Once he was in Thread, Josh avoided venturing outside the camp. He didn’t even go near the lake because a fisherman offshore might spot him. For the same reason, he abandoned the main rooms of the house. Their expansive windows of glass were too exposed. Instead, he holed up in the upper floors where heavy drapes could black out any evening lights. He knew it was too early to be discovered.
Determining the next step was unclear. It would be easy to simply flee as a fugitive since a great deal of money awaited him in his hidden accounts. From the money stolen from the Arabs, he used just enough to give Premios and Danny breathing room. After all, Danny had to survive, because Josh wasn’t done with him yet. But the bigger question was whether Josh was done with the life he had always led. Was he willing to go into hiding with an assumed identity, always looking over his shoulder? Or was there still some way out?
For some reason, the conversation held months earlier with Chip and Barbara still obsessed him. It was the talk about the physicist and his damn cat. It irked him that he didn’t understand what they were discussing that day at lunch. It was amazing how they seemed so confident spouting their gibberish. While locked up in this old camp, he found time to read more about the Schrödinger’s cat problem, and he didn’t think Chip or Barbara were so clever. The way he read it was this scientist posed his famous problem only to make clear how absurd the contention was that some element could be both one thing and not that thing at the same time. It certainly didn’t require a viewer to look into the box to force it into being one state or the other. Things were what they were. It was the observer who didn’t understand the true situation.
In some metaphysical way Josh supposed that when he knocked on Oliver’s door and surprised him in Chicago there was some truth to the contention that in that afternoon moment Oliver was both dead and alive. For those few seconds of the confrontation, Oliver thought he was alive and Josh thought of him as dead. But the reverse was probably equally true. No doubt, Oliver, knowing about his hidden gun, also believed that Josh would soon be dead, and that Oliver would survive. So perhaps Josh had also been in that nether state, neither one thing nor the other, but both at the same time. Actually he too should have considered his condition that way. He didn’t control what would happen in Oliver’s home office, and it might have gone the other way. Instead of grabbing the gun away from Oliver and firing, Oliver might have triggered the first shot and left Josh lying dead in a pool of blood on Oliver’s fine Oriental carpet.
And what if that had happened? Would it really have made any difference? Yes, Josh would have been gone. But Josh didn’t believe in gods or devils, so he held no fears of dropping into hell. Life would simply have been over, and he would have known nothing. Truthfully, he was more than a little tired of his games—especially since nothing ever seemed to force Danny into that existential choice between hope and despair.
Maybe some of these scientists were right. Something could exist in two states at the same time. But if so, Josh still felt so impotent because no matter how hard he tried to examine the question, he couldn’t force matters. What was that scientific idea called again? A quantum superposition. Why couldn’t he cause Danny to collapse into one ethical state or another?
No person was needed to catalyze Josh’s entry into his current state of being. It happened early on and the result never bothered him. He didn’t care that his mother didn’t get her raspberry pie or that Clarence ended up hanging lifeless in the woods, that Danny was humiliated in front of all his coworkers, or that his parents suffocated in their beds from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Why should any of those things disturb his sleep? He didn’t actually tie the noose or force bats to dwell in the chimney. He didn’t agree to suck Oliver’s cock. Everyone else made his or her individual fatal choices. Josh simply let people thrive and fall based on their own decisions.
That’s what he told himself, but there was one time that he had trouble believing his own stories. He still didn’t understand why. What happened with Tony Masters, that good-looking husband of the town nurse in Thread, never sat right with Josh—even though Josh didn’t make the guy stare at him that wintry afternoon of his parents’ burial nor did Josh ask Tony to hang around and laugh with him that afternoon at the meal served by the Ladies’ Aid in the basement of the Lutheran Church. Plenty of people mourned his parents at that reception and few stayed to listen to Josh’s jokes and stories of Los Angeles. Tony made the choice to do that.
From the moment he saw Tony staring across the open grave, Josh knew that the man was infatuated. He also recognized that the man didn’t seem to realize it. Several rounds of drinks later in the evening at the local tavern, even as Tony failed to wake up to his attraction, only made the connection clearer to Josh. It wasn’t the first time Josh had encountered deeply closeted gays, the kind of men who managed to get married, have kids, and think they were living the All-American life, only to discover at some point that they hungered for something different. Tony was one of those lost souls, and after downing all those boilermakers, he was more than willing to head back to Josh’s old farm to fulfill a hunger he usually ignored, and once there, Josh knew full well the moves to make.
And he made every one of them. It wasn’t hard at all. The guy had probably never cheated on his wife, but suddenly he was stretched out naked on the deathbed of two of the town’s upright citizens having his cock sucked by the town fag. Tony didn’t let himself think about any of it, not until after the final climax. Then instead of lighting up a cigarette, he let his mind stew in the details of what he had done.
For Josh, Tony’s moment of self-awareness was the best part of the night. It was better than porn to watch Tony’s realizations bubble through his drunken state. He grew quiet and more flushed. Then he hurried to find his strewn-about clothes, never looking Josh in the eyes, or uttering anything other than an animal-like mumble.
That night turned out pretty amazing. Josh should have headed back to Los Angeles to wait for the payout from Ma and Pa’s life insurance. But instead, hearing about how someone seemed to be buying up the old farms in the area, he decided to hang around and find out more. Every time he ran into Tony at the Piggly Wiggly, or the Wink o’the North Bar, or the Loon Town Café, it was an added little bonus to see the handsome local blush and scurry away. Except for those times Tony compulsively hung back.
Then came the day which no one else in town could explain—except for Josh, who was not willing to share his theories with anyone. Tony left his house to drive north on Highway 17. When he saw a convoy of motorcycles coming south, for some reason that everyone else debated but no one comprehended, he veered straight into the cyclists, killing not only himself but many of them. The enormous accident was the talk of Thread for weeks.
Josh did not go to Tony Masters’ funeral. After it, he avoided even being in the same place as Tony’s widow. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he felt guilt. There was no basis for his emotion. He never suggested that Tony kill himself. He didn’t ask the guy to drive north, or arrange for others to be riding toward him. Compared to his other crimes, in this case Josh was truly innocent. And yet for the first time, it somehow seemed his fault, which bothered him in ways he couldn’t explain.
No one saw the acts in which Tony and Josh reveled—except for Tony, but that was enough to transform not only Tony but also Josh. That winter in Thread, Josh began to watch Danny with a different set of eyes. He wanted to believe in the boy’s goodness and the possibility that someone might actually be different. Being near someone who was so opposite of Josh might pull him back toward the middle, or so he hoped. In some ways, he wasn’t even aware of what was happening because he just thought he had an itch to test Danny and to fuck up others. But something new had clicked into place.
Danny’s and his lives had become entangled; there was no other word for it. From that moment forward, Josh anticipated that no matter where he might be, Danny’s actions would somehow affect him. The two of them
were linked in an inexplicable way. So he needed to understand the boy if only to understand himself.
Josh told himself that he was remaining in Thread merely to sell the farm for the best possible price. But he could have used a realtor for that. Danny was his motivation. Josh fell in love with the possibility that Danny’s presence would make Josh a better person. Even when a moment of clarity rushed over Josh, and he forced himself to move back to the West Coast, the break wasn’t totally successful. Without Danny he felt incomplete. After little more than a year, he fully gave in and convinced Danny Lahti to leave Thread and move in with him. By that point, Josh felt he had become a more moral person, and there would be no more dead Tony Masters on his conscience.
But then maybe Danny wasn’t such a spirit of goodness. His presence didn’t balance out Josh’s own nature. Or perhaps Josh didn’t really have a conscience after all, and he had merely been acting in a different sort of play for a few years, trying on a different role, a part for which he was not suited. He fell back into testing people and seeking their motivating secrets, always hoping that eventually Danny would anchor him from drifting too far.
But there always remained the old dilemma. How could Danny be a strong anchor if under the right circumstances Danny’s moral certitude could be switched? For Josh, the nagging question of Danny’s true character bloomed again.
When Josh confronted Oliver in Chicago, every element of Josh’s complicated relationship with Danny inhabited that room. Ghosts of past actions and plots rattled about the baseboards and corners. So long ago, Josh influenced Oliver to entice Danny into a sexual trap just for the fun of it. Maybe in the end it wasn’t so different than what Josh did with Tony. Through Oliver, Josh forced Danny to confront his own desires and to see those urges reflected through the mockery of his coworkers. But it didn’t really work to turn Danny bad. His goodness persevered.
Josh should have abandoned Oliver. But he was like a pair of well-worn shoes—always comfortable to slip on when an errand needed doing, like egging Oliver into harassing Pete Peterson in Thread. When he went looking for first stage funders for Premios, there were so many potential sources, yet when Jesus Lopez casually mentioned knowing Oliver and Colby, it was a revelation. Josh had lost track of Oliver and hadn’t known of his present role as a venture capitalist. Rediscovering Oliver was the impetus for Josh creating the most elaborate test yet for Danny.
The plan evolved as time went on, as all good things in life did. It was like drafting a novel and not knowing how it might end. He courted Endicott and Meyers, and delighted in that first meeting when Oliver realized it was Josh who ran this potential investment, at the same time deliberately keeping Oliver’s presence hidden from Danny. Josh thought that someday his subterfuge would pay off. And it might have. He had high hopes for purposely dangling the story of Oliver and Danny in front of Jesus. When the writer bit, just as predicted from the writer’s jaded interests, Josh was once again the master.
But he failed to foresee that Oliver wasn’t his alone. Even as he began to worry about the source of Oliver’s money, Josh never considered the possibility of Arab terrorists. But then there were the danger signs, and that’s when Josh had to improvise, losing control of his usual carefully planned tests. By the time Josh knocked on Oliver’s townhouse door, Josh couldn’t really say exactly what he was thinking or planning to do.
Maybe that’s why the more he read about this Schrödinger’s cat, the more Josh thought it confounding. Because he was beginning to accept that on that day in Chicago, he was in two alternate possibilities at the same time. He wanted to kill Oliver to see how his death would force Danny into yet another test of faith, but he also wanted to kill Oliver to protect Danny and their relationship by ridding them of something rotten. Both hopes were true. Only an observer taking an action—Oliver with his gun—could push Josh from one side to the other.
But which side did he land on? Why did he use Oliver’s own gun to kill him? In one of these readings about quantum superpositions, he ran across the idea of multiple universes—and the concept that at every instant the cosmos split into new alternatives, one in which the cat lived and one in which the cat died. Over the years, Josh had set in motion so many potential realities: One in which Clarence still lived and was beloved by his aged mother. One where Danny was never humiliated and became a totally different personality. Another where Josh could go home to see his parents at Christmas. And still one in which he allowed no information to be hacked on New Year’s Eve. And yet another where Pete continued to inhabit his camp beneath the bridge and still wore his hat to ward off the monsoon rains.
This was a set of possibilities he could not explore. He was not a quantum physicist dealing with the strange paradoxes of entanglement and superpositioning. He would not contemplate all of the alternative universes that might coexist and thrive. He was not willing to consider the possibility that he was the outside observer. It could not be his destructive actions that forced this continual branching of good and evil.
Besides, he wasn’t alone. He had his allies, people like Jesus Lopez, who were always so eager to follow up on Josh’s suggestions, even when they weren’t aware of their being manipulated. With Lopez, the man’s novels reflected his character. It’s what attracted Josh and why Josh thought it would be funny when he loaned Pete’s hat for some of Jesus’s recent errands. He could always count on Jesus to say or do whatever Josh requested.
But he wasn’t going to let himself relive decisions and choices involving Pete and Danny and Jesus. There was too much time on his hands in the old camp. He had to stop thinking and start doing. He needed to design the ultimate experiment. It was time to stop skirting around the core matter. Until he knew Danny—fully and completely—Josh could never know who and what he was, nor could he be truly independent again. He needed to understand his own soul.
In this box with the poison ready to pour out, there were two cats, and their names were Danny and Josh. Which was dead? Which was alive?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Whirlwind
Storm clouds darkened the horizon. With rains and winds rushing in from the Plains States, the air promised the kind of summer storm that prompted tornados to dance through the woods as they toppled trees in mad patterns and skipped across lakes.
There were many places Danny might want to be. The camp was not one of them. Life marched on—and at the moment it appeared that the way forward no longer required Josh. Actuades had completed its purchase of Premios, placing the company inside an international media conglomerate and making it part of Danny’s past. Orleans landed at a Silicon Valley investment firm, a position likely achieved with the help of Barbara Linsky. Before leaving southern California, Orleans put order to Danny’s finances by liquidating Josh’s various real estate investments, refinancing both the camp and the mansion with proceeds from the sale of Premios, and consolidating various trusts. She counseled Danny to put one or the other of his homes on the market, telling Danny he wasn’t as rich as Josh always claimed.
Still Danny felt financially, if not emotionally, secure, and was surprised to discover that he was happy to have Josh continue to remain missing. Wherever Josh had gone or whatever he had done, Danny felt he no longer needed the man—who seemed to have planned his exit well, covered his tracks carefully, and left behind no sign of ever intending to reappear.
But then Cynthia called.
A worker from Lattigo Industries had been fishing in front of the Wisconsin camp. He saw someone lurking in the windows of the upper floor and alerted Cynthia out of concern for the widow of his dead boss. She requested a home check by the local police, who reported that the house, although now empty, had recently been occupied. Both she and the police thought the same thing: Josh Gunderson had been using the place as a hideaway.
Danny hated the call when it came.
“Danny, I don’t want to have to tell you this but I think Josh is here in Wisconsin,” Cynthia said, “or at least he was
here. Maybe you should come back.”
“And do what?” he asked. He really meant it. What good would it do for him to examine the hulking log mansion on the lake? What would he look for? Another hidden room? So what if there were empty TV dinner trays or slept-in sheets? By seeing the signs in person, what would he learn that he didn’t already know? He did not need to reinforce the reality that he never really knew Josh and that the man was not trustworthy. He wanted Josh to flee to another country and be gone forever, because he was happy without him.
It was best to be cautious. Josh was a patient spider weaving a web, but if Danny didn’t fly into the trap, he couldn’t be caught. Already he had followed Barbara’s advice and burned every one of Josh’s files concerning Project Big Stick. That included all of the written notes about the suspected funders of Endicott-Meyers. Danny never told anyone, not even Barbara, about Josh’s documented case for where Oliver’s money was derived. He also destroyed the tapes but only after torturing himself by listening a second time. They provided the strongest reason for Danny to resist returning to Wisconsin, because they fully convinced him of Josh’s insanity.
Cynthia had no patience for Danny’s reluctance to come home but he had avoided telling her anything of what was revealed by the tapes. Danny knew that Cynthia was trapped by her vision of what she would do were she to discover a sign that Chip was still alive, but he knew there was nothing similar about their two situations. She lost a beautiful lover; he uncovered a crazed man.
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