Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Read online

  On the way home, surrounded by holiday lights and pagan wishful thinking, I dissected other myths surrounding me, like marriage, family, friends, happiness. I’d make my own. I’d always made the most progress on my own. I should’ve been used to it by then.

  Christmas Eve day I spent keeping surfaces in focus: reviewing the research and my notes on beauty, preparing the questions, and cleaning the already spotless apartment. I avoided calling Elizabeth back. I avoided Sam’s coffin, relegated to a corner in the kitchen, though Sam was beginning to reek.

  ***

  Even in Times Square Christmas Eve had shadows. It was just past 7:30 PM, and if I’d read Zoe’s directions correctly my destination was an alley around the block from the coffee shop where we’d met, about halfway down. I spotted an unlikely entrance, seedy, that triggered more edginess.

  A single light bulb at the far end of the alley silhouetted garbage stacked high above me along each wall. Grit drifted through the shaft of light, which charted a small, otherworldly pathway. If I was careful I could navigate without touching the discarded waste. The smell, even encased in the large plastic bags, cloyed at my throat and made me gag. Those mounds had been forgotten for a long time.

  Time was running out. Even as I moved through the fetid trench it occurred to me that the filth and smell were the least of my worries. I could be mugged, or worse, I could fail.

  I didn’t see her. She’d said halfway down, look for stairs into a basement. I wasn’t early; numerous Times Square clocks had dispelled that. The solitary bulb was a warning, but I’d already burned what was behind me, so I moved forward till I saw the steps. Zoe ascended from the shadows wearing a dark green jacket.

  “You made it!” I couldn’t have been tighter inside, breezier out.

  She wasn’t. “Eunis, I’ve been thinking . . .”

  “Zoe, please.”

  “It’s just that I . . . we could be in a lot of trouble. Security’s tight.”

  “First off, you said it’s light tonight; skeleton crews.”

  “It is.”

  “We’ll be in and out in an hour, we’ll be gone before it’s even monitored, and I’ll have the only record.” I held up the disc.

  She was dour.

  My heart quickened. “I’ve set up blind phone numbers. Untraceable. You thought it was a grand psychological experiment.”

  “It is.”

  “So?” Out on the street dark bodies passed left and right. “This is a chance to do really exciting research. With some luck, to change things.”

  “Luck.”

  “No one gets hurt, there’s nothing illegal.”

  “Except that I’m giving you access to a proprietary four-story high billboard, in Times Square. Let’s not kid ourselves.”

  “Replacing Kate Upton for sixty minutes. She’ll be back up doing her stuff before they miss her.” I gave Zoe a moment. “You’re not even scheduled tonight. You said the board’s on remote.”

  “But if they ever find out . . .”

  There was still a little of Harold’s money in the bank. “I’ll pay you.”

  Her face shifted, almost indecipherable.

  “What’s a semester’s tuition? Three thousand? That’s more than they’ll pay you in a couple months, right?”

  “With fees, more like five thousand. But I don’t know . . .”

  That would effectively finish me off. But time was slipping away. “I’ll pay you eight thousand, cash. It’s all I’ve got.”

  “How do I know you’ll pay?”

  “Because if you lead the cops to me, I’ll lose my job and any hope of getting a doctorate. An education in genetics will be gone. You’ll lose your job; I’ll lose my life. Look at me, what else can I do looking like this? Please.”

  “You could market your story. Isn’t that the way? Your fifteen minutes of fame, with me as your expendable?”

  “What do you think they’d do with me? Pay me a little, then turn me into a sideshow freak?”

  Her eyes were down, distant, not really seeing the pavement.

  “Zoe.” I knew I’d almost lost her. “What would your life have been like if what I’m proposing had been possible for your folks?”

  Her one good eye met mine, a well of disappointment. With barely a nod we descended the steps through a non-descript metal door, into a narrow, scarcely lit basement hallway with a strangling steamy odor and large sewage pipes running along each concrete wall. An old building.

  “Careful,” she said as we ducked under a pipe and, farther down, over a series of tattered ventilation ducts. Bodies —rodent and human— could’ve been secreted away there. The air, claustrophobic like a tomb. Atoms on alert.

  We turned left and went down another five or six concrete steps till we came to an unmarked door sheathed in dented metal. Zoe pulled her keys, then wavered. Water rushed to my ears. No time to measure. “It’d be easier to hack the system remotely,” I whispered. “No one would even know this is here.”

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

  “Yes you do.” I signaled for her to unlock the door. She took a deep breath and held it, like she was going to dive. She opened it.

  I stared into a tiny server room, like the one at the lab except that it was much, much older, with more servers.

  “This is just for that one billboard?”

  “Give me the disc.” Her voice harried, constricted. She fumbled with the disk and, hand shaking, inserted it into the drive and checked her watch. “7:46 PM. You have thirty minutes.”

  “Hey! We agreed an hour.”

  “You want your disc back?” Panic twitched around her mouth.

  “Okay. Go!”

  She pushed PLAY, and the tiny monitor dissolved from Kate Upton’s micro bathing suit and ample flesh to a split screen with my normative male and female heads. I could almost hear men in Times Square moaning at their loss, but no, it was deep water amassing around me. Stay focused.

  My normative faces had skins so perfectly pigmented they could be Caucasian, African-American or Hispanic. My headline:

  “You choose the most beautiful”

  Each male and female head animated every eight seconds through the four choices, then repeated itself:

  Blonde hair/blue eyes

  Blonde hair/green eyes

  Dark brown hair/blue eyes

  Dark brown hair/green eyes

  A series of numbers —one set for male voters and another for female— scrolled along the bottom, with instructions to text only once. Zoe alternately watched the monitor and a series of digital numbers and lights on the server panel. “This is live on Times Square now?” I could hardly believe my good fortune or the pressure.

  “Yes.” Tense as ever, chewing her fingernail.

  As I stood there wishing I could be on the street watching, Zoe suddenly said, “You know what, get out of here. If security shows up, I can say I was in the square and detected a problem, so I came here. Just get out!”

  “What?”

  “I’ll destroy the disc as soon as I’m out of here. Get out!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Bring the cash to the coffee shop on the twenty-sixth at noon. Don’t mess with me.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Don’t screw me, I’ve done my part. Now get out of here!”

  As quickly as I could steer through the hurdles of the passageway, I was out the door, up the steps, and out of the alleyway into the lights. Coming up for air, I ran to the other end of the block. And there it was: magnificent, sixty feet high, my images, my research, and a crowd of people watching and texting.

  ***

  The match ignited. I lit the candle. The matchbox given to me by the albino Jamaican woman went back in my pocket. Christmas Eve atop the world, and I could enjoy the colors. At last something to celebrate!

  The numbers on my laptop had stopped spinning. Zoe hadn’t given me the full thirty minutes, but I had feedback from close to 20,000 respondents! 20,000
! My heart swelled, my eyes tingled with . . . dare I say it, joy. On the TV there was no mention of anyone hacking into Times Square. By then Zoe should’ve been safely at home and the only evidence destroyed.

  Data partied in my head like drunken sugar plum fairies. I was consumed with corralling and evaluating it, but as I settled into the high-backed chair and watched the flickering light dance across my apartment, the stench emitting from the red cedar box on the kitchen counter distracted me, the dirty, proliferating stench. It reminded me of how I’d failed him —of my many failures, really— and I wanted to be rid of them. But the seed of freedom that Sam had planted was strong too.

  “Sammy.” I walked over to him. “I’m sorry. I can’t bury you properly. I wanted something beautiful for you. I don’t want to incinerate you . . . like the others.” Like Harold.

  It was the practical way, the antiseptic way, bleaching out all impurities but . . . I was going to have to do something soon. The pong of Sam’s rotting carcass spread into the air and forced my head to jerk away. Tonight, of all nights, let me do something right.

  A proper burial, Momma would warn . . . or else. To me it became a simple matter: basic cleanliness demanded it. I pulled on my overcoat and, keeping the box at arm’s length, I left the apartment.

  I pressed ‘down.’ The doors closed and the elevator descended. But at the eleventh floor it glided to a stop, surprising me. I questioned the floor indicator. The doors slid open and, despite the late-late hour, a well-dressed older woman wearing expensive jewelry, a red and white Santa hat, and carrying a laundry basket, stepped in. Of course my face jolted her, but the smell collapsed her expression and immediately repelled her.

  “My god!” the woman said angrily. “You’re disgusting!”

  The woman bolted. The elevator door slid shut. I smothered my laugh. The elevator started down again. I did feel free.

  Once I was out of The Octagon’s glare I removed my tinted glasses and appraised the darkened path to the lighthouse. The day’s warmth had contracted the mounds of snow, but the earth, lampposts and railings were frosted with crystals as the post-midnight temperatures again plummeted and bewitched the landscape. Momma, unable to see crystals as the multi-dimensional ordering of atoms, saw them as sprites and nixies, members of her unpredictable family of spooks. Notwithstanding her foolishness, I was oddly revitalized by their familiarity and by their certain return, drop-by-drop, to the rivers and oceans. That night they would honor Sam the Shadow.

  As I approached the lighthouse at the end of the island, I wondered about Charles Dickens — the writer who traveled that island of outcasts, who saw that very lighthouse almost 200 years earlier, and who was unafraid to speak out concerning the inhumanity he saw there. Yet he was also an imperialist. I’d asked Harold about this contradiction when he read it to me. He shrugged, that annoying shrug.

  Wasn’t it Dickens who wanted to eradicate the East Indians? Conquerors take the vanquished.

  He nodded.

  “Where’s the humanity?” I’d asked.

  He had no answer.

  And where was my humanity? Ahead in the dark watchtower, I envisioned the destitute Charles Dickens and how I’d failed the poor man. But I still had time to make good on my other promises and I was grateful for that.

  My fingers ran along Sam’s red cedar coffin. Best to go by water. With so little light I still saw remarkably well. At the tip of the island, behind the lighthouse, where once I’d considered slipping into the water — you did consider killing yourself, Eunis, stop pretending — I climbed over the railing, careful to keep a grip on the cedar box. Perhaps due to the heady response in Times Square, I felt nimble as I climbed deliberately over the rocks to the choppy water’s edge.

  “Stop,” said a voice above me. “Don’t!” The man was clumsy, scampering down the slope to me before I could even respond. It was Charles Dickens.

  “Take my hand,” he said.

  “I’m okay.” And he was alive!

  “Take my hand.” He was a bit shaky but seemed more lucid.

  “Charles, it’s me, I’m okay.”

  “Who?”

  “Charles Dickens. That’s you right?”

  “No. My name is Malcolm. Let’s talk about this up there away from the water. C’mon”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “I do not.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Then come up there with me.” He pointed to the base of the tower.

  “Not before I bury my friend.”

  “In the box?”

  “Sammy.” I pulled the matches from my pocket and, holding the flame steady, lit the top of the cedar box on fire. Fire and water, complete purification.

  “Oh,” said Malcolm. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “No, please stay. He was a rat among many. But I knew him better than most.” The box held the flame. The sweet cedar smoke consoled me. I placed it on the water, gave it a shove.

  “Sammy?” he asked.

  “Sam, Sammy.”

  “How old?”

  “About two and a half.”

  Reverence rose in Malcolm’s eyes. “This is grand, like the Vikings; a burial ship. May your soul be peaceful, move on, and return. See you soon, Sam.”

  It was stately, even if it was only legend. “Thank you.” I nodded at him. “That was very nice.”

  The cedar box bobbed in the choppy waters but stayed afloat and on fire. We stood on the shore watching the blazing box drift into open sea. All connected: Sam, Harold’s gift, Malcolm, the water and me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sam’s funeral pyre finally disappeared into the charcoal mist. I turned to Malcolm who had not taken his eyes off the flaming box. I climbed the rocky slope to the lighthouse.

  “My hand,” he said leaning over the railing, arm extended, his stained brown overcoat riffling in the night breeze and his shin-high military boots partially laced and firmly planted. “Take my hand.” I did, then considered where I could wash it.

  Back on solid ground I asked again, “You don’t remember me?”

  “Should I?”

  “We met a few nights ago.”

  “Same place, same time?” He smiled. His teeth needed work. He’d been discarded too long.

  “Yes, almost.” I returned the smile. “Are you in the lighthouse?”

  His eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “Do you like Charles Dickens?”

  “I do, very much.”

  “When I met you the other night, you quoted him.”

  His grin folded. “Did I say something wrong? Dickens . . .” He scratched his grimy head, his eyes heavy. “Sometimes . . . I don’t know where it comes from. Sorry.”

  “No, no. What you said to me was important.” Perhaps he was an emissary, a connection, someone who could point me more clearly to Dickens, to Harold, and —given his comment regarding reason and beauty —even to Dickens’s principles or codes of beauty.

  “It was?” His face lightened a little.

  “Yes.” How would I explain it all? I couldn’t. “Why do you stay in the lighthouse?”

  “I’m good with my hands.” He grinned proudly, referring to the jimmied lock with a twist of his wrist. “Don’t need to sleep on the streets. And here I am, ready for my morning intake at the hospital. Most people spend a small fortune to live on this island. I’m gentry, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I guess you are. But isn’t it cold?”

  “Sometimes. Don’t you like the cold?”

  “I do.”

  “So there. It makes me feel alive. As long as it doesn’t kill me. That will come soon enough without my help.”

  “You could crash at my apartment. It’s warmer.” Had I offered that? To a man who almost frightened me to death a few nights earlier? “At least for tonight.”

  “I told you, I like the cold.”

  But he
had saved me, hadn’t he? “Just tonight. For a few hours.”

  He deliberated. “You’re not afraid of me? What I might do?”

  “What would you do?”

  “I’m not always clearheaded.”

  “No, neither am I. Come on. I live over there.”

  “You’re sure? Just tonight.”

  “Sure.” I wasn’t. But it was time.

  ***

  Once more I lit candles. Would Malcolm hear the voices I heard? How exactly could I fashion questions around Harold’s death and my hope that the Dickens books held answers? It was unreasonable of course. Yet at this point, why not.

  At the same time, I dwelled on my idle laptop and itched to start tallying and correlating the data from my grand experiment. Consensus —particularly consensus from 40,000-50,000 people— could be the means toward finding beauty’s coordinates.

  I offered Malcolm the old chair but he crossed his legs and sat against the bottom of the kitchen counter, as Elizabeth and I had done only a day or so earlier. In a way, I was glad. He was filthy.

  “Would you like some food?”

  “Water, please.”

  When I brought it to him his smell overwhelmed me; worse than the alleyway garbage. Much worse. He needed a bath. “Would you like to take a shower?”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I used to be respectable, you know.” He finished the water. Set the glass down slowly, unsure where the air met the floor.

  “I’ll get it warmed up. Get you a towel.” In the small bathroom I put away my toothbrush and toothpaste and water cup. My washcloth too. Otherwise, as I scouted around, it was tidy as should be, and safer this way.

  I pulled a towel from the small linen closet and turned on the shower. My ears started reverberating. “Oh god, it’s starting again.”

  I held onto the washbasin and waited for the voices. But instead a lustral sensation overtook me. I had no desire to push against it. It held me for only a minute or two, then passed. One breath and I returned to the living room. Malcolm slept against the counter, snoring loudly. The canyons on his face had softened. If not for his clothes, he could have been a contented family member sleeping off holiday festivities. I touched my heart where his calm had surfaced in me.