Thomas World

by Richard Cox

  But I can’t drink any water out of the faucet because I don’t know where Runciter is or if he might hear the pipes…you know the sound I’m talking about, when you open a faucet.

  I roll out of bed slowly and stand up, shaky on my feet. The room sways as I find my balance, but my thirst doesn’t go away. It’s a live thing, this thirst, and all I can think about is the luxurious feeling of water gushing into my throat, reawakening cells that right now might as well be dead. Finally I can’t take it anymore. I walk quietly into the master bath, where I get down on my knees and scoop water out of the toilet, swallowing it greedily.

  Regardless of its source, the water does wonders for my confidence. My mind feels more alert almost immediately. I wonder what Runciter has been up to for eight hours. Surely he must have checked on me several times by now. Once he realized I wasn’t going anywhere, what did he do? Take a nap? Call in reinforcements? Play checkers? He could have done none of those things or all of them. I still don’t understand what his plans are for the long run, any of these people, because they can’t honestly believe living in my house and following me around everywhere is going to work for even a few days, let alone the rest of our lives.

  They aren’t telling me something, and the reason they aren’t telling me is because I’m not going to like it.

  I have to get out of here. And you know what I’m going to do?

  I’m going to find Gloria.

  I don’t know what the hell I’ve been thinking. Maybe the world is a game and maybe it’s not, but either way she’s the most important part of it. I have to find her. I want to apologize for everything I’ve said and done to her, not just in the past few days but in all the years where I have taken our relationship for granted. When I met Gloria, everything else in life became secondary, because I felt like together we could do anything. Where before I had imagined life as a sequence of hurdles to be cleared, with Gloria I realized it could be a long, satisfying journey whose destination was unimportant. For some reason I haven’t lived that way in a very long time. I don’t remember how or when it happened, falling into such a careless and predictable routine, but I won’t do it again. If I can get that life back, I will make it up to her. I will love her madly all over again.

  Maybe the right thing is to leave her alone. To not tell her the truth about the world. But I can’t know that for sure. What I do know is I love her, that I always have, and there is no point to anything if she isn’t a part of my life.

  I’m going out the window. There’s no reason to look for Runciter first. If he catches me, he catches me.

  So I put my shoes back on and walk to one of the windows, which unlocks and opens easily enough. Removing the screen proves a lot more difficult. There’s nothing really to hold onto except a thin metal tab at the bottom. Every time I lift up on it I’m afraid the screen is going to buckle and fall out of the frame and make a lot of noise, but finally I manage to bend it outward with only the tiniest scraping sound. Surely Runciter couldn’t have heard that, even if he is sitting outside the door.

  Now I bend down and push my right leg out the window. I squat until my crotch is against the frame and search for the ground outside. The dirt is a little soft and muddy against the house, and I struggle for firm footing. Then, carefully, I shift my weight and bring my other leg through the window. My right knee creaks in protest but holds. My shoe tries to slip. Finally I get my other foot on the ground and now I’m standing in my backyard.

  I sneak slowly around the back of the house until I’m at the last corner, where brick gives way to a stone column. Slowly I peer around the column and look toward the driveway. I see my car. I see Runciter’s. My hand feels the outside of my jeans to make sure the key fob is in my pocket.

  I creep slowly toward my car, wondering if any neighbors might be looking out their windows, watching me. I’m sure I look silly doing this, but it can’t be helped.

  Any minute now I expect Runciter to rush out of the house, running straight for the car. I open the driver’s side door and sit down behind the steering wheel, pulling the door closed as slowly as I can. Still no Runciter. I push the ignition button and the engine roars to life, which should be a clue this whole thing isn’t a film. If it were, my car wouldn’t start. And anyway he had to have heard that. I put the transmission in reverse and begin to back out of the driveway, and that’s when I see the door in the garage swing open. Runciter is standing there. There is a button in my car that lowers the garage door and I push it as I back quickly down my driveway. That’s not going to stop him but maybe it’ll slow him down just enough. When I hit the street my car makes a terrible scraping sound against the asphalt. One of my tires bounces roughly over the curb. I look up to see Runciter squeezing under the garage door as it stops and begins to trundle back upwards. He is yelling something. He runs down the driveway as I put the transmission into drive and floor the accelerator. I feel ridiculous speeding down my own residential street, but I’m also relieved as I watch Runciter recede in the rearview mirror.

  I watch for unfamiliar cars or people as I speed toward the end of my street. The only person I see is a thin, old woman dressed in an oversized sweater walking her dog, what I think is a Shih Tzu. The woman’s sweater is red and blue and there is an American eagle stretched across the back of it. She yells at me as I drive by, obviously upset that I’m driving so fast. When I look in my rearview mirror, I see her flipping me the bird.

  There are no surveillance cars waiting at the end of the block nor do I see anything unusual when I reach Yale. Just a normal amount of traffic for a Wednesday (?) afternoon, and a low droning sound coming from nowhere. I keep watching my mirrors for Runciter, but so far he’s not back there. I drive north to 71st Street and then turn right. The sun is out, and the billboards are all leering, and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles.

  The light is green at 71st. The mall is two miles east. The violins begin after I’ve driven just a few blocks, and a man in my ear warns about the end of the world.

  If Runciter hasn’t found me now he’s probably not going to, since I could have made any number of traffic maneuvers by now. But why isn’t anyone else following me?

  In a few minutes I reach the mall. It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday and the parking lot is packed, so densely that I’m forced to leave my car in a lot intended for customers of the Cheesecake Factory. As I’m parking I happen to notice something stuck to the back of the car in front of me, next to the brake light. It’s the shape of a fish. The Jesus fish, as some call it. There is one on Gloria’s car as well. I wonder if this is a sign of some kind, but I suppose that’s naïve to think when everything seems like a sign.

  I keep hearing violins even after I enter the mall. They are playing over the P.A. system. Young people are everywhere, I can never tell their ages anymore, if they are thirteen or twenty, but they all seem to be swaying in time with the music, dancing almost, even though the song is not danceable. At the base of an escalator I see a couple of Coke machines and a group of four black massage chairs, and beyond that a bank of six pay phones. The phones are built into the wall and have digital readouts and accept credit cards. I get out my wallet and find my Bank of America card. I look down at my hand and find Gloria’s number.

  555-2374.

  2-3-74. February 3, 1974. The day Philip K. Dick went crazy. Or perhaps the day he learned the real truth.

  Is there a difference?

  The phone rings once, twice. The third is interrupted by silence and then a tentative query.

  “Hello?”

  “Junior.”

  “Oh, my God. Thomas. Oh, my God, you’re okay. Thank God, you’re okay. Oh, my God.”

  “I’m okay, but—”

  “Where on earth have you been? Why didn’t you call me? Thomas, I’ve been worried sick.”

  “I lost my phone. I—”

  “Where did you go? William said you showed up at work so drunk you could hardly walk. At ten o’
clock in the morning?”

  Something is buzzing around my head. At first it sounds like some kind of air blowing, like a release valve, but I realize now it’s a fly. At least a couple of flies. Shrill and loud, like someone has amplified the compression beating of their wings a millionfold.

  “Junior,” I say, having to raise my voice to hear myself, “none of that is relevant right now. I need to warn you about something. You need to listen to me.”

  “Thomas, what are you talking about? Where are you? It sounds like there are people everywhere. Are you calling me from a pay phone? Is that what this number is?”

  “Gloria, listen—”

  “Why aren’t you calling me from home? Where have you been all night?”

  I jerk my head around, looking for these damned flies, and I see two middle-aged women in the massage chairs. They’re looking right at me, their eyes narrow and angry, their mouths hanging open slightly. Their bodies oscillate slightly with the movement of the chairs.

  “We got flies all over the fuckin’ place,” I tell them. “We got flies comin’ for us.”

  The women look at each other and pretend like I’m not there.

  “What?” Gloria asks me. “Flies, baby? What are you talking about?”

  “Junior, listen to me. I went back home. This man followed me. He—they—they’re desperate. They’ve been following me. They don’t want to let me go.”

  A long moment of silence passes between us, so long that I have to ask Gloria if she’s still there.

  “Yes,” she says. “I’m still here. Thomas, I—”

  And then nothing, like she was cut off, like her voice is a recording and someone hit PAUSE.

  “Get the fuck outta here, you flies.”

  My head hurts. My mouth tastes like the leads on a nine-volt battery.

  “Thomas,” she says, much more firmly now. “Go back home and I will meet you there in a few minutes.”

  “I told you, I can’t go back there. We’ve got three flies. Five flies.”

  “Thomas, get hold of yourself and listen to me. Runciter fucked up.”

  I don’t hear the first few words of what she says next because my mind can’t process that “Runciter” and “fuck” just came out of her mouth.

  “…fell asleep or something. We need you to go back home, Thomas. Do it now.”

  “Junior, I—”

  “Where are you? The mall? We’ll find you there. If you try to run we’ll find you. Don’t be stupid, Thomas.”

  My heart is cold, like someone wrapped it in an ice pack. It hurts. The tips of my fingers burn, like I’m touching dry ice.

  “If you don’t go home right now,” she says, “your life will become much worse than you ever thought possible. If you thought you didn’t like working for William, that’s nothing compared to what your life will be like if you don’t come back to us, Thomas. So go home now, or tell me where you are.”

  “Gloria? They told you? I can’t believe they—”

  “Yes, they told me what you are, Thomas. At first I couldn’t believe it. You? Of all people in the world, you are the center of everything? Of all the irony anyone could ever come up with, that has to top the list. I mean, honestly.”

  My heart not only feels cold, it also feels very small, as if it has almost ceased to exist. It seems difficult to breathe. A long, steady chord on a cello slides underneath the surface of the silence.

  This isn’t happening.

  “Junior, I—”

  “It’s no wonder our marriage has begun to feel like a sham lately,” she says. The sarcasm in her voice is sharp, surgical. “That’s because it is a sham. All of our memories are fake, and whoever wrote our backstory obviously did a terrible job because I don’t understand how you and I could have ever fallen in love in the first place.”

  “Junior—”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “Gloria, please. Don’t do this. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. I’m so sorry. I love you. I don’t have anywhere to go. Please—”

  “Go home, Thomas. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  I hang up the phone.

  FORTY

  I want to kill Runciter.

  I want to drive back to my house and take my 6-iron and beat him in the head with it until blood runs out of his ears.

  They have ruined it for her. Ruined it!

  And once I kill him I want to take Gloria and get out of town. I want to explain things to her, what their real motivation is, I want to win her heart back and start a new life with her somewhere else.

  But I can’t do any of those things.

  If I kill Runciter, I will go to prison. The police are his friends, and at least two FBI agents have been following me. Maybe this simulated life already is prison, I don’t know, but freedom within this world surely must be better than incarceration.

  I could forego violence and simply take Gloria away, but if I try to approach her they will surely capture me. And anyway, I’m not sure she wants anything to do with me.

  She said our marriage was a sham. That the memories of our relationship were fake, and not only that, they were badly written.

  But they weren’t. They can’t be. We lived that life. We have too much history for it to have been written that way. Don’t we?

  Gloria said they were coming for me. I’ve got to get out of here. There are three malls in the city but only one of them is close to my house. She knows where I am.

  I have to get out of town. Now.

  I will come back for her. I will not give up on her. But for now I have to get away and figure out what to do.

  Fortunately the phones aren’t far from the entrance and it only takes a minute or so to reach the doors. A young mother pushing a stroller is about to enter the same door I’m exiting, and she smiles gratefully as I hold the door open for her.

  The walk to my car is much longer. I feel like every person in the parking lot is watching me, although maybe I’m wrong, because about halfway to my car some guy in a Ford Expedition nearly runs me over as he backs out of his spot. I have to jump out of the way and yell at him as I walk by, but the jerk doesn’t even acknowledge me.

  As I near my car, I smell something cooking at the Cheesecake Factory and realize I’m hungry. Starving, really. I don’t remember the last time I had something to eat. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech…I honestly cannot remember. Did I eat anything yesterday at all? Besides the mushroom?

  In fact the last thing I can remember eating is the spaghetti Gloria made on Monday. Monday! Today is Wednesday.

  I open the door to my car and get inside. I see that fish emblem on the car in front of me again. The fish is a symbol of Jesus Christ and his miracles of feeding the multitudes. Which I suppose is a rather ironic thing to have on your car when dining at the Cheesecake Factory, but for some reason the fish makes me think of something else, like the blue orb. It makes me realize the blue orb was a signal, a medium of communication that put me in touch with the real world. I don’t know why it makes me think that, but it does.

  And in this moment I realize I must go to California. The only person left in the world I can possibly trust is Sophia. I’ve never seen her in person, after all. I’ve only communicated with her electronically. This means they can’t possibly know of her or where she lives. This is where I’ll have to go. Together Sophia and I will figure out the truth.

  I pull out of my parking spot and head toward the mall exit. Gloria and Sherri and Runciter would probably come from different locations, but most of those are to the west, so, I head east on 71st Street. This road is six lanes wide and bordered on both sides by shopping centers and chain restaurants. Even if someone is watching it would be difficult for them to find me on this road. Once I get to the highway I will find a roundabout way to drive around the city and then head back west, in the direction of California. At some point I’ll need to stop, get something to eat and drink and find a place where I can get on the Intern
et, because I don’t have Sophia’s address. But my immediate concern is to get out of town without incident and head generally west. I can figure out the rest later.

  Whoever wrote our backstory obviously did a terrible job.

  I reach a freeway interchange and turn south, and three minutes later I turn west. From here, assuming I drive all the way to L.A., I have about a two-day drive. I know this because in college, before I met Gloria, I once drove to Burbank in order to be on “The Price Is Right.” Four of us made the trip, and believe it or not we managed to get into the studio audience (though none of us was called to the stage). I remember driving through Amarillo and stopping at The Big Texan, and there we did sit on stage as we tried to eat the 72 ounce steak in an hour. I couldn’t get through half of it. When I finally gave up, I swore I would never eat red meat again for the rest of my life, and still there was enough left on the plate for two more people. My friend, Chip, threw up five miles outside of town.

  Or at least that’s what I remember. When you think about it, The Big Texan sounds like a contrived plot point, doesn’t it? Like something out of a bad movie? Maybe the reason this simulation is populated with thin characters, maybe the reason it strains credibility, is because the architect of it is not a very good storyteller. Wouldn’t he be the perfect Creator for Gnosticism, being so imperfect?

  It’s no wonder our marriage has begun to feel like a sham lately.

  I circle around the city, closing in on the interstate that will take me west. I have been watching my rearview mirror so far and will pay close attention at the edge of the city, but so far I’ve seen no evidence of pursuit. I also remember what Runciter said when we left the police station, how the FBI would have never let me go without following me somehow, and I wonder if they’re back there somewhere, Scruggs and Smith or one of their counterparts. As far as I can tell no one has followed me since I left my house, but I’m not exactly James Bond.

  Of all people in the world, you are the center of everything?