Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

“Who’s old?” he said, thumbing the screen of his phone. He saw an icon of a snowflake and paused for a few seconds, not quite registering the little picture.

“If I’m old then you’re old,” she said. “And I am old.”

“Nonsense,” he said and gave her a hard little peck on the cheek. “You’re my spring chicken. My honey bunny.”

Back on the road Susan pointed to some graffiti on a billboard. Huge, cloud-like letters spelled something, though she didn’t know what. It may as well have been in another language. “God,” she marveled. “I can’t believe someone actually stood up there and wrote that. It’s so high .”

“That’s why I’m not worried about someone cleaning our windows,” Henry said. “It’s probably the same people.”

Susan opened a bag of black licorice and reached in. She eyed the speedometer. “Slow down, will you please ? You’re making me sick.”

“Al right ,” he said as if she had already asked him many times. He relaxed his foot on the gas pedal, bringing the needle down only slightly.

“I wish we could take a train there,” Susan said, chewing the candy. “Trains put me right to sleep.”

Henry glanced at his wife. “In Russia you can’t sleep on trains,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You wake up without organs.”

“Henry.”

“Either your kidney or your liver. Gone. I think the demand for livers is higher than—”

“Henry, please.”

“The future has been here for a long time,” he said in a kind of trance. “We’re not even people anymore.”

“That’s enough ,” Susan said firmly. But it was too late. Her mind already contained a sloshing cooler of organs. She set the bag of licorice down in the drink holder, feeling nauseous. “You know what I find really disgusting?” she said. “Harvesting.”

“Oh I know ,” Henry said, nodding adamantly.

“Just the thought of someone’s organs kept alive… without them.”

Henry made an empathizing hum.

Susan tilted her seat back and arranged her scarf over her face.

• • •

When she woke, Henry was outside pumping gas. It was dark and a light snow had begun. The grass looked slick.

“We should stop,” she said when he got back in the car.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “I have another hour in me at least.”

But when Henry got back on the road, they quickly had the sensation of gliding over water.

“Henry,” Susan said in a clipped tone. “We have to stop.” Snow was falling heavier by the second.

“I know.”

“Take this exit.”

“I know ,” he said, turning off the road. The car swerved slightly and he braced the wheel, struggling to complete the turn.

“Henry!”

“Shut up for a second.”

“You’re going too fast!”

A bright Holiday Inn sign appeared at the roadside, behind it a beige castle nestled in darkness.

“Thank God,” Susan said but the tawny offering whipped by. “For Christ’s sake! Why didn’t you stop ?”

“It looked expensive,” Henry said quickly, though in fact he was afraid to make the turn. “There’s another one coming up I think.”

Now they were driving down a thin road flanked by the tall darkness of trees, giant snowflakes falling in droves.

“Henry!” Susan cried, pleaded, her eyes shifting wildly from him to the road.

He relaxed his hands on the wheel, oddly mesmerized by the snow. Ding ding ding went the bells in his mind. He smiled absurdly.

Susan sat quietly, her eyes bugged. She guessed she was about to die.

A moment later the car seemed to be flying. It swerved off the road — Susan screamed — and it thudded to a stop in a shallow ditch. Instantly their hands flew to each other.

“Are you alright?” Henry said.

Susan burst into tears. They unbuckled their seat belts and hugged.

“Are you hurt?” he said.

“No,” she gagged and brought her hands up to her face, making a bowl to shudder into.

Henry patted her with one hand and felt around for his phone with the other. Susan took her hands from her face and sat hiccuping for a while. Then she switched on the car light and stared at her husband.

Nervously, with shame, he stared back. Henry could see the fear fading in her eyes and the accusation rising. “What is wrong with you?” she said.

“Alright, save it. Let’s just get out of this goddamn hole.”

• • •

A few hours later they were in bed at the Holiday Inn, fully clothed, bickering, with rolled towels under their necks. They had been pulled out of the ditch by a huge, ham-colored man in a tow truck who demanded two hundred dollars in cash, which of course they didn’t have on hand. So he drove them right to an ATM.

“It was like being robbed ,” Susan fumed.

“You’re shouting,” Henry said.

“You should’ve refused.”

“We had no choice. That guy was clearly in cahoots with the cops. This is what they do .”

“My neck ,” Susan moaned.

“You have whiplash. You’re going to be fine.”

“We should go to the hospital.”

“So we can sit there for hours until some moron says we have whiplash ? I won’t do it.”

“What if we hit our heads?”

“We didn’t hit our heads,” Henry said and sat up. “I’m turning off the light.”

“Sometimes people hit their heads and they don’t remember,” Susan said, her eyes pleading.

“We didn’t hit our goddamn heads. The windshield would’ve broken.” He sighed. “I’m turning off the light.”

“Leave one on,” Susan said. “Please. This place gives me the creeps.”

Henry said nothing. But he had to agree that the room was awful and somewhat like a cage, with its low ceiling and unopenable windows looking out onto the parking lot. Giant flakes of snow were still rushing through the air, quietly accumulating on the three cars in the lot. It looked so soft, Henry thought. The thing that almost killed them. He closed the slatted metallic shades and undressed, then walked back to the bed in his boxers and undershirt. Henry had pale, bony legs and the paunch of a genetically thin man who has overeaten for decades. “Let’s get under the covers,” he said to Susan but she said nothing, her mouth angrily pursed. He walked to the other side of the bed and peeled the tan blanket back, then climbed in despite Susan, who remained sternly in position, blinking at the ceiling.

When she finally did take off her clothes and get under the sheets, the same angry, fearful energy kept her eyes bugged. “I can’t sleep,” she said.

Henry muttered something, then slid right back out of consciousness.

“I keep thinking about the guy at the front desk,” Susan said loudly. “Didn’t he have kind of a strange reaction when we said we were in an accident? He looked like he thought it was funny.”

“He was odd,” Henry said, rousing with interest. “He looked a little like the guy that killed the dancer.”

“What?”

“Remember the woman in the East Village who had the terrible roommate who killed her?”

“No,” Susan said, as icily as she could manage.

“Was it the eighties?” He squinted. “She was a dancer, I remember that. And the guy cut her up and put her in a stew and fed it to the homeless in the park.”

“God damn it, Henry.”

“I remember reading about it in the Voice . It was this bald guy that did it.”

Unable to move her neck, Susan went on staring, with great urgency, at the ceiling. “That’s such a terrible thing to do to the homeless,” she said.