The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Rombes Nicholas

Author:Rombes, Nicholas [Rombes, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781937512248
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Published: 2014-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Laing seems to be completely lost. I sense that it’s best to give him a few moments. During this entire time the wind has been gusting against the cheap motel door and window, and it seems right to just listen to it. And for the first time I notice that the room’s walls aren’t blue, as I thought they were, but a very pale shade of ocean green. Laing stands up and goes to the window. He’s wearing some kind of khaki shirt that brings to mind a photograph of someone on safari. He parts the drape and watches as the rain pelts the window so hard that you could imagine a row of soldiers machine-gunning the hotel except that by the time the bullets arrive they have turned to water pellets. Laing lets the drape fall back and turns to face me. His face—something about his pinched eyes and slight scowl that disguises a grin—reminds me of Charles Bronson, mid-1970s Charles Bronson of Mr. Majestyk and Hard Times. He seems not to be looking at me but through me, as if there’s another version of myself right there behind me, a version that’s accessible to Laing only. I don’t know how long he stares at me (or the me behind me) but I can tell you it feels like hours had been compressed into a few moments and during those moments I can feel myself aging, really feel it in my bones and muscles and veins as if Laing—through his weird, altering gaze—is somehow butchering time. The motel room seems unsteadier than ever as if it’s collecting itself more compactly around the figure of Laing, who by now has stopped staring at, or through, me and has gone into the small bathroom where, impossibly, I hear him speaking in a hushed, brusk voice to someone. Impossible, I say, because I had been in the bathroom earlier and there was, of course, no one there. I feel the flash of some super-new truth behind my eyelids. It’s like I’ve gulped down water too fast and the back of my throat hurts. And that’s followed by more soft, hushed words by Laing spoken to someone or something in the bathroom, or just to himself which maybe amounts, in the end, to the same thing. When he comes out his safari-like shirt looks damp, like he’s been sweating. He claps his hands together as if to say, There! It’s all done now! and comes back to where he was.

“The last film,” he says, “that I remember. A. took me to see it, or else I dreamed that she took me. She tells me there’s a movie I need to see. The last showing’s at midnight. She takes my hand and leads me through the streets of Philadelphia, a city I thought I knew but that, with each step with her, fades away and is slowly replaced with something completely unfamiliar. Different buildings (if buildings is even what you’d call them) and crazily named streets that loop like cursive.

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