Futures Near and Far

by Will McIntosh

  Were the dots even aware of her? Did they have awareness, or were they just natural phenomena of some sort? Leia didn’t know. She pulled into the drug store parking lot.

  It was closed. It was Sunday. Of course. Leia took a deep breath, tried to quell rising panic. Where else could she eat?

  It was too late—the dots were bulging, losing their two-dimensional flatness, glistening, sweating fluid as black as deep starless space. Leia raced back to the pumpkin sale. She wasn’t hungry any more.

  She’d never let them grow big enough to find out what would happen. All she knew was, it would be bad. It was not a fear to be faced. Not this one. Oh, no.

  Not even her parents had understood. They’d been sympathetic, they’d indulged her, but they’d never understood. It was their one and only failing as parents as far as Leia was concerned, that they did not understand the dots were not just in her head. They were in her head, but they weren’t only in her head.

  The guy in the red cap was still there, half-sitting on a wooden rack, his hands braced behind him, a pumpkin beside him. He glanced at Leia, who was squeezing the steering wheel, which was covered in a pink fuzzy steering wheel mitten. He looked away.

  This was too much. It was just too strange to continue hanging around in such close proximity to someone without acknowledging him, and Leia wasn’t going to let him drive her away. Twenty minutes with the pumpkins would shrink the dots enough that she could make it home if she wanted, but she didn’t want to go back to her little apartment over a silent Drive-In. She loved her apartment—it was her ultimate power-place, but you can get tired of any place if you spend too much time there.

  Leia grabbed her camera and drifted around, hugging herself in the growing cold, circuitously navigating toward the guy who was at the moment the only other customer. She stopped a few feet away from him, leaned out over a clump of misshapen pumpkins and took a few bird’s-eye shots.

  She glanced his way, as if she’d just realized she was in his vicinity. “You must love pumpkins as much as I do.”

  Leia thought he was going to look over his shoulder to make sure she wasn’t talking to someone else, but he didn’t. He smiled and nodded. “I love their color. They’re perfectly orange, an orange only pumpkins can be. No orange dye number two added.”

  “They fire off so many good memories,” Leia said.

  “Mmm.” He lifted the one sitting next to him, held it in his lap. “And I love the shapes. They all approximate round, but none ever quite get there.” He swept his long bangs out of his eyes; they fell right back into place, obscuring his eyes. “I bet if you averaged them all together though, the resulting pumpkin would be perfectly round. I think that’s how nature works: the perfection is always in the entirety, never in the individual.”

  Leia nodded, not sure how to respond to such an abstract observation.

  “I’m Byron, by the way.” He held out his hand. Leia shook. She liked shaking hands with gloves on—there was contact, but with a buffer. Risk and safety rolled together.

  There was a pause, a moment when they could either continue talking, continue the dance, or declare the short conversation a success and drift apart, becoming strangers again. Leia was torn. She craved talk with someone new, but this guy said odd, slightly unnerving things. On the other hand she was finding that talking to Byron left a crackle of energy in the cold air; it gave her flashes of lying in freshly fallen snow, in that moment just before the first flap of her arms and legs formed a snow angel. But it could not become a date thing, or even a friend thing. She couldn’t hide the dots, and she was finished with trying to tell people about them and sound sane at the same time. It wasn’t possible.

  “Well, good luck in your search,” Leia said. Safer just to say goodbye, she decided.

  “Oh,” Byron said, looking surprised, maybe that Leia was ending their conversation so soon. “You, too.”

  Leia wandered off, feigning interest in a particular pumpkin close to the road. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Byron run his gloved hand over his face, glance toward Leia, then off toward the rough white stone wall of the church. There was an earnestness about him; an appealing familiarity to his mannerisms despite his oddness. She knew she’d never met him before, but he was one of those people who fit easily into a type, who reminded her of a number of other people, though she couldn’t describe what they all had in common.

  Joseph, Leia’s last boyfriend, hadn’t easily fit into a type. He’d eventually tired of canned Beefaroni and watching the same three dozen movies on VHS, but it was the dots that sealed the deal. He’d initiated an argument as a way to escape with honor soon after she told him why she couldn’t go with him to his office’s New Year’s Eve party. If it had been a Halloween party, or even Christmas, there might have been enough allies to ward off the dots. She could have dressed as Edward Scissorhands if it were Halloween. If it were Christmas she could have spent the night in the shadow of the tree, watching the flick of the colored lights reflect off strands of tinsel while drinking spiked eggnog. But New Year’s held no allies for her.

  Leia let their orbits cross again. “So what do you do, Byron?”

  “I’m an artist. A designer. Landscape architect.”

  “All three?” Leia asked, amused at how his answer was broken in pieces.

  Byron shrugged. “They’re all one thing. How about you?”

  “I own a drive-in, out on Route 301.”

  “Interesting. I’ve never met anyone who owns a drive-in before.” Byron cupped his hands and blew into them.

  “So why did you decide to become a landscape artist?”

  “I noticed that there were fewer and fewer places for people to care about in the world. I wanted to push against that tide.”

  “That’s a great phrase,” Leia said. “Places for people to care about. I’ve never thought about it in those terms.”

  “But you know what I mean?” A cold mist puffed from Byron’s mouth as he spoke. “It’s all becoming parking lots and corrugated metal siding. Median strips. Cut up squares of lawn. It deadens your soul.”

  “There’s no ‘there’ there.” Leia said.

  Byron grasped her forearm as if she’d said something terribly profound. “Exactly!” His hand lingered a moment longer than it should have, and Leia let it. The contact, muffled by his glove, felt good.

  “We don’t all care about the same places, though,” Leia said, thinking of her power places.

  “That’s true. But we all agree on the places that are not worth caring about.”

  “We do. Yes.”

  “They’re killing us.”

  “They’re killing me, that’s for sure.” Leia took a step backward, toward her Beetle. “I’d better get going. It was nice talking to you.”

  He smiled, but looked disappointed. “You, too.”

  Leia decided she would watch Superman when she got home. The Christopher Reeve version, of course. Lois, was it really worth risking your life for ten dollars, two credit cards, and a lipstick?

  “Leia?”

  She turned.

  Byron took a few steps to catch up with her. “I’ve really enjoyed talking to you,” he said. He licked his lips; they were chapped from the cold. “Would you mind if I called you some time to talk some more?”

  It was clear that he’d rehearsed it in his head a few times before saying it. Byron swallowed, looking like a sixteen year-old nerd who’d just asked out a cheerleader and knew he was about to be rejected with extreme malice. And nothing could have melted Leia more.

  “Sure.” She brushed her hair back over her ear. “Do you have a pen?”

  * * *

  Byron called the next day. No two-day delay for the sake of cool, just a guy on the other end of the phone who was so nervous he started the conversation out of breath.

  “It’s Byron? From the pumpkin patch?” Assuming she’d already forgotten him, or got so many calls that she needed prompts to keep her suitors straight. Shut-ins
who had to leapfrog from power place to power place or risk being consumed by dots that no one else could see did not field many calls from suitors.

  Leia lay in her bed facing the wall that held her cereal box collection and talked to a near-stranger. It wasn’t a brief call to ask her on a date—he’d meant what he said about wanting to talk. He asked what her favorite things were, and what she kept on her dresser. He said he loved the sound a stream made when it tripped over stones, and the wet chuckle horses made with their loose lips. He wished dogs could fly, because he couldn’t imagine anything quite as fabulous as the sight of a brown Labrador skimming the treetops, that look of windblown ecstasy on her face.

  “You have a vintage laugh,” Leia told him.

  “There are vintage laughs?”

  “Listen to people laughing in old movies. They have different sorts of laughs than people today. Laughs go in and out of fashion, same as hats. We just don’t notice.” She didn’t add that vintage laughs held a hint of power.

  Just before they were to hang up, Byron asked her to dinner at Cha Bella, one of those restaurants where they serve salmon drizzled with a perfect pentagram of amaretto reduction on a huge expanse of white plate. A place where everything is clean lines and Jazz piano, where Leia had no allies.

  She suggested the snack bar in the bowling alley instead. Byron balked. Of course he did. Who besides Leia wanted to eat at the bowling alley snack bar? And now Byron probably sensed that Leia was not without her weak points. She was cute in a fatigued, adrenal exhaustion way, her honey hair split and frizzed yet still long and full, but she was the pinnacle of high maintenance. Leia regretted giving Byron her number. She just wanted to get off the phone.

  “What about a picnic at the pumpkin sale?” he asked.

  * * *

  With permission from the ladies behind the card table they made a circle of pumpkins and spread a red and white checkered picnic blanket in the center. Leia mostly ate the food she’d brought: peanut butter and marshmallow Fluff oozing between slices of white Wonder bread, sliced apples mixed with walnuts and raisins. She noticed that Byron mostly ate what he’d brought: gorgeous sushi rolls, each a symmetrical work of art, an edible mandala, and raw carrots and celery in alternating rows, offset by a half-sphere of hummus.

  “So what does your work look like?” Leia asked.

  He leaned back on his palms, shrugged. “Different. For me it’s all about how a landscape feels, the emotions I feel.”

  “You’ll have to email me some photos so I can see it.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “Let me show you my house. I’ve been working on the landscaping for ten years.”

  “I’d like to, but, some other time,” Leia said.

  “Are you sure? Couldn’t we go for just a while? Look…” He held out his hands, palms up, as if to show he wasn’t armed. “I’m not the sort of person who’d make a pass or anything. I’d just like to show you what I’ve done with my house.”

  If only that was her greatest fear right now, that this perfectly guileless man might try to kiss her. “I know that, Byron. It’s not you, honest.” She started packing up. She felt like such an idiot. She was blowing it. “I’d better get going.”

  “Maybe we can meet again tomorrow?”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “Could we meet here again?”

  * * *

  It was apparent that the women at the pumpkin sale were busting with curiosity, but they didn’t ask why Leia and Byron kept returning. This time they met for drinks and dessert. Byron unveiled a polished steel tumbler of hot rum cider and produced two crystal goblets from his coat pockets. Leia produced a celery-green Tupperware container. She opened the lid with a “Ta-da!” and a flourish.

  She’d made oatmeal raisin cookies. The cookies were perfect circles, the raisins evenly spaced. Byron covered his heart with his palms. “They’re gorgeous.”

  “You haven’t eaten one yet,” Leia said. “They’re pretty, but they taste like dung.”

  Byron smiled, poured cider. Steam wafted from the goblet; she caught a whiff of nutmeg. Out of habit she checked the status of the dots. They were hard black frozen peas.

  Byron took a cookie and put the whole thing in his mouth at once. That made sense: if he bit the cookie, it would no longer be round.

  It was obvious Byron had more than a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Leia didn’t mind. She found it endearing, the way his fingernails were perfectly manicured half-moons, and the top button on his red and green plaid shirt was buttoned.

  Leia sipped the cider, scooted closer to Byron under the artifice of being in easier reach of the cookies. A couple wandered by, the woman carrying a sleeping child. They nodded hello and continued walking. “What a romantic idea,” she heard the woman say. She felt like a normal girl starting a romance with a normal, wonderfully awkward man whose head was filled with crazy, fascinating, poetic ideas.

  “You’re a cider demigod,” Leia said, hoisting her glass and holding it aloft for a toast.

  Byron lifted his glass, clinked it to hers. “If you were Native American, your name would be Bakes Perfectly Round Cookies.”

  They drank. There was a pause then, the sort of pause that was the perfect moment for a first kiss. She considered leaning in, to signal Byron that a kiss would not be unappreciated. Before she could decide whether that was a good idea, given the dots, Byron kissed her of his own accord.

  One of the women behind the card table giggled delightedly, then stifled it abruptly.

  “You don’t want to get too involved with me,” Leia said, their faces still close. “Trust me on that one.”

  Byron frowned. “Why not? Are you married or something?”

  Leia shook her head. “No. I just have a lot of issues. I’m one of those extremely neurotic chicks your mom warned you to stay away from.”

  Byron swept at his bangs. “Well, since we’re being honest, you can’t hold a candle to me when it comes to issues. No one holds a candle to me.” He reached for her hand; Leia splayed her fingers.

  It was getting dark. The longleaf pines were black against a silver-grey sky. The smell of pine and the sharp, cold air reminded Leia of Christmas. The combination had power.

  “I have an idea,” Byron said. “Let’s both take a chance. Tell me your biggest issue—the worst thing about you. I promise I won’t judge, no matter what it is.” He swept his free hand, banishing all doubt. “I promise to like you just as much. Then I’ll tell you mine.”

  Leia smiled wanly, shook her head. “Don’t want to.”

  “Please?”

  Leia just kept shaking her head. Byron reached out a tentative hand, brushed her hair back. “Trust me. There’s nothing you can say that would make me not like you.”

  Leia squinted at him. He had no idea, the things she could tell him. It felt like a challenge, like a knight of the round table handing her a sword and saying, ‘go ahead, give me your best shot, I’ll bet you can’t knock me off this stump.’ In this particular challenge Leia’s best shot was a two hundred pound war hammer that could not only knock him off the stump, but send him sailing over the castle wall.

  Leia disentwined her hand from his. “All right, I’ll play. I give you my best shot, and you see if you can handle it.”

  Byron nodded. “I can handle it.”

  Leia smirked. Poor little sucker.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “Imagine the most terrifying thing you can. The thing that crawls in the corner of your worst nightmares, that leaves children screaming in the night because their too-open minds haven’t learned to block it out yet, and they can’t even describe it to their parents sitting at the edge of the bed, because there are no words for it, it just is.”

  Byron looked…alarmed. It wasn’t the sort of look Leia was used to seeing at this point, although it also wasn’t particularly promising. She pushed on, the hope she had allowed to creep in now all but dashed. “Then imagine this thing doesn’t go
away as you grow up. In fact, it gets worse. It’s always with you, always fighting to rise to the surface. And imagine you never get less terrified of it; you’re certain that if you let it grow big enough, it will do something horrible, but you don’t know what.”

  Byron’s entire face was trembling. The skin around his eyes was twitching so badly Leia was afraid he was having a seizure.

  “Are they black circles?” He asked.

  Leia’s mouth fell open.

  “I don’t have to imagine it,” Byron said. “I live it. Every single day of my life.”

  * * *

  “What are your power places?” Leia asked, eyeing her display of family photos, pinned haphazardly by the thousands, covering most of an entire wall.

  “Places that are simple and beautiful, clean, harmonious. Gardens, but not wilderness. Wilderness is too wild. I hate beige, hate clutter, can’t abide walls made of concrete blocks, or that corrugated aluminum siding. What about you?”

  “Drive-ins, white ice cream trucks that play circus music, Frankenstein—the original one with Boris Karloff. Skee-ball. Greeting card stores, and the greeting card departments of drug stores. King of the Road, Black and white tiled floors. Snowmen with button eyes and carrot noses. Cereal boxes. Primary colors.”

  “What’s King of the Road?” Byron asked.

  “An old song. Really old. My father used to play it when I was little, and it was old then.”

  “Does there have to be cereal in the cereal boxes?”

  “No.”

  “What do those things have in common?” Byron asked.

  “They all give me the feeling I get sitting in front of a fire sipping cocoa. The dots can’t stand the warmth.”