The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

is still echoing and exposed due to the story she’s just told Kierk, and she is now suddenly reevaluating his attentive face, his leaning in, his interest in each word, and with this a deep and old insecurity rises: that all her relationships, both professional and not, are warped unnaturally by this biological form that cannot help but attract, a thing no more impressive and just as predetermined as a pitcher plant emitting its tantalizing scent. What she likes about Kierk is his seemingly unaware resistance to it; she feels that his disinterested intelligence acts like some kind of shield for it, but suddenly she is unsure, worrying at what she’s building and how genuine this budding bridge really is.

It is a busy afternoon. On the avenues the flow of people perceptibly recognizes her, clears space. Girls with long painted nails size her up. A homeless man exclaims as she passes. A group of men lounging on concrete steps fall silent, all looking. A fleeting summer day myth, Carmen makes her way like a serpentine medusa through the Grecian columns of the city towers, the summer light clinging to her, until she stops by the glass mirror of a building to evaluate herself. At first it is merely to tilt her head and move aside some stray hairs, but then, her mask dropping, she suddenly begins to rub the lipstick from her mouth, which comes off in a violent violet streak on her forearm, and then she’s smearing her foundation with her palms, tugging down her dress as low as it will go, and it is only when digging around her purse to come up with a clip with which she tries to pin her hair up in an ungainly bun that she realizes the mirrored wall of the building is in fact a window onto a coffee shop. The inside snaps into focus and within she sees the many faces that have turned to watch her, looking up from their seats or turned in the line, all paused, earbuds dangling, mouths open, frozen.

MONDAY

Kierk wakes up and dwells for a while amid the covers, already having a coherent mental conversation with himself over the flat liquid mercury of his mind, a monologue proposing that perhaps, during the waking operations of the brain, small segregated parts of it become cut off, involved in only their own processing, and produce within them functional micro-consciousnesses, disconnected events, local dreams, perception without a self, qualia unassigned, unknown and amnesiac, whole brain circuits left in an idling conscious state, forming and winking out at a startling rate. Perhaps even this very thought occurred in one such micro-subjectivity and then bubbled up to fill the space of his receptive morning mind, and that every day’s consciousness was the continuation of some lucky dream.

In the lobby of his building, as he is passing the security desk, tapping out a cigarette from a new pack, someone calls to him.

“Hey! You look like you’re feeling better!” Standing behind the shoehorn desk is a smiling middle-aged black man in a dark blue uniform.

“What do you mean?”

“You probably don’t remember me,” the security guard guffaws. “I normally work the night shift. Last time you saw me you were, I mean, I’ve been there myself. You certainly had a time of it.”

“Friday,” Kierk says. “You’re talking about the Friday night before last.”

“Would have been around then. Man, you were far-gone. I feel that though, I feel that.”

Kierk’s manner has changed in a way that only someone who knows him would notice: now there is a different stance, an aw-shucks tilt to his smile, his sentences not rapid-fire as usual but drawling and slow.

“So . . . What can you tell me about that night? I’m missing some parts of it.”

“Well that’s too bad. That’s something to remember. You were with that girl. What a thing. What a creature! Give me five, man.”

Kierk high-fives him quizzically, his face one of confusion. “What girl do you mean?”

“The blonde one. You two were hot and heavy together on the sidewalk, man. Gotta hand it to you. Most fine-looking woman I’ve ever seen. I thought for sure she was going to go upstairs with you, cause you both came into the lobby, and were still going at it. Making out. Not that I minded, man. I was rooting for you. I thought that you were gonna score big man. But then you both left.”

Kierk’s mind is an explosive carnival of music, a round of live ammo dropped. “We left? Why?”

The security guard gives a deep-bellied laugh. “Don’t ask me, man, can’t believe you did. You were doing your thing in the lobby for a sec. Then you left.”

“Do you remember the time?”

“Actually, I do, because we get a security check at 2:00 a.m. This was a little after that. Maybe fifteen minutes later?”

“And when did I come back?”

“Oh shit, man, don’t tell me you let that get away. I was hoping you had gone to her apartment.”

“No, man, I woke up here.”

“Crazy night, huh. My shift ended at four and I didn’t see you by then.” Kierk drums his fingers on the desk. “You’re saying that I did not walk through those doors to go to bed until sometime after 4:00 a.m. that night?”

“Well, I guess that’s right.”

“. . . Beyond the utmost bound of human thought,” Kierk mutters to himself, lost.

“What’s that?”

“What? Oh, nothing. Reveries. Impossible connections. Poetry and lost time. I can’t . . . I’m sorry, thanks so much for your time.”

As he leaves, the security guard calls out to him—“Hey man, you make sure you go after that lady!”

Kierk, having reached the glass doors, looks back and nods, then pushes the doors open.

He smokes the cigarette he’s been holding while pacing the steps of Union Square. He is uniquely aware of his lips, his hands, his body seems new to him, fit, sexual. Sitting on a bench he closes his eyes and briefly reviews the imagery and memory techniques of