The Fearsome Particles Read online

  As he reached with one hand for the liquid bandages bottle, he ran the other up the inside of his thigh and dealt with an itch in the scrotal region. He could imagine himself being happy, having a job that supplied endless opportunities for satisfaction, living in a house where all clocks showed the same time, with a wife who cared enough not to wound him repeatedly, and a son who had not gone to Afghanistan and was now, therefore, more than just “physically sound.” He could imagine himself coming home, opening the door, and not checking for surreptitious movement before stepping inside. But that was someone else’s life, obviously. It was his once, but it wasn’t any more. Which is why it didn’t surprise him when he felt another itch at his dangling testicles, sent a hand to quell it, and encountered something other than his own fragile self. Why it wasn’t shock he felt, but a mixture of horror and sweet vindication, when he looked down and saw between his legs the whitish reality of Rumsfeld, the cat, reaching up with a five-clawed paw.

  2

  Vicki still treasured moments like this, when out before her stretched the possibility of perfection, and she could already see it taking shape.

  “Is that going to pose any challenges, do you think?” Avis trilled. They were on the second floor of the Lightenham Avenue house, standing at the top of a small mountain of polished stairs, and Avis Nye was slowly circling her manicured finger to indicate a vacant, apparently purposeless area south of the fifth bedroom, about a hundred square feet of iroko wood, gleaming as if it had just been stripped from the west African coast, bound on one side by a wall of closets and on the other by a burnished chestnut railing.

  “Not at all,” said Vicki, smiling her reassurance, for Avis was a silent agonizer and would soon, if Vicki was not convincing, need to take a series of pills. “We’ll make that an ‘open den.’ I’ll use the Turkish prayer rug and the Georges Jacob set. You know, the one with the chairs in cross-hatch blue?”

  “The Georges Jacob set, of course.” Avis adjusted the rose-petal scarf riding her shoulder and let her fingertips trail over the lapel of her blazer in a way that suggested profound relief. “You haven’t used the Georges Jacob in a very long while.”

  “Not since Roxborough Drive,” said Vicki. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity.”

  “It will be wonderful to see it again.”

  Well, really, thank God for Avis. When she’d called last week, moments after Gerald had reported the unexpected but happy news that Kyle was coming home, she’d said the builders of 146 Lightenham were nearly finished and would love for her to begin staging on Tuesday. And Vicki had felt a noticeable and somewhat confusing spear of discomfort, just there, under her rib cage. It would have been difficult to name the sensation, but it was almost a feeling of dread, as if the assignment to bring to life the largest home on Lightenham Avenue – fifteen rooms on three levels, nearly eleven thousand square feet – were anything but a privilege. It had made her wonder, briefly, whether she should accept.

  But what she loved about tiny Avis Nye, besides her patrician centredness and the sweet, flutelike music of her voice, was the way she, more than any other luxury realtor, made her feel appreciated. Avis understood and respected the service she offered – Avis never said fluffing, she always said staging, she accepted that even very wealthy buyers lacked a certain imagination when it came to looking at a collection of empty rooms, could not picture themselves or their things in a new, unadorned space, and needed a not-so-subtle nudge in the direction of fantasy – and this awareness was certainly a contributor to Avis’s status as number one in dollar volume among luxury realtors in the city’s central core, to say nothing of Vicki’s own success.

  Now that she was here in the Lightenham house, Vicki could tell she’d made the right decision. This was where she was meant to be today; here she felt completely sure of things. She gazed around at the cornice mouldings and wall details made of a pressed-fibre material that, having been painted, looked ceramic to the casual eye. Even the best builders engaged in small deceptions to save cost, or time. Vicki knew just how to work with such falsehoods, to aid the effect.

  “So what are you planning in terms of price, Avis – about six three?”

  “Six seven five, I think,” said Avis. “There was a quite plain Georgian resale several doors east that sold for six two in March.” When Avis said six two, her mouth moved exaggeratedly, from a kind of smile into a kind of pucker, as if to suggest the absurdity of such a figure. “The moment I heard that, I decided ours warranted the extra five hundred and fifty thousand. Or it will, once you’ve applied your particular spell.”

  Oh, Vicki was feeling so much better! The new Lightenham house was a great big blank French Country canvas, and with her warehouse space full of collected antiques, draperies and linens, rugs and fixtures, mirrors, prints and porcelains, she was going to create a month-long vision that would be worth every bit of the $50,000 she would charge – $35,000 for an extra month if the vendors wished to extend.

  “I can always count on you, Victoria,” Avis cooed. “Buyers can spin like maple keys in the wind, not knowing what to think, not knowing what to do. But then they come to a house you’ve done, and they see.” She moved to the top of the staircase, which curved slightly and cascaded to the bottom like the gown of a Hamptons bride. “You have a way inside their heads I don’t fully understand. It’s not just exquisite taste. It’s something much more, I don’t know, sympathetic.” She smiled in the light flooding through the bevelled glass windows and set out two veined hands in front of her. “You’re like a sturdy marble cornerstone, propping up the wavering spirit.”

  Avis touched her palms together, seemed content in the moment, then began to descend the stairs in her queenly way, setting one small stocking foot carefully on each glossy tread. “I hope,” she said, her voice escaping into the entrance hall’s bright-lit air, “those two fortunate men in your life are as appreciative of you as I am.”

  Vicki caught the railing with a hand and held on as she watched Avis go, following her strawberry blond head as it moved down through space like an ever so slowly bouncing ball. When the agent got to the bottom, she turned and seemed surprised not to find Vicki immediately behind her. She looked up.

  “Is there something else you wanted to see, Victoria?”

  The question welled for a moment as Vicki thought, and shook her head.

  “Did you want to check some measurements?”

  “No.”

  Avis continued to gaze up at her. Though her face betrayed nothing, was as smooth as a river stone, she was clearly puzzled as to why Vicki was not, like her, headed toward the front door of the house. Vicki was almost as mystified, although it was possibly connected to the sudden return of the discomfort under her ribs, at about the spot where Vicki imagined an important organ should be. It was a very unpleasant feeling. And it made her not want to rush out the door just yet.

  She resisted the urge to place a hand on the spot and wondered what to tell Avis. “I think I just need to visit the bathroom,” she said, wishing instantly that she had thought of something else, as the word bathroom seemed to travel over the unadorned surfaces of the upper and lower floors and grow until it became vibratory and immense.

  “Oh,” said Avis, a surreptitious hand reaching down for her small black purse on the floor. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Avis, it’s all right. I’m fine.” Vicki smiled as warmly as she could at the top of the stairs, though not warmly enough to prevent Avis from picking up her purse and rooting around for something. “I just need to … use the facilities.”

  Of course, this was all very strange, and Vicki understood why Avis would be unsettled. Use of a client home’s facilities was usually considered an emergency-only matter. And this was not something that could be called an emergency. Although it was not not an emergency, either.

  “You go,” said Avis, pulling a small silver case out of her purse. “I’m just going to get a glass of water.”

  The master
bedroom’s enormous ensuite featured the Carrara marble vanity and tub surround, the intricate basket-weave floor inlays and the Milanese fixtures that Avis, in consultation with Vicki, generally stipulated among the list of appointments that were necessary for her to agree to list a builder’s property (luxury builders, or perhaps their architects, were not as attuned as one would naturally assume to the tastes and needs of the wealthy home buyer; thus their habit of placing compact laundry appliances on the second floor, for the “convenience” of the very people who did not do the laundry, a feature Avis and Vicki were constantly having to purge from their designs). In the comfort of this environment, Vicki sat on the lid of the toilet, smoothed her fine taupe skirt over her knees, and tried to clear her head.

  Now, just what was going on here? What was this dreadful feeling? It was a physical sensation, but not entirely physical, so she couldn’t quickly put it down to having eaten something off. And anyway she hadn’t eaten this morning, she’d been in such a hurry. Sitting on the toilet, Vicki listened to Avis take a call on her cell phone and considered the possibility that the feeling had something to do with Gerald, because he was very agitated about Kyle’s homecoming and when Gerald got agitated, nothing and no one in the house could really settle. You wanted to put a blanket over everything, a thick, heavy quilt, and make everything just be calm, but that wasn’t possible. Years ago, when this Gerald sort of feeling pervaded the house she grew up in, her mother used to say, “We’re all in an upset!” which didn’t help, but must at least have given her the satisfaction of being able to label the feeling. It was an upset, and they were in it until they managed to get out.

  Was this “an upset”? It seemed like such a paltry term next to the whirligig of Gerald’s anxiety. Something serious had happened in Afghanistan, that was obvious, but it was a mystery to Vicki why Gerald needed to get into such a state about it, since it was equally clear, thank goodness, that Kyle hadn’t been hurt. “Physically sound,” he said they had told him. After all of Gerald’s uproar before Kyle left – and all her assurances that their son was ready to make such decisions – everything seemed to have turned out so well: Kyle was coming home from his adventure, early (delightful surprise), and he was sound. If anything, it should have been a cause for celebration. She wished she’d thought of that before; she would have told Gerald.

  Vicki sat up straight, tried to take a deep breath, and brought her hand to her stomach. She slipped two fingers between the pearl buttons of her blouse and pressed them delicately into the soft tissue under the rib cage, not certain she wanted to find something unusual, but no less troubled when she didn’t.

  Of course, she considered, it could be that unfortunate cat. What a mistake that was! She should never have agreed to take it in, although that was not something she could ever admit to Gerald, especially since the olive incident. But Lorie Campeau had been in such a panic, and there were so many other things on her mind at the time, the decision about the cat seemed to make itself. She’d just found herself holding out her arms. Really, though, if she had it to do over again, knowing what an annoying little creature it was (and how irrationally Gerald would react to its every move), she would slam the door in Lorie Campeau’s face.

  But no, it wasn’t the cat.

  “Victoria, darling,” came Avis’s whisper from beyond the door. “Are you at all ill?”

  Vicki shut her eyes and pressed her lips tight. Avis was not a young woman, and because of her she’d had to once again climb all those stairs. “I’m just freshening up,” she called brightly. What she needed to do was simply stand and walk out the door with Avis, into the rest of her day. And yet, just now, it was the last thing she felt up to. “You must be busy, Avis. If you need to go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

  “No, no, it’s quite all right. I’ll just … have a peek at the western view.” Avis’s voice, which tended to travel the scale unpredictably, and sometimes seemed designed to keep a two-year-old entranced, offered no indication of the anxiety she was undoubtedly suffering. Vicki, scowling at herself, gave the spot under her ribs a firm press, and sipped a breath.

  “I’m almost done.”

  “Don’t rush, don’t rush.” Avis was still there at the door; she hadn’t gone to look at any view.

  “I’m so sorry about this.”

  “Victoria, apologies are hardly necessary. Although, now that I look at my watch, I do see that it’s past nine-thirty.” All over the place, Avis’s voice, like a swallow in the wind. Up, down, up, down. I am not, Vicki said to herself, a child. “And I seem to remember that I have a showing in Forest Hill at ten. For which I have to pick up brochures. Let me just make a call.”

  She felt herself wanting to sigh. She closed her eyes, took in as much air as she could, and let it out silently. Enough. The feeling wasn’t going away, and soon she was going to put Avis in the terrible position of having to postpone a showing. And for that Vicki could never forgive herself.

  As she opened the door, she beamed. “I think they got the inlays just right,” she said. “And I love that grassy green.”

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” agreed Avis. “It makes me think of Burma for some reason.”

  “I wish we’d done that in ours.”

  When they had descended the stairs and slipped on their shoes, the two women clipped through the foyer and out the door, into the fair metropolitan spring. “It’s going to be a very good season, I think,” said Avis, picking her way along the flagstones that twined through the just-seeded grounds. “It’s been very good already.” She pointed her keys, causing the bronze Jaguar sedan parked in the drive, next to Vicki’s purposely unshowy Camry, to blip. Then she turned to Vicki, took her hand, and gently pressed it between both of hers. As the agent looked up into her eyes, Vicki could feel a large key ring digging into the heel of her palm.

  “You’ll call me if you need anything.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d be very angry if you didn’t.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Avis squeezed her hand, then released it, and the women were in their cars.

  3

  I mostly keep to myself. But nineteen hours, including the stopover in Dubai – it was asking a lot. If I could have slept, that would have helped. But sleep wasn’t happening. And reading didn’t work either. I needed visuals and sound. Otherwise stuff I didn’t feel like thinking about started to climb in through the cracks of my brain like those lizards and cockroaches you get in your hotel room in Mexico. And I was so stupid, because what I should’ve done was buy some game thing off somebody at the camp before I left. But I didn’t think of it in time. Anyway the batteries would’ve died pretty soon, and then I would’ve been in the same situation, stuck on a plane, surrounded by soldiers, with nothing to focus on. So, under the circumstances, what else could I do?

  I leaned out of my aisle seat and looked back. “Lieutenant Jayne?” Lieutenant Jayne didn’t need batteries. Legg used to call him a windup toy. “Lieutenant?”

  He was four rows behind, sitting in his pixilated CADPAT camouflage, reading a Stephen King novel (a lot of military guys like Stephen King; I don’t know why). He said something to the sergeant next to him, which I couldn’t hear because of the drone of the airplane, then he unbuckled himself and stepped into the aisle.

  “What’s up, Kyle?”

  I waited until he was hulking over me – he’s a big guy, he could’ve played football – gripping the back of the upholstered seat to keep steady. “I’m worried about my tattoo,” I said.

  “Your tattoo?”

  “Yeah. I got it in Dubai, at this place near the airport.”

  The buzz of the plane seemed to be making his squared-off glasses slide down the bridge of his nose. He narrowed his eyes at me. “What about it?”

  “I’m thinking I mighta caught hep C or something.”

  Jayne studied me for a second and shoved his glasses back up with a finger. “Why?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “
It’s all puffy and red.”

  Lieutenant Jayne glanced back in the direction of his seat as if he wished he’d never gotten out of it, then he frowned down at me. “Well, I dunno. Did you want me to look at it or something?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s on my ass though. Don’t you have to be, like, a captain before you can look at a guy’s ass?”

  The muscles around the lieutenant’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and his eyes went kind of squinty. “You don’t even have a tattoo, do you?”

  “Yeah I do! It’s on my ass, I swear! If you were a captain I could show you.”

  Lieutenant Jayne bunched up his mouth as if he had bees in there trying to escape, and he stared at me for, like, half a minute, holding back the bees. Then he leaned down to murmur into my ear. “Don’t go turning into a dickhead, Woodlore.” I could feel the breath from his mouth tickling my earlobe. “See a chaplain when you get home.”

  I blinked at him as he straightened up. Soldiers sometimes forget things aren’t the same outside the forces as they are inside. “You only find chaplains in institutions like the army, Lieutenant,” I told him. “I’m not in an institution.”

  Lieutenant Jayne clenched his jaw again, three times. Clench. Clench. Clench. “I could say something,” he muttered. “But I won’t.” He turned away and walked back to his seat, shaking his head.