The n-Body Problem

His mother is moving. She won’t hurt him, but she’s not gonna stop moving either. She’s dead. She’ll eventually shimmy to the floor and agitate all the poison. I hold my breath and open the driver door. Grab her by the coat and pull. She hits the road like a bad pumpkin. Then I swing her to the sidewalk. As much of her as holds together. There must be roadside pickup but I don’t know the day. Not perfectly legal what I’m doing.

I take three long strides before I breathe. The sugary rot punches my gut. Too much sick to fight off. At least the shingles are buried by this.

Heading back to make a plan. There may be time to catch the Youth Drop-in tonight. I’m about to cross the street but I stop. Back to the car.

Can’t leave the fuckin’ kid like that.

he has brought the house down.

The guy with the sides of his head shaved. Mushroom cap on his little finger. That guy. You see, this racket is about going into communities, taking a few key people aside and talking them into killing themselves. The more marks you got the bigger the pile of gold they’re gonna leave behind. And it’s surprisingly easy to do. There just aren’t that many people left who actually wanna be here and if the Seller can lull you a bit with the idea of sunbathing weightlessly in space, with the world rolling below, then you happily go. Sometimes the Seller convinces you that he’ll go too. He doesn’t though. He stays back and drains your dough, then moves on.

I know the Seller with the sides of his head shaved. That’s Glenn Dixon. He’s a top Seller. He once got a whole town—8,500 people—to lie down and die. Glenn and I go way back.

The boy and I keep up Main. It’s about six o’clock. The Christian Drop-in opens at seven o’clock. I figure we’ll sit in the parkette and watch folks for an hour. The boy is steady, calm. We sit on a bench by a fountain. I open some pills and gag a bit to get them down. The boy stares ahead. He’s a remora. I’m a shark.

Bright fence line across my vision. Top left half is pinball. Like a layer of hallucination pulled itself between me and the savage world. A slicing pain around the left ear. I can feel that things I’m going to think about this won’t add up. I have to affirm this temporarily. There are banana-coloured skies. There are crying leaves. There is a road that goes through puberty. Hot red teeth. Hallucinated light drawing shadows. That’s it. That’s what I affirm. The things that are not here are having a measurable effect on the things that are. If I look down, then eggs will fall from nests, pollen will bounce like flour on the lawn. Stroke. I don’t know much. Strokes do damage. I press in and try to hold on. The pain pushes down. I can’t swallow. There is one line, jagged and falling like a graph, a charted downturn. It’s black with a red ghost line. This is the dominant. It denies contiguity. The world above it is charged with pain and light. It is a stylus. Below the world is cold. Pain free. I am not in this half. I have to be. A couple. No faces. Long legs walk at an angle and turn. They can’t walk to a point. Not this point. Boot is a shadow club. I see the fine blue dots. Artefacts of her long coat. I need a place to store. I need a notebook. There is a finite number. She is an age. She is an entire morning. That. That is where I am not. That is where I am be. Raise my head quickly. Do the thing that things don’t expect. You make them what they are. The effect is disastrously close to being permanent. I can’t imagine and I feel sick. I throw up at my feet. The pain scoops my forehead. I watch the long line of yellow spin to the ground. My lip to a crack in stone. This could be the out. Stones. Small and unlike one another. They have come from places, moved here on the bottom of impressionable boots. Grains. Wind born from the gutter. A purple plastic dulled by sun and winter. Part of a bubble-blowing ring. It is enough. It is enough. I count the rows of dimples in stone anyway. I note flaws. I mark variations—depth, colour. One dimple is a wound. White in the centre. A ring of inflammation. I close my eyes and pray for some approximation, something independent, something less accurate. Fuck me. How are regular people supposed to handle this? It’s hopeless. We need to be able to guess, for fuck’s sake.

I have sat quietly for half an hour. The boy too. He was patient while I suffered. Now I am sitting upright. I have good breathing. The pain is all old. Echo. I am less worried about formulating. Less obsessed. I have two things in my vision that I’ll have to accept. One is a red and purple egg just off centre. The other is a thick line across the bottom. If I look up, the line widens. It looks like a face. Talking. If I look down, it disappears. Not gonna kill me. It’s good to have reminders. Like an oil light on the dash. I see you but I can drive. Big road ahead. The boy is calm. His boy scout uniform looks ridiculous. I get up and he follows.