Speculative sullivan the.., p.77
Speculative Sullivan: The Collected Short Fiction, page 77
“Yup.” Talking this way, it almost seemed as if there really were souls captured in the jars we’d been mailing all over the country for the last few weeks.
Rosa got into her VW Bug and I placed her boxful of bottled Thai soul on the floor on the passenger’s side. She started up the motor.
“Maybe I should let it go,” she said.
“Let what go?”
“The soul.”
“You mean pull the cork out?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” I said, nodding at the box. “The one he gave you is so old it looks like the cork has petrified and become part of the bottle.”
“Maybe a little WD-40 will loosen it.”
“I guess you could try that,” I said.
“Or I could just smash it.”
“Yes, you could do that,” I said. “Take a hammer to it.”
“I’d rather break it on the rocks over the ocean,” she said. “Maybe down at Palos Verdes while the gulls fly over.”
“It’s a pleasing thought, especially considering how much Bob loved birds.”
“Maybe that’s what I’ll do.” She smiled at me and backed out of Bob’s driveway.
I watched until her car was out of sight and then turned to look at the innocuous single-story house Bob had lived in all his life. Should I release his soul inside the house? It seemed to me that he’d been imprisoned there. I would take him home with me and he’d dwell somewhere else for the first time, even if it was only a few miles away.
I wondered how he was going to like my lifestyle. Now that I was divorced and not working I had a fair amount of free time. I didn’t want to get too used to loafing, but it did leave me time for writing.
BOB HAD BEEN INTERESTED in my writing—the writing I did to pay the bills and my real writing. My ex, Johanna, never understood how much I appreciated that about Bob. She thought it was kind of me to indulge him, a man she considered a nut-job loser. But finally she’d had enough of me and my inability to say good-bye to someone she thought wasn’t useful. As far as Johanna was concerned, friends were people who helped you move up in the world. You didn’t hang on to those who couldn’t. I hadn’t fully grasped her point of view until she decided I was no use to her anymore. That was shortly after she became story editor of a network sitcom.
“Johanna,” I’d said one afternoon while painting the front hallway a few years back, “how do you know if people will be useful to you in the future?”
“I know Bob Krovantz will never be useful,” she said while I dipped my brush, “so you better let him go.”
“Let him go?” I said, dismayed. “How do you let a friend go?”
“Just stop taking his calls,” she said. “He’s hurting your career.”
“How so?”
“You insist on taking him to parties and he doesn’t know how to talk to people,” she said. “He sits in a corner by himself and tells crude jokes to anyone who approaches him, or he goes on about movies nobody’s seen, records nobody’s ever heard.”
“Somebody’s seen them and heard them,” I said. “A lot of people like Bob.”
That didn’t matter to Johanna. “Having a guy like that around is a detriment to your career. Just think about it,” she said, turning toward the kitchen. “That’s all I ask.”
I made no promises, but Johanna ended up getting her way, as usual. Bob received no more invitations to go places with us, I’m ashamed to say. After a while even phone calls and emails dwindled to little or no contact until Johanna and I split up. I started calling him again, once a week or so. Bob didn’t take betrayals lightly and he made occasional remarks to remind me of my disloyalty, but we soon got together. I tried not to step in the caked bird droppings. My last visit to his house was years ago, when he only had maybe a dozen birds, and I was a little concerned about the current state of his surroundings, but I said nothing about it.
I first suspected something was wrong when I received no emails from Bob for a few days. The last conversation I’d had with him before that was mildly troubling. He’d told me he visited a doctor because of bronchitis and was given medication and sent home, but the problem didn’t go away.
I called him and got no answer. I left a message and he didn’t call back. Further emails went unanswered. There were no new posts by Bob on Facebook. I called his work number the next day and was told by a recorded message he was out of the office. I began to fear that something bad had happened. I called around to local hospitals and found that he was in a Pasadena facility owned by the insurance company he worked for.
I decided to go visit him in the hope that I might cheer him a bit. When I got to the hospital, it turned out that Bob was very sick with congestive heart failure and an as-yet-undetermined infection. I was the only one who came to visit him. I don’t think it was because no one else cared, but they didn’t know he was ill. Besides, it was easy for me because I had no day job since the show I wrote for had been canceled. My annuities paid enough that I didn’t try very hard to get a new job, staying up late writing and getting up around noon every day.
Nights were my time. In my youth I had written Petrarchan sonnets, blank verse, and free verse. Eventually I had turned to short stories, enjoying some mild success in science fiction and fantasy publications while working on my magnum opus, a historical novel set in the Hellenistic era. None of that kept me alive and eating, though. Television writing—that strange world of character arcs and beats, contriving elaborate complications to keep the viewer interested up to the next commercial—did. I never liked the medium, because everything I wrote went through any number of word processors until it conformed to the show’s guidelines. It was a drag, but it paid real money and it enabled me to make some investments to keep me going while I tried to write fiction and poetry.
It was through TV work that I met Bob. He was at a wrap party for the second season of “Leaping Lizards,” the network sitcom that became my sinecure for six years. Bob attended, invited by a writer who was interviewing the stars for a magazine article. He looked so out of place that I was moved to engage him in conversation. I was delighted to find out he was the only one present who knew anything at all about what I considered my real work, even if he didn’t know about the poetry. How could he? Hardly any of it had been published, and most of that in literary journals with tiny circulations. But Bob read the sf magazines and he remembered my name.
I mentioned the poetry and he asked to read some of it. Not only did he read it, but he made astute observations, all the while apologizing for his lack of formal education and saying that the only poetry he really understood was the limerick.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Bob,” I said, an opinion I would voice on more than one occasion. “You have a sharp and analytical mind.”
It was true, except when it came to his personal life. There he was completely at a loss, unable to form any kind of romantic attachments, except for his brief time with Rosa, who was more like a mother than a girlfriend in many ways. He clung to friends until they were forced to find some way out of the relationship, despite their fondness for him. He was invariably injured, although I’m sure no one ever meant to hurt him. It was just the way things were. The way he was.
I encouraged him to try writing and acting, but he never did. He loved the arts, sure, but he would never give them a try. He always protested that he couldn’t stand the uncertainty of such a life. The best he could do was breathe the same air as the creative people he admired, collect their work, and slog through rush-hour traffic to his dreary job five days a week so that he could enjoy his passions on the weekends and evenings.
His birds, his collections, and his friends were all he cared about, but even those, as dear to him as they were, couldn’t satisfy him. I suppose that was what accounted for Bob’s final collection. He loved his Blu-rays and CDs, but they were inanimate if he didn’t play them. He loved his books, comics, and posters, but they meant nothing until he took them out and looked at them. He loved his birds most dearly, but their conversations were severely limited. He adored his friends, but they grew apart from him, hurting him.
But souls in bottles . . .? Even if souls were kept under glass, they could still reason, couldn’t they? They would never leave him. Maybe they even knew he was there, taking care of them. Maybe they appreciated him. I remembered what he said about feeling them.
Bob’s jar was sitting on the kitchen table. I had just brought it down from the attic. The glass was perfectly clear except for my finger smudges and the distortion of its curves. I picked it up, wiped it with a paper towel, and held it up to the light.
“You in there, Bob?” I asked.
I sensed nothing, no emanation of any kind. I put the jar down and drew up a chair to stare at it. Still nothing. I rested my palm on it. I closed my eyes and waited.
A slight vibration may have been caused by a truck rolling past outside, or even a temblor.
Or maybe it was Bob, saying hi.
“How ya doin’, buddy?” I asked the Mason jar, feeling foolish but speaking with sincerity. “If you’re in there, I guess you’ll want to know that Rosa and I are taking care of business for you. We found homes for the birds and gave your movies and books and records away . . . and we distributed the souls to the right people, just as you wanted. We’re trying to do right by you and follow your directions to the letter. Oh, and I’m donating my stipend to a bird sanctuary.”
Whether he could hear me or not, I was sure he would have approved. Somehow this experience made me appreciate belief in the supernatural in a way that reading about it never could. Bob had followed his own spiritual dictates and now I was kneeling at the altar he’d built out of discs, paper, bird doo, and glass.
“You’re coming home with me, Bob.” I picked up the jar and put it in a cardboard box I’d already stuffed with padding for the drive over to my place. I saw Luisa through curtained windows as I hefted it across the porch and set it on my car’s roof while I searched for my keys. I waved to her and then unlocked the trunk.
I put Bob’s soul inside.
“It’s dark in there, Bob,” I said, “but it’s the safest way to get you home. It’ll just be a little while.”
I got in and started up the Prius, preoccupied with thoughts of how stupid I was to think there could be anything to this odd business. I went through a stop sign and got in a pretty bad accident three blocks away. I don’t remember much about it.
I AWAKENED in the same hospital where Bob died. I was told later that when I became conscious the first thing I asked about was the jar. Nobody knew what I was talking about.
Medicated, I drifted in and out of consciousness. I suffered two broken ribs, a fractured elbow, and a mild concussion. Every time I went to sleep somebody woke me up.
“What happened?” I’d ask.
“You’ve been in a car crash,” a plump nurse named Marie would explain.
“Where am I?”
I was told the name of the hospital once again.
“Is the jar broken?”
She didn’t know the answer to that one.
Next time I drifted off and somebody awakened me, I asked the same questions. Concussions are like that. If you go into a deep sleep it can easily become a coma, so they have to keep waking you up. But every time I came to I had little or no memory of where I was or why I was there. I asked the same questions so many times that they put a notice on a white board in front of me with answers to all of them except one. It listed the name of the hospital, the fact that I’d been in an accident, and a few other salient details, but nothing about the jar. After a while things started to make some sense.
I heard Rosa speaking on one of these occasions.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I think he knows I’m here.”
“Good,” the nurse said. “Don’t let him fall asleep, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be back.” The nurse went out to check on some other poor soul.
“Rosa . . . ,” I said in a hoarse voice.
“Hi,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Don’t try to talk.”
“I want to,” I said, clearing my throat. “Did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Break the bottle at PV.”
“No, I haven’t done it.”
“Do you believe there’s a soul in that bottle?”
“Bob believed it.”
“I’m sure he did, but it’s still just a bottle.”
“Is it?”
“Better be,” I said, “because I think his soul jar is gone forever.”
“The accident?”
“Yeah, I was taking it home with me. The jar was in the trunk.”
“Oh.” She looked stricken.
“It happened right near Bob’s house,” I said. “I barely remember it.”
“You’re going to be okay, though.”
“So the doctor tells me.”
“It’s a shame it had to happen this way.”
I was in too much pain to shrug. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the jar’s loss or my injuries. They seemed like parts of the same thing, but I had no idea what that thing was.
“His soul could be anywhere by now,” Rosa said.
I sighed. “His soul, if it exists at all, is right where it always was.”
“Where’s that?”
“Nowhere,” I said. “Everywhere . . . How would I know?”
“But you said—”
“What I meant is that you can’t keep a human soul under glass. If it exists, it’s an intangible entity.”
“A spirit.”
“That’s another name for it, sure.”
“You can’t bring yourself to believe any of it, not even a little bit for Bob’s sake?”
“Let’s just say I find it highly unlikely.”
“Unlikely, but not impossible?”
She had me there. “It’s impossible to prove one way or the other. It has to be taken on faith.”
“Well, then.”
“That’s the trouble with woo-woo,” I said. “You can’t test it.”
“Maybe we can.”
“Huh?”
“Some people test for ghosts.” Rosa and Ted used to listen to Art Bell late at night, an indulgence I had always frowned upon.
“Yeah, a smear on a lens or an electromagnetic pulse in an empty house and the true believers are convinced. They don’t use anything resembling logic in most cases, because they’ve already made up their minds.”
“Well, where do you think those smears and electromagnetic pulses come from?”
“I’ve got plenty of old pictures with smears on them,” I said. “As for the EMPs, they’re all around us in any electrically wired house.”
“Oh.”
“But simple facts like that don’t stop the nonsense.” I realized that I was becoming quite animated for the first time since the accident, trying hard to be logical. “People believe what they want, even if it’s magic.”
“Is that so bad?”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“Don’t you like to waste time?”
I laughed a little. “Before Johanna I did, if the company was good.”
“She didn’t make you happy, so why go on trying to please her?”
“Everybody has to smarten up sometime,” I said, trying to forget my soliloquy to Bob’s jar shortly before the accident.
“Being smart is one thing, but doubting the wisdom of people who love us is something else.”
“What’s that got to do with ghosts?”
“I’ll buy you an EMP detector for your birthday and you can find out,” she said.
I laughed, which made Rosa smile.
“You’re gonna be all right,” she said, “as long as you can laugh.”
“It’s just the drugs.”
I gave Rosa my house key and she went to my place to check my messages. One was from the towing company. They’d found a briefcase, some loose papers, and an intact cardboard box. They wanted to know if I intended to claim them. I hurriedly punched in their number, afraid that they’d thrown Bob’s soul jar out with the trash.
“We have it here,” the woman on the phone told me when I finally got through. “You can pick it up anytime from nine to five at our office.”
“Can you deliver it?”
“No, sorry.”
“But I’m in the hospital,” I explained.
“Sorry,” she said, “We have a strict policy.”
“I’ll pick it up as soon as possible,” I said.
“We can hold it another couple days.”
“Thanks, I’ll try to get someone over there by tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she said. “I hope you feel better.”
I thanked her and hung up. I told Rosa the unexpected news about the jar.
“It’s not broken?” she asked.
“Apparently not,” I said. “I was hit in the front end on the passenger’s side and the jar was in a well-padded box in the trunk. It could be shattered inside the box, but they didn’t seem to think there was any damage done.”
“They’d hear it tinkling if the glass was broken.”
“Right.”
“I’ll pick it up for you today.”
“Thank you, Rosa.”
Rosa had always been someone you could depend on. She not only retrieved the box, but she retrieved me from the hospital when the time came. There was a long wait for the wheelchair, which particularly annoyed me because by then I was capable of walking without help, but it was a hospital rule. Marie offered to wheel me out when they finally found a chair, but Rosa said she’d do it.
“Did you bring Bob’s soul?” I asked her as soon as we were out front in the hazy sunlight. I got out of the wheelchair, blinked, and groped for my shades, tears coming to my eyes because of the brightness.
“No, it’s at your house.”
“You didn’t leave it outside, did you?”
“Of course not. You gave me a key to check your mail and things,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” The concussion and medication had left me with a lot of fuzzy memories of the past few days. It was possible that some memories had been obliterated altogether. I was careful not to bump my cast or rib brace while Rosa helped me get into her car. I was still hurting all over, but Percocet helped. I was quiet while Rosa started up the engine and turned on the stereo.
