Green Eyes Page 0,10

were waxed and curled. Hectic spots of color dappled his cheeks, and his eyes were startling bits of blue china. Donnell fixed on the left eye, noticing the pink gullies of flesh in the corners, the road map of capillaries: Edman hadn't been sleeping.

'Actually' - Donnell thought how best to exploit Edman's lack of sleep - 'actually, I had one just when you came in, but it was different...' He pretended to be struggling with a difficult concept.

'How so?' Papers rustled on Edman's clipboard, his ballpoint clicked. His eyelids drooped, and the blue eye rolled wetly down.

'The light was spraying out the pores of your hand, intense light, like the kind you find in an all-night restaurant, but even brighter, and deep in the light something moved, something pale and multiform,' Donnell whispered melodramatically. 'Something I soon realized was a sea of ghastly, tormented faces...'

'My God, Donnell!' Edman smacked the bed with his clipboard.

'Right!' said Donnell with mock enthusiasm. 'I can't be sure, but it may have been...'

'Donnell!' Edman sighed, a forlorn lover's sigh. 'Will you please consider what our process means to other terminal patients? At least do that, if you don't care about yourself.'

'Oh, yeah. There must be thousands of less fortunate stiffs just begging for the chance.' Donnell laughed. 'It really changes your perspective on the goddamn afterlife. Groping, bashing your head on the sink when you go to spit.'

'You know that's going to improve, damn it!' The blue eye blinked rapidly. 'You're retarding your own progress with this childish attitude.'

'What'll you give me?' Jocundra stroked his shoulder, soothing, but Donnell shrugged off her hand. 'How much if I spill the secrets of my vital signs?'

'What would you like?'

'Another whore.' Donnell jerked his head toward Jocundra. 'I'm bored with this one.'

'Would you really prefer another therapist?'

'Christ, yes! Dozens! Orientals, Watusis, cheerleaders in sweatsocks for my old age. I'll screw my way to mental health.'

'I see.' Edman scribbled furiously, his eye downcast.

What gruesome things eyes were! Glistening, rolling, bulging, popping. Little congealed shudders in their bony nests. Donnell wished he had never mentioned the visual shift because they hadn't stopped nagging him since, and he had begun to develop a phobia about eyes. But on first experiencing it, he had feared it might signal a relapse, and he had told Jocundra.

Edman cleared his throat. 'It's time we got to the root of this anger, Donnell.' Note-taking had restored his poise, and his tone implied an end to games. 'It must be distressing,' he said, 'not to recall what Jean looked like beyond a few hazy details.'

'Shut up, Edman,' said Donnell. As always, mere mention of his flawed memory made him unreasonably angry. His teeth clenched, his muscles bunched, yet part of his mind remained calm and watchful, helpless against the onset of rage.

'Tall, dark-haired, quiet,' enumerated Edman. 'A weaver... or was she a photographer? No, I remember. Both.' The eye widened, the eyebrow arched. 'A talented woman.'

'Leave it alone,' said Donnell ominously, wishing he could refine his patch of clear sight into a needle beam and prick Edman's humor, send the fluid jetting out, dribbling down his cheek, then watch him go squealing around the room, a flabby balloon losing flotation.

'It's odd,' mused Edman, 'that your most coherent memories of the woman concern her death.'

Donnell tried to hurl himself out of the wheelchair, but pain lanced through his shoulder joints and he fell back. 'Bastard!' he shouted.

Jocundra helped him resettle and asked Edman if they could have a consultation, and they went into the hall.

Alone, his anger ebbing, Donnell normalized his sight. The bedroom walls raised a ghostly gray mist, unbroken except for a golden fog at the window, and the furniture rippled as if with a gentle current. It occurred to him that things might so appear to a king who had been magicked into a deathlike trance and enthroned upon a shadowy lake bottom among streamers of kelp and shattered hulls. He preferred this gloom to clear sight: it suited his interior gloom and induced a comforting thoughtlessness.

'... don't think you should force him,' Jocundra was saying in the hall, angry.

Edman's reply was muffled. '... another week... his reaction to Richmond...'

A mirror hung beside the door to Jocundra's bedroom, offering the reflection of a spidery writing desk wobbling on pipestem legs. Donnell wheeled over to it and pressed his nose against the cold glass. He saw a dead-gray oval with drowned hair waving up and smudges for eyes. Now and again a fiery green flicker crossed