The Keeper
by Ocean Lover
<3>
Jim Hollenbeck sat on the dais and nodded his head. The last speaker against the proposal before the city council sat down.
The meeting had gone longer than anyone had expected. It was nearly eleven. This was only the first reading of the measure, too. He'd have to be sure to schedule a whole lot more time for the second reading.
He already knew the proposal would move to a second reading. Emily, their contrarian, would be against it. He expected everyone else to be in favor.
"Thank you, Mr. Townsend," Jim said. "Is there anyone else to speak tonight?"
He looked around the sparsely populated room. Only a few people, including the stringer for the Bugle, were still seated.
"Then I will call the vote on the motion to move this proposal to its second reading. Mr. Temple?"
"In favor," the elderly man said.
"Miss Redtree?"
"In opposition," the ageless woman said in her clear voice.
"Mr. Bartleby?"
"In favor," said the town's largest motel owner.
"Mr. Keaver?:
"In favor."
"And I am also in favor. The motion passes to second reading." He stopped for a moment and tried to catch his breath. The conclusion had been predictable, yet his heart was racing as if he had run a race or been stuck in the middle pages of a griping thriller.
"That was the final item on tonight's agenda. I call the adjournment," Jim said. He stood up at the same time as the other commissioners.
Jim Hollenbeck took four steps before collapsing on the dais.
Wesley Temple, one of the town's doctors, rushed over to his side. "Call for an ambulance," he shouted out to Emily Redtree.
He arrived at the party and was annoyed at how far away he needed to park his Lexus. Lots of people, but no valet. Not a good sign.
He walked to the door and knocked. The door opened and a willowy blonde man stared out at him. "I'm Lawrence," came the words.
"Of course you are. Come in. A lot of the others are already here." The thin man showed no signs of doubt, no flickers of unrecognition. He was a good host for a party like this. Lots of people, some famous, mostly just a pack of cravers and wannabees eager to surround themselves in reflected glory.
There were days when he felt the same scorn for himself. He didn't care for the glory, but he did love the reflected, refracted energy he could find in a place like this.
"My name is Theodore, but you can call me Tonton." He smiled again. "The house special is a kir royale, but we have some wines and a few other things. Some of the boys are already upstairs in the play area. Feel free to dive in. Everyone's sharing themselves tonight." Tonton stopped at the bar, gestured toward the drinks, and headed back toward the door.
He wasn't sure he could control the flaring up on his cheeks. He had been told about the party, but apparently not everything about the party.
He walked around the room to get a sense of the geography of his surroundings. He found a stairway leading to the second floor. He found the kitchen and dining room. He couldn't help but notice the six people sitting at the dining table being attended to by four other people under the table. The grunts and groans gave away the game.
He walked up the stairs and continued his observations. He could feel the waves of energy rolling off the people upstairs. He didn't actually get any enjoyment from participating in the activities he saw. He did help create additional energy in those around him. The energy felt good, nourishing.
He found a chair in one of the rooms outfitted with two beds, plastic sheets and all. The eight or nine people were so engaged that they didn't notice the observer ^Ö or at least didn't comment.
At some point in the evening one naked man wandered over to him and proceeded to reach towards his still clothed body.
"Leave it," Lawrence hissed. "I like to watch." The naked man sat down next to Lawrence and played with himself. His eyes never left Lawrence's face. The watcher of the voyeur evidently got a lot of pleasure from what he saw.
Lawrence sat in the room for a long time, he lost track of the time, with his eyes closed and his mind open. He felt as though the passion around him would choke him at particular moments in the night. He opened his eyes occasionally to take note of the changing mix of performers.
He left sometime after daybreak. Tonton was asleep on top of the dining table, with a large, muscled individual still mounted up on his back.
This energy was lovely, passive. He felt strong and clean. The problem came later. He'd empty quickly and feel more decimated than before he had gone in.
He also clicked through the individuals he had considered and probed. Nothing new, nothing worth keeping in his collection.
He fell into his car and turned the ignition. Homeward bound he plunged.
Brian Thomas sat in school and tried to write an essay. He couldn't focus on the assigned topic.
What he wrote came out sounding like, "Othello killed his wife because he couldn't stop thinking about her alleged infidelity. I can't stop thinking about someone, too, but I don't want to kill him."
He stopped writing again. I don't have a damn thing.
The essay wasn't due until the end of the week, but the teacher had been sufficiently unprepared for today's lesson and gave her students the time to begin their submissions.
Brian could see and hear the other pencils in the room scraping across the paper, then back again to cross out a word or add another thought. Little robots, plugging out their formulaic thoughts onto their papers. Nothing troubling them, nothing stopping them from complying.
By the time the buzzer signaled the end of his time in this classroom, Brian had only written one paragraph worth keeping: "Understanding Iago and Othello are uninteresting problems compared with realizing why Desdemona lays down and passively accepts her fate. Why didn't she fight for herself, her life? Why did she surrender without a fight? Why didn't she get out of life what she wanted?"
<4>
He sat up, still in his human form, and felt enervated. He hadn't fed since the gluttony that ended yesterday morning. And it had been pleasure food, not memory food. The sadness he often felt after dining in a well of pleasure energy still overwhelmed him.
The intensity of the energy was great. The quality was the problem. Uninteresting people offer up uninteresting energy. He remembered someone explaining how Chinese food could feel. Massive quantities, low quality; a feeling of uncomfortable, queasy fullness replaced by an overwhelming, unpredictably timed feeling of hunger.
He had never touched a Chinese buffet, but he understood acutely the analogy. He felt it in every inch of his being at this moment.
The last time he had felt this disturbed was three years ago in the middle leg of a quick jaunt to Europe. The impetuousness of his position had ensnared his mind and he wanted to return to old family sights. The man next to him on the eight hour trip wouldn't stop talking. He kept plunging into topics and kept expecting responses.
He had taken to using only human forms of transportation a hundred years earlier. The shock-and-awe of his native means of arriving at a new destination aroused too many questions in these more inquisitive, more densely populated times.
He had tapped this loud man, not to feed, but to silence him. The overwhelming banality of what he absorbed left him ill for next three days. He couldn't feed on interesting energy sources; he couldn't purge himself of the tainted influx, either.
Why he had stayed at that party last night was a question he couldn't answer. The brutalism he saw intrigued him, even though the participants were, from his perspective, mostly uninteresting. He had been in awe of the way each of these forms had given to the others. A few, of course, simply took and took, but the minds he touched were mostly a more generous, giving audience.
He groaned and rolled over on his rarely used sofa. Even the softness of his bed was discomforting today. He tried to stand up and felt himself buckling. He reclined again on the sofa.
"Never again," he said. The uninteresting fodder in the world would stay outside from now on.
"I'm fine, Tammy," Jim said to his oldest daughter.
"Daddy, people who are fine don't collapse at their own council meetings."
"We'll look back on this in a few weeks and laugh about this together, right?"
"Always on the fair side of the coin. I knew there was a reason I liked you."
"That and I make the best pancakes on a Sunday morning."
"That's true," Tammy said. "I'd love to stick around for a few days so I could get some of those pancakes, but I'll probably have to head back tomorrow."
"Don't trust Tim with my granddaughter?" Jim asked. He erupted in a brief, emphatic laugh.
"Still laughing at your own jokes, Dad. Yeah, I think Tim is a bit clueless right now. Three year olds are tough."
"Yes, you were. So was Brian. Gene didn't become an ass until he was 15. I could barely stand to talk with him until he turned 25 and became human again."
"Did you call Brian or Gene?"
"Am I supposed to think of everything myself," Jim asked.
"And why are you avoiding them," his daughter shot back.
"Give the sick man some wiggle room here."
Tammy stood up and stretched. A few cracks ripped through the air as she twisted her torso.
"It's a great chair. They should prescribe them for outpatients."
Jim laughed.
"I'm going to be fine," he said again, his tone quieter and more serious.
"I like to worry," Tammy said.
"Worry about Sara. I can take care of my battered old carcass just fine."
"What would Mom say about that?"
"She would say the same things we all remember. `You look hungry, eat some more beets.' You know, I haven't touched one since the day she passed."
"We could change that," Tammy said.
"Now I know you're trying to kill me," Jim said.
"Kill; heal, it's all a matter of perspective," she said.
Jim was quiet a moment. "You know, if you're hungry, I might be able to talk the nurse into sneaking us some food."
"Now who's trying to kill whom? I'm not even sure I'd trust the cafeteria."
"Okay, to be blunt, would you give this old man a few minutes of alone time?"
"Ahh," Tammy said. "Sorry to be dense. I'll traipse back in five minutes or so."
"Give me fifteen. Sometimes the plumbing is more of a drip hose than what it should be."
"Did I need to hear that?"
Tammy stood up. Jim looked at her again. "You know, I'm glad to be speaking like this with you. It's nice. I'm sorry it's inside this miserable hospital."
Tammy nodded her head. "It's been nice." She left the room.
When she returned twenty minutes later, her father's lifeless body was the only thing in the room.