Dagger Key and Other Stories

As absurd as this nightmare is, as explicable in terms of its imagery, it unnerves you. You can’t get it out of your head. The next morning, newly suspicious, you go through Abi’s address book and copy down the names of her male clients. It’s not that you believe she intends you harm, you tell yourself. You’re the one with a problem. It’s your ambivalence toward her that’s causing you to pursue these fantasies. You did the same thing more-or-less with Carole, suspecting her of cheating on you, then dumping her before she could. By making a thorough investigation, you’re certain you’ll be able to defuse your suspicions and defang your nightmares.

You dedicate the weeks after Thanksgiving to checking out Abi’s clients. Your master’s thesis is circling the drain, but you hope that by cutting classes following a vacation holiday, you can build the grounds for an excuse, an emotional crisis, illness in the family, something, and perhaps your committee will be lenient. You don’t much care one way or the other, though. The relationship is what’s important. Five of Abi’s clients have moved away, including Phil Minz. With the others, you pretend to be taking a survey for a study designed to improve handicapped services. Those you interview during the first week have all been injured prior to meeting Abi and have discernable reasons for their disability, whether disease or accident or congenital defect. Your investigation doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere and you think you must be coming down with something. Your energy’s depleted, you’re running a mild fever, and you’re having trouble concentrating. To top things off, Reiner has re-entered your life, popping up here and there in the U District and shouting profane threats then hurrying away. Two or three more days, you decide. After that, you’ll pack it in.

On Tuesday of the second week, you interview one Nathan Sessions, a muscular black guy with a spinal injury who’s three years older than you. He opens the door wearing gym shorts and a gray T-shirt, a pair of dumbbells resting on his lap, and asks if you would mind talking in his bedroom? He’s been exercising and would like to lie down. As he precedes you in his wheelchair, you observe a backwards 7 tattooed at the base of his neck and, when you enter the bedroom, you see an aquarium set on a table, almost obscured behind stacks of books, pump gurgling merrily. No fish. Books are scattered about the room, on the floor, in chairs. The pile on the chair beside the bed, which you clear in order to sit, consists of works treating with the nature of time. A sheet of paper falls out of one; on it, the word “Bottom” and, depended beneath it, a list of numbers that appear to be longitudes and latitudes. You ask him about it, and he takes the paper, peers at it, shakes his head, and says, “I had a geography class last semester. Must be some old notes or something.”

With practiced agility and a notable lack of effort, Sessions transitions between the chair and his bed, settles himself, and cheerfully tells you to fire away. After a battery of inessential questions, you ask how he came by his disability. He says it’s a degenerative condition that relates to an injury he suffered on the wrestling team back in high school, and was later exacerbated when he was “messing around.” His attitude strikes you as buoyant and energized—you remark that he seems extraordinarily well-adjusted compared to others you’ve interviewed.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” he says. “I’m more alive now than I ever was. I can’t begin to tell you how much my life’s improved.”

“What do you mean? How’s it improved?”

“Before I was paralyzed, I was bored with my life…though I didn’t understand it that way. Not so I could say it. I wasn’t interested in the world, except for the pleasure it could give me. Now I’m interested in things. Passionately interested. There’s not enough time in the day. I suppose my attitude’s partly compensatory. I’m determined not to get depressed.”

This seems right out of the Abimagique textbook of new age morality, and you wonder if Sessions actually feels that way or if he’s been drinking the Kool Aid. You wonder also if that’s a meaningful distinction.

“There must be some things you miss,” you say.

“If I sit and think about it…sure. I don’t like being in crowds anymore. Can’t see over people. Things like that. But I don’t worry about that shit. I’ve got too much else going on.”

Employing as much sensitivity as possible, you ask about sex.

Sessions fold his arms and gives you a cool stare. “Isn’t that outside the scope of your survey?”

“Not really. I’m hoping to get a complete profile on everyone I interview. That way, when I analyze it, I’ll be dealing with more than just statistics. If you prefer not to answer…”

“No, it’s fine. I’m fully functional.”

You pretend to make a note. “Isn’t that unusual with spinal injuries?”

Sessions starts to respond, pauses, and then says, “My massage therapist, she…”