Saltered States
by Bruce Salter
EN ROUTE TO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—7/12/10—The long needles she used for her intricate embroidery had no eyes. The clock she kept at her bedside had no hands. And Susan, her long brown hair braided tightly behind her head, had no heart.
Her chest was a void, a black chasm containing only a hammering fist that circulated her blood and fed her body. It was an indifferent thing, that muscle, mechanical and aloof, content to do its work with numb regularity. It was not a heart. She knew that as well as she knew anything. Her true heart had been ripped out, chewed and gulped down by something she now refused to remember, something that had skipped away laughing just before she cried the blue from her eyes. Her glow had faded. Her shoulders had grown tight, rigid, stiffer than the straight-backed chair she always sat in. And her dreams . . . well, the less said of them the better. The loss of one’s heart is no small thing.
Without a heart, Susan found the world a cold place, a place whose narrow palette of color ranged from slate gray to the palest of blues, whose music was swallowed by the inner silence that was her life. Her skin was hard, too hard for any to penetrate or for her to escape, a cloak of protection and imprisonment. But none had any wish to enter a soul without a heart and Susan, her eyes fixed blankly on the emptiness around her, had no desire to desert her sanctum. As I’ve said, the loss of one’s heart is no small thing.
Despite her emotional isolation, there was one other creature that inhabited Susan’s world. A small yellow cat had been given to her by a concerned relative shortly after her heart’s abduction and had shared her barren apartment in the long years since. Her sister had feared for Susan’s sanity and thought the kitten, whom she christened “Pearl,” because its eyes resembled opalescent jewels, would provide companionship and possibly rekindle a spark of feeling in Susan’s soul. But there was no love in Susan to extend, no empathy to offer. She fed the cat, brushed her routinely every evening and took her to the doctor when vaccinations were necessary, but Pearl was no more to Susan than the dishes she scrubbed or the towels she folded after washing. Pearl was just another thing to deal with, another duty to perform, and she had absolutely no sentimental effect on Susan or her blunted sensibilities, no effect at all . . . until she died.
Susan awoke one morning to find Pearl curled in the corner behind the straight-backed chair, her eyes closed, her mouth open and her body stiff and cold. Without the smallest pang of remorse, Susan wrapped the cat in an old piece of blanket, squeezed the bundle into a plastic grocery bag and carried it to the corner dumpster, where she deposited the creature without ceremony and quickly made her way back home. After finishing her morning cup of coffee, she mixed some disinfectant in a bucket of water and went to the corner to clean away any “unhealthy” residue Pearl might have left behind. She had just begun scrubbing when she noticed something small and dark by the baseboard where Pearl had died.
“What could this be?” she wondered, blowing the dust away and examining it closely. It was no bigger than the end of her thumb, soft and even a little moist. Turning it over in her hand, she held it up to the light and studied it carefully but, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t identify the tiny thing.
“It can’t be healthy,” she thought as she walked to the bathroom to flush it into oblivion. But something stopped her. She opened her hand and looked at it again. Then, with a sniff, she turned into her bedroom, folded the strange object into a handkerchief, placed it on her bed table and returned to her cleaning job.
What Susan didn’t realize was that Pearl had bequeathed something very special to her mistress. Pearl had given Susan her heart.
As the weeks passed, Susan began to change in subtle, yet undeniable ways. The tight lines around her permanently pursed lips softened, the gray in her eyes began to take on the faintest hint of azure, and random locks of hair, usually knotted tight, escaped with increasing frequency to flit and flutter about her face. One evening, as she routinely drew her curtains, she noticed the twilit stars playing above the neighboring apartment and, for the first time in memory, the most fleeting of smiles danced across her lips.
Pearl’s heart, now dried and hard as an acorn, remained in its handkerchief cocoon next to Susan’s bed. Not understanding its nature, she often thought of throwing it out, fearing that it might, in some way, be unclean, but something always stayed her hand. It seemed somehow familiar and she slowly became attached to the funny little thing, often touching it for luck before retiring each night,
One day, as she was walking home from the bus stop up the street, Susan saw a tiny kitten, its eyes barely open, struggling in the garbage at the mouth of an alleyway. Normally she would have looked away, quickened her pace and put it out of her mind but, this time, she stopped. She bent down and watched the creature staggering through the refuse. It reminded her of Pearl. Somewhere inside her, pity, concern and compassion were finding a voice, a voice that was really her own, and, before she knew what she was doing, she’d scooped up the helpless thing and run back to her apartment to give it some food. She later named the kitten Pearlette, and the two became almost inseparable. Susan’s heart had returned at last.
It wasn’t long before he arrived. He was tall and handsome, in an offbeat, angular sort of way, with a smile dripping charisma and eyes aching with hunger. His name was Charles, or was it John . . . or perhaps Mark? It really didn’t matter, because names were all the same and he was always the same; dark, ravenous and irresistible. When Susan first saw him across the park he was wearing a rumpled black coat that fell past his knees, looking, in the afternoon glare, more like a pair of folded leathery wings than any customary attire. She spun away and then, not quite knowing why, turned and looked at him again, sensing a vague half-remembered familiarity. Her pulse quickened as she met his gaze and felt his dark eyes upon her, both embarrassed and exhilarated at the same time.
He watched her in silence, rigid and calm, until she finally turned away and disappeared around a corner. He, too, sensed recognition, but recognition of a different order, for this man with no name and every name was a collector; a collector of passions, a collector of dreams, a collector of hearts.
When Susan next saw the dark man it was at her door the following evening. There had been a knock and then she saw her neighbor, Mrs. Lockley, smiling through the peek hole, undid the bolt and swung the door open only to find him looming above her with the most unnerving smile she had ever seen. They regarded each other in silence, he measuring up his trophy and she melting beneath his gaze. His long coat rustled like dried leaves as he grasped her shoulders and pulled her against him, leaning his face down to hers.
Her eyes searched his and she realized she knew this man. Or was it another very much like him? She couldn’t be sure. But she had been mesmerized, seduced, plundered by a creature like this before; had lost her heart to something predatory, unnamable, and now it was happening again, against her will.
She found herself submitting to his embrace, yielding to his pleading eyes and laughing mouth, and she knew that her heart, which had risen into her throat to welcome him, was about to be stolen again. It almost wanted to be stolen.
His breath was hot and wet on her cheeks as he forced his open lips against hers and began to probe with his tongue, hungrily seeking another heart to devour. He knew he possessed her completely, that there would be no struggle. Tightening his grip, he could feel the warm sweetness of her heart drawing closer and he smiled. This was getting too easy . . .
A heartrending scream flooded the stillness, and sent a terrified Mrs. Lockley rushing to her door in dreadful panic. She had been quietly watching TV and sipping her nightly glass of Merlot when the wail from the hall outside all but tore off her ears. Seeing nothing through her peek hole, she inched the door open just in time to glimpse a tall dark figure stagger around the far corner and plunge down the stairwell, his black coat flapping behind him like a pair of broken wings. Just to the left, in the doorway opposite hers, stood Susan, her chin and chest red with blood and her eyes alive with fire.
“My God!” Mrs. Lockley shrieked, throwing her arms around the girl. “What happened?”
Susan calmly straightened her sweater, pushed the tangled hair back from her face and removed a sizeable object from her mouth (Mrs. Lockley couldn’t determine its nature), casually tossing it over her shoulder into her apartment. “It was nothing, Dear,” she smiled. “Just a thief in the night. Don’t worry; he won’t be coming back.”
“But all of this blood . . . that terrible scream . . .”
“Everything is fine, Mrs. Lockley. I’m fine, you’re fine and even little Pearlette here is fine. Now go back and finish your wine. It’s getting late, and tomorrow’s another day!”
Mrs. Lockley reluctantly returned to her apartment as Susan picked up little Pearlette, who had been scowling intently at the stairwell, and went back inside, bolting the door securely behind her. A sense of serenity filled her, and her heart, which remained intact, beating with a peace and assurance she hadn’t known before.
“It is getting late,” she thought, removing her sweater and putting it into the sink to soak. “I must remember to get Pearlette a nice toy tomorrow. She deserves it.”
After giving the kitten a kiss on the nose, Susan indulged in a long hot shower while little Pearlette occupied herself by ferociously batting the dark man’s tongue across the kitchen floor.
Susan lived a long life. Her heart had been lost, recovered, and defended from a second irretrievable theft, and while she guarded it carefully and never again gave it away, she shared it freely and let it shine out through her radiant blue eyes.
