Fiction: As My Body Slowly Melts

By David Huntington

 

There is a bald man on the porch who keeps rubbing his head, alternately sitting on the bench and standing up. He must not realize that my home security system has already detected him and opened a video on my phone. I am one room away from him holding a book on the Stoics, watching him rub his head again. From the fisheye lens above, his dome is as big as the rest of him. The moment expands, watching him, like a meditation, the bald man on my porch; I don’t move an inch, but I sip coffee.

The bell chimes and I see his hand jab out, in that order. I set down my coffee and set down my book. Being coldhearted, I consider watching him wait longer. Perhaps I resent that he is nervous about what he will communicate. It is not trivial to drive out to this scenic home in the painted hills west of Tucson. I cross the house to open the door. We now regard each other through a locked metal screen. Yes? Can I help you? Through the little holes in the screen I see office wear, a slim build, and a puggish face.

Hi! This is Mr. Mark Kensington?

Yes.

I’m Lars. I’m canvassing for the Hope Without Borders Foundation. We provide care and support for immigrant children who have been separated from their parents. 

Is that all? I say.

His head moves side to side, trying to see me through the screen: Yes, he says, can I . . . can I tell you about what we do?

You came all the way out here, such a long drive for so few houses, I say, so you might as well then.

You want to, um, open the screen maybe? So we can see each other clearly? 

Oh I’m fine like this, I say. 

Lars clears his throat, but then says nothing.

I am waiting very patiently.

Sorry, he says, just I was really hoping you would recognize me. It’s Lars Gunder. We used to work together at Arrowspace? Sorry about the canvassing thing. I really just wanted to know . . . kind of test . . . but anyway, he laughs, you couldn’t really see me with the screen there so it’s moot. But yeah, now you must know me. Good to, well, sort of see you again, Mark. 

Lars Gunder? I repeat. From Arrowspace? It’s been over a decade . . . I am still not certain. Pressing my eye to the screen door I call up old colleagues. He certainly hadn’t been one of my main companions there, or even someone integral to my work. Then comes a sneaking suspicion that he’s after something classified. After so many years, I begin to realize, it’s nontrivial to recall what had been included in the nondisclosure agreements. I sigh. I say, really Lars, I’m stumped. How exactly did we work together?

Ah hell, maybe you don’t remember. I’m afraid I really must come across as suspicious then. I’ve just moved to Tucson. I’m at Raytheon now. John Thorpe gave me your address, said you still contract for them.

John Thorpe sent you? I repeat. At last he has said something reassuring. John’s a friend. So why’d he send you?

Because I said I knew you at Arrowspace. I was one of the ballistic designers. The Cuttlefish, that was me.

Ilya designed the Cuttlefish.

We co-designed it. I was in Building B with the materials guys.

It rang a distant bell. How many targets could the Cuttlefish hit?

49.

I nod. That’s right. But anyone who’d read up on the Cuttlefish missile would have known that. I must ask something better. Something personal. But my mind takes hold of nothing, or rather nothing bites, though I sense so many forms circling in the darkness. At last something comes, and I ask him where we went for the company party that year after the Cuttlefish was completed.

I admire your prudence, he says, rubbing his head. Through the screen he is really nothing more than discrete pins of light. Then he says, that was a memorable one, wasn’t it? We rented a ferry on the Hudson. Tim Scaglioni got smashed and climbed up on the thing and . . . you, yeah, I think it was you, actually—there was some sort of bet, and I remember you got down on all fours and pretended to be a dog. It was incredibly convincing! It was like you’d become a dog, the way you sniffed around and barked—you even begged! And I think you licked my shoe. Wow, actually, it was fairly impressive. You were a perfect dog. I’d almost forgotten that.

Strangely, I had also forgotten, but as the words gave form to images, I knew it was true. How embarrassing! It was a sloppy night. Why of all things did I ask about that party? Just the first thing that came to my mind by chance? Or was it something that had been lurking in my subconscious all these years? Lars is craning to see me again. Let’s get a better look at each other, I say, unlocking the screen. With full detail now, I regard again this bald Scandinavian. He smiles. Yes. He does seem familiar, doesn’t he?

He looks a healthy fifty, as I am a healthy sixty. I would always check the simulations with you, I say, but more as a question.

That’s right, he said. Come on, Mark, ten years isn’t that long ago.

You’re right. Please, Lars, come in. My apologies. My memory’s never been strong, God forbid age makes it worse. As he enters I shut the door. Lars appears remarkably bolder and more dignified now, nothing like the man who’d cowered before ringing.

Beautiful collection! Lars says, and suddenly I am acutely aware that my quiet sanctuary has been compromised. I never would have planned to have a guest in the morning. How did this happen? Look at him grinning. I begin to detest him. His head’s like a squirt of paste. This a local artist? he says, picking up a Hopi katsina carving, an elaborate figurine with a face of triangles. 

Yes, I really admire native desert art. 

The house is dressed with a hundred thousand dollars of it, and his touching it irritates me. My art collection feels something like an open wound, a wound on every counter and wall, one that I can’t help picking. But the largest painting, as we enter the sunken, dim lit den where I had been reading, in which the half-drawn shades give contrast to a blade of orange light, is a gothic New England landscape—in the miniature distance one sees a hunter and two hounds crossing the snow and approaching the trees. From the moment I met this painting it provoked me, and in the tangle of shadows and branches it was as if I saw the entire plot of Paradise Lost reenacted, though certainly the artist did not intend it. I feel like Satan looking down into paradise. 

Lars now is regarding it with some reverence; has it got him too? I like him more for this. And even more I appreciate when he turns back to me and does not feign to comment.

So why are you here? I ask. We stop in the kitchen that looks over the sunken den. I’ve taken the initiative in the conversation; reasserted myself.

I’m new in town, he shrugs. You’re the only guy I know. 

Family?

None. You?

Divorced, I say.

Kids? he says.

We got divorced because I was sterile. I am surprised at how directly I say this. I am still not certain I know this man. He is like an acquaintance from another life.

Oh that’s a shame, he says. And you wouldn’t adopt? Or use a bank?

Please, I say, this isn’t a morning conversation. I remember my coffee. Do you want a coffee? I have an espresso machine. It packs a punch.

I’ll take it with some whiskey, he says.

I laugh and say that’s the spirit, but I am as much unsettled by the idea as I am elated. I tell him to take a seat at the counter as I make the drink. Of course I splash a little Jack in my cup too. We clink mugs. Good stuff, he says. He picks his ear. It is the moment to speak but I miss it. I try, but all the possibilities of speech evade me. Suddenly I am helpless.

Don’t you wonder about how much we’ve forgotten sometimes? He says this absently, his eyes on the painting, the cup near his lips. 

So where are you living in Tucson? I ask dryly.

Oh, he says, in the south near Raytheon. It’s fine. Remember McAlister Ames?

Oh do I! I say. That man was something else. 

He was, he was. And he’s still going, you know? After he sold it, he bought a high-rise in Miami, and took in some investors to buy a second in Kuwait City. Wants to realize his dream as a businessman.

He always wore those suits, but . . . I chuckled, imagining that fierce, militaristic bravado, the purple cheeks, the sideburns, the stature, the . . . 

All these military men love power, Lars says, and for years they clime the ranks. But then at some point they mingle back with civilian society, and they realize they don’t have the power they thought they had. It’s the businessmen of the world who really have the power. 

To buy the politicians. To buy the missiles. To buy the intelligence. The drones, I say. You’re right—power today has changed. It gets you nowhere to have the ability to lead a militia. In fact, I think we’re more aware than ever of what has always been true—that people don’t direct the classes of societies, but rather it’s the work of much larger, incalculable forces.

This statement empowers me. I am certain I have said it well and am capable of speaking well again.

How about another? he says. A little more this time.

What time is it? I wonder but do not look. I don’t leave home often these days—I have everything I need and more. There is so much philosophy I never read in my youth. For days I have been reading words that fill me with regret. But it’s inspiring to be made to regret what one for so long has not regretted. It suggests there is potential for change. I am yearning to be changed. What else is there to do?

You know Lars, I admit to him, you are a strange man to come here and act so friendly. Not that we weren’t friends, we worked together for some 15 years, but it’s been so long without a word and almost never, as far as I recall, met outside of work. And so . . . I’m not sure exactly how to say this, but most people wouldn’t come seek out an old colleague at their home in the hills and invite themselves in. 

I’m pretty sure you invited me in, Mark.

Did I? I am confused for a moment, but before I can explain that yes, technically I said “come in” but really it was he who appeared on my doorstep as an old colleague, which more or less forced my hand. Certainly it had been Lars who had imposed himself. But before I can explain this Lars says:

Well, Mark, as you are absolutely right that it is strange of me to come I’ll be straight with you. John asked me to come. He didn’t feel he could come himself, so he wanted me to check up on you.

Check up on me? Why?

I don’t know entirely. Perhaps you haven’t been answering his calls.

If John called I would certainly answer. He hasn’t called me.

Perhaps something about your memory then.

What? I say. What gave him cause for concern then? I’m doing just fine. Suddenly I feel exposed. My home has been invaded. This ghostly Scandinavian of times-gone-past is visiting, and I don’t know why—is something else at work here? 

Lars, I say, Lars, what is this about really? I’m semi-retired, I haven’t worked for John in at least a month—who the hell are you to come here! I am angry now, furious. I am fully embodied, but a traitor to my own Stoic aspirations, and as such, quickly after I am enflamed, a bucket of shame crashes over me. I look at Lars with my heart pounding in my chest. Lars, I say, who are you, really?

Mark, I told you, I am Lars Gunder, your old colleague.

I—I know that! You think I’m a fucking Alzheimer’s patient? I mean it . . . I mean it metaphysically, and, no, I mean it accusingly! Who are you to come here and force yourself in?

You invited me in, he says.

Don’t patronize me, Lars Gunder, what are you here for? What’s going on?

Look, he says, with a touch of pain in his eyes, now in a place of utter power in our exchange that frightens me, look, he says, forget what I said before. The truth, my personal motive, is one simply of loneliness. The John Thorpe thing was an excuse. I’m like you, you know, over fifty, alone, moderately wealthy but lonely, really lonely. In a new city now, even, having abandoned all I knew in Jersey. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come here. I just came out of weakness, really. My mission, to be honest, was to change myself by moving to Tucson. I’ve always loved the southwest. I own a horse now. Did you know that? Don’t tell John, but I took the job almost solely so I could live out my cowboy fantasies.

A horse?

A majestic black Mustang named Adele.

I am disoriented. Angry, but I no longer know for certain at what. A horse? When I picture Lars on a horse I see Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal. 

Just pour the whiskey straight, Mark. It will be late soon enough.

The bottle of Jack is reassuring in my hands, like an old weapon. I could ask him something now, about having a horse instead of a wife, but I find it distasteful to engage him more. I’d ask him to leave, but I just poured him a drink. Doesn’t he know that he’s overstayed his welcome? But again I’ve missed my chance. He has stood and walked before the painting of the hunt. My heart is sinking. Why would John be concerned about my memory?

Lars rubs his bald head.

But he says nothing about the painting and returns to sit at the table, while I stand there between rooms, as if this home were his, and I the intruder, or just a ghost looking on, like a prior resident of this house who died long ago. The stoics believed the world flowed infinitely in cycles, repeating itself over and over again. There is a young man in me, Lars, and he is trapped.

In me as well, says Lars. He is eager with potential for a different life. 

But he cannot escape this performance, I say.

To the poor boy, toasts Lars, and we take a heavy drink. Then he says: I have another confession, old friend.

I return to the table. Perhaps to give in. It seems conversation with Lars is inevitable. Tell me then.

He leans in: When people ask me what I do, I often tell them, “product designer.”

I laugh. Typically I say “computer engineer” and leave it at that, if at all possible. 

Why do we do this, Mark?

Because it pays.

We’re creators, I think. At least I think I am. Whatever society had set me upon I would have built it. And society, instead of painting, decided tactical weaponry was what it needs. And now I’m 54.

And now I’m 62. And now I’m refilling our glasses. I think of being young. The cystic acne that broke out over my flesh. The disease that is not a disease. The corruption that was born with me. And the crippling fear of speaking with girls. My whole self, my whole existence, just this little narrow, my narrow, crystal-walled personal space; I should have known by my daydreaming I was a prisoner. A child then. Just a poor child. It took college to rough me into this bag of bones, to admit enough chaos to moderately succeed, but not enough to change. Have I never changed? Have I been lost in thought? Has Lars been watching? Has he confirmed to himself that I am early-onset senile and that I very-much-needed this unwelcome visitation? I was thinking about the past, I tell him.

Let’s play chess, he smirks. Isn’t that what old men do?

An odd feeling muscles over me, like déjà vu. I tell him this feels like déjà vu.

We’ve played before, he says, at a company retreat. When all of us stayed in that house by the sea. 

My god, yes . . . hazily I see it—a big open house with many windows, the line of the ocean, a fridgeful of beer, but the windows wriggle with rain, the room is a bright, voluminous grey. There were games. Charades. My heart was heavy. It had been after something—not long after my divorce? Or the death of my father. I had not participated in the games and—

You were grieving, Lars says, and you sat always on the side of the room with a steely expression, rather intimidating, actually.

Intimidating?

You had an oppressive aura, Lars says. The rest of us, well, we never got far talking with you, so we let you be.

Yes. That’s right. And now I feel that old heaviness where it always has been. Good god, I mutter, as I recall now what I felt staring out at the sea as they played charades and all that crap I hated anyway but had lost all pretense to endure. My father was gone and I had not cried for him. It was with envy that I watched the sea. But when was the chess? I ask him.

You remember Candice and Lingling?

Oh yes, of course. They were in Building A for years. I’ll never forget the Building A people—it’s you B people who always hid amongst yourselves over there!

Right, right! But anyway they were playing chess, and they were quite good.

Lingling got a job building rockets when she was 20. I don’t doubt it. 

Their game was the only thing for two days that drew you out of your brooding.

I laugh. Because the chess reminded me of my father, I say.

Yes, says Lars, that makes perfect sense. And it caught my interest too. 

We are speaking very excitedly now. I can feel the cloudy atmosphere of the sea-side room, the dead bird in my belly, Lingling’s piercing demeanor, and Candice, the congenial mathematician. It was a very tight game, and Lars, it must have been him, was standing beside me. 

I find women playing chess to be incredibly attractive, says Lars. I had my eye on Candice that whole vacation. 

Did you? I laugh. And how did that go for you?

Ohh, he says, so long ago! I got us alone on the beach with a couple drinks at one point. But it was too cold, and I was too self-conscious. But no . . . that wasn’t the issue. I think we talked of the job and I learned she supported the war. It seemed she was inspired by working on weapons that would go on to bring death to America’s enemies. 

That’s a hard gap to bridge, I say, and as I speak I feel a wave of sickness. All the turquoise in my apartment catches my eyes. His memory is so much better than mine. 

But the chess, he says; and I refill our drinks. After the girls’ game, it was only natural that the two spectators play, and Candice had lost and wouldn’t play again, but I still felt I had to play out of that whole anti-logic of machismo, you know, and though I was intimidated by you—really I was—I challenged you and you accepted. I had hair then, by the way.

I laugh, thanks, so that’s why I forgot. This time my laughter startles me with its depth and inhibition. The whiskey has done its work. And I realize it has also numbed me, made of me a passive receiver to this man’s narration of my own past. It is strange to have the past rewoven in this way. It is like listening to a fiction but the words conjure far more than images—I feel imminently the self that is becoming myself. It is like his words have an unauthorized power. I could not endure without the drink, but now drunken I cannot not endure. And with a sense of dread I ask what came next. 

But I have a better idea, Lars says, how about we reenact it?

A little voice in me says yes, that is better than him telling me. This way I have a chance to rewrite my own past. Come with me, I tell him. I grab the bottle and lead us down the hall to a wood-paneled alcove by the entrance. It is one of my favorite features of the home, though not particularly useful. It is a cramped space with tiny benches built in on three sides of a tiny table. On the back wall is a small framed Virgin of Guadalupe that came with the place. I presume that the original owner had a shrine here. On top of the table is an eight-by-eight board with squares made of turquoise and obsidian, and between them gold trim. One of my more decadent purchases. I see buying art as a form of charity, at least. From under the bench I retrieve a box of hand-carved pieces. I hide a piece in each hand and Lars picks white. We assemble. 

I know we are drunk. The game will be decided by who makes the first mistake. I must force him into tactical decisions on one side of the board and then on the other—a drunk man will easily overcommit one piece, and then I will have him. Losing to this intruder would be unacceptable—my heart begins to race. I cannot play wrong. As we enter the game, the game becomes everything. Soon we are straining against possibility. I think of being breathless, playing drums as a kid and being told to breathe, running track in high school and being told to breathe. Breathe, Mark! The position on the board is a boiling pot—it is the act of balancing on a mental needle—the present interwoven inextricably with the past. My position is better, slightly better, and as a gunslinger flicks up the catch over his pistol I pour each of us one more drink. And I give Lars a little smile.

It’s amazing, Lars says. This is exactly like the game we played before.

Is it? I can’t tell if this is true or if he has said this to shake me. I sweat. That statement alone was a brilliant play. I’ve always been a fool to pride myself on an intelligence I don’t quite possess, and an intelligence that is crippled by a stumbling memory. I think of how stupid I am in the world and it frightens me. Focus. Focus, fool. I attack on the left. I attack on the right. When he defends on the left he abandons a pawn on the right, which I seize with glee.

Damn, he says. And he sucks through his teeth.

We drink and continue. Turn after turn now my position is bettered. He looks consternated and cold. Now I know that the bastard is mine, and I know that I’m smirking, and I know that this ego is something to revel in. 

I make a sloppy move near the end, and he takes back a knight. But it is too late—he has already lost. He doesn’t surrender which tells me the loss hurts him. Checkmate, I say, and I watch him wincing in his skin. Good game, I say, and offer a hand. 

Good game.

I chuckle with tension and he pours one more drink. 

It’s true, he says. You beat me last time too.

I feel terribly good at this. I stumble a little sliding out from the alcove—I’ve almost forgotten I’ve become an old man. I feel like my belly is full of hot tears.

Ohh, I hate losing! says Lars. And he laughs. I thought I’d improved. 

It’s the drink, I tell him. It changes the game. 

Cheers, he says.

And though something in me is wrong and burning, though a fiery sadness has taken up deep in me, I feel comfortable now and almost happy. I don’t mind Lars’s presence. I’m glad you came by, I tell him.

He says, me too. It’s been lonely on my ranch, as beautiful as it is.

You have to like that kind of life to live in the desert. 

I like it, he says, though heavy with sorrow. 

I lead him to the dark leather sofas in the living room.

When I sit there I sink deeper than expected. I observe that sensation of drunkenness that is often called spinning, but it’s not spinning exactly. Instead it’s as if your vision were drifting left or right; what is most still and stable in the world reveals itself to be unseated. I welcome it as a spiritual experience. I wonder if this is what my father meant, when he said drinking was a spiritual experience for him. The world can be opened through so many doors. We should drink some water, I say.

Christ yes! he says.

And as we both try to stand we fall back deep in the couch. I tremble into a relentless giddiness. And Lars also! We are giggling like babies, rolling on our sides—good lord when was the last time I really laughed! I can only see him rolling over out of the corner of my eye, out of the sparkle of my tears, the ache in my side. I roll onto the floor, heaving and weeping. How drunk am I! I must crawl out of the space between the couch and the coffee table. I recall tumbling with my brothers through endless spaces as a child. My body is old and painful all over—it’s hilarious! I can’t even judge now how wildly I am laughing, but I am certain that I suffer from it, that I am hurting myself in many profound ways, which is funny, given life. 

I crawl around the couch, and I crane my neck up to see Lars standing, red-faced, leaning deeply on the back of the couch. When he sees me crawling, something devilish seizes his face. He points at me and laughs—Look! Mark Kensington has turned into a dog again! Good boy!

Ruff! I say. Ruff! Though I don’t mean to do that because I have dignity, but still, this is a special talent I have, and I am eager to show it off. I know I am good. I know I can be a dog better than Lars can, better than anyone. Ruff! I say, with more depth and conviction, and I raise steady on my paws and feel the world with my tongue. I make a grrr sound that turns into a whimper with a little bark. I open my eyes wide and wag my tail. I begin to pant lightly and feel a lightness in my heart. The key to being a dog is to have a bounce in your knees—you can’t go dragging your legs like an infant across the room, even if it hurts the old material (because that pain is a pain that does not belong to the hound). You must pant and trot around the room. You feel your pride on a pike and bleeding and you know that this is what makes you a superior dog. You know you are superior because Lars is making sounds as if he were dying. He is taking pictures now and maybe even a video. You trot over to him and nuzzle his leg. If only you weren’t wearing such foolish clothes. You nuzzle his leg and sit and pant; you relish the hand that tussles your head, the cackle and the voice that says such a good dog. You try to lick his hand but he pulls away. And just so you know that you have truly beaten him, you bend low and lick clean the leather missile of his shoe.

David Huntington's poetry, translations, and short fiction have been published in Post Road, Literary Hub, Swamp Ape, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. As a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona, he studies critical theory and literary modernism. He has been an active editor and organizer for the Spittoon Literary Collective.