Chapter 41a

Bo: You again.

The famous first line of The Divine Sharpness.  You had to say it just right, or it wasn’t funny.  This Bo delivered it pretty well.  It got a laugh, anyway. But Gavin couldn’t focus.  Couldn’t laugh. All he wanted was to lean over and say something to Rona, to explain.  So unfair, how she had sprung the New York question on him when his answer couldn’t be a speech, a paragraph, a well-thought-out explanation of why he couldn’t leave things now.  Why it wasn’t the time to move to New York.  Why it was, and he hated thinking of it, but it was true, the time to move to Kansas.

Mi: You were expecting somebody new?

Frick was right, like always. I need to persevere. He wasn’t going to be the kind of person who just gave up all his dreams on a whim, with no good alternative plan, for no reason.  For a girl. How could you succeed if you didn’t stick with a path, choose a goal and commit to it? 

Bo: I was hoping.

Mi: There’s never been anyone but us.  And the God of course. Can’t forget him.

At least the Mi was pretty good.  Tall and lanky, that kind of world-weary destructiveness even though he was probably only in his late twenties.  Gavin’s age, Mi and Bo both.  Maybe even younger. They’re supposed to be older than me.  Or at least, they always had been, all the other times he’d seen this play. 

I was younger then, he realized. Now he had caught up, become old enough to be in The Divine Sharpness.  Maybe soon he’d be too old.  It felt scary, way scarier than it should be: too old to be in The Divine Sharpness.  He searched his mind, checked the ages of all the Bo’s and Mi’s he’d seen; had any been over thirty?  Forty?  He couldn’t tell.  They had all seemed so old, so adult.  He’d never thought he could get that old.

Mi: But I understand, you’re tired of me.  Don’t worry.  I feel the same.  What’s that saying—Hell is other people?

Rona leaned towards him, whispered in his ear.  “What’s it made of?”

She meant the heart. That was always the issue, how to set up the heart. He’d seen it done with strips of fabric or paper mache. Those were clean, sanitary, easy to rip through and replace.  Wrong effect though. What you needed was something slick, slimy-looking.  You were supposed to do it with raw meat. That was the traditional way.

“Sponge?” he whispered. That’s what it looked like, sponges and red food coloring and Saran wrap and maybe oil or something. Not meat, but pretty gooey anyway.

She nodded, turned back to the play.  Re-entered, gone.  He was alone. He watched her from the side of his eye, sly, not wanting to seem creepy. Actually he didn’t think she would notice if he stared right at her.  She was totally in the play.  Eyes wide, fingers gripping the edge of her metal chair like it was speeding through a tunnel. When Bo or Mi said something funny, she laughed out loud, or covered her mouth with one hand when it was horrifying and funny at the same time.  She darkened, lit up suddenly, turned green and purple and red. She throbbed to the beat of a pulsing heart. Bah-bum.  Bah-bum.

He needed to leave.

No, seriously, there was no way he could sit through another hour and a half like this.  The two men on stage, the meaningless words droning on and on, like a song on repeat. The shifting of stage lights, the creepy music—he was pretty sure that was music, playing quietly in the background. But maybe it was just the hum of the building or something in his head. Rona off somewhere by herself, believing he was a coward, that he had let her down, with no way for him to explain, to fix it. The darkness.  That inescapable bah-bum, bah bum.

Mi: Nobody here but you, me, and the God.

Bo: Why do you say it like that? Like it’s silly.

Mi: No reason.

Should he go out in the lobby—cramped, dark—and take a break?  He kind of wanted to.  At least the heart wouldn’t be so loud out there. But it might mess up the play for Rona.  Maybe she would follow him to see if he was okay.  Or maybe she wouldn’t.

She put her hand on his knee and leaned her head close to his.  “Are you okay?” she whispered.

He tried to whisper back, didn’t have enough saliva.  Swallowed, tried again. “Of course.”  

“It’s pretty intense.” Loose strands of her hair were brushing his ear.

Ba-bum. Ba-bum.

“What?”

“The play is.”

“Yeah.  Right.  It’s intense.”

She left her hand on his leg like that, so now he really couldn’t go anywhere. And there was still at least an hour left, maybe an hour and a half.  Better settle in and get comfortable. Enjoy the play! Enjoy it!

He just need to figure out what part they were at.  The two his-age men on the stage were saying words, familiar words, but he couldn’t connect to their meaning through the shifting colors of the light, the pounding of the heart. 

Wait, what was this?

Bo: Because YOU don’t even exist.

Mi:  That’s funny. From my perspective, you’re the one who doesn’t exist. At least, I can’t find any conclusive evidence that you do.

This was the scene, the one that Rona had read aloud with Braden. The best thing that had ever happened in one of his classes. It had all been downhill since then.  Rona was gone, DeJuan was gone. School was almost over and they were working on final papers.  Braden and Kayla sat on opposite sides of the room now.  Everything was falling apart.

Bo: I’m right here! Look, you can see me. You can feel me.

Bo punched himself in the stomach.  You could tell it wasn’t very hard, but he whelped like it hurt and fell down on the ground. When he got up, there was a red stain on the side of his body.  It didn’t look like it was from the floor of the heart, more like he had popped a capsule full of red die in his pocket. Then Mi was saying something, and Bo punched him, too. They stood in profile to the audience, so that Bo’s punch looked like it was passing through Mi’s head and out the other side.

Mi: And right there is the heart of the problem, I suppose. Under these circumstances, it’s so hard for me to have faith that anything exists.  I mean, all of this. How can I know I didn’t invent the entire thing? 

Gavin’s favorite line, but it seemed to mean something different. It used to be an abstract philosophical idea about the life of the mind, about how tiring it was to take a skeptical stance towards everything. Now, it was just—what?

Literal.

Mi went over to the heart, stuck his finger into the spongy wall.  Gavin had seen it over and over, but this time, he wanted to stop it.  He had to cover his mouth to keep from yelling, No! He felt like running up on stage, bear-hugging Mi from behind, pinning his arms down. So odd.  You could see a play twenty or thirty times, and then, on the thirty-first, suddenly decide you wanted to change how it went.

He didn’t do it, of course, because that would be crazy.  So Mi’s finger was in the heart, and when he pulled it out, blood sprayed everywhere.  In pumping spurts over the clean white overalls of Bo and Mi.  Onto the stage in puddles and slicks. A fine mist of it wafted over the audience.  You couldn’t see it in the dark, so maybe it wasn’t staining Gavin’s shirt.  Maybe. But he could feel it on his exposed arms, his forehead, a warm oil but it made you feel cold inside.

Rona’s hand tightened on his knee, clawed into his skin. Bo pulled down his overall straps, stripped off his t-shirt—the actor playing him had been working out, or maybe some guys were just naturally built like that?—and shoved it, all wadded up, into the hole in the heart.

The blood stopped for a moment. Ahh.  But then a roaring, gushing sound. The shirt flew across the stage riding a stream of blood. Bo covered the hole with two hands. But Mi was just standing there, watching, one arm on his hip.

Bo: You’re going to get us both killed.

Mi: Do you really believe in death?

Bo: Do I—pardon? Believe in death?  Of course I believe in…are you serious?

Mi: I’m not sure I do.

Bo: Of course you do.

Mi: You’re so certain about what I believe.

Bo: Here’s what I’m certain of: if the God dies, it’s bloody curtains for us.

Mi: I’m not sure I believe in him, either.

Bo: You’re out of your bloody skull.

Mi: Hmm.

Now Gavin’s mind was synched up with the play, at last.  That didn’t really make him feel better, though. Worse, maybe. He watched Bo trying every possible way to fix the heart, with all the wild panicked despair of a drowning man, while Mi observed him, passive. Gavin’s own heart raced, twice as fast as the heartbeats filling the room, three times as fast. Bo took off his overalls, asked Mi for his clothing, which he handed over, but none of it was enough to stop the bleeding.  Wearing just his white boxer shorts, soaked through with blood, Bo leaned his back against the wall of the heart, put his head against it, pushed the spongy flesh into itself like he could force it to heal.  He was sweating, panting.

Had this play always been so horrible?

Blood pooled on the stage, slushing over the edge and onto the tarp-covered floor where the audience was sitting.  Any time Bo or Mi took a step, it was like they were stomping in puddles. It looked thick, slippery, like maybe it was made of vegetable oil or something.  Gavin was really glad they were sitting halfway back.

And now, sooner than Gavin expected, Mi’s soliloquy.  Gavin had written a couple papers about it.  It meant, among other things, that the play was close to over.  And that meant that Gavin was going to sit in his chair, Rona’s fingers still clutching his knee, and watch these two blood-soaked mean tear the spongy, bloody heart into spongy, bloody chunks. 

He was pretty sure he couldn’t handle it.  He also couldn’t leave, not with Rona’s hand pinning him to his seat.  What happens to a person forced to endure something he can’t handle?  Does he scream?  Does his head explode? It didn’t seem possible that he could just sit here and take it.

Mi: Haven’t you ever wondered what it’s like outside of here? There has to be an outside. If you broke past all of this, there has to be something, something out there, beyond. But what. I imagine it peaceful. Maybe blue. Something blue as far as you could see.  Doesn’t that sound beautiful?  An endless peaceful sea of blue.  That’s just a fantasy, though, something I see when I close my eyes to dream.

He was sloshing around the stage in his undies as he spoke, blood splashing up onto his ankles, gesturing with his hands like he was Hamlet.  Bo didn’t look at him, didn’t say anything.  He was lying on his back, legs up the inside of the heart, covering the hole with one foot and then the other.  It worked better than his hands, but the blood still seeped out around the edges, ran down his thigh, sprayed out whenever he lost his angle or had to switch feet because of fatigue.

Mi: It could be anything, really. Maybe something horrible—though it’s difficult to imagine what could be worse than this.  It would have to be something unimaginably awful.  And then I suppose you’d have traded this, whatever we have here, boredom, relative peace—at least it was—for some horrifying alternative. I suppose that would be an undesirable outcome.  I suppose. 

Gavin thought: Don’t. With the rhythm of the heart. Don’t, don’t, don’t.  Rona took her hand off his knee and grabbed his arm. He didn’t even care.  He just needed this to stop, the whole thing.

Mi: Or nothing.  It could be nothing out there. Just, you know, a void, emptiness, blackness. Maybe even the end of time. In which case you’d have traded something for nothing, which does seem a bit of a shame. And yet, don’t you think it might be better, in the end, that anything might be better than, than…

Bo: Shut your mouth.

He lowered his feet to the ground, stood up.  Blood gushed unchecked from the heart, like from a garden hose.

Bo: Shut your bloody mouth.  You’re making me bloody sick.

He ran towards Mi, which wasn’t a good idea at all, you could see that right away.  His legs slid out in front of him and he fell hard onto his ass, skidding across the swampy floor.  He picked himself up, careful, examined his boxers.  They were deep red now, not white, sagging and filled with blood.  He ripped them off, gathered the into a bloody ball in his hand, threw them at Mi.  They stuck when they hit his forehead, suspended for a moment.  Then they slid a slow, bloody path down his face, bare chest and leg, down to the floor.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Bo: I’m going to bloody kill you!

And here it was.  Don’t.  Don’t.  Too late.  It wasn’t going to work. There was no changing the ending of this play.  It was going to happen.  It was inevitable.

Bo ran to the heart, ripped two handfuls out of it, threw them at Mi.  Splat.  They landed like what they were, bloody bits of sponge, tissue exploding on skin. He stood, let it slide down his cheeks, paint crimson streaks over his shoulders.

Bo: Kill you!  I’m going to kill you.

Handful after handful, ripped from the disintegrating body of the heart with hands and teeth, thrown, splat splat splat against Mi’s face and chest and stomach and legs.  The structure of the heart began to buckle, to collapse in on itself. 

Mi: That’s right.

He took a few steps, slow, careful not to fall over in the muck.  Went to the heart, shoved his hand into its ruined flesh, pulled out a bloody chunk.  Smashed it against his own forehead, ground it against his skin, let it drop to the floor.

Mi: Yes, that’s right.

Another bloody chunk, smeared over his own chest.  Bo watched him, mouth open, stained hands limp at his sides. 

Mi: Yes, kill me.  Bloody kill me.

He ripped another gash in the heart, and another and another.  Bo let out a murderous scream and tore into the heart with his teeth. 

Next to Gavin, Rona was sobbing. Gavin might have been sobbing, too.  He couldn’t tell anymore.  The beating noises were frantic, erratic, punctuated by wailing violins and violas and cellos, and Gavin didn’t know what sound was what anymore.  It was every bit as bad as he had been expecting. It was horrifying.

The two naked men tore the heart together, body and mind united at last in a common purpose.  Tore it into tiny shreds that flew through the air, accumulated in bloody piles, toppled off the edge of the stage.

Gavin closed his eyes hard, waited a few seconds.  The heartbeat was subsiding now, a faint few beats, the music almost gone.  Gone. Silence. Was it over?

He opened his eyes, and saw the most shocking sight of the entire two hours.

Everything was blue.

A blue tarp covered the stage floor.  The heart was gone, the stage was flooded in blue light that streamed from overhead like a cartoon heaven, like some endless paradise between ocean and sky.  A mist of blue water sprayed over Bo and Mi, washing them clean as they rose up into the air, floating like angels against the blue backdrop.  The blue light grew deeper, richer, brighter, until it subsumed Bo and Mi and you could barely see them at all.  They faded, or maybe blended, until all you could see was the white outlines of their smiling teeth, the place where their hands met and clasped together.

Then the room went black.  The play was over.

<Chapter 40a

Chapter 42a>