“Go?” I said. “Go where?”
“Anywhere. I’m through with this dump. It’s time to move on.”
I glanced toward James, Steve, the others. They seemed just as surprised and taken aback by this as I was. I turned again toward Philipe. “You want to move? Get a new house?”
“Not a bad idea. But, no. I want to travel.”
“Travel?”
“I think we need to go on a trip.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been a little too active lately. I think we need to take a breather, let things cool down. We’re starting to attract attention.”
“I thought attracting attention was what we wanted.”
“This is the wrong kind of attention.”
“What does that mean?”
He looked at me solemnly, evenly, and I understood from that look that he did not want to talk about this in front of the others. “It means we need to take a vacation for a while.”
“How long is a while?” Buster asked.
Philipe shook his head. “I don’t know.”
We were silent then. I imagined us taking off, moving away from the city to some small town in the great Northwest, some little logging community where the pace of life was slow and everybody knew everybody else. Would we blend into the background everywhere, I wondered, or just in cities? Would people in a small town eventually get to know us? Would we be noticed?
Probably not.
“Let’s go,” Philipe said. “We’ll stop by everyone’s place. Pick up what you need and what we can carry in the cars, and we’ll hit the road.”
“Where?” Pete asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“North,” I said.
Philipe nodded agreeably. “North it is.”
We decided to limit everyone to two suitcases—the amount we could fit easily into the trunks of the cars—and we stopped by Tommy’s, James’, John’s, and Junior’s places before we got to my apartment. I didn’t know what I wanted to bring, but I didn’t want to waste time thinking, trying to decide, so I quickly looked through the cupboards and closets, dug through the dresser, picking up shampoo and underwear and shirts and socks. In the dresser, I came across Jane’s old pair of panties, and a feeling of nostalgia or déjà vu or melancholy or something flashed through me, and I had to sit down on the bed for a moment. I held the panties in my hand, turned them in my fingers. I still didn’t know where Jane was. I’d tried calling her parents the week after my walk to their house, but when her father had answered the phone I’d hung up.
I wanted to get in touch with her now, to let her know I was leaving. It was stupid, but for some reason, it seemed important to me.
“Almost done?” Bill called from the living room.
“Almost!” I called back. I stood, dropped the panties into the suitcase and closed it.
I took a last look around my bedroom. I didn’t know if we were really going on a vacation, if we would be gone only until things cooled down, or if we were going to be gone for good and I would never see this place again. An absurd sadness came over me at the thought that we might not be coming back. A lot of my memories were here, and I suddenly felt like crying.
“Bob?” John called.
“Coming!” I took a last look around the bedroom, closed the second suitcase, picked both suitcases up, and walked quickly out the door.
SEVEN
We were gone for three months.
We traveled north, through California, stopping at tourist spots along the way. We went to San Simeon, tagging along for free with a group of paying customers. We visited the Winchester Mystery House, leaving the tour group unseen and spending several nights in that spooky old mansion. We went to Santa Cruz to ride the roller coaster, stopped by Bodega Bay to see the birds.
We lived for the most part in motels, those glorious monuments to facelessness. We never saw the chefs who cooked our meals nor the purveyors of room service who brought them. We were gone when the maids made our beds and exchanged our dirty towels for clean ones.
The rooms themselves were interchangeable, decorated by anonymous firms who dealt in bulk with the stylishly sensible. There were always twin double beds separated by adjoining nightstands topped with securely anchored night-lights, a long dresser atop which perched a swivel television, bolted in place. There was always a Gideon Bible.
I wanted to hate living this way, knew that I should, but I did not. I loved it. We all did. We did not tire of either the food or the accommodations. This was our milieu, this was our native element, and we basked in it. The ordinary, the average, the standardized, this was what we felt comfortable with, and though we avoided five-star inns and stayed primarily in moderately priced motels, from our point of view we were in hog heaven.
We did not pay for food or lodgings, but aside from that and a few five-finger discounts on souvenirs, we suspended our illegal activities. We really were on vacation—from both our regular lives and our roles as terrorists—and it felt great.
We moved up into Oregon, through Washington, into Canada, before finally starting back down again. I had never before been out of California, and it seemed exciting to me to leave the state. I was seeing things I had never seen before, that I had only read about, and it made me feel more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan, and gave me a sense of satisfaction.
I loved traveling, loved going to all these places, but it was our nightly bull sessions that I really looked forward to, that gave me a sense of purpose. For it was here, for the first time, that we discussed who we were, what we were, how we felt, what it meant to be Ignored. We tried to find meaning in our existence, and for once it was not Philipe telling us how we were supposed to feel, but all of us expressing our thoughts and emotions and trying together to make some sense of our lives.
I had never before been a part of a group, had never before belonged to any clique or circle, and it felt good. I knew now what people saw in teams and fraternal organizations, the bonding they felt being with like-minded individuals, and it was wonderful. I was free to be myself because I was with others who were just like me. The atmosphere was relaxed and easygoing. We talked seriously and honestly, but we were not solemn, and we had fun together. We would often brag to each other about our sexual prowess, a juvenile, junior high school kind of exaggeration. We all knew none of it was true, and I suppose it should have seemed pathetic, as old as we were, but somehow it made us feel better. Philipe would tug on his pant leg just below the knee, pretending that his penis hung that far down, and say, “Why did God bless me so?”
Buster would say, “Is that all you’ve got? When I lie down, dogs mistake it for a fire hydrant.”
And all of us would laugh.
We were together so often, so rarely apart, that for a long time I did not have the opportunity to speak with Philipe alone about why he’d really wanted us to get away from Southern California. I was tempted to ask him on several occasions, but we were always within earshot of the others, and I remembered that look he’d given me in his house, and I always decided to wait for a more opportune time.
That time finally came when we were at Mt. Shasta. For once, all of the others had started up the self-guided tour trail while Philipe was still sitting in the car, looking at a map to try to figure out where we should go next, so I stayed with him, waiting until the others were out of sight before bringing it up.
“So,” I said, “why did we really go on this trip?”
He folded the map, looked up at me. “I was wondering when you were going to ask about that.”
“I’m asking now.”
He shook his head slowly, thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. Not really. I just had this feeling—” He broke off. “Do you ever have, like hunches or intuition or… premonitions? Things that you know are going to come true and do come true?”
I shook my head.
He licked his lips. “I do. I don’t
know if it’s just coincidence or what, but I get these feelings sometimes…. Like when I killed my boss: I knew months ahead of time that I was going to kill him, even before I wanted to, and of course it came true. And when I met you. Something just told me to go to South Coast Plaza that day. I don’t know why. And when I got there, I had the hunch that I was supposed to look for somebody. It was like… like I was being guided or something.”
I laughed. “You’re getting a messiah complex.”
“Maybe I am,” he admitted.
My smile faded. “I was just joking.”
“I’m not.” He looked up at me. “I feel that way sometimes. Like I’m a man thrust into a god’s role—and I’m not prepared for it.” He dropped the map on the seat next to him and got out of the car. He closed the door, locking it. “Anyway, that’s how I decided on this trip. Something just told me it was time to go. I had this vague feeling that we were being watched, that someone was closing in on us, and we had to get out of there. I didn’t know for how long. I just knew we had to leave. Fast.”
“Who do you think’s after us? The cops?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged.
“But you don’t think so.”
He looked at me. “I don’t think so.”
“Are we ever going back?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Soon. I think it’s blowing over. I think it’ll be safe again in a few weeks.”
We walked down the guide trail where the others had gone. I glanced over at Philipe as we started down a series of log-and-gravel steps. “Your house,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Was it your mother’s?”
“No. Mine. I bought it.”
“I’m sorry. It just kind of looked like it might be your parents’ place.”
We were silent for a moment.
“Where is your mother?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, when’s the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
We were quiet then, the only sound the crunching of the gravel on the path beneath our feet and the occasional far-off cry of a bird.
“I’m Ignored,” Philipe said. “You’re Ignored. We’ve always been that way; we’ll always be that way. Don’t try to look for answers in childhood or family histories. They’re not there.”
I nodded, said nothing.
Ahead, on the path, we saw the others, and we hurried to catch up to them.
We added two members to our little group.
Paul we picked up in Yosemite, on our way back home. He was standing buck-naked on a footbridge beneath Yosemite Falls, yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs. A constant stream of tourists crossed the bridge, looking up at the falls, taking pictures. People from other states, other countries. English, German, Japanese.
Paul stood there, cock and balls bouncing with each bump and jostle. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!”
We stood for a moment at the foot of the bridge, watching him.
“That’s amazing,” Philipe said. “They’re running into him, and he’s yelling in their ears, and they still don’t see him.”
Steve and Bill were laughing. They seemed to think it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
To me, it was eerie, like something out of a David Lynch movie. The man stood on the bridge, absurdly visible in his nakedness, while the crowd of Bermuda-shorted tourists took no notice of him, passing him by, bumping into him, even pushing him casually aside in order to take a clearer photograph. The sound of the falls was deafening, masking all ordinary conversation, but faintly, in tandem with the movements of this naked man’s mouth, came a barely audible voice, quietly screaming: “PRICK! PRICK! PRICK!”
It was an obvious cry for help, a desperate plea to be noticed from a dangerously disturbed man, and all I could think was that if the rest of us had not found each other, if the terrorists had not come together, that could be one of us.
“He’s insane,” James said. And he, too, seemed to sense the seriousness in the situation. “He’s gone completely insane.”
I nodded.
“No,” Philipe said.
He followed the flow of foot traffic onto the bridge and walked up to the man. He spoke to him, said something the rest of us could not make out. And then the man stopped screaming and was crying, sobbing, and laughing at the same time. He hugged Philipe, his entire body shaking.
Philipe led him off the bridge.
The man dried his eyes with his hands, wiped his nose on his arm as he saw us. He looked from one of us to another, and an expression of understanding crossed his features. “Are you… are you all Ignored?”
We nodded.
The man fell to his knees, began sobbing again. “Thank God!” he cried. “Thank God!”
“You’re not alone,” Philipe told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He looked at us. “His name’s Paul.”
Paul was not insane, as James and I had originally feared. He did have a few problems adjusting at first—he had definitely been alone for far too long—but by the time we returned to Southern California, he was pretty well recovered.
Our second new recruit we found after we got back to Orange County.
We saw him for the first time in Brea Mall, a week or so after we got back, sitting on the floor in front of the magazine rack at Waldenbooks, reading a Penthouse. He was young, not more than nineteen or twenty, and he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his long hair pulled into a ponytail. We were walking toward the food court when Philipe spotted him and suddenly stopped. Philipe stood outside the store, staring at the man, and after a few moments, obviously seeing our presence, he looked up, returned the stare.
“Another one,” Philipe said. “Let’s see how far along he is.” He told the others to move on, told me to stay with him. “We’ll meet at the food court in a half hour,” he said.
As soon as the others left, Philipe walked straight up to the magazine rack, smiled at the man on the floor, picked up a People. The man, panicked, shoved his Penthouse in front of a Redbook and hurriedly left the store.
“That’s what you were like at first,” Philipe told me. He put down his magazine. “Come on. Let’s follow him.”
It was surprisingly easy to keep track of the man. His attempts to ditch us were almost cartoonlike. He’d stride quickly through the crowd of shoppers, looking constantly over his shoulder to see if we were following; he’d dart behind couples and groups of teenagers, only to move out into the open again to see if we were coming.
I must admit, the man’s obvious fear of us gave me a little thrill of power, made me feel strong and forceful. I walked through the mall more confidently, hyper-aware of my own authority, and in my mind I was like an Arnold Schwarzenegger character, single-mindedly stalking an enemy.
“He hasn’t gone through the initiation yet,” Philipe said as we followed the man through Sears. “He’s not yet one of us.”
“The initiation?”
“He hasn’t killed yet.”
The man exited Sears and started running down the first aisle of the parking lot. I was about to run after him when Philipe put a hand in front of me, holding me back. “Stay here. We’ll never catch him. Just try to see what kind of car he drives.”
We stood on the sidewalk in front of the store. The man moved between two cars about halfway up the aisle, and a moment later, a yellow VW Bug pulled out.
“He’ll drive by us,” Philipe said. “He wants to see us. Try to get his license plate number.”
Sure enough, instead of exiting down the aisle away from us, he came speeding in our direction. In the second before he turned, I saw through the windshield wild eyes staring out from beneath a large forehead.
Then he was gone.
“Did you get the number?”
“Part of it,” I said. “PTL something. I think the next number was a five,
but I’m not sure. It could’ve been a six.”
“Close enough. I saw a Fullerton College parking decal on his bumper. It should be pretty easy to find a yellow Bug in the Fullerton College parking lot with a license plate that starts with PTL.”
We walked back into the mall, through Sears, toward the food court.
“How do you know he hasn’t killed his boss?” I asked.
“You can tell. Something happens during the initiation. Something physical or biological. Something changes within us the first time we kill someone. There’s a definite difference in the way we act. I can’t really explain it, but I know it. It’s real, concrete.” We saw the others, and he motioned for them to join us. “We’ll follow this guy, keep tabs on him. In a few weeks or so, he’ll be ready to join.”
“You don’t know anything about him,” I said. “You don’t know him, you don’t know his family, you don’t know his work situation. What makes you think he will kill his boss?”
“We all do,” Philipe said, and there was a hint of sadness in his voice. “We all do.”
A week or so later, we staked out the Fullerton College parking lot. We found the VW with no problem, and the rest of us waited in our cars while Tommy, the youngest of us, stood near the Bug.
A few minutes after noon, the man came walking up from the direction of the math building, a load of books beneath his arm. Several other students came out as well, talking in groups or pairs, but our man walked alone.
He reached the VW, unlocked the door.
“Hey!” Tommy said. “Is that your car?”
The man stared at him for a moment. Contrasting emotions were visible on his face: surprise, relief, fear. It was fear that won out, and before Tommy could say anything else, the man had gotten into the Bug, locked his door, and started the engine.
“Wait!” Tommy called.
The man took off.
The rest of us emerged from our hiding places. “He’s getting close,” Philipe said knowingly. “Next time he’ll be ready.”
Through sheer luck, we picked the perfect day. It was about two weeks later, and again we staked out the parking lot. This time the man was not in class but sitting in his car.
The Ignored Page 21
