The Ice Queen

I wanted things cold, the way they’d always been. And yet, I felt moved by these people in some way I didn’t understand. Perhaps it was because each one was ruined so uniquely, every undoing so against all probability. I turned and saw that the Naked Man was sitting with his head in his hands, eyes closed. He was sleeping. A woman next to me, struck while pruning her hedges, held a finger to her lips.

“Poor thing,” she whispered.

I noticed that the Naked Man wasn’t wearing a wedding band, that there was dog hair on his pant leg, short black hair, probably a Labrador retriever. Maybe he’d gotten what he’d wanted, or what he’d imagined he’d wanted. But he moaned in his sleep, and we all turned to him, startled by the sound. There it was, like a toad let out in a garden. Sorrow.

The Naked Man didn’t open his eyes until the group was breaking up. Then he told us this sleep disorder was happening to him more and more; he couldn’t stay awake. He would be having a conversation with someone, and the next thing he knew, he’d be fast asleep, snoring. He couldn’t tell the difference between his life and a dream. That was his problem. He’d talk to his girlfriend, Marie, about what they’d done the day before, and she’d look blank. Then he’d understand — it hadn’t been real. The canoe on the river, the car on the road, the storm or the clear sky he’d been so certain of, all of it disappeared as soon as he opened his eyes.

“I want to be awake,” the Naked Man said. “That’s all I’m asking for.”

We all looked away when he started to cry. I, for one, hoped he would remember this as a dream. A hazy room of stunned and silent people who were decent enough to give him his privacy. Before he knew it, he’d be out walking his dog and he wouldn’t even remember us, the strangers who wished the best for him, who wished he would indeed wake up.

We all had our photographs taken that night. It was part of the study. Quite necessary, we were told. One by one, we went into the examining room. We took off our clothes and stood in front of a white screen. As I stood there shivering, I recalled a fairy tale, “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” It was a tale I’d disliked as a child about a boy who is so brave he can play cards with corpses and subdue ghouls without ever once flinching. When my brother read to me, I always insisted he skip right over to the next one. I didn’t like stories in which Death was a major character. Even for me, this tale seemed too illogical. Who on earth could look at death and be unafraid?

When my time came to be photographed I got into position and did as I was told. I turned left and then right. I kept my spine against the white paper. My photographs would go in my file, the same as everyone else’s. My expression would resemble the Naked Man’s — blinking in the cold brightness. Maybe that was what kept Lazarus Jones away. He who had no fear, who had wrestled with death and returned far stronger than he’d been before. He wanted his privacy; some people believed a man who told his secrets was a man who lost his strength, and maybe Lazarus Jones was such a man.

I got dressed slowly. I was the last to go. I had just started driving again, which was probably foolish. I wasn’t yet well. Sometimes I felt so nauseated I had to pull over to the side of the road to vomit. Once, I had found myself on the highway out of town and I wondered how I’d gotten there, and how I’d ever find my way back.

Coming home from the survivors’ meeting, I circled round my block twice before I recognized my own front yard. There it was: the worst lawn on the block, weedy and in need of watering. I pulled into the driveway, hurried inside, went into my bedroom. I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. I’d closed my eyes when I’d been photographed, as though that could keep who I was and what I looked like from my own consciousness. Now I saw. There was a splotch above my heart, the spot where the lightning had made contact before it sputtered and fell to the floor. I touched that place; inside it was hard, as if a little stone had been implanted beneath the skin.

The windows were open and I could feel the weather outside filtering through the screens. For once, I had good luck.

Unlike the mythical Dragon people spoke of, Lazarus Jones was said to be only fifty miles outside of Orlon. I thought about how the Boy with No Fear had played cards with the dead, how he’d grinned and thrown an ace on the table, how he’d walked through graveyards without a single shiver, how he knew death from the inside out. I wanted a man like that, one it was impossible to kill, who wouldn’t flinch if you wished him dead, who’d already been there and back.

I had brought a suitcase of clothes with me to Florida, woolen clothes, New Jersey clothes, mittens, scarves, and sweaters. I needed something new for this occasion. I hadn’t been shopping for years, not since my grandmother had first taken ill. My clothes were serviceable, suitable for someone ten years older than I. I didn’t even have a decent pair of shoes, only flip-flops and sneakers and a pair of snow boots I’d surely never need again. But looking for something to wear in Orlon wasn’t so easy. I had to drive to the Smithfield Mall, three exits away on the Interstate.