Strange Itineraries

by Tim Powers

  He had got the car back under control by the time he merged with the southbound lanes, and then he braked, for the 85 was ending ahead at a traffic signal by the grounds of some college.

  “Is your neck hurt?” he asked. “Can’t twist your head around?”

  “It’s not that. I can’t see anything you don’t see.”

  He tried to frame an answer to that, or a question about it, and finally just said, “I bet we could find a bar fairly readily. Around here.”

  “I can’t drink, I don’t have any ID.”

  “You can have a Virgin Mary,” he said absently, catching a green light and turning right just short of the college. “Celery stick to stir it with.” Raindrops began spotting the dust on the windshield.

  “I’m not so good at touching things,” she said. “I’m not actually a living person.”

  “Okay, see, that means what? You’re a dead person, a ghost?”

  “Yes.”

  Already disoriented, Moore flexed his mind to see if anything in his experience or philosophies might let him believe this, and there was nothing that did. This woman, probably a neighbor, simply knew who he was, and she had hidden in the back of his car back at the apartment parking lot. She was probably insane. It would be a mistake to get further involved with her.

  “Here’s a place,” he said, swinging the car into a strip-mall parking lot to the right. “Pirate’s Cove. We can see how well you handle peanuts or something, before you try a drink.”

  He parked behind the row of stores, and the back door of the Pirate’s Cove led them down a hallway stacked with boxes before they stepped through an arch into the dim bar. There were no other customers in the place at this early hour, and the room smelled more like bleach than beer; the teenaged-looking bartender barely gave them a glance and a nod as Moore led the woman across the worn carpet and the parqueted square to a table under a football poster. There were four low stools instead of chairs.

  The woman couldn’t remember any movies she’d ever seen, and claimed not to have heard about the war in Iraq, so when Moore walked to the bar and came back with a glass of Budweiser and a bowl of popcorn, he sat down and just stared at her. She was easier to see in the dim light from the jukebox and the neon bar-signs than she had been out in the gray daylight. He would guess that she was about thirty – though her face had no wrinkles at all, as if she had never laughed or frowned.

  “You want to try the popcorn?” he asked as he unsnapped the front of his denim jacket.

  “Look at it so I know where it is.”

  He glanced down at the bowl, and then back at her. As always, her eyes fixed on his as soon as he was looking at her. Either her pupils were fully dilated, or else her irises were black.

  But he glanced down again when something thumped the table and a puff of hot salty air flicked his hair, and some popcorn kernels spun away through the air.

  The popcorn remaining in the bowl had been flattened into little white jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The orange plastic bowl was cracked.

  Her hands were still in her lap, and she was still looking at him. “I guess not, thanks.”

  Slowly he lifted his glass of beer and took a sip. That was a powerful raise, he thought, forcing himself not to show any astonishment – though you should have suspected a strong hand. Play carefully here.

  He glanced toward the bar; but the bartender, if he had looked toward their table at all, had returned his attention to his newspaper.

  “Tom Cruise,” the woman said.

  Moore looked back at her and after a moment raised his eyebrows.

  She said, “That was a movie, wasn’t it?”

  “In a way.” Play carefully here. “What did you – is something wrong with your vision?”

  “I don’t have any vision. No retinas. I have to use yours. I’m a ghost.”

  “Ah. I’ve never met a ghost before.” He remembered a line from a Robert Frost poem: The dead are holding something back.

  “Well, not that you could see. You can only see me because … I’m like the stamp you get on the back of your hand at Disneyland; you can’t see me unless there’s a black light shining on me. She’s the black light.”

  “You’re in her field of influence, like.”

  “Sure. There’s probably dozens of Pat Moore ghosts in the outfield, and she’s the whole infield. I’m the shortstop.”

  “Why doesn’t … she want you to talk to me?” He never drank on days he intended to play, but he lifted his glass again.

  “She doesn’t want me to tell you what’s going to happen.” She smiled, and the smile stayed on her smooth face like the expression on a porcelain doll. “If it was up to me, I’d tell you.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of beer. “But.”

  She nodded, and at last let her smile relax. “It’s not up to me. She’d kill me if I told you.”

  He opened his mouth to point out a logic problem with that, then sighed and said instead, “Would she know?” She just blinked at him, so he went on, “Would she know it, if you told me?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “How would she know?”

  “You’d be doing things. You wouldn’t be sitting here drinking a beer, for sure.”

  “What would I be doing?”

  “I think you’d be driving to San Francisco. If I told you – if you asked – “ For an instant she was gone, and then he could see her again; but she seemed two-dimensional now, like a projection on a screen – he had the feeling that if he moved to the side he would just see this image of her get narrower, not see the other side of her.

  “What’s in San Francisco?” he asked quickly.

  “Well if you asked me about Maxwell’s Demon-n-n-n – ”

  She was perfectly motionless, and the drone of the last consonant slowly deepened in pitch to silence. Then the popcorn in the cracked bowl rattled in the same instant that she silently disappeared like the picture on a switched-off television set, leaving Moore alone at the table, his face suddenly chilly in the bar’s air conditioning. For a moment “air conditioning” seemed to remind him of something, but he forgot it when he looked down at the popcorn – the bowl was full of brown BBs – unpopped dried corn. As he watched, each kernel slowly opened in white curls and blobs until all the popcorn was as fresh-looking and uncrushed as it had been when he had carried it to the table. There hadn’t been a sound, though he caught a strong whiff of gasoline. The bowl wasn’t cracked anymore.

  He stood up and kicked his stool aside as he backed away from the table. She was definitely gone.

  The bartender was looking at him now, but Moore hurried past him and back through the hallway to the stormy gray daylight.

  What if she had backup? he thought as he fumbled the keys out of his pocket; and, She doesn’t want me to tell you what’s going to happen.

  He only realized that he’d been sprinting when he scuffed to a halt on the wet asphalt beside the old white Dodge, and he was panting as he unlocked the door and yanked it open. Rain on the pavement was a steady textured hiss. He climbed in and pulled the door closed, and rammed the key into the ignition –

  – when the drumming of rain on the car roof abruptly went silent, and a voice spoke in his head: Relax. I’m you. You’re me.

  And then his mouth opened and the words were coming out of his mouth: “We’re Pat Moore, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” His voice belonged to someone else in this muffled silence.

  His eyes were watering with the useless effort to breathe more quickly.

  He knew this wasn’t the same Pat Moore he had been in the bar with. This was the her she had spoken of. A moment later the thoughts had been wiped away, leaving nothing but an insistent pressure of all-is-well.

  Though nothing grabbed him, he found that his head was turning to the right, and with dimming vision he saw that his right hand was moving toward his face.

  But all-is-well had for some time been a feeling that was alien to him, and he managed to resist it long
enough to make his infiltrated mind form a thought – she’s crowding me out.

  And he managed to think, too, Alive or dead, stay whole. He reached down to the open seam in the seat before he could lose his left arm too, and he snatched up the revolver and stabbed the barrel into his open mouth. A moment later he felt the click through the steel against his teeth when he cocked the hammer back. His belly coiled icily, as if he were standing on the coping of a very high wall and looking up.

  The intrusion in his mind paused, and he sensed confusion, so he threw at it the thought, One more step and I blow my head off. He added, Go ahead and call this bet, please. I’ve been meaning to drive the 101 for a while now.

  His throat was working to form words that he could only guess at, and then he was in control of his own breathing again, panting and huffing spit into the gun barrel. Beyond the hammer of the gun he could see the rapid distortions of rain hitting the windshield, but he still couldn’t hear anything from outside the car.

  The voice in his head was muted now: I mean to help you.

  He let himself pull the gun away from his mouth, though he kept it pointed at his face, and he spoke into the wet barrel as if it were a microphone. “I don’t want help,” he said hoarsely.

  I’m Pat Moore, and I want help.

  “You want to … take over, possess me.”

  I want to protect you. A man tried to kill you.

  “That’s your pals,” he said, remembering what the ghost woman had told him in the car. “Your students, trying to kill all the Pat Moores – to keep you from taking one over, I bet. Don’t joggle me now.” Staring down the rifled barrel, he cautiously hooked his thumb over the hammer and then pulled the trigger and eased the hammer down. “I can still do it with one pull of the trigger,” he told her as he lifted his thumb away. “So you – what, you put off mailing the letter, and died?”

  The letter is just my chain mail. The only important thing about it is my name in it, and the likelihood that people will reproduce it and pass it on. Bombers evade radar by throwing clouds of tinfoil. The chain mail is my name, scattered everywhere so that any blow directed at me is dissipated.

  “So you’re a ghost too.”

  A prepared ghost. I know how to get outside of time.

  “Fine, get outside of time. What do you need me for?”

  You’re alive, and your name is mine, which is to say your identity is mine. I’ve used too much of my energy saving you, holding you. And you’re the most compatible of them all – you’re a Pat Moore identity squared, by marriage.

  “Squared by –” He closed his eyes, and nearly lowered the gun. “Everybody called her Trish,” he whispered. “Only her mother called her Pat.” He couldn’t feel the seat under him, and he was afraid that if he let go of the gun it would fall to the car’s roof.

  Her mother called her Pat.

  “You can’t have me.” He was holding his voice steady with an effort. “I’m driving away now.”

  You’re Pat Moore’s only hope.

  “You need an exorcist, not a poker player.” He could move his right arm again, and he started the engine and then switched on the windshield wipers.

  Abruptly the drumming of the rain came back on, sounding loud after the long silence. She was gone.

  His hands were shaking as he tucked the gun back into its pocket, but he was confident that he could get back onto the 280, even with his worn-out windshield wipers blurring everything, and he had no intention of getting on the 101 anytime soon; he had been almost entirely bluffing when he told her, I’ve been meaning to drive the 101 for a while now. But like an alcoholic who tries one drink after long abstinence, he was remembering the taste of the gun barrel in his mouth: That was easier than I thought it would be, he thought.

  He fumbled a pack of Marlboros out of his jacket pocket and shook one out.

  As soon as he had got onto the northbound 85 he became aware that the purple dress and the dark hair were blocking the passenger-side window again, and he didn’t jump at all. He had wondered which way to turn on the 280, and now he steered the car into the lane that would take him back north, toward San Francisco. The grooved interchange lane gleamed with fresh rain, and he kept his speed down to forty.

  “One big U-turn,” he said finally, speaking around his lit cigarette. He glanced at her; she looked three-dimensional again, and she was smiling at him as cheerfully as ever.

  “I’m your guardian angel,” she said.

  “Right, I remember. And your name’s Pat Moore, same as mine. Same as everybody’s, lately.” He realized that he was optimistic, which surprised him; it was something like the happy confidence he had felt in dreams in which he had discovered that he could fly, and leave behind all earthbound reproaches. “I met her, you know. She’s dead too, and she needs a living body, and so she tried to possess me.”

  “Yes,” said Pat Moore. “That’s what’s going to happen. I couldn’t tell you before.”

  He frowned. “I scared her off, by threatening to shoot myself.” Reluctantly he asked, “Will she try again, do you think?”

  “Sure. When you’re asleep, probably, since this didn’t work. She can wait a few hours; a few days, even, in a pinch. It was just because I talked to you that she switched me off and tried to do it right away, while you were still awake. Jumped the gun,” she added, with the first laugh he had heard from her – it sounded as if she were trying to chant in a language she didn’t understand.

  “Ah,” he said softly. “That raises the ante.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “When did you … die?”

  “I don’t know. Some time besides now. Could you put out the cigarette? The smoke messes up my reception, I’m still partly seeing that bar, and partly a hilltop in a park somewhere.”

  He rolled the window down an inch and flicked the cigarette out. “Is this how you looked, when you were alive?”

  She touched her hair as he glanced at her. “I don’t know.”

  “When you were alive – did you know about movies, and current news? I mean, you don’t seem to know about them now.”

  “I suppose I did. Don’t most people?”

  He was gripping the wheel hard now. “Did your mother call you Pat?”

  “I suppose she did. It’s my name.”

  “Did your … friends, call you Trish?”

  “I suppose they did.”

  I suppose, I suppose! He forced himself not to shout at her. She’s dead, he reminded himself, she’s probably doing the best she can.

  But again he thought of the Frost line: The dead are holding something back.

  They had passed under two gray concrete bridges, and now he switched on his left turn signal to merge with the northbound 280. The pavement ahead of him glittered with reflected red brake lights.

  “See, my wife’s name was Patricia Moore,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “She died in a car crash five months ago. Well, a single-car accident. Drove off a freeway embankment. She was drunk.” He remembered that the popcorn in the Pirate’s Cove had momentarily smelled like spilled gasoline.

  “I’ve been drunk.”

  “So has everybody. But – you might be her.”

  “Who?”

  “My wife. Trish.”

  “I might be your wife.”

  “Tell me about Maxwell’s Demon.”

  “I would have been married to you, you mean. We’d really have been Pat Moore then. Like mirrors reflecting each other.”

  “That’s why she wants me, right. So what’s Maxwell’s Demon?”

  “It’s… she’s dead, so she’s like a smoke ring somebody puffed out in the air, if they were smoking. Maxwell’s Demon keeps her from disappearing like a smoke ring would, it keeps her …”

  “Distinct,” Moore said when she didn’t go on. “Even though she’s got no right to be distinct anymore.”

  “And me. Through her.”

  “Can I kill him? Or make him stop sustaining her?” And you, he thought; it would
stop him sustaining you. Did I stop sustaining you before? Well, obviously.

  Earthbound reproaches.

  “It’s not a him, really. It looks like a sprinkler you’d screw onto a hose to water your yard, if it would spin. It’s in her house, hooked up to the air conditioning.”

  “A sprinkler.” He was nodding repeatedly, and he made himself stop. “Okay. Can you show me where her house is? I’m going to have to sleep sometime.”

  “She’d kill me.”

  “Pat – Trish –” Instantly he despised himself for calling her by that name. “ – you’re already dead.”

  “She can get outside of time. Ghosts aren’t really in time anyway, I’m wrecking the popcorn in that bar in the future as much as in the past, it’s all just cards in a circle on a table, none in front. None of it’s really now or not-now. She could make me not ever – she could take my thread out of the carpet – you’d never have met me, even like this.”

  “Make you never have existed.”

  “Right. Never was any me at all.”

  “She wouldn’t dare – Pat.” Just from self-respect he couldn’t bring himself to call her Trish again. “Think about it. If you never existed, then I wouldn’t have married you, and so I wouldn’t be the Pat Moore squared that she needs.”

  “If you did marry me. Me, I mean. I can’t remember. Do you think you did?”

  She’ll take me there, if I say yes, he thought. She’ll believe me if I say it. And what’s to become of me, if she doesn’t? That woman very nearly crowded me right out of the world five minutes ago, and I was wide awake.

  The memory nauseated him.

  What becomes of a soul that’s pushed out of its body, he thought, as she means to do to me? Would there be anything left of me, even a half-wit ghost like poor Pat here?

  Against his will came the thought, You always did lie to her.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “The odds are against it.”

  There’s always the 101, he told himself, and somehow the thought wasn’t entirely bleak. Six chambers of it, hollow-point .38s. Fly away

  “It’s possible, though, isn’t it?”