisputable fact of their togetherness, this plain happiness of their mutual attraction and love, and it burns away the separateness and acts as a billboard for the possibility of family, wholeness, belonging.

An image forms in Lenore’s mind. She hates it, instinctively, but like an annoying and persistent daydream, she can neither eliminate it nor alter it. She’s stuck with it: herself as Isabelle tending a pot filled with an exotic stew. And here’s the tough part: Woo as Harry, dicing up vegetables and babbling the pleasant fables of his grandfather.

A fact becomes apparent that’s so bizarre it makes her dizzy. She could love Woo. There’s the genuine possibility that she could care for, pledge herself to, undertake a life with this odd Oriental linguistics professor. The Barracuda is full of the smell of him. And she knows this is why she lingers, why she doesn’t want to get out.