Green Eyes

  ‘… and see if my shit’s spelling out secret messages!’

  ‘I’m not trying to pry out your secrets!’ She threw down her magazine. ‘I thought if you had some encouragement, some criticism, you might finish them.’

  Halting footsteps scraped on the path behind him, and a scruffy, gassed voice asked, ‘What’s happenin’, man?’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Richmond,’ said Jocundra with professional sweetness. ‘Donnell? Have you met Mr Richmond?’

  Richmond’s head and torso swam into bleared focus. He had a hard-bitten, emaciated face framed in shoulder-length brown hair. Prominent cheekbones, a missing lower tooth. He was leaning on a cane, grinning; his pupils showed against his irises like planets eclipsing green suns.

  ‘That’s Jack to you, man,’ he said, extending his hand.

  The hair’s on Donnell’s neck prickled, and he was tongue-tied, unable to tear his eyes off Richmond. A chill articulated his spine.

  ‘Another hopeless burn-out,’ said Richmond, his grin growing toothier. ‘What’s the matter, squeeze? You wet yourself?’

  A busty, brown-haired woman came up beside him and murmured, ‘Jack,’ but he continued to glare at Donnell, whose apprehension was turning into panic. His muscles had gone flaccid, and unable to run, he shrank within himself.

  The brown-haired woman touched Richmond’s arm. ‘Why don’t we finish our walk, Jack?’

  Richmond mimicked her in a quavery falsetto. ‘ “Why don’t we finish our walk, Jack!” Shit! Here they go and stock this place with these fine bitches, and they won’t do nothin’ for you ‘cept be polite!’ He bent down, his left eye inches from Donnell’s face, and winked; even when closed, a hint of luminous green penetrated his eyelid. ‘Or don’t you go for the ladies, squeeze? Maybe I’m makin’ you all squirmy inside.’ He hobbled off, laughing, and called back over his shoulder. ‘Keep your fingers crossed, sweetheart. Maybe I’ll come over some night and let you make my eagle big!’

  As Richmond receded, his therapist in tow, Donnell’s tension eased. He flicked his eyes to Jocundra who looked quickly away and thumbed through her magazine. He found her lack of comment on his behaviour peculiar and asked her about it.

  ‘I assumed you were put off by his manner,’ she said.

  ‘Who the hell is he?’

  ‘A patient. He belongs to some motorcycle club.’ Her brow knitted. ‘The Hellhounds, I think.’

  ‘Didn’t you feel…’ He broke off, not wanting to admit the extent of his fright.

  ‘Feel what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Richmond’s voice drifted back from the porch, outraged, and he slashed his cane through the air. The rose-colored bricks shimmered in the background, the faceted dome atop the roof flashed as if its energies were building to the discharge of a lethal ray, and Donnell had a resurgence of crawly animal fear.

  After the encounter with Richmond, Donnell stayed closeted in his room for nearly two weeks. Jocundra lambasted him, comparing him to a child who had pulled a sheet over his head, but nothing she said would sway him. His reaction to Richmond must have been due, he decided to a side effect of the bacterial process, but side effect or not, he wanted no repetition of that stricken and helpless feeling: like a rabbit frozen by oncoming headlights. He lay around so much he developed a bedsore, and at this Jocundra threw up her hands.

  ‘I’m not going to sit here and watch you moulder,’ she said.

  ‘Then get the fuck out!’ he said; and as she stuffed wallet and compact into a leather purse, he told her that her skin looked like pink paint, that twenty dollars a night was probably too high but she should try for it, and - as she slammed the door - that she could go straight to Hell and give her goddamn disease to the Devil. He wished she would stay gone, but he knew she’d be harassing him again before lunchtime.

  His lunch tray, however, was brought by the orderly who sang, and when Donnell asked about Jocundra, he said, ‘Beats me, Jim. I can’t keep track of my own woman.’

  Donnell was puzzled but unconcerned. Coldly, he dismissed her. He spent the afternoon exploring the new boundaries of his vision, charting minuscule dents in the wallpaper, composing mosaic landscapes from the reflections glazing the lens of the camera mounted above the door, and - something of a breakthrough - following the flight of a hawk circling the middle distance, bringing it so close he managed to see a scaly patch on its wing and an awful eye the color of dried blood and half filmed over with a crackled white membrane. An old, sick, mad king of the air. The hawk kept soaring out of his range, and he could never obtain a view of its entire body; his control still lacked discretion. It was a pity, he thought, that the visual effects were only temporary, though they did not suffice of themselves to make life interesting. Their novelty quickly wore off.