Notes (VIII)

Scene: the upstairs bathroom of Marsh’s house, approx. 9 PM. I had turned on the lights illuminating the stairs as I went up, but had turned them off again afterwards, with a weird sort of reverence for the sleepy tranquility of a thickly carpeted domestic hallway in natural darkness. Bedtime, children.

The bathroom itself was a simple thin lozenge, white-tiled and homogeneously lit. In this stark visual environment Aaron’s flesh revealed itself as darker than I’d originally realized, a nearly orange block framed by white on all sides, duplicated in a mirror which barely intruded on my peripheral vision. At first he didn’t even seem to notice me. He just continued to stare at, or through, his reflection, his gaze intense. The rest of the room seemed to array itself in symmetric and submissive harmony around his face, as though warped by the gravitational pull of his concentration.

Finally he turned. It took a moment for his thousand-yard stare to refocus on me, a mere foot or two away. He gave me a curiously conspiratorial nod.

“Hey, Paul.”

“Hey, Aaron,” I replied.

I edged closer. We were both in front of the sink now, and my own reflection sprung into place in the mirror above. Tracing lines of force in the visual tableau, I found myself staring, with Aaron, at Aaron’s left (left?) hand. Something seemed off about that hand, and as I peered closer I discerned that, cradled in his palm, there was a thing more vividly orange than his skin.

“Aaron, what are you doing?” I asked.

This is all more specific than it was in the moment. What I retain—as you can probably tell—is mostly a succession of images, and I’m doing my best to string those images together into an animation, playing in-betweener to the keyframes of my memory. For the most part, I think my interpolations are harmless. I’m not entirely sure I said “Aaron, what are you doing?”—but I said something more or less similar, and what’s the difference?

“GlassWave,” he said, chirpily, “I’m sorry to drag you into this. But I’m not going anywhere good, and I’m coming to terms with that.”

It was the voice, at least, of the Aaron I’d met at the door and known from the forums. Fluting and definitive. But I didn’t know what to make of the words that had been fitted into that format. And—GlassWave? My name was Paul. He knew that, obviously.

“GlassWave,” he proceeded, as if reciting a memorized monologue, “this is the end of the line, and I realize that. Look at this. I go to talk to the only people I can talk to, and thirty minutes in I have to run away because the truth is too much for me. End of the line, my friend.”

Is this quite how Aaron talked, here? I’m not sure. I worry that I’m GlassWaving his speech, smoothing him out with my own cadences. I remember “end of the line, my friend,” though, very clearly. In any case, he didn’t quite sound like the Errant KnightsMove I knew from the forum, not anymore. There was a new dimension to him, something rawer—as frank as his forum voice, but about wounds rather than technicalities. (But maybe that isn’t as clear a distinction as you might expect.)

“GlassWave, my friend,” his face now turned towards mine, lines of influence vortexing around it, “you have more than just Salby, don’t you? Isn’t that right?” The near-whine of a smug populist preacher, nearing in for a rhetorical kill.

“I don’t, uh,” I said. “I don’t know what you.”

“Leonard Salby killed someone, for real, Paul. My Leonard Salby. I wore out those old Chesscourt paperbacks in my room, alone. Hiding from the folks. Reading the words of a murderer. Isn’t that just how it goes?”

“Aaron, what is that in your hand?”

“Do you know what it’s like, GlassWave? I’m not sure you do. You’re reasonable, GlassWave, and I’m rational. Very different things, my friend. You can escape the end of the line, but I can’t.”

“Aaron, I’m starting to get seriously worried.”

“It’s good that Salby wrote TNC [pronounced Tee Enn See], to remind me not to get carried away.”

“Aaron, can we continue this conversation downstairs?”

“GlassWave, you’ve always seemed like a decent sort, so I should be straightforward with you. I am feeling quite hopeless right now. I am not sure if I can convey this to you in a way that will be understood. To be honest I am finding you very obnoxious and I would prefer if you would leave me in peace.”

“I’m not going to do that, Aaron.”

“I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s the topic of your speculation.”

“I mean. You can’t blame me for wondering, with that bottle of prescription pills in your hand.”

Aaron laughed, mobilizing respiratory forces from deep within his formidable chest. “These? Just Ambien. Kenneth’s prescribed the lowest clinical dose. I wouldn’t die if I swallowed the whole bottle. I’d sleep for a long time, though. Which might be nice.”

“Aaron, exactly what are we doing here?”

“I don’t know, GlassWave. What are we doing here?”

“My name’s Paul, Aaron.”

“GlassWave, have you ever felt a sense that either you needed to pierce into the core of something and comprehend every little bit of it, or else die?”

“I . . . don’t think I’ve ever felt like that, Aaron, no.”

“How do you feel about TNC, GlassWave? It really chills me to the bone, personally. Because it can’t be understood. I’ve tried, but of course it didn’t work.”

“I guess I’ve always been comfortable with ambiguity.”

At this Aaron’s face twisted, with unexpected and disturbing rapidity, into a wide nightmarish grin. My temples pulsed under the antiseptic light. End of the line. Place where there is no darkness.

“Comfortable with ambiguity. Yes. I suppose so, GlassWave.” Those stagey dramatic gestures again.

“You haven’t ever felt like if you can’t explain something fully and completely, it will eat everything you love from the inside out?”

“Like WC and the exechamp.”

“Quite.”

“I guess I have felt like that on occasion, Aaron.”

“We’re sharing something, then, GlassWave. We’re sharing something in this moment.” He listed to starboard. He looked a bit drunk. I wondered if he’d taken any of those pills already. Then wondered why I hadn’t thought of this earlier.

“I’d like to use this moment of connection to encourage you to go downstairs, with me.”

“No can do, GlassMan.”

“‘GlassMan’?”

“GlassHole. AssWave.” He tittered. His smirk subtended an angle no smirk should subtend.

“Those are certainly things someone might do with my handle, if they didn’t like me.”

“I like you, AssMan,” he said, swaying forward suddenly. His left hand, having dropped the pill bottle, slammed against my shoulder. Aaron’s full picturesque face, all plunging curves, came to rest deliriously close to my own.

“I . . . like you too, Aaron,” I said, uncomfortably. “Is there anything I can do for you, right now?”

“I want to go to sleep and never wake up, AaronWave,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, ridiculously.

He looked up at me, and I swear his eyes were glassy with tears. Some things I don’t quite remember, but I remember that.

“I am never gonna defeat Tee Enn See and that means the end of the line curtains down goodbye for Errant KnightsMove good run buddy but no more, goodbye, no more. If it wins then they win and that’s game over, period.”

“Then who wins, Aaron?”

“Two plus two beginning of death.”

“I’m not sure I’m reading you, Aaron.”

“The folks said I’d burn in hell, is what they said.”

“By ‘the folks’ do you mean your parents?”

“TNC is just really awful, isn’t it, AssClave? I mean all that death. So much death. What’s the reason for all of it. Maybe Salby just liked death I mean join the club right.”

“I don’t like death.”

“I’m never gonna defeat Tee Enn See and that’s the end of the line for old Err, ha ha Err, what did I get calling myself that, huh, AssGlaive? I mean really.” A tendril of mucus poked its way out of his right nostril, as if tentatively. A convulsive sob caught my torso unawares and I stumbled.

“Aaron, uh, I’m here, and . . . I want to defeat The Northern Caves with you. I’ve always admired you, Aaron.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Really, I have! You’re amazing! Even when I can’t stand anything else, the Cafe is there for me, and you’re one of its leading lights.”

What was I saying? And yet it was true, wasn’t it?

“You’re a good egg, AssRave. I like you.” He blubbered into my outstretched arm. I was clearly the only thing left supporting his limp body. I glanced at the pill bottle on the floor and began to wonder whether calling 9-1-1 was warranted.

“We’ll defeat TNC, Aaron. Don’t worry.”

“Read the whole fuck thing dammit I mean. With commentary. Fuck I love. Commentary. And you know. It’s ours. Not us it. But ours. The whole. Bite off whole thing three thousand pages something. We can fuck that thing up.”

“We can fuck that thing up, Aaron.”

My hairs were standing on end. The inspirational thread I had kindled solely to handle the emergency had begun to inspire me.

Who was I, anyway? My name is Paul. Aaron kept calling me GlassWave. Isn’t that right? Because there is little that can stir me these days, except Leonard Salby, and people like this brilliant man who was now crying into my forearm.

I was of ancillary importance—but of importance. Something almost patriotic swelled in my breast.

I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. An attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use.

“We can fuck that thing up,” I said again.

“We’ll fuck,” Aaron declared approvingly into my receptive armflesh.

“We’ll show Leonard Salby that he hasn’t outwitted us,” I said to the Prince.

“We’ll show Lennur Sulboh.”

“We’re going into the caves.”

Like a secret agent activated by some seemingly innocuous codephrase, Aaron sprung upright. He swayed, pendulous, but held his ground.

“We’re going into the caves, GlassWave.”

“We’re going into the caves, Errant KnightsMove.”

And the Prince and his attendant strode down the unlit staircase toward Marsh’s living room, for all the world like two conquering heroes.