THE ROOM WAS lit by a single fluorescent bulb hanging directly over the bed. I collapsed onto the bed and tried reopening my eyes. The world was slow motion, and the light dripped outward in every direction, illuminating my periphery and bringing the world into focus.
The room was plain, cream-colored, with wallpaper that frayed in the corners. The bed had stiff gray sheets that smelled like I imagined the blouse on a corpse might. I turned to the left. An old alarm clock, covered in dust, read 3:45.
Mara offered me a paper cup filled with water. I’d never been so glad for sink water. “Okay, what do we expect to find here?”
I looked around the room. There weren’t many hiding places. The bed, a bedside table, and a lamp. “I don’t know. Something. He had to have left something.”
“Arthur, it’s been cleaned. Even if he left something, it’s probably not here anymore.”
I nodded gently, trying and failing not to disturb my throbbing head.
“It was five years ago,” she continued. “Even if he wanted to, how would he leave something? Hide it? Behind the wallpaper? I mean it—this might take more than just me and you to search.”
Neither of us spoke for a long while. Every movement I made reminded me of a different kind of pain I was in. I tried to decide between more sleep, more water, or more booze.
“Is it possible,” I asked, “we got the wrong room or something? Maybe 17D is code for something else?”
“Why would any other room be any different?” Her face was serious. “I’m being honest, Arthur, I think we may need some help, or at least another opinion—”
“Mara.” I stopped her.
“Come on.”
I waited a long moment. “Did you know Jack never met Hunter Thomas?”
“Thompson, and yes, I knew that. His birth mother just told him who his father was, and even her—she’s in an institution, so . . . so I don’t know. He didn’t take the name until a few years ago. It’s all a bit strange.”
“Well, my grandpa was real,” I assured her, although I didn’t know why.
“Right,” she said. “So figure out where he went.”
I closed my eyes and saw my grandfather in the room, lying on the bed, staring at the four plain walls, breathing the old air, writing and reliving and stumbling back into his old habits. I hoped he had less pain than I did, but realistically, he probably had much, much more.
“There was no shredded paper anywhere?”
Mara shook her head.
“Anything in the Bible?”
Mara shook her head.
I motioned toward one of the two doors in the room. “Is that a bathroom?”
Mara nodded.
“Is there a toilet?”
“Yes?”
I closed my eyes. “Could you check the plumbing for me?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Come on, Mara, just see if it’s running properly.”
“Do I look like a plumber? How would I even know if it was—”
“Mara, shut up and look in the top of the toilet.”
Mara stared at me for a moment before dragging herself off the bed and into the bathroom. I heard the clinking porcelain as she removed the top. “Yeah, looks like a toilet from—” Mara screamed. There was a loud clanging as the top of the toilet connected with the base and then the floor.
A moment later, her head popped back into the room. “There’s a paper! There’s a fucking paper, taped to the top of this toilet! How did you know that was going to be there?”
I half smiled as Mara skipped back into the room. “My grandpa used to take the tops off people’s toilets. Every single time. Sometimes he’d do it to every toilet in the house. My dad would get so pissed.”
“And why was that? Was he a plumber in a half-remembered life, searching for the perfect toilet drain?”
I shook my head against the pillow.
“Then what do you think he was doing?”
It hurt to swallow, but I smiled through it. “Looking for clues.”
She looked at me, surveying the fractured pieces of a new puzzle, then smiled, like she’d found a few pieces that fit together and was starting to see the picture on the box more clearly. “Alright, then, Sherlock. Read it.”
I folded it open.
“Aloud,” she insisted, and bounced onto the bed next to me, slouching at the same angle, the back of her neck against my pillow. She closed her eyes, and I stared at her, her face too close for me to think about anything else.
Her eyes opened again. “Well? Are you going to . . .”
I looked down at the page. Her eyelids fluttered shut once more, and I read aloud.
april 30, the 2010.
i first felt you
at thirty secands old.
i was intraduced to the world
& you were thare,
color & breath & warmth
growing up was
growing towards you,
pieces of you in every word.
learning the language just so i could speak it for you,
learning words just so they could fall short with you.
color & breath & warmth
arthur
i felt you in
our souls colliding,
i was eighteen,
you a year older.
like discovery of what i’d known all along.
you were breath.
you were color.
you were warmth.
& finally you were there,
& i felt you still, when
that warmth disappeared,
the world was gray,
my breath was gone.
& words that failed me were all i had
to remember you,
to re-create you,
arthur
color & breath & warmth
& i created you
out of words that were never enough.
i’ve written
this dream,
this room,
this great,
this love,
a thaosand times,
envisioned us meeting in
life after life,
body after body.
face to face finally
when all the words have failed.
but this morning,
i woke up a million miles from you
familiar trumpets reminding me that i’m not what i used to be
& angals spoke to me in your voice,
they said,
this road gets steeper,
& the curves get sharper,
& the tread on my tires will ware down
thin like the skin on my fingertips,
but if i keep going,
i’ll find myself in paradise.
& i’ll find you there.
—arthur louis pullman