Summer writing project, part three

“Do you believe in God, Eddie?” Lucy opened the office door and walked down the front stairs, leading me by the hand to the dungeonesque basement I had avoided before.

“How should I know? I don't remember anything.”

“I didn't ask you about what you knew or remembered. I asked you what you believe.”

“What's the difference?”

We reached the bottom of the stairs, which led to a short corridor and then a locked door. Lucy let go of my hand and started fishing through her pockets, eventually pulling out a piece of black iron that looked like a skeleton key that might have been a hundred years old.

“Belief and knowledge are separate,” she explained, twisting the key in the lock. “You don't have to know anything to believe in something. It's something that's either there or it's not. So I'll ask you again: do you believe in God?”

The door opened. I took a step backwards and put my hand over my nose as the stale air from the basement washed over us. It smelled like I had just woken up in the morgue again, but mixed with rotten meat and mold-covered concrete.

“No,” I said. “No, I definitely do not believe in God right now.”

“Not even given your current condition?”

“Given what I've seen over the past couple of hours, I'd be willing to believe in the Devil, but not God.”

She stepped into the large room beyond the door, leaving me the choice of either following her or abandoning her. My eyes watering slightly from the smell, I followed her into the room. The door drifted shut behind me, and doubt immediately filled my mind.

A mad scientist's lab. That's all I could think of as I followed Lucy into the room. Three bookshelves stood along the far wall, none of them with any actual books on them. One of them was crammed full of old vinyl records. The other two had a collection of anatomical doodads that belonged in a horror film rather than a woman's basement. Plaster molds a human skulls. Jars filled with brownish-colored water and false teeth. Next to the shelves lay a single long table decorated with tin trays, scalpels of varying size, and an old record player decorated with red splotches along its side. Another table lay in the center of the room under a set of large fluorescent lights. Again decorated with haphazard red spatters, this one looked like a primitive operating table. Of course, operating tables don't usually have built-in restraints for the arms and legs. This one did.

“What the hell is this?” My voice came out higher than expected, but stayed just below the level of a shriek.

“It's another question of belief,” replied Lucy in the same even tone she had used when I first walked into her office. “We've established that you don't believe in God. Do you believe in me?”

“Believe in you for what?”

She gestured toward the table of crude operating instruments. “We've been here many times. The blood in the room is yours – most of it, at least. I know enough about you that I can fix you up. Get that heart of yours beating again. When you've got some real blood pumping through your veins, you'll start thinking more clearly. You'll remember who you are. But i'm not going to force you to go through with it. So...do you believe in me or not?”

I shifted my weight. The plastic bags inside me that held my innards crinkled again. The gauze used to pack them together felt like it might suffocate me. Finally, I stepped forward and sat on the primitive operating table.

“Will it hurt?”

“If there's one thing you still have, it's a good tolerance to pain,” she replied. “Still, I guarantee that you'll barely feel a thing.”

I laid myself down on the table. “Okay, then. Get to it.”

“I'll need you to strip down, first.”

“What is this...a bad porno?”

She smiled at me. “See, you're not all gone now, are you? You've still got a bit of the old Eddie in you. I almost saw a twinkle in your eye there.”

“Can you at least turn around?”

“It's nothing I haven't seen before, you know.” She sighed. “Okay. I have to put some music on, anyway.”

I pulled my t-shirt over my head. “You operate with music on?”

“It's essential. I need some sort of anesthetic.” Her voice lowered as she crouched in fron of the record shelf and began talking to herself. “Now...who should it be? Ella? Duke? Nah, let's try Louis.”

She pulled a record out of its sleeve and put it on the player, but didn't start it spinning right away. Instead, she turned around to find me naked and lying on the operating table.

I closed my eyes as she approached. I seemed more self-conscious about my nudity than the bagged up organs inside me. I opened my eyes when I felt her take my hand and tighten one of the straps around my wrist.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Relax, Eddie. It's for my protection, not yours. You're not always yourself when you come out of these procedures. Sometimes it takes you a bit to calm down.”

“You want me to trust you. You're not making it easy.”

She shrugged and walked to the other side of the table, where she grabbed my other hand and started to strap it down. I could have pulled away. For some reason, though, my muscles didn't even want to tense up.

“It's a moot point now, isn't it?” With my hands secured, she moved toward my legs. “You already gave me your trust when you sat on the table. From here, you're going to have to live with that decision. Don't worry; I promise you won't regret it.”

Only when she had finished did my muscles respond and try to strain against the bonds. She had done a good job – I probably would have had to gnaw my own arm off if I wanted to escape. Giving up, I closed my eyes and waited for the pain of the first incision. Instead of getting to work, though, Lucy crossed the room again and started fiddling with the record player.

“I asked you before if you believe in God,” she said. “You might not, but I do. Now, I don't think He's some white-bearded old man sitting on a cloud somewhere. I don't even think He's a 'He.' But I think there's evidence of God in certain people – certain things in life that are just perfect. Like Louis Armstrong.”

“Louis Armstrong is perfect?”

“He was at what he chose to do.” She turned on the record player. I heard the hiss of the old recording, then some trumpet playing. “I think that when you listen to a Louis Armstrong record, you're listening to perfection. It's got to be a record, mind you – anything else tries to clean the track up too much. You listen to a CD, they think they're doing the listener a favor by clearing out that white noise hiss in the background. But you need that. It's part of the era, part of the charm. You hear that, and it takes you back to Louis' time. Then you hear his trumpet, and you realize that he was a master of his craft. Then you hear him sing, and you realize that he sounds like a trumpet would if it could talk. Louis Armstrong was made to do what he did. When you listen to him, Eddie, you're listening to perfection. You're listening to God. Try it.”

The trumpet playing gave way to singing. Almost immediately, I realized that Lucy was right. Louis Armstrong had a voice like no one I had ever heard – like no one else who had ever lived. He sounded like a singing trumpet, his words becoming an extension of his playing.

“Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper, 'I love you'
Birds singing in the sycamore trees
Dream a little dream of me”

I had stopped struggling. My eyes, previously closed, now opened halfway. They didn't seem to want to exert the effort necessary to either open all the way or squeeze shut.

“Now, Eddie, I want you to relax completely. Don't listen to anything else in the room except for the music. You don't even have to listen to the music – you can focus on the quiet hiss of the record. You have to concentrate, though, and focus hard. If you don't you won't hear it.”

At Lucy's suggestion, I focused my attention past the singing, past the music, and on the hiss of the record itself. Record companies spent millions of dollars trying to cover up that recording hiss, to the point where it didn't exist in modern recordings anymore. The more I focused, though, the more the hiss seemed important. Taking it away would leave the song with a missing piece.

“Keep focusing, Eddie. You know the music well. It takes you away from here, away from pain. The more attention you pay to the music, the more it becomes the only thing in your mind. In a few seconds, you won't even be able to hear the sound of my voice...”

Lucy was right. Everything else in the room faded away, and Louis Armstrong took hold of my mind. I listened as the song wove between his trumpet and his music. I heard the slight tremble in his voice at the end of each line as he held the note, his voice holding the same brassy vibrato as his instrument. And soon the subtleties of his music were all I knew.

“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me”

I took a deep breath in and then opened my eyes as I breathed out.

Then I discover that I’m not on the operating table anymore. I’m standing on stage in front of a microphone. People are applauding me – no, not me, the person I was just introducing. I turn to stage right, feeling my well-shined shoes tap against the stage as I move. A man is stepping on the stage. A black man, with a smile that shows off an enormous row of white teeth. He has a trumpet in his hand. A band follows him, setting up for the show. I walk over and shake the man’s hand. Old Satchmo, in the flesh. Then I step off the stage as Louis and his band start to play.

Where am I? When am I? I hear snatches of conversation in the crowd as I rub elbows with people in mink stoles and fancy suits. Someone mentions the upcoming presidential election, immediately sparking an argument about the merits of Dwight Eisenhower versus Adlai Stevenson. I brush through them, using their tired political rhetoric as nothing more than a means of getting my bearing. My feet move by themselves, moving independent of my thoughts. I’m not really here. My body is on cruise control, and I get to watch where it takes me.

“Stars fading but I’ll linger on dear
Still craving your kiss”

I turn my head back to the stage as Louis carries the sibilant “s” of kiss longer than he needs to. The air escapes between that enormous row of teeth of his, perfectly imitating the white noise sound of dead space on a record player. The band itself pauses just slightly before he carries onto the next line. For a moment, all anyone hears in the room is the living vinyl record that is Louis Armstrong.

“I’m longing to linger till dawn dear
Just saying this”

My legs carry me past the dance floor, toward the corner of the ballroom. A woman sits in a wooden chair, watching me with large dark eyes. She has dark skin – somewhere between a light tan and a solid brown. Strange words float through my mind, words that I can’t seem to remember the meaning of. “Mulatto.” “Not proper.” The words diappear as I come within arm’s reach of her and touch her arm.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say. Then I kiss her. I feel dozens of eyes shift toward me as I do so. The band is on stage, separate from the rest. But her – she’s among the rest of us, and it sickens many of the people in the room. But we’re immune to their judgment. We ignore the hisses and whispers and head toward the dance floor. She carries herself proudly, unafraid of the disapproving glares of “proper” society. It’s only when we get to the dance floor that I realize that she’s the only person outside of the stage, myself included, with any real color on her skin.

We remain there on the dance floor, oblivious to everyone else in the world. Our bodies touch, and I feel heat surge through my skin. For one long moment, it’s just us and the music.

“Yes, dream a little dream of me!”

I opened my eyes for real this time and found myself still on the operating table. I felt the slight prick of a needle on my skin, which I instinctively tuned out. The record had ended, leaving only the static hiss of the needle of vinyl. Lucy pulled the needle through my skin just below the collar bone. Then she cut the threat and put her tools away.

“Enjoy your nap?”

“What did you do to me?”

“I just helped your mind focus elsewhere for a little while. You know how to tolerate pain, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune to it. Seeing as I don’t have any anesthetic on hand, I had to try something else.”

I raised my head until my chin touched the top of my chest. Lucy had redone the stitches along the torso, but not as the simple patch job the mortician had performed. While I saw the black line of artificiality that held my skin together, she had doubled and even tripled the stitches in areas, allowing me to function normally without literally busting a gut.

“Now take a deep breath,” she said.

I did as she said and got an immediate shock as I felt the lungs in my body expand. Something trembled deep in my chest. Then my heart started beating, pumping actual blood into my veins.

“Feeling better?” asked Lucy.

“I…I feel human.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but you’re looking a lot less corpsified than when you wandered in her a few hours ago.”

“A few hours? Has it been that long?”

“Why? How long do you think it’s been?”

“I only felt like I was out for a few minutes. And…I had a memory…” I remembered the woman on the dance floor, compared her to the pale-skinned woman I had seen before in the mirror. Two different people, but there was something similar about them – something that made them the same.

“Only one memory?” asked Lucy.

“I was supposed to have more?”

She shook her head and started undoing my restraints. “I was hoping. You’re more lost than usual. That makes me wonder what you ran into. Do you remember how you got into the morgue in the first place?”

“I heard the mortician’s dictation. He said I fell – or maybe I was pushed. He couldn’t tell anything from my corpse.”

“Of course not. Well, then, there’s only one thing to do.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re the investigator. It’s time for you to check out the crime scene.”

“But I don’t even know where I was.”

“I know where I sent you. You were supposed to check out a tip on a missing girl. She was last seen at 42 Addison Avenue. So that’s where you should start.”

“Are you coming with me?”

She laughed at the question. If a noise could cut skin, her bitter chuckle would have left someone bleeding. “Do you know how much of a mess you cause, Eddie? I’m going to be spending the next few days getting my hands on security footage from the morgue, bribing investigators, and trying to convince one frightened mortician that he’s having lucid hallucinations. Keeping you on the down low is a full time job.”

I rubbed my wrists as I sat up. “If it’s so hard, why do you do it? What are you, anyway?”

She winked at me and started walking toward the door. “That’s a question I wouldn’t even answer for you if you were one hundred percent, bud. All you have to know is that I’m on your side, and I’ve always got my eye on you.”

She closed the door and headed up the stairs. I looked at my left hand. The eye tattoo blinked once. Then I sighed and started to get dressed.