The first chapter of the second story featured in the upcoming Quasar 169: Physical Evidence.
My brother had just had twins.
Well, his wife had anyway. Boys. A seven pound three ouncer and a seven pound eight ouncer. Full heads of dark wispy hair already. Blue eyes just like their father. When I’d asked their names, I was proud to learn they would always remember their Russian heritage. Christianus Pavel Roglitz and William Valery Roglitz. David and I were both native born citizens of the good ol’ U.S. of A. and knew little of our family’s Soviet background aside from brief excerpts dad had grumbled once in a while during his frequent alcoholic stupors. I’d attempted to keep an ongoing correspondence with our cousin, Pyetra, but our letters took so long to reach each other and then mine
eventually began to come back to me stamped “undeliverable” with no explanation. Anyway, Dave and I had
shared an on again off again fascination with our familial homeland’s history, which was why the sloppily gift wrapped box on the table beside me contained a hand crafted, hand painted set of imported nesting dolls from the USSR. They weren’t dolls you played with—more of something their mother would put on display somewhere
within their huge, museum-like house on the outskirts of Tarrytown.
The hospital cafeteria was also the gift shop, so I waited for my brother at a small table surrounded by
magazine racks and bins full of stuffed animals. I’d told him I’d be there, out of the way of Contessa’s wealthy,
snooty family members who didn’t like me anyway, near the entrance, probably reading a newspaper. He’d sounded appalled that I wasn’t going on up to the room to see the boys for myself right away, but understood my
feelings toward the Balabans seeing as how he shared them himself—save for his beautiful-from-a-distance wife. He’d promised to meet me at nine sharp and was already forty-five minutes late. Draining the last of my cold coffee from its plastic cup, I piled my trash upon my breakfast tray, then decided to go over the parts of the paper I
normally didn’t peruse like the obituaries, want ads, and comic strips.
I like to look for the last name “Dize” in the obits simply because it amuses me in a sick sort of way. Anything along those lines is worth a subdued snicker. Helen Dize. Harry Dize. Mortimer Dize. Yeah, pal, well
everybody Dize eventually. Sometimes you could even find stories of people kicking off in unusual
ways...envenomed by his sixteen pet cobras—gee, couldn’t see that one coming, could ya? Guy strikes a deer, tries to put the animal in his car, animal comes to and manages to run over the guy. Squashed flat by a Lance machine just ‘cause her peanut brittle bar wouldn’t come out.... Death’s only funny if you’re indifferent to or don’t like the deceased. The guy who’d lived next door to us when we were growing up had worked for his family’s mortuary
and told some pretty wicked bizarre stories if he could coax any of us neighborhood kids up onto his back porch on late summer nights. Wrong bodies placed in wrong caskets for funerals. Some dead guy sitting up suddenly just as they were about to drain the fluids from him. Elderly pallbearers dropped the heavy coffin they were carrying and the old lady inside pops out and falls into her open grave followed by casket and four of the pallbearers. Being asked if a little boy could be buried with his taxidermied hamster in his arms.
Glancing over the list of names, I wondered if the guys at ArtReal ever sent in the real names of the
volunteers who’d died helping to keep the world a more peaceful place. Death was a distinctive part of my life in a
job where my assigned partners just didn’t last too long. My co-workers were indifferent to the phenomena, but I
seemed a little more keen on the ramifications. ArtReal literally lost dozens of “employees” every year and nobody seemed too concerned about this phenomena. They didn’t think of the Quasars as human. They were tools. They
were often impedences. They were like buses—another would be along at any minute....
There was a photo that caught my eye. Small, black and white like all the rest of them, but the subject seemed so young. Angelique Janice Chrisbaum. Found floating face down in a canal. Why would somebody murder such an attractive young woman? Of course, it didn’t actually say she was murdered. She was just found bloated and putrefying, seven months pregnant....
I was drawn to her face. Cute little thing with light colored hair, turned up nose, huge smile that made me
think of...those lips traveling along my thighs from knee to....
I shivered. It was my good luck Angel! What the hell...? Survived by her mother, Constance Chrisbaum...lived in Manhattan over by...by that bar I’d been in that night...the French fries...her white bra.... I checked the date printed at the top of the page, thought back to—when had I started at ArtReal? S-s-seven months pregnant? In the depths of me, my greasy breakfast churned.
I uttered a barking kind of squeak when my brother suddenly dropped into the chair closest to me. He patted my arm happily, grinning from ear to ear. He smelled like lotion and baby powder, his face was rosy with excitement. “Hey!” David stared at me and the smile faltered. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
I released the paper and tapped at the small picture. “I...I think I knew her.”
He pulled the paper closer so he could skim the brief article. “Oh, wow. Really? She doesn’t look
familiar...gee, died five days after her eighteenth birthday. You knew her?”
I swallowed, then coughed slightly. “Uh, no. Guess not. Too young. Unh-uh.” Unfortunately, my psychic abilities made me aware he was concerned by my reaction and wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not. I looked up at him. “S-so, you’re a dad, now, huh? You. You a father! Yikes!”
“Yeah,” he answered guardedly, his eyes seeking out the photo I’d unconsciously covered over with one
arm. “So what’s up with that, huh?”
Read more in the pages of
Quasar 169: Physical Evidence
soon available
wherever fine books are sold
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