by Joseph Fink
“Here, look at this equation. I have no idea what it means. It’s really long though. I’m going to add a couple more variables. Great, that looks really great. Nilanjana, please add that to the chalkboard.
“The next obvious step would be to go visit King City itself. See if all of this can be explained through simple physical proximity, or even if the slip of paper will react differently when it is proclaiming location rather than destination.
“Oh, and Nilanjana? Draw another ‘Science’ with a heart around it please. Put that next to the new equation. Thank you, Nils.
“But getting to King City is not as easy. Getting anywhere from Night Vale is a little tricky, as we have a vast desert around us and our reality does not seem to align exactly with the reality of the rest of the world, but King City is an especially difficult case.
“Look at this map. Stan, can you please put the map up on the projector? No, wrong slide. That’s the picture of a bee with a label saying ‘Blood Oath.’ That goes with the apiology project. Yes, the next three slides as well. They’re some free-writing I did about bees. That’s why they’re labeled ‘Research Notes.’
“Okay, yes, good. There’s the map. So this is a map of our region, with all roads and highways, and I want to show you all something. Let’s start here with a laser pointer and try to make our way from Night Vale to King City. Head out on Route 800 and then turn here, and merge with this— But oops, we missed it. So we go back, maybe try cutting across on this little mountain road. You believe in mountains, right? Not everyone does. Either way, we end up miles away. You see? None of the roads connect. It is like they are two entirely different road systems that seem like they should connect but never do.
“Here, this next slide even brings us down to the level of horse and hiking trails, small ranch roads, stuff like that. I won’t try to trace it all out right now, but believe me: there is no sequence of walking or driving or any other kind of transportation that would take us from here to King City. Even though, and this is very strange, we could easily follow any number of roads to get to, say, Soledad, just a few miles down the highway from our target. Okay, so easy enough, now that you got to Soledad, just head down the highway to King City. Well, if you’re starting in Soledad you can do that. But if you start tracing the roads all the way back in Night Vale, then by the time you get to Soledad you can’t find any way to get to King City.
“Scientifically speaking, wow. Big wow. This makes no sense, right? Do you think this makes no sense? Everyone nod if this makes no sense. Everyone’s nodding. See, we are all in agreement that it makes no sense.
“But this is all laboratory work. And what does lab work tell you? Almost everything. Labs are very important.
“Something is wrong with King City. That’s the most scientific answer I could give you. And I think that it would be dangerous to go. Which you couldn’t do anyway. But even the attempt might do irrevocable harm to your person or to the consciousness within your person. Not recommended.
“You might try talking to our mayor. She’s had some experience with other worlds. I can’t think of anyone else who has. Besides, of course, me. I’ve had extensive experience. But I don’t like talking about myself. It’s personal and not scientific.
“Most people don’t leave here. Most people only come and then stay and stay and stay. Honestly, I have no idea how long I’ve been here. Time doesn’t work here and all that. But not long enough. I haven’t stayed long enough.
“Oh, sorry, I have to go. Or you have to go. I’m going to stay here, this is my place of business. But it’s just that Cecil’s show is almost on and I never miss it.
“No, I think I haven’t stayed long enough at all,” Carlos said.
13
The Moonlite All-Nite Diner along Route 800 served okay coffee. Okay pies.
Some of the pies and coffee were invisible, and, for the people who like invisible pie or invisible coffee, this was a real plus. Here’s what: If you like a thing, and only one place in town serves that thing, you’re going to be pretty excited by that thing, regardless of quality.
So for people who like invisible pie, the invisible pie at the Moonlite All-Nite was perfect, despite being just okay.
Diane did not like invisible pie. Her friend on the PTA, Steve Carlsberg, was one of those people who championed the unpopular dessert. “It’s an underappreciated pie, Diane,” Steve would sometimes say between bites. “You develop a taste for it, like you do with scotch whiskey, or cilantro, or a salt lick.”
Diane remained unconvinced. Her issue was not with flavor (the pie had none) but with texture (it had none).
But Diane was not at the Moonlite with Steve now. She was there to meet Dawn.
They rarely interacted at work and even less often outside of work. There were a lot of reasons for this, none of them interesting. Not everybody gets to be friends with everybody.
Diane was not friends with many people. She had drifted apart from her childhood and teenage friends, because of age and changing circumstance and the high rate of mysterious disappearance and death in Night Vale. In her mid-twenties, she found herself at the funeral of what was her last remaining childhood friend (Cynthia Yin, whom she had met in Music Censorship class in third grade and who had survived three UFO attacks, a year’s incarceration by the City Council for voting incorrectly in a municipal election, and a direct encounter with a pack of street cleaners, only to die of a liver cancer which had gone undiagnosed for over a year), and she wondered whether it was worth it to have friends, to make any connections at all when the world so easily took them from her.
Since then, she had continued making friends, but they all, like Steve, were friends of circumstance. The people she worked with in the PTA. Regulars here at the Moonlite. Even the people and sentient patches of haze who often walked the same evening neighborhood route as she did, which was more of a distant nodding relationship than a friendship, but whose names she knew. (A few of them had even whispered some interesting secrets to her as they passed.)
Mostly she contented herself with Josh, who was not a friend, and was often not even friendly, but who filled her life until it couldn’t fit much else. She looked with excitement and unease to the day when he would grow old enough that her heart could empty a bit of him and there would be a space left where someone else could fit, although she couldn’t imagine who.
Anyway, Dawn was late. This was fine with Diane.
Laura, one of the regular waiters, was standing over a table, long leafy plants growing from her chest and arms and neck. The diners plucked the fruits from her branches, looking at each bright bulb for dents, smelling them for ripeness.
Diane had written down some things to talk to Dawn about. She wanted to know the obvious: how’ve you been, how’s the family, do you have a family (written in parentheses, as Diane did not want to presume that everyone has a “family”), how are you feeling, name every person you’ve ever worked with, and so on.
But this was all leading to the real reason for their conversation. Evan. Was his name Evan? She looked at her notepad. “EVAN,” it said in an unfamiliar hand.
“Evan,” Diane said aloud.
“Hey, Diane,” Laura shouted across the way, a family of five yanking blackberries and tomatoes from her sides. “Good to see you again. Somebody’ll be with you in a minute, all right?”
Diane smiled and waved. Laura was bleeding along her wooden limbs. The diners stopped taking the food from her and stared in discomfort.
“Oops, sorry about that, let me get you another server. Be right back.”
Laura bled her way toward the kitchen. A branch caught on a sink and snapped off. Laura begin to weep, still making her way toward the coffee machine, her face growing paler and paler as the stump of the branch spurted blood onto the coffee cups.
“Oh jeez,” she said, tears falling from her face and landing like dew on her already blood-spotted leaves. “Clumsy me. Just a real Sally Knock-’em-down.”
Diane got to her feet before she even knew that was what she was going to do. He did not look at her. He trotted with his dishes. She thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t know what to say, so she just followed him. It was definitely Troy. Would she follow him into the kitchen? She wouldn’t know until the moment came.
He was nearing the swinging silver door and they were well past the restroom arrow sign, well past the point where her presence could be excused, and still she hadn’t said anything to him.
The man, and now she was starting to feel unsure that it was Troy, maybe just a man who looked similar, or even a man who didn’t look that similar at all, turned around to face Diane. As he pressed his back against the door to open it, he looked at her.
“Excuse me,” Diane said much louder than she had intended, “is this the restroom?”
He said nothing. The door swung shut, then open, in smaller and smaller increments. The man who looked like Troy was gone.
“What are you doing, Diane?” It was Laura. She was not smiling. Her branches were still bleeding a little onto the floor.
“Nothing. I just—”
“Restrooms are back that way.”
Diane pointed at the door to the kitchen.
“Nope, back that way,” Laura said, her face giving nothing away but bland service industry congeniality.
Diane walked toward the restroom, but she did not need to use it so she just slowed her way back into the restaurant and past the coffee counter, glancing into the kitchen area. She couldn’t see anyone in it.
“They’re right over there, Diane,” Laura said from across the room. She pointed with a leafy arm, her face no longer congenial, her eyes unmoving, unmoved.
Diane turned and went into the restroom. She stood in front of the mirror for a minute, her hands gripping either end of the sink. It had been Troy, she knew it. Or, well, maybe it hadn’t been. And anyway she was here to find out about . . . Ethan? Ellen? She couldn’t remember the name. Nothing about herself seemed certain. She shouted into the sink. It did nothing in response. She shouted again, wondering if the people out in the dining room could hear her. No one came in, anyway. She wasn’t sure she had even been shouting out loud, or if she had only thought about shouting. Her throat felt raw.
She ran the sink and then the hand dryer and then returned to her booth.
Dawn was there.
“The waiter told me you were in the restroom. She said to have a seat. Sorry I’m late.”
“Hi, Dawn. It’s good to see you.”
Her throat was tight and sore as she spoke, and she tried to make her voice sound normal.
“What’s this?” Dawn grabbed the notepad Diane had left sitting on the tabletop.
“No, you don’t have to—” Diane started. “It’s just some things—”
Dawn grinned as she read it.
“Well, first off, I am fine. How are you? Do you have a pen?”
Diane indicated the pen next to the salt, pepper, and sand shakers.
“Ah, great.” Dawn took it and checked off the questions as she answered them. “The family’s great. My sister is pregnant. My father retired and is making hammocks. As a hobby, you understand. He’s made thousands, leaving them in a giant pile on his front lawn. The neighborhood association is upset because they think it’s a political statement, some kind of conceptual art installation about the existence of mountains.”
“Yikes. That’s very controversial,” said Diane, finding a gap in the conversation she could work her voice into. “I mean, I believe in mountains and all, but I understand it’s a controversial viewpoint. I would never force that viewpoint on others.”
“Right, well, that’s not what he’s trying to do at all. Don’t get down on my dad. You don’t know him. He just likes making hammocks and then putting them in a pile. That’s something he’s always loved.”
“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I’m glad your father is happy.”
“He says kids come by sometimes trying to steal hammocks from his pile to hang between two trees and lie on. He manages to chase most of those vandals away. He acts irritated when he talks about it, but, between you and me, I think he likes the challenge.”
Dawn checked the next thing off the list and added, “Yes, I have a family. It might have made more sense to put that first.”
Diane didn’t think that anything about today was likely to make sense. She felt nauseous after that moment in the restroom and was extra glad she hadn’t ordered any food, invisible or not.
“I’m feeling okay,” Dawn said, pen over the next question. “I had a migraine recently, although of course I didn’t know until someone told me.”
“Of course,” said Diane. Why of course?
“Also a bout of food poisoning. Had to miss a couple of days.”
“You got a migraine from food poisoning?”
“What? No, how would that happen? It was just food poisoning. We have the salmon deliveryman come by every Tuesday, and leave fresh salmon on our porch. Lately the quality seems to be deteriorating. He used to put an entire live fish there and lumber away. We’d open the door to find a wet creature with panicked, unblinking eyes, flopping around outside our door. We’d kill it with strychnine and have delicious steaks and salads and pastas. But lately, he’s just been leaving wet piles of torn, pinkish gray flesh that I hope is salmon. Honestly, I think he’s just tossing it from the sidewalk, not even walking up to the porch anymore.”
“I’ve never heard of any kind of meat causing food poisoning. Just wheat and its by-products.”
“Well, me neither, of course, but after we ate this week’s salmon delivery, and it was especially moist and spongy this week, Stuart and I both felt a bit sick. We couldn’t get out of bed for days.”
“Is Stuart your husband?” Diane asked.
“Who?”
“Stuart.”
“Who is Stuart?”
“You just said his name is Stuart. The man you live with.”
“I live alone, Diane. Single as single can be.”
Diane suddenly felt like the words she was saying were twisting in her mouth and coming out as different words altogether. No part of the conversation was connecting with any other part. She might throw up after all, but she had just been in the restroom. It would look strange to run back to it so soon. The thought of that slight embarrassment kept her stomach in check.
“Who did you eat that salmon with the other night?”
“Nobody. Just me. Like I said, this is my first time out with someone else in over a month, I think. So glad you invited me.”
“Right. I’m glad you agreed to meet me.”
A gray-gloved hand rose over the edge of the table, holding two coffees. It quietly slid them in front of the two women. They pretended they did not see the hand, maintaining eye contact and waiting in polite silence as it pushed food they had never actually ordered onto the table: a Greek salad for Diane and a Denver omelet for Dawn. The hand made a subtle flourish of accomplishment and then disappeared back under the table.
“This is about”—Dawn looked back at Diane’s list—“Evan?”
Diane moved the Greek salad away from her, one hand on her stomach.
“Yes. I remember working with Evan. I remember him going missing from our office the same time you were out sick. He called me the day you came back, and when I went to his cubicle, where I was certain he worked, there was no cubicle there. Just a plant and a photo and a chair.”
“Mm.” Dawn’s mouth was full of omelet. She seemed very hungry. It must have been the recovery from the food poisoning.
“And neither you nor Catharine remember anyone named Evan working with us?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t,” Dawn said, having swallo
wed the mouthful of egg. Diane felt a surge in the back of her mouth and had to take a moment to keep herself together.
“It’s just that,” she said after that moment, “how can you sit so close to where someone worked and have no recollection of them?”
“Well, Diane, I—”
“You didn’t call in. Catharine had some of us ready to go to your house to find you, Dawn. But then you get back to work and Catharine is like ‘No, I was totally in the know,’ and you were like ‘Yeah, just food poisoning.’ But I’m telling you the feeling around the office before you came back was that you and, and”—Diane glanced at her notepad—“Evan were both missing. We almost had to get the Sheriff’s Secret Police involved.”
Dawn set the pen down and slid the notepad back to Diane. Her lips were stern and thin and had a bit of egg on them.
“Diane, tell me what you remember about this Evan.”
“I remember working with him. For years.”
“Did he like sports?”
“I don’t know.”
“Movies? TV shows? Books? Certain types of dogs? What kind of clothes did he wear?”
“I remember a tan jacket.”
“What else? What color shirts? How tall was he? Was he married? How old was he? What’s a memorable thing he once said? Did he ever tell you a joke? Or maybe he had some insight during a meeting? What department did Evan work in, Diane?”
A long pause became a short pause became a quick beat became nothing.
“I don’t want to make you seem crazy, Diane. I really don’t. Listen, I’m just happy to have a friend to hang out with. I can’t remember the last time I hung out with somebody. But I can tell you there was never an Evan at our office.”
Dawn’s face was flushed, and she was breathing hard. She seemed furious, but it might have just been the food poisoning.