She shook her head, then stopped and stared at him, frowning. “You look different.”
He nodded. His hair was a thatch here, his skin sunburnt, his teeth unbrushed.
She leaned back on the couch. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve seen it. Now I know.”
“No,” he said. “You have to—you have to come with me. See it. I need you to see it all.”
He took her in the car, and they drove through town. They went to Decal’s first. Everett introduced Gwen, and Decal smiled his ragged grin and shook her hand. Decal gave them two quart containers of alcohol, which Chaos locked in the trunk. At Sister Earskin’s he added a container of soup and two baked bird legs wrapped in recycled aluminum foil. Kellogg’s Food Rangers still hadn’t turned up any new cans. Chaos wondered how long it was since he’d seen a can or a Food Ranger, and a corner of him thought to wonder if the Rangers had actually existed in the first place or whether they were just another part of Kellogg’s lore.
Then he drove them out to the edge of the desert, to sit by the crumbled salt dunes and watch the sunset and eat.
His thoughts were distant, and he and Gwen were silent for a long time. Finally, in the smallest voice she possessed, she said: “Did Cale make another place? A house for us? Like where you lived before?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t we go there,” she said, “instead of here?”
“I want you to see me here.”
“Why?”
“You need to know this part of me.”
“It’s the worst part of you, Everett. You don’t need this. You ran away from this.”
“I—” He couldn’t find the words.
“What?”
“Isn’t that the idea, in love?” he said. “That you should be able to love the worst part?” But he knew this was beside the point, that he was talking about love when he should have been talking about real and fake.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Well, I think that’s all there is of me now, Gwen. The worst part. This part.”
“I think you’re being miserable,” she said. The piece of bony meat she held, she placed it back on the foil. “And I think this food tastes rotten. I can’t believe you had to make up all this garbage, make this whole screwed-up place, just to drag me here.”
He stared off into the distance, at the sinking sun’s reflection on the shimmering highway, and thought of his journey to California, the things he believed he was leaving behind, the things he believed he was moving towards.
“Cale says you can make anything,” she said. “We can have whatever we want, Everett.”
He didn’t speak.
“Take us back,” she said.
“Not yet.”
She clung to his arm. “To your house, or whatever it is, then, please.”
He turned and saw fear in her eyes. “All right,” he said. He put the food in the car and drove Gwen back to the Multiplex.
She sat on the couch, huddled into herself. “I’m scared, Everett. If you go away from me, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know where I’ll be. God, it smells in here.”
“I don’t want to go away from you,” he said.
“Then stop this. It’s destructive.”
The sharpness in her voice was another echo of Cale.
“You’ve only been here a little while,” he said. “Give it a chance.”
“This is crazy, Everett—”
“Call me Chaos, please. It’s important.”
“No. I won’t call you Chaos. It’s not your name.” She lowered her head and began crying quietly. “This is all wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“I mean it’s not you, not really. It’s fake, Everett. It’s not real. I wish I could make you understand.”
“Everything is fake,” he said. He opened a container of alcohol and took a drink. “It’s all fake, now. But some fake things are important, too. Because they’re the things that define a person. Like you, Gwen. You’re one of the fake things that define me.” He took another drink. “You’re fake too, you know.”
“Don’t say that.” The tears on her cheeks seemed to evaporate as her cheeks flushed with anger. “I came a long way back to you, Everett.”
Cale’s words. Every time she got angry, he heard Cale. Her gentle side was more convincing, because it had been cribbed from Chaos’s dreams, but the angry parts had to be invented whole. And for that the only model Cale had was himself, the only voice he had was his own.
“Cale made you,” he said at last, hating himself for saying it.
“No—”
“You’re a simulation. He made you from a few scraps, a few memories. He built you around the idea of me, of us together. That’s why that’s all there is of you. He was counting on me to finish the job, to flesh you out and make you real.”
“That’s not what Cale told me.”
“He lied to you. You’re a slide show.” He drank again, looking away, avoiding her eyes. “You’re a gift for me, Gwen. Bait to bring me back. Cale did a good job, the best job he could. He made you believe in yourself.”
She was crying again. “Can’t you see it’s me? Can’t you hear my voice?”
“If you were really Gwen, you could love me here. As Chaos.”
“I’m not obliged to love you at your worst,” she said, standing up. “I’m not some dog, Everett.”
He didn’t speak, but thought, Nobody would bother to make a fake dog.
And the Hatfork part of him thought, If you were a dog, we’d have a roast. A major meal.
“This is all lies,” she said and went to the door. “I don’t have to pass some test. I’ll see you later, Everett. I don’t even know anyone named Chaos.”
Groping for the wall of the stairwell in the dark, she closed the door behind her. He listened as her footsteps clattered away downstairs into silence.
Everett, who was little more than his tie to Gwen, might not have been willing to see her walk out. He might have followed her.
But Chaos didn’t. Chaos reached for another drink.
As he drank, he wondered if the things he’d told her were true, and what it would mean if they were. There was an ache inside him. He drank to blot it out. As he sat, he watched the candlelight blur, and the things he’d said and the things she’d said all echoed away like the unreal residue of one of Kellogg’s dreams. What was left, what was always left, was this room. The old projectors pointing out on to the empty theaters.
What if what Cale suggested was actually true? Could he really dream projections into realities? Funny, if so. Because this sure wasn’t what Cale had in mind. Hatfork.
He raised a drink to the thought.
He listened to the desert wind howling in the ventilation system. It was night now, outside. He wondered where the woman had gone, whether she’d made her way to the town, or the highway. Or had she disappeared the moment she left the building and went out of his range? Confusing. The whole business about San Francisco and the people there was confusing. Preposterous, really. Kellogg sure had some dumb ideas.
He remembered, sourly, the woman’s parting words. Well, he wasn’t so sure he knew anyone named Gwen, for that matter.
If Kellogg’s ideas were dumb, what did that make him for dreaming them? Even dumber, he decided.
He stayed in his booth for two days, drinking, smoking, and masturbating. At night he drank to pass out, and didn’t dream. It was hunger that finally flushed him. He got in the car and drove to Sister Earskin’s for supplies. When he caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror, highway stretched out behind him, wind tangling his hair, he grinned. Everything was going to be okay. He could live with Kellogg’s dreams. That was his job, his cross to bear. Hatfork was his place, after all; it was here that he was an emblem of something. Everything was back to normal.
Back at the Multiplex he found another car parked in the lot, one he didn’t recognize. When he carried his bag upstairs, he found Kellogg waiting fo
r him on the couch. Kellogg had the place lit with a beacon and was filling the air with smoke from a huge cigar.
“We gotta talk, Chaos.”
Chaos couldn’t find his voice. The last time they saw each other, he’d left Kellogg lying in the sand, bleeding.
“Your woman is staying at my place. And boy is she giving me an earful. She’s even crazier than I am. Heh. You sure can pick ’em, Chaos.”
“My woman?”
“Gwen. Your fancy-ass city woman, remember? How quickly, how quickly they forget. I should’ve named you Captain Vague. The Space Cowboy. Well, never mind. She and I are hitting it off just fine. Your loss, my gain. You dreamed yourself up a hell of a woman there, Captain.”
Kellogg took a puff from his cigar, which glistened darkly. Chaos hallucinated briefly that it was studded with walnuts. That Kellogg was smoking a brownie.
“You and Gwen?” Chaos said. He remembered her now. Just.
Kellogg laughed, belching smoke. “A touch of jealousy, Captain?”
“What? No. She’s not real.”
“Not real? You’re still riding that horse? You have got one profoundly fucked-up sense of priorities, Chaos. She’s as real as I am. We both come from you.”
“You’re insane.”
“Splendid!” said Kellogg, jumping up from the couch. Chaos took a step back. “Am I supposed to go ‘No, you’re insane’? We could do that for a while, I guess.” He played both parts, crossing his eyes to perform Chaos: “You’re insane. No, you’re insane. Excuse me, no, but you’re insane.” He reached out and poked Chaos in the chest with the suck end of the cigar, leaving a smear of tobacco-brown drool on his tee shirt. “Give it up, Chaos. Sane and real only go so far these days.”
“Leave me alone.”
Kellogg threw up his hands. “You’re the boss. That’s the whole point, Chaos. You’re in charge around here.”
“Bullshit!” Chaos was suddenly roused. “I’m lost. I’m in San Francisco, right?”
“Well, yeah . . .”
“And look. Here I am dealing with you again.” Chaos put his head in his hands. “I go all the way to San Francisco and I can’t even get away from you.”
“What crap. You called me here, pal. I’m only a consultant on this case.”
Chaos ignored him. “I’m missing huge chunks of my life,” he went on. “I can’t even remember my parents.”
Kellogg waved his hand. “You’re a thirty-year-old man. Chaos. Time to stop whining about your parents. Start a family of your own, for Chrissake.”
“Who did this to me, Kellogg? Was it you?”
“Not me, pal. You were like this when I found you. When you found me, when we started working together. That’s the way it has to be for you. You’ll always be living in an FSR.”
“FSR?”
“Finite Subjective Reality. That’s what I call it. I ought to copyright that, in fact. You go creating a little area of control around you, until you bump into the next guy with his. A little sphere of reality and unreality, sanity and insanity, whatever you pull together. There’s no hope of sorting it out. That’s the way you live. FSR.”
“You have a theory for everything.”
“True enough, true enough. And your FSR sure could use some sprucing up, Captain.” Kellogg waved his hand and knocked over a candle. “Oops. Well, I must be going. Have a happy!” He picked up his beacon and started singing. “You take the high road, I’ll take the low road, I’ll be in Scotland before you . . .”
He stopped and turned. “Cripes, I almost forgot. Gwen wrote you a note.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled slip of paper. “Here you go.”
He passed it to Chaos and clomped downstairs. Chaos smoothed out the note and read:
CALE CAN’T GET TO US HERE. YOU MADE IT SO HE CAN’T FIND US
IF YOU DON’T DO SOMETHING WE’LL BE HERF FOREVER.
Chaos put the note on the table beside his cigarettes. He sat motionless for a minute or two, then unwrapped the food from Sister Earskin’s and ate.
Late that night he was woken by quiet footsteps on the stairs. He sat up and lit a candle. The door opened and Melinda came in.
“You put me back with my parents, you dork.”
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and blinked at her.
Melinda flopped down on the end of the couch. “I ran away again, just now. They’re gonna kill me.”
“How did you get here?”
“I got Edge to drive me. He’s got a crush on me, you know. Keeps trying to put a move on.” She shook her head. “Can’t believe I’m back in this town.”
“Where’s Edie?”
She sneered. “Now you want to know where Edie is. Boy, Chaos. You think maybe it’s a little late?”
“What do you mean?”
“Back in Vacaville things are getting weird. Cooley and them . . .”
“What?”
“It’s hard to explain. Anyway, where’ve you been? And what are we doing here?”
“I had to come back. I didn’t mean to bring you. It has to do with this woman—”
“I know, I know. Your dream girl. Edge says she’s up at Kellogg’s. Why you want to drag her out here, though?”
“I had to see. I—my name isn’t even Chaos, to her. I thought I was going back to my past. But there was nothing there.”
“So?”
“It suddenly seemed important to be Chaos again.”
“Well, maybe.” Melinda rolled her eyes and yawned. “But I think you got the wrong Chaos.”
“What do you mean?”
She tucked her legs up on the couch and rested her head on her knees. “You got the loser,” she said. “The Chaos who just sat and took it. I mean, you could’ve picked the guy who hit the road.”
He couldn’t think of what to say.
“You know, because she might have fallen in love with him. If that’s what you wanted, if you even know what you want.” She yawned again. “God, I’m tired. I had to lie awake in the dark until my folks went to sleep. I was so pissed at you. Oh.” She woke up a bit. “You lose a clock? I found one outside.”
Then she went to sleep, curled up there at his feet. As though she thought it was her right place, he mused. Whatever she had against him.
He sat for a long time watching her sleep. When he was sure it wouldn’t wake her, he slipped out and went downstairs. The sun was just beginning to rise. He turned and saw the last visible stars at the edge of the hills to the west.
He found the clock lying on a small bank of gravel at the far end of the parking lot. It was surprisingly heavy, and the golden pendulum shifted erratically as he righted it. Strangely, the loud tick was regular whether the clock was upright or not. He stared at it wonderingly. There was nothing in Hatfork or Little America so clean and beautiful.
Another message, another arrow pointing him away from Hatfork. But an odd, unexpected one.
He had to return, he saw now. There was something unfinished in the place the clock was from. Maybe an escape he hadn’t managed yet. The tick of the clock seemed to drown out clear thought, even as it called him back.
Chaos walked out to the sign at the end of the parking lot and from there watched the sun rise over the desert, watched as it warmed the hills and burned away the dew that clung to the grass that grew in the cracks in the pavement and around the foot of the sign.
C H a O s, c H A O s, C h A o S.
Then he let Hatfork disappear; the sky, the desert, the Multiplex, and the girl sleeping upstairs; everything.
The clock was happy.
It felt itself to be the very embodiment of pride and purpose, clacking. The work was second nature, effortless. To be a clock was to tick, but to be this clock was to clack. The sound itself was golden. And reflection; that was the great work, the distinction.
The curved casing of the clock held the whole room in miniature, bent and gilded. But the light flowed both ways. As the shimmering pendulum swung again and again, an inch fro
m the glass table, magical specks of light raced along the walls of the room, touching everything, dancing in flamboyant courses that were repeated exactly. The beams confirmed the arrangement of the room, each item glowing in its right place, even as the reflection in the casing drew all together into a detailed, burnished knot.
Conferred, conferring. What a privilege.
Clack.
The room was happy all over. The clock was aware of the fantastic pleasure the oak chair took in just being the oak chair, claiming nothing more. It was possible even to envy the oak chair, grain glowing beneath so many fine thin layers of varnish, wooden spokes of the seat back marvelously warped. Ilford might sit there! But then the clock knew that when Ilford entered the room through any doorway and stood or sat anywhere, he would be held and honored in the clock’s gleaming case, would experience the clock’s counting as a steadying pulse, and that was better.
The chair was fine, but the clock was finer.
The clock felt the satisfied presences of all the furnishings in the room, the paintings, the glass table, the lamp with the marble base, even the row of beveled glasses and the stoppered crystal bottle of scotch behind the doors in the inlaid-rosewood cabinet. Even the bonsai trees in a row on the mantel—except for that one at the end, which seemed a little edgy, a little discontented.
Clack, clack.
Today it was raining through the fog, so the windows were jeweled with reflective drops themselves. They twinkled. The fog kept the windows opaque, not so much portals to the outside as mirrors of the room, even when it wasn’t raining. The clock faced no competition from the sun. All light and warmth emanated from the room, and the clock was the shining center of that system. Nothing else was as sure. The clock had never been fogged over. The sun almost always was.
The room was perfect but incomplete. Unavoidably, it was waiting, a little unfulfilled, for Ilford to return. What was the point of the perfection, the soft glowing, if not for Ilford to move through and inhabit? This wasn’t just any perfect room—as if there were any other—it was Ilford’s perfect room.
Clack.
Amnesia Moon Page 17
