by Nick Mamatas
And I saw something else. I saw myself, sitting atop the world, where the ice caps meet the sky, in a throne made of glacial ice. And due to my body heat, the ice began to melt and the trickling slush formed a thousand rivers and a million tributaries. And my face was reflected in the tiny chunks and particles of ice. Every little stream was a life of mine. The great big me atop the throne could see them all at once, and frown, or shake his head, or smile at his endless mistakes. But I, the me in my little purple drank haze, had to do it the hard way. Follow every stream to its end. Killed by the police. Dead in the incubator at three weeks old from a lung infection. Bad tin of sardines at age thirty-one. Or me, shooting my way through school and surrendering to the police. It’s a scandal. Things are blamed: video games, the Internet, lax morality, my supposed homosexuality, drunk mother, distant father, and, of course, race. I get poorly written fan letters from the chinless daughters of white supremacist Pineys to this day. I saw it all coming. I chose the path, chose to be manipulated by Eris, and have set myself up in the best of all possible worlds. A world that stretches before me, into infinity.
I tried to tell this all to my shrink, a few times. I knew she’d refuse to engage me—can’t feed into a patient’s delusions by taking them seriously enough to challenge, after all. But I also knew she’d finally cave in.
“Fine, then,” she said. “You know, already, everything about your life.”
“I do.”
“As though you are someone else, observing yourself from the outside. Watching a video of your own life, from beginning to end, and you can rewind, or freeze frame—”
“And listen to, and record my own director’s commentary as a special feature!”
“But you cannot change your fate. Dave Holbrook is just the main character in the video. Is that correct?”
“More or less. I mean, I decided which DVD of I to watch. And live.”
“So then, you must have at least skipped to the end of all of them in order to choose which life was most satisfying.”
“That’s right.”
She raised her palms to the cracked ceiling and gestured around us. “And this is the one you chose.”
“That’s also right.”
“So then, how does Dave Holbrook die?”
I just stared at her. She rolled her eyes. I suppose that the superior breed of psychologists end up working in places a little tonier than East Jersey State Prison. “How does I die?” she asked.
“How do I die? Or how do you die?” I laughed at my own little joke. It gets funnier every time I tell it to her. She raised her right hand and pointed her finger at me like it was a gun. I lifted my own finger and drew my symbol—three toothy little peaks and valleys—in response.
“Resistance. Electricity. Everything moving very quickly, as if superheated, and then it all stops at once.”
“You’re not on death row, Da—I. New Jersey eliminated the death penalty five years ago. There’s no electric chair in your future. Old Smokey is a museum piece.”
“Just try to act surprised when it happens, all right?”
“Our time is over for now, Mr. Holbrook.”
Ironically, there’s something very freeing about knowing one’s own fate. Some Spic tried to shank me the other day, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. The hacks had been tipped off—by me, having forged a note from one of their preferred drug customers—and they tackled the guy and broke his arm while I sat in the common area, playing countertop football with a bit of folded paper against my friend the retarded sex offender. I wasn’t able to act surprised, but that just adds to my mystique. In my vision, there was a web of tributaries branching off the stream of my prison sentence. In some I’m punked so hard and so often I go fag and prance around in lipstick and bleach-blonde hair. In others, I don’t make it that far—choked out and left to die in solitary by a hack whose cousin had gone to Hamilton but never graduated thanks to me. But in this particular babbling brook I’m wading through, nothing goes wrong until the end. I never get to see the outside again, or take a bus, or see her, but life is good. Conjugal visits from groupies with too much eye makeup. The occasional sit-down interview with a crusading journalist—I give them a three-star looney-toon act as requested—and a law library with which to amuse myself. My life is better than my shrink’s life, that’s for sure. It’s good. It’ll be a good, long life.
CHAPTER 13
Dave wakes up in the hospital. This is the awakening he remembers. First he spat out some gibberish to the EMTs on the trip to St. Mary’s Hospital in Hoboken. He tries to walk out of the ER and into the parking lot while being triaged. When he wakes up for the third time, he stays conscious and remembers. Dave’s entire face feels the way a 3D movie looks—like it’s floating in front of him in exactly the wrong spot. Only slowly does he become aware of the wider world. His mother Ann sitting next to him, sober but practically sweating alcohol. The curtains on either side of the bed—Dave is not in a room, nor is he in a ward. The noise and bustle beyond the curtains. He senses something else nearby too—it’s me—but only for a moment, then he is no longer able to experience me as I experience him.
“Mom?” Dave asks. Tears blind him.
“Oh honey,” Ann says. “I’m so sorry. Daddy is meeting with a lawyer now. We’re suing the school, we’re suing the district, the state of New Jersey—it controls the schools, after all. And we’ll find someplace for you. Someplace without riots and stabbings and nonsense. Don’t fall asleep; the doctors think you might have a concussion, and with your nose already messed up . . .”
It was the nicest thing my mother had ever said, in this timeline or any other. She was beyond “up” and “down”—she was actually a mother for once. If Erin hadn’t pulled the fire alarm, Dave never would have been spotted and punched in the face so ferociously and so publicly. If she hadn’t been there to sit him down on the curb, he would have been beaten down that much harder. Ann would have been drunk beyond kindness by the time Dave regained consciousness. Instead, she would have hissed, What the hell did you do to bring this upon yourself! and shriek her demand for an answer until a pair of orderlies dragged her outside.
But Dave only has a mind for Erin, who helped him to the curb and held his hand. “But . . . school,” he says, as best he is able.
“Sshh.” Ann puts her fingers to her own lips, then to those of her son. “Just rest now. Your father is on his way. He had to leave work early to come, so don’t agitate him with talk of wanting to stay in that horrible zoo.” She licks her lips and wrings her hands to hide the shakes. Then the kindness is gone, replaced by an urgent need. “Listen, Davey,” his mother says, “I’ll be right back. I have to find the restroom.” Dave is alone. He wants the restroom too, but can’t manage to get up, and he’s too embarrassed to use the bedpan, so he waits and squirms.
Ann doesn’t come back, but Jeremy finally does. His face tells Dave the story—the kid is a problem to be solved. “Where’s your mother?” he starts, but then immediately changes topics. “How are you feeling? Are you in a lot of pain? Do you need a painkiller?” And without waiting for an answer he says, “Let me get a nurse,” and then pushes his way through the curtains and bellows for a nurse. One comes soon enough, and happily hands Dave some pills, which he just as happily takes, but all he really wants is some Robitussin. Maybe later, he thinks, once my parents are gone.
Jeremy badgers the nurse. When will he get a room? A private or a semi-private? There were other kids injured today; how can he be guaranteed that his son won’t be put in the same room as one of those animals? How much is this going to cost? What did those pills cost? Fifty bucks a piece or something? And to each question the nurse only says, “I don’t know, sir,” with the s in sir growing ever more sibilant. Finally, she says she has other patients to attend to and leaves.
Jeremy takes the seat his wife had vacated and sighs. “Would more Tae Kwon Do lessons help, you th
ink?”
“Dad . . . the whole school. Police . . .”
“Well, what the hell are we supposed to do? Buy you a gun?” He runs his hand over his face as if trying to wipe off his features. “Sorry, son. This is just so frustrating. There’s no standard operating procedure for this sort of event. I can imagine that your mother has one. It’s the same as it is for anything else.” He pantomimed drinking from a flask. “I’ll talk to her about it after this all blows over. This has to end now, David.”
“What am I supposed to do?” The pain is fading, but the opiates haven’t yet taken hold. Dave’s alert now and upset, unused to having extended conversations with his father about anything.
“Maybe we’ll move. Sell the house. Prices are skyrocketing. I can find a place closer to work. New school, new everything. But you need to do your part. How many scrapes are you going to get into; how much trouble is there going to be? You have to be doing something to make yourself a target. There are two thousand kids in that school, and they’re not all coming home looking that they went twelve rounds with Mike Tyson. If you spent less time on that damn computer and more time making some friends, you wouldn’t be such a target.” Jeremy sighs again, and slaps his palms against his thighs. “I wasn’t like you in school. I had friends, a girlfriend, excellent grades. Did you know I was three-year varsity on the golf team?”
“We don’t even have a golf team. Where the hell would we practice!? This isn’t Long Island, you know,” Dave says. It hurts to talk so much, so angrily. He knows his father will focus on the word hell, and of course Jeremy does.
“Don’t talk to me that way,” Jeremy says. “Respect at all times. Respect! You know that the specific example of the golf team isn’t the point. You haven’t gone out for anything. Hell, the chess club would be an improvement. Glee club. Towel manager!”
“Now you’re the one saying hell. And—”
“Father,” Jeremy says, pointing to himself. “Child.” He points to Dave. “That’s the difference, and it’s a hell of a difference.”
“And anyway, we don’t have a chess club or a glee club or towel—”
“Oh no, now that’s a lie! I’m sure you have towel managers, because Hamilton has a football team. And a basketball team. Oh boy, don’t try to tell me there isn’t a basketball team at Hamilton,” Jeremy says, voice thick and nasty. “You need to get it together, son. I want to hear a plan from you by the end of the week. Something to improve your situation. Understand?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Good,” Jeremy says. He slides his Blackberry from his pocket and thumbs the keys for a moment. “I have to go. And, uh, find your mother. They’ll probably let you out tomorrow; I’ll be here to pick you up, son. Don’t use or consume anything you don’t have to. Even paper slippers are fourteen dollars, apparently. God knows what’ll happen if you eat a bowl of apple sauce. I bet that’s not covered by insurance.” He stands and, without another word or even a backward glance, pulls the curtain, walks through, and shuts it behind him.
“What an asshole.” Dave thinks that, but it’s Erin who says it, from Dave’s left, behind the other curtain. She pops her head in and smiles. Erin’s smile is always squinty, but it’s warped now because her left eye is sporting a serious shiner. She’s not in her casual school clothes either, but a candy striper outfit. “What do you think?” she says, running her hands down her sides.
“Uhm . . . do you really work here?”
“I started today.”
“When you found that outfit hanging up somewhere, right?”
Erin nods. “You’re pretty smart, eh?”
“Why do you do these crazy things? It’s just nuts. Someone’s going to get in trouble,” Dave says.
“Oleg found me in the hallway while you were being worked over in the locker room. He told me what happened. I pulled the fire alarm. I guess that caused all the fights, eh?” Erin says. She takes a step closer to the bed.
“I guess . . . wait, I wasn’t being ‘worked over.’”
“No? Too bad, it sounded sexy.” She puts her hand on his knee, over the thin cloth sheet. “Say, can I get you anything. Some water? A book? A magazine? Maybe Penthouse Forum?” Her palm brushes across his crotch.
“Oh God, stop,” Dave says. “I don’t feel good. How come we didn’t do this before . . . I can barely breathe.” And he can barely breathe. He starts gasping, gagging. He smacks Erin away and grabs the call button. “I’ll call, stop!”
Erin pulls back. “Fine! I’ll find someone who really likes me. Somewhere else. And it’ll definitely be easy. I’m not going to waste any more time with a baby like you.” She storms out. Dave thinks it’s so strange that the curtains have pretty much managed to keep people out. The whole afternoon was like a little play, with one person entering and then leaving, one after the other. But now the play is over and he is alone, without even a television to entertain him. He turns the call button over in his hand, but realizes he has no requests for the nurse. What’s he going to do, ask for a hug? He closes his eyes and cries, then sleeps.
Dave wakes up in another room. It must be at least two in the morning, or that’s his guess. Someone else, an old man, is in the room on the other side of the curtain. He’s on the second floor now, his bed by the window. The parking lot is nearly empty of cars, and there is plenty of light thanks to an emergency pavilion. A woman walks into view. She’s small. Could be anybody, but Dave thinks it’s Erin. Or his mother. They’re roughly the same size and shape. She stops right beyond the pool of light, almost purposefully to remain a silhouette, then raises one hand high. Then she snaps it down, as if pulling a great invisible switch.
CHAPTER 14
My job has benefits. I don’t mean the pretty nice benefits of a state employee, but particular benefits. The state lottery is a part of the New Jersey State Department of the Treasury, and that’s what my work ID reads, what my business cards read, and what the voicemail on my work phone explains to callers. Theoretically, I could even get a license to carry a gun with relative ease, except for my high school escapade.
My job’s not a bad one. One would think that there wouldn’t be much call for lottery machine installations—doesn’t every ugly little bodega and liquor store have one already? Well, the stores close and then open again under new management some months later. New ones open up. Machines break or even get ripped off by the special sort of idiot who thinks having a machine means being able to make it cough up winning numbers in advance. So most days I work in the field, which I prefer to the warehouse or my cubicle. I love driving, even in New Jersey.
Most days I don’t run into anyone I know. There was that guy Charles from high school, once, and very occasionally someone recognizes me from the newspaper stories, but that’s only when I’m working in Jersey City. Today, I ran into someone else—Mr. McCann, my old Social Studies teacher. I was working in a new liquor store in Harrison. Harrison’s an odd little town carved out in a small jetty of land by Newark. I lived in North Jersey all my life, but never had occasion to visit there, knew nobody who worked or lived here, and only knew about it at all because it has a PATH station stop of its own. I’ve never even felt the need to get out and walk around to see what’s what. But there I was, driving the lottery van down 3rd Street, looking for the cleverly named 3rd Street Liquors, when McCann stormed across the street. I had to slam on my brakes. He whipped his head around to look at me. It was him. Older and grey, both his hair and his skin, I mean, and he was unshaven. His eyes were wild; he would have killed me if he could. But he couldn’t. His lips quivered for a moment, and then he ran to the sidewalk and into the store. Into 3rd Street Liquors, the very store I’d been looking for.
It’s easy to park when driving an official vehicle, so I parked right in front of the place. It was 10:15 a.m. I had no choice but to go about my business. McCann wasn’t going to come out if I was outside, and he probably didn’t know that I wa
s heading into the liquor store myself. He was the one who had saved my life, and the lives of a lot of other students. After what happened between Erin and my father—between Eris and my father, I should say—and the endless insults and injuries of school, I thought I’d put the fear of God into everyone at Hamilton. I had no plans to shoot anyone, and I didn’t shoot anyone. I was just going to wave a gun around, scare some people. I figured that if I had a reputation for being “crazy” people would leave me alone, or I’d at least be thrown out of school.
McCann cared about me about as much as anyone in that school did—not at all. But he had cultivated the bad habit of coming in early and smoking a cigarette while eating his McDonald’s breakfast on the corner about a block from the school. We passed one another on the street that day. I didn’t say hello; in Jersey, you don’t say “hi” to acquaintances you encounter outside. You might nod and raise your eyebrows. Teachers you ignore. The courtesy is supposed to be mutual, but that day McCann spotted me and decided to follow me. I was wearing Oleg’s long leather duster, which set him off. I’d told Oleg I needed the trench coat to hide my kilt, which I was planning on wearing to protest the proposed dress code at the assembly this afternoon. Oleg was always in favour of anything weird and stupid. But it was only three years after Columbine, and a picked-on kid strolling purposefully toward high school was enough for McCann. In those days, cell phones weren’t all that common among schoolteachers and other people who made no friggin’ money, so all he could do was tail me and hope to somehow intervene.
“Mr. Holbrook!” he had shouted at me. For a second, I thought it was my imagination, but then I realized that McCann was behind me. I ran up the steps, toward the entrance nearer the INDUSTRY sign. There was a metal detector there, of course, but nobody as yet manning it, and the doors were open. That’s Jersey City for you. I ran in, and in the foyer a fat guard, who had squeezed himself into one of our little plastic classroom desk chairs, looked up from his own breakfast of a bagel and grape soda, then looked back down at it when he saw it was me. What the hell was I going to do? Bring in a gun and shoot everybody? The stupid metal detector wasn’t even plugged in.