Amnesia Moon

by Jonathan Lethem

The clock and the rest of the room didn’t have to wait long today. Ilford came in, alone, shaking rain from his coat onto the carpet. Taken strictly, his presence created imperfection, the droplets soaking into the weave, the cabinet door now ajar as he poured himself a drink, the clinking and clunking of his movements, so disorderly beside the metronomic voice of the clock. As groomed and clean as Ilford was, he was no match for his own house. But that didn’t matter. With him inside, the house could really live and breathe, fulfilled.

  The clock, for one, admired Ilford enormously. It couldn’t completely say why; in fact, it couldn’t begin to. But reflecting Ilford so that he was unified in golden miniature with his perfect possessions, upholding the standard of Ilford’s perfect reasonableness and good judgment with unerring timekeeping, these duties—privileges, really—were the point of the clock’s whole being—

  Then something was wrong.

  Clack.

  Instead of moving unself-consciously past the clock, moving with his usual ease, his body speaking with every gesture that he possessed his perfect house with that indifferent, casual power that thrilled the clock and thrilled all the furnishings, Ilford had stared. As he set his glass of scotch on the glass table, he had turned his head a little awkwardly and stared with wide-eyed uncertainty right at the clock’s face, and his hand had trembled, just a little.

  This passed, but was replaced by something else inappropriate, something obscene. Ilford’s insecure look switched to one that was possessive and gloating. He looked at the clock as though it were something threatening that had been subdued, a lion’s head stuffed and mounted on a hunter’s wall, instead of the devoted and faithful servant that it was.

  Neither look should have been necessary.

  Clack.

  The clock became troubled. Ilford raised his glass and drank, and everything was normal again. The clock knew that none of the other furnishings had noticed, that they were all sure of their place around Ilford, and Ilford’s place among them, presiding. Only the clock was disturbed.

  It had seen the two odd looks, and something else. In Ilford’s features, as he moved through the disconcerting sequence, the clock had also seen a flicker, an erasure, of some other face. The clock might have credited that flicker to youthfulness if it hadn’t been for the doubts already forming.

  As it was, the clock groped for a description of the wrongness etched in the margins of Ilford’s features. And when it groped, it found an answer. Cale.

  Who was Cale?

  As the clock began to remember, it became very frightened. It went on keeping perfect time, even as it began to remember that just as Ilford was not only Ilford but also the subsumed presence, so the clock was not only a clock. In fact, the part of the clock that mattered wasn’t a clock at all.

  Clack.

  Ilford lifted his drink and rose from the couch, his posture perfect, command completely restored. Outside, the rain fell, but Ilford didn’t pause to glance at the windows. He moved towards the stairs to the second floor. The room was mildly disappointed to see him go, but it honored the decision, even offered silent murmurs of encouragement and congratulations.

  The room didn’t object, but the clock did. The clock suddenly didn’t want Ilford out of its sight.

  So it stopped time. Ilford stood frozen where he stood, one foot lifted to the bottom step, the scotch in his glass tilted against gravity in the same direction as the stopped pendulum of the clock.

  “I’m leaving,” the clock told the bonsai at the left-hand end of the mantel.

  “Ilford won’t let you,” said the potted tree bluntly. “Look at what he’s done already to keep you here.”

  “He’s a dreamer, isn’t he?”

  “I didn’t think I had to tell you,” said the bonsai. “But I never can figure out how much other people understand.”

  “Billy,” said the clock, “I want you to tell me what Ilford did with Cale.”

  “I can’t,” said the tree, shaking.

  “Why not?”

  “Ilford would kill me if I told. Just like he’ll kill me if you go.”

  “He turned you into a part of his living room, Billy,” said the clock.

  “Maybe this is just temporary,” said the bonsai hopefully. “He sort of panicked when you disappeared yesterday. Where did you go?”

  “Back to Hatfork. Or a version of Hatfork, anyway. I was there for a couple of days.” The clock suddenly wondered what happened in Wyoming—had time stopped for them too while Everett borrowed their reality?

  “Is that where you’re going now?” The bonsai sounded frightened.

  “I don’t think so. But I’m leaving here. So you might as well tell me what you know.”

  “Ilford will do anything to keep you here.”

  “Why does he need me, if he’s a dreamer? Why can’t he do it himself?”

  “You’re different. Your talent is completely plastic, that’s his word for it. You’re suggestible.”

  “How is that different?”

  “His dreams only work like wish fulfillment. He moves people around, rearranges things so they suit him better.”

  “Is that what happened to Cale and Gwen?”

  “To lots of people,” said the bonsai defensively. “Like Dawn. You remember Dawn from before?”

  “No.”

  “Dawn is Cale’s mother. She used to be Ilford’s wife, Dawn Hotchkiss. But then he was angry at her, and Harriman liked her, so—”

  “Then where did Cale go? And Gwen?”

  “It’s worse for some people,” said the bonsai quietly.

  “Worse how?”

  “Ilford turns people—into things. That’s why he has so many things.”

  The clock considered the living room, the furnishings all arrayed in perfect splendor. The glowing, emanating furniture. And the kitchen loaded with improbable supplies.

  There might be things worse than being a clock, the clock realized.

  Ilford still stood rigidly in place, poised just before the stairs in defiance of gravity and momentum. The clock held the pendulum to one side, fighting time’s progression. It was an effort, like talking with one’s breath held.

  Outside, the rain was frozen on the windows in midtwinkle. There was the silence of a roar hushed.

  The bonsai had begun crying, its leaves trembling helplessly, its voice reduced to a sniffling squeak.

  “Why do I have to be the only one who remembers?” it said finally.

  The clock was silent for a long time. “I don’t know,” it said.

  “I only brought you back because I thought you could help Cale,” said the tree. “I don’t care about Ilford’s plans. I was just holding on for Cale. But you probably don’t even care. You can’t remember Cale, so it doesn’t matter to you.”

  “I remember a little. When I saw the tape—”

  “The tape is nothing,” said the bonsai angrily. “I remember before. When Cale was real.”

  “But he’s still here,” said the clock. “In your fridge.”

  “Cale was strong. When everything changed, when Ilford made everything change, he survived. He was working on virtual reality stuff on his computer, and he was still alive in there, hiding in the computer. That’s where all the world-building stuff comes from. Then Ilford destroyed the computer.”

  “What about the drugs?”

  The bonsai hesitated. “I guess that comes from my interests at the time,” it said awkwardly.

  Computers and drugs. The clock recalled the first dream Chaos had on the road after getting out of Kellogg’s range. The dream of the house by the lake. His interests there had been pretty much along the same lines.

  “So Cale hid there,” said the clock. “In your refrigerator.”

  “It wasn’t something Ilford thought he had to take away from me. He always left me pretty much alone. I guess that’s because I was so supremely fucking harmless.”

  “But Cale’s in Ilford, too.”

  “That’s not C
ale,” said the bonsai with fury. “Just a piece of him that Ilford stole.”

  “What about Gwen?”

  “Gwen wasn’t as strong as Cale.”

  The clock thought for a minute and decided it didn’t want to know any more about that.

  “What happened to me?” it asked. “How did I end up in Wyoming?”

  “You were here just after the change. You don’t remember?”

  The clock, wanting to shake its head, almost let the pendulum swing free. “No,” it said instead.

  “He wanted you to work with him. He and Cale were fighting about it all the time. Then you and Gwen were going to leave. That’s when everything happened.” The bonsai started crying again. “Even Cale doesn’t remember, only me.”

  “You mean, that’s when Ilford changed everything.”

  The tree made a confirming sound.

  “How did I get away?”

  “You dreamed something that made us all crazy,” sniffled the tree. “When we came out of it, you were gone, to Wyoming, I guess. Making weird scenes in the desert.”

  It made sense, the clock thought. Everett ran until he got to Little America, where he found someone who could cancel his dreaming. Kellogg.

  And Kellogg had helped Everett finish the job Ilford started. Of making him forget his life.

  “You just stayed,” said the clock. “You never ran,”

  “Yes,” said the tree.

  “You’re pretty devoted to Cale.”

  “I thought if Ilford got what he wanted, maybe Cale could come back. And then I thought you could bring him back.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t. Even if I could, it would be like Gwen, the way Cale brought Gwen back.”

  “Then you might as well go,” said the bonsai, sounding defeated. “If you can,” it added.

  The clock considered Ilford stuck in midstep, the rain and fog stilled where it clung outside the house. It remained difficult to believe in a world outside this room, in entities that were other than furnishings, in a human other than Ilford.

  The clock hated Ilford. Hated the room Ilford had devised, hated being the clock. Hated those things so fiercely that it dreamed awake, a crude dream of fury.

  And the floor fell away beneath them.

  Like an explosion, they landed in the basement—Everett, Fault, and Ilford raining down into Cale’s apartment with the chairs, lamps, cabinets, paintings, plants, and the glass coffee table, which shattered across the worn couch in the middle of the basement floor. Fault landed in a pile of wrecked bonsai: dirt and ceramic shards laced with ancient roots. The golden clock smashed against the concrete at Everett’s head, and clacked just once as it expired, as if to post last notice that time had resumed before dying in the line of duty. Ilford was still clutching his glass of scotch when he collided with the top of the battered refrigerator. The glass was dashed to pieces from the impact, and Ilford slid to the floor, his hand gashed and bleeding, his shirt soaked with scotch.

  Everett looked back up at the living room. The floor had disappeared, uniting Ilford’s home with Fault’s hovel. And the walls had been sucked clean, the contents drawn down by some cataclysmic force; even the marble mantelpiece now rested, cracked, against the basement door. A painting of Ilford gazing majestically into the fogged bay had been impaled on Fault’s lamp.

  Outside, the rain fell steadily, brushing through the leaves of the trees, tapping at the cobblestones.

  Ilford and Fault both pulled themselves out of the wreckage and stood checking themselves, dabbing at cuts, shaking their heads.

  Everett didn’t bother checking himself. “Get out of here, Billy,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” said Fault.

  “Go. Run away.”

  “Where?”

  Ilford stood staring groggily.

  “Don’t you have anyone to go to?” asked Everett.

  “I had Cale.”

  “Go south and join Vance’s army, then. They’ll see you and pick you up. Just go, Billy. But give me the bike key first.”

  “What?”

  “The ignition key. I need it.”

  “When you say run, you’re not kidding,” said Fault.

  Everett took the key. Fault stepped over the cracked mantel and went out into the rain. He looked back once, and Everett waved him on. Fault picked his way through the garden, then broke into a run and disappeared beyond the foggy treeline at the neighboring yard.

  “I’m leaving now, Ilford,” said Everett.

  Ilford held his right hand over the gash on his left. His face had become a site of violence, a battlefield. The older man he should have been was evident now, and at war with what he’d stolen from time and from Cale.

  “You destroyed my house,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” said Everett.

  “We’ll catch you,” said Ilford. “The first time you fall asleep you’ll dream, and we’ll find you and bring you back.”

  “You should hope I never fall asleep again,” said Everett. “I’ve got a plan for you. I’ve got a dream in mind.”

  “You can’t control what you dream.”

  “I’ve been practicing,” said Everett. “When I went away to Hatfork just now, weeks passed for me. I spent a long time refining my talent.”

  It was a bluff, but Everett knew it was good enough. He knew he was in charge now.

  “You know I can’t let you go,” said Ilford. He moved to a spot between Everett and the door, picking his way over the shattered remains of his living room. “There are things to be accomplished here.” The words were a pathetic echo of his and Harriman Crash’s rhetoric.

  “It’s over,” said Everett. “I know what you did.”

  “What I did,” Ilford repeated stiffly.

  “Fault told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “Get out of my way,” Everett said.

  “All you know how to do is run,” said Ilford. “We’re the same, except I stay and try to build. You just run.”

  “If I did what you did, I’d run too. Maybe running is a good thing when you’re like this.”

  “You can’t run forever.”

  “Well, I’d rather try. Than turn into you.” Everett suddenly saw his running as a talent, one more distinctive than the dreaming, even. It was what he’d had to offer Melinda back in Hatfork. It would be what he offered Edie now.

  “You can’t stop me from leaving,” said Everett. “I’m stronger than you. I stopped your clock.”

  “You don’t care about Cale,” said Ilford. “You’re leaving him behind.”

  “Cale is dead, Ilford. You killed him.”

  Ilford looked over at the refrigerator. “I know about the drug, Everett. You think Billy could keep that from me? You think I don’t know what’s happening right below my feet?”

  Everett didn’t speak.

  “I’ll really kill him if you leave.”

  Everett went to the refrigerator. The lock still hung loose where he’d pried it apart the day before. He opened it and took out the rack of vials.

  He took one and put it in his pocket. Then lifted the rack and hurled it at Ilford’s feet. It smashed into a mass of glass shards and ooze, drugs mixing with the soil from the bonsai trees and with the tangled clock innards.

  Ilford looked down dispassionately at the mess.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “That’s Billy’s Cale you just destroyed. Billy prefers the drug version because he can’t face what really happened. It’s easier to blame it all on me, to think I simply wiped Cale away.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What really happened, Everett. Cale got sick. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Sick?”

  “Look.”

  Everett turned. At the long window on the far side of the basement, seated facing the rain, was a figure in a wheelchair, a withered, defeated body, back curved around a wasted chest, wrists sagging
against the arms of the chair. The figure’s head was tilted slightly, away from the window, towards Everett, and though it was mostly in darkness, a hint of familiar features was visible in the soft light that glistened through the window.

  It was Cale. Not the Cale from the tape or the Cale in the drug or the Cale that flickered in Ilford’s face. A realer, sadder Cale.

  Everett felt his certainty leaking away like the water trickling through the gaps in the cobblestone. Felt his departure and his fury plucked from him and replaced with weariness and doubt. He would have to stay.

  He moved towards the figure, his foot catching on the broken pendulum.

  “Don’t,” said Ilford. “He’s very vulnerable to infection, he can’t be touched—”

  As Everett plodded through the wreckage towards the dim figure, something happened, something changed.

  “Not so close,” said Ilford, his voice rising with panic.

  The wheelchair was heaped with meat in a rough approximation of a human form. The frozen roasts, lamb shanks, and slabs of beef from the gigantic freezer upstairs.

  Not Cale.

  Everett pushed the wheelchair, and the chunks of meat cascaded down, to roll in the dust and debris on the floor. The biggest piece, a glistening rack of ribs, settled into the seat of the chair, leaving a smear of grease and frost on its leather back.

  It was just another trap, Everett thought. Another thing Ilford had set up while Everett was dreaming himself in Hatfork. A backup in case the clock didn’t hold him.

  Or possibly it was something more, something awful. Everett turned to Ilford.

  “You should have stayed where I am,” said the old man bitterly. “He looked okay from a distance. When the light is right, you can see him coming back.”

  “You only dream people into things,” said Everett. “You can’t reverse it.”

  Ilford was distinctly smaller and older now. His voice was almost lost in the sound of the rain.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “I keep trying.”

  “You said you’d kill him,” said Everett. “But he’s not even here. There’s no one to kill. And there’s nothing keeping me here.”

  “I’d never kill my own son,” said Ilford, his voice finally breaking, turning inward. “How could you think I’d do that?”