March 25, 2003

Keystone

By George K. George

It was Leon Augustine’s one hundred and twenty-fifth birthday. He had just seen his wife of one hundred and twelve die from complications of a reverse sterilization. In his numbness he scuffed his feet in the direction of the hospital’s cafeteria.

He sat down in a far corner and began mixing the sides into a mash—before his face collapsed into his cupped hands. He immediately sensed a stranger taking up the bench opposite him. He looked. The stranger sat as a jester would, with one leg stretched out on the bench and the other bent at a right angle. And that smile. It curled up like the doodles on a dollar bill.

“Hello,” said the stranger, barely breaking the wall of teeth between his lips.

“Hi,” responded Leon, gripping his fork like a spear and sitting up straighter.

Leon now saw the character. He could have been in his twenties, but who would know nowadays. Black hair, black eyes, black trench coat—and what’s this, black fingernails! As black as these things were, were his features white.

“I’m a doctor,” he said to Leon, “Doctor Curtin.”

Leon weakly introduced himself and stared down at his tray.

“I know who you are,” said the doctor.

“Really,” said Leon, not convinced by any of the preceding.

“You are Leon Augustine, who hoped to have a child with your wife whom you recently wed. She was sterilized at a young age, and you had never wanted children until it was the only thing you wanted that compared to your desire for her. She died this morning.” And the doctor looked to be fighting a smile, mouth closed and corners curling downward then up.

“So you’ve read her chart, what do you want?” asked Leon.

“I needed not read the reports. Something very similar happened one hundred and twenty-five years ago.”

Leon reminded Dr. Curtin that people didn’t live to be one hundred and twenty-five years one hundred and twenty-five years ago. He dismissed the obviously manic statements the stranger was making and wished for him to leave. He shoveled a bit of food on to his fork. Maybe eating would repel him.

“You don’t look a day over eighty, Mr. Augustine. You never have each time we’ve met. Your life, though edged along by numerous anti-aging therapies, has never gotten the best of you.”

“What kind of a doctor are you?” Leon asked without much earnest.

“I’m an anesthesiologist.”

“You don’t look like any kind of doctor.”

“You always say that, Leon. Last time we met I was dressed as a clown. ‘You don’t look like any kind of doctor,’” the doctor mocked.

“Have we met?” asked Leon.

“Many times,” and Dr. Curtin shook his head chuckling to himself.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. The understatements I make always make me laugh. You’d think after such a long time I’d get used to—Ha! ‘Such a long time,’ I say!”

Leon stood and excused himself grimly.

“I propose a walk. This is a large hospital. You may be interested to see the inner workings,” Dr. Curtin smirked.

Dr. Curtin received only a dull shake of the head with no further eye contact from Mr. Augustine, who headed toward the bussing tubs on the other side of the cafeteria. Leon decided he couldn’t eat with or without the company of Dr. Curtin, a flat “No,” was his answer.

“I insist. I know this hospital like the back of my hand—Ha! There I go again. To the game room!”

Curtin took Leon by the arm and strode down the patterned tile hallway to the clacking of pool balls. He swiveled on one foot, swinging Leon round through the open doorway of the hospital’s recreational facility.

“Please, please let go of me,” protested Leon, “Nurse, nurse!” he pleaded but was unanswered.

“Now, now Leon. Remember this one? Pinball. In a few minutes you will tell me that if you had every quarter back from what you spent on pinball and invested it in electronic gaming console developers you’d be a rich man. Of course you won’t say that now that I’ve said it, but you know it’s true.”

A young boy with hearing aids and a flat-brimmed baseball cap was testing the tilt sensor of the pinball machine, which had a Disney World theme. “Atrocious, isn’t it, Leon? But it will do…it usually does.” said Curtin, “Do you have a quarter? Do you have a quarter?” Curtin repeated himself with sarcasm, “Of course you do. You keep a stash of change on you at all times. You are borderline obsessive about giving exact change.”

Leon knew he was right, but kept quiet.

Curtin stepped beside the boy playing pinball and hip-checked him away from the controls, “Step aside, Tommy, destiny’s fate is at hand.”

“Hey, creep!” protested the boy rather quietly, “I’m telling.”

“I’ll see you in twenty-four years, blessed one,” shouted Curtin after the fleeing child.

Curtin plunked a quarter into the machine. A ball popped into the ejector column. “The trick of this game is to know where you are, Leon.” He proceeded to rack up a score of forty-two million on his first ball, “Not much to this game if you’ve played it as much as I have.”

Leon asked where he found time to master Disney World pinball on an anesthesiologist’s schedule in one of the largest hospitals in the country, “Aren’t you busy anesthetizing?”

“Well, I’ll admit, I’m not an anesthesiologist. I’m not even a doctor, dear Leon.”

“So you just hang out here?” Leon asked in demanding tone, “Reading people’s charts and pushing little kids around?”

The second ball slipped through the flippers, and Curtin blushed, “Perhaps, Leon, you would understand better if you played a bit of pinball. Here, take the next silvery bearing.”

Leon stepped up to the machine. He’d come this far with the stranger. He felt strangely familiar with the game. Probably from his years of wizardry as a teenager he figured.

“Tell me what you’re concentrating on, Leon,” said Curtin.

Lights flashed, buzzers buzzed, bells dinged. Leon added another forty-two million to Curtin’s score but played on.

“The ball,” responded Leon as the game paused to add a one hundred eighty thousand points for hitting a bonus hole.

“What’s controlling the ball, Leon?” asked Curtin.

“I am.” said Leon, not breaking his roll on the machine.

“But Leon, isn’t the machine controlling the ball?”

“Well, I suppose that—“

“Have you ever pondered which side of the equation you’re on? Have you ever wondered whether you are the ball or the machine?” questioned Curtin.

“But I am the flippers,” argued Leon.

“No, dear Leon. We are the flippers.”

Leon wished he would stop calling him “dear Leon.” His delivery of the phrase was too natural and eerie. Leon turned his head toward Curtin, forfeited the last ball, and had the most intense attack he could recall of feeling as though he’d been in the same situation before.

Curtin’s smile returned curlier than ever, and he spoke, “Hello Leon.”

Leon was still reeling.

Curtin spoke again, “It’s really not a matter of who’s what, Leon. Just that someone—who on this earth knows how long ago—put a damn quarter in the machine. If you are the ball, the machine has its way with you. If I were to suggest that you are the machine, the ball would have its way with you, wouldn’t it? The most pleasant way to look at it is to see yourself as a member of a team—the flippers—continually sending the ball to the machine and the machine to the ball. Although, it’s not a very interesting life to lead.”

Leon, broken down by the déjà vu, was quite vulnerable to this line of reasoning, said nothing, and stared into Curtin’s black eyes.

Curtin sensed this, as he always did, and burst into laughter, “Now I’ve got you!”

Leon looked at the final score of four hundred and twenty million points and sighed.

“We’re not done yet, old friend. This ain’t the half of it, brother.”

Leon followed Curtin out of the game room in dazed apprehension.

“I promised you a tour of the hospital, Leon. Are you game?”

“I think I want to go home.”

“But you’re almost there,” Curtin’s eyes bulged, and he covered his mouth with his hand, “That’s a first. I say. I am getting sloppy. You never fail to throw a curve at me, dear Leon.”

That was one dear-Leon too many for Leon.

“Just what do you want dear Dr. Curtin, or whatever your profession is?” Leon demanded.

“I’m a flipper, Leon. I’m your left flipper. I’m the most and least useful element to your life. How’s that feel?” Curtin came clean.

“Let’s take that walk,” said Leon, summoning his powers of restraint on this obviously cracked but mostly harmless character. He had nothing left to lose, and was even a little intrigued by the madness.

Curtin paused in disbelief, but blinked back into a smile, “I’d be glad to show you around.”

The pair strolled past the nurses’ stations of several floors on their way to the pediatric oncology ward. Leon couldn’t help but glance through the windows of the doors behind which lay the children with not a hair on their heads and the families who prayed silently as they visited their offspring whose lives were in limbo. Of course the mortality rate was much lower for these unlucky ones than in just several years previous, but it was still a game of Russian roulette.

“Such a happy place,” Curtin twirled round and around with spread arms down the hall of imminent death, smiling as usual.

“Yes, almost akin to Disney World,” said Leon.

“But you don’t see. These people face a fate better than death. They face nothing. They do not exist,” Curtin paused and let a short sigh, “except to me.”

“Good luck explaining that to them.”

“They wouldn’t hear it in the sense that you hear me and I hear you.”

“Explain your damn self already.”

“To the chapel!”

And they strode off to the nondenominational refuge of seekers of hope. Its gray molded plastic stones were laid into the wall of a large lounge. It’s arched entrance and backlit stained glass window were its only features, and were rimmed by smaller, more perfectly rectangular stones. The chapel’s exterior was aesthetic, though glaringly synthetic.

They did not enter. They stopped short of the archway.

Curtin began after examining the entrance, “Only in a metropolitan hospital would you find such disorganized religion,” Curtin tapped his knuckles on one of the bricks producing a hollow sound, “Real stone would give a better effect for this lesson, but I guess it just wasn’t in the budget,” Curtin side-stepped to face the circular stained glass window, “Tell me, Leon, what do you see in this window?”

Leon responded, “A dove in flight, of course.”

Curtin pulled Leon slightly left of the window, “How about now?”

“I still see a dove.”

Curtin took Leon by the arm and walked him in a tight circle, facing the window. After a few revolutions, Leon noticed the window had a holographic effect. The dove appeared to be floating in three-space and beating its wings as the two of them revolved before it.

“The stages of the holograph depend on your perspective, Leon. And when you swing full circle, they give the entire picture.”

“Pretty,” said Leon, “But what’s your point?”

“We—or rather you—only have one perspective, agreed?” Curtin didn’t wait for a reply, “Humanity—all matter in the universe—crowds this window, but each sees but one frame of its beauty. Sure it’s just a hologram, but the actual picture is something to see. It would blow your mind, dear Leon. Not only does everyone—everything—have a unique position in relation to the moving picture, but also a responsibility to hold it together,” Curtin ran his black-nailed index finger along the rows of stones bordering the round window, and stopped at the top stone. The stone was larger than the rest, except for the stone at the bottom of the circle, which was about the same size.

Curtin took out a marker from his trench coat and checked over his shoulders for hospital personnel. He quickly scrawled an “L” on the top stone and a “C” on the bottom stone, “There,” he said, “Now I can illustrate this quite nicely.”

Leon wasn’t sure he liked being seen with a vandal. Every molecule in his body was screaming for him to walk away, but he stayed and just shifted his weight a little.

“Don’t be nervous, Leon, you may find this interesting,” Curtin tried comforting, “Okay, there,” Curtin pointed to the top stone bearing the “L”, “Think of this windowpane as a roadmap. You are here.”

“Sure,” humored Leon.

“Without this stone in the upper arch, the pane would topple, hence it is called the keystone. Are you feeling your sense of responsibility yet? Without you the picture would shatter under the weight of the surrounding stones. What are these stones? Other elements to the pane that you alone support—only by your existence. Elements that keep your frame of the hologram, well, whole. Of course there are many more stones in the big picture, but like I said we’re on a budget. The people that you know, the animals you’ve seen, the grass and trees,” Curtin slowly ran his two index fingers down the arches of the top half of the pane, “all the way down to high-viscosity liquids, crystalline structures, amorphous solids, free gases, and sub-atomic plasma particles—but who’s this guy?” Curtin pointed to the bottom keystone, “That is I.”

Leon was silent.

“Not a very prestigious position, amongst the gunk and grit of the cosmos, but they tell me I’m important. Let me show you. Imagine I yanked my stone right out from under the window. Where would we all be?” Curtin gestured toward the open archway adjacent to the window, “No picture, just passage. The bottom half of the pane would open and infinite pillars of the components of the universe would stretch down out of sight, allowing the picture to drop indefinitely into nowhere. Never shattering, never stopping, until it is caught—In my mitt.”

“In your mitt.”

“Yes, caught therein, like I will today. Your picture—your frame of the dove’s flight—your perspective on the everything—has begun to descend, my poor doomed chap. But don’t fear, Leon, I’ll be there to catch it… but not before you walk through the arch for the umpteenth time.”

Leon stuttered, “You-you… You should probably head back to the behavioral health unit. I bet they’re missing you.”

“Oh Leon. I know you see. But there’s more to the picture. A bit of a skew you may not have noticed yet. The real beauty of it all.”

Leon glanced around for hospital personnel, but saw no one. A white-bearded man strolled by, pushing an intravenous drip stand with all the might his frail body could deliver. Leon doubted if he’d be much help in returning Curtin to his room in the hospital. He was still convinced Curtin was a wayfaring patient.

“Let’s continue, Leon,” said Curtin, and made a gesture to one of the lower stones in the upper arch of the windowpane, “Imagine this stone is that man passing through our little intercourse.”

“Why not?” said Leon impatiently.

“Surely he is the keystone of his own existence, as you are to yours. His name is Edward.”

The old man jerked his head around with an, “Eh?” and growled back to pushing the stand.

Curtin modified the “L” on the keystone to look like an “E,” and continued, “Where does that put you?” he counted the stones from the keystone and wrote an “L” several stones down, “And me? Well, that’s the funny part, I am static, and that’s what confuses the whole mess. Everyone has to adjust to me, the terminator.”

Leon’s stomach churned. He knew Curtin’s layman’s explanation was next.

“You see, Leon. That man isn’t creeping down this hallway right now. In fact the hallway really isn’t here in its entirety. I could tell you what percent of it resonates with your realm of perception, but we’d be wasting time. To him, you are not here. And he won’t see me for another few days on what might as well be another planet. Your surroundings, your whole life, have been an elaborate montage of props, dear Leon. But only in relation to the big picture. Because everyone is their own keystone in the window pane, everyone else’s—everything else’s position in the scheme is adjusted to where they’re leading a life independent of anything that actually exists, except for the cross-bred manifestations that compose what each perceives!”

“So the loneliness I feel from losing my wife is more than justified by the disjointed construction of the universe,” said Leon flatly.

“Ah, but universes, Leon… Enough consultation of the stones. Shall we play some more?”

They walked from the lounge and were grunted at again by Edward. They headed to a less dire pediatric ward and settled down Indian-style on a candy-striped carpet, home to scattered swallow-proof interlocking plastic blocks.

“You remember these, Leon.” smiled Curtin.

“What kid wouldn’t?” Leon picked up a blue block.

“Remembering. Yes, Leon that’s what this one’s about.” Curtin stood halfway up from the carpet, twisted around, and gathered every block in the corner. He dumped them before Leon’s folded legs, “Make something,” commanded Curtin, “Isn’t that what people have been telling you, mostly in your young life? Make something. It’s the implication of living. But that’s not entirely where we’re going with this, Mr. Augustine.”

Leon began to build. One block snapped squarely on top of the other. Then he began a similar column of the same shade to his left. He joined the columns and grouped together every white piece he could find. A square was constructed above the joined columns, with two pieces sticking out from the sides. He continued until he had what appeared to be a rather square-shouldered human figure.

Curtin admired his work for a moment and spoke, “Good, but you’ve still got all these pieces left,” Curtain pointed, “Better to use all your resources, my friend.”

Leon fitted the extra pieces rapidly, wherever they would go.

“Finished?” asked Curtin.

Leon handed the variegated man to Curtin, who proceeded to smash it against the carpet like an ax. Blocks flew and ricocheted until the former man was completely atomized.

“Build it again,” Curtin shoved the blocks back toward Leon with a smirk.

For the first time since their meeting, Leon smirked back at Curtin, “Build it your damn self.”

“But that would be too easy. I watched every step of assembly with a foreman’s eye, Leon. It wasn’t the same as your first creation last time, or the time before that. At some point I know they have repeated, but it’s been so many years. That’s what it is about human creation. Even if you have the most crystal clear vision of what it is you want to construct, a fly will buzz through your line of vision and you’ll be off on a tangent. This is even more so when there is no plan. But, to reconstruct from memory is the eternal art. Each attempt has never been the same since the beginning… if there even was one. No one’s told me.”

“Spit it out, Curtin.” sighed Leon.

“Go ahead and please, just try to build exactly what is was you built just a minute ago for me.”

Leon conceded. He built the legs one block too short. The torso was perfect, but he gave up when he had an assortment of about a dozen blocks remaining, and simply put them on the man at random.

“Done already?” Curtin grinned.

“Is there something I’m supposed to be learning from this? Seems pretty childish.”

“Well, as long as you ask,” Curtin was beaming, “You will have to start the big one over someday. Or should I say… today? You are given some things in life, and what you do with them is mostly encoded in your genes. But your life is but a memory. Can anyone truly live in the now? It’s already over,” Curtin snapped his fingers, “Now! Now! Now! It’s nothing but the past. You are reliving your life over and over again until it just becomes a blurred charade of past, present and future. And most visibly, past. Like you assembled this thing out of blocks, you are reassembling your life the best you know how from what you remember of the previous umpteenth times you’ve lived it. Though, as demonstrated, your memory isn’t that great. You are embedded in cycle upon cycle exponentially, and that,” Curtin smashed the block creation on the carpet as if it were a gavel, “is why I am here. To end it. But only so that you can start anew and meet me again here, or perhaps if you are lucky, some other fine place with other wonderful physical metaphors,” Curtin drew a breath, “In conclusion, perhaps next time, or the time after that, or the umpteenth time from now you will realize what you want in life before it is too late. You’re young, and you’re old. You’re all over the map, Leon. Time isn’t ticking by like you think it is. I’m afraid you haven’t found all the happiness you desire on the plane you’ve created this time. All you have to do is remember. Now. Are there any questions?”

Leon sighed, “Do you mind if I have your full name, so that I can report you and have you returned to your room?”

Curtin turned bright red, not from anger, but to hold in hysterical laughter that was pounding in his chest. He then took Leon’s hand in his, looked him directly in the eye and enunciated all forty-three syllables of his full name. Leon saw the black garb of Curtin turn to blotches of paisley. His heart stopped, his spine went numb and he flopped over on the carpet, dead.

Curtin stood. A passing pair of nurses saw Leon sprawled out on the carpet, rushed over, and began taking vitals with no results. The nurses spoke to each other.

“Isn’t this the man who just lost his wife?”

“Yes, we’ve been having reports that he’s been wandering the hospital talking to himself.”

“He must have had a stroke.”

Curtin followed the medics who wheeled Leon to the morgue. Curtin’s work was done for the time being. He had other appointments, so he wrapped himself in his trench coat and shut the door on Leon’s most recent life cycle. Leon’s lingering static charge in his brain heeded Curtin’s parting words the best it could before dispersing. The world Leon knew folded in on itself and collapsed from existence.

The absolute became apparent to Leon. He saw the picture the floating dove had represented. Had he had a mind, it truly would have been blown. Instead he began to remember.

ã Copyright 2003 george k george