A Web of Black Widows Read online

  Looking up at Penelope, I placed the revolver on the table.

  "I'm not going to kill myself," I said.

  "Jesus," she said. "Are you trying to scare me to death?"

  I wanted to tell her that was impossible, because she was already dead, but instead I said, "I don't mean to hurt you."

  "Then why did you buy it?"

  My throat was dry. I got up to get myself a drink, but there were no clean glasses in the cupboard. I stuck my head under the faucet, narrowly avoiding a dish coated with spaghetti sauce, and slurped at the cold water.

  "Saul?" she said. "Saul, don't you want me to be solid again?"

  I wiped my lips on the back of my hand. "Of course," I said.

  "But if you go away, we can't go to more weddings, and if we don't go to more weddings, I can't get more solid. So why would you leave me?"

  "I just wondered," I said, "if, thinking about it, you know, killing myself, if maybe that might make me feel something."

  She was looking at the gun as if she hadn't heard me. Suddenly her pouty expression changed, and her eyes grew wide.

  "Do you think there might be an evening wedding somewhere in the city?" she asked.

  "Why? You're not fading too much yet."

  She smiled. It was the same smile from when I met her at the grocery store.

  "I want you to shoot someone for me," she said.

  After the funeral, the numbers which once came so easily to you

  now never add up correctly. Your boss encourages you to take a bereavement leave, and you take him up on the offer. You sit at home, the curtains shut, only eating when you feel faint, only sleeping when your body robs you of consciousness. You lay on your stomach on the carpet and listen to the sounds of the neighborhood. Barking dogs. The roar of lawnmowers. The creak of the mailman opening your mailbox. Mrs. Albert's Oldsmobile scraping against the street when she backs out of her driveway.

  None of these sounds make you feel anything.

  After three months, your boss leaves a message on your machine asking if you're going to come back to work. You don't return his call. Your bank account is running low, and since you still feel like eating now and then, you trade in the Lexus for a used Honda Accord and pocket the difference. Mrs. Alberts leaves a note on your door mat asking you to please mow your lawn, as specified in your neighborhood association contract.

  Then, one night when you're awake in bed, you remember the ring. The simple gold band. In the darkness, you retrieve it from your nightstand, and squeeze the cold metal inside your fist. You were hoping this would make you feeling something, but you are still empty inside. You slip the ring on your finger.

  "Saul?"

  Startled, you sit up in bed. You flick on the bedside lamp and there she is, floating at end of your bed, dressed in a wedding gown you never saw on her in life. When you look closely, you see the wall through her body

  You say her name.

  "Of course it's me," she says. "Who else would it be? Now don't just sit there, get up and get the newspaper. I want you to take me to a wedding."

  You want to know why.

  "Don't ask me why! I just want to!"

  When you pass her, you reach out to touch her partially transparent form, and then jerk your hand back when you find her so cold it hurts.

  There is Catholic wedding in Beaverton two days away. By then she has faded to the point where, if you don't look right at her, you don't even see she's there. She follows you around everywhere. You ask her where she's been all this time since the crash, and she tells you to stop asking silly questions.

  At the wedding, you have no idea why you're there. You sit in the last row, and she stands behind you and whispers sarcastic remarks in your ear about the bride and groom. Her lips are right by your ears, but you don't feel the wind of her breath. She keeps pestering you until finally you turn and tell her to be quiet. It's in the middle of the ceremony, and when you do this, Penelope's body brightens.

  "You're making me more solid!" she said.

  The priest gives you a harsh stare, and you slump into your seat.

  "Do it again!" she cries. "Do something outrageous! Do it and I'll be real!"

  Because you want her to be real, because you would do anything to have her back, to not be alone, you stand and begin to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It is the first thing that comes to mind. The priest, slack-jawed, stares at you. The bride weeps. The groom's face turns purple. When you reach the end, you start on The Star-Spangled Banner. Two ushers grab your arms and toss you into the street, but by then she is mostly solid.

  "It's working!" she cries.

  But within a few hours she is fading again.

  At first, you break up other weddings in a similar way, but it isn't long before she is fading faster. She tells you to be more outrageous. You become familiar with the finer points of noise makers and rubber chickens. During a Lutheran ceremony in Lake Oswego, you cry out that the groom is your secret gay lover — Please don't leave me for a woman, Phil! At the synagogue in downtown Portland, you interrupt the ceremony with a slide show of 10 Different Ways to Eat Pork. You unleash a dozen garden snakes into the aisles at the Baptist wedding in Hillsboro. There's a quaint, non-denominational affair held on the patio of the B&B in Southeast Portland, and you bring the house down by squirting tomato juice on the bride and shouting, "This is the blood of your former lovers, you cow!"

  Still, Penelope keeps fading. If you don't come up with something really outrageous, she'll be gone forever.

  We got lucky. On the three calendars tacked to the living room wall, where I had been tracking all the weddings I found in the local papers, I saw that there was an evening wedding. It was at the same Methodist church down by the river where Penelope and I were to have been married. We had come full circle.

  The names of the bride and groom meant nothing to me. I flipped a penny: heads the groom, tails the bride.

  "She probably looks like a goat anyway," Penelope said.

  I put on the blond wig, tying the hair back into a pony tail. I affixed the thin black mustache, then slipped on the hazel-tinted sunglasses. It was still balmy outside, but it was cool enough that I could get away with wearing a gray trench coat — the one with pockets big enough to hide the revolver.

  Fifteen minutes later, I parked the car by the river, then briskly walked the two blocks to the church. The wig kept slipping, and I had to adjust it. It was half past six, and the sun still burned yellow over the tops of the pine trees and the buildings. Traffic was heavy, the air thick with car exhaust. A gentle wind off the river pushed at my back.

  "Hurry, hurry," Penelope said.

  Even her voice was fainter now. When she passed through the shadows of a building, I lost track of her. All the color in her body was gone. In my right pocket, I gripped the walnut handle of the gun.

  The plan was simple. Sit near the aisle. Wait until they were about to say "I do," stand and fire, run like hell, dump the wig, then walk calmly down to the river and toss the gun.

  Then I would be done.

  And Penelope would be solid.

  The white, turn-of-the-century church with tall spires and looked out of place next to the sleek gray office buildings. Inside it was crowded, and I took my seat near the aisle at the back. Most of the guests were young, with earrings and colorful hair.

  Two stained glass windows rose up behind the cherry altar. The place was small, with tightly-packed pews, but seemed more cozy than crowded. When we looked at it the first time, Penelope had sighed and said, "It will do, I guess," but I had fallen in love with it immediately.

  "Get ready," Penelope said.

  She was flickering in and out of my vision. I blinked the sweat out of my eyes. My face burned, and I was having a hard time breathing. Short, shallow breaths. The wedding party was gathered up front. The bride and groom, slim and baby-faced, looked like children.

  The organ stopped playing. The silver-haired minister told everyone to be seated
, and the bodies rippled down like a wave.

  I remained standing.

  Inside my jacket, I fidgeted with the gun. The minister made a motion with his hand for me to sit. Still, I didn't move.

  "Do it," Penelope said.

  Her voice was as faint as satin rubbing against silk. When she moved in front of me, all I saw were the outlines, as if she had been drawn on the air with a piece of chalk.

  The bride and groom turned and looked at me. He had a gold hoop earring and a day's growth of beard. She was short and petite, with black, horned-rimmed glasses, her bright, red-apple hair reaching her waist. They looked confused and afraid, but there was also something else — something I had not noticed before on the faces of other brides and grooms.

  Hope.

  "Don't fail me now, Saul," Penelope said.

  Penelope waved her hands, trying to get my attention, but I looked right through her. I had never bothered to really look before. There was fear there, to be sure. But I also saw love. Happiness, hurt, and loss. Ambition to be more. Looking closer, I saw shouting marathons in twisted sheets, clasped hands amidst daffodils, dirty diapers and birthday cakes. For the first time, I realized what I was about to do. Everything I saw I was going to take from them.

  "Saul, please," Penelope begged.

  My hand greased the handle of the gun with sweat. When I looked at the groom again, I didn't see a kid with a gold hoop hearing. I saw myself. Just another petrified young man in a tuxedo, standing bolt upright. Was I willing to take from him everything that had been taken from me?

  She touched my face with her nearly invisible hand. What once would have chilled me now barely registered.

  "Saul, I'm fading . . ."

  I realized I was doing this because I was still, even after all these years, clinging to the same bullshit — that Penelope was the only one for me out there, that no one but her would ever be with me, and that if I let her go, I would be left with an empty house and a loud television.

  As everyone stared at me, I turned and walked out of the church.

  Imagine you're a young man of twenty-two, not handsome or ugly, but in that limbo world of the nondescript, and you decide to walk away from the only woman you have ever really loved.

  She swarms around you, crying for you to stop, slapping at your face with hands you can't feel. You walk toward the river. A man pushing a shopping cart eyes you curiously and you realize that you are crying.

  Stop, Saul.

  Her voice is just an echo in your mind. She is invisible except for fleeting moments where a contour comes into view. Here a hand. Now a shoulder. You strip off the wig and sunglasses, dropping them in a trashcan. You walk faster.

  Don't leave me, Saul.

  When you reach the river, you are out of breath. There are people watching you, but you don't care. First, you take out the gun and heave it into the river, watching it splash in the water far below.

  Don't, don't, don't . . .

  You slip the ring off your finger, and now, for just a moment, she comes into view. She is floating out beyond the rail, over the gray waters, and she is reaching for you. You realize that more than loving Penelope, you loved the idea of being with someone. You realize that you must let that idea die if you are ever to find someone who will truly love you for who you are.

  You throw the ring.

  It sails out far beyond where the gun fell and barely makes a splash. Penelope's arms drop to her side, and just like that, she is gone.

  There is a voice behind you, an old man asking if you are all right.

  You turn and look at him. He wears mirrored sunglasses, carries a black walking stick, and grips tightly to the leash of his golden retriever guide dog. You are about to tell him you are all right, a little lie, when you notice the reflection in the glasses.

  You see your own face. You see a young man who has lost his way. But even in your grief, you see hope there and you know all is not lost.

  Front Row Seats

  DANIEL LINGERED IN HIS CRAMPED OFFICE at the University of Minnesota long after the other professors in the Math department called it a day. He was still there when all the lights under all the doors winked out and the parking lot outside his window was a bleak, snow-draped emptiness. He was at his desk when old Cal Thomas from Geography shuffled past, taking his incessant coughing with him. He stayed until the equations on shifted lattices turned to squirrelly nonsense, lines and squiggles on ruled pages, until finally he felt the thing creep into his thoughts, that black starfish wrapping its prickly limbs around whatever memories he chose to dwell upon, making his ears ring and his eyes water.

  When he felt it coming, he finally got up, knowing that it didn't matter where he was because the pain would be the same.

  He took the rear stairwell in the off chance someone was in the lobby. When he hit the frosty outside air, he realized he had left his overcoat, but he didn't want to go back, so he trudged, shivering, to his Camry. A kid with a stocking cap dotted with ice rode past on a ten-speed, tires crunching over packed snow. Daniel waited for the look of pity he was used to seeing, but the kid did not look his way.

  On his commute home to New Ulm, Daniel passed near the Cinema-3 Theatre, and he thought, what the hell. As long as the theatre was crowded, maybe no one would know he was there by himself.

  "What's your most popular movie?" he asked the kid at the window, a round-faced boy who wore a button that read Escape With Us.

  "The most full, sir?" the kid said, voice crackling through the intercom.

  "Yeah, which one is that?" His teeth chattered in the frigid air.

  "Harry Potter starts in five minutes. We got seven seats left for that."

  "Is that any good? Oh, forget it. That'll be fine."

  "One adult, sir?"

  "No, t—" he said, then caught himself. The starfish fluttered at the edge of his vision, and he felt as though his lungs collapsed as he forced out the rest: "Yes, one, please."

  The kid slid the ticket through the opening in the glass. When Daniel took it, he felt the stream of hot air blowing out of the little coffin of a room.

  "Hey," the kid said, "aren't you Professor Cooper?"

  Daniel cringed. Of course he should have expected this. Of course he might be recognized. He knew what the kid was thinking: poor wretch, going to the movies by himself.

  He nodded.

  "I had calculus with you last year," the kid said. "I'm sorry about your wife, man."

  Daniel said some trifle that seemed appropriate, but which he immediately forgot once he walked through the doors. He had many rehearsed responses — Thanks, I appreciate your condolences — Thanks, I'm doing okay — Thanks, I am seeing someone now, and it's helping. He seldom thought consciously about them.

  The packed theatre smelled of warm bodies and popcorn. He stumbled across a few people in the second to last row and found a seat in the middle. As he sat, the lights dimmed. He was grateful. In the anonymity of the darkness he could pretend it wasn't an old woman next to him who smelled of peppermint. If he kept his eyes facing forward, and repressed the urge to turn, he could pretend it was Debra, and it was just some new perfume she was trying, some sample she had gotten free in the mail.

  Debra loved movies. There were many nights he was busy — first with homework, later his thesis, and now student papers and research — when she had gone to the movies. Unlike him, she didn't seem to mind going alone. She was not a discriminating critic. She loved Sleepless in Seattle as much as she loved Edward Scissorhands. She said Star Trek V was fantastic even though the critics trashed it. She laughed for days after seeing Dumb and Dumber, mimicking Jim Carey's obnoxious facial expressions until asked her to quit.

  While the theatre’s opening bit played, a cartoon mouse who warned to turn cell phones and pagers off, a kid behind Daniel kicked on the back of Daniel’s seat. He was going to turn and say something when the film stopped and the room went dark — completely dark, as dark as the windowless cellar in his house
where he would go when the starfish was squeezing too hard. The darkness was brief, not even long enough for the stunned silence to turn to hissing at the control booth, just a room full of silent bodies, air trapped in lungs, and then the film was playing again.

  And there, in the uneven light, Daniel saw the old man for the first time.

  He had come in during the darkness, a coincidence Daniel thought at first, a frail fellow with stooped shoulders. The only hair he had, a few tufts of white with a yellowish tint, stood on end. His shoelaces snapped against his loafers as he shuffled down the aisle.

  He watched as this fellow took one of three remaining front row seats, easing himself down, hands pressed hard against the armrests like a gymnast straining against the parallel bars. Then the back of his head was just another dark outline laced with light, and he was part of the audience as the movie rolled.

  Daniel turned his attention to the film. His escape lasted for perhaps twenty minutes before his thoughts returned to Debra. He was trying to remember the last movie they saw together, and as he plumbed his memories he felt the thing stirring at the edge of his mind.

  He forced his attention on the movie and felt the thing loosen its grip. The onslaught of images seemed to be keeping the thing at bay. It would have continued if it hadn’t been for the old man.

  The movie was at one of its tensest moments — Harry and his friends creeping through the castle. The audience was silent, the only sounds a few people scraping the bottom of their popcorn barrels, whispers, creaking chairs and something else, something that didn’t belong.

  Laughter.

  It was coming from the old man. He couldn't see the old man's face, but he saw that the old man had his hands over his mouth, his shoulders shaking. The kids on both sides of him stared. A man in a cowboy hat cleared his throat. A woman a few rows back made a shhh sound.

  A lot of people laughed when nervous, but this wasn't that kind of laugh. This was a genuine belly laugh, a good natured laugh, a laugh that wasn't right at all for the scene.