RITUAL

By Jesse Morris

Jim sat and stared as Freddy raised the record. He rotated the vinyl slowly and adjusted it to catch the low light that crept through the dusty stained glass of the old church hall. Jim had been running a small records table at the back of the Sunday Market for over three years, only occasionally missing a week now and then due to illness, exhaustion, depression, or some assortment of the three. On his first visit Freddy’s incessant curiosity was promising, his enamoured assessment of each record obviously destined to end in a sale. Boy, could he do with a sale. Beyond the few dollars he might make he had to pay to keep what he couldn’t sell in a storage locker. He had slept at the locker on occasion. Never was he homeless however, quite the opposite. Jim stayed in the lock up to take brief moments away from the house he had always lived in.

Freddy slipped to the next stall after leaving fingerprints all over every record again. On that first visit years ago Freddy had been a disappointment. When he appeared the next week and repeated the process exactly, then he became agitating. Finally after three years his eccentric ritual was just another oddity that Jim had grown accustomed to. Besides, it gave him something to talk about with the other stallholders; the ones who liked to talk at least. He had to endure him; after all, everybody else did. These days Jim even drew some comfort from his familiarity, though the two had never really exchanged more than glances and proximity. Freddy would come and meditate over each of his records individually in his usual trance. His eyes tracked along each groove in order like a needle. If he knew the record, he would chant along under his breath while his eyes swam in circles through the grooves. The ones he didn’t know he would simply hold to the light, uttering static noises as if in a private conversation with the vinyl. It seemed to do most of the talking, and Freddy was very attentive. The noises shifted with his gaze, and each revealed a new revolution on his peculiar face. Approval, hesitation, concern, sometimes he let out a snicker as if he were in secret communion with an old friend. It actually made sense: some of these records he’d looked at week after week for years since Jim had set up his stall to help ease the tension of his child support. It was these little moments that Jim tried the most to ignore. He had learned not to laugh at Freddy, not to his face. It still took a lot of concentration. Jim had managed to make some sense of him over the years, enough that he didn’t really need to bother wondering about him anymore. Freddy came each week and made his quiet appraisals then turned to Jim as if considering another inspection. This was the time Jim found it hardest not to laugh. Looking up to avoid his stare, Jim rested his eyes on a scar in the church ceiling. From this distance - though his eyes often failed him from much closer - he could make out a series of violent scratches. Perhaps an amateur builder had aborted his attempt to install a skylight in the churches roof, to bring the light of god a little closer to the long darkened halls. Perhaps halfway through he realised that desecrating his church would not necessarily achieve his aim. Entertaining as many possibilities as he could, even the ridiculous, Jim saw an angel clawing at the roof till their fingers scraped to bone. This helped waste enough time so that on returning his gaze Freddy had already taken the few steps to the next table and continued his process like a slow melodious dance. Round and around he went until the floor was empty of goods to assess. Then he would leave. Jim had never once seen him purchase a single thing.

As Jim performed his closing ritual, Julie unplugged her plastic light up Jesus and set the kettle to boil. A cup of tea is simply necessary after a long day at the stall. It was a mantra she often recited when there was someone available nearby to hear her. She packed her mother’s heirlooms into a small box. The priceless items she was never to touch in her mother’s lifetime were not met with any interest at her stall for another week. Perhaps if she had a higher shelf to place them on, just out of sight and reach, maybe then somebody would be interested like she had as a young girl. The crockery pieces had lost their mysticism when she had grown tall enough to see them without a struggle.

“Strange day today.” Julie said, though she didn’t really believe it. “Nobody so much as looked at my teapot, except Freddy of course. Who wouldn’t want a teapot?” Jim stacked the records into his trolley silently. She was hoping he’d noticed something actually out of the ordinary. “I’m just glad we’ve got Fred to keep the dust off on days like today” she said, a little louder and patting his hand to guarantee his attention. Jim turned to her with a smile and finally spoke. “He keeps the dust off everything but my sales log.” Julie chuckled, though she could no longer remember the number of times Jim had made the joke before. She supposed she couldn’t have counted that high, having never truly applied herself to mathematics. Still, she liked the way Jim tried to stay positive, even with such a dismal face. “I saw his hands as he was leaving today. They’re just filthy by the end of his round. I always imagine him going home to his mother to get in trouble for those hands of his. I know he’s a grown man but I can’t imagine him living with anyone but his mother. I don’t know why.” Julie trailed off as she realised what she meant to be funny was rather depressing. She felt it was a bad habit to assume too much about a stranger but she never stopped herself until she was already done. Jim sipped his tea and thanked Julie for it. He told her he didn’t like to think about Freddy at home, it was already too much trying to understand him as a customer, though that title seemed entirely inaccurate.

They laughed again later as they walked out into the car park together, Jim pushing his records and her crockery in the old trolley he had found abandoned by the market years ago. He may have been embarrassed by it but he still insisted it had served him well. It wasn’t far to their street and soon they were home. Apart from a few light cosmetic upgrades and the new commission flats, the walk was identical to how Jim remembered it when walking home from service when he was a boy. He knew it all so well that he could barely recognise a thing anymore. The only small change: he wasn’t nearly as afraid of the old ghost house nowadays. Why should he worry about that old place anymore? Developers had purchased the property years ago, but nothing had come of their plans. ‘The Crypt’, they used to call it. What are the kids calling it today? Are the kids still afraid of death, or in all their capacities are they somehow excited about that as well? Do they even take an active interest?

As he passed Julie her box of crockery from his trolley, he thought of how much he’d like Julie to move in and help him take care of himself. He could cook and maybe she could help distract him from his records. The collection now took up the greater part of his parent’s old home, and he was much more talented at acquiring doubles than selling them at the stall. He had heard about selling on the Internet, but he would have to sell enough records to buy a computer first. Then he would probably have to pay for classes to learn how to use it. Maybe Julie had one, maybe she could teach him the way. He understood the simple reason why he loved her: she would never return the favour; satisfied as she was with the brief and comforting ritual they shared each Sunday evening. She was a mirage he had contrived to perpetually glisten on a horizon he claimed otherwise deserted. Jim knew it was all illusion; he had seen before the interminable power of his own imagination. Forever his heart only beat for that moment coming before birth, that slipping second when things can only be known as possibility. It was this sentiment that cursed his days: that a dream that wills itself into existence is simply suicidal. Knowing this Julie was a light he could only let flicker in and out of shadow. Turning full spotlights onto a world of dreams could only hope to wake him from the security found only in his ephemeral fantasies, like little magic tricks too sustaining to dismiss as entirely entertainment. His mistake may have been thinking it could only be illusion, or somehow he took its illusive nature to mean more than it needed to. Preferring not to indulge himself in her flesh in case it caused the ghostly oasis to disappear forever, Jim wished her well, insisted she ‘take care’ then continued to his own home four houses down. He liked girls and Julie was a pleasant example, but after all these years he still didn’t believe he could be good to one. His marriage had not been a gracious experience.

Once in France Jim had seen a Rembrandt painting apparently depicting a divine companionship. Something about the painting wasn’t right. Not the dimensions or the perspective or anything like that, they were pretty tidy Jim thought. Even the frame was nice, not too garish. It was the look of malice in the Husbands eye. He would have liked to turn away from the painting at that point, but photographs were not allowed and it seemed he should at least look while he was there. Taking his time, trying to articulate his own response to himself, all Jim could say was the painting stirred in him some kind of perverse jealousy. Nobody ever has divorce portraits. It’s the good moments you struggle constantly to immortalize yourself: the bad ones do it for themselves. He shook his head as if it would somehow help him finish his internal sentence. Whenever he caught himself wondering why about things he was already sure that he knew, he stopped himself to keep from getting nowhere. He laid his head down on the bed his parents once shared and sighed heavily. The room still smelled of his father’s shoe polish.

He looked above the closed fireplace, to the mantel lined with his family’s portraits. The frames stood as his parents had arranged them. The exception: a picture of young Jason, taken when he was three. He would be about twelve now. Jim thought he might try to write to him someday soon. Was he old enough yet? It seemed too difficult to say in anyway he could understand himself. He certainly didn’t trust himself to find the words that could express it all in a coherent fashion to a young boy who learned to ride a bike with another man. Bicycle by Queen started on the stereo and Jim got up to change the track. He never learned to ride a bike, and with the grocery store at the end of the street his mother had never pressured him to learn. The only demands she ever made were to be home for dinner, which he did and he grew up big. He took the stall at the back of the Church hall to avoid the embarrassment of customers struggling to pass him in the small space available between tables.

Jim was hungry. He could cook a meal, but he wouldn’t. This evening his body could eat off of itself. He would sit, he would sit on the bed, he would not lie down and he would not eat. All his body needed for months would be water. More than his mind at least he had built his body to a state of self-sufficiency. He would keep this up until he could find the words to say to Julie, or maybe just a new joke for next week, or choreograph some small gesture towards kissing her, or maybe Julie isn’t it at all, as nice as she is. Maybe next week he would ask if she’d like coffee instead of tea. He could seduce her: that was a definite possibility. The culinary feats he could conjure were nothing if not effective. Being a talented cook not only helped Jim recover from the crippled sexuality of his obesity, it somehow managed to excuse it. Who could blame him if he was a little overweight when he had such sumptuous banquets at his fingertips? Yet he could not bring himself to invite her. He could only see depravity in that path. He would not convince her to sleep with him, and Julie to him would be allowed perfection, if not existence.

Four doors down, Julie put a frozen lasagne into the oven and sat watching her favourite soap on DVD. She mouthed along with her friends as they read their lines and soon enough she had a hot dinner in her belly and it was late enough to go to bed. The show was never really popular and had only survived for so long due to low production costs and the networks contractual commitment to producing local content. Her best friend in high school Sam had a small role working at the general store in the show, and since it’s cancellation had found steady work as an extra in most locally produced dramas and sitcoms. Sam’s features were vague and friendly, lacking illumination or any characteristic that could bring her out of a crowd. She fitted the extra work well: a perfect backdrop for the stars to shine on. Though she wasn’t necessarily happy with the work it was easy, regular enough and saved her the surprise of some new disappointment. Julie shivered whenever Sam invited her to mill about with her in the larger crowd scenes. Though the thought of being so close to the stars excited her, her exhilaration wavered whenever she pictured the camera casting her directly against those lucky souls deemed professionally beautiful, leading her always to politely decline the offer.

Jim realised he couldn’t just sit there. It’s so important: you have to do something. You have to take a stand. Countless films, songs and acquaintances had reiterated the point until he barely knew what they meant by it anymore, all he knew was he supposed he agreed. He picked himself up from the bed and considered his posture carefully in the mirror. It felt awkward just standing in the middle of his bedroom half naked. He didn’t feel at all like a man taking a stand. He was a guy who had stood up, nothing more. The window stepped out from across the room. That could be a good place to start: People make important declarations out of windows. The Japanese Emperor only ever meets his people through a window, once each year in January. At least, Jim had been to Tokyo once in January and seen the emperor on a balcony through bulletproof glass, and it was a very special event he was led to believe. Thousands of his people would cram into the palace square waving thousands of miniature paper flags at his grace through the glass until they tore from their plastic pipes. Then they would shuffle out, as the next load would storm in to tear up their flags in turn. This filled the Emperor’s whole day, waving through glass to hysteric masses. The Japanese were normally such reserved people. It was unsettling. He understood why the Emperor only put on social events so occasionally.

Looking out of his own window there was no audience gathered. It was just Freddy, playing in Jim’s own garden, spellbound by a spider and it’s stupid fucking web. Jim quickly tore at the Venetians. He fell against the wall as the blinds finally collapsed. His right hand called violently to him: in his rush the stubborn old cord had cut deep into the centre of his palm. Spread on the floor he could not move. He sat stunned and surveyed the little he could see of himself carefully. His naked belly was a mountain that dominated the landscape. In the distance his bare, stubby feet poked out from his fraying white cotton pants. He felt the growth of his beard, running his fingers through the greasy long hairs and realized his blasphemy: he must have looked like a fat pitiful floundering on the floor. His cheap digital watch was the only thing breaking the illusion of Christ’s inadequate second coming. Surprised by the rich color of his own blood, he stared rapt as the narrow lines drew across his arm tracing their way to his elbow. Slowly collecting together they gathered confidence and prepared for their closing dive. Remembering himself, he cupped his free hand underneath his elbow, picked himself up and raced down the hallway. His legs struggled to pass each other, his awkward body pathetically attempting to thread through the house like a camel at full speed. His muscles creaked with the floor beneath him as he stumbled between the fading lounges. Jim could not remember running with such unified vision in his entire life. The bathroom came into view, it’s fluorescent light radiating into the room. His elbow extended to the heavens in one last plea for salvation as he made his final leap. He made it. Had he made it? Jim collapsed to his knees. He moved his cupped hand and watched the blood painstakingly depart from his bloated elbow. The droplet finally formed drifted in brief reprieve for one last moment before exploding brilliant color onto the cold bathroom tiles. Just. The splatter lay only two inches safe of the clean carpet. Allowing himself to gasp for breath, Jim slowly began to raise the body he had put into shock. Ignoring the bloodied, desperate figure in the mirror he let the cold water run over his hands. He found it best to concentrate on the throbbing. Freddy would leave his garden; eventually, Jim knew that. Then he could open the blinds and try again. The wound continued to weep and he reluctantly opened the cupboard to look for some antiseptic. There would be nothing there - he hadn’t bought any after all - but he felt obliged to look in case he called Julie and she asked if he had. After all: he would feel pretty silly if he hadn’t.