The Project Gutenberg eBook ofAny Coincidence IsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.*** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. ****** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ***Title: Any Coincidence IsAuthor: Daniel CallahanRelease date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6526]Most recently updated: August 21, 2012Language: English*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANY COINCIDENCE IS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
*** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. ****** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ***
*** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. ***
*** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ***
Title: Any Coincidence IsAuthor: Daniel CallahanRelease date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6526]Most recently updated: August 21, 2012Language: English
Title: Any Coincidence Is
Author: Daniel Callahan
Author: Daniel Callahan
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6526]Most recently updated: August 21, 2012
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANY COINCIDENCE IS ***
Copyright (c) 1994-2004 Daniel Callahan
Any Coincidence Is(or, The Day Julia & Cecil the Cat Faced a Fate Worse Than Death)v9.2 (January 2004)
Daniel Callahan
Copyright (c) 1994-2004 Daniel Callahan This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
This novel can be found online at http://www.eclectic-cheval.net in html, pdf, and zipped text formats.
"I used to do a turn in the army. I was really mad back then… [a] loony! I'd never have any music to introduce me, which was a big deal. Unheard of. I'd hop out on to the stage. It used to take ages. Hop, hop, hop. As I got nearer to the microphone, they'd hear this doddery voice going 'Do do do… do do do.' When I'd eventually make it to the microphone I'd stop and say, 'I must be a great disappointment to you all.' That's it. There's no joke. It's totally irrational. A lot of people don't get it. Still don't." — Spike Milligan
"What will be is. Is is."— James Joyce, "Finnegans Wake"
1. The Dim Bulb"If you guys don't listen to me, we're going to end up in that boxagain!"— Davy to the other Monkees, "Head"
The young man (boy, really) played with his fingers in the garish light cast from the lone bulb hanging in the concrete basement. He scratched at an imaginary itch on his right hand (just below his thumb) in order to take his mind off the man in the lab coat who sat across from him at the beaten, scarred, wood table. It didn't work. And whoever this man in the lab coat was, he was insistent about paperwork. He had three inches clipped onto a weathered clipboard which he flipped through with precision.
"Can I offer you a glass of water?" asked the boy's captor in a calm, sensitive tenor.
The boy, Kurt, continued to scratch the imaginary itch, which had leaped magically from his right hand to the left. Eventually the falseness of the itch would be deduced, and the lab coated man would disappear out of the cell and return with… God knows what. Kurt had seen torture hundreds — if not thousands — of times on TV, and he was glumly aware that there would be no commercial breaks for him.
"Can I offer you a glass of water?" The question was repeated without urgency, as if the speaker was an absent-minded waiter. The itch now leaped with the dexterity of a trained flea onto the boy's leg, and the dutiful fingers followed.
He watched as the man in the lab coat, without name tag or company insignia, studied his stack of papers attached to the clipboard. Several yellow forms near the top half inch were labeled 27B. The man frowned and wrote a note on the top page: Note: Find out who isn't duplicating 27B in Pink.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I wasn't listening. Was that a yes or no to the water?"
Kurt remained in his chair, almost motionless, except for the itching-and-scratching routine. It had leaped again, this time onto his scalp, and the twitching fingers followed. He wondered how long he could keep this up without drawing blood.
"I'll just write down 'no answer' in your file," the Lab Coat Man muttered, shuffling his way through the stack of paper, skipping the yellows and pinks to find a blue. Locating the relevant box on a 43F, he made a small 'X,' flipped to the front of the pile, and looked back at the boy. He had stopped scratching his scalp and pushing his strawberry-blond hair even more out of place, leaving his hands motionless and his eyes fixed on the table top. Good, he thought; at least he won't make himself bleed with all that scratching. The man adjusted his glasses, which didn't help, as his vision impairment was due to the dim lighting. The singular bulb, being pathetic twice over (as it was: A) the only one in the room, and B) thirty watts too dim), hung from a cord — a more melodramatic touch than he would have employed himself, but from a practical point of view there wasn't much to see even in a well lit concrete basement. A painting or two would clear up the problem nicely, although it would take away from the point of the room: interrogation. Interrogation rooms were not meant to be pleasant. So, perhaps, they would only fill the room with Dali's? The man chuckled and coughed to cover his lack of composure. Dali, indeed. Or Miro. More camouflaged coughing. But the boy, still maintaining what seemed to be an impression of a sedated vegetable, didn't seem to notice. So, the lab man adjusted his collar and steeled himself for the next grim encounter with the unkempt.
"My name is…" he offered. The boy's silent motif continued. He discouraged a sigh that was building inside him. The boy was obviously frightened and knew nothing. How could he, the man thought. I'm junior vice-president, and I have to keep asking Forrester what to do next. Although no one ever called him by that title, or even his name anymore. Just because he had unpacked the first shipment of lab coats and arranged them on hangers according to size, he had been dubbed the Lab Coat Man. And now, weeks later, the joke dead and buried, the name had stuck. Was this the brave new world they were heading to?
The Lab Coat Man sighed. What could he do but persevere? The questionnaire had to be completed. And if the boy was ever going to be recruited, he'd have to be a lot more forthcoming.
"My name is…" he prompted.
The boy resumed scratching, this time under this first knuckle of his left hand.
"Well, what's in a name, eh? Ha ha ha!" The subtle wit of a well executed quote amused the man, but generated no response from the boy. Discouraged, he dutifully noted this on a blue 42C, adding another 'X.'
This could go on forever…
2. What there's no accounting for "If that's the best you can do, then your best sucks!" — Jodi Foster, "The Accused"
"Because all of you of Earth are idiots!" shouted Tom, wearily wiping the glass counter and removing coconut oil from the reflections of overpriced candy bars. Inside the theater the movie echoed him: "Because all of you of Earth are idiots!"
Tom sighed, not for the first time that evening. The Manager, who paid in cash every Sunday, had decided to take advantage of the bizarre tastes of his Gen X clients and offer an Ed Wood film festival. "Bride of the Monster", "Plan 9 From Outer Space", and "Night of the Ghouls" ran on the second, smaller screen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, two bucks a head. Carloads of costumed goons from Madison assaulted the theater in droves, throwing popcorn at the screen whenever they saw a particularly bad moment of cinema history. Which meant that Kurt spent a lot of extra time cleaning the theater. He had mentioned this problem to his boss, but his only response had been a toothy grin. The Manager was making a killing.
Tom, who needed the job in order to move out of his parents' trailer home, found little about the Ed Wood canon amusing. Even so, he had been forced to hear the dialog of each film every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday… The soundproofing between theater two and the lobby was nonexistent. Thankfully, he only had to watch them once, when he filled in for the Manager's weasel-featured nephew/projectionist Neoldner, who had called in sick to buy grass in Beloit. In return, Neoldner was going to clean out theater two this evening, and Tom couldn't wait for his shift to end.
One good thing about the Ed Wood freaks - they bought all the popcorn Tom could make. He always had the nagging worry that the Manager would increase his profit margin by manning the concession stand himself. The last two employees in Tom's position had been let go for no given reason… it seemed only a matter of time before the same thing happened to him. But the Manager strolled out of the second theater with a broad grin, revealing his cutting overbite.
"I don't know why," the Manager exclaimed, "but they love it!"
"Most of them are from the 'Ed 9 Film Society,'" Tom replied. "By the way, I need to restock."
"I brought three boxes up already — they're by the stairs. And once you're done with that whatever else needs to be done out here, you can go home early!"
"A whole five minutes?" Tom muttered, almost inaudibly. "Whatever shall I do with my time?"
The Manager swung his hands apart and then together in loud clap, as he always did to change the subject. "By the way, your mother called. She said to call her back immediately."
"When did she call?"
The Manager leveled a mischievous stare at Tom and quoted the following: "'He tampered in God's domain!'"
"But that was seventy minutes ago!" The closing line, in fact, of "Bride of the Monster". Woodian dialog had become part of Tom's internal clock. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"I had to give Neoldner a hand threading 'Plan 9', and I forgot all about it. Sorry!"
Tom heard Criswell begin his parting words, figured to hell with it, and abandoned his post in order to use the phone in the employee's lounge. It had been a storage room until just recently, when the Manager had redecorated it with a host of kitschy sale items from Osco. Good intentions, perhaps, but the room was only big enough for two people to begin with, and a hypothetical third could only find space through acts of physical intimacy which would have been rendered impossible by the decor. He dialed home and his mother answered immediately, showering him with motherly affection and gratitude that he was safe and babbling on about some catastrophe that had just occurred.
"What, mom? Mom, what?! Mom! What?!" Tom repeated his request in several permutations until he finally received the coherent message that had so shaken his mother: his cousin Kurt had gone missing.
Tom pondered this for a moment.
"And…?"
3. Meanwhile, back at the ranch… "Voyaging through the strange seas of Thought, alone." — Wordsworth
Justin Nelson, Jr., pounded the last of the stakes of his new cattle pen into the dry dirt. Like sentinels, they sprouted in a line from the barn, swerved north of the stream, veered at a right angle for the stump, and followed Justin to where he stood. The cross-beams remained, after which he'd finally be done.
He took a white handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his forehead. The task had been lengthened considerably, although Justin refused to admit it, by incessant thinking, an activity which often stopped him with his hammer in mid-swing. But now, he would soon be able to think all he wanted from the comfort of his porch as the cattle wandered from shade to shade. After he bought some cattle, he reminded himself. Or sheep. He could never decide which.
Under an entirely blue vault of sky, Justin felt something pass between himself and the morning sun. His leathered face turned up to see nothing but ubiquitous light, curving toward him in all directions. He arched his aging back, feeling the popping and hating it more than usual, before wiping his neck and replacing the handkerchief. He had that feeling that he'd better drink something and sit down or he'd end up in that damn hospital again. Twice last year, whether he needed it or not, he went in for a check-up, and twice a year, some intern treated him like the village idiot. Truth be told, everyone who knew about him had treated him that way for nearly eleven years, except his niece. With a sigh escaping from the bellows of his withering chest, Justin shuffled back to the porch he had added onto his small two-room home. In the distance, a plume of dust was billowing off the road. Mail truck. Must be time for breakfast. About time I ate something.
Tired legs maneuvered Justin's frame to the rocking chair, where both of his strong, chapped hands gripped the chair arms as he strategically placed his rear over the seat, then allowed gravity to do its work. As his ass plummeted, he was reminded that gravity yet to be reckoned with electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force, the other fundamental forces of the universe. Strange that he would remember a detail like that just now. Something he would have taught to his senior physics class and explained as best he could — the one-eyed, cataract patient leading the blind. Gravity, he would explain, was the odd man out, and would be until somebody found a way to take the known model of the universe apart and put it back together. And when they did, he thought, wiping his face and neck again, they'd make some interesting discoveries. So much so that our explanation of space and time, the one that was "real" and "true" and had superseded every other theory since the beginning of history, would itself be superseded by something new that was more "real" and "true" than its predecessors. Be hell on all those science-fiction programs, having to reinvent how those cock-eyed transporters worked.
The dust whirled in the air, passing before the green truck as it drove up the road. A shadow, a large one, passed beside it. Dust doesn't make that big of a shadow, Justin thought. There's something up there. He looked up again, and whatever it was had passed away from the sun. And then, there was a glint of light, hovering somewhere above the mail truck. I bet it knows the secret, thought Justin, as he began to rock. How else can they hover that way? Whether anyone else believed in them wasn't the point. What was real and true didn't depend on prevailing fashions - it just was, whether or not it had been discovered yet.
Still, Justin wondered, how advanced could they be if they needed to hang out here and what for the mail truck, too?
4. In loco parentis "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." — President William Jefferson Clinton
Alona Schwatrz's persistent knocking at the door of room 412 went unanswered for three minutes as she nervously shuffled her feet. Her book bag was super-saturated with textbooks, notebooks, schedules, rough drafts, and various other forms of academic paraphernalia. And itkept getting heavier. She continued to knock, even though there had as yet been no answer, because the note card tacked to the right of the door indicated that these indeed were Prof. Turgy K. Sigger's office hours. She could see the light under the door and thought she had heard a groan. Just before she decided to give up, slow feet approached from the opposite side, then silence; with a dramatic turn of the knob, the door swung open.
"Was this trip really necessary?" asked Prof. Sigger, blinking and brushing his oily, graying hair back into place.
"These are your office hours," Alona replied. She nervously smiled, feeling the corners of her mouth twitch. Somewhere in the darkened hall, a janitor coughed.
"All right," conceded Prof. Sigger. "Come in."
The carpet was smothered by leaning towers of textbooks. Papers lined the left side of the desk, above which was a small note card which read "To Be Graded." On the right side, the oak finish gleamed in the mid-morning light that pierced the Venetian blinds.
"You've come about your final project," Prof. Sigger stated.
"It's only mid-term," Alona reminded him.
"Oh yes, yes," continued Prof. Sigger, without conscious embarrassment. "Mid-term grade. I think I have it here. Somewhere." His hands disappeared into the left side of his desk.
"You told the class that we would all get a C if we maintained thatCoca-Cola wasn't a crypto-fascist conspiracy."
"Oh yes," said Prof. Sigger. "We were discussing social issues, as I remember. I was quoting Marx and some little idiot brought up Rush Limbaugh."
"That was me," Alona muttered.
"Oh yes, yes," Prof. Sigger continued. "What can I do for you?"
Alona stared blankly back. "You said you wanted to see me in your office anytime before next Wednesday."
Prof. Sigger finally sighed, sinking a little in his chair.
"Did I say what for? I'm feeling a little low today," he said, hoping to elicit a small display of feminine attention.
"Oh," came the succinct and neutral reply. Prof. Sigger sighed again."It was about my book report," continued Alona. "On…"
"Rush Limbaugh," interrupted Prof. Sigger.
"No."
"Coca-Cola?"
"No."
"I need to find my horoscope. I can't seem to keep track of anything anymore." He leaned back in his chair and felt his eyes close. That's it! he realized. That's why I asked her to my office! I have to find out if she would…
Somewhere in the pit of Sigger's abdomen, a latent piece of conscience manifested itself as a stomach cramp. He coughed and patted his belly. Then something lower than his abdomen began to draw his attention. He closed his eyes for a moment to clear his mind and focus on the art he had studied for years. With his intentions firmly aligned within (and without), Sigger opened his eyes but found himself no longer in his office but in a basement alcove. Across the room sat a pimply faced teenager who was scratching his scalp under long strawberry-blond hair.
5. Julia & Cecil the Cat, as mentioned in the title (above) "I've just one step further from falling behind." — Brandy Daniels, "You"
"Did you ever have one of those days," inquired Julia of her cat, Cecil, who lay in the crook of her arm and was pushing his head into the moving fingers of Julia's right hand, "when you think you've noticed something everyone else has missed?"
Cecil didn't respond directly, but instead rubbed the side of his cheeks against the spine of "Gravity's Rainbow" which Julia held lopsidedly in her left.
"Pynchon keeps bleating about the preterit, right?" Cecil, who began licking his paw and washing his face, did not respond. "— and the elect who are out to destroy them, but he's the only one I see who's treating his characters badly. I mean, how can you go off on God for malpractice when you treat your characters like you treat cockroaches?" Cecil looked at her for a moment, and resumed washing.
"OK, listen to this: 'Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end.' OK, I can see that. But I don't throw you against the wall and call the universe evil, do I?" Cecil snorted a tiny snort through his nostrils.
"But as far as making trying to make sense of everything… I can see that. That's why I wonder sometimes. Like about Uncle Justin," she continued, as Cecil stood, arched his back, and attempted to find a comfortable position on her stomach, "who was a science teacher for twenty-two years, who gave up everything, because… you know…"
Julia shook her head and returned the book to its level reading elevation.
As a matter of interest, Cecil did not know, but was content enough to curl up again, feeling Julia's hand press against his fur, causing his throat to vibrate with greater volume. That is, until the book slipped from her hand and roundly thumped Cecil on the head.
"I'm sorry!" apologized Julia, but too late, and Cecil was off her lap, shaking his the pain out of his head, galloping into the bedroom to find his favorite orthopedic pillow. "Maybe I should read a shorter book," said Julia to herself. She waited for some cosmic act of synchronicity to follow, to confirm her judgment on some level above human interpretation. Yet the moment of truth that had evaded her ever since childhood continued to remain conspicuous by its absence. In lieu of enlightenment, a muffled argument began to emanate from the college students next door. The plaster made it all to easy to hear, in terms of volume, but reduced everything to disconcerting roars, in terms of clarity. As far as Julia could tell, the argument, which was building to the "throwing objects to accentuate one's point" phase, and concerned the doctrine of predestination versus free will as well as whose turn it was to run the dishwasher.
"Well," she said, tossing the hulking tome next to the library's copies of "Cat's Cradle" and "Waiting for Godot", "I didn't understand much of it anyway."
6. Unidentified floating objects "Sucks to be you." — Traditional
Old Zeke handed Justin his day's worth of mail and looked longingly at the cool shade under the porch, half hoping, half anticipating an invitation to enjoy a cool drink and a few minutes out of the sun. His state-of-the-art mail delivery vehicle, an old green Ford with busted air-conditioning, sometimes elicited sympathy from those along his route, but the ones with beer were the best. However, Justin just looked through his mail and then began watching the sky.
"You ever think about gravity?" Justin asked suddenly.
"No," admitted Old Zeke, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.Justin sighed a little.
"You ever fall off a ladder?"
"Well," considered Zeke. Damned if this wasn't a round-about way to offer a fella a drink, but maybe after all this Justin would offer him a beer instead of that watery lemonade he made. "Yeah."
"How long did it take you to fall?"
Well hell, muttered Old Zeke under his breath. Maybe all those stakes he was driving in had given Justin a touch of the sun. The thought made him consider hauling Justin back to town, although the truck might finish the job the sun had started.
"A second or two," Zeke replied. But before he could load Justin into the truck, he figured he would have to collect a few things from the house, and maybe from the fridge he'd collect a few drinks…
"That thing up there hasn't fallen a foot in ten minutes or so."
Maybe Justin had a small bottle of something tucked away under the…"What thing?"
Justin pointed.
Zeke shielding his eyes with his hands and looked up. "Oh, that weather balloon?"
Justin's expectant face seemed to droop. "That what it is?"
"Yep. Looks like it's almost out of helium, the way it's floating so low. Launched 'em myself thirty years ago in the Army."
"Oh," muttered Justin "Be seeing ya, Zeke." He turned back to the porch.
Damn, thought Zeke, plodding back to the truck, if I told him it was a flying saucer I might have got a beer after all. Coincidentally, a gust of wind took the balloon higher into the sky.
7. Fallout"This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet."— Shakespeare
Alona ran out of the elevator, trying to hide her face in one hand and hold her overstuffed bag in the other. She kept wiping away the tears just to get through the already crowded lobby, where young gossip-mongers waiting vigilantly for fresh news.
The tears had started when Prof. Sigger had somehow sneaked passed her as she was searching in her bag for her paper. How anyone that old and lazy could have slipped out without a sound was a mystery to be considered after the wave of rejection and failure had passed — and after she made it to her car. Wiping her face with her sleeve and pretending to look as bored as everyone else, Alona hoped that even if her roommate were around, she would be fooled long enough to prevent her from starting any more rumors. Unfortunately, Alona decided this just after her roommate spotted her across the vestibule, noted the tears and false-face anxiety, and immediately deduced out loud to several of her closest acquaintances that Prof. Sigger had made a move on the all-too-innocent waif. The rumor spread across the hall and up the elevators by the time Alona was weaving through the cars that stalked the parking lot for open stalls. It seemed nearly everyone in the building had heard a whisper by the time Alona reached her father's rusting Gremlin.
She made her way to it without getting hit by the over-anxious drivers, unlocked the driver's side door, threw her bag into the back seat and herself into the driver's. Then she let go and sobbed and sobbed, hoping that if she got a "C" in Freshman Comp that it wouldn't turn out to be the excuse her parents needed to stop paying her tuition. They wanted Alona to work in the town's newly renovated theater, an investment in which they owned a small percentage.
Alona's sobs lasted for some time, and she knew, just knew, that her water-proof mascara had run, so she opened the glove compartment to find a Kleenex. Out fell a letter.
Her sobbing stopped as she picked it up from the dusty car floor. "Alona" was written, almost scribbled, on the cover. In Kurt's handwriting. She hadn't seen him in weeks, not since he began playing regularly in the band. She couldn't help picturing him the last time he was in her car, brushing back his long hair and scratching his hand in that nervous way of his.
"You're breaking up with me?" he asked, staring vaguely at the floor-mat.
She had nodded. What else could she do? Even she had finally admitted that he was just a good-looking loser. Sure, he could play the guitar and write songs, but she wouldn't be able to face her parents once they found out his most popular ballad was titled "Love Turds".
"This sucks," he muttered. Somehow, that had helped her keep her resolve, although in the weeks that had passed, her memory of that lonely quality of his, the one that had attracted her to him in the first place, had grown to almost god-like proportions.
Alona sighed and opened the letter.
Alona, (it read, unnecessarily)
O.K. I've had time to think about us. You shouldn't have broken up with me, but you're still cool, O.K.? I mean, even if you dont let me go all the way with you, your cool. So, like what I'm asking is should we get back together?
I know you don't think your parents will like me. But I'll grow on them. I'll write them a song that they'll like. Like 'Love Turds' but with different lyrics.
Any way, that's not what I wrote about. I mean, youre cool and all and I want to get back together with you but there's something else going on.
I'm probably going to loose my dayjob at Osco. Doesn't matter. Screwm all. But I think I know what's been in those weird boxes Osco orders that end up in Denny's car! Something big is going to happen and I think that all of those freeks who picked up the white lab coats are in on it. You remember them? Anyway—
Denny let it slip that some of that stuff was going to Seltzer or Sesame, or whatever. This all adds up! I'll let you know as soon as I can find out what's in them! Then I'll see if Tom if can get off his butt long enough to come with me to search for Seltsame — Call me tonight after eight.
(I mean if you want to call me after eight. You don't have to but I shure would like to talk to you again about us and all of this and stuff, you know?)
Love, Kurt.PS. If you arnt getting back with me, can you give me back my Ugly KidJoe CD?
8. The most effective form of rhetorical persuasion ever devised"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again. Then give up.There's no use being a damned fool about it."— W.C. Fields
"Hello!" cried Prof. Sigger, his voice drained of masculine resonance with panic. No one seemed to be around, except the long haired kid sharing his cell. The boy was hunched in the corner, arms folded around his stomach.
"Hello!" bellowed Prof. Sigger. "I'd like to visit the AmericanEmbassy! Unless of course this is the American Embassy, in which caseI'd like to visit to the Russian Embassy! Ya neeminoga gavaruparusskie!"
From beyond a shadowed corner, a small man emerged wearing a white lab coat.
"About time! About fifteen minutes ago I was—" began Sigger.
"Contemplating making romantic overtures to a female student less than half your age," said the Lab Coat Man, reading from a yellow page stacked (neatly) in a clipboard.
"Well, yes," muttered Prof. Sigger. "Is that the reason I'm here?"
"We'd like to schedule your interview. Are you free in an hour?" he replied.
"You don't seem to be comprehending me! A minute ago I was in my office with a student! The next I'm here! You have a lot—"
"Entertainment is at seven, attendance mandatory, unless you have failed to complete part one of the interview."
"I'm not completing any damn interview until—"
"What the hell's for dinner?" the boy demanded.
"Let me see, let me see," said the Lab Coat Man, flipping through the pages on his clipboard.
"Excuse me. Point of order here…" began Prof. Sigger.
"That pizza today sucked."
"I certainly can't disagree with you there."
"I am negotiating for my release, so if we could stick to the topic -"
"Couldn't you have at least baked it instead of microwaving it?"
"Out of my control, I'm afraid."
"Am I invisible? Am I not part of this conversation?"
"Patience, Mr. Sigger," replied the Lab Coat Man, flipping back to his top sheet.
"Professor Sigger!"
"Frigging crybaby," muttered the boy.
"I'll have you know—!" bellowed Sigger, his voice cracking in a most un-John Wayne like fashion.
"Now, now," began the Lab Coat Man.
"So what's it going to be? More bad pizza?"
"La dee da, la dee da! Never mind that I'm here! I think I'll just find a corner and sit here while you two carry on this most important of conversations."
"Oh, no, Prof. Sigger, we have our interview. Not a thing we can skip."
"There's nothing you can say to make me!" Sigger cried, sulking in the corner farthest from Kurt.
"In answer to your question, Taco Bell," he replied, looking up from a red 2B.
"I think I'm going to puke," Kurt moaned, looking even rattier than before and visibly greener as the pronouncement set in.
"I'm ready for that interview now," muttered Prof. Sigger, trotting to the steel bars and waiting like an obedient schoolboy. The Lab Coat Man nodded and marked an 'X' on a white page.
9. A weird day's night"There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds.She is too wise or too cruel for that."— Oscar Wilde
Julia dashed into the Osco employees' entrance and punched in one second before four o'clock. Accomplishing her day's goal of being on somebody's payroll, she decided to catch her breath by sneaking a smoke in the restroom. She caught Rhonda's eye at the check-out counter, who gave her a smile and a nod that meant: "Join you in a second."
Kurt, aka. Butthead, hadn't replaced the dead bulbs yet, so Julia sat on a toilet lid inside a claustrophobic's nightmare of a stall with only pale, yellow light keeping her from absolute darkness. And the brief flame of the lighter, which she snapped closed as she took a strong, slow drag. Another night-shift to deal with old grannies looking for denture cream, kids trying to lift cigarettes, drunks picking up plastic violets for the wife. If only she didn't need to eat, Julia concluded, maybe she wouldn't have to work in a world that seemed more than a little unreal.
But then, that was the family legacy, wasn't it? Seeing something that wasn't there, or worse: trying to see something that wasn't there and almost succeeding. Find a farm out in Arizona and retire once you've had enough of being called crazy. But then, Julia knew that there were two kinds of people: those who couldn't live without air conditioning and her uncle. Another run-down, fix-it-up farm in this family was out of the question. She took another deep drag and wondered why she kept smoking these things. They were like beer, Uncle Justin had told her: after the War, they never went back to making them right. If only someone would just make some real changes in the world — how long could it be before it was a better place to live? A better place than this? Wasn't that what everyone wanted? If so, why did everyone settle for what they had?
That's what her mother had done. Settled for Dad dying. Settled for the life of a reclusive widow, until she died too. Not much Julia could do but not make a conscious mess of her own life. Not that everything had gone perfectly. She had a job, she was going to school — although Uncle Justin kept reminding her it was "only" for accounting. No science, no liberal arts. But she read a lot on her own. Mysteries, new fiction, the classics that were recommended by that stud of a librarian. Not that she understood all of it, but there was usually something to enjoy, to learn from. Especially questions about the Big Picture — that always sparked her interest.
But Uncle Justin would just shake his head. It was a tech school, not a college or a university. Lord knows there are plenty of cheap schools in Wisconsin that offer some liberal arts courses, he would say. To say nothing of real science. He accused her of falling for the same trap his sister, Julia's mother, had fallen for: living in a Wisconso-centric universe. Once he brought this up, the conversation usually degenerated into combative silence. They never settled that argument — it just kept going on its own, to the detriment of everyone's sanity.
Whether she was getting a real education or not, Julia found herself constantly searching for meaning. About what governed reality (whatever that was), about what was human will (assuming it existed), about the elusive qualities of soul (love, happiness, etc.), and about the urge to bury one's face in Godiva chocolate every twenty-eight days. The last question was more easily answered than the others. She took a long drag, determined to make this one last. One a day was bad enough, but she'd probably need another one after work if Denny was in one of his moods.
She leaned back on the toilet and stared at the pale, sodium light spread out across the ceiling. Deja vu. Something from a dream about lying back and watching the sky. How the sky and the ceiling in an Osco restroom were connected was beyond her, but what the hell — there would be an entire evening for worrying about mundane problems. Like most of her dreams, she remembered it as another memory, one as real as a memory of a waking moment. And as usual, the memory of the dream seemed more vivid than her memory of what she had done this morning.
It came back to her — the light in the sky had been yellow, almost gold, with a brown tint. That was what made it look so unusual, this dream-light. It wasn't the sunlight of the world when everyone is awake and concentrating on whatever was going on beneath them. A light reserved for people who didn't deserve it, or know what it was, or what it meant. At least, that's what it seemed like in the dream. Or maybe she had made all that up after she woke up. But she did remember it had altered into a haze, growing more uniform, covering the world in a grey aura. The white of the clouds gave way, under pressure of a great and unstoppable force, to something else, which she couldn't describe. This, whatever it was, blanketed the sky, offering neither snow nor rain, instead smothering the world below from whatever was above. Except now, the clouds began to descend.
In parallel streams, this gray sky, this aura seemed to move toward her. Julia felt herself begin to giggle, that nervous giggle when she knew something was wrong but didn't know what. And then she realized that she wasn't just remembering the dream — the haze was overheard was coming through the ceiling, causing the restroom lights to bend and shimmer. Julia stopped giggling and stared upward, her eyes fixed on whatever it was that she knew she had to be imagining. But just as suddenly the gray haze retreated until it had returned to whatever unknown sky it had descended from.
Julia felt her body constrict itself to form another giggle, but none came. She stood up, tossed the butt into the toilet, and quickly lit another cigarette. Nicotine euphoria swept through her body, but it would not take her to wherever it was she desperately needed to go. She dropped the cigarette to the floor and crushed it under her foot.
"Now that was disappointing," she muttered. She felt her throat knot up with sadness until she heard someone move outside the door. She looked at her watch — she had wasted fifteen minutes, and now the restroom smelled terribly guilty.
The bathroom door creaked open. The fan located above Julia's well chosen stall expelled the smoke and Julia began flapping her hand as quietly as she could to speed the smoke on its way.
"Julia?" asked a voice.
"Rhonda?" Julia whispered conspicuously. The restroom door quickly closed and Rhonda scuttled into the stall next to Julia.
"Quick! Give me a drag!"
Julia, heretofore holding her breath, exhaled in relief and passed another cigarette and the lighter into Rhonda's hand hovering under the partition.
"I thought you were Butthead looking into the restroom again," Julia said.
Julia heard Rhonda inhale and exhale in rhythmic, sage-like fashion."No," Rhonda finally answered, "somebody said he called in sick."
Rhonda's hand appeared under the stall again holding the lighter. Julia took it from her as they both heard a man's voice from outside the door.
"Rhonda? Julia?"
"That ain't Butthead!" whispered Rhonda. Both toilets flushed, as if their actions in unison would provide an air-tight alibi which, notwithstanding the stern tone in the voice outside, caused them both to giggle. They emerged sheepishly from the restroom as Supervising Manager Denny frowned and shook his head disapprovingly.
"Rhonda, where's Kurt?"
"Sick, I think. Someone said he called in with a stomach ache."
"Then he's fired too."
"Too?!" exclaimed Julia.
"Well, let's see, Julia. You missed your shift yesterday without calling in…"
"I did?"
"You did. And that's the third time this month."
"I can't believe I did it again!"
"You did. And you don't have to tell me which novel you were reading. I don't need to know." He turned to Rhonda. "And I figure if you leave now, we won't need to talk about the beauty supplies that go missing just before your days off."
Rhonda's eyes widened uncontrollably as she gave a guilty grin to the floor tiles.
"So, adios!" With that, he returned to the Osco floor.
Julia's jaw slackened but Rhonda pealed into outright laughter.
"It's not funny!" shouted Julia.
"Oh, forget this Popsicle-stand! You punched in, right?"
A smile formed reluctantly on Julia's face. "Well," continued Rhonda, "let''s take off and punch ourselves out in eight hours!"
The smiles and laughter became contagious as they grabbed their jackets and ran out the back door. The spent the rest of the afternoon taking in all of the shops that lined both sides of the street. Eventually, they found themselves at Popeye's pub, where they had a sandwich and a few beers, and decided to kill the rest of the evening with a movie. After a short walk, they saw the marquee, which read: "BRIDE, GHOULS, & PLAN 9!" Rhonda seemed to have noticed it first, taking Julia's hand and leading her toward the theater.
10. The Second Phase "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." — Douglas Adams, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
"Well done!" the Lab Coat Man exclaimed, rubbing his eyes and replacing the pen in his coat pocket, "Very well done! Not many subjects have been able to answer our comprehensive questionnaire in under three hours."
Prof. Sigger forced a smile to his drawn face. "I take it most people are reluctant to answer your questions without knowing how and why they arrived in a place like this." The room, like the holding area, was also concrete, although this section looked more like an office than a jail.
"That long haired fellow," the Lab Coat Man confided, "we pulled him out of a urinal. Dirty trick, really. Maybe he thinks we're all drug-induced hallucinations. As far as he's concerned, he was leaning against the bathroom wall in order not to stain his shoes and the next moment he's peeing in our corner."
Sigger tried to nod sympathetically.
"Hasn't completed the interview yet," he continued. "Oh that doesn't mean I haven't been able to take a few notes, but I guarantee he'll be missing out on the entertainment for some time to come!"
"Now that I've answered your questions, let me ask you —" Prof. Sigger began.
"No time. I have a number of errands to run. You'll find we're quite organized, once you've been here a while."
"A while?"
"Yes, this may take some time. All good projects do, as I'm sure you understand." Sigger nodded dumbly.
"Now I'm going to turn you over to my assistant, Neoldner."
The door opened, and twenty year-old resembling a ferret and wearing an identical lab coat entered, a clipboard in his hand.
"He's going to help with the second phase," the Lab Coat Man said.
"Hey," Neoldner said.
"Um… yes," Sigger replied.
Neoldner took the seat across from Sigger as the Lab Coat Man moved to the doorway. Forrester, with his strange brown mustache, popped his head into the room.
"I'm going home to finish to schedule for tomorrow this evening. Do you have everything?" Forrester asked.
"How could I? You haven't told me what I need yet," the Lab Coat Man replied.
"I haven't?"
"No, I've been with Prof. Sigger since…" He looked at his watch."It has been a while, hasn't it?"
Prof. Sigger shrugged, although no one noticed that he had answered.
"I thought Frank would have told you," Forrester said.
"Who's Frank?" asked the Lab Coat Man.
"Oh, I forgot! Frank resigned. That's when we brought you in."
"Right. Just after what's-his-name resigned."
"Frank."
"Exactly."
"That's what I said."
"I know, I just repeated it."
Silence.
"So do you need a list?" Forrester asked.
"If you wouldn't mind. And whatever forms you'll think I'll need."
"Ah, forms. Yes. Definitely. Meet me at my office before you go."
And out popped Forrester's head from the room. The Lab Coat Man sighed and turned to Prof. Sigger.
"Once we're ready, we should be able to conclude everything quickly. Neoldner will help you out with the details. I think you'll enjoy the perks. The travel. The entertainment, if you like that sort of thing."
"What about the entertainment?" Sigger asked.
"Soon!" replied the Lab Coat Man, misunderstanding, his eyes twinkling with an annoying but enigmatic flare.
"So," Neoldner began after the Lab Coat Man had left, "what size jacket do you wear?"
11. An Unintended Mishap"It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people lookingridiculous that you realize just how much you love them."— Agatha Christie
Tom walked into his parents' trailer home to find Alona crying on the couch. He barely knew her, saw her only twice before, and with Kurt, so he figured she had to be a loser.
"Why are you here?" he grumbled.
"Kurt's missing!" she shouted, and let loose with a protracted wail. Tom's mother came in and hugged Tom tightly, then slapped him across the cheek. "Your cousin's gone missing, and you don't care!"
Tom rubbed his cheek and said, "He's probably just sleeping off a date with Rhonda in her backseat!"
Alona wailed again. Tom couldn't help thinking that if that wail had been sung, it would have raised the hackles of even the greatest opera devotee, a majestic solo of anguish and a thousand angry paper-cuts.
"Sorry," muttered Tom.
"The police won't do anything until he's been gone twenty-four hours!" Betty exclaimed. "Twenty-four hours! And he disappeared while he was playing in that band of his!" She went on to explain how Alona had called after she received a letter from Kurt — how he hadn't been at home or with the band — how, according to the other members of the band and a half-dozen other witnesses, he had disappeared the night before from a bathroom with no windows. Tom listened to most of this and nodded. He kept nodding even after he stopped listening. Once his mother was done talking, he stopped nodding. She didn't seem to notice the difference.
The TV across the room was on a little too loud, so he decided to shut it off, grab a sandwich, and sneak out of the house again. Maybe he should go into work, even though he had the night off. Maybe get a second job. He had to earn enough to move out of here. Enough to move out yesterday.
"And this just in at WXOR," said the newscaster. "An English professor — "
"Turn up the TV, Tommy, will you?!" Betty shouted. Tom sighed, annoyed at being called Tommy in front of a female, and reached for the switch.
" — and disappeared earlier today without explanation. He was discovered missing after an unknown female student was seen running from his office. Police are still searching for both Prof. Turgy K. Sigger and the student. If you have any information, please call the WXOR Viewer Hot Line(R) at 387-4278 — "
A scream interrupted the newscaster, which acoustically channeled the shattered death of a priceless chandelier. To Tom's surprise, Alona had leaped from the couch and had grabbed his arms, forcing him to look directly into her eyes. "That's him! He just disappeared when I looked the other way!" She began to sway, and Tom instinctively reached for her. "He's missing too!" she cried.
Then she swooned and fell forward perfectly into Tom's waiting arms. He helped her to the couch as his mother dashed to the kitchen to fill a glass of water.
Tom looked around, as if to see if anyone had been watching him. If anyone had seen what he had seen. If there was any way out. But there wasn't.
Tom was utterly, and helplessly, in love.
12. Cecil Gets Away"Only the fool, fixed in his folly, may think he can turn the wheel onwhich he turns."—T.S. Eliot
Cecil stretched and sniffed the air. Movement, but just the curtains.
He remembered that Julia had left. Probably back by dark. Or not. She had been sitting on the couch, and he had come from the bedroom and hopped onto her lap again. After stroking his fur for a while, she held up the shiny thing with the snake on the end. Cecil had batted it a few times, then ambled off to eat. Smelled like fish.
Later, Julia had thrown the fuzzy ball around the apartment, so he ran after it until he was ready for another nap. Then the phone rang. Julia left the house without petting him, although he stood near her legs and arched his back. He slowly padded his way to his pillow, which smelled like Julia, especially in the morning.
Cecil turned three times before settling down, but a sound stopped him. A footstep in the hallway. Then, nothing. Cecil waited for a moment, watching the doorway, his tail whipping softly on the bed. After another moment, he yawned.
But then another sound, a squeak. Cecil hopped down from the bed and peered from around the frame.
A man stood in the hallway. He moved something in his hand, like a twig, but Cecil didn't want to play with it. The man smelled strange. New. Odd. If he could have recognized human clothing, he would have recognized a lab coat, a clipboard, a pen. The balding man, glasses, a slightly weary look, who, after scanning the room, made a note on a yellow 12A.
The man turned and spied Cecil in the doorway, and Cecil darted into the closet.
The Lab Coat Man cursed quietly after he realized that the cat had darted into what appeared to be the world's most cluttered closet. And the cat was the last (damn) item on Forrester's list! He wondered if the Director knew of Forrester's cat phobia, how it was adding to an already full schedule. He'd have to wait for the next general meeting to bring up the matter, assuming the Director would even attend. And even by then, Forrester could have required them to round up as many house-cats in Tranquil as he could list on a 12F!
He began pawing through twenty-six years' worth of mementos, which were crammed into a space that could barely hold enough office supplies from one small conspiracy. But enough holes for an orange tabby to hide. He waited for any kind of movement, and something eventually flickered in the corner of his eye. He turned to see Cecil pull his head back into the bathroom.
The man's sublingual cursing increased audibly as he tromped into the bathroom and found find no trace of the cat in the bathtub, behind the toilet, in the sink, or under the sink. Nowhere. He cursed audibly and stormed out to see Cecil scamper off the couch and into the kitchen. He flew toward him, but he'd already gone again. The man let loose an expletive at the top of his lungs that woke the downstairs neighbor who was napping in front of a hockey game. And with manic grin born of angst and momentary abandon, he struck out the last line and its corresponding box on the 12F. His pen capped with a momentary sense of triumph, the man disappeared.
Cecil poked his head out of the bedroom closet and into the empty apartment. The man was gone. He snorted with satisfaction and hopped onto the bed to continue his nap. Before laying down, he turned three times.
Coincidentally, the phone began to ring.
13. Perfection"Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim."— Graham Greene
After waiting for nearly a minute, Justin slammed the phone onto the receiver, muttering something about nine hundred damn miles and not having the decency to be home when someone was calling. He had to call. Something was wrong. He didn't go in for that malarkey about being in touch with the universe or having sympathetic vibrations reach him from a different plane, but, damn it, if there was something wrong, you did something about it. And he knew something was wrong. But would have been sent to the loony bin by one of those interns before he could explain it all to another human being properly.
He didn't give a damn (as those who ventured near him would often discover) about what everyone else perceived as reality. He saw what he saw. If no one else saw it, that was up to them. Sure, he couldn't verify it, but did that mean he was crazy? Not if he was right (which Justin had already concluded), which meant that he was seeing relationships and consequences that everyone else had just learned to ignore or couldn't see in the first place or would never see. Sometimes he saw it, sometime he just felt it. It was there, like an invisible web, telling Justin enough to either stay away or to get involved. And when he got involved, sometimes the people in the thick of it just couldn't understand what Justin was getting at! Of course, after the dam had broke, after the cows got loose, after the snake bit the dog, then everyone forgot all about old Justin and concentrated on what was practically too late to fix, unless he had been lucky enough to a have solution ready beforehand. All too often, he wasn't that lucky. But now, he felt that too. Luck. Invisible, intangible, and someone somewhere was going to feel the heat of it if he ever found out who was planning to harm his only (semi-sane) relative. But Julia wasn't home, so he couldn't warn her that he had had (as she would describe it) a vague impression of imminent danger that only sad, smelly, old Uncle Justin could perceive.
Put that way, perhaps it was best that no one had answered. Justin scratched his scalp and decided to have a beer. He harrumphed quietly, then turned around.
To his shock (but only mild surprise), there was a balding man with a clipboard standing in his corner taking notes. J.J felt paralyzed for a moment, until his anger regained the upper hand, and he reached down, opened the third drawer under the phone, and pulled out a loaded revolver.
The Lab Coat Man, weary, almost to the last of his forms (a pink 2D with carbons) wished he had could have arranged to appear in a sauna somewhere in darkest Finland, but resolutely kept noting all he was able until he realized somewhere between checkmarks that Justin Nelson was pointing a gun right between his eyes. At first, he wanted to flip to a red 1A. Somewhere on a 1A there was a box relevant to imminent personal danger. But then, he understood in the microseconds he had left that Justin's finger was pulling the trigger, which was pulling back the hammer, which would imminently fire the bullet in a more or less straight line directly into his tired, balding skull.
He had expected his life to flash before his eyes, but all he could remember (and in fact see, superimposed over the image of Justin's gun) was a Dali that he could not be sure he had ever seen or had even been painted. Perhaps, in those last days of his own early life, studying art history and believing he too was capable of producing something famous, immortal, perfect, he had envisioned such a painting, an abstract only now completed, detailing a life of frustration and mediocrity that wound its way, eventually, down to this last moment of nothing.
It was so beautiful, so tragic, that he held the clipboard over his face as Justin fired once, piercing the thin wood with a single, perfect hole.
14. Criswell Speaks"One is always considered mad when one discovers something that otherscannot grasp."— Bela Lugosi, "Bride of the Monster"
Julia and Rhonda ran inside the theater at exactly 7:10 pm. Still giggling, they bought two tickets from a weary looking man wearing a jacket and a "Manager" tag. When they hit the concession stand to relieve their munchies, they found a sign that said: "Closed".
"Aww!" Rhonda whined. "I was getting really hungry too!"
"It's too bad I can't hop back there and get us some popcorn. I worked at a theater for two summers when I was in high school."
"I beg your pardon?" the Manager inquired, somehow looking five years younger. "Do you mean that?"
"Oh yes!" exclaimed Julia. "I was Assistant Manager for a month as well!"
"Would you like a job? Part-time?" he asked, regaining another three.
Both woman screamed and hugged each other. Wiping a tear from her eye,Julia said: "Sure!"
A smile suddenly broadened upon the Manager's now young and chipper face. Tom had been showing signs of being less than happy with this job. Perhaps he was ready to move on. Maybe he needed a push. Anyway, he had called in sick for the evening, and despite the run of good luck with the second-run bad movies, the Manager did want something left over for a vacation this year.
Julia was about to ask a few questions from her new employer, but a voice like a drunken oracle began to blare from inside the theater. Julia found herself entranced by the grammatically awkward oratory:
"Greetings my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friends, future events such as these, will effect you in the future."
Julia winced, (and the Manager silently cursed Neoldner for threading"Plan 9" instead of the intended Bride of the Monster.)
"You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable; that is why you are here."
"You got the job!" Rhonda suddenly whooped in her friend's ear. But it seemed more like a distraction than an exclamation of happiness. Julia looked at Rhonda and the Manager. Her imagination? or was there something in the space between them, around the building, wrapping tight around the theater doors, something that was just plain… wrong? For the first time in years, she desperately felt the need to talk to her Uncle Justin.
Julia took a step back from Rhonda. Her friend's face suddenly fell, and she reached out to her as if to let her know everything was all right. She had the job. The Manager's eyebrow arched, perhaps a second thought as to his quick hire. She had to sit down.
"I need to sit down," her voice echoed her thought.
"We've got the tickets, don't we?" Rhonda replied, taking Julia by the arm and leading her into the theater.
15. Chance Happens "Good luck needs no explanation." — Shirley Temple Black
"So I says to this guy I says — "
The TV in the bar was on, and the man at Tom's side was letting his mouth run loose as he sucked back on his third beer in Popeye's none-too-copyrighted Pub. Jeez, he thought, I finally meet the one, the one, and she's going out with Kurt. With Kurt! How does he do it? I couldn't get a date to save my life (except with Rhonda), and Kurt can't seem to shake them off! Alona's, what, his third this year?
The rest of the bar was watching a rerun of "The Simpsons" and trying to imitate Barney the drunk. One fell off his chair in a drunken stupor, which gained the applause of his comrades. After he lay on the floor for a minute, they realized it hadn't been an imitation, and they picked him up. They ordered him a coffee and Kaluhua in the most obnoxious trio of 'Moe the Bartender' voices ever heard east of the Mississippi. Some of the bar laughed at this but most just groaned. Tom still wasn't listening.
If only… Tom thought. If only she had come in to see "Bride of the Monster" and gotten bored, and come out to the concession stand to get a drink, and began to talk about something — it wouldn't have mattered what — and stayed all the way through that entire string of rotten films!
The guy at Tom's side suddenly realized no one was listening to him and stumbled off to the bathroom. He nearly bumped into a man with a strange brown mustache who took the seat to Tom's right. He plopped his clipboard onto the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender gave him a frosted mug of flat Treaty Beer and went back to the television. Tom, again, didn't notice.
That is, until the sight of the man's reflection in the mirror behind the bar caught his attention. He seemed familiar, but he couldn't be sure. He was sure he would have remembered that mustache. The man was looking around for someone, peering into the far corners of the ill-lit room. As he did so, Tom noticed the clipboard. The cover sheet, a form labeled 3G, read: Complaints, Problems, Irregularities:
1) Find out who's been using Green paper. No green paper allowed. If it's Neoldner, give him restroom duty. If it's You Know Who, make him fill out all the forms in the proper color. 2) Leave message that Kurt is in Chicago for the weekend; also find and destroy his letter to Alona.
Tom read the note three times before believing it. Without realizing what he was doing, he raised his mug, causing what was left to dribble on his head. Then he brought it down, and the mug broke from the handle and bounced on the floor after smashing into the exact center of the man's bald spot, who crumpled soundlessly to the floor. As the bar hooted and laughed at the cartoon antics on the tube, Tom grabbed the clipboard, tucked it inside the man's trousers, and dragged him by his feet out of the bar.
16. The Decision"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persistin delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."— Carl Sagan
Justin watched the clipboard plummet to the floor, followed by a multi-colored stream of papers, detached from the clip, fluttering like autumn leaves. The wall was marked by a bullet hole, the floor littered with paper, but the man had disappeared. Justin stood over what would have been the corpse. He looked at the floor from one angle, then another, and finally shrugged and scratched his scalp again. This was strange…
A lot of strange things had happened to him, even since he could remember. That dog he had. It was odd moments like this that he remembered how much he missed him.
Had him for thirty years. Never seemed to grow old. He never told anyone about it — made the excuse that he just preferred the same type of black lab when the old one got taken to live at his parents' farm. It was something of a relief when Roosevelt (the dog, named after Theodore rather than Franklin Delano) got killed. It was getting hard to keep up the pretense, especially after the local vets started to compare notes. But just when it seemed like half the town was talking about the Dog That Wouldn't Die, Justin woke up and found Roosevelt laying by his feet, even though he had left him out in the back yard and shut the bedroom door. Roosevelt was lying as content as he'd ever been, but dead. A coincidence, to say the least.
But if that had been the end, Justin wouldn't have thought of him so much. It was years after his dog's death that he saw him again, standing in the front yard, ready to chase a ball if it ever got thrown again. Justin had gone to the window, certain that his eyes were playing tricks on him, then more certain that they weren't. Roosevelt just stood there, waiting.
After Justin had summoned the courage to go outside, Roosevelt had led him the half-mile west to the new elementary school, up to the east-facing double-doors that opened into the kindergarten. Inside, the darkness seemed not merely a lack of light but more of something alive, spreading outward from the room and into the playground, toward Justin. He felt fixed to the spot, unable to do anything but shake, as Roosevelt let out a long, slow howl beside him.
He could not remember how he got home. He was sitting in his easy-chair, looking outside at the darkness. No Roosevelt. No vision, nothing. But his shoes were on, the soles stuck with wet grass. Justin had trouble getting a few hours' sleep that night.
The next morning, he was sure the whole thing had been a dream. Sleepwalking, probably. He comforted himself with this conclusion as he drove by the elementary school on his way to work. He slowed as a kickball bounced lazily into the road. An older child with an orange crossing-guard sash carefully crossed the street to get it. Justin turned toward the school. A number of children were playing outside. Then he saw Roosevelt again. Standing in the middle of some children. The smallest children. The kindergarten class, Justin supposed. Then Roosevelt was gone. The ball had been retrieved, and a car behind him honked, but Justin couldn't drive on. Instead, he parked his truck by the curb and walked to kindergarten the doors. Inside, Mrs. Nolla was straightening a few chairs when he entered.
When she turned and saw him, she gasped and put her hand to her chest.
"I…" she stammered, "I wasn't expecting… to see… you… there."
Justin apologized and muttered something about stopping by. They had met a few times during the last round of school board meetings when the latest draconian cuts had been proposed. She was a few years from retiring and had a remarkable teaching record — Justin still came across her old students in his class who remembered her fondly.