Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus

had zoomed into the homes and shops that would keep them during working hours, that he was exaggerating his indignation. The whole thing was a wash. He was worked up for nothing. No one was watching and he was putting on the fucking Ritz, for God’s sake, as if there was something so terribly wrong with someone kissing him at night.
    Was he really supposed to care at this late date who kissed him? Wasn’t it enough to be kissed by someone? What was the saying: beggars can’t be complete and total losers?
    At a restaurant called Altstadt he ate a full breakfast of cold cuts and long potatoes. It was early but he ordered a beer, and it tasted so good he ordered another. He smoked and had a coffee and sat looking out the window at a small, distant piece of the Rhine. Then, on his way out, he realized he was still hungry and sat down again for a piece of chocolate cake. He pointed at it through the display case and they brought over, instead, a cake that turned out to be citrus and ginger, which he devoured. He had another coffee and could have sat there all day but he had plans to make and if he didn’t get moving, he was going to be late.
    After his treatment that afternoon, Julian woke to a surprise.
    “Your friend is here,” said the nurse.
    Friend, thought Julian. Not possible. The word made him picture animals. Pets he’d never had.
    “Your friend waits there now,” said the nurse, pointing up.
    If he followed that direction, he’d leave the building and float through the sky before crashing to the ground. Head in this direction, sir, even if it takes you over a cliff. Waiting for you, maybe, will be someone who cares. Trust us.
    Julian cleaned up in the patients’ bathroom. On the way out a nurse flagged him over to the doctor’s office, where his very own doctor, who he hadn’t seen for days, was hanging film in a light box.
    The doctor greeted Julian and waved him over to a stool.
    Julian, instead, stepped up to the light box. The scan was mostly black, a portrait of darkness.
    “Is this me?” Julian asked. “My head?”
    The doctor nodded.
    “We are looking at your scan while you are here this day.”
    Julian studied the doctor. He was trim and his skin glowed. Like most doctors, the fanciest ones, he seemed offensively healthy, as if he kept the real secret of vitality to himself. He would live forever and people would crumble and die around him. You were supposed to feel like death after seeing him, in terms of your complexion, your posture, your whole body. If necessary, this doctor would eat you to survive.
    “Well, we see something sometimes,” the doctor was saying, “in this kind of white blood person. The scan is really. This is why we scan. And,” the doctor continued, “we have this discovery to show you.”
    The doctor pointed his pen at a scuff in the film.
    “A little discovery. You can discover it here.”
    The doctor traced the outline of nothing that was, perhaps, a shade lighter than the nothing around it.
    Maybe Julian could see it. A very small shape, like a cloud.
In his brain
. Weather passing through. If you could draw a headache, this is what you would draw.
    “This is a concern,” said the doctor, looking at Julian hopefully.
    “Okay,” said Julian. “Where is it?”
    That mattered, right? His entire personality could be explained by this cloud. A cluster of rogue cells pushes on a nerve, blocks a vessel supplying blood to the deep limbic system, and suddenly you’re funny, witty, and charming. That’s what a personality was, the blood thirst of rogue cells, a growth in the mind.
    The doctor pointed again at the cloud.
    “It is here,” he said, more slowly.
    “No, I mean in
me
. Where is this thing?”
    Julian tapped his head. Maybe it wasn’t in the brain itself.
    “This is not our work.”
    “You didn’t make this tumor?” Julian grinned.
    “Well, tumor,” the doctor said, as if there might be some doubt. “We see a shape, yes? We do not make that name