A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims Read Free Book Online Page B

sensed there was something she wanted to say, so I was not surprised this morning when she woke with my alarm. Now, while I stand beside the toaster, I’m waiting for her to speak.
    She’s been brooding at the kitchen table, her face still pale from sleep, her blond hair frazzled into an aureole. When I turn my back to her I can still feel her watching me, and so—to have something to do with my hands—I prematurely pop the toaster. I busy myself with the butter knife, frowning down at the soft slices, barely warm. When I glance back up, she is indeed still watching me. Even her pajamas are watching me: the polka-dot pants; the white tank top, semé with cartoon owls. They ocellate her body, multiplying her watching a hundredfold. Finally she clears her throat: ‘What—’ she begins. ‘What if you do find Mr. Mazoch?’
    Ah. So that is what she woke so early to ask. I should have guessed. It’s not a question that I have posed, in so many words, to Matt. But it’s the very first question that Rachel posed to me, back when I initially broached the search with her. ‘He doesn’t want to kill him, does he?’ she asked. When I didn’t respond right away, she brought her hands to her cheeks: ‘Oh my God. He wants to kill him.’

    At the time, I told her that I had no idea what Matt’s plans were. We hadn’t discussed them, I said, and anyway, the search was more emotionally complicated than that, for Matt. He himself probably didn’t know deep down what he was doing. Nor was it something I felt comfortable putting him on the spot about. She was making it sound as if I were knowingly abetting Matt’s Ahabism, manning the oars while he sharpened the harpoons, in some monomaniacal manhunt. When in fact the situation was much grayer, I told her.
    This was all strictly speaking true. I really didn’t know what Matt was planning. We really hadn’t discussed it. And because we haven’t discussed it since, I’ve been able to continue the search in good faith. Rachel’s been able to condone it as well, so long as we both operate under the tacit assumption that it is a rescue mission: that Matt intends to commit Mr. Mazoch to a quarantine. On most days of the search, this interpretation seems viable. But then there are days—such as yesterday, at Highland Road Park—when I harbor my suspicions. Although I’ve never admitted as much to Rachel, it does seem at times as if Matt might entertain the prospect of euthanasia: that he might be driven to put Mr. Mazoch out of his misery. While I personally would advocate strongly against this (it’s illegal, for one thing; and for another, we can’t be sure that what the undead are experiencing is misery), 23 I also recognize that I can go only so far in dissuading Matt. It’s ultimately his decision to make.
    I have never admitted this to Rachel. Thankfully, over the past few weeks, I haven’t had to. As it began to seem less and
less likely to her that we would ever actually find Mr. Mazoch, Matt’s motives ceased to be an issue. With Mr. Mazoch out of mind, Rachel has been free to conceive of the search as a purely ritual activity. When she imagines Matt and me driving around the city, it is as if we are circling an empty center, like two monks raking sand. The search is aimless, autotelic, without object. It serves its own purposes. For Matt, she imagines, it must be a ritual of mourning and memorial: he is visiting the sites of his father, so that he can reflect on the man and remember. Whereas for me, it must be a ritual of routine: it is a structured excuse for me to get out of the apartment each day, as well as a safe way of encountering the undead (to conquer my fear of them, on the one hand; and to come to understand them, on the other). We will simply perform these rituals until Friday, she imagines, and then we will be finished.
    She’s not