I mixed my first martini at five. The morphine was taking its toll. The ceiling receded and the window looked out over the sea. The nurses appeared to be made of wire, sculpted as a Bertoia chair—pleasingly curving. What did the wire people see? My bones, working their way to the surface.
 
The new work was all in color pencil. When the pain wasn't terrible, the sketches came easily. The gin and vermouth stashed at the bottom of the art box. Ice was available by the nurse's station.  The sound of the cocktail shaker unmistakable—even with the door closed. Fuck it. The prognosis was death.
 
The color pencil sketches were coming along well—a series—wooden doors set in thick stone walls constructed by ancient hand. The work was graphic, and devoid of human figures. The scale of each structure indicated by the presence of a man door hinged within the huge double doors. The large opening designed to accommodate all manner of machine and beast. 
 
The morphine IV tugged at my veins as I drew.
 
A single glass bottle, tinted blue—placed beside each door like a suburban milk delivery. An offering. An invitation. An antidote to life. Drink me and enter. 
 
The heat of the desert apparent, the relative coolness of the alcove felt—sometimes, a glimpse of the sea through an open portal. The drawings were not conjured, but culled, from decades of my watercolors and sketches. 
 
A foray into the desert, my Bedouin Arabic failing, and betraying me. 
 
"This is your door sir. Ahlaan wasahlaan," an old man with broken teeth had said to me as I sat with my markers and sketchpad. 
 
"This is your door sir."
 
A fortress where I could get a decent night's sleep with out having my throat slashed—a wall around a single tree and a well—a carved out place to defend. 
 
"This is your door sir."
 
Those wire bitch nurses couldn't wait to open up the valve on the morphine drip and slam the door on me. What they didn't know, here in hospice, was that I couldn't die. Not that I didn't want to. I had inadvertently wished for, and been granted, immortality. Unfortunately, there were no conditions. No stipulations. I would suffer, watch loved ones fall. 
 
I mixed another drink.
 
The call from the embassy had come early in the morning. The invasion was coming from the North. The airport shut down. There was bombing in the south. A high-speed ride across the desert a fantasy. Chaos and small arms fire in the streets. The ring roads soon blocked by tanks.
 
"It was best to lay low," they said on the telephone, "Prepare to stay in hiding for an extended period." The receiver clicked.
 
I wasn't even in my own apartment. My girlfriend was on holiday, and I was staying at her place in order to be closer to the airport. We were supposed to meet in Spain the following day and travel to Alhambra—to sketch and paint and photograph. That wasn't going to happen now. Every business was shuttered, the steel door pulled down.
 
A number of my colleagues, I would learn later, had been picked up on the street—transported to military sites and strategic locations—held, as a deterrent to allied attack.
 
I was the only occupant in the block of flats. All the expatriates were gone for the hottest months. I blacked out the windows—filled light leaks on the doors. My girlfriend, Liz, had keys to her neighbor's flats. She would water plants—drop mail on the counter. I would be a hostage in this building for months. I gathered all of the food and propane tanks from the other units. There wasn't much food to be had. Frequent power outages made cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer a wise move when leaving town for July and August. If there was any good news, my new home had a Bertoia bird chair and ottoman in the living room. I would spend hours and days in that chair and inside my own head.  
 
I tried to read books that I pulled from the other apartments—airport novels, travel books, some poetry, and a leather bound copy of The Arabian Nights, with an uncracked spine.
 
Most of the time I spent drawing. I was drawing every day. There were numerous Middle Eastern treasures collected by the other tenants in the building. I raided every apartment for hand-hammered pots and bowls, water pipes, brass coffee pots, and teacups. I set up an Anglepoise lamp with a bare bulb—each still life illuminated by a single source.  The lamp, taken from Elizabeth's drafting table, could be manipulated to find the perfect intensity and shadow length—sometimes softened with a piece of 1000H. 
 
As I laid down thousands of pencil marks and deep black shadow, I thought of Elizabeth's work—her watercolors so elegant and simple. The curve of a dome a single brush stroke, the paper unmarked where the sun blisters the eye—a vanishing cobblestone street a brush rotating in her fingers—a few typical bricks. All this in contrast to the technique I was now using in hospice—thousands of pencil marks filling sketchbooks as a madman attempting to render the door, the portal, I so desperately needed.
 
I had been shown the door in an existential sense—yet I hadn't paid close attention to the incantation. 
 
"This is your door sir." "This is your door sir." "This is your door sir."
 
In Elizabeth's flat, I held an ageless brass oil lamp—recovered from the living space below. A wisp emanated from the spout. I couldn't help but to inhale. The ceiling receded, and the window looked out over the sea.
 
"I don't want to die," I said aloud—breaking my own vow not to talk to myself while in hiding. My lungs froze, embedded in ice.
 
Positioning the brass lamp before the bare bulb, I brushed fine sand from the surface with my thumb—a damaged area exposed on the belly. I expressed desire for life. My wish had been granted. I had become the vessel.
 
I regarded the treasures amassed before me—a tomb in brass in lieu of gold—a few trinkets for the afterlife—perhaps payment for the oarsman who would take me across.
 
I made my innocent wish not to die my first encounter with the lamp. Life came on as an attack—crying with the first breath I drew. 
 
The power appeared an apparition—a cool stream of serpent-like smoke ushered into my lungs. Isolated as I was in this block of flats, I went to the lamp daily—trying to replicate that first encounter. There was no change in venue—no magical transportation. I lived on coffee, rice, and tea—the smoke a replacement for food, Elizabeth's delicate scent on her things—a substitute for love.
 
I started to see everything happening at once. I saw Liz, so beautiful, leaning over me, coming to my aid—a stranger, rushing to help me as I had been knocked to the street by a cart in Abu Dhabi—the dizzying sun a burning halo behind her head.
 
In the compressed future, presented by the lamp, Liz would witness a car bombing in the souq—she would rush to the injured to comfort and administer first aid. An ambulance would arrive on the scene—packed with explosives, it would detonate—killing Liz and the other peaceful, caring people.
 
Every distraction would be removed from my path. Every lover, friend, acquaintance, dispatched—as I spun around the sun for eternity. My only charge, was to carry the contents of the lamp—through the door.
 
The embassy called on the evening of this revelation. There was a seat for me on a flight to Frankfort in the morning. One hundred and fifty-three days after their initial call, they would send a car for me.
 
At a debriefing in Washington, my only assessment was a plea not to destroy any historic site or ancient fortress—protecting and locating the door my only mission.
 
I couldn't protect Liz. She was convinced that I didn't want her to go back because I had left her flat a shambles, defiled her panty drawer, and robbed her neighbors. Liz would die. In the parlance of the Empty Quarter, "It was written." 
 
Now there was renewed urgency to complete my task, to concentrate my efforts—the contents of my body cavity growing impatient for delivery—magnetic imagery of my abdomen showing a raging, spiraling, sandstorm.
 
I opened the sketchbook. The pencils had chosen today not to cooperate—they were laughing and twisting as I held them. The pencils danced around the room. They started to taunt me—chanting in the singsong style of schoolchildren.
 
"This is your door sir." "This is your door sir."
 
They swirled about my head, and jumped just out of reach as I made a play for them. I looked at the sketch before me—the blue bottle awaiting consumption. The pencils weren't taunting—they were celebrating. This was the door, and I knew where to find it. The pencils clattered to the floor.
 
The nurse opened the tamper-proof door on the medical equipment—her chrome wire fingers catching the light—knuckles appearing as welds. She held cool, clear morphine—the bottle tinted blue by the sky.
 
I would need to rest before my journey. She commented on my thirst—the sound of the cocktail shaker now in my windpipe. I would book a flight to the gulf in the morning. I would need to hire a car.
 
Soon I would return this vessel to the shifting sands—my bones, working their way to the surface.
 
 
© Jon Montgomery 2019