Amelia Gray: Threats

“You’re supposed to be questioning me now. I saw that on the news. Are you questioning me?”

“I have questions, but you surely have questions as well.”

“They didn’t mention on the evening news that I have questions as well.” A bread crumb had attached itself to David’s chin, and Chico watched it bob as he spoke. “They seemed less interested about my questions, perhaps because I’m not a member of law enforcement.”

“We have some natural concerns. Your wife had no apparent antagonists. No plausible cause stands out. You’ve been very helpful, but they tend to have questions in the main office.”

“Concerns.”

“Natural concerns. Sorry, you seem to have a bit of bread on your chin, there.”

“I have my own theory.”

“Do share.”

David scratched his neck. He looked across the street. “She was hiding things from me,” he said. “There were financial problems at the salon, and she didn’t want to let on. She was losing her grip and creating elements of danger around the house in order to snap herself out of it.”

“You seem to be having these thoughts for the first time, for my benefit.”

“I have had these thoughts for years.”

“And you’re saying she did it to herself.”

“She got caught in her own trap. It snared her and she lost her mind. I don’t think she meant to.”

Chico rolled the corner of the bread crumb bag between two fingers. A bird hopped near, regarded the man’s fingers on the bag, and hopped away. “That’s an interesting theory,” Chico said. “Would you mind if I brought some investigators by your house later and we all took a closer look around?”

David stood. “They said on the news that you had a warrant,” he said.

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

Chico looked at David, shielding his eyes against the winter sun. It looked like he was raising his hand in greeting. David touched the detective’s fingers with his own.

“What’s a warrant?” Chico asked.

“It’s a matter of personal accountability,” David said.

“I understand.”

David stooped to brush invisible elements of the park bench from his behind. The single crumb, the largest, remained on his chin.

Chico watched the man’s limping walk toward the bus stop.

THE GARAGE was original to the house, which meant it was large enough to hold one carriage and two horses. Over time and industrial revolution and questionable advancement, the space had been modified and neglected in alternating efforts. The roof sagged under years of snow and ice and fallen branches. The partition that had once given each of the horses its own private space now separated the barely functional washing machine from the dryer. Hooks and ropes hung from the ceiling, holding old bicycles and gardening equipment above reach, an impractical storage system that required an A-frame ladder to retrieve anything.

David found Marie lying down in the corner. She had hung a mosquito net from the hooks on the ceiling and spread the net around two wooden shipping pallets she had pushed together on the floor. The gauzy white gave the partition the look of a young girl’s room decor. It looked like she had used soap and water to clean the floor and the white-lacquered dryer. The wooden pallets had been stained and varnished. Marie was wearing a blazer and skirt. She looked like a flight attendant, except for the fact that she was lying on pallets on the floor. Her hands covered her eyes. David’s impulse was to turn and leave, but she removed her hands and looked at him, so he kept walking until he was standing over her face. The wasps walked in individual circles across the mosquito net, looking for their way in.

“I need to know if we have doctor-and-patient confidentiality,” David said.

“Technically, you’re not my patient.”

“Can I become your patient?”

“Also, I am not a doctor. Again, speaking technically.”

“I’d like to work some things out.”

She rolled onto her side and pushed herself into a sitting position. “I’m glad, David. You are the best judge of your progress in any matter.” She held out her hand. He ducked under the mosquito net and tucked it under his heels behind him to keep the wasps out. He shook her hand and she turned to address the wasps. “You have my guarantee of doctor-and-patient confidentiality,” she said.

He was aware of the smell of her shampoo. “Do you have the ability to put me in a trance?”

“I can certainly try.” She moved to the side of the pallet, careful to spread the mosquito net in a way that kept her from pulling on it when she crouched next to him. “Here, lie down. Close your eyes, hands by your sides.”

“Right now? Shouldn’t I do something to prepare?”

“The truest result comes from spontaneous action. Careful for splinters.”

The wood felt weak and wet under him. He could smell fresh varnish. The pallet stuck to his hair. Eyes closed, he could sense her near him, and then he felt a soft pressure of air on his face, and then he could not sense her near him. He wondered if she had left the garage, but he kept his eyes closed. He tried to slow his breath. If she was still in the room, she was waiting him out. He stayed like that for a while without making a sound. He had a fearful flash that she had gone into his house and was loading his things into a waiting truck. David was certain she had left the room. He resigned himself to the fact that he would die alone in this warm room with his eyes closed. It was comforting to know. He thought calmly of the fact that sometime in the future he would breathe out and would not breathe back in. It became apparent that he could not feel his left foot in its shoe, and he wondered idly in a small portion of his brain if that foot had vanished or had simply died and remained attached to his body. It seemed possible that when he died, the feeling of death would spread through his body like a deep blush, that the blood on its farewell tour of his veins and capillaries would move slowly and with familiarity, like a man leaving a room for the last time, looking at the items he had purchased and arranged, broken or repaired, the man recognizing each before switching off the light.

A portion of his living body heard Marie speak. “Relax,” she said. “Imagine you’re walking down a long set of stairs. As you walk down the stairs, you realize the air is thickening. Each breath you take in is more productive. Your body fills like a cylinder and presses out through not only your mouth but your ears and skin and eyes.”

David thought of his heavy breath like a supply of air emerging from a plastic tube that was curled inside a velvet bag. He thought of the feeling of receiving oxygen from a mask and the calming sensation it brought, partly because of the concentrated gas but partly too because he could hear his muffled lungs expelling their product within the mask, and it reminded him that he was breathing, that the gas was flowing at all times but most importantly at that moment, a constant and essential truth. His lips and lungs and teeth were witnesses to the passage of breath.

He heard Marie’s voice as if from a recording. The wasps provided the buzz and burr of static behind her. “Your surroundings are wholly familiar yet strange,” she said. He pictured himself on the stairs in his home, descending into the basement.

“The world around you is entirely untraveled, yet you feel no desire to explore it. The mysteries of the world are deeper than your breath, which nourishes your blood and grows your hair and propels your muscles and bones as you guide yourself. Your breath feeds your mind, of which you consciously become less aware, pushing it away, watching it float like a paper boat on a still lake.”