by Richard Cox
“How would I let you down?”
“Don’t get any funny ideas in your head.”
“What do you mean, funny ideas? You’re locking me in a cell.”
“I mean don’t think you got this whole thing figured out, because you don’t.”
A little jolt of adrenaline shoots into my bloodstream as he swings open the door and motions for me to step inside the cell.
“What do you mean, ‘this whole thing’?”
“Get in the cell.”
“Wait. What did you mean when you said that? What whole thing are you talking about?”
The officer puts his hand on the butt of his baton.
“I’m not gonna ask you again.”
“Please,” I say, moving in the direction of the open door but still facing him. “Please, if you know something, will you tell me? I’m confused and I’m tired and I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Buddy, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. All I meant is don’t be thinking you can escape. Don’t think you’re going anywhere.”
“But you said—”
“I don’t know how much you had to drink, but I think you need to sleep it off.”
I’m all the way inside the cell now. He moves to shut the door behind me.
“Please.”
“You’ll be released in the morning, assuming you’re sober by then. You’ll need to arrange for someone to pick you up since your car will be impounded. Your license is automatically suspended but you’ll receive a temporary one before you’re discharged. Is there someone you can call to pick you up?”
Gloria. God, I never called her. She could be worried sick. Or she might not have checked on me at all.
“Can I make a call right now?”
“’Fraid not. No calls ’til morning.”
“But my wife doesn’t know where I am. If I could just call her and let her know I’m okay.”
“Sorry, sir. It’ll be morning in a few hours. You can call her then.”
“Come on, man. You must have a wife. Put yourself in my shoes.”
The officer doesn’t answer right away. We stand there looking at each other. A beat of time passes, and another. Then a look passes across his face, a ripple of confusion, as if something just occurred to him that he cannot reconcile.
It hits me.
“Are you married?”
“I don’t answer questions, perp.”
“But you are, right?”
“That’s enough. We’ll see you in the morning.”
“What’s her name? Do you know her name?”
The ripple of confusion becomes a wave. A tidal wave. The officer shuts the door, which locks audibly, a loud thunk! that reverberates throughout the Plexiglas cell. He turns to walk away, but then looks back at me, and by now the confusion is fear.
“You don’t know her name, do you?”
I don’t know if he can hear me, but he keeps looking in this direction. His features are slack. His eyes look vacant, even lifeless.
People say they want to know the truth, but really they don’t.
THIRTY-ONE
You ever notice how you sometimes miss little details that later seem obvious and glaring and you wonder how you ever missed them in the first place?
There is a toilet in the back of the cell, right in the middle of the wall. This is something about jail I hadn’t considered, that if I want to pee, I’ll have to do it in front of my cell mate and anyone else here who can see me. Which is a problem since I’m one of those people with a shy bladder. You know us. We can’t make anything come out if someone else is in the room. The valves won’t open. Hell, I know a guy at work named Tom Mix who can’t use a public toilet at all, ever. He can only go if the toilet is in someone’s house, like where he can see wallpaper and monogrammed towels and fluffy bathmats. He intentionally lives in a neighborhood less than two miles from work, and every time he has to pee he gets in his car and drives home. Consequently Tom doesn’t drink much water during the day. He doesn’t drink anything with caffeine in it. Poor guy.
My case isn’t as severe as Tom’s. For instance I have no problem being interrupted while peeing. Like at the beginning of the story when I saw (or think I saw) the guy in the church bathroom, I was totally fine. But now…I have no idea what I’m going to do when I have to pee, because I’ll have to at some point, right? After all the alcohol you would think I’d be going every five minutes. In fact—
In fact, when exactly did I pee last?
I roll the timeline backwards, to the cop approaching my car, to sliding off the road, to Sherri driving me home, to seeing their three names in that book, back to the bar and drinks with Dick, back to work, to my argument with Gloria, to the Ambien hallucinations, to the Ant Farm game, back back back.
I haven’t peed since I saw the man in the church bathroom. Since I saw Philip K. Dick in the bathroom. More than two days ago.
That can’t be right.
Okay, so I haven’t exactly been at the top of my game the past few days. I could easily have forgotten. Think about how many times a day you pee. Do you remember all of them? Even most of them? Really the only bathroom experiences we ever remember are the traumatic ones.
But I can’t remember a single instance of using the bathroom since Sunday morning.
Not possible, except…
“It’s not as hard as it looks,” someone says.
I turn and get my first good look at the fellow on the cot. He’s lying on his back, hands laced across a huge barrel chest, wearing a denim, button-down shirt with pleated, tan khakis. His hair is gray and receding, but he isn’t bald, not yet. He’s looking at me with bloodshot eyes, drunk or hungover or maybe both.
“What isn’t?”
“Taking a shit in that toilet. Nobody cares. Just go if you have to.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Okay. Suit yourself.”
He closes his eyes and appears to forget about me. I can’t decide if I should say something else to him. I wish I could remember the last time I went to the bathroom.
Failing anything else, I take a few steps to my left and sit down on one of the fiber cots. It’s softer than it looks. For some reason the material makes me think of data cables, fiber optics, like what the inside of a futuristic computer might look like. Or the innards of an android, if androids were real.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say.
“If you want.”
“Do you remember the last time you went to the bathroom?”
“You mean the last time I dropped a deuce?”
“Anything.”
He takes a little while before answering.
“Can’t say I remember exactly. Why?”
“What were you doing before you got put in here?”
“Driving home from the bar. My wife is out of town and I went out with some friends to watch the game. Shoulda called a cab but I didn’t think I was that drunk.”
“What game did you watch?”
“Um…baseball.”
“Who played?”
“Look, buddy. Even the cops didn’t ask me this many questions.”
“I’m just curious. Who played?”
He doesn’t say anything for a while. And by a while I mean like twenty or thirty seconds. Maybe more. That doesn’t sound like very long, but in the middle of a conversation it is.
“I guess I had more to drink than I thought,” the guy finally says. “Can’t remember who played.”
“Didn’t think so,” I mutter under my breath.
“Speak up, buddy.”
“It’s nothing. Sorry, man. I just had a bad night.”
“I’d say that makes two of us.”
This guy seems familiar to me somehow. I know I keep saying that, but honestly, I get the feeling I know him or read about him or have seen him on television.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Runciter.”
�
�Is that your first name?”
Again he doesn’t answer right away, and I start to wonder if he’s going to say anything at all.
“Louis,” he finally says. “Louis Runciter.”
You almost never see anyone in a movie use the bathroom, and then only if there’s a plot point that involves the bathroom or use of the bathroom. Any good screenwriter knows not to include a scene that doesn’t advance the plot. It’s one of the primary rules of storytelling.
So I suppose it’s the same for me as it is for Sherri and Kevin and David and the police officer and even this guy, Runciter. It’s the same for all of us. I only know what I need to know. I only do things that advance the plot. I don’t pee because peeing isn’t necessary. For that matter I haven’t taken a shit in three days, either.
In fact I haven’t taken a shit at all.
Ever?
No, that isn’t true. I had a colon cancer scare a couple of years ago when I found blood in my stool. Luckily that turned out to “only” be a ruptured blood vessel.
But that memory stands out to me because it was traumatic. Does that mean it never happened, that it’s a piece of backstory?
Even now I still find this idea so hard to imagine, that my entire existence since Sunday might not have been one continuous experience. It could have been nothing more than a collection of interesting scenes. Even more disconcerting is how there’s no way to tell the difference. Since it’s obvious our brains can’t recall every minute of our entire lives, since we are programmed to primarily remember important events, how would you distinguish between a plot-driven life and a real one? You couldn’t, really.
And if this is not reality, what is? David said the only way to know is through Gnosis, or speaking to God, but who or what is the Creator? A novelist? A screenwriter? Is the Creator a scientist running an ancestor simulation? Some kid in college playing a video game?
Many events since Sunday have seemed choreographed to the point where they strain credibility. But if that’s true, it means that some or all of what’s happening is out of my control. And if I’m just a puppet being yanked around, what’s the point? I mean honestly? I might as well give up, just sit here and do nothing, because eventually something will happen to move the story on to its next scene. Maybe it will happen while I’m sitting here waiting, or maybe the scene will just end and I’ll wake up somewhere else doing something else, and that will seem perfectly normal, because my brain will knit the two disconnected realities together to make it all seem completely rational.
I drop my elbows to my knees, let my chin rest against my chest, and put my hands over the back of my head. Close my eyes.
During my teenage years I could hardly speak to girls, any girl, and I always thought this fear was borne out of the dysfunctional relationship I shared with my alcoholic mother. When Gloria and I finally got together, I worried constantly that she might find me lacking in some way and leave me. It was years before I finally let those feelings go.
But you know what frightens me, what makes me want to puke my guts out? The possibility that it all never happened. My mom’s anger. Meeting Gloria in school. The trials of our courtship. The way she cried when I sang to her.
All fiction?
Was I ever really married to her? Did she really leave me the other day? Was I fired from my job on Monday? Did I ever even work there?
Do you understand I don’t even know what today’s date is? The Halloween party was on Saturday, but I don’t know if that was the actual day of Halloween. Either way I don’t know what year it is.
I don’t know the name of the city where I live. I’m pretty sure I live somewhere in the middle part of the United States, but there’s no way to be more precise than that.
I don’t know…anything.
Nothing.
THIRTY-TWO
Sometimes silence isn’t silent but a ringing sound, and I always wonder what that is, that ringing, like am I hearing the machine that runs everything, this reality, or is it the sound of electrochemical current surging through my neurons, or is it something I cannot comprehend?
“Hey, man.”
I should look up but I don’t. I’m far too exhausted to raise my head, to even care about what Runciter might have to say. I can’t remember the last time I slept. I might as well be dead.
“It’s gonna be light in a few hours. They’ll let us out soon. You have someone you can call to pick you up?”
Why even bother answering him? What’s the point?
“I don’t mean to pry but I got the feeling when the cop put you in here that you don’t have anyone to call.”
The effort to open my mouth is enormous. To push sound out of my throat is a nearly insurmountable obstacle.
“I’ll probably call my wife. If she doesn’t answer, then I don’t know. I lost my phone.”
“Why wouldn’t she answer?”
“We split up yesterday.”
“I’m sorry about that, man. Was it her?”
Why is he asking me all this? I don’t want to talk about this with him.
“She left me. She wants a divorce. But it’s my fucking fault. She loved me and I drove her away.”
“Well, the reason I ask about the ride is because I’d be happy to share my cab with you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Your wife only left yesterday. You guys could still work things out. And we’ll find your phone for sure.”
“How?”
“Well, you could call it. If you left it somewhere, maybe someone will answer and tell you where it is.”
For some reason, this energizes me enough that I can lift my head.
“That’s a really good idea. Thank you.”
“When they let us out, they’ll give back our personal effects. You can use my phone to call yours.”
“I was at a bar the last time I remember having it. They probably won’t be open.”
“Well, if no one answers, I’ll take you home. I mean if your wife doesn’t come. Or we can go get your car if you want.”
“Thanks. That’s very kind of you.”
“No problem at all. And maybe later we can go somewhere for a drink.”
I look up, and Runciter immediately starts laughing.
“You should see the look in your eyes,” he says, still amused. “That’s great. Maybe not a drink, then. Maybe something else. Do you like bowling?”
“I’m not much of a bowler,” I say to him. The truth is I throw a decent hook and average close to 200, but I don’t tell Runciter that. I just want to go home and go to bed.
“Okay. I mean, I’m not any good, either. It’s just something to do.”
I don’t understand why he’s being so friendly all of a sudden. How often does some strange dude invite you to the bowling alley?
“Sure, we can bowl sometime,” I finally mutter.
Runciter isn’t looking at me. He’s lying down again. He doesn’t answer.
“Where do you usually bowl?” I ask.
Still no answer.
“Look,” I say. “I’ve had a rough couple of days. I wasn’t trying to be a…I mean, I didn’t…whatever.”
“Perky Pat Lanes on 11th Street. Small place, but it’s a good crowd and the drinks are strong.”
“Sounds like fun. If the drinks are strong.”
“It’s sad,” he says. “How we can be in here, the drunk tank, but we can’t wait to go out and have drinks again.”
The last thing in the world I want to do right now is have another drink. But rather than say that I decide to be agreeable.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a tough world when all you want to do it hide from it.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“Can you think of another reason to drink?” he asks.
“To have fun?”
“Because real life isn’t fun enough?”
It’s hard to find interest in this conversation when I know whatever he says is only designed to
push the scene forward. Whatever he says is not an accident or even his choice.
“Probably not tonight, though,” I tell him. “I have some shit to take care of after I get out of here.”
“No rush,” he says. “I’ll just get your number. The world isn’t going anywhere, right? We’ve got all the time in the—”
A loud, rattling sound interrupts him. I look up, we both do, at the source of the sound, which is the door. For a moment my mind goes blank. Like a television screen of white noise. Just nothing. Nothing.
And then fear, childhood fear, nightmare fear.
Standing on the other side of the glass are two men dressed in matching gray suits and Stetson hats. One of them is short and thick around the middle, the other is about my height and built strong, like an NFL quarterback.
The door opens and the taller man says, “Thomas Phillips?”
I can’t speak. This guy looks like a private investigator from a bad period film. His outfit ought to be silly but instead it’s the most menacing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Mr. Phillips?”
“That’s me,” I finally manage to say.
“I’m Special Agent Scruggs. This is my partner, Special Agent Smith. We’d like to have a word with you, please.”
I’ve somehow always known the appearance of these men would mean my death. And here they are, ready to take me away.
“Are you sure you have the right person?” I pathetically ask. “I haven’t done anything the FBI would be interested in.”
“You are Thomas Phillips, are you not? Of 1928 Berkeley Road?”
“Yes.”
“If you could please follow us? We just have a few questions.”
I shuffle toward the door. I suppose I should make a run for it, but how could I get away? And I am so tired. So very tired.
“Thank you,” Scruggs says. “It should only take a few minutes.”
As we walk out of the cell, Runciter says:
“Be careful, Thomas. It’s hard to know who to trust.”
The agents look over at him but don’t say anything.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” he adds. “I’ll make sure you get home.”
But I don’t think I’m ever coming back.
