Don’t mean shit.
Churn on that.
And next time send me some tough ones.
This has been the Devout Jester whispering sweet nothings in your ear.
Three days after Daniel’s first disappearance, he came in for breakfast, sat down, squared his shoulders, shut his eyes, and instantly vanished.
Volta, who’d been chopping tomatoes for salsa to accompany his renowned huevos rancheros, laid the knife on the cutting board and applauded, murmuring, ‘Bravo.’ Then he went back to chopping.
He was aware of Daniel’s presence but tried mightily to ignore him. He was glad to get rid of him, if only for a few minutes. From the moment Daniel had reappeared and stumbled toward the porch, he’d showered Volta with questions. The only one Volta could answer with certainty had been the first.
‘What did you put the poison in, the wheatcakes or the ham?’
‘Daniel! I take pride in my wheatcakes, and I would never insult Tick Hathaway’s ham.’
‘Where?’
Volta couldn’t tell if Daniel was demanding or pleading. ‘I injected it in the apple in your portion of the fruit salad. I was in a Christian mood.’
‘What? Christian?’
‘The Tree of Knowledge. Forbidden fruit. Temptation and the Fall and all of that. Some tastes of the forbidden are rapturous; some make you sick.’
‘What’s sick,’ Daniel gasped, ‘is dosing somebody. And what’s really sick is mixing speed with it.’
‘I’ve offered the apology of necessity. I can only repeat it. And please – it wasn’t poison. It was a virus that took Charmaine weeks of intense work.’
‘She hates me,’ Daniel said.
Volta noted with surprise the disconsolate edge in his tone. ‘No, she doesn’t. She highly recommends you, as a matter of fact; and as you undoubtedly noticed, she is extremely aware and uncommonly insightful.’
Daniel doggedly shook his head.
After that first question, Volta had no certain answers. This uncertainty seemed to provoke Daniel into fusillades of more questions, as if answers simply awaited the right inquiry.
‘Why do your clothes vanish with you? And your fillings? Why don’t they just fall on the floor?’
‘I don’t know,’ Volta patiently replied, a reply he would often repeat. ‘I can only tell you, based on my own limited experience, that anything in intimate connection with your force field for longer than thirty to forty hours will disappear with you and reappear when you do – depending on its own strength of field and its harmony with your own.’
‘What do you mean exactly by this force field? Your body?’
‘Daniel, I can only speculate. I think of it as the sum of vitality – flesh, soul, psyche, or anything else you consider a constituent of being.’
‘Wait a minute now. Let’s take a practical example. Say my pocketknife disappears with me and I walk outside and set it on a rock and then go back inside and reappear, the knife would still be in my pocket?’
‘No, not in my experience. It would reappear on the rock, right where you left it.’
‘Why? It wouldn’t be in my force field anymore.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps there’s some principle of dimensional or field exclusivity. Or as Smiling Jack is fond of saying, “You can’t be in two places at once if you’re not anywhere at all.”’
‘Wait a minute. How can you see? You don’t have eyes. How can you hear when your ears have vanished? It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘That’s because it’s impossible, Daniel. If the impossible made sense, it wouldn’t be impossible. I assure you I made long and serious inquiries – discreetly, of course – from physicists to shamans. The only conclusion among those few who would even entertain the notion was that sensory integrity is not limited to somatic existence. Think of it this way: You briefly turn into your ghost.’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Don’t tell me. Tell your ghost.’
‘All right, all right. So what you’re saying is that the physical self turns into spirit.’
‘I don’t know. What I’m suggesting, if anything, is that we’re born to be amazed.’
‘But I wonder …’ and Daniel would ricochet off on another line of questions.
To spare himself, Volta added another four hours of solitary meditation to Daniel’s daily post-graduate regimen. It didn’t matter. There were still as many questions; Daniel just asked them faster.
‘Why did you experience the ecstasy as contraction while I felt it as expansion?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we were experiencing different things, or the same things differently.’
‘And that’s why I didn’t go through that still, empty, stop-time sensation you did when you vanished?’
‘So I assume, yes.’
‘But some things we experienced were the same. Why some in common, some unique?’
‘I don’t know. To make it more interesting?’
But the interrogative reversal didn’t work. Daniel ignored the question and bored on with his own until Volta said pointedly, ‘Daniel, ask yourself. You know as much about it as I do, and I have no doubts that soon you will surpass my meager understanding.’
Volta wiped the cutting board. Daniel had been vanished far longer than his program prescribed. Volta resisted an impulse to check the clock. Daniel was beyond him. He must have simply imagined a mirror, making a leap that Volta had never considered. That didn’t surprise him, for he’d felt from the beginning that Daniel wanted to dance on the threshold. Thus far Daniel had displayed discipline and respect, but his passion to understand what was essentially a mystery could easily fuse into obsession, and that worried Volta. As he cracked eggs, he decided to relinquish his position on the Star. He was weary of constant decisions, weary of questions he couldn’t answer or had already answered too many times. If they stole the Diamond, he would have found what he’d sought. Then he could spend his remaining years watching the wind blow, visiting friends, tending the garden, savoring a cup of afternoon tea, standing in the Diamond’s center.
Volta glanced at the clock. Serenity would have to wait. Daniel had vanished fifteen minutes ago, clearly ignoring Volta’s suggestion that he limit disappearances to under ten minutes. He tried to sense Daniel’s presence in the room. He felt, but only faintly, that Daniel was still at the table. Just as Volta was about to abandon nonchalance and yell at Daniel to return, Daniel reappeared, still seated at the table. He showed no evidence of disorientation. His smile was almost indecent with triumph.
‘Forgive the theatrics,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve been around you too long.’
‘Indeed,’ Volta said, his throat tight. He could feel his anxiety collapse through relief into anger. Anger was pointless.
‘Not bad for a beginner, wouldn’t you say?’ When Volta said nothing, Daniel added, ‘It’s all in the imagination, and a million mirrors.’
Volta walked over to Daniel. ‘No it’s not,’ he said evenly. Before Daniel could react, Volta slapped him hard across the face. ‘It’s a dance, and you better watch your step or you’ll fall through one of those mirrors and keep on going.’
Daniel touched his numb cheek and lifted his eyes to Volta’s. ‘Fuck you,’ he said.
Volta swung but his open hand never touched flesh. Daniel had vanished.
Swiftly but without apparent urgency, Volta moved to the center of the kitchen. He rolled up the sleeves on his faded denim shirt and waited, trying to sense Daniel’s whereabouts. Before he could bring his concentration to the necessary point, Daniel appeared behind him, locking his hands behind Volta’s neck and pushing his head forward and down, virtually immobilizing him with a full nelson. Applying just a bit of pressure for emphasis, Daniel grunted, ‘Well my, my – imagine that. I mean, who would have even imagined the possibility, or ever imagined it would come to this? Do you imagine I’ll accept your apology?’