And besides: Alice was hungry.
Chapter 14
“The key,” said Oan, sweeping gracefully between the folding tables of the Sharing Room and doing her best to sound supernatural, “is to channel positive energy through your aura, resonating with the frequencies that permeate all things.” She paused for a moment, closing her eyes and cocking her head to one side, apparently tuning her aura to another station.
“Your thoughts,” she continued, gesturing broadly around the room, “are essentially magnetic; they attract like things, things that vibrate at like frequencies. Every thought and every wish that is transmitted into the universe will return; it will return and be made manifest at its source. And The Source,” she added, dramatically pronouncing the capital letters, “is You.”
The inmates of the hospice were assembled in the Sharing Room for Oan’s weekly self-actualization class. Today’s session featured the ninth in a series of thirty-seven inspirational lectures on the transformational power of visualization. Or something like that. The lecture included a lot of phrases like “focused intentionality,” “sympathetic reverberation,” and “universal, deep harmonics,” but, like Oan’s untameable mane of ash-blonde hair, the precise subject matter was impossible to pin down.
Oan’s audience was seated in groups of three or four around an assortment of folding tables awash with crayons, paper, stickers, and other tools of self-expression. Rhinnick sat with Zeus and two Napoleons (Three and Five) at a card table littered with playing cards, IOUs, dice, and other evidence of a Brakkit game in progress. While Oan enthused about the Laws of Attraction and the Miracle of Self-Truth, various members of her audience — all acting at Oan’s direction — busied themselves by colouring their intersectionality.
Intersectionality, it transpired, was Oan’s word for each person’s core identity, which Oan explained as the intersection of various lifepaths on which each person trod. Take Oan, for example. During working hours she was an unlicensed Caring Nurturer and Lifepath Guide. But she was also a woman, an avid reader, an amateur accordionist, a cat enthusiast, and a teetotaller.31 At the intersection of these assorted lifepaths stood the True Self that was Oan, a singular, multifaceted being constructed of a unique web of overlapping, intersecting identities. This crossroads of identities was her intersectionality, her unique array of attributes. It was her Oan-ness.
The precise method of colouring one’s intersectionality remained a bit of a mystery.
Zeus had coloured his own in shades of black and grey. It was terrier-shaped. In fact, any uninitiated observer — one who hadn’t heard Oan’s lectures, for example — might have been led astray by the overall terrierishness of the picture, and mistakenly believed that Zeus had simply drawn a dog.
Zeus added a speech bubble over his intersectionality. It said arf.
“I think Miss Oan will like it,” Zeus said proudly, his big, grinning face beaming “keen” in every direction. His chair creaked in protest under his hulking frame.
“Three of cakes,” said Rhinnick absently. He bounced a Brakkit ball into a wooden cup and drew a card from the deck.
“Oh, right,” said Zeus, who had momentarily forgotten about the game. “So,” he said, setting aside his intersectionality and picking up his cards, “that means that I can play my, umm, my four of suns, right?”
“Unorthodox play, old horse, but well within the rules,” said Rhinnick. He sucked the end of his pen and stared off into the middle distance with the vaguely distracted air of a man who knows that somewhere, at this precise moment, Tonto is having a bubble bath. He extracted the pen and beat a thoughtful tattoo on the card table. He appeared to be a mental patient with something on his mind.
Cards were played, balls were bounced, and Oan’s lecture wafted drowsily in the background. She’d reached the bit on Nature’s Gift of True Beauty when Rhinnick emerged from his reverie.
“Answer me this,” he demanded in a hoarse whisper, leaning forward with a sudden sense of gravity. “What, I ask, is an eight-letter word for ‘bisect’?”
“Je m’excuse?” said Napoleon Number Five.
“That’s nine letters and an apostrophe,” said Rhinnick.
“Cut-in-two?” ventured Zeus, counting on his fingers.
“Non non, Monsieur Rhinneek,” said Napoleon Number Five, “what I mean to ask eez why do you need to know une eight-letter word for “bisect”?”
“It’s seven down,” said Rhinnick. “Eight-letter word for bisect. And it can’t be cut-in-two. Needs to start with an L.” He withdrew a folded sheet of newsprint from his lap and rapped it smartly with his pen.
“You are doing un puzzle du crossed-words in ze middle of ze Brakkit game?” said Napoleon Number Three, cottoning on. He laid a two of suns on Zeus’s card while raising a skeptical eyebrow in Rhinnick’s direction.
“Multitasking,” explained Rhinnick. “Promotes mental agility. You can’t expect a busy man like me to focus on one activity.”
“He’s a genius,” said Zeus, reverently. “You can tell. He does the crossword puzzle in pen.” He gazed at Rhinnick with an expression that could have been labelled “Man’s Best Friend.”
“Let me see zat,” yipped Napoleon Number Three who, being a Napoleon, had difficulty letting a compliment slide unless it was meant for him.
Rhinnick relinquished the puzzle and turned back to the game, surveying the table and scanning his own hand. “The play’s to you,” he said, nodding at Zeus. “I’ll pass this round.”
“All right,” said Zeus, furrowing his economy-sized brow. “So, if the card in play is a sun, then I can . . . well . . . er . . .” he looked helplessly at Rhinnick. Despite stereotypes concerning men whose biceps are best measured using surveyor’s equipment, Zeus wasn’t stupid. He was actually quite clever, and frequently did himself proud in hospice trivia competitions. But in one sense he was simple. His simplicity lay in the way he saw the world in black and white, a world in which the border between “Good Boy!” and “Bad Dog!” was a bright line. He thoroughly understood important things like loyalty and friendship, things like helpfulness and duty, things like sticking with the pack and standing up for the underdog. But Zeus lacked subtlety. He had difficulty with politics, and blushed when he tried to lie. He was suspicious of the notion of “half-truths,” and couldn’t think in terms of gambits, stratagems, or ploys. He had trouble with any game that was more complicated than fetch.32
He’d been trying to master Brakkit for twelve years.
Rhinnick came to Zeus’s rescue: “You can play a higher-valued card, follow suit, or bounce and pass,” he explained, still examining his own cards.
“LefFt?” said Napoleon Number Three. This was, admittedly, a puzzling thing for him to say. It garnered three raised eyebrows and a pair of confused “eh whats.”
Napoleon Number Three slapped Rhinnick’s crossword on the table and stabbed four down with his index finger. “LefFt,” he repeated. “Monsieur Rhinneek ’as written “LefFt” in ze puzzle at four down. Avec two Fs. Ze second F is capitalized. Ze clue is ‘ze opposite of right,’ five letters.”
“Regional spelling,” said Rhinnick. “Perfectly acceptable. And you need the second ‘F’ to make it fit with ‘Rhinnick Feynman’ at six across.”
Zeus solemnly played a twelve of swords and drew from the deck.
“But ze answer is wrong,” protested Napoleon Number Three, “LefFt is not a —”
“Ze answer to six across eez ‘Rhinnick Feynman’?” asked Napoleon Number Five, snatching up the puzzle and examining it intently. “Sacre Abe!” he exclaimed. “Ze clue for six across eez ‘a stable solution of caesium and unfiltered mire salts,’ ’E ’as crossed out zat clue and written ‘Tonto’s future husband’. And ’e ’as added four boxes to ze crossword to make ‘Rhinnick Feynman’ fit in ze puzzle.”
“Improvisation,” said Rhinnick, airily. “I adapted
to an adverse situation and overcame.”
“Genius!” said Zeus, radiating hero worship. If he’d had a tail he’d have wagged it.
And so the long day wore on — Rhinnick winning a heap of IOUs while inventing novel ways of cheating at crosswords, Zeus putting the final touches on his intersectionality while struggling to master Brakkit, and the Napoleons jabbering away in what Rhinnick generally called their heathen lingo. Oan’s lecture faded limply into the background, eventually swallowed by the buzz of conversation.
There was a sudden, shrill “hem, hem.” It should be impossible for a “hem, hem” to qualify as shrill, but Oan managed.
Silence happened. Dozens of heads swivelled around in Oan’s direction.
“Can I help you?” she said. She was addressing her remarks to a nondescript, unremarkable, average-looking patient standing mutely at the Sharing Room door. He was standing between two Goons and clutching a yellow hall pass as though it were a protective talisman.
It took a moment for those present to realize that the nondescript patient was Ian Brown. It’s not that he’d changed his appearance since the last time they’d seen him: he was still the same slightly pudgy, amiable-looking fellow in a standard-issue terry robe. It’s just that he’d never made a lasting impression. He tended to go unnoticed. He was used to it. He’d been standing in the doorway holding his hall pass for the last eleven minutes.
“Can I help you?” Oan repeated.
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Ian, meekly. He generally led with an apology. “I have a hall pass,” he added.
“Yes, I see that, Mister . . .”
“Brown, ma’am. Ian Brown.”
“Yes, of course. Mr. Brown. Are you coming or going?” asked Oan. Like most of those present Oan had failed to notice whether Ian had been in class.
“Coming, ma’am. I was in a private session with Dr. Peericks. He said that I —”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure that you were, Mr. Brown. Please take a seat and have a go at colouring your intersectionality. I suggest a shade of beige.”
Oan blinked a slow, owlish blink, paused to re-attune her aura to the appropriate metaphysical channel, and then carried on with her lecture. Her next sentence began with the phrase “Homeopathic principles,” which we can take as a signal to stop paying attention.
Ian trudged across the room and seated himself between Zeus and a Napoleon. His chair was situated beneath a needlework sign that bore the legend “If you believe it, you’ll receive it.”
Whatever it was, Ian probably didn’t believe it.
“The coast is clear,” he whispered, scooting his chair forward. “Peericks should be out of his office for at least half an hour. He’s gone for a meeting with Matron Bikerack.”
“Ho, ho!” said Rhinnick, rubbing his hands together and leaning closer to the table. “Then the game is afoot! The time, my fellow conspirators, has come.”
“Er . . . what time has come?” asked Zeus, exuding honest innocence.
“Try to keep up, silly ass,” said Rhinnick. “What were we whispering about all morning? The time has come for our merry troupe to kick the dust of Detroit Mercy from our slippers, to skip like the high hills, and to hie for the open spaces. We’ve been bunged up in this loony bin for too long. The time has come to stretch our legs and make our escape.”
“Right!” said Zeus, smiling broadly. He had a knack for switching gears from total puzzlement to unbridled excitement in no time flat, a knack that Zeus would have attributed to his past life as a terrier. This was a useful trait in dogs that were bred to chase anything without regard for what it was or what it might do if caught. He placed his cards on the table and leaned forward, causing his chair to creak another objection.
“So what do we do?” he whispered.
“Let us review the master plan,” whispered Rhinnick, signalling his tablemates to draw closer. “Now that Brown has ascertained the fact that — unbeknownst to Mistress Oan — the coast is clear in Peericks’s den, I shall have myself expelled from the Sharing Room and sent postey-hastey to Peericks’s office. Finding the office vacant, I shall not, as one might expect, hang the bean despondently and shuffle off to the Feynman quarters, but shall instead employ this,” he paused dramatically and, with something of a flourish, withdrew the matron’s pass card from his pocket. “Armed with this magnetic thingummy I shall obtain access to Peericks’s inner sanctums, if sanctums are what I mean, and therein acquire the file folder marked Brown, Ian, as well as any texts on mindwipery that I find strewn about the lair. Having carried off this bit of pilfering, I shall activate a handy fire alarm and hasten for the exits. This is when you, my steadfast minions, spring into action.”
“Right,” said Ian. “We’ll be led out into the courtyard once the fire alarm sounds. In the courtyard we’ll meet up with the other Napoleons. They’ve set up a distraction that should allow us to slip away from the crowd and past the Goons. Number Three here will take care of the main gate, and we’ll run into the street, where Tonto will be waiting with a van. We hop in, and Tonto drives us to one of those IPT stations. Then we transport out of the City.”
Creases deepened on Zeus’s forehead. “Um, Rhinnick,” he said, “how will you get expelled from the Sharing Room? Oan never expels anyone. And what sort of distraction are the Napoleons planning? What about the guards at the main gate? I mean, we’re not planning on hurting anyone, are we? You know I don’t approve of —”
“Nothing to fear, my skittish oaf,” whispered Rhinnick. “Rest assured that I —”
“And what about the extra security?” Zeus continued. “You know that Dr. Peericks added a bunch of new guards after the night that I was . . . well, after whatever happened to me happened, on that night that Ian’s files were taken from the archives. Charlie told me there are policemen stationed around the hospice grounds. He said that —”
“Well here is the latest news, my hulking minion, and this is Rhinnick Feynman reporting it. Charlie is a fathead of the first order. He’s simply spreading specious rumours, if specious means what I think it does. Think about the issue rationally, old man — you can’t go putting faith in the groundless ramblings of a certifiable loony who’s obsessed with finch beaks. The man’s confined to a mental institution.”
This gave rise to a round of uncomfortable fidgeting and throat-clearing. Ian and the Napoleons managed passable impressions of ceiling and floor inspectors.
“But the point, my good ass,” Rhinnick continued, “is that you have nothing to fear. Stick with Ian and you’ll be fine. Trust my plan. You’ve known me virtually from the egg and I have yet to lead you astray.”
Zeus bit his lip nervously. It was odd how a three-hundred-pound colossus with arms like iron bands could seem as menacing as a kitten. “Well,” he said, scratching his head, “you did get us into trouble that one time with the fan dancer in the Rainbow Bar. And that time you made me steal the matron’s hat. And what about that time we bet on the gladiatorial games without any money? That didn’t go very well at all. Ooh! And then there was the time we disguised ourselves in janitor’s uniforms and went into the nurse’s —”
“This is no time for pointless reminiscing,” said Rhinnick, testily. “All that matters is that this time you can trust me. I’ve taken care of every possible contingency.”
Ian weighed this. Here was Rhinnick — a man whom Ian had known for only a few weeks, a man whose grip on reality was about as tight as a clown’s trousers, and whose ego was so large that it could pull moons out of their orbits — claiming to have taken care of every possible contingency. This could pose a bit of a problem. In his mind’s eye Ian could see a longish future of confinement in the hospice. Justifiable confinement. As things stood at present, he was probably in the hospice for no good reason. He was sane, after all. He really was. All that set him apart from other people — people who were allowed to wear long pants and use
real cutlery — was that he remembered his beforelife. It wasn’t his fault that practically everyone else had lost their memories. They were the ones whose brains had let them down. He was sane. But signing on for Rhinnick’s plan, a plan designed by a man who suffered from ego fabularis and whose closest advisers were a hamster and a reincarnated dog? That was crazy.
Ian could hear himself explaining matters to Peericks in the likely event that Rhinnick’s plan went sour. “Sorry about that, Doc, but Rhinnick overheard you saying that I’d been mindwiped, so we thought we’d swipe the matron’s pass card, steal my patient files, set off a fire alarm, blow the gates off their hinges, hop in a van with a handful of Napoleons, and set out to find my wife. I would have asked for your advice, but I thought the better course was to team up with a gang of mental patients. No hard feelings.”
Ian would stamp the commitment papers himself.
It didn’t help that Ian didn’t actually believe the mindwipe nonsense. Oh, he understood the theory, he could see why Tonto bought it, but something about it didn’t fit. His memories — his real memories — didn’t align with the mindwipe business. But Tonto was so convinced of the mindwipe theory that she’d approved of Rhinnick’s plan. She was probably crazy, too, come to think of it. Signing up for any plan dreamt up by Rhinnick was reason enough for a longish stretch in a padded cell.
For the fifth time in a week Ian prepared to voice an objection. And for the fifth time in a week a voice in his head kept him silent. “Follow the plan,” said the voice, “Trust Tonto’s judgment,” said the voice. “Just follow Tonto and you’ll be fine.”
The voice was getting on Ian’s nerves.
Ian emerged from his reverie to find Rhinnick in the midst of boosting team morale. “This is not a time for objections and misgivings,” he was saying, “but a time for uncommon valour and that old questing spirit. As for our paltry opposition, well, they may take our freedom, but they will never take our lives.33 This is a day that will live forever in song and story, a glorious day for myth, legend, and history. Its anniversary shall ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, we band of —”
Beforelife Page 18