American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  At school and at home and nearly everywhere else, it’s different. People know who Gracie Zuela is. She is Talked About. She is, after all, the girl who has been Tapped, Touched, Chosen. Though they don’t know what she’s been chosen for—God help them if they ever figure that out—they know she has Connections. They fear her as they would the child of a mafia don or a corrupt mayor, worrying her whims and attentions could result in dire consequences.

  But the eponymous Chloe, owner of the diner, doesn’t care about Gracie’s relations at all. Her work ethic is so inflexible, so demanding, that she is blind to Gracie’s background, and deaf to all the rumors that follow her around like so many muttering thunderclouds. Some people are aghast at this: Gracie’s fellow waitresses, for example, exchange terrified looks when Chloe gives Gracie both barrels for whatever mistake she’s just made, as if her recriminations could bring the whole roof down on their heads. These comments can’t go ignored, they say; surely Gracie’s—they stumble for the word—benefactor must intervene?

  But nothing happens. Gracie always just nods meekly (she really cannot nod another way) and fixes her mistake. Chloe blows away the stray strand of blond hair that’s always in her face, sighs, apologizes; then, as always, follows up that apology with another warning, though this one less severe than the last; Gracie nods again, and Chloe mutters, “All right, then,” before moving on to more important affairs.

  And everybody just stares. The sleeping dragon has just had its eye poked; surely there must be a column of blasting fire, and a terrible roar?

  They just don’t understand, thinks Gracie as she buses a table, mopping up coffee with a used napkin. They just don’t understand how unimportant they are. How unimportant I am. And it is only at Chloe’s that she feels as unimportant as she knows she really is. It’s only here, except possibly in her times with Joseph, that she feels normal, whatever that means.

  It has been a long while since Gracie’s felt normal for any length of time. Perhaps she has never felt normal. After all, everything started when she was just an infant. She cannot remember her first visitations, and to this day she does not really know why she is visited, she over everyone else. Her own parents prefer not to discuss it. All they told her (and this was grudgingly given) was that one evening, mere weeks after she was born, they had just put her to bed and turned the baby monitor on, and both her mother and her father went to bed smiling as the speaker told them of the tiny creature across the hall snorting, grunting, and, frequently, farting; yet then, much later, they awoke to hear a voice in the room, murmuring softly in a language they could not understand or mimic, and at first they thought they had been Visited, and were terrified, before realizing the voice was coming through the baby monitor.

  Gracie has never gotten her parents to admit what they did once they heard this voice. They will not tell her what actions they took when they realized their child was no longer alone in her room, that a stranger had come into their home and was standing over her and mumbling to himself in a low, awe-filled voice. Once her mother suggested, but did not explicitly say, that they went to look, and found the room empty except for Gracie; but her father has never corroborated this, and deep in her heart Gracie is convinced her parents did not do anything at all: she is sure they cowered in their bed in the dark, afraid to provoke those who secretly maintain Wink from basements and crawl spaces and attics and dark playgrounds.

  She realizes, of course, that she is quite lucky that it was he who visited her, and not one of the others. And to this day he still likes to visit her in her room, and watch her sleep. She almost finds it comforting now.

  The courtship, if it could be called such a thing, was both long and erratic. There would be a shifting of sand in a park sandbox, stirring under an invisible touch; or perhaps the sound of tall grasses being parted in a nearby field, as if some huge watcher was gingerly making its way near her; or small brass trinkets would appear on her windowsill, ones of a very exotic and peculiar make. And little Gracie would tell everyone that she had an invisible friend whom she went walking with in the woods, except he wasn’t really invisible, because, after all, she could see him plain as day, and she had never seen anyone like him before, with a face like that, and so tall…

  Even at that young age, Gracie noticed people turning away when she discussed her friend. They did not want to hear it. They did not want to know, to really know, what went on in their town. Eventually she learned to hold her tongue, but by then everyone knew who was visiting her, and she was permanently marked, and soon feared.

  Now, standing in the diner, Gracie scribbles down another order for Chloe’s banana bourbon pie (a town favorite). She works here because she likes how the people ignore her, and how Chloe doesn’t care who she is; but that does not mean that she loves working for these people. Because over the past year Gracie has come to realize that there is a bright, vicious little coal of hate smoldering in her stomach, and it is a hate for these people, her neighbors and family and friends, all of whom are so happy to go on believing horrific, monstrous lies, all so they might claim a semblance of normality and peace. They have traded the happiness and well-being of their families, even themselves, all so they can have this quiet cup of coffee here, and their little white house, and a well-watered lawn, and a nice, gleaming car of their own.

  It is not their own. Gracie knows that now. They do not own anything in Wink—their residence is only permitted. What control they think they have is all illusion. At any time one of Them could come walking into their houses, and they could do nothing about it.

  Just like her. Just the way it happened to her.

  She slashes at her order book with the pencil. Flakes of graphite trickle down the page.

  God damn these silly people. Gracie doesn’t care anymore. There’s nothing to care about. She can’t even summon the strength anymore.

  Then she stops writing, looks up. Her eyes grow wide, and she almost gasps out loud.

  “Something wrong, hon?” asks one of her customers.

  “Oh, no,” says Gracie. “No, no. I’m sorry. Please go on.”

  Yet there is something wrong: she feels a coldness in her stomach, near her loins. It is as if she’s been penetrated by an icicle, and its chilled water is pooling in her abdomen. Her smile tautens, and she dutifully takes down the remainder of her customer’s order before she wobbles to the back and leans against a wall.

  Not here, not now. She doesn’t need this here.

  Though the patrons of Chloe’s go about their business as they always have, to Gracie the walls tremble like skins on a beating drum, and slowly grow transparent. The walls and floor and ceiling become like gelled water, like she could pass through them with only the slightest effort if she wished. Sound begins to fall away from her, replaced by wind rushing through desert canyons, warbling, crying. The breath in her lungs is arctic; it feels as if her chest is frosting crystals with every second.

  She is slipping over. She must stop it.

  She shuts her eyes. Breathes deep. Holds it. Then she takes the web of her left palm in her right hand and pinches it, hard.

  Gracie opens her eyes again. The rush and roil of Chloe’s have returned: someone whoops and makes a comment about the quality of the pie; Chloe herself is totaling up a large party, nearly ten people, nodding along as every charge is listed.

  Gracie takes a breath, relieved.

  Something happened just now, she thinks. Something triggered that.

  She glances nervously out the front windows and sees she’s not done yet: for though the walls and noises of Chloe’s are back, she can still see the evening sky outside, and it is dotted with red stars. And there is no mesa beyond the town; there are peaks, but they are black and curling and strange, rock formations of a kind not found in New Mexico.

  Gracie blinks again, slowly. And when she opens her eyes, the mesa’s back too.

  She sighs again. The cold sensation in her loins is ebbing away. It’s an unpleasant phenomeno
n, one that’s been happening randomly for nearly three months now. She is being changed by her visitations, that is clear. At first she was not sure how, but the more she talks to him, the more they sit in the canyon and discuss his nature and origins, the more she realizes that in these moments she is crossing over.

  She is becoming more like him. She is catching glimpses of where They are from.

  There is a gust of wind out in the street, so strong and loud that all the customers look up. They hear a clattering outside, like someone’s just thrown an enormous deck of cards up in the air to let them fall on the ground.

  “What was that?” someone asks.

  “Something got blowed over.”

  People stand up and trickle outside to see. Initially Gracie has no intention of following them, but then she remembers the cold feeling in her stomach, and wonders if its being followed by the wind is just a coincidence…

  Heart sinking, she walks out of the diner to join the crowd. There are letters in the street, big black ones. They’ve been blown off the marquee signs of the restaurants and stores along the sidewalk, leaving patchy messages of gibberish behind. Someone comments that this is damn curious, which casts a pall over the crowd as they begin to suspect that this was not accidental.

  Gracie carefully scans the signs, looking from one to the next. Then she walks a few steps down the street and turns around and starts walking backward, and then things just…

  Line up.

  The letters ME and ET remain on the garden shop sign. Then, on the mechanic’s, she can still see M E and after that T ON, and just behind that sign she can see the barber shop’s sign, which has a single lonely I, and looking down the street she can see a G on one sign, and then an H T.

  “Oh, brother,” says Gracie, and she pinches the bridge of her nose.

  He always does use such awkward methods of conversation. She keeps asking him to try just sending her a letter every once in a while. But he never listens. He’s never been very good at listening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It is night, oh holy blessed mother of God, it is night, and with night comes all the nighttime things, all the tremors and whispers, all the burning veins and teary cheeks, all the minutes (or hours, maybe months) of misery stretched out in the unblinking stare of the sodium lights. Oh, thinks Bonnie, oh my dear, oh it is night, actually night, forever night. I thought it would not come this time.

  Each morning Bonnie rises and says well that’s over, that’s finally over, night is over and it will never come again. For how could night persist in the pink broiling sky of the dawn? With a sky like that, why, night cannot exist at all. There cannot be night anywhere, not with that up there.

  Bonnie knows, of course, that this is stupid, and that’s the worst part of it, because she’s aware, she is just so fucking aware, that some crucial part of her brain has corroded and now she cannot keep the sky where it is supposed to be, nor can she keep the ground where it is supposed to be (the walls, thankfully, seem pretty stable—they generally stay where they are), and so often she forgets where she is. She sort of knows—she knows the squalid cinder-block apartment with the burned-out tiki torches and the forever smell of rotting potatoes (and all the flies that come with them)—but ever since she first started doing the runs for dear old Mal she has felt that things are slipping. Things like day and night and the lengths of hours are undependable: they mix like yolk running out of a fried egg.

  Or perhaps it is not the runs. Perhaps it is her dirty little habit, perhaps it is how she’s just tapped the inside of her elbow with that magic wand, and it felt like someone took her by the nostrils and blew a billowing cloud of fairy dust up into her brain…

  She isn’t sure. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

  It is such a pity. She hates it so much it makes her want to weep.

  Weep, weep. Weep, weep, weep for poor Bonnie.

  There is a knock at the door, and poor Bonnie goes over and opens it and puts one eye (with a pupil like a pinpoint) to the crack, and she whispers, Who’s there?

  And a voice outside says, It’s me, Mal, silly, open the door.

  Bonnie does not want to let Mal in. The apartment is Bonnie’s place, no one else’s, so she opens the door a little more and awkwardly sidles out. Carefully shuts it behind her, locks it.

  Jesus, says Mal, what have you done to yourself?

  Nothing, says Bonnie.

  Girl, look at me. Look at me, girl.

  Bonnie pouts, but looks at her.

  Jesus, says Mal. What happened to you. Have you bathed?

  Bathed? Today?

  Anytime. This morning. Last morning.

  Bonnie just shrugs. Every morning is a restart to her, a total reboot. Today is yesterday and tomorrow, it doesn’t matter.

  Christ almighty, Bonnie, says Mal.

  It’s not that bad.

  It’s pretty bad.

  I guess it is that bad, she says. She looks at Mal. I don’t want to go tonight, she says.

  Mal leans up against the wall of the apartment and rubs a twist of stray lipstick from her mouth. She eyes Bonnie sourly, and says, Oh really? Bonnie watches her. She takes in Mal’s long, lean body, which so effortlessly fills her tight khaki pants and dark green blouse. Mal is everything Bonnie wishes she could be. Strong, smart, sexy. And not sexy in the pouty little-girl way, sexy in that freshly fucked kind of way, that I-just-had-it-and-I-don’t-care-what-happens-now kind of way. She has that lofty, clever confidence about her that can only come from knowing that everyone in the room wants to fuck you. Bonnie wishes she knew what that was like.

  I hate it, says Bonnie.

  Mal says, What?

  I hate it. I hate it so much.

  Hate what?

  The night. The night and where it lives. That’s where I’m going again, aren’t I? Where you’re taking me.

  Mal is silent.

  Bonnie says, We’re going to that place under the ground where the night lives. I know. It’s okay. I just… I just hate it. I hate it so much, Mal.

  The night doesn’t live there, says Mal. It’s just… oh never mind. Come on. Let’s get you in the car.

  I’m not coming. I won’t, Mal. I hate it.

  You are, says dear old Mal. You’ll want to come.

  Why?

  She reaches into her pocket, grabs something, holds it out. Because I got a present, she says.

  Bonnie looks at the bag. It is a lot, a whole, whole lot. Enough to keep her running for days and days. More than dear old Mal’s ever given her before. Yet why, Bonnie wonders, is Mal’s hand shaking as she holds the bag? Mal is not the type to shake.

  It’s so much, says Bonnie.

  Yes, it is.

  Why is it so much?

  Why do you think?

  Bonnie considers it. She asks, Because this is the last time?

  Yeah, she says. Yeah, you’re right, kid. This is the last time.

  Oh, thank goodness. Thank, thank goodness.

  Then you’ll come?

  Yes. Yes, I’ll come.

  Put your shoes on. Do you need help with your shoes?

  Bonnie nods.

  Oh Jesus, says Mal, and she sighs and sits and tries to force Bonnie’s feet (toes black, nails yellow) into her Keds. Bonnie whimpers a little.

  Stop it, says Mal.

  I don’t mean to, says Bonnie.

  Yeah you do, says Mal.

  I don’t.

  I don’t even care anymore. I don’t care. Come on.

  Mal drives an old green Chevy Suburban that is as wide as a boat and it makes Bonnie scared because she’s sure it’ll tip over, yet somehow it never does. They drive north, straight north, because Bonnie lives on the southern side of Wink, which is not the “wrong side of the railroad tracks” because there are no railroad tracks in Wink, but if there were then Bonnie’s neighborhood would be on the wrong side of them.

  It is that kind of neighborhood. There are a lot of trailers.

  Have you been dreamin
g more? asks Mal as she drives.

  Bonnie shakes her head.

  Well, that’s good.

  Bonnie shakes her head again.

  It’s not good?

  No, says Bonnie.

  Why not?

  Not sleeping.

  What? You’re not sleeping anymore?

  No. I don’t like it.

  That’ll kill you, you know. You’ll burn yourself up.

  Bonnie doesn’t answer. She stares out the car window. Rolls it down slowly.

  You don’t want to know why, do you? asks Bonnie.

  You’re right, says Mal. I don’t want to know why.

  I’ll tell you.

  I said I don’t want to know why.

  I’ll tell you anyway. You put him in my head. You deserve to know.

  Mal is silent. Though Bonnie slavishly adores Mal, she enjoys seeing her so disturbed. It is a power she has never had before.

  Because when night comes, when I sleep, says Bonnie, there’s another corner in my room. I can’t see it, because I’m dreaming. But I know it’s there. There’s a fifth corner, suddenly out of nowhere, where it shouldn’t be. It’s like a door opens, and then there it is. And he’s always there. Standing in the corner. He’s got his back to me. I don’t know why. But he’s always there. And even though I can’t see his face I can tell he’s watching me. I don’t think he needs eyes to watch me. I think where he’s from no one needs eyes. They have other ways of seeing things.

  You’ve said this before.

  Have I?

  Yeah. Mal asks, Where is he from?

  I don’t know. Somewhere far away. And underneath. Like when you flip over a board lying on the ground and there’s all these bugs underneath. But it’s not quite like that.

  No?

  No. It’s more like you flip over a board and you see it’s not the ground under there but a whole ocean, big and black, and there are things looking up at you from down there, watching you. They’ve been watching you all this time.