A Tear in the Veil Read online

  “Why did you let me light the two then?”

  “I’ll take it,” Felix says.

  “You didn’t quit?” Hirofumi asks.

  “Still have one once in a while. Don’t tell Audrey.”

  “She would beat me for giving you one, so don’t worry.”

  Hirofumi hands Felix the lit cigarette and Felix takes a long drag and coughs a little in his throat. Getting rusty at smoking? Felix decides that’s a good thing, strange as it is to him.

  “Audrey has one sometimes too,” Kaori says with a playfully guilty expression.

  “I figured.” Felix chuckles.

  “So,” Hirofumi bends over and cocks his head close to Felix’s for effect and asks, “Have you been raped yet?”

  Felix laughs and looks around. Mitch is walking from island to island searching the ashtrays for smoke-able butts. Delores is sitting at a bench on the far side with a young woman who’s probably her daughter. The rest must be inside.

  “Not yet. I’m a little disappointed.”

  They laugh. Felix takes another drag and sobers a bit.

  “How is Audrey?”

  Hirofumi straightens back up and starts, “She’s okay. It’s hard for her to understand, but–”

  “She just wants you to get better,” Kaori finishes.

  Hirofumi grunts at Kaori’s interruption and continues, “She loves you, Felix. I don’t know why, but she does. Anyway, she was upset when your doctor called but he must have convinced her it was needed. Why is it needed, though?”

  “It’s a part of my condition.”

  “What is your condition? What happened?” Kaori asks.

  Felix takes a drag and holds it. Maybe if I hold it long enough, I won’t have to let it out?

  He exhales, defeated.

  “I guess I have something like what my dad had. Saw some crazy shit. Audrey’s… Actually, I don’t really want to say much more right now if that’s okay. Maybe not at all. It’s just in my head. The medicine will control it.”

  “That’s okay,” Kaori says.

  “Yeah, we understand.”

  Felix notices Mitch approaching. He’s staring at Hirofumi’s mostly finished cigarette. Hirofumi notices Mitch too.

  “Are you finished with that?” Mitch asks. His cigarette is down to the butt but still burning.

  Hirofumi looks at his own smoke. He takes his pack back out and gives Mitch a fresh cigarette. Mitch’s eyes get big.

  “Really? Thanks, bro!” He lights it with his almost dead smoke and sucks on the fresh one hard as he takes a few steps away. Mitch stops and turns around. He says, “Hey, could you go get me a real big coffee and bring it back in like it’s yours and give it to me? I need a coffee, man.”

  “Is that okay with them?” Hirofumi asks.

  “People do it for me all the time.”

  “Then get someone else to do it, Mitch,” Felix says. It comes out harsher than he meant it but something about Mitch really bothers Felix, so he’s not too broken up about it.

  Mitch looks crestfallen and goes off toward Delores and her visitor.

  Hirofumi shakes his head and lowers his voice a bit.

  “Just don’t stay too long or you will be like that guy.”

  “Yeah, I’d hate to see him when he actually drinks some coffee,” Felix says and they all chuckle softly.

  They hug him by the doors, both at once this time. It hurts his shoulder a little but the friendly intimacy makes it worth the pain. They release and Hirofumi pats Felix’s good shoulder.

  “Watch your ass, aniki. You are a precious little flower,” Hirofumi says. Felix laughs. Kaori shakes her head and squints at Hiro.

  “So, we are going traveling to different countries to oversee server setups for home/free. People really do like it,” Hirofumi says, with an air of modest pride.

  Felix says, “That’s rad. Have a great trip.”

  “Yeah, we will be back in a while. Just let them help you and come home to Audrey soon,” Kaori says.

  Felix nods and smiles.

  They walk to the doors and Peggy opens them.

  Felix looks down toward the common room. Rudy is sitting with a pretty girl who’s… Spanish, maybe? She has her hands around his neck and shoulder and her face against his chest. He holds her tenderly.

  Hirofumi and Kaori step through the doors and turn back toward Felix and wave. The mirrored doors close and Felix watches his friends turn and walk away in stark outlines through them.

  Because of the shallow translucence of the doors, it looks like Hirofumi and Kaori are gone almost instantly.

  10

  Felix sits at a long table with the other patients. They are all drawing and painting. He had heard the term “Art Therapy” before, but figured that’s kind of what he does when he’s sketching anyway, so he never really thought about it much.

  This is a little different. Most of the others have almost no artistic talent. Not in graphic art at least. They “got no hand skills” as one friend used to put it.

  The purpose seems to be to relax the patients and allow a different way of expressing… well, something.

  Most of the other patient’s images are simple.

  Candy is drawing a big, silly puppy with oil pastel sticks. Mitch is drawing swirls of red and black, also in pastels. Delores makes abstract blobs of color with tempera paint.

  Shasta has managed to draw a skyline and abstract, almost cubist San Francisco with brown and blue crayons. Above the city are black blobs of varying shape rendered in black crayon.

  Kinda cool, actually.

  From what Felix can see over Jesse’s arms, he’s drawing something mildly lewd, probably using Shasta as his imaginary model.

  Peggy told them to draw whatever they felt like.

  Felix has had a bad association with crayons since he was about ten but he decided to mess around with them because he despises tempera paint and the oil pastels Candy and Mitch aren’t hoarding are broken and smudged with other colors. Plus, Rudy grabbed the only colored pencils.

  Having had so long to learn other graphic mediums, Felix quickly figures out tricks he can use to bring out the potential of these cheap, drugstore crayons. He’s actually really enjoying the strangeness of the resistance and waxy sliding they do between intended strokes.

  His drawings depict some of the different states the distortions Audrey’s head and face went through during his ‘episode.’ The quick portraits of melting, prism cutouts, and light distortions are vivid and almost impressionistic. He chose black and dark blue construction paper and he’s using the darker colors as a base and the white and brightest other colors are for highlights. A kind of additive approach from the darks on up. He’s channeling some of his favorite Francis Bacon paintings, he realizes, but that’s just fine.

  He’s working the crayons hard and fast, causing interesting variations in line quality which…

  Something moving in Felix’s peripheral vision catches his attention and pulls him out of his controlled artistic frenzy.

  Rudy’s right hand is shaking and the red colored pencil in it is wavering back and forth. Felix looks at his face. Rudy is staring at Felix’s drawings, visibly disturbed.

  Their eyes meet. Rudy looks confused and upset. He looks over at Peggy. She’s texting someone on her phone. He subtly spins his drawings around so Felix can see them.

  Rudy seems untrained but isn’t untalented. His images are a little crude and they have a distinct flatness but–

  Felix feels a chilly tingle through his body and he furrows his brow.

  It’s unmistakable…

  Their styles and skill levels are different but they are drawing the same basic thing. The same distortions. The transparent cutouts and the bubbling and melting. The lifeless black shark eyes. Rudy even tried to pull off the paradoxical effect of the bright darkness with dark blue, black, pink, and white pencils.

  They make eye contact again then Rudy thinks for a moment. He writes something on his d
rawing and spins the drawing more so Felix can see what he’s written.

  It reads, “Guess we should talk. Chess later”

  Felix considers and decides he has to know what this means. He nods subtly to Rudy. Rudy nods back and quickly draws over his note before looking at Peggy again. She didn’t notice.

  Dean Martin slides down a fireman’s pole and lands on a stage. Delores actually lets out something close to a chuckle. She also formed a whole sentence in group therapy after lunch. They must be stepping her dosage down or something. She’s transfixed by Mr. Martin as he sings and jokes with his Rat Pack friends and popular guests of the day on The Dean Martin Show.

  Walter once told Felix that even though Martin’s persona and shtick were of an alkie playboy, his lowball glass was usually filled with apple juice or something like that while performing. He also said something about Frank Sinatra not smoking or drinking for hours before a performance. Work ethic was the point if Felix took it right.

  Felix usually hates these long ads for video collections of ancient comedy and prank shows but it’s taking his mind off his meeting with Rudy.

  Mr. Martin stands with Dom Deluise who’s dressed up like a magician with a cape and big turban hat. Dean is trying not to laugh and he’s failing horribly as usual. Now Dean is standing in front of a board with a vague human shape painted on it and Dom throws knives at the board around him. Delores is enthralled.

  Rudy enters the common area from the male section hallway and Felix watches him make his way to the board game box near the padded tables and chairs past the ping-pong table. While he’s sorting through the box, he looks around and meets Felix’s gaze and nods.

  Felix looks back at the screen. Dean busts the swinging saloon doors down on a western set and struts in with a cigarette in his mouth. Felix wants a cigarette. Dean smashes a candy bottle on a cowboy extra’s head. Felix always wants a cigarette when he’s nervous. Dean saunters to the bar smashing more glasses on the way and fires a blank from his cowboy gun and Don Rickles as the bartender cracks wise but what he says is hard to make out. Felix’s stomach is uneasy from a mild, aching dread he can’t shake. Don Rickles breaks the forth wall, joking about them both flubbing their lines. Delores chuckles. Roy Rogers shows up and Don Rickles goes round in a circle behind the bar joking about having Roy Rogers pictures up since childhood then proceeds to mock Roy about his bad acting in the sketch.

  Delores sniffles. Felix looks at her and sees that she’s crying silently. He thinks about Robotech then Voltron.

  Fuck it.

  Felix gets up and walks with a slight limp toward the padded table where Rudy is setting up the chessboard. His ankle is feeling better so he left the crutch in his room.

  Rudy gestures for Felix to sit and he does. Rudy takes the black and white king pieces, does something with his hands behind his back, and holds his clenched fists toward Felix. Felix taps his right hand and Rudy gives him the black king piece.

  As they set up the rest of the pieces, Rudy notices that Felix is slower because of his slung arm. He helps Felix finish his side then sits.

  In a mostly discarded accent Rudy says, “Cheap, plastic set. You play?”

  “Badly, but I know the basics,” Felix responds.

  “Then we won’t bet on it.”

  Felix can’t place the accent. Australia? New Zealand? Neither seem right. European?

  Rudy begins by moving a pawn near the center two spaces forward. Felix moves his corresponding piece two forward to block.

  Actually, Felix doesn’t know what any of the moves are really called. That’s just how he thinks about it.

  Rudy moves a bishop to the same row as the pawn, one over. Felix can tell just from the Rudy’s quiet confidence that he’s going to lose and badly.

  Only a few total moves later, he has.

  “Checkmate,” Rudy says.

  Felix is confused. He must look it too because Rudy gestures around the board to show him how he’s lost so quickly.

  Rudy chuckles and says, “You weren’t kidding. I haven’t gotten anybody with a School’s Mate in years, man. Alright, I’ll just mess around from here on out.”

  They reset their pieces and Rudy starts again. Knowing he has no chance, Felix tunes out on the game and just moves reactively.

  Felix’s tongue is loosened a bit by his embarrassment so he asks, “Where are you from originally? New Zealand?”

  “Fuck off, man. I’m from Cape Town, South-Eh-frica ‘originally’,” Rudy shoots back with exaggerated emphasis. “Anyway, they really had me going, man. Felix, right?”

  “Yeah, Felix. And you’re Rudy. What do you mean?”

  “Rudy is less formal than Baruti Naaktgeboren, so yeah, I go by Rudy. What do you do, Felix?”

  “I went to art school. Work at a GameStop. Why?”

  “Just trying to break the proverbial ice.”

  Rudy is toying with him on the board but Felix doesn’t care.

  “Fine. What do you do?”

  “Going for my masters in journalism at state. Almost there… bad timing.” Rudy shakes his head a little. He looks at Felix’s sling and arm. “How’d you get so busted up, anyway?”

  “I jumped out of a car.”

  Rudy studies Felix’s face, probably not sure if he’s serious. Felix acts like he just said something completely normal and moves his only remaining pawn.

  “What did you mean when you said they had you going?” Felix asks.

  “I mean I was almost convinced. I was starting to believe I was a nutjob. Schizo-dissociative or whatever she called it.”

  “She?”

  “Doctor Menlo.”

  Maybe Felix is special, getting Fleischmann to himself. He wonders why.

  “So… you think our drawings mean we aren’t crazy?”

  “Hell yeah. I’m not the McFarlane you are but we were drawing the same thing. If I could draw like that, they would have been almost exact.”

  Felix tries to come up with another, more rational solution.

  I’ll settle for anything remotely rational.

  “I don’t know, man,” says Felix.

  Rudy thinks and says, “Okay, look. Where did you see yours? Who was it?”

  “My girlfriend.”

  “Day-um. Sorry. Anyway, it started when she got emotional, right? Like when she got pissed off?”

  Felix is becoming uncomfortable.

  “Yeah.”

  “And it started in the eyes?”

  “Yeah… yeah, it did.”

  Felix picks up a piece to move.

  Rudy says, “And I’ll go out on what’s lookin’ like a sturdy limb that it all started after you pressed that little button on the HDV-426 on the lens.”

  Felix accidentally knocks a few of the other pieces over. Rudy looks around. No one seemed to notice.

  Rudy sighs and continues, “Yeah, I just got that camera. I was doing an interview on the street for an assignment. The sun was going down and I hit that button to see if it did any good with low light or something.”

  Felix just stares at the board.

  “The guy seemed homeless. Had a dead eye and a big face scar. A little vacant but coherent enough. The questions were about world politics. Oil and water as finite resources. I thought it would be funny to get a bum’s opinion on world affairs. The guy got hella heated when I brought up… I think I asked him about nuclear proliferation. The fool went ape shit. That’s how it started. First from the eyes… then it fucked his whole face up.”

  “What did you do?” asks Felix.

  “I flipped, man. Thought I got dosed at the coffee shop or something. But listen, I saw some even weirder shit after that and made the mistake of asking random people if they saw it too. Somebody called the po-po I guess. I was in SF General for about a week before I got transferred here. This place gags on it but General was a nightmare by comparison. Been here a couple weeks.”

  Felix locks his eyes on Rudy’s and asks, “So, if we aren’t crazy, what
is going on?”

  Rudy shakes his head slowly.

  “I do not know. All I do know is that I was ready to take those pills forever just so I would never see that shit again.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Felix looks around the common room.

  “It has to be some sort of defect or something. Some glitch or surge in part of the camera that causes temporary hallucinations? That shit can’t be real.”

  “What if it is?” Rudy asks.

  Felix doesn’t even want to consider that.

  “Do you still have your camera?” he asks.

  “Naw. I think the cops broke it when they cuffed me and I don’t remember seeing them pick it up. Now I’m not sure it was an accident. How ‘bout you?”

  “Mine broke when I… mine broke too.”

  Felix’s mind is racing. He looks around the common area again to escape Rudy’s intense gaze. He looks toward the patio doors and sees Mitch leaning against the wall to the right of the doors, just staring out. He must be pining for his beloved, sweet cigarette. I wish I had one…

  It finally hits him.

  Something about this angle and his partial profile. Mitch kind of looks like his dad. Not that much but enough to bother Felix. Watching Mitch lust after another smoke and the similarity to his dad makes Felix angry. Felix doesn’t want to end up like either man.

  Then Ray’s warning about the weirder patients getting to him seals it for Felix.

  Now I understand.

  Rudy says, “If that stuff is real–”

  “It’s not,” Felix says, never more sure about anything.

  Give him a break, he needs this.

  “Woah. We saw the same damn thing, Felix. We need to–”

  “They’re just drawings. You probably just copied my drawings as best you could and you’re fucking with me.”

  Felix locks eyes with Rudy.

  “I have an illness and I just need to… I want my life back.”

  “That’s bullshit. Where is this coming from? A minute ago–”

  “Shut up!”

  Felix swipes his good arm across the table, throwing the chess board and pieces onto the floor. He stands up from his seat.