by Steven John
I never really knew why I turned back. Turning back and driving home meant my same pungent mattress, my same mildew-covered walls, and my same smoky mirror, where I would stare into my same hollow, twenty-one-year-old eyes.
And then they were twenty-two-year-old eyes. I tried to find work as a driver—any sort of driver. I figured it would suit me well: time alone, time driving like I always did but being paid, no chicken shit. But the only offer I got was trucking sodas around town, and it was more time spent at delivery stops than on the road and would involve talking to scores of people all the time. I never had anything against people as a whole; I just didn’t want to be around them that much.
Eventually my money ran thin and I was faced with the prospect of begging from my middle-class family. Then they died, and I immediately joined the army. I was older than most of the others. They were children who could scarcely grow beards. I was a child who could grow a beard. We ran and did push-ups and shot rifles and made our beds. They yelled at us and we yelled back. Then training was over and I was qualified to shoot a rifle and I knew how to iron my uniform and I could run wires to lumps of explosive clay and explode things and I marched around when I was told to and I was always surrounded by boys with the same haircut but I didn’t have to think very much and it suited me fine, really.
The sickness came so fast, it was almost easy to deal with. Everything was normal one day, and then the next it was not. Its swiftness made it more tolerable than the fog, despite its horrors. The fog could be ignored at first—the disease could not. Whole towns’ worth of people just started rotting. Some places were almost untouched; some were almost erased. Everyone I knew outside of the young recruits I slept beside and did not know died very quickly. They died in their homes or in hospitals or wherever the buses we were ordered to force them onto took them. They told us the buses went to quarantine and treatment centers, but I was sure they just took them off to die out of sight—I never once saw evidence of the “clinics” the officers and civilian advisors claimed had been established.
Those who wandered back into sight we shot, and it was just that simple.
And then shortly after that, we were corralled into the city and then it slowly grew misty.
I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it. If I could go back to the night of my conception, frankly, I think I would have told my father to roll over and go to sleep. It’s amazingly awful not to desire to be alive, yet not to hate life quite enough to end it.
I always wondered what kept a guy like Heller going. Why Salk bothered waking up each morning to lament fate in his flowery prose and sell canned goods and illicit meds. I guess it must have been worse than this at times before. Plagues and pestilence and wars and floods and fires have laid waste to mankind for longer than we’ve bothered to record. I wondered if the whole world was like this. Pockets of humanity riding out the storm of disease and death in a thousand gray nests that were randomly spared. I wondered if there was any change to hope for. Hope is a dangerous commodity if it is in vain. Despair, at least, can lead to definitive action.
I was drunk. I had finished my glass, finished the bottle, and delved into the fifth of vodka. Rebecca’s vodka, I ruefully muttered as I took another sip. I washed all three pills back with a pull of ice-cold liquor and gagged, choking the capsules down and coughing, hands on my knees.
I lay down on the carpet next to the door and pulled my pants off. Then my socks. I paused, feet on the floor and legs bent, looking up at my cracked and molding ceiling. There had to be more than this.
Even in times of hardship, the measure of success is always calculated against the level of others’ misery. In a blue-sky world, would Watley have strolled among manicured hedges and well-groomed rosebushes while I drank cheap wine on a tenement roof? And would he have been as happy for that as he was for his high ceilings and polished wooden tables? I supposed a medieval peasant might have seen my little chambers and refrigerator with its meager but preserved rations and thought me something of a nobleman.
Noble. I laughed aloud as I stripped off my underwear. For all I knew, I would be killed in an alley, just like some scientist I’d never met, for asking questions. The only reason I had a few thousand dollars crammed into a hole in my bathroom wall was that most people were too scared to ask questions anymore. It was so easy to disappear in the fog. Fewer people would miss me than I could count on one finger. Maybe Adam the bartender would wonder for five minutes why his bottle of Cutty Sark was lasting so long. Maybe Rebecca was clean after all and would be upset, for a little while, that I’d never panned out. Maybe Heller would miss my occasional loans. And he’d want his Chopin back.
More likely, Watley would shoot me in the back and eventually, when my rent went unpaid for long enough, someone new would sleep in my wretched little home.
The pills were taking hold, and I rose and stood naked in the middle of the room. The blood drained from my head as I got up, and for a moment my vision swam. My temples pulsed and a dull ache constricted my brain. I stumbled into the kitchen and sucked sulfurous water from the sink. Only a few minutes left now before I was asleep or at least blacked out. I always feared the time right after those few minutes. What if my mind released before my body? What if I stumbled down into the night while out of my head? Coming to, somewhere out there in a misty alley, naked and confused and shivering. There would be no one to help me home.
I lurched toward my bedroom. Bounced off the doorframe and stumbled. Lay down. Couldn’t find a pillow. The sheets were a messy pile, so I threw them onto the ground. Just the mattress on my skin. Rough and soiled. I was fading. Never told Watley my first name, never learned Rebecca’s last. Never asked for any of it. Never tried to make a difference or get in the way. Just wanted to keep surviving until I was ready to give up.
I rolled over onto my back. Coughing. Then I was up on my knees on the bed. I clawed at my cheeks, my chest. Sweating and gasping. It was all so pathetic—so miserable. What the fuck were we doing running around in our little world until our hearts stopped pumping or our lungs filled with fluid or our brain cells were replaced with cancer? For what? Before, at the very least, you could change your scenery. Move someplace hot and dry to spend your dying years. Spend your life savings on things. The only point of living was to avoid death. Did everyone in this godforsaken city feel like this? What did the bureaucrat do to get his jollies? Did he have a lady to go home to and get inside? Maybe. Maybe that was enough. Maybe he read books or listened to music and escaped into a polychromatic land in his head.
The eight-hundred-pound gorilla lurking in the corner of my mind was knowing that had the fog never drifted in, had the sickness never spread across the land—the earth, for all any of us knew—I would most likely still be alone and drunk and sweating on a bare mattress. I would still have never once had sex with and loved the same person. Never shed a tear another could see. Never once experienced happiness that lasted longer than one drink or one orgasm or, long ago when I was younger and would drive around in my father’s old car, one song. And that one moment of song, rolling along open roads with the windows down and the volume up on a crisp day … that one moment would never be replaced.
In the morning, the backs of my fingers were raw and sore. There were a few spots of dried blood on the concrete wall above my headboard. I didn’t remember any of it.
6
“Hi, Rebecca.” She was so focused on a piece of paper held close to her nose that she hadn’t even glanced up as she passed within inches of me. I was leaning against the speckled granite wall by my office building’s entrance. She gasped upon hearing her name.
“What are you reading?” I asked with an edge to my voice. She had crammed the paper into her pocket and closed her eyes, then took in a deep breath to regain her composure.
“Tom. Hi. Hello, I … you startled me.”
“I was just standing here. Just leaning on the wall, perfectly still. Perfectly calm. What were you reading?”
“No
thing. Nothing important. To you, I mean. Just other things in my life.
I blew a short burst of air through my nose and looked away. “Well, that’s kind of an answer. I’d like to talk to you about other things in your life, though, so I’m glad you brought it up.”
I took her roughly by the arm and started walking down the street. Her biceps was tense beneath the soft wool of her gray jacket.
“Aren’t we—what … aren’t we going to your office?” she asked, her voice growing higher as she spoke.
“No.” I tightened my grip as she tried to pull her arm free.
“Tom, what are—?”
“Don’t talk, okay.” I spat laconically. I led her down the block. She kept looking over at me, but I kept my eyes forward, my face a blank mask. When we had walked maybe fifty yards, I abruptly turned around and pulled her along as I went back the way we had come. After covering half the distance back to the office, I stopped.
“Shhh,” I ordered. She jerked her arm free and stood breathing quickly and staring at me. I looked into her frightened gray eyes for a moment and then stood still, staring off into the mist and listening for any sound. None came. A minute passed and then another and then, finally, I turned again and said, “Let’s go.”
She followed a few steps behind me as I walked quickly down the street. I knew this part of town well, so while it seemed no one was following, it would be easy for me to be sure. We passed an alley obscured by the haze, and I quickly turned left and entered it, looking over my shoulder to be sure she followed. Down another small street and then through a square we walked. I gradually led us in a circle, taking an illogical and winding path. We crossed the same square, and I was confident she didn’t realize it.
Finally I led her out onto Saint Anne’s Boulevard. The wide, clear-blown street was nearly deserted. I stopped in the very middle of the road and turned to look at her. I said nothing. Let her do the talking for a bit. Rebecca was nervous, confused. Good. It had been on her terms before. Now it was going to be on mine. Several times she took a breath as if to speak but was silent. She avoided my gaze, crossed her arms and hugged them tightly to her gray-clad chest. Finally, her voice steady but imploring, she asked “What’s going on?”
“I really have no idea. But I want to know. I want to know very much. I want you, right here on this fine street in our fine city, to tell me.”
Strands of her blond hair danced across her face in the blower winds, and she pushed them behind her ears. Looking up at me, her brow knit with concern, she seemed younger than she had before. Gone was the red-dressed vixen. Gone was the smartly dressed client offering fifty thousand dollars. Here was a girl wearing a white T-shirt beneath a cropped jacket and a pair of blue jeans. And me? I’d washed, shaved, and put on my nicest shirt and a brown suede blazer. Which was a bit pathetic, but lack of trust aside, she was disarmingly pretty.
“I don’t know what to say, Tom. I thought you would be … doing the talking this time, I guess.”
“I can start. What’s your last name?” She hesitated a beat, her lips slightly parted. “What’s your last name, Rebecca? Tell me your last name.”
“Smith.”
I snorted. “Right. And what’s Fallon’s last name?”
“It’s Samson.”
“Right—that’s right, Fallon Samson. What kind of cigarettes do you smoke? When you do smoke, I mean.”
She looked away, down to her left, and I immediately continued. “Don’t worry about it. What color are Fallon’s eyes?”
“They’re blue.”
I nodded. “Blue eyes … yeah. And here I am brown and boring. What have you—” I paused and took in a breath, leaned closer. “—what have you gotten me into, Ms. Smith?”
She looked around as if expecting to see something that could help her. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“I spent all morning on the phone. There doesn’t seem to be a Fallon Samson in jail. It’s not easy to get information these days, sure, but it’s something of a specialty of mine, and I came up dry. The police don’t have a record of him. I know because it took me only three minutes to be told nothing—when there’s information to be found, it’s normally a slew of transferred calls and time on hold and questions asked of me before I’m told nothing. Every time I called today, I got no answer immediately. It was very unusual. But then I got to thinking, you see, and you know what I came up with? Do you know?”
She shook her head, her eyes downcast.
“Well, what I started thinking was, Hey, Rebecca is lying. Isn’t that interesting? Twice yesterday, Becca Smith, twice I had to leave places in a big hurry. Very different places. It was unnerving. One of them was the offices of the Science and Development Research Department. I was there because of you, in fact. Strange that I’d feel compelled to rush out of such a dull, sober place as that, huh? The other place I felt I had to get out of was different. That simply must have been unrelated. But quite a coincidence, yes? Normally I go find people in places and I talk to them about things and then when I’m good and satisfied, I go home and sit on my couch. But when I was in that office yesterday, trying to find out about poor Mr. Samuel Ayers—well, Rebecca Smith, it was very unnerving.”
“You can walk away if you want. I need help and I have the money, but maybe you want to walk away.”
“You always confuse me. I’ve never met someone who brings three different faces to three different meetings. Who is Fallon? You’re going to tell me all about him. Right now, here on St. Anne’s. Tell me.”
She bit down on her lower lip. Eyes shifting, as if she were looking for an escape. She spoke softly. “He’s not a killer. And he’s someone who I’d do anything to protect. He’s a good man and somewhere out there—” Her hand traced a loose arc and then dropped to her side. “—is someone who is a killer and Fallon needs help and so I need help.”
“Rebecca, you just told me nothing.”
Her gray eyes flashed and her cheeks grew faintly red. She stared up at me but kept silent. I spun around, thinking I’d heard footsteps. No one. Nothing. Slowly I turned to face her again.
“What were you reading? What’s on that sheet of paper in your left jacket pocket there?”
“Nothing you need to see.”
“We’re out of the traditional service provider–client relationship, Ms. Smith. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Give me the paper.” Instinctually, she took a small step away from me. I put my hands on her shoulders, careful to be firm but not hurt her, and repeated myself. “Give me the paper.” My voice was hung with icicles.
Her face twisting into a look of panic, she muttered something under her breath, then whispered aloud, “Fine … Tom, fine. I’ll show you the paper. I’ll tell you about Fallon. I’ll tell you what I know about Sam Ayers.”
I let go of her immediately and stepped back. She reached into her pocket, and I heard the crushed paper crinkle as she drew it out. She hesitated, and extended the balled-up sheet to me.
“Shit,” she muttered as she dropped it.
It bounced and rolled a bit in the blower wind, and I quickly leaned over to grab it. As my fingers closed on the paper, I heard Becca whisper, “I’m sorry,” and then her knee was rushing toward my face and then it was all stars and pain and a red black night before my eyes.
I heard her turn and run at full speed up the street. I was on my knees and shook my head, jamming the heels of my hands into my eyes and trying to get my sight back. Unsteadily, I rose and could just see her through my swimming vision as she turned and darted off into a foggy alley. I began to chase her but stumbled with each step. Slowly I jogged toward the street where she had disappeared, but by the time I got there, I knew it was useless to follow. She was gone.
My head throbbed as I staggered back to the place where we had stood moments before. I scoured the area. The paper was gone.
With no idea what to do next, I decided on some aspirin and maybe a few hours of sleep. I’d figure out what to do
about Rebecca Smith once the headache she’d so thoughtfully given me faded. I coughed as I turned off the clear-blown St. Anne’s Boulevard onto a gray side street and said aloud to myself, “Come on, Tom—there’s no way in hell that’s her name.”
* * *
The fog was dense, and it was getting colder as I got back into my neighborhood. The walk, usually not more than fifteen minutes from the part of town by my office, had taken me the better part of an hour. The more my blood pumped, the more my head throbbed, especially just behind my right eye, where her knee had connected with my temple. I had to stop a few times to let my heart rate fall.
I did my best to think of nothing. Fucking bitch slipped into my mind a few times, though. At one point, I passed two young men in a pocket of lighter mist, and both had recoiled upon seeing my face. I must have had a pretty good-looking shiner already.
I stopped a little way down from my door to light a cigarette. I figured my hobbled pace would leave me just about the right amount of time for a smoke. I struck several matches, but their flames kept going out. Finding a doorway, I stepped into it and struck another match, finally getting the cigarette burning. I started walking but thought better of it and stopped, leaning against the moldy bricks of the building. Probably apartments exactly like mine. Hundreds of rooms like boxes, where people like me stored themselves. Hundreds of people carrying on with their lives, lives that had very little to carry on toward.
I began to walk again, each step still sending a dull wave of pain through my head. It must have been five o’clock or maybe even six. The fog was changing into a deeper gray by the minute, though the orbs were still dark. Ahead, I saw the pale glow of the shitshop’s sign through the swirling mist. I sighed. Home. It stirred no sense of relief in me. No promise of warmth and comfort. Just rooms in which to spend hours.
I drew nearer to the shop window. The sign was now fully visible, its pale yellow light casting a faint pall on the sidewalk. Sure enough, the old woman was there with her face to the glass. But then something happened that sent shivers down my spine. She spotted me, and for the first time I’d ever seen, emotion flickered across her round face. Her eyes went wide and her mouth agape. She leaned back from the bars and looked around frantically, and then her face gradually resumed its calm.