by David Shafer
“The letter you wrote to me.”
“Yeah, well, listen, if I was way off base, I’m sorry. It was worth a shot.” He didn’t look sorry.
“You weren’t off base, Leo.” They were standing close again, charged particles between them like fireflies. “But that teepee-wigwam thing of yours is a bad system. You’re either a genius or a loser? What if you’re neither? What if you’re in between, a little of both? That’s much more likely.”
He didn’t look loony anymore. He looked as clear-eyed as a raptor. “I know that. I know how I’m supposed to feel. I’m supposed to be okay with myself or change what I’m not okay with. But I’m halfway through my life, Leila, and it’s always been this way. Most of the time, I’m a loser. When I’m a genius, why shouldn’t I grab hold of the feeling? At least that way I can pull up the average.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” she said. “But feelings aren’t vines in a jungle; you don’t grab hold of them. You get through them or you enjoy them or whatever.” She was thinking of the plate smasher, and her one girlfriend, in college, and a maternal uncle—addicts all—who seemed always to be at the center of storms they could just as easily have steered around. “There’s a basic problem in the way you’re approaching this.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” he said.
“Sorry. No. That’s kind of an asshole thing for me to say.”
“I don’t think it rises to asshole,” he said. “But why do you care, Leila? I mean, about these habits of mine.”
Why did she care? Was that love, or whatever was preliminary to love? It felt more like a tapeworm, or like that Alpine-hatted worm from the Richard Scarry books, with a little suitcase, come to live behind her sternum. Leila had always suffered from what she feared was a deficit in romantic drive, a condition stigmatized in women. Even the people she had most loved she could not exactly recall falling in love with. It had felt rather more like moving slowly up a steep grade.
“Because you were right,” she said. “What you said in the letter. That there was more supposed to happen between us. It’s happening now, isn’t it?”
He nodded. The pony lifted her head. Her wild black nostrils flared and sniffed.
“Okay, but I’m not just some experience,” she said. “I go forward and backward in time. And if we’re going to do this, I want to know that you’re reliable. Are you reliable?”
He was looking out at the sky through the door behind her. She let twice the reasonable amount of time go by and then said, “Leo?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking.”
“You shouldn’t have to think so long to answer that question,” said Leila.
“I would like to one day live with you in Rome and bathe our child in an iron tub. Actually, any kind of tub, really. With you, I would always try my hardest—God loves a trier, they say. And I wouldn’t lie or hide. I want to feed you and fuck you and ask you what’s up and walk with you through whatever searing desert, down any choked street, into what joy and trouble might be ours.”
The words brought her to the edge of a high cliff. Rome? Our child? Why, how, did he let himself race forward like this? She could have fallen into him then, but he kept speaking: “But all those are just promises and fantasies, so I don’t see why they should mean that much to you. And reliable?” He made a little orchestra conductor’s flourish before his temple.
“What does that mean?” she asked, imitating the gesture, gutted by his swerve and disclaimer.
“It means that I feel like my mind’s a wild card. I don’t want to say I’m reliable and then spend my life trying to live up to that.”
She thought: His mind’s a wild card? Sounds worrisome. She said: “I think that’s exactly what you should do.”
“What?”
“Spend your life trying to live up to ideals. The rest is none of our business.” She could see him take that in.
“But what about when two or more of the ideals you’re trying to live up to come into conflict?” he said. “Like when you get to some door and you can’t be both reliable and adventurous and still get through the door?”
She left him there then, with the pony and his stupid angst, his Hamletian hemming. Why would he not just settle on one or the other? Their child in a bath in Rome, or not? It would be too much work, loving a man like that, torn as he was by twenty decisions a day. She walked back across the still meadow; the moon had set, and the sky was a blue speckled bowl.
She went back inside and found Mark and Constance and Roman clustered around a computer. Not one of the computers that Dear Diary appeared to fabricate here—the old laptops gutted and re-filled with the novophylum plants. The computer they were sitting around looked like an old PC, with a tower and a big monitor. Both were wrapped in tinfoil. Mark’s Node was attached to the computer’s tower with a short USB cord. A cable the gauge of a garden hose ran from the back of this setup along the floor and into the butt of a rifle that Trip was holding. He was making himself comfortable in a wooden chair by the window. Then he used another chair, overturned, to make a sort of aiming cradle, and he pointed the rifle out the window, at the sky.
Leila saw then that it wasn’t a rifle but a sort of a telescope. Where there should have been a muzzle, there was a tiny ceramic parabolic antenna.
Constance made a finger-to-lips be-quiet sign at Leila. Leila stopped where she was.
“Wait for it,” Trip said without looking at the people behind him. He trained the rifle telescope low over the far horizon. “Okay. Keyhole access in three seconds. Two. One. Established.” Leila could see he was concentrating keenly on his aim.
“Go,” said Constance to Mark.
Mark pressed a button on his Node. Leila heard the bubbly ring of the call he was making.
“Hello?” said a voice from the PC.
Mark spoke at his phone. “James. It’s me. Mark.”
“Mark? That’s not what the screen says. Why are you calling cloaked? Parker says that’s for emergencies only.”
“I know, James. It’s just that it’s Parker I’d rather not talk to right now. I was afraid he might intercept the call. He seems rather upset with me.”
“He is upset with you, Mark. We all are. I heard about your performance at Nike. You know I’ve really done a lot for you, Mark.”
“I know, James. I know. And the thing at Nike, that was bad shellfish I had the night previous. I’m mortified, I assure you.”
Silence from Straw.
“But the thing is, James, I’m not sure Parker understands us. I’m not sure he is able to appreciate the…nature of the connection between us. Maybe even I have wanted to turn away from it at times, you know? Because I was afraid, because I have been afraid…of accepting the closeness that you’ve offered me.”
“Closeness?” said Straw. The line a bit crackly.
Mark shut his eyes and continued. “Our minds, James. The way our minds have become close. If I could just talk to you again, about this job you want me to do.”
“You’re accepting the job?”
“Oh, yes, James, yes. But I want to accept it in person, with you. Maybe by the pool. I’m sorry I was seasick that last time. I want you to show me more. I want to learn from you now. I want you to teach me.”
“This is wonderful news, Mark. I hoped you would come to see it this way.”
“When can I come back to you, James? Can it be soon? Where are you? I’m still in Portland.” Mark really did manage to sound ardent.
“Nils!” they could hear Straw shout at someone on his end. “Nils!” Then an inaudible reply. “Where are we?” Then a hard-to-understand response from Nils. “An auspicious stroke, Mark,” said Straw. “We’re gleaning the transpacific cable-five network.” More crackly static. “We’re nearby.” He conferred again with Nils in the background.
In the corner by the window, Trip made a wrap it up gesture by spinning an index finger above his head. He was still aiming keenly.
“Can you get to t
he coast by tomorrow evening?” came the old man’s voice through the computer. “Can you get to these coordinates?” He read out a GPS point.
Mark looked quickly at Constance, who looked at Roman, who thought for a sec and nodded once.
“Of course, James,” he said. “But, listen. Can we keep Mr. Pope out of this for now? He and his people are such brutes. I do see why we need men like him, but he’s taken against me, and I’m not even certain he wants the same things you want from New Alexandria. We should speak before anything else happens. Just you and me.”
“Very well, Mark. I’ll send a Zodiac to collect you. What shall we dine on tomorrow? Bucatini al vongole? Melon balls and a crisp Riesling? I’ll speak to Chef.”
“Sounds delicious, James. Until tomorrow, then.” Mark hung up.
In the corner, Trip relaxed his rifle. “I didn’t like that at all,” he said. “That was one hundred and ten seconds. That’s a long time to keyhole-connect.”
“It was worth it. Mark will be on board in less than twenty-four hours,” said Roman.
Leila could tell that Trip still didn’t like it. “Let’s hope the Committee won’t notice two minutes of anomalous satellite cross-feeds over southwest Oregon,” he said.
Leila looked at Mark. “You okay?” she asked him. “Nice work with Straw. I was getting a little steamed up there.”
Mark smiled. “I read some Oscar Wilde at Harvard.”
Chapter 32
In the blue dark of the little loft, Leo could make out potted ferns and begonias running up the eaved walls toward the skylight. Mark was slack-jawed asleep on a sort of chaise or fainting couch. His socked feet stuck out like two spokes of a ship’s wheel.
Leo and Leila made their beds on the floor, quickly and quietly, like soldiers.
“’Night, Leo,” said Leila, and turned herself away from him.
He figured she was steamed at him for not calling her back when she walked out of the barn. “Good night, Leila,” he said.
He still wasn’t really tired. How could these two just sack out? Big day, he thought. Definitely should journal about this one. He slowed his breathing, counted the begonia leaves backlit by the night sky.
But his sleeping bag was made for a little girl. It was printed with the image of a cartoon heroine, and only about three quarters of him fit into it, so he appeared to be emerging from it, as if interrupted between pupa and imago. Leila was in a man-size green sleeping bag. But she was asleep already. Was she really asleep? He felt such a charge between them, her shoulders maybe eighteen inches from his sternum. She was a shell and he was the sea.
“Leila,” he whispered at the back of her neck, which he saw now was downy. Maybe her shoulder stirred. There was a catch in her breath. Leo, his nervous system in a sort of flare, was aware of all of it. But after a minute, she had not responded. Outside, a night bug skritch-skreeked at intervals. He didn’t say her name again. If she was really asleep, he did not want to wake her. So he just lay there, half out of his sleeping bag, like a banana begun.
He fell into a sleep, and dreamed that he and Leila were trying to replace a lightbulb together, climbing two sides of the same ladder. The higher they climbed, the closer they came to each other. But the light they had to reach kept receding, until, just to keep from falling, they had to hold each other. They fumbled tools between them. At one point, Leila was wearing only a tool belt. But then he was alone at the top of the ladder, standing on a step that bore the warning THIS IS NOT A STEP and he felt that he would fall at any moment. He tipped forward and woke from the hypnagogic jolt. His sleeping bag had ridden down and now was more just a sack around his lower half. He felt, beneath the sleeping pad and the gritty carpet, a crude transition in floorboards that his ribs were straddling. He was cold.
“Leila,” he whispered. “Leila.”
She made a sound with n’s and h’s.
“Leila, can we switch sleeping bags?”
Nothing.
“Leila,” he whispered again. “You awake?”
She sat upright in her bag like a woken zombie. “Yeah. Sure.” Then she slipped from her sleeping bag, all waist and hips and static cling. She was by far the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on, and the whole thing was pretty much in slow motion. But Leila was just as quickly asleep in the smaller bag. No buzz came off her body as it was coming off his. He was pulled toward her; he was the sea and she the moon. He remembered that a high-school physics teacher once told him that the moon was always falling. That’s what orbit is, after all.
Leo tried to tip himself back into sleep. But he was distracted by a tiny orange light playing on the cabin window below him. He looked closer and made out the shapes of Constance and Trip and Roman. They were out on the porch, in a sort of conclave. The orange light was the embered tip of Trip’s cigarette. Their voices were indistinct and night-muffled, but the tempo and the interruption rate made Leo know that they were worried. He hoped they had this all in hand. Constance had said there would be scones for breakfast.
He fell asleep again, and this time his dreams were too abstract to decoct. The ladder scenario was not reprised, except possibly as a dream within a dream, but this time in Aramaic or something.
Chapter 33
Everybody up!”
Leila sat upright. She was in a different sleeping bag. Oh, yeah.
A too-bright lantern came to life in the main room below them. Trip was down there, clapping his hands loudly.
“Diarists,” he yelled. “There’s been a breach and we’re evacuating the farm. We’re leaving now. I’m going to the greenhouse. I’ll be back in eight minutes.” He moved, then stopped. “Scratch that. Constance, check the go-bags, and see that the cabin is clean. Roman, go get the saddle and panniers on Little Nell. Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot up there, you guys grab your shit and get outside. Scratch that. I need one of you with me. Mark, you ever use a flamethrower?”
Mark was sitting up in bed, buckling his ruined shoes. “I have not,” he called hoarsely. “But I’m game to try.”
Leila was quick down the loft ladder. Leo behind her.
“What can I do, Constance?” Leila asked.
“You and Leo stand there. Await my instructions.” Constance began to remove fancy backpacks from a wardrobe. She was opening and checking each one.
It was just Leila and Leo, waiting in a corner.
“About last night, in the barn,” he said to her.
Really? she thought. Now?
“I definitely do want to live in Rome with you,” he said. “I just don’t know what comes between here and there, now and then. I think I’m strong enough for almost anything, but I’ve thought that before.”
“Can’t you just settle for a minute?” she said. “You sound so certain, and then you get all Or it could be this other way too.” He nodded to concede the point, which annoyed her even more. “How can you be sure about us, then, Leo, that we have this big story in front of us?”
“Because of our numbers,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He looked almost embarrassed to have to tell her. “I’m your square root, Leila.”
A zap in the air between them, audible, like the snap of twig, the thwang of a snapped trap. In her mind, his number leaped up, its digits sparking, marrying, and multiplying. Indeed, multiplied by itself, it was her number. She felt the key find its tumblers and then a door open inside her. Nothing about eye tests or shadow governments. Just love. That expansion of the soul, that reaching out. Her story ran through his.
“The bags, Montes,” said Constance. “Out to the barn. Chop-fucking-chop. I want us over the ridge in twenty minutes.”
Leo moved to grab the bags, but Leila stood there, dazed.
“Lola?” said Constance, more loudly, waving a hand impatiently at Leila. “You with us?”
“Leo says he’s my square root.”
Constance looked at Leila and then at Leo. Roman turned and did the same. Then they eac
h nodded.
“Well, that is remarkable,” said Constance.
Chapter 34
Leo wished Trip had given him a job. Mark was getting to use a flamethrower. But this way, he could stay near Leila. He had woken with such desire for her. Her face was still soft from sleep.
He and Leila each grabbed three of the fancy knapsacks, heavy and full. They left the cabin and walked into the creeping dawn outside. The eastern horizon was the color of a peach, but the sky above them was still an azure bowl. A brand-new day, he thought.
He looked back. A thick plume of gray smoke, darker against the dark sky, rose from inside the forest of novophylum. Leo could hear whumps and a rising crackle, presumably the sound that a greenhouse makes as it’s being flamethrown.
“Which one of us is which, did he mean, do you think?” he asked Leila as they crossed the wide meadow.
“Which one of us is which which?” she said.
“Trip said Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. You think I’m Foxtrot? I bet you’re Tango. I’m probably Foxtrot.”
With a nod, she allowed that he was Foxtrot.
“What about my code name?” she said. “You think I should stick with Lola Montes? I didn’t choose it.”
“Stick with it. It suits you.”
“You chosen a name yet?”
“Pace Backenforth?” He saw that she saw the joke in that. “No. I’m going with Leo Crane.”
“I see what you did there,” she said.
Did she? Did she see that he had forgiven himself for not being a genius? Did she see that he was ready to stand up and start pushing back against the world, no longer a fugitive or an apologizer; that he wanted a child and a task and to row in with all he had; that it was all due to her somehow, that she had turned a key? Of all the times and places, she lived in this one, and he did too, and they had come upon each other. That could be luck or something grander; either way worked for him.
“Did you have any dreams?” he asked her. His dream of her had been so vivid, she must have dreamed of him also. The world turned out to have hidden languages and plant computers. Probably, in such a world, you can co-dream with your square root.
