Sleepeasy

by Wright, T. M.

  Saying? Sam wondered. Was he saying something? "Was I?" he said.

  "You were. Yes." She was holding her front door open and speaking to him from behind it, as if he made her nervous.

  Sam nodded. "Yes. I was…investigating. I feel that there is something to investigate here. That's what I do, ma'am. It's what I've always done. Investigate."

  "I'm happy for you." She wasn't being sarcastic. She was smiling.

  "It's a living," he said.

  "And what is it you're investigating?"

  His brow furrowed. "What I've always investigated, I imagine, ma'am. Errant husbands. Errant wives. Fraudulent accountants. People who aren't what they appear to be." That last made him wince. The dowager with the cavernous attic had been one of those people who weren't what they appeared to be. Thank God she had gone the way of the dinosaurs. "Dinosaurs, ma'am," he said.

  "You're investigating dinosaurs?" This made Mrs. Alexander's smile grow broader.

  "Possibly." Sam frowned. He fished in the pockets of his tweed suit, came up with a wallet, opened it, removed a card and held it out for Mrs. Alexander to see.

  Mrs. Alexander read the card. "Then you are Sam Goodlow," she said. "And you're investigating dinosaurs?"

  Sam put the card back in his wallet and the wallet back in his suit pocket. "Well," he said, confused. "I don't think that I'm investigating dinosaurs, ma'am. I believe that dinosaurs are extinct."

  In the corporeal world, on East 79th Street, in Manhattan, in an apartment that was jointly owned by a young lawyer named Barrow and a young advertising executive named Freely, Harry's rat puppy was doing what he had to do. He was on the verge of bringing a life to a violent and vicious end.

  It was Freely whose life he was planning to end, though Freely didn't know it yet because she was asleep, and Harry's rat puppy (whom Harry would come to refer to as Sydney) was standing over her, getting his bearings straight. He was all murder, lust, malevolence. He was single-mindedly avaricious and brilliant, which is how Harry's subconscious had designed him (because it was what any murderer worth his salt should be). But he didn't see well in the pitch-dark, because Harry didn't see well in the pitch-dark. He would have flicked on a light, but he couldn't see a light switch in the dark. So he waited for his eyes to adjust. He had all the time in the world.

  And as he waited for his eyes to adjust, Freely dreamed. She dreamed of getting out of the rat race of advertising and into something more fulfilling. She'd write. Novels, short stories, poems. She'd find an apartment in SoHo. She'd get an old Remington Rand typewriter. She'd work long into the night, exposing her soul. In her dream, she saw herself hunched over the Remington Rand, pecking out the words that would eventually turn the heads of civilization.

  And that's when the first blow fell. The dream Remington Rand typewriter flattened out and became a smudge on the dream desk. Her dream self hunched forward and fought for air. But it wouldn't come. It was as if she were trying to breathe sand. Her dream self turned into a newborn robin too soon out of the egg—featherless, pink, beaky and desperate.

  Then the second blow fell.

  And she awoke, if only for a millisecond. She saw a huge black shape above her, silhouetted against the gray darkness in the bedroom. And she knew that the end of her life was close at hand, and she didn't want to see it.

  "Death," said Sam Goodlow to June Alexander. "I'm investigating death." He grinned, happy to have found a sense of purpose again after so long.

  Mrs. Alexander said, "Then come in and investigate."

  And behind Sam, at the bottom of the little slope that led to Mrs. Alexander's house, Harry called, "Okay, buddy, what in the hell do you think you're doing? And don't try any funny business either. I got my gat trained on you."

  His gat? Sam wondered. He turned his head, looked confusedly at Harry, who'd donned his private eye getup and had the snub-nosed .38 trained on Sam's head.

  Sam said, "What's a gat?"

  Harry nodded stiffly at the .38. "This, stupid! My piece. My gun."

  Sam nodded. "Oh, of course. Then why don't you just call it that?"

  Harry's brow furrowed. He shrugged. "I don't know. What's the difference?"

  "None, I guess," Sam said. "Except that if I didn't know precisely what you had trained on me, I might have reacted in a way that would have proved painful for both of us."

  Harry pursed his lips. "Just tell me what you're doing here, buddy. Now! Or my gat's gonna talk."

  Sam chuckled.

  "I mean it," Harry barked.

  "Investigating," Sam told him.

  "Yeah? What?"

  "Whatever there may be to investigate. It's what I do."

  June Alexander chimed in, "It's true, Mr. Briggs. I saw his card."

  "You're telling me," Harry called, "that you're some kind of PI?"

  Sam nodded. "Yes. That's what I'm telling you. And what are you supposed to be?"

  "Dammit," Harry whispered. Wasn't it obvious to anyone what he was supposed to be? He called, "Just don't give me any guff, buddy. You damn well know what I'm supposed to be." He jerked the gun to indicate the slope leading to Mrs. Alexander's house.

  "Come down here. Now!"

  "Why?"

  "Why? Because I'll blow your head into yesterday's soup if you don't."

  Sam grinned. This man was very entertaining. He descended the slope, stopped a couple of feet from Harry and gave him a puzzled look. "Okay, so now what?"

  "Now, we talk."

  "Oh, shit," Amelia whispered to herself. "Who the hell is that?" She was sitting on her park bench, on the cement slab above the lakeshore, and she was watching as a tall, dark-haired young woman, dressed in what looked like blue flannel pajamas, trudged out of the lake. The woman seemed very confused. She carried an ancient black typewriter under her arm.

  In the corporeal world, Henry Barrow was raining ineffectual blows on Sydney, who was hunched over Freely's body. Sydney was smoothing Freely's hair back from her smashed face, and he was mumbling lustful incoherencies at her, only dimly noting Barrow's blows.

  At last, Sydney turned slightly, caught Barrow by the throat with one huge, chunky hand and squeezed. Barrow's windpipe collapsed. Two minutes later (it would have been nearer three minutes if he'd kept himself in better shape) he was dead.

  Harry said, "I know you! You're the guy who was watching Barbara swim. You're a goddamned Peeping Tom."

  Sam shook his head. Harry had the snub-nosed .38 pointed at his nose. "No, Mr. Briggs. I was plooped," he said.

  "Plooped? Is that supposed to be a joke?"

  "One moment, I wasn't there, in your backyard, and then I was. I was plooped. So how could I peep?"

  "Insanity," Harry muttered. "Plooped, peeped. Does anyone around here have both oars in the water?"

  "You should," he heard from behind him. It was Amelia's voice. "Because it's the only way you and your friend are going to get to the other side."

  He glanced around at her. "I thought you said you didn't know how to get there."

  "I lied."

  "Of course."

  "And besides, all I know is how to get to the… space in between, I guess you'd call it." She gestured at the snub-nosed .38, still pointed at Sam's head. "Put that down, Harry. I doubt that it would do you any good here anyway."

  He looked at the gun, sighed and slipped it back into his shoulder holster, which was beginning to feel less uncomfortable and more like a part of his body.

  Amelia continued, "Didn't you wonder why I was so anxious to take you out on my boat, Harry? Hell, I wanted to… tease you. Once you get out there, everything changes. It's a whole different world. Not this world or that one. Not this side or the other side. It's some ... halfway place, I guess. I was going to take you to the edge of that place, because I think it leads all the way over."

  "You think? You don't know?"

  "Harry, what do any of us know? I'm as new to all this as you are."

  "And what you're saying is, I've got to go
out on your boat—"

  "Your own boat, Harry. Sorry."

  "My own boat. Why?"

  "I value my boat. I don't want anything happening to it."

  "I don't understand. If something did happen to it, you could just conjure up a new one, right?"

  "Wrong. There's only one wish per customer. At least that's the way it looks to me. When poor Mrs. Pennypacker was murdered, I tried to will her back into existence. Couldn't do it. Don't ask me why. Maybe the ... architect of all this wanted us to get it right on the first go around. Maybe He's teasing us just as we tease each other. Maybe He's as perverse as we are. Who knows? But I do know that you're not taking my boat. It stays here. You can conjure up one of your own boats, or you can use one of the rowboats, but my party boat isn't going anywhere unless I'm on it."

  "So you're not coming with me?"

  "Harry, this is your problem—you deal with it. I like my little village, and if it's going to be overrun by the. . . flotsam and jetsam of your subconscious creation, your Sydney Greenstreet, I have to stay here and deal with that. Hell, I don't even want to go back to the other side."

  Harry, standing by the shore of the lake, stared at the two-seater rowboat for a long time.

  Sam, standing close by, said, "Why don't you do what she said? Conjure up one of your own."

  Harry shook his head glumly. "I wouldn't know how to do that, Mr. Goodlow."

  "Yeah, sure. Sam." He looked at him. "I'm afraid that whatever I conjured up might sink. What do I know about boats? I'm afraid of the water, for Christ's sake." He looked at the little rowboat again, then at Sam. "Do you know anything about boats?"

  "I know that they float," Sam answered. "But only if they're built right."

  Harry nodded. "That's my point." He noticed he was sweating. "I wonder who controls the weather around here?" he said. "It's so damned hot."

  "There's another point to consider," Sam said.

  "Yeah?"

  Sam gestured at the rowboat. "Even if we did go out in this little boat and it sank, so what? What's the worst that could happen to us? We're dead already. So if we drown, what's the difference?"

  Harry considered this for a couple of seconds, then said, "You've hit upon an interesting philosophical conundrum, my friend."

  "I have?"

  "Yes, and it's this: admittedly, we're dead—I accept that, you accept that, everyone accepts that—and yet, we're not really dead, because we walk and we talk, and we have a certain limited, if bizarre, control over our environment. Accepting that that is true, we would have to assume that we're subject to various... environmental and spiritual givens."

  "If you have a point to make, Mr. Briggs, just make it."

  "Sorry. Conditioning. My point is—can we, in every meaningful sense of the word . . . die here, in this place, because, in every meaningful sense of the word, we're alive here?"

  Sam considered this. "Didn't your friend Amelia say that bullets would have no effect?"

  "Ah, more unfounded assumptions. First of all, she's not my friend, she's my wife." He cocked his head. "Although that may not be strictly true anymore, considering that our marriage vows said 'till death do us part.' And secondly, you're assuming that she's right. Has she ever had a chance to try it out? Does she know anyone who's died here and lived to tell the tale? I doubt it."

  "What about this Mrs. Pennypacker?"

  "Amelia's own creation. I don't think she counts."

  "So what you're saying, Mr. Briggs—"

  "Harry."

  "What you're saying, Harry, is that this is pretty much uncharted territory. What you're saying is that if we go out on that boat and it sinks, then that might be all she wrote for us? We will have bought the farm.

  Checked into the big house. Shuffled off to Buffalo."

  "Yes. That's what I'm saying."

  "Shit. I thought so."

  "So I guess that, philosophically and practically, the only course left open to us is to get into this little boat and see what happens." He stepped forward, put one foot over the boat's gunwale and took a deep breath. His whole body was trembling with fear.

  "I'll row," Sam said.

  Both Oars in the Water

  Chapter Twenty

  Amelia watched them go and thought how inexperienced and pathetic they looked. Harry was exquisitely overdressed for boating, and he stiff-armed the little boat's gunwales as if his life depended on it. At the same time, Sam was having a hell of a problem getting the oars in the holders. A fitful breeze had come up—Amelia too wondered who controlled the weather here—and the boat was pitching and yawing unpredictably. At one point, Harry had to duck to avoid being slapped across the face with an oar. It would have been comical under other circumstances, but Amelia found herself unaccountably concerned. She hadn't wanted Harry to show up but had known he would. And now that he was here, her feelings were mixed. Sure, he could be aggravating. He could be dense. He could even be a stiff neck at times. But he had a certain nerdy charm, he was agreeable to play with and she had more than once wondered if she might actually love him.

  She was watching from the park bench where she often sat and the little boat was not far off. She thought she could even call to Sam and Harry and wish them good luck. But no. The wind was too strong, they'd never hear her.

  Rationalization, she realized. The wind wasn't too strong. She simply didn't want Harry to know that she was concerned.

  "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Harry called to Sam, who had finally gotten the oars engaged in the holders and was doing his best to get the boat moving against the wind. "I mean, I think there's a storm coming."

  Sam looked at the sky. His brow furrowed. "Did you notice that there's no sun here?" he said.

  But Harry hadn't heard him above the wind. "What?" he called.

  Sam repeated himself. Harry looked up and saw only a bright blue, cloudless sky faintly tinged with green. "Do you think," he called, "that there are actual weather patterns in this place?"

  Sam shrugged.

  "And even more interesting," Harry continued, "do you think there are actual directions—north,east, south, west."

  "Sure," Sam answered. "Why not? People made up that stuff in the first place, so they could know where they were, I guess. And so they could know how to get where they wanted to be. We're people. We can make up our own stuff."

  Harry—despite the fact that he hadn't been out on a boat in decades and was asnervous as a cat—managed a quick smile. This guy was brighter than he'd thought. "So," Harry said, "if we want to say that back that way"—he pointed toward shore—"is west, then that's what it is."

  Sam nodded. "Which would mean that that way"— he pointed left—"would be north and that way"—he pointed right—"would be south and straight ahead would be east."

  Harry, whose back was to the shore, looked beyond Sam, at the opposite shore, which seemed to be no more than a mile away. "We just head east," he said.

  "Huh?" Sam said. The wind was building.

  They were fifty feet out now and the water, which had been a brownish blue nearer to shore, was becoming a deeper blue, closer to the color of the sky, as they moved farther from the shore. This made Harry uncomfortable, though he wasn't sure why. "East," he called. "We go east."

  Sam nodded, and kept rowing.

  In the corporeal world, on Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan, Sydney had pulled out a wad of bills and was attempting to pay for a room at the Ritz Carlton with it. But the dapper man behind the counter was looking at the bills as if they were disease-laden, because they were grotesque fakes. They looked as if a child had drawn them with smudgy green crayon (which was the way that Harry's subconscious had seen the money that Sydney would carry—ill-defined, a necessary inconvenience. What real use, Harry's subconscious reasoned, did arch villains have for money?).

  The desk clerk at the Ritz Carlton couldn't decide whom to call first—the police or hotel security. But he knew instinctively that he shouldn't make Sydney angry. "Sir, if y
ou could just wait a moment, I'll check on room availability."

  Sydney spoke. His voice was a raspy, nasal tenor that was irritating and threatening at the same time. "My good man," he said, "you've already checked on room availability. I think you're giving me the runaround, and I don't like it. Either my money is good here or it isn't."

  It was then that the desk clerk noticed Sydney's wide silver tie. Near the bottom, it bore several diagonal red stains. The man centered on these stains and whispered, "Good Lord, is that blood?"

  Sydney looked at the stains, took hold of the tie, lifted it to his nose and sniffed. Then he put the tie neatly back in place and gave the desk clerk a sinister, meaty smile. "Strawberries," he said.

  The desk clerk stared wide-eyed, but could say nothing.

  Sydney nodded at the wad of grotesquely fake bills that the desk clerk clutched in his hands. "I'll take that back now," he said. "Your hotel is not to my liking." The clerk quickly handed the bills over and Sydney left the hotel. His stride was quick, fluid, elegant. Watching him, the clerk couldn't imagine how someone so large could move like that.

  Harry offered to row, but Sam was enjoying himself.

  "I remember, when I was a kid, my parents would take me up to a cabin they owned in the Adirondacks. It was on a lake—hell, pretty much like this one. And I used to take our rowboat out all the time because it was so peaceful on that lake. Especially in the mornings, when there was a fog. It was like I was in another world."

  Harry nodded. The wind had calmed. Conversation was easier. "And now you are in another world."

  "Am I?" Sam said.

  Harry couldn't decide if Sam was simply being ironic or if his question had been genuine.

  Sam went on, "How can we know for sure exactly where we are? I mean, I guess we know where we've come from, in a way. But where was that, for God's sake?"

  "I think we have to make a few logical assumptions, based on empirical evidence," Harry began, but Sam cut in.

  "I'm here, now, in this place, and I was there, in that other place—the earth, the real world, whatever you want to call it. And when I was there, I thought I knew where I was and what it was. I assumed all kinds of things. Everyone does. It's like this, Harry: what if I'd lived, all my life, in a single room? Like a mouse in a box. That would have been my universe, and I would have guessed that that was the extent of the universe. But then one day a door opens and I'm allowed into another box, another room. What do I assume then? Do I assume that the universe consists of just these two rooms? Hell, no. I assume that if there are two rooms, there must be three, or four, or four hundred, or four hundred thousand. Unless I'm a white mouse. Then I assume that there are just two rooms. But I'm not a white mouse." He grinned, pleased with himself. His grin was broad, toothy, full of good feeling.