David Serafino

Asylum

He knocks and the white woman answers and he finally remembers Carrie – tall, fluttery, a year ahead of him in accounting school at a satellite campus of the state university. She welcomes Dennis, shows him to his room: green iron bed frame, thin mattress, wooden cross, bars on the windows, walls painted the yellow of a smoker's teeth.

“I know it's weird,” Carrie says. “I inherited from my grandmother. She was, uh, eccentric. She wanted to live in an asylum, but nobody would take her. They said she wasn't crazy, or not that kind of crazy. So she built this place.”

“What is that sound?”

“The highway over the canyon. The house kind of vibrates most of the day. You get used to it.”

“It sounds like human voices. Like hundreds of them.”

“That's the echo. You get used to that, too, sort of. It's disorienting, but those are just my friends in the kitchen. Come on.”

Trailing his new employer, Dennis is almost nauseated by the network of parallel and diagonal hallways. The corners of the house, which should be triangular, are convex polyhedrons that trap, distort and amplify their steps, filling the halls with invisible others, all shuffling toward the kitchen. These multifaceted corners have mirrors embedded in the plaster, long reflective strips on the windowsills and baseboards, with tiny circular mirrors in the roof beams and tile floor that let Dennis see around corners, in full circles, up multiple corridors simultaneously, into nested reflections where he and Carrie fold into and out of one another. It feels like being racked on the spokes of a kaleidoscope.

The kitchen isn't full of people, but mirrors built into the countertops and cupboards square and cube the women, and their echo sounds like a concert hall full of teenagers, though it's just six people conversing in normal tones. Carrie hands him a glass of kahlua and cream. He doesn't see or smell food, though Thao assured him room and board are part of the deal.

Dennis makes polite conversation, Carrie's friends cordial, but not giddy like he's seen them get around taller, better-looking Black men. Dennis is short, plain, quietly spoken and careful never to mention his oddball fancies, like that several of his reflections are right now conspiring to sneak out behind his back, or that these reflections all fall into line when the caterer arrives: beef bourguignon, fondant potatoes, ratatouille and plum galette. Since he lost his company and house in the last recession, Dennis has been on bananas and beans, rice and ramen.

After the party breaks up Carrie goes to bed, leaving Dennis to unpack. He'd been scared of sleeping in old lady funk, but the bare room smells like pipe smoke and dust. The traffic overhead keeps him awake. He hadn't noticed it beneath the party chatter, but in the sleeping house he hears the interstate in the walls like wheezing lungs.

The strip mirrors in the corners are a reel of exposed negatives showing a man not getting any sleep. Maybe he's just nervous, first day on the job, a new boss revived from the hazy memory of someone who used to be an equal, but inherited a house around the time Dennis lost his. He's grateful to Carrie for having kept her distance tonight, saving them both the difficulty of pretending they ever really knew each other, or that their common past implies anything about Dennis' current set-up. He wonders what he'll be working on. The few things Carrie mentioned – mounting the TV, moving furniture to the attic, hanging paintings – won't take him the full month. Dennis hopes he didn't oversell his carpentry skills by implying he had any. She expects something from him, and the whir in the walls seems to want to tell him what, but the pitch is too low, its vibration too constant to mean much.

~

In the morning Dennis sits at the kitchen counter in what he considers handyman clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, the best he could do considering he owns nothing flannel. He doesn't hear Carrie stirring. In the fridge he finds low-fat yogurt, skim milk, dijon mustard and celery. He searches the cupboards, cabinets, pantry, then settles for celery and yogurt. There's coffee, at least, and though he's never used a percolator he gets the idea. To kill time, he warms the milk. The echoes are less oppressive in the morning. Sun-glazed mirrors wink discreetly at private jokes.

Around nine, Carrie appears in iterations from three halls at once. High-heels-on-tile ricochet floor to ceiling, chopping her words to syncopated hash.

“Sorry, what?”

“You made coffee,” she repeats. The echoes make her tone hard to parse. Has he overstepped? “No,” she says, “it's great. Could you bring me a cup in my office?”

It takes Dennis several tries to find her office among the bedrooms, all with the same sheets, same cross. Mirrors fool him twice into pulling up short at long hallways that turn out to be walls. There are single stairs at random intervals, their depth obscured in the gingham pattern of the tiles. He sloshes coffee everywhere.

Last night, before he fell asleep, it occurred to him that Carrie's grandmother was trying to drive herself nuts, but in a reasoned, methodical way. He hopes she appreciated the irony, though the house shows no sign of ironical intent. The institutional lighting suggests deadpan lunacy, a house ideal for spying and eavesdropping, an edifice of missteps and disproportion that gets its kicks from nudging his breathing into obscenity, his squeaky heels into infantile insolence, a discreet burp into vulgar innocence.

He finds Carrie in an outbuilding at an elaborate wooden desk, facing a wall empty except for a smattering of circular mirrors, each containing a miniature view of the woods through the window at her back, and fragments of the overpass fractured in the treetops like wreckage. He sets the coffee on a coaster beside her and she seems not to notice, purring like the walls as she studies spreadsheets on a tablet in her lap.

When he tries to peek she turns it away, then taps at it until a printer in the corner chugs to life. She hands Dennis a single sheet. Agenda, it says, with today's date. It looks like a high school schedule, ninety minute blocks, two ten-minute breaks, forty-five minutes for lunch. His tasks for the morning are cleaning the gutters, reshingling the roof and washing the skylights. Dennis is pretty sure he can't reshingle the roof in ninety minutes. It'll take at least that long to figure out how.

“Just do your best,” Carrie says. She'd help, but she's got to monitor her investments. She'll also have to spend a few hours preparing his contract and full agenda. There's an administrative burden that comes with being a job creator, as Dennis knows. She hopes he appreciates it.

“I do. Really, I do. But I thought maybe I should go food shopping?”

She takes the agenda from his hand, crosses out roof shingling, inserts shopping. He'll also need to buy shingles and other materials, she supposes. Carrie reaches into her purse, then pauses. It might look sketchy. What might look sketchy? Nothing, nevermind. She hands him a rubber-banded roll of hundreds and the car keys. He can take her grandmother's station wagon.

Dennis waits until he's in the car to separate the bills into his wallet and pockets.

When he comes back with food, materials and ten bucks change, Carrie hands him a blue canvas binder. Inside are thirty daily agendas. Because he's so far behind on his tasks for today she's reassigned them for tomorrow. He'll have to start trying a bit harder, okay? Superb. She's having a superb day. Her investments are really taking off. She'd be happy to give him some investment pointers, but today she's got a luncheon. She ordered Dennis a sandwich. It's on the counter. He should take the rest of the day off to get ready to really give his best tomorrow.

Dennis eats on the back porch, watching instructional videos on roofing, but trucks rattle the joints in the bridge above, steel ribs warbling, the inevitable asshole's horn reverberating in the gully. He can't hear a thing, so he switches to the new agendas to see what other manly arts he'll have to fake.

The first job each morning, nine to nine-fifteen, is serving coffee. Some yardwork, cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen, sweeping and mopping, washing the car. Okay, so he's like a maid, or a caretaker. Dennis doesn't mind taking care. Somebody should.

When he brings Carrie's coffee the next morning she's got green skin, purple eye sockets, face propped on a fist. She glares at the coffee. Did he read the agenda? Did he understand everything? Sure did. Carrie sniffs the coffee, but doesn't drink, turning to her screen. Her investments are doing better than her kidneys. She's too hungover to walk him through everything now, but Dennis should start on the roof. There's a leak in her bedroom. Also, yesterday he heated the milk. The milk in this coffee was cold. “I know the difference, so no slacking off, alright buddy? Thanks so much.”

~

Roofing sucks. By ten it's hot as fuck, no shade, pulling up shingles until his fingertips burn and blister and the blisters pop. After a few hours his hands are worthless. His knees quiver from bracing himself against the pitch. Even his toes hurt. He's not close to half done.

When he climbs in the window for water, Carrie catches him off duty. It's not break time. She'll bring him water, but he's got to work during working hours. First the cold milk, now this. Maybe it's her fault. She'll prepare a document setting out expectations, rewards and penalties, a standard operating procedure. It's another administrative burden, but she doesn't mind the grindstone, if Dennis holds up his end.

By sunset his neck is so burned it hurts to turn his head. Stripping the tiles was the worst part, he hopes. Tomorrow he'll roll out the roofing paper, pop chalk lines like on the videos, maybe it'll be fun. Carrie goes out, leaving Dennis pizza money. He pockets it, cooks three eggs for dinner, three more for dessert, then falls asleep in his clothes.

In the morning she needs him to clean her bathroom. There's vom on the wall. And the trash can. He should change her sheets, and could he please take that coffee away? She doesn't want it. She's sorry to be brusque, she's just so busy, and so tired.

He gets a cold cheeseburger for lunch, no fries, another binder. The table of contents lists a dozen items, from hygiene standards to a section entitled Walking More Quietly. There's a mission statement. Skimming, he's afraid he might laugh, though reading more closely it becomes less funny. It refers to the rehabilitation of his manhood, and building a sense of integrity through hard work. The section on sanctionable offenses includes one described simply as turpitude. She wants him to read the document, initial each page and sign at the end.

Dennis drops the binder on her desk. He's not signing it. Carrie looks hurt. “I worked hard on that, Denny. What gives?” Look at his hands, first of all. He tried to do a three-day job in ninety minutes. He doesn't want to scrub puke. He's walking as quietly as he can and his manhood does not need rehabilitation.

Carrie's breathing grows in the corners like the room is sighing. Is this because she's white? She agrees the optics are skewed. She never meant to boss him around, but she hired him, so some bossing is inevitable, right? He can see her conundrum.

“It's not that, Carrie. Well, it's partially that. How about I just do the roof, then move to the next job when I finish? I'll make coffee, do the shopping and tidying up, and we'll get along like normal people. Right?”

But Carrie worked super hard on those guidelines and it's unfair of Dennis to object over a few word choices when she did her best to craft a fair deal for them both, but fine, she can strike out the line about rehabilitation, she can get rid of the whole mission statement. Is that a good deal or what? Hasn't she given him a place to live, three meals a day? All he's done so far is ruin her roof. She's just asking him to sign his name. She doesn't think it's too much.

Dennis signs to shut her up.

~

He does a good enough job on the roof, cuts the lawn, trims the hedges, keeps house, fetches take-out, rakes up the trash blown down from the highway. Then, last week of the month, he finds her nose-breathing at the computer screen. “War's off,” she mutters. Click, click, furrow. “They called off the war.”

Dennis leaves her squinting, coffee steaming, and spends the morning swimming in the creek. When he comes back for lunch she's still gaping, typing, coffee untouched. He coughs gently. Carrie leaps and clutches her guts like he's shot her. “Oh God, lunch. I totally forgot. Say, Denny, how's your liquidity?”

Scrambling eggs for them, he watches her blue face suffer in a series of mirrors. He wonders how badly she's done, whether he should offer his services as a fellow accountant. There are loopholes, chicaneries she may have overlooked from stress. Judging from her expression, though, she's lost the money to pay the property tax, possibly the estate tax, so she'll lose the house, maybe land in debt. That horror on her face is Carrie realizing how easily she could end up like him.

He makes her another coffee, double-strength, and treads heavily in the hall, squeaking his heels. She doesn't usually drink coffee in the afternoon, makes her jittery, but today she could use one, thank you. He leaves her to eat alone, shutting the door too loudly, then spends the afternoon sending resumes.

After dark Carrie emerges, haggard and timid. Dennis tracks her moving between mirrors because she hates when he does that, though today she doesn't notice. She's staring at her phone like she forgot who to call. Usually she'd order dinner now. Dennis whistles down the hall, Nessun Dorma, rapping his knuckles on the wall. The reverberation turns immediately to noise. In a dozen reflections he watches her stiffen.

~

The next morning he puts cold milk in her coffee, spills a bit in the saucer and waits for it to cool. He finds Carrie's face sucked into the screen. She takes the coffee without looking, sips and grimaces, sets the cup on her grandmother's desk, then she notices the coffee ring soaking into the antique wood. She lets a fingertip rest in the wetness.

Dennis coughs into the room's heptagonal corner, keeps his eyes in the mirror until she relents and meets him there. “Aren't you supposed to be scrubbing the bathrooms?”

Sitting on her toilet, he buys a domain name and sends Carrie an email from a property appraiser named Earl, saying the township has scheduled her grandmother's property for appraisal and possible revaluation. She's requested to be home next Wednesday at eleven, with her federal, state and local tax receipts for this year and last. Then Dennis scrubs the bathroom until it smiles back at him.

Carrie asks him into her office after lunch. “Can you put the old shingles back on the roof?” Nope. Can't untrim the hedges either. “If I'm not wrong, your contract expires Tuesday. Could you put everything back how it was, then clean it all up again next week? I'll pay extra, of course.”

Dennis shrugs. He's got his own apartment to tend to. His subletter's an artist, place is probably trashed. Carrie answers by rubbing her eyes. Sorry. She hasn't slept. The Asian markets are behaving erratically. He makes a show of relenting. It's a peculiar request, but sure, he can help her out.

Carrie springs up, seemingly to hug him, but sags against her desk instead. “Would you really do that for me?” She looks for him in the mirror and he nods. “I'll order something special for dinner. It's been a while since we've had a quiet dinner together, hasn't it?” Yeah. Since forever.

Over dinner from d'Angelo's he gives Carrie some free financial advice. She should sell everything and pay the proceeds to Dennis as wages. He'll stash the surplus in a separate account, so if her house and car get repossessed, at least she'll have something to live on while she looks for work. Actually, she should sell the car, too. Maybe torch the house?

Carrie smiles. “That's funny. You're funny, and very kind, but I'll be fine.” The ceiling twitches under a passing truck, commerce jostling the walls. Carrie lays a hand on the wall to soothe it. Can Dennis imagine how it felt living here alone? Seeing herself everywhere, hearing footsteps and breathing all over the house. “I kept finding my grammy's things, started thinking she was, like. Anyway, it was too much. I should get some sleep. Goodnight, Dennis. See you in the morning.”

Once she's safely snoring he rummages in the attic. He leaves her grandmother's scarf in the laundry basket, eyeglasses between sofa cushions, pearl earrings in a desk drawer. Passing Carrie's room, he knocks an offbeat rhythm into the walls, tuning forked halls to static, and when he hears her wake up, Dennis slips into bed.

He spends the weekend finding new vantage points, combinations of mirrors that put his eyes in every wall, convergences of echoes where he can best hear the little plastic telephone forcing her meekest tones. Prowling nights, Dennis appreciates the thrumming in the bones of their home, the reassurance of an outside world that might otherwise seem imaginary.

Each night he taps the walls as he walks. She calls out once, “who's there?” The next morning she finds the pearl earrings. He searches her refracted faces, sure she'll know it was him. Instead he sees her shiver, hurl the earrings in the trash and look up to find his eyes in the walls. In the echo he hears her choke on a scream.

~

Wednesday, well before eleven, Carrie leaves and doesn't come back until after dark. What happened while she was gone? Did anything unusual happen? Did anyone stop by?

Dennis describes Earl, a cold, officious man who nonetheless resembles Santa Claus. Earl was very upset to find her gone. He wanted to poke around, but Dennis wouldn't let him. He's coming back tomorrow, and Dennis would be happy to get rid of him again. Carrie can hide in the attic. Though maybe it's better if the house does get repossessed.

No. Carrie always wanted her own home, and now she at least has somewhere to start. In another year or two this place will be unrecognizable. Once her investments rebound, he'll see. Everything's just so chaotic, the war, the economy. Of course Dennis knows. He lost everything, right? Carrie owes him an apology. She could've been more welcoming, but that is going to change. If he wants to stay another month, he can. In fact, she hopes he will.

~

That night, Dennis wakes up for his nightly haunting to find his ceiling slithering flame. Barred windows. Carrie is blocking the door, holding a candle. The room isn't on fire. Those flames in the walls are propagated light.

“I keep hearing things,” she whispers. “I decided to poke around. Everything's fine. Go back to sleep.”

Dennis nods, breathless, teeth in his tongue. When she closes the door, he gets up to rattle the window bars. They don't rattle. He's trapped in here with her. Why did he tell her to burn down the house? What if she does? What if she tries to pin it on him? She could get away with it. Does she know that? Is that why she wants him to stay another month?

He wakes in terror to another sunny morning, smells coffee, sees Carrie in the lawn burning branches. The highway is quiet. From the porch Dennis even hears a few lurking birds. “I'm going to meet this guy Earl,” she says. “Show him around, explain my situation. I'm sure he'll understand. Nobody wants to throw anybody out of their home.”

Dennis doesn't answer. The bank had no problem taking his home. He dreamed about that house last night. Carrie was there. Her blue eyes and the fire, the white house behind her, the crackling, throbbing heat and shimmering billow, the pillar of smoke were all in his nightmare. It felt just like this.

~

After dinner he locks himself in his bedroom, and is still awake hours later to hear her tiptoeing in triplicate. Does she know he's Earl? Does she know he's been pocketing cash and fudging receipts? Firelight seeps under the door.

Dennis dresses in the quiet the house taught him. He takes the cross from the wall, grips it like a hammer and opens the door. In the halls Carrie is amassed. Women eight feet tall and thin as his arms, others squished between shelves, clinging to the ceiling, blazing in dark corners, dozens of Carries dressed in white robes with fire in their hands, fire in the roof, fire in the floors, pieces of words senseless cracking into distended laughter, the walls cackling. Which reflection is her? She's getting closer, but from which hall?

Then she's behind him and he spins with the cross raised and she screams, dropping the candle. It goes out in midair. He swings the cross, but she's inside his arc, too close to hit. She wraps her arms around him, trembling. “I thought you were someone else,” she says. “I'm so glad you're you.”

END

The author has fiction appearing in the Los Angeles Review, AGNI, Gulmohur Quarterly, Chaotic Merge and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, as well as the WSFA Small Press Award, and lives near Medellín, Colombia, where he works as a translator. instagram.com/daveserafino