A Fold in the Tent of the Sky

by Michael Hale

  The only one not moving was Charlie. He’d climbed up on an old stage-prop buckboard; he just stood there through it all, pointing at her as she sped by, zeroing in on her with his outstretched hand, straight out from his chest like a half-raised Nazi salute.

  Simon tumbled back, in slow syrup motion that rippled into a stuttering, strobing bone-rattle of a ride. Through eddies and vortices that finally spit him out into deep silence—it was as calm and compliant as the bottom of the pool after a particularly good dive.

  Fight your way home, fight your way home. Come up for air. He was lost for an instant—disoriented, not knowing up from down. This way, that. Till he finally broke the surface.

  Back in his room at Calliope. In a cold sweat. He was trembling; and his heart was trying to break down the door of his chest. Not like a real dive, he thought. No crowds cheering this time. Silence . . .

  And his arm was on fire: he felt a searing line of pain below his elbow. Jesus. Fucking bitch was trying to kill me.

  He had touched down in the right place, at least; he knew that much. The right night? He wasn’t sure. He looked over at his clock radio; he’d been out of it for twenty minutes. His lungs sparkled with smog itchiness when he breathed. He opened his eyes, pulled off his wool hat, and sat up. There was a shallow wound about three inches long across his right forearm.

  Maybe I imagined it all; maybe I just fell asleep and dreamt it all. Cut myself with my own fingernails. He remembered watching this hippie chick, Linda Kasabian (it was her, he could see her name in the background of her thoughts, written on the sky of her consciousness, the sky like a blue canvas tent with graffiti scrawled across it, airbrushed with her identity), finally get in the car and drive off. Mission accomplished—maybe. The fucking cut on his arm, though—that was definitely not part of the plan.

  Thanks a lot, Linda baby. It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? We’ll always have Spahn’s Movie Ranch.

  I touched down; I was actually there. It was easier than he’d ever imagined (harder than he’d ever imagined!). Making history before I was even conceived of. Corporeal manifestation in the past.

  Changing history.

  In the morning he would check it out. One thing altered, one small incident—but what about the ripple effect? How much damage, how much repair work? Maybe nothing. All a dream. If that’s the case, why does my fucking arm feel like it’s ready to fall off?

  23

  Sharon Tate—the comeback years . . .

  Simon woke up dreading the day to come—his morning hard-on like a bookmark in his dream: where the sound of a slamming car door had slammed the book shut. Waking up to the day as if it were another lap of the pool in an Olympic event he had no interest in—time trials that went on forever. No. You don’t do that anymore; stay away from the water. No more fucking gravity. You never have to hit the water again. Not even the sky’s the limit. His arm still hurt and that brought it all back—where he had gone last night, what he had done, or not done.

  He got out of bed and opened the blinds—the sun was shining, the brush on the side of the hill random, clinging—if it had changed since yesterday, he couldn’t tell. It amazed him that here, even in the tropics, life could be so fragile, on the dge.

  He turned on the TV. CNN—the continuous bowel movement; the same shit as yesterday. New shit happening! Live! This war, that war, a train wreck in Italy—a mud slide in Peru; a bomb going off somewhere, another somewhere else—different brands: Irish, Syrian, Serbian. All the same ingredients, though. Semtex getting its fifteen seconds of fame again. He flicked through the meager range of channels for a few minutes and came up with nothing that would suggest a shift in the flow of things; his modest intervention, even if it were successful, overwhelmed by the flood of human endeavor—acres of it, aeons of it.

  He had pulled a zeitgeist heist. Zeitgeist. The Germans had good words for everything—long-winded some of them, but right on the money. Schadenfreude was his favorite. When he’d first discovered it he realized that he’d always lived by it to some degree—the pleasure in the misery of others.

  His own memories of the event hadn’t changed. Sharon Tate dead; she and her friends murdered by Charlie Manson’s Family. That song of Charlie’s Guns N’ Roses had recorded a couple of years ago—all in his head, part of the big picture. The old big picture. But there was a second picture of things overlaying parts of the old one now—a subtle, out-of-phase variant on the original theme.

  He had to find something outside his own head—something that would prove he’d actually done it. Maybe not finding any references would be evidence enough. Being dead was what had made the Tate chick memorable, not surviving. Millions of people survived every day.

  He would have to seek out something concrete, literal. Give Sharon a call, maybe. Ask her what she’s been up to lately. Sharon, my dear, how’s little—no, he must be my age by now, older. Is he a little shrimp of a guy with a Roman nose like his daddy? Or does he have your—I know, he’s an actor, right? One of those second-generation Hollywood types who show up every couple of years in a Movie of the Week about regular folks dealing with some tragedy, in the last segment learning something about “Life” with a capital Elgar riff on the soundtrack (or is it Elton John these days?). AIDS, or frostbite; affirmative action; chapter eleven bankruptcy; false memory syndrome—that’s a good one; he could rewrite the book on that one. That kind of career? Have I got him pegged? Gets to go on Larry King every now and then and smile through all the questions about you and his Dad, rather than him? . . . well the same to you. I’m sorry I called.

  Maybe this is happening all the time, he thought, heading for the john. Like the future—we’re always changing the future. Why can’t the same be said for the past? It occurred to him then that someone not even born yet could be fucking with all the stuff in the past; and all the shit he was doing was orchestrated by someone else. He shut down his thinking on that one—it could only lead nowhere and everywhere.

  To the so-called library with the big TV. On the way he passed through the lounge and grabbed a coffee. The doughy muffins in a basket as usual, the tea bags, the nondairy creamer, just like always. Polythene Pam curled up in an armchair reading a book, wearing shorts today; her legs not half bad if they weren’t the color of something out of the frozen poultry section.

  As far as he could tell the coffee tasted the same, a bit stronger today maybe. He remembered that in the original version of events Abigail Folger, the heiress to the Folger’s coffee fortune, had died along with Sharon Tate and the others that night in 1969. He wondered whether her salvation could have worked its way down into this one cup of coffee. Thank you, Mr. Hayward; here’s a little bit more caffeine for you. The ripple effect.

  Not enough books on the shelves to call it a real library—travel magazines, old issues of Time, a few salt-water-wrinkled paperbacks. A row of aging hardbound also-rans probably bought by the pound or the yard. But he found a Random House one-volume encyclopedia, a huge Webster’s dictionary, and an outdated Leonard Maltin movie guide.

  She was in there: Sharon Tate, with a list of movies he’d never heard of; a few he had: Nashville and Superman III. And another that almost sounded familiar, one of Woody Allen’s: Crimes and Misdemeanors.

  He looked up Nashville, just to be sure. Yes: 1975, directed by Robert Altman. A huge list of characters: Ned Beatty, Lily Tomlin, Henry Gibson, Geraldine Chaplin, among others—there she was: Sharon Tate.

  He went out to the patio, then over to the lounge, listening for things, looking for them—signs of what he had done, the ripple effect washing over him: a wave of panic. Pam wasn’t wearing her headphones, and there was something in her eyes when she looked up at him—a quick dismissal as usual, but something about her had changed. He was afraid all of a sudden; the mess he could have made of things, the ripple effect again—that image in chaos theory: the flutter of a butterfly’s wing turning into a hurricane.

  He walked out to the road with its
long view of the shoreline, where the planes seemed to come right in on top of the line of palms and the terra-cotta roofline of a distant hotel. Tourist planes from all over the world landing at Juliana Airport. Nothing this morning, just the dazzle of the eastern sky. He could see the diagonal edge of the huge casino sign about a mile down the road, intact like last night, the neon filigree dark now, like burned-out fireworks. The foot-square sign about the security system planted in the shrubbery near the wrought-iron gate; it was like a designer label on an expensive scarf—obvious and almost inviting disaster, comparisons, challenges. It looked familiar but how could he tell? His memory wasn’t that good; he didn’t know everything. Even the stuff in books—he would be second-guessing it even if it rang true.

  Stop. Give it up. Get on with it. Why the fuck aren’t you jumping up and down? You passed the test. You did it, for Christ’s sake. Now go out there and make some fucking money.

  He would phone his sister, Beth, and ask her outright. About Sharon Tate. She knew shit like that: details about things that didn’t need details. Maybe that was what the dream had been all about: the door slamming, Linda Kasabian driving away. The door slamming in one version of things, opening in another, letting in all that carnage—the bookmark a reminder.

  And he remembered both versions—which made sense, since he had orchestrated the changes. It came to him then: an image of Charles Manson with his own web site, and at the same time the absolute conviction that he didn’t have one; that his White Album was clean again and there was no more bad “Helter Skelter” vibe attached to it. RehabiliTATEd! Yes! A pun. Why the fuck not?

  He saw his own hard dick breaking the surface then, up and out of the water—a fleeting sense of it being his future, the unlimited potential of it all. Flying off into space, then coming to earth. Gliding down to the surface—like those strider bugs walking on pond water. Moving through life on a meniscus of wealth.

  But the money wouldn’t be enough, he realized then; there was a yearning for something else. Notoriety, celebrity, infamy—all those notions that transcended wealth. It all came down to being remembered for something—anything, as long as it rated some sort of public recognition. Something to do with why he couldn’t really connect with the mystique of Sharon Tate anymore—the new, resuscitated version. Bits of it, yes—vague recollections of a second-rate, has-been actress that he’d lost interest in when he was about fourteen. The other version seemed so much more appealing somehow. What made “bittersweet” so much more interesting than “saccharine.”

  Maybe he should phone her up and tell her he’d saved her life.

  No. He couldn’t do that—she’d think he was crazy.

  24

  . . . touch and go

  She never liked touching men, anyone for that matter—for one thing she was ashamed of her hands, the nail-biting thing—but Pam decided she wouldn’t mind touching Peter. She had already touched him—sort of: when he bought the jacket in town. His shoulder through layers of fabric, fabric that wasn’t really his at that point so it didn’t count.

  The fact that he was like her, good at what she did, the psychic stuff, made it easier somehow. Or maybe harder and that added a challenge to it: how to survive getting halfway close to someone who could meet you more than halfway. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to draw a line as to how close he could get. That’s what she was afraid of—not being in total control of the situation.

  “I want to show you something.” Pam took his hand and pulled him to his feet.

  His eyes there with her own. Feeding the same optic nerve. The wave passed through her, on to somewhere else—a clashing of waves canceling each other, it felt like. Letting go as soon as she could.

  He was still thinking about dinner, and suddenly talking about it as he stood up and followed her out along the path to her building. “We can get a car and find a restaurant in town if you want. Or just walk to that place on the beach.” He was giving her options, choices; he was very good in that way—not wanting to impose—but sometimes it was nice to be just steered along a fixed path, just like she was doing to him now.

  In retrospect the sensation of his hand having been in hers was a neutral thing—a fuzzy memory—as if the analgesic of anticipation, this barricade thrown up against the shock of it, had done too good a job. But it was hard to say; making contact like that was so unpredictable; sometimes all she had to do was touch a doorknob and voices and sensations would be so loud she wanted to blow her brains out. Other times when she really wanted to get right inside someone’s head she came up with nothing, not a glimmer—no matter how hard she tried.

  But at least she was prepared for whatever came next in their relationship. She would let him get close and fall back on it for a change, she decided. A big soft cushion. Let herself go. Let him break through the stockade around her heart.

  His eyes. Brown chocolate eyes—the way they could change like his voice; he’d pull a dialect out of thin air and unconsciously change the way he walked, shaped his face. And she’d discovered that she was good at it too—sparring with him in a Scottish accent over imaginary meals of disgustingly complex recipes for things like New Age haggis: “You take the heart and lungs of a Rolfer and add the spleen of a Phrenologist—”

  Maybe he wouldn’t want to get close to her for the same reasons. Two people keeping each other at bay: a stalemate, or like what happened in the cold war—she’d read about it in a magazine on the plane—mutual assured destruction, MAD. Both sides armed to the teeth so neither would risk making the first move.

  But on the way to her place he turned to face her and when he caught her eye he just leaned in and gave her a kiss: a big friendly smack on the lips. Okay, she thought. That went well. A bit tense but, you know, in the right direction. But he held on to her shoulders, turned her face into the light from one of the spotlights that hung in the palm trees and looked at her for a moment, saying nothing, his face expressionless; then down at his feet with a sort of bobbing low nod, as if he were debating with himself. Reconsidering. Like it was a rehearsal for something.

  Later in her room, in the dark, she opened her drawer and took out the old notebook—what she had been going to show him. She got back on the bed and walked toward him on her knees; his chest white but not as white as the sheet. Little black hairs swirling like what an electric mixer does to the surface of whipped cream—a pattern of abutted swirls, the tangent all the way down to his navel.

  “This is my résumé, but it’s not really a résumé because no one’s ever seen it,” she whispered in a jerky, kidlike sleep-over excitement, lying down beside him, getting comfortable, her arm circling his pillow. The notebook was resting against her thigh—cold.

  She could hear his breathing: deep, slow, deep. In the thin light from the window (moonlight, she realized then, an almost full moon) she could see that his eyes were closed. Touch him. Go on, see what he’s dreaming about. Me, I bet. He’s dreaming about me. She put the thought out of her mind—there was something about it that made her think of rape—and rolled away from him. Pam pulled the sheet up to her throat, making sure that her feet were nowhere near him.

  25

  . . . his favorite number: “Route 66”

  Gordon was in the pool doing his morning laps while Simon watched from as close to the edge as he would allow himself, which was a good fifteen feet. He waited till Quarendon emerged near the ladder—this usually signaled the end of his workout. His long hair was like seaweed as his head broke the surface, dirty gray seaweed matted against his suddenly shrunken skull.

  “Gordon, my friend,” Simon said, thinking, Jesus, what am I saying? “Friend.” I hate this guy; I truly despise everything about him; he’s like my father without the good clothes. At least his father had ended up with a bit of money, seeing the light when he was thirty, getting a haircut and a tie, deciding to get his foot up on to the corporate ladder, hanging on to the first couple of rungs of it till he got a bit of money invested, qualified fo
r a decent pension.

  Gordon was standing there dripping beside him now, dabbing himself with a towel that looked like it had been used to plug a drain—all frayed at the edges, some odd color that used to be burgundy or cherry, one of those decorator colors. “We got to talk, Gordon. You were going to show me the map thing, the trick with the map.”

  Simon turned away from him and walked back to his table, to his Wall Street Journal and his John Lennon biography, not wanting to be near the guy for very long, knowing what came next—the flick of the head, like a dog getting out of a bath spraying water all over the place. He didn’t want Gordon’s secondhand pool water getting on his new shirt, on his bare skin.

  “You do it with a map the way you would any other site, except it’s more concentrated—you can cover more ground but you can miss a lot if you’re not careful.” Gordon spread a map of the mainland USA across the table. He opened his suitcase of divining rods on the chair next to him and took out what looked like a length of fishing line on the end of a chopstick. He leaned back and fumbled in his pocket—he was wearing a “Bud” T-shirt now, and a pair of cutoffs he’d pulled on right over his wet bathing suit—till he came up with a bunch of keys. He worked one off the ring and tied it to the end of the line. “This is the key from the first car I ever owned. A ’fifty-two Studebaker—did I ever tell you about that?” Simon shook his head before he could stop himself; but Quarendon surprised him. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. Great car, fabulous car—I keep this key on the ring all the time so it’s close to me—part of me, you know what I mean? Works better that way.” He sniffed loudly and leaned forward, dangling the pendulum arrangement over the map. “The trick is to concentrate. You know, clear your head, get the key hanging perfectly still.” He sniffed again and closed his eyes. Simon could smell the chlorine on him; his hair was still wet and a trailing hank of it delivered one fat drop of pool water to a sizable chunk of Nevada. “Okay. I’m ready. Ask me something. No. How about, uh—give me the name of someone you know real well and I’ll tell you where they are—”