He walks over, sits on a spare stool next to Cotton Manager, and orders a Benedictine with hot water, or a ‘Benny and Hot’ as the Colnites call it, something he’s developed a taste for since his landlady poured him one as a ‘supper drink’ the night before. It’s strange, he thinks to himself, that he hadn’t noticed the Jollity Hat at all since arriving, not once, and yet seeing it tonight, bathed in the green glow from the central crossroad’s traffic light, it feels as if the building has always been there.
Cotton, like him, is drinking Benny and Hot. Only Cotton stands, resting his right foot on the horizontal spindle of a bar stool. He has a gargoyle’s demeanor. Dorian feels a sliver of shame. He feels effeminate, sitting on his stool, and no matter how he readjusts, he can’t prevent a certain camp meeting of his knees . . . and now he’s about to meet Cotton, he really feels as though he should. Cotton turns to regard him, revealing the seam of a deep scar that separates the two vertical hemispheres of his face from hairline to chin, running via the forehead, between the eyes, the bridge of the nose and perfectly down the groove of his filtrum. Cotton’s cap shields the glossy black orbs that glare from his eye sockets as if he’s reading the bad poetry of Dorian’s existence.
“Mr. Manager—”
“Cotton.”
“Cotton—uh, I appreciate you agreeing to see me.”
“Shut up. I knew you were coming.” Cotton Manager fixes his gaze and almost wills Dorian into taking an effeminate sip of his drink. “Listen . . . and I mean listen.” He runs a dirty thumbnail down the crease-deep scar along his nose. “And don’t just wait for your chance to talk—because I don’t like that.”
Dorian nods.
“What did I just say?”
Cotton’s expression is serious.
“What?”
“What did I just say?”
“You asked me to listen?”
“And for not to do what?”
Dorian can’t remember. He hadn’t really been listening, preoccupied as usual by unimportant details . . . like what the fuck made that scar? He recoils slightly when Cotton leans towards him. Cotton’s warm breath, stale from cigarettes and Benedictine, sours Dorian’s nostrils and throat.
“You’re just like all the rest.”
“The rest?” Dorian asks, genuinely surprised.
“All those other fucking Southers.”
“Southers? You mean southerners.”
“I mean what I say. All you people coming up here to Colne because it’s built on this ridge—because by living on a ridge it presents a bloke with a choice—and because that choice is simple. North valley. South valley. Good. Evil. Which way do you descend? Do you descend at all? Know what I mean?”
“What?”
“Do you descend at all?”
“Is that why I’ve come here?” Dorian is genuinely confused but tries to keep the tenor of his voice sincere. Three days ago, when he’d closed the second edition of Dr. Robert Trebor’s self-help opus How to Calibrate Both Your Being and Becoming he was about to slap the volume shut and begin convincing himself that the mantras contained therein were existentially useful, when a loose leaf of paper fell from the end spaces of the book: a handwritten note: ‘Colne—know thyself,’ and at the bottom: ‘Cotton Manager.’ Without thinking, he’d gone online, located the town in the east of Lancashire, and called Doctor Trebor. Trebor admitted that he’d folded the note inside the back flap of the dust jacket. It’s an insurance policy if all else failed, he explained, for all his regular clients who become ‘existentially corkscrewed.’ Dorian had immediately taken the train north. His job didn’t matter; that could go to hell. His relationships and social network groups didn’t matter either. The online roleplaying community didn’t matter. The shelf full of anime pornography didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be defined by them. Because that one little note seemed to hold all the clues to the meaning of his entire being. Hell, Doctor Trebor had even called the damn thing ‘insurance.’
All those sodding questions had blighted Dorian for years. And now it’s Friday night and here he is, in a pub that doesn’t exist on school nights . . . and Cotton Manager breathes fetid fumes into his face.
“That’s why you’ve come here. To know thyself. To meet tha’self face on. You’ve come from a ruddy city with your facades and your business cards and your three course luncheons and your Filofaxes—”
“Filofaxes? It’s not nineteen-eighty . . .”
“—and your sun-blushed fucking tomatoes . . . and what do you really have? You haven’t a clue as to what the point of your fucking life is. You hang about like odorless gas in your skin. And so you’ve come here, on doctor’s orders, to take a walk down into one of our valleys . . . or both . . .” He takes another gulp of his drink. “You’ll never amount to much until you do.”
“What do I do when I get there?”
“You meet the man, of course.”
Dorian didn’t understand
“I swear,” Cotton continued, “tha’s all nothing but babies, you twat. You’ve come all this way, so go and meet the man. Meet ’em both if you can take it.”
Cotton Manager stands up, downs his Benny and Hot with a flick of his wrist, and walks slowly away, around the dancing men at the snooker table and out of sight. Dorian watches him until a roar of fire from the stilt-walker’s pursed lips plumes across the space and temporarily blinds him. All is white scorching light and the warmth of his drink at the back of his throat . . . and then his vision returns.
He’s standing in front of the Jollity Hat. There’s a light drizzle in the air, not enough to constitute rain but enough to dampen his hair a little. He turns to look at the pub. It’s still there, but only just, like the ghost of a building, a gaseous sandcastle that he can see right through. To his right the green light is shining bright again, bathing the crossroad. He walks to it, compelled. Upon reaching it, he stands still, sensing the descent on either side of the ridge, the north to his left, the south to his right.
So, Dorian thinks, he goes down one and meets the man, right?
But which one?
From the thick, white fog on the north side he can hear the swirling choruses once again, coming out from the heart of the vapor. The song chills his marrow and tightens his testicles. To the south, the desolate blackness shrouds everything below. Whichever side he took, he wouldn’t see what he’d be approaching, but something in him reasons that a silhouette in the mist would be less dislocating than walking right into the oppressive nothingness of the south valley. After all, oppressive nothingness is what he fled.
He takes a few steps to his left and looks down. The tapering pavement disappears into the smear of grey weather at the bottom. The town is silent now as he enters the street. It is as if Colne has stopped moving, occupying a terrible Pinter-pause, one that exists just for his descent. The wind is gone but not all is silent. The green traffic light behind him hums with electric charge. But the wind has gone now. The street is so steep, he thinks to himself as he takes his next dizzying steps down, down, down. The mist-enshrouded world below him bounces from side to side with each heavy step he takes; his breathing becomes ragged. His heart hammers. After half a minute he passes the midway mark on his plod into the north valley. Soon after, the gradient peters out. But there’s something strange. He’s level with the mist but not immersed. The fog stands ahead of him like a great wall; a distinct vertical presence stretching some ten feet up. He stops several yards from it. For a while Dorian squints into the mist, wondering whether to enter. But then the vapors shift, as if parting. A shape appears, a man. Yes, he thinks, there’s a man approaching from within the mist.
You meet the man, of course.
And in a terrible moment the man emerges from the opacity like a bad dream, his eyes, just white boiled eggs in his skull, his grin peeled back from ear to ear, literally from ear to ear, a revolting upturned crescent exposing gums and the gaps of glistening jawbone to each side of two rows of chattering pearly teeth. Th
e man holds his hands out, clawed fingers in a mockery of a greeting and it’s at that last moment, just yards from being claimed, that Dorian realizes that the deformity that comes for him, is him. It’s his face, twisted out of shape, but his nonetheless.
Dorian turns and scramblesaway from the abomination but momentum is not on his side and the arms of his doppelganger wrap around his chest. He closes his eyes . . . and then nothing. He stands there for a moment in the comforting darkness behind his eyelids. The cool aura of the mist wraps its tendrils around his legs and shoulders, causing him to shudder. And then he hears footsteps retreating away from him, up the hill towards the top of the ridge and Colne’s center. He opens his eyes. Receding into the distance, he sees himself, sprinting away, occasionally turning round and looking back at himself in abject terror. Then Dorian looks down at his clawed hands. A sense of stifling panic takes him over. He looks to his right and beholds his reflection in the window of the nearest terraced house. His clouded, white eyes gaze back, framed by the stretched lids and the arched eyebrows, his smile twisted and deformed, torn to meet his ears. And then around his ankles he senses the fingers of mist curling tightly, round his waist too, round his neck. And then all is mist. All is nothing. All is joy. And the angels sing their sweet aria.
When he reaches the top of the street his lungs are burning from the run. Dorian turns and is thankful to see that whatever the hell it was that pursued him had returned, back into the mist. His lungs and legs are burning and his eyes water from the exertion of having sprinted uphill. And then when he gets his breath back, a perverse calmness pervades. He stands with his hands on his hips, bathed in the comforting amber glow, from the single traffic light above. His smile spreads and he flexes his fingers. He imagines Cotton Manager, back in the Jollity Hat, perhaps doffing his cap to him for having just ‘met the man.’
He’ll take control of himself, Dorian thinks. He’ll ditch the cartoon-porn, the drudgery of his job, the online ‘friend’ collating. He’ll fucking-well live his life. The other side of the valley beckons him now, the dark dip in the land that leads down into the void: an antithesis to the milky levity of the mist to the north. He just has to know who awaits him down there. What new facet of himself could he assimilate next? Because before meeting the man, he was nothing, and now his soul is full of music, full of smiles, full of whiteness. He leaves the pool of amber light, just as it turns red, crosses Albert Road and walks down the hill, grinning widely as he goes, further and deeper and down into another new kind of self.
PERSISTENCE HUNTING
JEREMY ROBERT JOHNSON
Don’t act surprised, or shake your bloody fists at the night sky.
You chased this down.
Help is coming—maybe a reality check can keep you seething until it gets here.
Better than slipping into shock.
Face it—you’re lying there in the evening chill, broken and breathless on the dewy suburban grass because of a basic truth:
You’ve always been a sucker for love.
And being smart enough to know that isn’t the same as being able to do a goddamn thing about it.
You were a mark from the get-go.
Age seven: All Mary Ashford had to do was smile. You kicked over your licorice. She skipped away, shared it with that red-headed oaf Mikey Vinson.
Rube.
Age fourteen: Sarah Miller asked you to the last dance of the year.
Why wouldn’t you help her with her algebra homework? An easy down-payment on a guaranteed post-dance make-out session.
You even gave Sarah your final exam answers.
She passed algebra.
She passed on attending the dance.
Stomach flu—very sad. She cried on the phone.
Two weeks later she went to the final dance at the school across town. With Mikey Fucking Vinson. The rumor mill had them crossing fourth base. In a hot tub.
You cursed Mikey Vinson, prayed to God for wolves to snuff the bastard, to disembowel him in a hot tub, a steaming red bowl of Vinson soup.
Revenge fantasies waned. You knew the truth. This was on you. You cried yourself to sleep, thinking Sarah Miller would be the last girl you’d ever truly fall for.
Chump.
Age fifteen: Love got blown off the radar.
Was it world-weary resolve? No, you were a mess of hormones and zero savvy charging headlong into the bayonets of the beauties walking your school halls.
Love caught the boot because your parents burned to death on their eighteenth anniversary. Bad electrical blanket wiring and spilled champagne caused a flash-fire.
As with every anniversary weekend since you were born, you were staying at Uncle Joshua’s house—a bungalow off Powell on 58th—in South East Portland. The crucial difference that weekend was that at the end of it you had no home to return to.
Uncle Joshua took you in. You didn’t speak for three months. You dreamed—your parents screaming with smoke-filled lungs.
Your Uncle did his best. Let you know you were loved. Gave you great pulp novels about druggy detectives and man-eating slugs. Taught you how to swear properly. Let you stay up till any hour, so long as you promised to run with him every morning at seven sharp.
“The morning run blows the morning prayer out of the water,” he told you. “Gets you thinking. Breathing deep. It clears out the worry, the garbage, everything.”
You ran the city with him—sidewalks, tracks, trails. Portland seemed huge and electric in a way your hometown Salem never did.
He showed you how to run through “the wall”—the utter vacuum of energy that forced you to walk. Soon the wall was pushed further and further out.
You ran to exhaustion—morning jogs with your Uncle and epic evening jaunts that allowed you to collapse far from the reality of your loneliness, from dreams of burning hands reaching for your face.
Five years after the fire, love finally tracked you down.
You were twenty-one. Still a virgin. You’d chased nobility, never exploiting your semi-orphan status for a cheap lay. Besides, that would have meant talking to someone, knowing someone.
You were confident chasing the cat was for suckers anyway. You’d transcended that status because you had a new kick, something you’d guessed was better than pussy:
THEFT.
It wasn’t for the cash—your parents’ trust kept you sound.
You stole because you’d recognized a loophole.
Portland was a runner’s city. During daylight it was impossible to hit the waterfront without seeing a jogger, but the nights had their own crews. Doctors or bartenders forced into the late shift. Other running zealots like you.
And Portland’s runner omni-presence rendered you a non-threat to the cops. Another fitness freak in fancy gear. You rocked sheer shirts, a Garmin GPS watch, a CamelBak water backpack, a flashy yellow vest, and shorts designed to hug your junk.
You liked to wave at the cops, give them a nod that said, “Here we are, upstanding citizens keeping things safe and healthy.”
Sometimes they waved back. Some of those times you ran right by them with a thousand dollars worth of pinched jewelry in your CamelBak.
They never turned around. What self-respecting thief would run by a cop car while rocking reflective gear meant to call attention?
You were just another night runner fading in the rearview.
In fairness to them, you started minor, like some jockey-boxing meth-head.
Your LifeHammer tool was designed for drivers trapped in a submerged vehicle. One side had a hammer specially designed to crack tempered auto glass.
Ostensibly designed for exits, it worked great for entrances.
You trolled the NW hills near the Leif Erickson trail, pulling smash-and-grabs on Suburbans, Jaguars, a smattering of Portland’s ubiquitous Subarus and Priuses. You copped cell phones, cameras, MP3 players. You copped hard-ons from the gigs, tracked record runs off the buzz.
You kept the swag in a box in your closet
, obsessed over it, deciphering what you could about the people you’d jacked. You fell asleep to stolen play-lists. You studied the smiles of strangers in digital photos.
You soon realized that any tweaker could crack car windows.
The buzz dwindled.
You escalated—houses were the logical progression.
Your first pick was a sharp art-deco joint. You’d done your sidewalk surveying—they had a habit of leaving the sliding glass door on the side of their house open.
You almost bailed. Nerves. Visions of the owners polishing rifles inside.
You decided to hit their car instead—a desperation move.
You got lucky, opened the glove compartment, found a receipt. Franzetti Jewelers—$6,000. Dated that day. Scrambled the car, found zilch.
Was it in the home? A necklace, a ring—they’d fit into your backpack so easily. Something like that was much more intimate than an iPod—it represented history between two people.
The gravity of it pulled you to the side entrance of the house.
You knocked on the door frame. “Hello?”
If anyone answered, you’d feign injury: You’d crunched your ankle coming down from Forest Park. Needed a cab, a hospital.
After your third “Hello” echoed dead, you crossed the threshold.
It took five exhilarating minutes to find the jewelry box. Bedroom dresser, third drawer, under a pile of gold-toe socks. A serious square-cut rock mounted on a platinum setting. An engagement in the cards?
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch Page 29