Sleepeasy

by Wright, T. M.

  The wind picked up again. Harry grabbed the gunwales. "Shit," he whispered.

  But Sam was caught up in his monologue. He even forgot to row. The oars sat useless in the churning water. "But maybe we can't even assume anything about white mice. We think they're not as bright as we are because they don't build cars and make war. But does that make them stupid? No. It makes them smart, because they don't endanger their own existence. White mice will outlive us all, Harry."

  The water was sloshing over the gunwales now. It was the same color as the sky and this made Harry very nervous. He remembered what the man in the olive-colored Speedos had said: "It's frighteningly easy to become disoriented. Sky, land and water seem to merge, and eventually you begin to feel that you're simply…floating. It's very disconcerting, Mr. Briggs. You can't imagine." But now Harry could imagine, and only too well. Because when he looked beyond the grinning Sam Goodlow, who was still yammering about white mice, he couldn't see the opposite shore. He saw only the deep blue-green sky, the deep blue-green water and just the barest hint of a horizon.

  He turned his head and stared back toward Silver Lake. He saw a whisper of brown and green, as if he were looking through fog. But there was no fog. "Row, Sam!" he shouted.

  Sam didn't respond. He was still oiling, although Harry couldn't hear him above the noise of the wind and water.

  "We've got to go back!" Harry shouted.

  Sam stopped talking at once. "Back?"

  Harry turned halfway around and pointed toward the near shore. It was all but gone now. "Row, dammit! We've got to go back!" He grabbed the gunwale again. The boat was threatening to capsize.

  "No shore!" Sam called.

  Harry turned around in the seat and looked toward Silver Lake again. He saw a churning, deep blue-green sky and churning, deep blue-green water.

  "Where do we go?" Sam shouted.

  A wave as tall as a man swept over the boat and soaked them both to the skin. The water was icy cold. Dammit, Harry thought, and shivered. He was dead already, and now he was going to die again of hypothermia. Unless he drowned first, which seemed more likely.

  "Exhilarating!" Sam called, and Harry had to look up at him because the boat was riding the crest of a huge wave, the oars were touching nothing but air and Sam—tweed suit, tousled red hair, craggy, smiling face—was at an oblique angle above him.

  "I didn't hear you!" Harry called.

  "What?" Sam called back. He was still smiling. He was having a hell of a time.

  "Row, Sam!" Harry called. He thought he was going to pee his pants.

  Amelia quickly lost sight of them. The wind picked up and the little boat seemed to merge with the sky and water. And now it was gone.

  She sighed. So, there was loss in this life too. It hardly seemed fair.

  In the corporeal world, on East 42nd Street, in Manhattan, it was early evening, and Sydney had slit the throat of a young Wall Street executive named Morgan Brown. It had taken several minutes for the man to die of suffocation, and Sydney had enjoyed every moment. "Thank you, that was pleasant," he whispered, when Brown's gurgles and pleas were done and he was quiet.

  Then Sydney bent over, dipped his chubby index finger deep into Morgan Brown's wound, wiped the blood diagonally across his wide, silver tie, reached into the pocket of Brown's suit jacket and got the man's wallet. Brown had been looking forward to a vacation and was carrying lots of money. Sydney straightened and counted the notes with delight.

  Harry's subconscious had been wrong. Sydney needed money. He couldn't kill his way into fine hotels. The Brown Derby wouldn't serve him steak tartare if he disemboweled the chef. Murder was wonderful, certainly. Nothing else piqued his libido in quite the same way. But money opened doors and made people grovel.

  They'd been fighting the wind and waves for what seemed like hours. Each new wave had threatened to send them both plunging into nothingness. Even Sam's Gee, this is fun! grin had faded, and he had frantically tossed himself around in the boat in an effort to keep it balanced in the water. Meanwhile, Harry, his head down and his eyes closed, accepted that this was going to be his punishment for a life of non-productivity and uncertainty: he was going to spend eternity in this little boat, with this crazy man, convinced that the next wave would bring an end to his existence. Whoever God was, he certainly had a sense of humor!

  Then, in an instant, the wind and water calmed. Harry opened his eyes and whispered, "I don't believe it." He could see land.

  "That's New York City," he said.

  Sam nodded wordlessly.

  "My God, there's the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center, the UN."

  Sam nodded again.

  "How the hell did we get here?"

  Sam shrugged, but said nothing. He looked glum.

  They were a couple of miles offshore, Harry guessed, and the ocean was as still as ice.

  He said, noting Sam's glum look, "What's wrong with you?"

  Sam answered, "See that?" and nodded.

  Harry turned his head, looked. He saw something large, dark and roughly circular floating not far off. "Uh-huh," he said. "What is it? It looks like garbage." He turned to Sam again.

  Sam shook his head. "It's not garbage-garbage. It's sewage. It's shit."

  Harry looked again. The circular darkness was as large as a football field. "That's a lot of shit," he said. "It's a hell of a lot of shit."

  "Where did it come from?"

  "There?" Sam nodded toward shore. "From them. From us."

  "I see."

  "No, you don't."

  "But I do. I see. They shit and here it is. What could be simpler? What else is there to see?"

  "Nothing. The question is, what do you smell?"

  Harry sniffed the air. He frowned, sniffed again.

  Sam said, "You don't smell anything, right?"

  Harry sniffed a third time. "I don't know." A fourth time. Another frown. "You're right. I don't smell anything."

  "That's what's wrong. Either our noses have stopped working, or this is not the place it appears to be, or it is the place it appears to be and we're not really here."

  Harry nodded. "The possibilities are endless."

  "I hope not," Sam said, and brought the oars up out of the water to rest them on the gunwales. "And there's another thing: where's the sun?"

  Harry cast about in the sky above. It was deep blue, cloudless. "Oh, hell," he whispered.

  "Again, I hope not," Sam said, and added, "Take off your hat."

  "Take off my hat? Why?"

  "Just take it off."

  Harry reached, grabbed the brim of the black fedora, pulled. The hat stayed put. "Good Lord," he whispered, and pulled harder. The hat wouldn't come off. It was as if it were a part of his head.

  "And how about the coat?" Sam said.

  Harry tried to take off his brown trench coat. He couldn't.

  Sam sighed. "I thought so," he said. "All that wind—"

  "You thought what?" Harry said.

  "We're partway there. This is a kind of . . . place in between. Isn't that what Amelia called it? All the physical trappings are here, but it's like a ... snapshot, I guess. At least to us."

  "Or a frozen computer program."

  "Sorry?"

  "You know, you're in the middle of a computer game, or Lotus, or whatever, and suddenly the thing freezes up. You punch all the keys, but nothing happens."

  "Oh, yeah, I understand," Sam said, though he obviously didn't.

  "And what you have to do is reset the thing."

  "You mean, press a button and get it to start over again?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "It would be nice if it were that simple."

  "You're saying it isn't?"

  "I don't think it is. But what do I know? I've done a bit more. . . traveling than you have, it's true, but I'm not sure of anything. I'm just guessing."

  "And your guess as to why I can't take off my hat and coat?"

  Sam shrugged. "Because they're a part of you?" It was
a question.

  Harry thought about this. "I think I understand. There is no real me anymore. No physicalness. No body. Only spirit. I see my hands and my feet because I expect to see them. And I see the trench coat and hat because I expect to see them too. Because I've made them a part of me. I might as well try to take off my head."

  "Maybe," Sam said.

  "But back there, in Silver Lake, I could take my clothes off, and I did."

  Sam grinned ruefully. "If I had all the answers, I'd still be alive," he said.

  "Yeah," Harry said. "Me too."

  "Dammit to hell," Amelia whispered as the well-dressed young man trudged up from the lake. He saw her, smiled, waved and called, "Hi there. Is this Club Med?"

  Chapter Twenty-one

  In the corporeal world, at Manhattan's 10th Precinct, Detective Kennedy Whelan was dog tired. He wondered if he had ever been so tired before. Sleep wouldn't cure it, he knew. Even if he slept for a week, he'd wake up tired.

  He dabbed at a coffee stain on his shirt and grumbled a curse. When he grew tired he became clumsy, and when he became clumsy, he got surly. It was time to go home. He crumbled his big cigar out in an ashtray.

  His partner came over, put a thin file folder on his desk and said, "Here's another one." He paused. "You look like last week's vegetables, Ken. Have some coffee. Get laid."

  "In that order?" Whelan asked, and flipped open the file folder. He saw an eight-by-ten color photo first. It showed a nattily dressed man in his mid-twenties, lying on his back, his hands clutching the air near his throat. Blood had pooled around him like a shawl. His eyes were open very wide and one leg was sharply bent.

  Whelan's partner said, "Samuels and Tower had this one, Ken, but Tower's wife got sick, so now we have it. Their report is in the file."

  "Motive?" Whelan asked.

  "The guy's wallet was empty."

  "It was robbery, then?"

  "I think so. It's hard to say whether he got his throat slashed as an afterthought or not. It probably doesn't matter."

  "No doubt you're right," Whelan said, and closed the file. "I'm going home, Mike. Jesus, I feel like a third-year medical student. I've been up for days."

  "Sure," his partner said, as Whelan stood. "Everything will be right where you left it when you get back."

  "Yeah, thanks a lot," Whelan said drily, then took another cigar from his pocket and lit up.

  "See it?" the man on the yacht said, and pointed stiffly toward the horizon. "See it, Doris?"

  Doris, who was nearsighted, looked but saw nothing, and said so.

  The man said, "A little boat. What's it doing way out here?"

  "What I want to know," Doris demanded, "is what we're doing way out here! It's winter, Charles."

  "Mine was a rhetorical question, Doris. Rhetorical. That means I wasn't really asking what it was doing out here, and even if I was, why would I ask you?"

  "That's very unkind, Charles. Why are you so unkind?"

  Charles ignored her. "There's no one in it," he said. "The boat's empty."

  "Empty?" said Doris.

  The boat vanished.

  Charles, who had been sitting in a deck chair, jumped to his feet and ran to the stern rail. "Doris, it's not there. The boat's not there anymore!"

  Doris strained to see. "Did it sink?" she asked.

  "Well, it must have."

  "We'd better get over there, then. Maybe someone's in trouble."

  "For God's sake, Doris, don't you think I know that?" Charles snapped, and went to start the yacht's big engines.

  Harry said, "Listen. Do you hear that?"

  Sam listened. "Yeah. A motor."

  "Boat motor, I think. Or an airplane." He looked about, saw the Manhattan skyline, a quiet blue sky, still blue water. But he saw what looked like snow too, and this confused him. Snow and blue sky at the same time? Someone was mixed up. Someone didn't know what date it was.

  "No," Sam said. "It's a boat." He listened for a few seconds. The engine noise grew louder. "Whatever it is," he said, "it's coming this way."

  Harry cast about frantically for some sign of the boat. It was very disconcerting to see the Manhattan skyline with such clarity, the blue sky, the blue water, the floating sewage and the snowfall overlying all of it, but not the boat that was clearly very close, and drawing closer with each second. "I don't like this," he whispered. "Damn, I don't like this."

  "You and me both," Sam said.

  "I mean," Harry said, "maybe it's like matter/antimatter or something. Maybe if they come in contact with us, we'll all explode. Or implode. Or just ... stop existing."

  "And would that be so bad?" Sam asked.

  "For me, it would be," Harry said at once.

  Sam nodded. "For me too."

  Charles throttled the engines back and brought the yacht to a slow stop. "Doris, do you see anything?" he called.

  Doris, standing at the stern rail, leaned over and looked left, right. "It must have sunk, Charles."

  "I know it sank, for pity's sake. But do you see anyone floating there? Do you see any bodies?"

  "Bodies? Charles, I didn't know that I was looking for bodies."

  "Well, you aren't looking for pennies from heaven, Doris."

  "You're an unkind man, Charles—"

  "Wait a minute. There it is!" Charles called. Doris looked at him. He was pointing toward the horizon. She looked, but saw only a faint gray smudge.

  "That can't be it, Charles!" she proclaimed. "It's too far away."

  "But it is, Doris. It is!"

  "Oh, Charles, you're so full of crap. I think you're going to explode some day, you're so full of crap. Bringing us out here in the winter just because you miss your boat. You're so full of crap."

  Charles's mouth fell open. "Doris, you can't speak to me like that!"

  "Where did it go?" Harry asked.

  "You mean Manhattan?" Sam asked.

  "Yeah. It's gone. It's not there anymore." They were surrounded by ocean and sky. The ocean was becoming frisky. Whitecaps were forming and the sky was smudging over with ominous, frothy gray clouds.

  "We're in deep doo-doo!" Sam said.

  "Up to our belly buttons," Harry said.

  Freely didn't believe what Amelia was telling her, but she was too well mannered to admit it. She said, "In other words, what you're saying is ..." She cocked her head, smiled pleasantly. "Are you married?"

  The abrupt change in the conversation took Amelia by surprise. "Yes. At least, I was married."

  "Divorced, then?"

  "No. Not divorced. Not single. Not married. Dead. Like you. That's what I've been trying to say, Miss Freely."

  "Oh, I know what you've been saying, Amelia." She was a delicate-looking woman, with clear, creamy skin, a small nose and large, expressive green eyes. "And believe me, I'm not disputing it. If you tell me I'm dead, then that is what I am, and it's what I believe."

  "You think I'm nuts."

  "I think, Amelia, that this is a very pleasant little community you have here, and if a person were to die and go off to another world, then this would be precisely the world she would want to go off to."

  Amelia sighed. "Miss Freely—"

  "Anna."

  "Of course. Anna, I'm going to show you something very strange. Something you have never seen before. Something that may shock you."

  "I'm not easily shocked, Amelia. I've seen it all."

  "No. You haven't seen this." She turned her head. When she turned back, she had become Barbara.

  Freely smiled. "Yes?"

  "Yes what?"

  "I'm waiting."

  "Waiting for what?"

  "For you to show me whatever it is you are intent on showing me."

  "But I am. Here it is. I'm someone else."

  "Are you?"

  "For Christ's sake, can't you see? I'm a different person."

  "In what way?"

  "In every way. Different eyes, different hair, different skin, different body."

  Free
ly stared at her for a moment, then asked, "Is there someplace I can stay, while I'm waiting to go back?" She smiled. "I have American Express."

  "Blue sky," Harry said.

  "And a calm sea," Sam said.

  "Too calm."

  Sam nodded. "I can see us playing this maddening little game for a very long time. Christ, we should have stayed where we were."

  "Perhaps, but we didn't. And there were problems we were asked to solve, remember?"

  "We?"

  "You're getting testy," Harry said.

  "I am and I'm sorry." He didn't sound very sorry. He looked about. "Damn, not even a bird. Where are the birds? There should be birds. But there's nothing. It's all so ... dead!" He grinned, pleased with his irony. He looked at the ocean. "But who knows what's down there!"

  "I wouldn't want to find out."

  "We may have no choice," Sam said.

  "You may be right."

  Sam looked at the water for another minute, then turned to Harry. "How deep do you think it is?"

  "Deep? It's the ocean. It's a couple of miles deep."

  "Is it? It looks like the ocean, sure. But, then again, you look like something out of Mickey Spillane."

  "Thanks."

  "You're missing my point."

  "No, I'm not. I get your point. Maybe we're not seeing what's really there."

  "Uh-huh." He reached over the gunwale and fingered the water. "Know what it feels like?"