A Fold in the Tent of the Sky

by Michael Hale

  “I know. I was there too. Pretty neat, huh?” Pam had her knees tucked up to her chest; she was turned away from him with her eyes closed; he could tell her eyes were closed by the way her words came out in a monotone.

  “Both places?”

  “Uh-huh.” She was almost asleep now.

  There was something else about the experience he wanted to talk about, but it was like the frayed edge of a dream he could not ravel up into something graspable.

  But Pam was ahead of him, in her own way knitting it all into meaning. Reliving the sound of tiny lungs—which wasn’t much of a sound at all really—as they struggled to suck air past this knot of blanket and pass on to the next phase where lungs get to turn breathing into stories and anecdotes about the significance of numbers and the meaning behind the sudden jerk of a forked willow branch. (click) This is Peter and me with Gordon over by the pool . . . (click) This is Larry and Jane sitting . . .

  If Peter had reached over to stroke Pam’s hair or kiss her shoulder he would have heard it too. The baby’s arm occasionally hitting the headboard of the crib was like the sound of a hooked fish in the bottom of a boat. He would have known for sure that Simon was behind it all. He might have done something about it sooner and not later.

  But “sooner” and “later” weren’t what they used to be. And they never would be again.

  38

  . . . breaking the contract with Paradise

  Two days after Simon had done away with Larry McEwan he walked into Jane’s office and with barely a knock at the door told her he was leaving—leaving Calliope, leaving St. Martin, heading Stateside. “I’m going home. I’ve had enough. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  She was on the phone when he came in—with the blinds closed, the glow of her computer monitor like a candle in a darkened restaurant—caught up in a conversation he sensed had nothing to do with Calliope business. The way she was looking at him now, as if she’d been roused from something; the way she cradled the phone in her hand as she spun away from him, her braids flying, and put her sleek back between him and her final whispered words to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  “You can’t just up and leave, Simon. You signed a contract, remember.” She got up and opened the blinds. “There’s a six-week release clause; you’ve got to give us six weeks’ notice and an affidavit saying you won’t do this kind of work for anyone else for at least a year.” She delivered this barrage of fine print against the window, then across the ceiling, finally strafing him with the tail end of it.

  “So sue me. If Blenheim gives me one more fucking target in some depressing ex-commie shit hole of a country I think I’m going to puke—”

  “Brennon? Who’s this ‘Brennon’?”

  “Blenheim. Mike Blenheim.” He raised his voice a notch and he heard himself through her ears: cranky—not the impression he wanted to make at all. “Whatever—Sanderson: same thing.” He remembered then that in this version of things Blimpo Blenheim had been replaced by a short, skinny wisp of a guy named Sanderson. The attitude was the same though, the I’ve-got-the-clipboard-so-I’m-in-charge mentality. Plus ça change . . .

  She frowned as she puzzled over the name for an instant, then gave him a mock-clearing-of-the-head little shake. “Sanderson’s only doing his job; if you want Susan to take your sessions, we can arrange—”

  “I’ve had it, okay? The whole thing. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “You’re one of our best, Simon. We’d hate to lose you. Maybe you just need a break.” She was sitting in her chair again, swaying back and forth with a pen in her hand: the thing she did with it between her long fingers—turning it into a cigarette, every now and then bringing the end to touch down on her lips. “Take some time off, if you want. Go home for a couple of weeks—”

  He was shaking his head even as she spoke. “I’m out of here. Sorry.”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do to change your mind?”

  He thought of one thing but then let it go—he was reading between the lines of the look on her face, the pleading tilt of her head, the wide eyes. What he thought it might imply bouncing around among his private collection of multiple memories, seeing it all through layers of countless gestures and looks all varied in ways he had lost track of days ago. Calibrating the references to what had gone before was impossible. Whatever lay beneath the words she had chosen was beyond his grasp. He couldn’t read her anymore, not this version of her anyway—not unless he reached over and touched her hand and used his powers to push his way right into her head; but of course that would defeat the whole purpose—the Heisenberg thing: the observer distorting the observed. The touch would be like popping a bubble.

  What he did do was go right up to the desk and lean toward her. He was conscious then of how scared she was of him, the respect she had for his powers—the unpredictability of them; the danger involved. He was close enough to pick up the sweet musk scent of her and make out the minute pattern of fine lines around her eyes, the tiny mole dotting the side of her nose. He leaned even closer; he felt his medal swing away from his chest and fall against the inside of his shirt.

  He plucked the pen from her fingers, saying: “A souvenir, of our, you know—time together.” He smiled, trying to turn it into a joke, but she just leaned back, crossed her legs, and stared at him.

  He turned away and placed himself in the doorway before looking at her again. He scratched the back of his neck, conscious all of a sudden of what he must look like to her today—the T-shirt he had on was less than fresh, and the shorts and sandals made him feel like a busboy invading the territory of an intimate dinner. As he put the pen in his pocket, he got a flash of her wishing him away, of her wanting to be back on the phone. Shit. I didn’t need that. The pen mightier than the fucking sword—all that shit. In this case, his ability to read what was written a two-edged one—a two-edged sword cutting both ways . . .

  He did a meticulous clean-out of the apartment before he left, taking pains to leave nothing of himself behind. He took his magazines out to the road and along the winding path that led up the hillside till he found a spot where he could safely burn them—his Wireds and his Wall Street Journals.

  As he came upon random scraps of paper he tore them up into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. He checked under the bed and in the closets and the cupboards, under the sink in the tiny kitchen. He stripped the bed and took the sheets and pillowcases down to housekeeping himself—making a point of putting them directly into the huge canvas hopper of linens next to the commercial washers and dryers. An old guy with a shiny forehead and a stubbly gray beard was loading the big machines; two women were folding sheets at a table on the other side of the room—Simon figured they must be sizing him up as a crazy person, someone to talk about after they got off work.

  But he had to do it; he knew the price he would pay later if he left it to chance. The avalanche of obsessive anxiety it could trigger in the middle of a sleepless night.

  The bathroom next—even the hairs in the bathtub, the microscopic detritus of his body scattered throughout the place, all had to be scoured away, disposed of—It’s the trail of ourselves left behind like the slime of a slug, he thought. The shit and piss of himself sitting in a pool somewhere out there at the end of the plumbing, waiting for Pam or Peter to come along and—Jesus, if there’s ever a time to tell yourself to “let it go,” he told himself, this is it.

  It was Peter Abbott he was most concerned about now. They had crossed paths the day before out near the front gate at the shuttle stop. Peter had been the only passenger coming in from Philipsburg; as the van pulled up Simon had been overcome with an urge to flee—not just the bus stop, but Calliope, the whole fucking island. But he stood his ground and watched Peter as he slowly climbed out, reaching back inside for a second to get a shopping bag. As he straightened up, the guy took off his sunglasses and gave Simon a squinty, Pierce-Brosnan-as-James-Bond kind of look—what with the hair a
nd the day-old beard it was almost convincing. Simon made a point of making eye contact too, holding on to it as long as he could. No one else was around other than the driver, so neither of them had an excuse not to address the other. Simon did a terse “Hey, man,” and Peter just nodded his head and walked away.

  Simon climbed into the van and sat right down where the guy had just spent forty minutes riding in from Philipsburg or wherever he’d been; the seat was still warm and when he touched the vinyl of the armrest it was like downloading data from a CD ROM.

  The guy remembered; he remembered everything; both of them—Gordon, Larry. Even that famous guy Ron Koch who had done himself in. Shit. How much he knew of his own involvement in it all, he couldn’t tell. But it wouldn’t take long for the guy to piece it all together.

  Simon could see what paranoia he was bringing down on himself—he was panicking. The door-checking thing taken to the extreme—but he had to do it. All of it. “Peace of mind”: the notion of it was alien to him. A cliché undeciphered meant nothing. Clichés by their very nature went undeciphered. He would never have peace of mind, but he could settle for a smoldering skirmish inside his head. A cold war, if he was lucky. The way to cut the anxiety down to a minimum was to eliminate the source. Take the proactive approach. Check and recheck.

  Since he couldn’t do away with Peter Abbott right away, he had to make sure nothing of himself was left behind. If Abbott did figure it all out, he could use his psychometric skills to track Simon down. Nail parings and used Kleenexes would be like a compass for the guy. Voodoo shit.

  Take a deep breath and put it in perspective. You’ve got time—that’s the one thing you do have. Get your priorities straight, he told himself. You’re in it for more than just the gold, the money, remember. It was all connected to something bigger than that. Something to do with Sharon Tate and John Lennon, the bigger-than-Jesus-Christ thing.

  Fame. Notoriety, if you will. The Olympic medal he never had a chance at. All that. Be all that you can be . . . But the bottom line, of course, was control. He was going to learn how to play the world like Jimi played “Little Wing”; like Tiger Woods made a chip shot.

  Fine-tune history. Turn the world into something as close to perfection as he could make it—like a brand-new copy of the White Album.

  I will make myself famous. Rich. Loved by beautiful women. Respected by politicians, billionaires, heads of state.

  Why not? He would turn the world into a place where he was the best at what he did. A place where people knew he was the best at what he did. But if Peter Abbott ever found a way to track him down and keep tabs on him, he’d never get there. There would be no place to hide.

  Peter Abbott would clue in eventually; it was only a matter of time. He could see it all: Abbott and his sidekick, Polythene Pam, doing a holier-than-thou vigilante number. Jesus, the guy remembered it all—he couldn’t get over that.

  Peter fucking Abbott. Like that Disney cartoon where Goofy’s trying to have a good time—trying to beat the system and every time he makes a move this “Good” Goofy shows up on his shoulder with wings and a halo—Peter was like that: his conscience, for God’s sake. He would never give him any peace.

  He would have to get rid of the guy as soon as possible. But he still didn’t have any birth-date coordinates. The fucker was adopted, for Christ’s sake. There was no record of his exact birth date. Mr. Thirty-Something could be Mr. Thirty-Anything. No coordinates—yet.

  He could go about it in a methodical way, he supposed—get the information by using a random search approach, remote view the guy back from the present every six months or so, drop in on him and sample a minute or two of his life here and there till he reached the beginning of it. But that could get a little tedious and time-consuming—and he wasn’t sure how he would hold up under that kind of repeated session. Maybe a few years at a time every night for a couple of weeks. No, he couldn’t see himself doing it. There had to be an easier way.

  He flushed the last of his sweepings down the toilet and picked up his suitcase, then put it back down again. The inkling of something was flickering like the spark of a firefly just beyond the periphery. Shit . . .

  He sat in the easy chair next to the window and closed his eyes. His St. Christopher medal needed to be touched all of a sudden. Held. Tapped, with a knock-on-wood formality. Again. Show me the way to go home . . .

  Maps. That was it. He could find the coordinates from maps, the way Gordon had done it by dowsing maps. The place of his birth, yes, but what about the date? Maps don’t change from day to day—what does? The length of my hair? The size of my bank account? Pork belly futures?

  The four coordinates of the Apocalypse: X, Y, Z, and delta T.

  He looked outside at the craggy scrub and the palm fronds poking around the side of the building—waving frantically at him, it seemed, beckoning—the wind picking up all of a sudden, the brightness of the scene before him stopped down to a flat shadowless plane. Clouds moving in. A change in the weather.

  39

  . . . stealing something from Pittsburgh

  There was a vaguely biologically active feel to the place, the sense that all the cleaning solvents and disinfectants in the world would not be able to kill what was squatting on every surface of the room—the counters, the doorknobs, the carpet. Especially the carpet.

  He’d been prepared for this, in a way—the letdown after the Good Life at Hotel Calliope. But he had to keep moving. Keep moving and not leave anything behind. He’d wake up in the middle of the night with a garden-variety paranoid vision (there was nothing extrasensory perceptive about it; he could tell it was just run-of-the-mill anxiety working overtime) of Peter Abbott tracking him down and stealing something from his hotel room—one of his socks or a bit of dental floss out of the garbage. And another one of his sidekick, Pam, trolling the ether and latching on to where he was now—here in this bed, this hotel, this city.

  What Simon hadn’t anticipated were the changes showing up everywhere now—the little things that were starting to drive him crazy—stuff like how many teams there were in the National Hockey League, the name of the guy who won Best Supporting Actor in last year’s Academy Awards, little things like that. The inconsequential stuff he had always taken for granted as being insignificant, but stable—there on the shelf of his common knowledge.

  The taste of Heinz ketchup—the sweetness or the tartness of it wasn’t how he remembered it. Or he remembered it in a new way and it was polluting the memory of how it used to taste. Heinz ketchup having always been a constant in his life—like the sound of his own voice. The other day he’d seen a woman in a restaurant squeezing it out of one of those little pouches you get in cafeterias and fast food places, squeezing it out drop by ruby drop, applying it to her French fry till she had a line of ketchup pearls strung along the length of it. Then she put the French fry in her mouth like it was the little wafer they hand out in church—as if she were celebrating a Mass of some kind. This is my body; take of my blood.

  Simon’s room was in a motel tagged on to a whole menu of motels and Inns—Super 8s and Best Westerns and Comfort Lodges; the glow of their signs like a cluster of giant bedroom night-lights paid out along a frontage road beside I-70 just outside Kansas City. He’d chosen the blue-plate special—cheap, barely functional, one-of-a-kind: the Carousel Motel.

  There was no carousel anywhere near the place as far as he could tell, except on the sign out front, and on the book of matches in the ashtray next to the TV remote that was anchored to the Formica nightstand. The logo was only a section of carousel: a galloping horse impaled on a fireman’s pole, it looked like. The illuminated glass sign out by the road was broken and the shattered lower corner exposing the fluorescent tubes made the horse look as though it were leaping over a glowing fence—the fence at the edge of things. Nothing on the other side.

  He pulled back the bedspread and stretched out; kicked off his shoes and tried to relax. He took out a set of foam earplugs he’d
picked up at a Home Depot and put them in his ears. The sudden isolation made him want to get up and check the deadbolt on the door again, so he indulged himself and did just that, feeling the rug under his feet again, the filth-steeped rug screaming at him—stories he didn’t need to be told; fumes of people’s lives permeating the soles of his feet.

  He glanced at the bedside table before lying down again—the cigarette burn on the edge of the Formica wood grain the size of a clitoris. Why that of all things came to mind, he did not know—the room like the sound box of a beat-up old guitar, he figured, resonant with fouling frequencies, melodies, snatches of conversations, screams, sighs—he didn’t need to be privy to any of them. He craved the luxury of not remembering, not being able to make the connections—his search engine shut off for a few moments. He wondered if that was possible anymore.

  He took a sip of water, turned off the lamp, put the plugs back in his ears, and tried again. Relax, breathe deeply, slowly, think of Jane—what she taught you. No. Put that out of your mind. He rested his hands on his chest, his fingers gently touching his medal—St. Christopher showing him the way (Do not lead me astray): carrying him on his shoulders.

  Time to clean out the “In” basket. Next on his list: Anita Spalding. Born March 15, 1958. Pittsburgh. She had always seemed older than that to Simon—looked older; the cigarette thing, wrecking her skin. Well, she would never die of lung cancer—he would make sure of that. He fell back into himself, tumbling, orienteering his way through the ether; and he picked up a scrap of a song along the way: “Bye Bye Love.” Simon liked the Ben Vereen version better than the Everly Brothers original. The version from All That Jazz. The macabre edge to it. The Everly Brothers like little kids when they’d done their version, singing about puppy-fat love, crushed crushes.

  He tacked through the ether searching for the Conception Zone—heading for roughly nine months earlier than Anita’s birth date.