Final
This is the final draft of this story, unless I go back to it some day. I know it's unfinished, but I've accomplished what I wanted, which was to start writing again. Coming up next should be some other "excercise" style writing, and maybe a polished piece or two eventually.
(Note: this was originally posted 10/1, but I updated the story to remove my correction marks from previous versions.)
On June 12th, Jason McCabe left a note for his wife saying "Won't be home for a couple of days. Sorry, can't explain. When I get back, ask me all about the paper midnight." After she read the note, Gloria immediately called Jason's office, trying to find him. He'd been acting strangely the last week. Their marriage was solid, so she didn't believe he was having an affair. But she knew something was wrong, especially when he wouldn't talk about what was bothering him. He'd just say " It's nothing to do with you. But I may have some news in a little while."
He wasn't at the office, and no one knew where to find him. He'd left early that day, that's all they knew. Jason hated cell phones, and, despite some agitated meetings with the CEO, wasn't required to carry one.
On TV, they used to say a person had to be missing twenty-four hours before he could be reported. She called anyway. The police officer was courteous, told her that, no there is no mandatory wait time before filing a report. However, the person has to be absent from where he is supposed to be, and the absense has to be involuntary. The office explained that having a note saying he would return, while unusual, certainly didn't make her husband's absense involuntary. But, if he was gone too long, they would look into it.
How long would "too long" be? She decided it would be two days, just like the note said. And, she'd call everyone she knew, including a detective agency if that's what it took. They had the money.
Ultimately, Gloria McCabe did call detectives, and the police, and waited six months for her husband's return before moving on with her life. She remarried several years later, having moved to another city. Sometimes she'd daydream about seeing Jason, maybe he'd be in the post office or a deli. What would she say if that happened?
She kept a copy of his note (the police kept the original). In their first year of marriage, her new husband, Paul, would wake up and hear her sobbing. He'd hold her, saying nothing, not even to ask what she meant by "the paper midnight".
* * *
Rachael didn't believe it was possible, and if it were possible then it couldn't be happening to her.
"Wait a minute. Maybe you didn't hear me. I said a regular cake doughnut with chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles."
The grey-haired counterman, who had been there each day she'd ordered her doughnut for the last six months, said "We're out. Get you something else?"
"But how can you be out? You've always had them."
The man gazed at her from forty-odd years of big city downtown food service experience, clearly not convinced that he should be answering philosophical questions at 7:35 in the morning.
"We've got chocoloate frosting no sprinkles, and vanilla with sprinkles, and twenty-three other tasty varieties. I'll give you time to choose." And with that, he moved on to the next customer.
Rachael left, not exactly in a huff, but taken aback. Was there another doughnut shop nearby? Could she find it? Would its plain cake with chocolate and sprinkles provide the same salvation that she'd enjoyed from Pauley's Pastries, the same bedrock of sameness and sanity she'd come to depend on to overcome a crappy year in which she'd left an awful job and worse boyfriend, had changed cities and states, and had put herself ten thousand dollars in credit card debt to recover from all of it? She might call in sick ("Yeah, I know that grant proposal for the new lab is due today, but
I can't work without my doughnut!"), take this as one of those prophetic omens that are cheerfully ignored in the movies leading to chain saws and necks colliding. But, on balance, she realized that she'd be better off treating this as a test, another step in her continous self-improvement that had included three weeks in February without peperoni pizza and Klondike bars.
Thus resolved, she walked to the Palmero Building and up three flights of steps (no elevator for her, though she was again ordering pizza with whatever meat item was available, including, memorably, a deep dish with ostrich sausage), then sat in her cubicle and promptly yelled "Michael! What the hell is this?"
A blonde man with a face that looked like a cross between an elf and a Viking came around the corner. Despite what should have been a gift of genetics, he was merely "cute" or "interesting", at least to the women Rachael knew. He had a girlfriend, anyway.
"What?" he asked. "Did you just prove that Mendel was wrong all those years? That won't go over well upstairs."
"Where did you get this?" she pointed at a pastry on her desk. It was, in fact, the very variety of doughnut she'd been prepared to sacrifice a day's income for.
"Pauley's. Duh."
"No. No, Michael. You're answering my words, not my question. You've got to learn the difference, otherwise you're relationship with your girlfriend--"
"Wilma--"
"
Wilma--"
"Named after the Flintstones cartoon character, but she doesn't like people to know that."
"
In any case. It won't last if you don't understand that women ask questions from
within their words, not with them. Now, what did I ask?"
Michael assumed the air of a beginning piano student. "You asked, 'Where did you get this?'"
"Yes. Very good. Now, what was my question?"
"Your question was, 'How did you know my day would have been ruined without this delectable confection, and how can I ever repay you without sexual favors?"
"Excellent. . . . Well?"
"Oh, it was the last one and I knew you liked them. Wilma says I need to work on being considerate and perceptive. Well, gotta go. Good luck on the grant. The microscopes are depending on you."
He left, whistling, and Rachael sat, logged in to her computer, then sighed at her first bite of what she now officially dubbed Chocolate Nirvana.
* * *
The courier was watchful, but not nervous. He'd stopped being nervous on his sixth delivery, realizing that it was more important to pay attention, and he couldn't do that if he jumped at every other shadow.
He got paid cash, just like every other of Alex's couriers, and he only had to deliver on time and not know what he was carrying. Only one receiver had tried to show him the contents, innocently saying "Wait, I need to make sure it's right." He had politely said that if the delivery was wrong to let the right person know, which wasn't him, and he left quickly. The receiver might have been on the level, or he might have been a test. Failing one of Alex's tests carried an immediate and fatal penalty.
The courier wasn't sure if what he was doing was illegal, though that was likely. In every other way, he led a normal life, going to his day job, paying his taxes (he never deposited the cash from a delivery job), playing with his children and making love to his wife. His will told Vera where to find the money in case he was killed, and Alex had a reputation for making sure widows and widowers got left alone.
His package was small, about the size of a box of pencils, which he liked because he could put it in his jacket pocket. He'd sewn that pocket himself so that if he was mugged they probably wouldn't notice it. It didn't matter much if his jacket was stolen. Alex always rigged his packages so they'd blow up anyone within five feet if they weren't opened properly. This was another disincentive to couriers having a curiosity.
The Ace Hardware building was three blocks away, and he was exactly on time. No moon tonight, but there was enough light from the streetlamp so he could cut through the next side street.
A few steps in, his lower back suddenly felt chilly. A second later, he knew Vera would appreciate all the money he'd set aside, and within twenty seconds he died from the knife wound. Someone had already taken his wallet and was pulling off his jacket.
Five miles away, and a half hour later, a small explosion went off in a park. Alex would smile when he learned that the next day at his office. He could tell his client the package contents had been destroyed in an emergency, as promised. His client would walk away angry, as usual. Six months later, Alex would be killed because the contents hadn't been destroyed after all.
* * *
The migration of ideas is well known. Buddhism, for instance, began in India, then through China and Korea, and into Japan. Each culture transforms the idea, and, according to one's viewpoint, improves, corrupts or merely changes what came before. Indian art from centuries ago is exceptionally detailed, often appearing as if the painter used a brush with only one hair. In China, the art is bolder, more direct. In Japan, more abstract, perhaps more "in the moment".
Suzuki Kouhei was considered a prodigy, and adopted by the court to surround them with beauty. His work was achingly fresh yet culturally correct. He could deliver what his benefactors desired, yet still pursue his ideals of painting. Namely, he sought the perfection of color in detail, using what he called the "empty stroke". He would sit, sometimes for an hour, poised over his special paper that, when treated after the painting was finished, shed water like the Emperor's ducks. He waited, not knowing if the time would ever be right, attempting to reach a state of non-doing; this was the paradox of his faith, that one had to take action to achieve a goal, but could only recognize if the goal was achived after the fact. Recognition destroyed the achievement.
As if a breeze had blown a leaf across the paper, his brush would suddenly--simply--mesh with the paper's surface. In most instances, the result was obvious to both the artist's and layman's eye. It was representation, not necessarily of a natural object, but of nature itself. Suzuki would capture the
essense of nature, as comprehended by humans, and display it. He politely acknoweledged the praise and gasps and encouragement from those few who viewed his work. In private moments, though, he would shrug and say to himself that it was merely a poor shadow on a cloudy day.
Suzuki was pursuasive, when necessary. He wanted to trace painting back along its path, through China to India, then back again. Such a request was virtually unknown, and would take many years. He would likely be killed, despite the desire for cultural and commercial exchange in the last decade. All this was said, but the short, polite painter was finally allowed the journey. It took him seven years to return, and more than one town and province would have sworn he had died at the hands of bandits or cowards.
Along the way, Suzuki began a collection. He would remain in an area for weeks, if necessary, when he found what he was looking for. His collection was contained in small bottles, tightly stoppered. These bottles contained pigments. They were the purest of each color. The reddest red, the greenest green, the yellowist yellow. Suzuki would combine these perfect colors into other varieties, but always with an inner vision of what the result should be. When the result was imperfect, the bottle was emptied.
He studied whatever art he could find. When available (and willing), he would discuss technique with the artist. When absent, he would imagine how the painting had been done, often lying in a field for hours, mentally reproducing each image, each stroke, each mixture of color, even the sharpening of the knife that would cut the brush hairs. A chemical is refined by removing elements, but art is refined by addition. Each new technique can contribute to the next expression. In this way, artists are like warriors; they gain from knowledge and experience until they can defeat an opponent by merely taking in a breath, because that act of breathing contains and conveys all that is to come if the aggitator continues.
As Suzuki filled his body with art, he further emptied his stroke.
He returned, and was welcomed by the court, who asked to see all that he had captured on his travels. They assumed he would have a pictographic diary. He politely asked two weeks to organize himself. No one realized there were no works of art to view, that he had returned with just a set of colors. They considered it merely an eccentric use of language, also, when he said "to organize
himself."
In the next fourteen days, Suzuki ate four times. He drank tea each morning and each evening. He painted for an hour, on a good day. The rest of the time, he sat poised, his bottles of color arrayed in an arc above a single sheet of his unique paper.
Today, now, was the fourteenth day. He would make the final stroke, or the stroke would make itself, depending on one's view. In the center of the paper was what appeared to be a black dot, about three fingers in diameter. It contained the purest colors, in strokes the width of a human hair. Thousands of filament-sized reds, greys, blues, and dozens of other colors all combined into what was becoming the blackest of blacks. The human eye couldn't distinguish the detail, and the human brain was unable to absorb such depth.
It was done. Suzuki stepped away, slightly astonished, carefully setting down his brush--really, a simple stick with one of his white hairs carefully wrapped into the end--and gazed at the masterpiece he had allowed to create itself.
He had succeeded, and yet felt like a bystander. He carefully treated the paper so that it would survive a flood, if necessary, and wrote a brief note, explaining what was to be done with this work of art, how to protect it, when to view it. Suzuki then eyed the center of the paper, the center that moved slightly in the way the darkest night sky moves a millimeter each moment. He breathed in, once. Anyone listening would have frozen at the implications of that breath. Suzuki stepped forward and vanished from the world.
* * *
There's lightning striking, then there's a laboratory research grant being approved on the same day it's finished, after only a one hour meeting. The second event is far more rare, and deserves parades and ticker tape. It deserves an all night sexathon with Chippendale dancers. It, in fact, deserves the possiblity of religious tax-exempt status.
Rachael celebrated during lunch with a chocolate cup cake and a single candle. There might be drinks after work. If Michael had his way, there would be drinks after work, through the night, and into the next morning, concluding with a fireworks display and a game of Guess Which Test Tube Has The Vodka. But, Michael rarely got his way since Dr. Lowery had started keeping a notebook she called the Michael Cause-Effect Journal. No one else had seen it, yet, but there was a rumor that Dr. Lowery consulted it whenever Michael made any request beyond purchasing new pens for the lab. And even then. . . .
The sky was threatening to be sunny all day, and Rachael was enjoying the mixture of professionals and dayplayers in the park. Dayplayers was her term for people who didn't have to work during the day, and came to the park without children. Maybe these people didn't work at all, or only at night, or were professional assassins and so could work once a month and then appear in public in disguise. Regardless, they wore shorts and threw frisbees and ate hot dogs with no regard for potential stains. They looked at their watches once an hour rather than once every fifteen minutes or so.
Rachael played a quick game of Cutest. She opened her planner to a fresh page and wrote three criteria across the top: Face, Hair, and Butt. Down the side, she made up names as she noted the guys in the park. Her scale was zero to five, with five being so fantastically cute in that category that every straight woman in the park, and a few gay ones, noticed. She evaluated five guys (whom she named "Darcy","Phantom","Boromir","Roy" and "Heathcliff"). Roy won with a top combined score of nine.
A quick glance at her watch and Rachael stuffed her sandwich and cupcake wrappings into the sack and headed toward the trash can. After dropping her stuff in the can, she noticed a piece of paper caught under a rose bush.
Oh well, might as well do the civic thing and get it, too, she thought, and scooped it up. It wasn't grimy, but she did notice it had a peculiar texture. Then her phone rang. It was Michael. Something might have gone wrong regarding the grant, probably not, but Dr. Lowery was asking where she was. Asking in her "Why isn't she here?" way.
Rachael stuffed the paper into her planner and hurried back to the office.
Draft 4