He turned his jowly face toward us, a movement so gradual that it gave me this crazy detachment, as though I watched him look at me from a place other than mine. He seemed to measure me with his eyes, as though dissecting every detail of my appearance. When he spoke, his voice rumbled and his words made no sense. “Thinner, hair different, but identical. One inside”–pointing to the metal door–“and one here. Both inhabiting where only one should.” He looked at Sammy. “Do you comprehend?” She nodded.
“I don’t,” I said. “When we were in that jelly, I touched a truck.”
He waved a broad hand, quieting me. “Two roads met here, crossed on another, and the force of their meeting sent waves rolling in widening curves, encompassing worlds.” He shook his head, as though trying to clear it.
“Laureanno’s Law?”{note 19} Sammy asked, and Scooter nodded. She looked at me.
“I’m not understanding any of this,” I said. I needed to go outside, into sunlight. Scooter reached toward me with a tree branch arm and rested it on my shoulders. The contact warmed me; I hadn’t realized I was shivering.
“Laureanno fits the circumstances,” he said. His voice filled the space, embracing me with as much force as his arm had. “Only the one who belongs can remain. Expelling the other should regain the balance.” I pictured his voice flowing down the hall and bursting out into.... I had no idea where the hall led.
Scooter lifted his arm from my shoulders and turned to the door. It creaked open at his touch. He stepped through and gestured for us to follow. Inside, a man lay on a hospital bed with the back part elevated so that he sat up. The tall policewoman I had seen around town with Scooter stood on the far side. Her gaze absorbed me the same way Scooter’s had.
19
The giant policeman slipped into Shelling’s cell, a silent arrival, unnoticed until his bulk commandeered Shelling’s vision. Shelling could see two others beyond him, a man and a woman, framed by the doorway. The giant policeman and the two newcomers approached the midget woman on the platform. The new woman looked familiar, but everyone he saw now reminded him of someone from his past, someone he had worked or slept with in California, and that was impossible, as though his brain, rebelling at his treatment, formed associations that, although they defied logic, served to give him an anchor in this otherwise disorienting experience. He looked at the other newcomer, expecting to be reminded of yet another figure from his past. But instead of a face, the other had a patch of glowing, blue-green mist.
Shelling twisted his body; the padded straps cut into his wrists. “Let me go,” he said, surprised that his voice was working again.
20
Sammy peered at the face of the man in the hospital bed and sucked in her breath. “You’re right. They are the same.” She looked back at me. “Patrick has to be the right one. But how could the double have broken through?”
“What are you talking about?” When I stepped forward, it was my turn to gasp. The man on the bed had my face. Like Scooter said, hair different. The man’s pupils were dilated, and he jerked his head around, looking at each of us in turn, over and over.
Scooter approached the tall policewoman. She was only an inch or so shorter than he. Scooter glanced at a notepad she held, then back to me. “What do you see?” he asked. I looked at him without responding. He waved an oven-mitt hand around. “This room, this person, what do you see?”
“A room. A man in a bed. He looks like me. What am I supposed to see?”
Sammy reached for my hand. “This can’t be easy,” she said. “I’m here. I’ll help you.”
“Help me what?” I pulled my hand away from hers.
“Only one of them can stay,” the tall policewoman said. She spoke softly, but her husky voice carried.
Scooter nodded. “But which?” he asked her, not looking at me.
“This one.” The tall policewoman pointed to the man in the bed. “He says he’s an actor.” She said “actor” as if it were an explanation, and Scooter bobbed his heavy head up and down in agreement.
Scooter turned to Sammy. “We brought him in earlier, but let him go. We felt the waves crossing, but weren’t positive he was the signifier.”
The tall policewoman came over to my side of the bed and stood between me and the other, extending an open palm toward each of us as though using them to probe our identities. She had her back to me, and when she spoke, she directed her words to Scooter. “This one, in the bed, he has a past, but his misplacement distorts his perceptions.”
“And so he must be removed,” Scooter said.
“Removed?” I said.
The tall policewoman lowered her hands and turned to face me. “Sent back to his world.”
I looked up at her narrow face, trying to read it, looking for some sign of concern. I pointed to the man in the bed, who had stopped his erratic head turnings and locked his gaze on me. “This person. He’s somehow a version of me?”
Sammy stared at the guy in the bed for a moment, then turned, and came over to me. She took my hand again. “Your counterpart is an actor. That’s his connection.”
“You must perform the separation,” the tall policewoman said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t be stupid!” Her spittle brushed my cheeks. I started to yell back at her, but she grabbed my shoulders and pushed me against the door. The back of my head struck its hard surface, and I cried out. My vision turned yellow, black, and red. I flailed my arms but couldn’t break her grip. A rush and confusion of voices filled the room–Sammy’s, Scooter’s rumble–then the tall policewoman released me.
Scooter spoke: “Please believe me. Officer Mercurio has never raised her voice or struck anyone in her life. The other’s presence...distortion. The removal must be done now.”
My head throbbed. The tall policewoman, Officer Mercurio, her face was still too close. Her eyes, a dull brown, stared into mine and I couldn’t break contact, couldn’t blink. She spoke, her voice low and soothing: “Rare and marvelous though it is, a moment of exquisite alignment of script, cast, and performance can cause a new reality to emerge, inhabited by the characters involved in that moment.” She said some other things, but I couldn’t grasp any of it. At some point she stopped and turned away.
Sammy held a hand near my face, but didn’t touch me. “You understand now, don’t you?” she asked. “Not everyone here knows these things.”
Officer Mercurio unsnapped her holster and withdrew some kind of automatic pistol. I knew nothing about guns. I took a step back. “No–I can’t shoot a person.”
She pulled my hand over the grip and squeezed my fingers around it. “Has to be the head. Move closer.” When I didn’t move, she gripped both my shoulders and shook me. “Only you can perform the restoration. Now.”
“What happens if I don’t do it?”
Officer Mercurio screamed–“You’re a fool! A base and ignorant man–you have no idea what forces are involved, the consequences we all live with, the powers shaping our lives.”
Scooter quieted her, then spoke: “She’s right. You don’t know. That isn’t your fault, none of it is your fault, but that doesn’t change the circumstances. If you do it, no harm will come to your counterpart. The only other choice is for us to erase both of you.”
I stepped nearer to my counterpart and raised the gun. It was too heavy for one hand, and its weight seemed to increase the longer I held it–a fell instrument of dire construction, I thought. The man in bed stared at me with my eyes, but I had the impression that what he saw differed from my vision of the room. Did he see a man, a man with his face, pointing a gun at him? Holding the gun with both hands, I sighted down the barrel.
As I fired, I saw the bullet from both sides, its slow, straight path away from me but also flying into my face, so close now that I could read the letters on its tip.
The recoil threw me against the door. The other separated from me, and as he slipped away, I had a sense that he was returning to something.
My head throbbed even more and my vision blurred. Someone removed the gun from my hand. Sammy’s arms encircled me, and I took solace in her touch.
21
Shelling watched a black, circular body pass before a fiery disk. The movement of the black shape captured his attention. He couldn’t look away, and as he watched, he lost all desire to try. Something–some warning he had once read about direct viewing of solar eclipses–flashed across his consciousness. The black shape kept moving until it obscured the fire, and in the ensuing darkness a cloud of chilled air covered him.
22
When my eyes were working again, I moved closer to the bed. I needed to see what I had done. The man’s head had exploded, painting the wall in bone and blood. I gagged and tried to back away, but my knees gave out. Scooter was there for support on one side, Sammy on the other. They carried me into the hallway and lowered me to the floor. The reddish lights of the hallway spun, forming whirlpools of virulent illumination and color. I reached toward them, spinning too, floating up and out, joining the evening air, where a pale moon hovered and trees sighed like long-lost lovers.
23
Danielle Saul was bragging to Shelling about the photographs that she had commissioned from Crain, or some name like that, a famous celebrity photographer whom Shelling had never heard of. He smiled and nodded, the way people did in Hollywood. She had just finished filming a movie that was scheduled to be the summer’s biggest hit and was expected to be her final step toward super-stardom. Shelling felt detached from the conversation, from the party around him, which was in the cliffside home of Rod Spender, the television producer responsible for Precinct 10, Gravity Man, Fresno Boulevard, and many others. Shelling had worked on several of them.
He left Danielle Saul and drifted into Rod Spender’s “trophy room,” the walls of which were covered with photographs, awards, and assorted memorabilia (Duggal’s helmet from Gravity Man, a Fresno Blvd. street sign, a baseball uniform from some long-forgotten sports drama). Shelling’s attention wandered across the pictures, recognizing the original cast members of Blake’s River, posing in the town where the opening credits had been filmed. He couldn’t remember the real town’s name. On the show, they called it Springdale.
The faces in the photograph, the buildings behind them–he had been there, and not solely for his guest appearance on the show. Another time, but when? Finding the photograph somehow threatening, he backed from the wall. What had happened to his house? The simplicity of his vegetable garden had given him such pleasure. He felt a sudden loss...intangible yet rooted deep within him. His eyes teared, but for what was he weeping? The patio doors stood open, and he stepped through them to the terrace. Crows called from a line of trees overlooking the ravine. He stared past them, toward a distant house, memorizing its shape as though it held a key to his future.
And beyond these hills lay the city. Encircled by the arteries and veins that propel the life-giving metal corpuscles onward. The edge of the continent crossed by more roads than could ever be traveled. Roads, the reflections of roads, railroads, paved roads, busses, cars, houses along the way–the center of the earth is paved and waiting for the first drivers to arrive.
“There you are.” Rod Spender slung an arm around Shelling. “Looks just awesome from here, doesn’t it?” Shelling agreed. “I’ve got something for you,” Spender said. “If you’re tired of masked aliens. This’ll be more like playing yourself.”
“I’d like that,” Shelling said. “I might even use my real name.”
24
I woke on a couch in an unfamiliar room. Soft light came through the drawn curtains, a lacy, ivory-colored material through which I could see an overhanging branch and, beyond it, the street. A car passed, its lights sweeping along the wall. An odd mix of antiques and rough-made furniture decorated the room. The coffee table in front of the couch appeared to have been constructed from wine crates: the words Cincque Terre appeared repeatedly over a logo of intertwined vines.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. They were irritated from my contact lenses, a gritty tiredness that made thinking difficult. I reached into a pants pocket for my eye drops, but couldn’t find them. After this...day I’d had...all I wanted was my damn eye drops.
The groan came out before I could stop it. I held my breath, listening. I didn’t want anyone to know I was awake until I knew where I was. Sounds emanated from another room–water running, then the clang of metal against metal. I got up and, taking care to keep my movements silent, walked toward the source of the noises. An arched doorway separated the living room from a dining room, and through the dining room door I could see into the kitchen, where Sammy stirred something in a pot on the stove.
I pulled back, not wanting her to see me. I couldn’t talk to her, not after.... How could she be cooking dinner as though nothing had happened? I crossed to the front door and turned the glass knob carefully, opened it just enough to squeeze my body through, and escaped into the evening air.
The area was familiar; Sammy had one of the houses overlooking the town. It would take me at least ten minutes to reach the bed and breakfast. As I walked, I kept expecting her to come after me. At the corner I turned onto the street leading down to the town. The train station was between me and the bed and breakfast. I looked at my watch, which showed ten minutes past eight. There was an 8:50 train. By midnight, I could be back in the city, in my own bed.
I increased my pace, letting the slope pull me. I had no time to explain the situation to the proprietor of the bed and breakfast–what would I say?–or to retrieve my suitcase. I had only packed for a couple of days anyway. I could leave it. But I needed to pop out these damn contact lenses.
Life on the street appeared serene, but in the faces of those who passed, I sensed knowledge of the events that had transpired in that funhouse, or whatever it was. These people...this town...repelled me. I wondered what would happen if that tall policewoman, Officer Mercurio, saw me. Or Scooter, that comical name I had once applied, now preposterous. A sense of unreality clothed the air. I couldn’t bury the feeling that I was escaping something–that if I had stayed with Sammy, eaten dinner, gone to bed with her after, I would have trapped myself in this town forever.
By the time I got to the train station I still had fifteen or so minutes. I bought a ticket from the machine and went back out. I wanted to run, but I had to stay calm. Best not to be noticed. The bed and breakfast wasn’t far. The foyer was empty. I heard voices off to the left, in the lounge. My room was at the top of the stairs. I fetched what I needed and returned to the street in less than a minute.
~
By the tracks, I stood watching the steps up to the platform, obsessing on the notion that I would soon view, emerging from the top of the stairs, first the heads of Scooter or Officer Mercurio, then the rest of their bodies as they climbed each step, propelling them toward me to prevent my escape.
Only one other passenger waited, a man in a dark suit standing near the tracks. My position, without the anonymity of a crowd, exposed me to too much scrutiny. I walked farther down the tracks, selecting a bench hidden by an overhanging shadow, and I waited.
When the train came, it brought the relief of knowing I would soon be home. I boarded, choosing a seat in the car opposite the steps. A jolt of dizziness shook me, and I slumped forward. That room, what I had done there–it all returned to me, and I watched, a flash of memory so real I felt that I was there again, though apart from myself. The shot, and that man–my doppelganger–the impact of the bullet with his head. His body twitched, rose a few inches, then settled. A glow seeped from him, pinkish like the breathable jelly, and the glow conformed to his features, aped the contours of his body. Where the head had been, the luminescence formed a replacement, solidified, then began to contract, shrinking and taking the body with it until nothing remained but a pink silhouette on the sheets. Then it too faded.
I stared out the train window, trying to see beyond the dark platform, to the town, to the maple tr
ees and peaceful streets, Sammy’s house. My fingers cramped, and my right arm spasmed. I relaxed my hand–I had been clutching my contact lens case. The raised L and R indented my palm. I unscrewed the caps and popped my lenses out, relieving my tired, gritty eyes, and with my glasses on, I resumed my vigil.
By now, Sammy would have noticed my absence. What was her role in this? She had given me some crap about living with the knowledge. And Officer Mercurio, what had she said–inconceivable that a character would fall out of its reality. At least I had been here to help send him back to TV land, or whatever the hell it was. But was that his reality...? I jumped up from my train seat. Officer Mercurio, she had said my counterpart was an actor. That was supposed to mean something. And she said he had a past. Implying that I didn’t?
Sammy wanted me to stay. And despite everything that had happened today, I trusted her. The train door swished shut.
“No, wait,” I said aloud to the empty car.
I scrambled over and tried to pry open the door. “I want to get off.” I drummed my hand on the Plexiglas window, yelling for someone to open the door. There had to be a conductor near. Pain shot through my hand–looking down, I saw I had torn my fingernails on the door. With a jerk and shudder, we pulled away from the landing. As we rolled out of town, the tangible darkness, with warm sticky fingers, invaded the train.
Notes
{Note 1}
Various Artists, Songs of Route 66: All American Highway and More Songs of Route 66: Roadside Attractions, Lazy S.O.B. 1997 and 2001. This type of music has a certain nostalgic appeal for some. Oh, that open road, the wind in your hair. The feeling, however, loses something in its transcription to a compact disc player in a mid-size, plushy Japanese car that reduces road noise to a happy little hum and is not meant to be driven with the windows down. Still, there remains the satisfactions of the centerline, tires eating distance, and viewing the sky through tinted glass.
In Springdale Town Page 6
