The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2)

by Mark Reynolds

  He nodded. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He turned and walked out through the kitchen, leaving the door open to the boneyard of scraps and memories.

  * * *

  Ellen walked barefoot amidst the derelict machines and discarded memorabilia, unconcerned about debris in the sand. It only looked like a junkyard. There were no edges of glass or rusty screws or half-buried jags of shredded metal. The yard was as clean as a deserted beach or a lonely desert or a country cemetery—one littered with sculptures of modern art and industrial wreckage. The fencing felt inconsistent to her, without purpose or merit; like erecting a white picket fence around a house in the badlands, a wall to separate the dust in one’s yard from the dust without, an effort in vain at simulating normalcy. There was nothing out in the Wasteland to fence away; nothing trying to leave and nothing trying to get in because there was nothing on either side of the fence. All that remained was her and Jack and a faded world of memories and used-up relics.

  Ellen shaded her eyes against the unrelenting sun blistering every surface it touched, time its ally in an endless war upon reality. But for her, it was a welcome sight, a reminder of summer days at the beach, lazy afternoons, the smell of coconut oil and lemonade. She panned the forgotten machines, some scoured by the elements to bare metal, others clinging to the faded skin of paint that was their former lives, refusing to move on: a world of endings and beginnings, of unlimited possibilities.

  She walked back into the garage, the cement glass-smooth and cool against her feet. Above, Jack clicked away at his keyboard, sentences flowing with halts and starts; they were hard-won words for him this time. She supposed it could be like that. Every moment of a writer’s life was not one long bout of fruitful inspiration. Not every moment.

  She went to the Pepsi machine and found the button she was looking for second from the bottom. She pushed it and the machine chugged out an icy can of Country Time Lemonade. One of Jack’s improvements: an end to the need for loose change to feed the vending machines.

  She doubled back to the red pickup where she remembered seeing an Indian blanket wadded up in the bed. She took it and walked to the back of the fence where the old cars were left to die, and picked out a two-tone Impala, sky-blue and white, the hood and rooftop the color of the sky fading into the endless desert. Though scavenged for parts—missing headlights, glass, tires, engine, and even the driver’s side door—the vehicle appeared undamaged. Ellen spread the blanket out on the Impala’s roof, then climbed up on the trunk and undressed. Naked, she stretched out on her stomach under the warm sun, placed her cheek against the blanket, one arm folded up around her head, the other holding the icy-slick can of lemonade. She supposed that from where he was, Jack might catch a glimpse of her if he was looking; if he wanted to.

  She smiled, the warmth of the sun carrying her into a lazy daydream of summertime memories. There had been good times in her youth; yes, there had been some. Visits to her grandparents upstate, estranged from her years later along with her mother who finally decided she wanted nothing to do with Gabriel Monroe; nothing to do with him or anything of his. And that included Ellen, his possession by association—his possession because he liked to possess things more than he liked the things he possessed. But before then, there had been summers in the country, summers spent swimming in a backcountry pond, exploring the woods, climbing trees, lying in the sun. There was a boy from down the road; they played together over the summer and stayed friends after they turned too old to play children’s games; after the nature of games changed. Running through the woods became walks in the forest, swimming and sunning offered intriguing glimpses of flesh, a bare torso or a naked shoulder blade, anything more still forbidden, still more imagined than real. There was an offered kiss. A pleasant return.

  Whatever became of him? Memories separated by so much time, she could no longer remember his name or what he looked like, details lost to the years. Mother left and grandpa passed away. Grandma followed shortly after, unable to live without him. There were no more summers in the country. Now there was only the city and daddy, her always underfoot. There were drugs. A breakdown; maybe more than one. An attempt at suicide, or maybe the misunderstood effects of some recreational drugs. Treatments. More drugs, but different from before. Another breakdown. More treatment. And somewhere during all of that, her childhood was lost, recovered only as stolen moments snatched from the air like a child armed with a butterfly net swinging at a whirlwind of swirling leaves.

  Ellen took a drink, the lemonade still cold, still nostalgic, still everything it promised, and wondered why everything couldn’t be that simple. Her skin beaded with sweat, glistening like dewdrops across the back of her hand and forearm as her bare skin drank in the sun, and for a time it was summer like it was long ago, before everything became complicated.

  She put her head down, allowing a drowsy kind of sleep to steal over her, and descended into daydreams. And in these dreams, she knew him, the boy from down the road during those summers lost so long ago.

  * * *

  “Be careful you don’t burn,” Jack said.

  Ellen turned her head slowly, regarding him. He did not seem uncomfortable about her sunning herself naked on the roof of the car. Neither did she. It felt entirely normal—insofar as anything could be argued as such in this place. Normal was out of place here; nothing grew or flourished in the Wasteland. Instead things waited, or they passed away. This was not a place that was dying or running down; this was a place that was already dead, everything simply bones baking under the sun, crumbling back to ashes, back to dust. And they were merely revenants of the graveyard, haunts of the old house, shades of former lives at a defunct rest stop on a dead road. They were waiting, Jack and her; waiting to move on.

  Or fade away.

  Resting his chin on his forearm, Jack reached out and lightly touched the skin between her shoulder blades, finger tracing along her spine to the small of her back, chasing beads of sweat. His touch sent a thrill through her nerves, awakening passions, memories, questions.

  “Jack?”

  “Hmm?”

  “When Oversight talked about the Wasteland, she spoke of it like Purgatory, a world for the dead.”

  “I remember,” he answered, tracing figure-eights along her back, playful, teasing.

  “It’s different now, isn’t it; less threatening than what she experienced. But in some ways, it’s still the same. Everything is dead: bones and graves and junked cars and scrapped machines. The Egyptian statue. The soul cages.”

  “Uh-hmm,” he murmured, fingertip running up to the edge of her shoulder, her neck, the knot of her spine.

  “Was she right?”

  “Was who right?” he asked.

  “Oversight. Was she right?”

  “About what?”

  He was being deliberately evasive, she knew. “Is this place death?”

  Jack gently massaged the back of her neck, considering; information could be slippery, even dangerous. Finally, he said, “Not in the way you mean. This isn’t a destination; it’s just a place along the way. You shed the things from before that have no use, and you move on. If this place seems like death, it’s because it represents that moment of transition, of change. It’s the edge where behind you lie all the solid moments of the past, precious in our mind but unobtainable and useless to the journey forward. And ahead of us lies nothing but wide-open sky, everything possible, nothing actual. This place is not an ending or a beginning. It’s both because they’re both the same thing.”

  She let the silence settle between them, considering his explanation and listening to the sounds of the Edge of Madness: the clack of the windmill, the squeak of old gears and rods, the soft ring of chimes, and the rattle of chains shifting in the breeze. There was a hum, maybe from the ice machine or a vent to the kitchen; she wasn’t sure. It was calming, though. She let it dull her senses until she almost believed that Jack’s speech—her questions, his answers—were all just parts o
f some vivid daydream.

  His fingers lightly brushed her temple, and he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not afraid. I know you’re looking out for me.”

  His touch retreated, and she felt his lips upon her arm, cool against the heat of her skin. Then footsteps as he turned to leave. “You may want to turn over soon, so you don’t burn.”

  CINEMA SHOW

  Ellen followed Jack’s advice, but to no avail; his answers made her restless, unable to enjoy the simplicity of daydreams. Not for getting burned, she was forced to abandon the sun in favor of something more distracting.

  Wrapping the blanket around her, she walked through the silent, metal boneyard, clothes in hand. The small robot watched her, head following as she passed, polished features offering only reflections; no insight; no answers.

  She went straight to the shower, the water cool against her skin. Jack continued to work at the words on the computer screen, hunched forward in his chair, oblivious. It was something about him she had grown to understand, or maybe simply to forgive. They were soul mates, kindred sprits, each completing the other.

  “Jack?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What would you like to do this afternoon?”

  To her surprise, he answered, “Do you want to see a movie?”

  * * *

  The Scarlet Cinema was not a large theater; it was not even a large room. A narrow aisle sloped up towards the projectionist’s area, walled away from the rest of the so-called theater by a partition of red-painted cinderblocks, a single square left empty where the projector lens extended like some curious nocturnal animal. But for the screen, the entire room was red: dark, thick, bloody, awash with rust and streaked with soot, the crust of a newly healed wound. The floor was timeworn nap, crimson to match the crushed velvet and cracked leather seats and faded burgundy of machine-sprayed metal, steel worn through, dark and unreflective. In the corner, a garbage can sat empty and unused while loose popcorn kernels littered the floor amidst old bags and empty cups. Like any theater, the Scarlet Cinema’s cleaning schedule was not strictly adhered to.

  Jack offered to get some popcorn from the diner and a couple cans of soda, promising not to be more than a few minutes. Ellen said she would find them a seat; there were only four. She picked the back two and sat down, the seats broken in just enough to be comfortable without being busted. Slouching down, she kicked her feet over the seatback in front of her and waited defiantly for the usher to come and tell her to put her feet down—but no one did.

  Life at the Edge of Madness had its perks.

  Jack came back with a bowl of popcorn and a couple cans of Mountain Dew, bumping the door wide with his hip and scooting in before it could close again, shutting out the daylight. He handed her the popcorn and deposited the sodas into the cup-holders in the armrests. “I need to get the movie set up,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded as he slipped behind the heavy velvet curtain, catching a glimpse of the projectionist’s booth’s walls: unpainted cinderblock wallpapered with dozens of low-budget, B-movie posters.

  “I can’t make any promises,” Jack called through the hole. “I was never exactly an audio-visual wiz. And there’s no telling what some of these movies are gonna be like, but … maybe …” Ellen thought he was drifting into some kind of apology about what he was doing, his silence its own form of amends. Then he added, “I think you’ll like this.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “I don’t think it has a title,” he said. “I’ll get the lights.”

  The theater went dark and Ellen let the question go, the sweet loginess of the afternoon creeping across her, loosening her focus. The projector made a soft brrrrrr noise behind her, and the screen lit up with an introduction of numbers counting backwards while Jack adjusted the focus. Drifting down into the seat, she inhaled the aroma of buttered popcorn from the bowl balanced on her stomach, and listened as numerous speakers surrounded her in sound, the story unfolding in celluloid, artificial life in an artificial night.

  * * *

  The image fades in, grainy nineteen-fifties Technicolor. An elderly man behind a wooden desk, black-rimmed glasses, brown suit, bow tie. Behind him, shelves of books, possibly a medical office or private library. He addresses the camera.

  “The human condition is unique in that it is composed entirely of our sense of time. Events that have gone before become our past while the future is planned for but remains a mystery for which we are never truly prepared. Our present state is little more than a collection of our past experiences; stored memory drawn upon when deciding the direction to take towards the future, one we know has an inevitable conclusion, but which we deny the immediacy of.

  “One curiosity is that while the past imprints itself upon our memories much the way this image is imprinted upon a strip of celluloid, we are selective about what we recall. Memories become lost in our subconscious, altered or repressed out of necessity or self-defense or the lack of reinforcement. Few remember the process by which we learned how to form words and talk, or the rigorous coordination of movements and balance that allow us to walk. The experience bears little relevance, and so we file it away like a book in a library.

  “So why are some memories buried? And why are other memories—those painful or debilitating—not repressed so as not to inhibit our decision-making? Often we attribute enormous significance to the immutable events of the past while affording little emphasis upon the present, the only true state of reality. The past is a blueprint, a collection of ideas and events that can aid our understanding of how things happen, demonstrate the repercussions of our actions and the actions of others. But the past does not control the future. It does not dictate our actions or their outcomes … unless we allow it to.

  “As a technique, hypnosis has proven successful in enabling a person to access suppressed memories and draw the necessary tutelage without dwelling upon the emotional scarring of those same events.

  “While hypnosis as a parlor trick is amusing,” the narrator smiles condescendingly, “Its therapeutic value is vastly more useful. In the relaxed state of hypnosis, a person can access any memory, regardless of age, complexity or relevance, and learn from that memory as they would any experiential event. The technique begins with relaxation: a comfortable position, a soothing tone of voice, even the use of a rhythmic device or sound such as a pocket watch or metronome like the one I have here on my desk.”

  He turns his attention briefly to the small musician’s metronome, the arm beginning to sway back and forth, slow arcs emitting a dull knock at each end.

  “We could even employ a simple series of numbers, typically counted backwards, in a steady, rhythmic tone like this: three.”

  The scene splices to a movie reel countdown, a sweeping arm revolving through the number three before cutting back to the man behind the desk. He is closer now.

  “Two.”

  Again, the scene cuts away: to the countdown, the number two. Then back to the narrator, the frame tightening, his face even closer. Off-frame, the metronome knocks.

  “One.”

  The scene cuts to the final countdown, the final arc of the arm, the final number and tock of the metronome.

  Fade to black.

  A young girl sits by the side of a country road, high summer, the grass in the field behind her pale under the sun like drying hay. She is on the edge of her teens, not far past her tomboy phase, her legs still long but not as spindly as the year before. They look good in shorts, of that she is aware. She doesn’t quite have breasts yet; T-shirts look better loose—less unflattering. Her face is pretty. She sits on the edge of a grassy, waterless ditch and throws stones at small targets on the other side of the road: a chunk of broken glass, a discarded pop can, a cigarette filter.

  She glances over her shoulder at a distant farmhouse: white Victorian with a treeless yard, red barns with tarpaper shingle roofs. A boy crosses the field from the
farmhouse. He looks to be the same age; not really a boy, but not quite a teenager either. He wears his hair long because it bothers his teachers. He keeps one hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans. The other holds a couple green soda pop bottles, their necks snuggly locked between his knuckles, beads glistening the length of the glass to spill by the wayside. He heads towards the girl.

  Behind him in the pasture is a red ‘55 Ford pickup, the once-fire-engine red gone pale and dull under the years of sun. Grass stands to its rocker panels and one headlight is broken. Look close and you’ll see a bullet hole in the tailgate that dates back to 1969; no one has ever said where it came from; no one has ever dared to ask.

  The boy’s shadow falls momentarily across the girl before he sits down opposite her, Indian-style in the prickly August grass. “Brought you a Mountain Dew.”

  He extends his hand, one bottle tilting up towards her. The girl takes it wordlessly. From his pocket, the boy produces a small bottle opener, opening his own before passing it to her. She accepts it with a wry look.

  “What?”

  “Did ya get ‘em?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “Couldn’t find ‘em.”

  She nods and smiles knowingly before tossing the bottle cap; an absent gesture, the cap spins artfully across the road and hits a flattened pop can—spang. “Maybe it’s just as well. If your grandparents came back and found it gone, you’d be royally busted.” She takes a leisurely sip from the bottle.

  “That’s just it. They’re gonna be up in Watertown all day. Grandma even fixed me a supper and everything before she left. They’d never know.” He turns and looks at the old pickup, clearly disappointed.

  “Are you sure? Cause we could be to the old rock quarry and back in plenty of time if they weren’t gonna be home early. There wouldn’t be anyone there but us. We could swim all day.”