Secret Lives

by Jeff VanderMeer

  At first, Gordon helped jump-start these improvements in his own neighborhood. At three in the morning, dressed all in black and slathered in an insect repellent an incompetent friend told him was loathed by dogs, he began to sneak out of his home armed with a potted plant and/or some ceramic marvel—an owl, a small fountain, a replica of the Taj Mahal constructed meticulously from a mold fashioned over several months. Thus equipped, Gordon would plant his plants in the yards of lawn-retarded neighbors and add his ceramic gift to some part of the outside of their home.

  However, the panic of sudden alarms, lights, and enthusiastic dogs in love with his repellent scent, and a pulse suddenly at a dangerous level, persuaded him to at least go farther afield. (“My neighbors would never appreciate it anyway,” he often mutters.)

  So now he roams to more fertile fields, having bought a van to help convey the instruments of his secret life. Every Sunday morning, some sleep-droopy husband or wife pads out in ridiculous slippers to collect the newspaper, only to notice a new cascading trellis of bougainvillea—or, even more likely, a huge, man-sized ceramic owl, plunked down by the front door, to draw attention from the, to Gordon’s expert eye, ridiculous rattan rocking chairs that some “aesthetically challenged moron” had placed there previously.

  Gordon, as may be obvious by now, is much more than a garden-variety ceramics and plant enthusiast. He may fairly be called “obsessed.”

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  DAVE DRISCOLL

  Dave Driscoll enjoys shooting guns. For many years he dreamed of meeting Philip K. Dick and Sam Peckinpah on the same night. Despite serving as a professor of humanities, he long understood the impossibility of this, both parties being dead. However, since the summer of 2005, he has spent no little time and effort on the most practical next best thing: building a time machine. He knew (and still knows) that in 1973 Dick and Peckinpah met in a Berkeley, California, bar for about half an hour. If he could only focus on that particular moment, he would be able to make his dream a reality.

  Experimenting with several psychotropic and psychedelic drugs, varying the electrical currents passed through his extremities, carefully watching the documentary Le Jete more than one hundred times, and using stolen equipment from the labs of friends in harder sciences than the humanities, Driscoll finally managed to create precisely the right conditions in the right combination on October 29, 2006. Before strapping himself onto the time travel table, Driscoll—as he always did before a “PDKSP Attempt,” as he called them in his journal, to avoid discovery—strapped two holsters with handguns to his sides and held onto an old shotgun he’d picked up in a thrift shop. “You never can tell what you might meet,” he once wrote in his journal. “Old flames. Old enemies. Other people traveling into the past.”

  Driscoll materialized in the bar at its farthest end—ahead of him, the bar itself, the stools, the bartender, the open door, a rectangle of light against the gloom, and framed by it: Philip K. Dick, sitting back on his stool, and Sam Peckinpah hunched over in deep monologue, both nursing whiskeys.

  Peckinpah had his back to Driscoll, but Driscoll still recognized that distinctive back from the many old photographs he had examined late at night as part of his research.

  Dick, meanwhile, was staring right at Driscoll, mouth wide, a look of horror on his face. Driscoll realized Dick had just seen him appear out of thin air.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Driscoll said, aiming his shotgun at the floor. “I’m not from the government. I’ve nothing to do with your wife or any ex-wives. I just—I’m just a big fan of you both.”

  Dick was still making his amazed face, managing to say to Peckinpah, “He’s got a gun. He appeared out of nowhere. It’s just like I said. Just like I said.”

  In slow motion—or so it seemed to Driscoll—Peckinpah turned, saw Driscoll, took in the weapons at his side, the shotgun pointed down, and drew his own gun, a Colt .45, and fired. Driscoll jumped to the side and the shot missed.

  “No, no—don’t fire. I’m a friend!” Driscoll shouted as the bartender ran out the door, followed by as many customers as thought they could make it. Dick and Peckinpah stayed put.

  “He’s a fucking demon or a devil or a wizard or something,” Dick ranted.

  Peckinpah said nothing but fired again, right over Driscoll’s head, where he lay protected by an overturned table.

  “Don’t shoot!” Driscoll cried out. “I’m from your future. I just wanted to meet you guys.”

  “Shoot him, Sam,” Dick shouted. “He’s a government assassin—from the future!”

  Peckinpah fired twice more, striking the wood of the table and sending up chips.

  Driscoll returned fire for his own protection, but aimed high. The smell of gunpowder and smoke got in his nostrils. His heart was beating fast. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. Not at all.

  Peckinpah, who had remained silent the whole time, fired a fifth time, an inch from Driscoll’s head.

  Mercifully, the drugs began to fade and the electrical currents pulsating through Driscoll’s extremities turned off, and he slowly began to return to his own time. As he left, he saw one last time the horrified look on Philip K. Dick’s face. What a paranoid bastard, Driscoll thought.

  When he came to on his time travel table, he realized he never wanted to see Peckinpah or Dick again.

  THE SECRET LIVES OF

  RICK AND PEGGY

  Rick works as a commercial credit officer at a bank and has an obsession with H.P. Lovecraft. This might be why he refers to the bank’s managers as “The Old Ones” and believes that at night they creep into the vault and shed their human disguises, shuggothing and writhing about, bathing in the money that carries the secret Masonic Old Ones symbol on it. In his secret life, unknown even to his good friend Peggy, Rick is a 24-7 Lovecraft apologist. In a secret bungalow outside of the city, Rick keeps sophisticated tracking equipment so that he can monitor the media day and night. Whenever he comes across a negative reference to Lovecraft, he fires off a missive via snail or e-mail, using one of his many aliases. He considers this his holy duty. For example, when in the summer of 2004 the writer Jeff VanderMeer scoffed at the hideous effectiveness of the giant penguins in Lovecraft’s In the Mountains of Madness for a Locus Online article, Rick immediately sent a letter to the editor under the name “Gerald Rebarb” that stated in part, “Clearly VanderMeer has never set foot in the Mountains of Madness.” It is a little-known fact that ninety percent of all letters and emails to the editor concerning Lovecraft originate with Rick.

  Meanwhile, his friend Peggy ostensibly works as a stylist, making drab products look beautiful for advertisements. In truth, her main job is protecting Rick from the Old Ones that work at the bank. As the great-great-great granddaughter of Dexter Ward, and privy to all of the secrets of the Mad Arab, Peggy has considerable experience in this area. Using as her latest cover the search for a new house, Peggy spends a lot of time saving Rick’s ass from various plots by the Old Ones. For it is Rick’s fate to be an unknowing nexus, or portal, into the Old Ones’ universe, which is the real reason he obsesses over Lovecraft. He cannot escape his fate yet has no inkling of it. He certainly doesn’t understand Peggy’s worries about his belly button. “Keep it clean of lint,” she repeatedly tells him. “Make sure your pants or shirt covers it at all times,” she says. “Who knows what might come out of it?!” Rick’s fairly sure nothing is coming out of it, but Peggy knows better. One day, an entire universe might devour our own.

  Sometimes Peggy is even behind the bank building, battling the green tentacular strength of the Old Ones, while oblivious Rick works in the front, attending to clients. Naturally, this takes a lot of energy and physical prowess on Peggy’s part, so it’s only understandable that she might from time to time get irritated. When Rick asks how her house search is going, Peggy says between gritted teeth, “It’s going fine.”

  It’d be going much better, she thinks, if the Old Ones didn’t gravitate toward you like bears to honey pots
. It’d be going much better if you weren’t such a portal!

  Still, she’s his friend for the long haul, and it could be worse. At least he’s not writing missives day and night in support of Lovecraft or something nuts like that, she thinks. Unlike the crackpots Rick’s always pointing out to her in the letters-to-the-editor columns of various respected periodicals.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  GAYLE DEVEREAUX

  Gayle Devereaux lived most of her life in Washington state, but moved to Atlanta, Georgia, a few years ago. She likes to swim in Florida springs and has a son in college named Rob; sometimes, she thinks the two facts are related. Gayle renovated the old house she now lives in, and sometimes her family comes to visit her there. (As does Dan, her talented yet humble boyfriend.) Among her many talents are cooking and an appreciation of good beer. But these particular talents do not constitute her secret life. No, her secret life involves another talent entirely. She’s had this talent for many years, but only recently became reacquainted with it. As a child, she first discovered her secret proclivity, but it long ago became enmeshed in the wash and warp of early memories, as distant as her first encounter with a bumblebee, her first lick of ice cream, her first ferris wheel ride. (Alone, sitting cross-legged in the sun on warm grass, next to a large, long rock eaten through by lichen. The green smell of grass and distant flowers. The feel of the tickly ground. And then the sly scuttle onto the stone: a small brown lizard or gecko, head bobbing, throat pink and throbbing. A trickling giggle from Gayle at the sight, a subconscious thought—a wisp of a thought, lighter than cotton candy—and her secret talent manifested, the lizard become as skillful as any Catskills song-and-dance man.)

  Recently, Gayle’s secret life manifested itself again. Sitting alone outside on her deck in the backyard, contented as she sipped a bottle of beer, a thin line of green—thin as a papercut—sped across the edge of her vision. Turning, she caught a glimpse of a tiny reptilian tail, a clever, narrow eye, claws light as sharpened pencil points gripping wood. And suddenly, Gayle remembered the first lizard, buried in her past, and what had happened on that long-ago afternoon.

  As she remembered it, the lizard on the edge of her deck rose onto its hindlegs and began to sway, foot forward, foot back, foot to the left, foot to the right. And slowly, by the ones and the twos and then the dozens, a torrent of lizards scuttled up to her deck and began to dance and gyrate and even do a little soft shoe, while she watched with a sense of astonishment, but also fear, because she had no idea how she had conjured up this vision, or how to unconjure it. Bright eyes staring up at her. The almost-silent scrape and patter of lizard foot and lizard tail. The faint sounds of delight issuing from their throats. Was she drunk? Were they? And why just lizards? She had no answer to any of these questions. People rarely understand the whys of their secret lives. Sometimes your secret life is just thrust upon you, without explanation.

  But later: in deep winter, in the bronzed dusk of a day when the snowflakes fell slowly and silently onto her deck while the lizards gathered around her despite the chill, Gayle felt a sudden upwelling of emotion, a surge of mingled joy and sadness in which every detail around her was magnified and more intense; it made her shudder and wrap her arms around her shoulders. And she no longer felt the need to know why.

  THE SECRET LIVES OF

  JOHN AND MAUREEN DAVEY

  John and Maureen Davey lead productive, fast-paced lives as the founders and owners of the world infamous “Jayde Design: Building, Computing, & Publishing—Consultancy, Contracting, & Design,” although recently their company split like rapidly mutating cells into “Jayde Design: Publishing, Distributing, & Computing—Consultancy, Contracting, & Design” and “Jayde Designs: Building, Management, & Surveying—Consultancy, Contracting, & Design.” To simplify matters, John sometimes makes up letterhead for himself that reads “John Davey: Builder by Trade, Surveyor by Profession, Writer by Hobby.”

  “Sometimes,” Maureen has been known to say to John, “I think we have taken on too much. Sometimes I think there are small third-world countries that have less work to do than Jayde Design and Jayde Designs.”

  Then John smiles his clandestine smile and the sudden light in his eyes and the light in her eyes display a perfect harmony of secrecy.

  Neither he nor Maureen ever let on to their friends about the particulars of their secret life, however—a life they carve out for themselves in the minutes, the seconds, the moments, at which their over-active brains are not pulsing toward the solution to some multi-faceted consultancy, contracting, or design problem. (It is theorized by one of their friends, in fact, that the energy caused by the firing of neurons in John and Maureen’s heads has been harnessed by the aliens who live on a planet circling a dying star—a white dwarf—and that this energy alone has kept the star from imploding, and thus John and Maureen are not just responsible for a multi-faceted business, but also for keeping alive an entire alien race, although this is, of course, speculation, not a secret life at all, and at no point in the immediate future will John and Maureen change their moniker to “Jayde Design: Publishing, Distributing, Computing, & Enabling the Survival of Alien Intelligent Life Across the Galaxy”.)

  What is their secret life? When they can grab the time, they work together as Inventors of the Impractical—conceiving of inventions that would, perhaps, be universally admired in a parallel universe but which (they realize) may never be appreciated in this one. Together, they draw out the designs, they pencil in the descriptions on graph paper. They debate (over drinks) the pros and cons of each invention.

  “Plastic,” he will say in a stray moment when Jayde Design(s) does not require their attention.

  “Breathing tube,” she will say hours later, in another free second, with an almost lascivious smile.

  “Furniture saver,” he will say, the next day, in the car, with a leer.

  “Pets!” she will reply that evening, over dinner, giving him a long hug.

  Shortly thereafter an invention is born that allows a pet owner to wrap his or her dog or cat in a plastic sheath complete with hole in the back and an air tube—providing for full freedom of movement, but negating any possible injury to furniture from fur, hairball, or claws.

  “No more need to cover the furniture in plastic,” Maureen says, looking down at the finished design, breathless, happy.

  “Cut off the problem at the source,” John says, hugging her.

  “Totally impractical,” Maureen says. “Completely fool-hardy.”

  “I love it!” John says.

  The next day, they will let their idea out in to the world. Curl up the graph paper, stick it in a bottle of glimmery old green glass, stopper it, and send it on its way—by river by tossing into the open window of a car by sneaking it into someone’s briefcase by mailing it to Timbuktu by any of a thousand means.

  John likes to think that whatever their delivery system, their idea will end up with someone or somewhere it can be of use.

  Maureen just likes to think that someone somewhere will be amused.

  Regardless, they are soon onto the next thing. A fashionable handle to clip onto the existing handle of an old suitcase! A suit with small globes of aquariums hanging from it! A pillow that doubles as a hibachi! Just so long as the idea works those few neurons not busy with their day job. Just so long as it is fun, secret, and, above all, theirs.

  THE SECRET LIFE OF

  BOWEN MARSHALL

  Bowen Marshall is an aspiring librarian who believes his sister leads a more interesting life just because, at the age of seventeen, she moved to San Francisco to become an artist and circus performer. However, Bowen is mistaken in his assumption about his sibling. Being a circus performer requires a Herculean commitment of time to repetitive, boring practice, usually in close quarters in smelly, animal-feces-encrusted circus tents inhabited by lots of unsavory, tattered characters who might have looked Romantic and fun from a distance but are revolting up-close. Not to mention the “excitement”
of being an artist. There is nothing particularly exciting about snobbish gallery owners, ignorant art buyers, and slowly starving to death from a lack of steady income.

  Besides, Bowen’s secret life would make even an adrenaline junky Navy SEAL weak with envy. Every night, about an hour into sleep, Bowen begins to dream of a fantasy land. First, the smells come to him: rich sandalwood and the exact freshness of a breeze that runnels across a stretch of clear, clean pond water. Then, the sounds: the rustling of leaves in a sensual wind, the staccato stamp-stamp of some animal moving through the underbrush, a hint of a bird-call, an owl perhaps, flying through the dusk. A taste of lime, a hint of mint. And when he opens his eyes in dream, he is there, with the somehow comforting hulk of a mountain range in the distance, and the splay of moonlight across his hands. He is sitting by a pool of water, in rich, deep mud, and when he staggers to the water’s edge and looks into its depths, he sees not just the reflection of the moon but also his face, transformed.

  Every night, it is a different face, of some creature from myth or nonsense rhymes. Each night, he delights in the power of the creature he has become, whether it be the powerful leg thrusts of the jackalope as it thunders across prairie beneath the mountains’ gaze or the thick muscular slide of a giant snake, belly ridges catching with itchy delight against an underbrush of dead, crinkly leaves. And with each incarnation, the concurrent amplification of his senses: eyesight that can pierce through the bark of trees to reveal the insects tunneling through its pulp; or hearing so acute that he can sense a droplet of water falling from the wing of a wasp in flight a hundred miles away; or taste that can bring him the brine of the far-off, long lost Old Sea, wrapped in the tang of seaweed and salt.