The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1)

by Mark Reynolds

  His hand froze on the handle of the diner door. Where had he been before? He had vague recollections of meetings and mergers and multi-national conglomerates, but like that time in the desert, he could recall none of the details. It was like a dream fading with each passing moment, details breaking away, becoming lost.

  The little shit was trying to take that, too!

  Leland went inside, unsure what he hoped to find, but refusing to stand still even for a moment. He would get out of this. It was possible. If Jack could remake reality, then he could do it again—and if Jack wouldn’t, Leland would do it himself.

  The cook leaned his fists on the counter, eyes narrowing. Two waitresses in short outfits the color of pasty mint candies looked up from waiting tables and frowned. Even the few patrons in the place seemed to find him interesting enough to warrant their attention. Leland glanced down at himself, and was ashamed.

  “I was mugged,” he said, trying to avoid the curious stares.

  “Clinic’s down the street,” the cook said, his stare hardening. “Police are two blocks past.”

  “I … I just wanted some coffee.”

  “Coffee’s fifteen cents,” the cook replied, scowling. “You got fifteen cents? ‘Cause if ya got mugged, I expect you don’t. And this ain’t no soup kitchen.”

  Leland’s hand dug into his pocket, skirting the jangle of keys—probably keys to the cab; maybe his apartment, too. But who knew where that was, or what it was like? Oh God! —and came up with a small collection of coins: two nickels and six pennies, all of which looked like they had been rescued from a sewer drain. “I have fifteen cents.”

  The cook nodded. “Then you got yourself a cup of coffee.”

  It was a transaction now, pure and simple; no friends, no enemies, just money. Money made every man equal, freed you from the dangerous, difficult judgments you might otherwise be forced to make. No one was any better or worse, simply richer or poorer. Respect was not earned any more than power or trust or salvation. It was bought. The first rule of commerce—something he remembered from that distant, former life—money was everything; anyone who told you differently was selling something.

  Leland sat down at the counter, a cup of coffee set before him. The other patrons returned to their conversations, his short-lived drama having spent itself out early with no real intrigue. “Sugar’s an extra penny,” the cook remarked. “And I ain’t got no cream, so don’t ask.”

  Leland placed all sixteen cents on the counter, what he supposed might well be all the money he had left in the world, and said, “Let’s splurge.”

  The cook shrugged indifferently, sweeping the ugly pile of coins away before tossing Leland a sugar packet from below the counter. He studied the packet carefully. A penny’s worth of sugar, he thought before shaking it to chase all the grains to one end, tearing it open and pouring. Might as well get my money’s worth.

  He sipped carefully, wincing as hot coffee hit open cuts in his mouth and lips. But in spite of that, Leland was glad; coffee was a simple comfort in a world where nothing was simple anymore.

  Behind him, the door opened, the cook looking up in surprise. “Uh … can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m here to meet someone and I’m afraid I’m running late. I hope I didn’t miss him.”

  Leland placed his coffee back down on the counter and turned. He knew the voice, knew who he would see standing in the doorway before he turned, his hands tightening into fists, a muscle in his jaw thrumming. “Jack!”

  “Mr. Quince,” the Caretaker replied amiably.

  The Caretaker wore a wide-shouldered overcoat, gray and unweathered, over a coal-gray suit, a maroon tie. His hair slicked with gel, a pair of prim, wire spectacles, the lenses dark, his eyes imperceptible. It was not an outfit Leland had ever seen him wear; not one he could even imagine the slacker Caretaker in. This was a power suit for the power hungry; he recognized it, remembered dealing with those who wore them in a previous life—his previous life. Energetic, eager, ruthless, as savage and vicious as any predator. He remembered liking their kind very much—their drive, their initiative, their servitude.

  “You know this guy?” The cook hooked a thumb doubtfully at Leland.

  “Well enough,” Jack said, locked into Leland’s angry stare. “We have some things to discuss. Why don’t we sit in that empty booth over there?”

  Despite an overwhelming urge to wrap his fingers around Jack’s throat, Leland picked up his coffee and walked to the booth. The most important thing—more important than anything else—was getting out of here: out of this diner, out of this town, out of this world! And Jack—fuck all! —was the only one who knew the way.

  The cook bristled. “I don’t suppose I could get you something to eat?” he began crisply, a prelude to his this-is-a-restaurant-not-a-park-bench speech.

  Turning sharply, Jack said, “As a matter of fact, yes. I’m hungry for breakfast, and I’m in a hurry.” The Caretaker produced a crisp twenty-dollar bill from his breast pocket, and the cook’s eyes widened. “Do you have eggs?”

  “Well … yes—”

  “Fine. Two eggs, sunny-side up with toast. White if you have it, wheat if you don’t. I like my eggs runny, so don’t overcook them. I don’t suppose you have any biscuits, and perhaps some sausage gravy?”

  “I can make some,” the cook nodded, eyes riveted to the bill.

  “Excellent. Throw a couple of biscuits on there and don’t skimp on the gravy.”

  “No, sir. But the problem is—”

  “Problem?” the Caretaker asked, his tone suggesting that whatever it might be, it rested squarely on the shoulders of the cook and no one else. “What problem?”

  “Well, sir, it’s still early.” The cook’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I ain’t got change for that kind o’ money, sir.”

  The Caretaker looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t need change. I need breakfast.”

  He left the bill behind on the counter and went to the booth, the cook following like a once-fed stray, snatching up the money as he passed. “Can I get you some coffee with your breakfast, sir? I just brewed a fresh pot. I can even offer you real cream.”

  Leland shot the man a hateful stare, but the cook only glared back, an expression that suggested anyone with only sixteen cents shouldn’t be angry about the availability of cream he couldn’t afford anyway.

  “Yes, coffee,” Jack agreed. “That would be wonderful. Bring me a cup and keep it filled.”

  “Right, sir. If there’s anything you need, you just holler.” And the cook dashed away to the backroom to get the supplies he needed for the Caretaker’s breakfast.

  “What the hell was that about?” Leland demanded.

  “That was about breakfast, Mr. Quince,” Jack said earnestly. “Most important meal of the day, and I have a craving for biscuits with gravy and some nice, runny eggs.”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Leland hissed, leaning closer. “I know you’re behind this. I know you think you got me by the short hairs, but—”

  “Here’s your coffee, sir,” the cook said, placing a cup of coffee in front of Jack—cleaner than the one he offered Leland—and half a dozen packets of sugar. Then he noticed the enraged expression on Leland’s face. “Are you sure he’s a friend of yours, sir? I could … well, you know.”

  Jack simply shook his head to the offer. “You mentioned cream?”

  “Of course, sir,” the cook said hastily, placing a small pitcher on the table, one he’d carried out with him but apparently forgotten. “Fresh from the dairy this morning.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said dismissively. “I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

  The man smiled and hurried back to the kitchen.

  Jack turned to Leland. “Don’t waste time sniping, Mr. Quince,” he said placidly. “I won’t be here for long, and you have a choice to make. This is your opportunity. You only get one.”

  Leland knew where this was going; he’d known the moment Jack pulled ou
t a twenty-dollar bill to pay for a meal that probably cost $1.25. He’d played this game too many times not to recognize it. Jack was humbling him, making up the rules so that he would win, and gloating over the results. He expected Leland to snivel and beg. Please, Jack, please don’t let me spend the rest of my life in a miserable shithole like this. Please take me home. I’ll do anything. Anything. I’ll repent and be a good person, I’ll be considerate of others and give to charity and donate blood. Anything. Please! Well that wasn’t how it was going to go down. “I still know who I am. I may be down, but I’m not out; not by a long shot. I’m not going to beg and grovel, and certainly not to the likes of you.”

  The Caretaker only stared back at him and shook his head. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Well once, maybe, but not anymore. Things change.”

  “People don’t.”

  “They can, if properly motivated.”

  The cook was back with Jack’s breakfast, biscuits under a layer of gravy thick with sausage, the salty aroma of spiced pork rising off the plate. Beside them, two eggs, the yolks jiggling dizzily like a pair of sightless eyes. They seemed to fix on Leland, a mocking stare, and he felt his belly tighten with sudden pangs of hunger. He wanted to be revolted, but the sight of Jack’s breakfast made his mouth water. How long since he’d last eaten?

  “How’s that for ya?” the cook asked, looking on expectantly.

  Jack sliced into one of the eggs, the yolk bursting open with bright yellow ooze. “Excellent.”

  The cook nodded happily, adding another, “If you need anything, sir, holler,” before leaving.

  Leland sipped his coffee, but it tasted weak and flavorless. He wanted eggs and bacon and maybe a Danish. And knowing he couldn’t have them made him hate Jack even more. “That shit’ll kill you,” he said blackly.

  “Eventually,” Jack remarked with toneless indifference, digging at the gravy sopped biscuits. “But you’re a lot closer to that door than I am. Listen carefully, and you’ll actually hear the squeak of the gurney wheels beneath you.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Forget I said anything,” Jack said, favoring his meal to Leland’s dark expression. “You’ll probably live a very long life—miserable, broke, and unhealthy, but long. Unless that problem with your bowels turns out to be more serious than you thought. But forget about that for now. In case you haven’t figured out the scale, I could have bought breakfast and lunch for everyone in this diner with that twenty, and still got back change. So what do you figure your chances are of making thirty-five dollars before tomorrow night, seeing as how you don’t even have money for gas? And you can forget those slips of paper in your wallet. You lost all your savings on the ones you scribbled out when they bellied up. The other ones are good picks; you and everyone else know it. They’re well beyond your means, anyway; pie in the sky. The only block of stock you own is barely breaking even, a weak, unsteady software company constantly chasing yesterday’s technology. You hold onto it because it means you still have something, even if it isn’t much. Low priced shares, no dividend, no growth; sell the block and it won’t even buy you out of your current troubles. Not exactly the portfolio you’re accustomed to, but like I said, things change.”

  Leland watched as Jack pushed the hot yolk from the egg with a corner of toast, using all the care and precision of a barbershop surgeon suppurating an abscess, and felt his hunger wilt. No empty prognostications or hollow threats and taunts, no, Jack was being his painfully honest self, as straightforward as a hammer. He might be enjoying the grisly demise of Leland’s life, but he was not embellishing upon it one bit. The one hundred shares of stock Leland owned of Xever-Gapp totaled thirty-two dollars less broker’s fees and taxes. And Leland also knew it was his most prized possession, a narrow wedge carved from a pie that only a few ate from gluttonously, and which most only dreamed of tasting. And this afternoon, he would have to sell it, or come tomorrow night, he would be beaten or killed by a pair of cops that knew—and that galled him more than anything else; they knew—they could do it simply because he, Leland Quince, wasn’t worth a damn, dead or alive.

  “I suppose this fits your sense of irony?” Leland observed. “Make a rich man poor. I’m just a plot twist to you, aren’t I?” He tried to take a mouthful of coffee, a vain effort at dramatic punctuation, but bumped the cup against his injured lip causing an involuntary yelp of pain, and sending coffee dribbling down his chin.

  Jack extended a napkin indifferently and answered: “No, not really. This only serves to illustrate an option. This is what you have. This is where you are. And unless you choose correctly, this is where you’ll stay. You see, someone offered me a choice once, and I took it. I didn’t have to. At least, I think back and tell myself I didn’t have to. Maybe we only think we have choices, Mr. Quince. Maybe the decision was made already. Options seem so much clearer when you’re looking back on them.”

  “Everyone makes their own decisions, Jack, good or bad.”

  “Maybe,” Jack conceded. “But some choices don’t feel so much like choices. If you’re drowning, and someone throws you a rope, you can choose to grab it or to drown. The choice is still yours. But maybe it’s not so much a choice at that moment of decision. Maybe it’s something we do because we have to. Maybe it’s something in our own particular nature. Lions don’t choose to eat gazelles over eating grass. Eating gazelles is in their nature; they wouldn’t think to do otherwise.”

  “So what? You’re here to offer me another alternative, is that it?”

  “Very good,” Jack nodded. “You’re catching on. It’s entirely up to you, and I won’t pretend that this alternative will be easy, but it will be more to your nature. Maybe that’s the thing, after all. Maybe your nature has already chosen the way you’re to go, and the only thing your brain does is rationalize why it’s not choosing the other fork in the road.”

  “Get to the point, Jack,” Leland grumbled. Different parts of him were starting to ache from the earlier pummeling, and he wanted nothing more than to go home (wherever that was?) and fall asleep after a couple aspirin and a few beers (beers?).

  “The point is you’re going to have to choose, Mr. Quince. This is the known.” He cast about at the diner, the street outside, the alley beyond. “The unknown is out there if you want to go that route, but you won’t know what form it will take until you open the door. And, of course, by then it will be too late. All I can tell you is that it’s more suited to you, to a man who likes his word to become law, his whim to become edict. Don’t think I don’t know you. I do. I admit I dislike you, but I don’t hate you, even though you gave me more than enough reason to. The fact is I’m the only one who actually understands you, Mr. Quince. There’s a little of me in you. A little of me that could be vain and arrogant, intoxicated off power and wealth and the respect it commands. I won’t deny it. But it’s not me, understand? I’m just not cut out for it.”

  “Listen Jack, whatever lessons you think you’re imparting while you bolt down that cholesterol plate are getting a little lost. What do you want me to do?”

  “That’s the point, Mr. Quince. I don’t want you to do anything. The question is what do you want to do? I’m giving you a choice. This is your one and only chance to show me up, prove you’re the better man. I didn’t give the others a choice; I simply gave them what I thought they needed. They got destiny. No options or forks in the road. No paths less taken. They go where they’re driven. Not you. I’m giving you a choice. This world, this life, is choice A.”

  Then the Caretaker reached into his pocket and placed Leland’s Rolex on the table between them. But where it was broken upon his arrival at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, now it was working, the second hand ticking rhythmically around the dial, steady as a heartbeat. “This is choice B.”

  Leland stared blankly at the timepiece.

  “You’re right, of course,” Jack added quickly. “That’s a little vague. Let me fill you in.
In exactly four minutes, a little girl is going to be in the middle of the crosswalk exactly half a block down the street at the main intersection, to your left as you leave the diner. A car going too fast trying to make the yellow light is going to hit her at forty-two miles per hour. She’ll be killed instantly. All of this will occur in exactly…” he looked at the watch face, “three minutes and forty seconds.”

  Leland only stared at him, his face a cleverly constructed mask that barely hid the confusion and panic leaping up inside of him.

  “Now you’re saying to yourself, why should I care? Good question. The answer, as I’m sure you’ve guessed already, is that you don’t belong here. You’re displaced in this world, and that’s causing havoc with reality; nothing cataclysmic yet, but things are a little skewed. You’re holding the fracture between two realities open, polluting this world with the other, and vice versa. You’re a kind of snag in the tapestry, and so long as you remain, the rip just gets worse and worse. Reality is locked in a quandary. No one knows you’re to blame because, frankly, you’re too insignificant to notice. But I expect you’ll notice. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve noticed it already.”

  Leland snatched Jack’s hand in a tight claw, catching him with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. “If I don’t belong here, get me out.”

  “I can’t. It’s out of my hands now. You wanted the right to choose, remember? Well, now you have it. Choose to stay and the fracture will close, leaving you stuck here until the day you die. And I wasn’t lying about that bowel thing. Or you can follow the advice of a little girl who’s going to die shortly if you don’t hurry.”

  “What?”

  “You’re running out of time, Mr. Quince. The only one who knows where you’re supposed to go and how you’re supposed get there is about to cross the street a little too abruptly. She won’t look both ways because she thinks the car will have the good sense to stop for a red light. She’s only seven, and she doesn’t yet realize that reality seldom does what you expect it to do. She’ll die, and with her, your only way out. But it’s your choice, Mr. Quince.”