Green Eyes

  Edman cleared his throat. ‘It’s time we got to the root of this anger, Donnell.’ Note-taking had restored his poise, and his tone implied an end to games. ‘It must be distressing,’ he said, ‘not to recall what Jean looked like beyond a few hazy details.’

  ‘Shut up, Edman,’ said Donnell. As always, mere mention of his flawed memory made him unreasonably angry. His teeth clenched, his muscles bunched, yet part of his mind remained calm and watchful, helpless against the onset of rage.

  ‘Tall, dark-haired, quiet,’ enumerated Edman. ‘A weaver… or was she a photographer? No, I remember. Both.’ The eye widened, the eyebrow arched. ‘A talented woman.’

  ‘Leave it alone,’ said Donnell ominously, wishing he could refine his patch of clear sight into a needle beam and prick Edman’s humor, send the fluid jetting out, dribbling down his cheek, then watch him go squealing around the room, a flabby balloon losing flotation.

  ‘It’s odd,’ mused Edman, ‘that your most coherent memories of the woman concern her death.’

  Donnell tried to hurl himself out of the wheelchair, but pain lanced through his shoulder joints and he fell back. ‘Bastard!’ he shouted.

  Jocundra helped him resettle and asked Edman if they could have a consultation, and they went into the hall.

  Alone, his anger ebbing, Donnell normalized his sight. The bedroom walls raised a ghostly gray mist, unbroken except for a golden fog at the window, and the furniture rippled as if with a gentle current. It occurred to him that things might so appear to a king who had been magicked into a deathlike trance and enthroned upon a shadowy lake bottom among streamers of kelp and shattered hulls. He preferred this gloom to clear sight: it suited his interior gloom and induced a comforting thoughtlessness.

  ‘… don’t think you should force him,’ Jocundra was saying in the hall, angry.

  Edman’s reply was muffled. ‘… another week… his reaction to Richmond…’

  A mirror hung beside the door to Jocundra’s bedroom, offering the reflection of a spidery writing desk wobbling on pipestem legs. Donnell wheeled over to it and pressed his nose against the cold glass. He saw a dead-gray oval with drowned hair waving up and smudges for eyes. Now and again a fiery green flicker crossed one or the other of the smudges.

  ‘You shouldn’t worry so about your eyes,’ said Jocundra from the door.

  He started to wheel away from her, upset at being caught off guard, but she moved behind his chair, hemming him in. Her mirror image lifted an ill-defined hand and made as if to touch him, but held back, and for an instant he felt the good weight of her consolation.

  ‘I’d be afraid, too,’ she said. ‘But there’s really nothing to worry about. They’ll get brighter and brighter for a while and then they’ll fade.’

  One of the orderlies sang old blues songs when he cleaned up Donnell’s room, and his favorite tune contained the oft-repeated line: ‘Minutes seem like hours, hours seem like days…’