The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  “Nothing?” repeated David's voice. “But if there is absolutely nothing between us, how can we be so far apart? And is there a limit to how far apart we can be? If there is no limit, then what you call space must be infinite, and you do not even know what it is. But it is obviously something, because without it nothing could exist. So nothing does exist. Do you see? Nothing matters.”

  “Nothing. . . matters.” She repeated the words with a strange elation. “What matters is nothing.”

  “Is it not comforting to know this?”

  “It is,” she admitted. “Although I'm not sure why.”

  “Have you not felt the space inside you? The place where you live, and never age? The infinite space, just like that space out there?”

  “I’m not sure. Where is it?”

  “It is where consciousness resides, although science cannot explain, nor the mind grasp, a space where time is an illusion, and where your physical body is only a shell. A place where what you can’t see--what people imagine to be nothing--matters most. The one true reality.”

  “Which is what?” she said faintly, urgently. "Tell me."

  “Do not resist it, and then you will see.”

  20

  She woke on a hospital bed, roused as from a fever dream, weak from sedative. Her arms were restrained to the metal sides by wide leather straps. Her wrist had been bandaged, but it was her head that hurt most.

  She tried to call out, toward the open door leading to the hospital hallway. “Help,” she managed to whisper.

  The word seemed oddly foreign to her, as though she wasn’t certain of its meaning anymore. She blinked, and in an eerie sense of déjà vu, attempted to bring the room into focus. On the opposite wall hung a calendar showing a blue glacier below a dark ridge of land. Beyond it, a massive, ominous and distant mountain rose to catch the sunlight. A mirror image of the mountain was reflected on a smooth sheet of ice at the base of the dark ridge, all blue and cold silence in stark contrast. She stared at the peak with a sense of foreboding.

  “Help!” she heard herself gasp in sudden panic. But this time her voice truly seemed detached from her. The frightened voice of a child locked in a closet. Or a liquor cabinet. Had she really called out at all? Surely she had. She'd definitely heard it, although this peculiar voice had seemed familiar somehow, too. A different voice, certainly, yet strangely also hers. As though she was possessed by some demon that was now cornered inside her head, fearing to be found out. The entity that pretended to be her.

  Do not resist it, she remembered David’s words, and then you will see.

  She looked back at the calendar, which showed the new month, heralding what portended to be the loneliest interval of her life. How could she not resist that? Not resist being without David's help to overcome fears that had long flowered inside her like a cancer? Even if she could surrender, and then feel free enough to let go, as he had, when might peace become something real to her? Next week? Next month?

  Next year?

  She squeezed shut her eyes again, and imagined David telling her the answer. Willing herself to see his face, she imagined him with the strained force of a dream slipping away. But it was no use. She was awake now, although drugged. And still there was no happy ending to come, that she could imagine. No secret to set her free, just as David had said.

  She lay back in resignation, and tried to remember her former boyfriend, next. The one she also knew as David. What would he do? Tell her to dismiss the past week as just a melodramatic and neurotic episode, most likely. A phase over which she might pass, with his amorous help. Or with the aid of a cocktail or six. She could even imagine him making a joke about a homeless person at the park, or looking the other way in passing, as though expecting to be hit on for money. He was cheap, not deep. So there would be no worthwhile advice coming from his direction. Nor would he understand doing nothing, either. Just watching a sunset had seemed like wasted time to him, she recalled. Being the man he was, with little patience for anything off his balance sheet, or beyond his goals and plans, he'd decided she didn't fit such plans, in the end.

  So why hadn’t she seen this coming, either? What had she been thinking?

  Stop, she heard David’s simple advice from her dream.

  “Just stop,” she told her resisting mind, aloud. “Enough, already.”

  Still, other images crowded in, attempting to force their way past her defenses and into her consciousness. Faces of friends who’d once envied her, ironically, before moving on with their own lives. Colleagues whose water cooler banter had seemed trivial and unreal, like substitutions for conversations happening at other water coolers, she wasn’t sure where. Anticipations, lies and delusions. . . all of these had only led to petty frustrations.

  She closed her eyes, and took a deep, slow breath.

  Relax, Valerie. Let them go.

  Another breath. She focused on the rhythmic rise and fall, ignoring the memories that competed for mental space. Sure enough, then, she could soon hear distant sounds, instead. Like her moment at the mall. Faint whirrings, closing doors, the click of footsteps, air whispering through ventilation ducts. . . She concentrated on each sound in turn, isolating it, and then letting the combination of sounds meld into one continuous background motif of barely audible resonance. Like radio signals heard from the depths of space, she listened for whatever was next, until each snippet became strangely new, divorced from its source. Gradually, the bed on which she lay no longer seemed to be restraining her. Her body felt giddily light, as though she might float away if not anchored down. Drifting into semi-consciousness again, she had the sensation of gently rising and turning beyond the confines of her room, toward a more peaceful awareness, where thoughts were renounced intrusions.

  Am I there yet? she wondered, just before that thought too was dispatched.

  And then quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, in the absence of thought, she really was there. Not as a pronoun or name or conception. Not as an I, or even as a Valerie. . . but as a presence. An ambient poised within some quantum reality more vast than she'd ever imagined possible.

  The quiet realization awed her. She didn't feel dwarfed by it, though, as when she’d once seen misshapen galaxies forming at the edge of space and time. Instead, she felt at home within a space that knew no limitations or horizons--no setting sun or rising moon. Because she was the space. Was the nothing that embraced everything. And here, at last, she finally knew that she had a choice, too. It was the gift of sight, just as David had said. An insight so clear that she was unafraid to let back in all the faces that she’d once excluded.

  One by one, then, she allowed each of them to return: her parents, her friends, her colleagues, her acquaintances. She saw them all, without their masks, at last. Felt their hopes and consolations, their compulsions and rationalizations. Knew their fears, as real as she recognized the wrinkles that shaped their expressions. Accepted them all. One by one. And then, when the sense memory of her retina found courage to recapture another face, he appeared before her, too. Stood in front of her bed as though he was in the room with her, and she had only to open her eyes to see him.

  “David,” she said, feeling the tremulous smile that shaped her lips.

  Smiling back at her gently in reply, David simply pointed toward the calendar on the wall. Pointed with casual significance, as if about to share another part of the secret he kept. Only she knew there was no secret, anymore. There had never been a secret.

  She did not need to strain against her bonds to see, this time. Although he had once attempted to reach past the manipulations and abstractions roiling in her mind, David seemed to know that this time was different, too. That no exertion needed to be made. No effort required to reach her. So, with just one revelation left, he pointed his finger toward the answer that could end the story for her, without dramatics, without suffering, and without resistance.

  And she looked where he pointed.

  The day was today. That was the key. Incre
dibly, it was also the same profound and simple truth that he had first shared with her in conversation at the park. The one befitting precept that, being blind, she had been unable to grasp. The answer that she knew was real, but which her mind had since resisted. The truth that could set her free:

  That she was alive, right now.

  That today was the day. Today, the only day.

  The only day that mattered.

  Even as his form gently dissolved back into silhouette, she felt David's presence as real as if she’d never left him that day. As real as sunshine was reflected as moonlight. His lips did not even need to move for her to hear, just as he was heard by others he had met, one by one, in the park. . .

  It is the way of the ego to attempt possession of what it can never truly own. It is never happy, never at peace, and can never accept anything or anyone for what or who they are. It lives in this space and time as a controller, a warrior, a schemer, a killer, a blind despoiler of what it cannot understand. What does it know, instead? The price of everything and the value of nothing. Pain and fear. Regret and loss. Aggression and hate. Past and future. If you want to be free of its control, simply observe it, reveal it, and accept it. Do not resist, and you will live. Surrender your illusion of time, and you will open your heart to joy. Give up owning anything, and you will gain everything. Do it now.

  When she finally opened her eyes again, her cheeks were wet. She saw that a nurse had appeared at her door, in David's place. Behind the dark-haired woman, in the hallway, stood Detective Trent. They both entered, then, and a moment later her boss, Greg Lomax, arrived. Greg looked on in astonishment as the nurse loosened her cuffs, and then examined her. He started to question the detective, but turned to Val instead.

  “Are you okay, Valerie?” Greg wondered, seeing the tears that she made no attempt to disguise.

  “I'm. . .alive,” Val told him.

  Greg seemed relieved by her smile, she could tell. Seeing that it was the kind of smile which must have lit the space between them. A smile she’d saved for the future, like everything else, but which she now spent at last, only to find more in its place.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Greg admitted, although his expression projected curiosity as well.

  He stood two steps away, looking down at her. She looked up into that familiar face, too, and saw the wrinkles there, the few whiskers that his electric shaver had missed. The red spot on his neck, his new teeth, his chapped lips.

  “No, Greg,” she assured him. “You don't understand. It was an accident, what happened. If you believe in accidents. But I'm alive, now.” She smiled again, wanting to convey more of what she felt. “I'm really alive.”

  “So . . . someone told you, then?” Trent inquired, not without surprise.

  “Told me?” she said, turning to look at the detective.

  “Yes. That David might be alive too.”

  21

  “Leiter wasn't shot or stabbed,” Trent explained to Greg, once the nurse had left the room, “he was struck on the head and then dumped in the desert, likely just unconscious. The man who did it is a drug addict named Morales. There’s evidence at the site, but no body or sign of burial. So either David walked away on his own, as Morales insists, or someone else found him.” Trent traversed the hospital room to look out the window. He nodded toward the horizon. “It wasn't far from here, actually. The spot where it happened. Out that way it's mostly desert, and Mexico is beyond. That's where Morales was caught, trying to get Leiter's Jaguar out of the country.”

  “Does this Morales admit to the kidnapping too?” Greg asked.

  “Not yet, but he will soon. No choice there.” Trent paused, glancing at Valerie, who returned to the bathroom to finish dressing. “I have to say, I do believe he was deeply affected by whatever David said, and only hit him when his back was turned, out of impulse or fear. Spooked by the publicity too, perhaps, but more likely David talked him out of it, from what I can tell.”

  Greg nodded, thoughtfully. “So they didn't pay the ransom, after all.”

  “The Melendez family? Didn't have to. The van was found at the park, abandoned. When the suspect's apartment in South Tucson was searched, they also found a watch and a camera inscribed "D.S..” Plus some other stolen goods, including half a pound of marijuana and traces of meth. He has a dog, too. Hadn't been fed in a while.”

  “Picasso?” Val asked, from the bathroom.

  “What? Who did you say?”

  “His dog. Was it a Shepherd mix with blotches like patterns?”

  “No,” Trent replied, “I think it was a pit bull.”

  Greg shook his head in confusion. “So what now?”

  “We find David, if he’s alive,” declared the detective.

  “But he is alive,” Val informed them, reemerging from the bathroom.

  The two men exchanged glances with each other. “How do you know that?” Greg asked.

  Val pointed toward what hung on the wall. “Because he was standing right over there, as real as you are, pointing at that calendar with the mountain and the. . .” She squinted at the photo in unexpected puzzlement.

  “What is it?” said Trent.

  “Nothing. It’s just. . .I mean. . .”

  “What?”

  “Something is different.” Val moved closer to study the image for a moment before she realized what the difference was. “It’s the picture. I’m certain that there were no ice floes beneath the mountain like those. So it must have been a different mountain.”

  “What does that matter?”

  She lifted one hand toward the image, then touched the shiny surface of the calendar with one finger. “A different mountain,” she repeated, in fascination.

  She turned up a page of the calendar to reveal a field of yellow wildflowers in a green meadow, which indicated the next month. Then she let the page drop, and reached up to the holder that secured the pages. Finally, she unhooked the previous month just passed, to let it drop down over the new and current month.

  She stared in wonder at the result.

  It was the mountain she’d seen in her waking vision. The mountain toward which David had pointed: A tall, rocky Alaskan peak girdled by clouds, fringed by snow. No dark headland or reflecting glacier at all. It was exactly as she’d seen it, she was more than certain.

  Not only a revelation, then, but a premonition.

  “David’s here now,” she announced with conviction.

  “Huh?” Greg smiled nervously.

  “What?” said Trent.

  “He’s here,” Val concluded, her tone calm and assured, “in Kino Hospital. In another room, just like this one.”

  ~ * ~

  Nurse Hagner demurred, but when Trent insisted, she scanned the patient roster with an impatient and dubious circumspection. “There’s no David Leiter listed,” the stolid woman concluded with brusque dismissal, and then lifted her clipboard to fan her weary face with the evidence.

  “Okay, then. . .thanks anyway,” Greg said. He nodding meekly, and finally sighed as though consoled. Trent just stood there, eyebrows furrowed, blinking at the floor. Thinking. A moment later a file folder was produced, and all parties were urged to sign the release form, as a matter formality and procedure. But when the pen was thrust at Val, she refused to take it.

  “What’s wrong?” Greg asked, and patted her shoulder gently, “don’t you want to get out of here, Valerie?”

  “Not yet.” Val looked at Nurse Hagner with an effortless, candid defiance. “I‘ve been sleepwalking most of my life, ma’am,” she said, evenly, “but I’m awake now.”

  Nurse Hagner chuckled in disconcertion, but despite herself could not hold Val’s steady gaze for long. “What on earth does that--”

  Val took Greg’s hand gently, and then turned, leaving Trent behind. With Greg in tow, she began to walk down the hallway, methodically pushing open doors as she went. Checking each room.

  “Hey!” Nurse Hagner called after them. “What do you think you�
��re doing?”

  Val didn’t answer. Nor did Greg resist, although he hesitated when Hagner started to follow. But then the phone rang at the nurse’s station, and a buzzer sounded. Conflicted, Hagner picked up the phone, put her hand over it for a moment, and then called for an orderly to intercept them, instead.

  ~ * ~

  The orderly who blocked the tenth door they came to was a big young man, resembling a college linebacker. When Val looked up into his face, though, she saw no sleepwalker looking back. Despite his age, this young man had learned kindness, had seen pain, but had not disassociated himself in defense from it. As such, he worked in the right place and at the right time. So when she gave him a description of David, his intuitive empathy produced a different effect than if he had been deadened by robotic duty.

  “We do have a John Doe, admitted just the other day,” the young man said. “Not sure that he fits your description, though."

  He led them down a stairwell to the basement, where at last they came to another door. Not a door to a regular patient room, this one, but to a storage room. Val did not hesitate when the orderly pushed open the door, although she did when she glimpsed the form of a man on the bed in the corner. The room itself was dimly lit by an exposed ceiling bulb, and possessed no windows. Along one wall were metal racks containing banded paper napkins, toilet rolls, heaps of soiled towels, linens, bed pans, tubes of paper cups wrapped in plastic, and dozens of sealed brown boxes. Three empty bunk beds lined the opposite side of the room, but the only one that was occupied stood on rollers, and had several cables protruding from behind it into a mobile monitoring device which stood next to an I.V. stand, also on wheels.

  On the wall, though, was a calendar.

  At seeing it, Val pulled Greg into the room behind her, and let go of his hand. They both stared, now, at the clean shaven man hooked to a monitor. The man’s head was thickly bandaged, but his eyes were partly open. His body lay straight and limp, as though positioned there. The metal sides of his mobile bed were lifted to prevent accident. If there was such a thing.