Little God Blues
Page 29
Natalie turned her sharp, blue-gray eyes on me. Was I just saying this to make her feel better? “I guess they could have, you know, shot her?”
“True. Logic says not at the apartment though. They would have left her, like they did Lyubanov. So if not at the apartment, we’re off all over Mexico with different scenarios.”
We both turned to the sound of the front door lock. Sula entered. “What’s wrong?”
“We were just talking about Mum.” I watched their conspiratorial glances. Delayed, my ass. “Jim says it’s about Mexican drug guys. Drug guys with guns.”
I tried to meet Sula’s eyes. She avoided mine. Sula’s not a good liar, dissembler or schemer. Even this small intrigue of delay had overtaxed her poker skills.
I had pushed away the Claudia story. Deep down I believed Claudia was dead. I had moderated my suspicions for Natalie’s benefit, and that had opened up new possibilities. It made sense that she had left the apartment alive. I hadn’t thought of that before. She was an attractive, confident lady who knew men, how to leverage them, move them in her chosen direction. So, maybe.
***
I get plenty of dirty looks as I carry my guitar case down the aisle. The three of us are flying out to LA together; Sula and me, and Estelle. I’ve been through too much to risk losing her again. My travel agent back home has enough pull with the airline to get a seat for one Estelle Shalabon. She has the window seat and is in no mood to talk. Sula, in the middle, holds my hand as we wait through that unsettling pre-takeoff time when you’re too jumpy to read, and intermittent announcements interrupt any effort at sustained concentration. I look at my watch: at least eleven hours in this cramped detainee center. Sula of the People insisted on economy. My theory: by ignoring her wealth, she’s pushing away from her father.
“You are a businessman. You should fly business class.” Yes, I was still Non-Executive Director of Iken Press. My MDR karma held: one of Iken’s raft of romance writers had hit it big with her fourth novel. Iken was not only back on its feet, it was tap dancing.
Sula wants me up front so she can have ten hours of pure work time back in steerage. It would be too damn poignant, however, flying off to our new life together in separate cabins.
Truth is, LA’s not such a great idea. I can’t tell Sula that. She’s unilaterally arranged for a postdoc in my home state. It’s a generous gift, and my job is to honor her generosity.
If all the world’s a stage, the LA part of it held three trapdoors.
What if our passion is a wine that doesn’t travel well, and what was smooth and complex turns thin and vinegary? Hell, we hadn’t even had a fight yet. Who’s counting? But my record before Sula was three weeks. It was spooky, like an impossible string of good luck; the end had to be coming, the fiercer for the delay. What if it’s so fierce that it’s over between us and she’s stuck on the other side of the world, afraid of flying?
The second trapdoor is The Music Scene in LA. All the people I know; my reputation; the expectations (in LA you’re either swimming forward or you’re dead); the Easy Access to Everything. I’d be like a former alcoholic going to live above a saloon. It can be done, but why put yourself through all that agony? Only to fail at the end when some freak conjunction of mood, stars and temptation engulfs you and pulls you under.
Now we’re being pushed back from the Jetway. It always amazes me how a little forklift truck-like vehicle can push such a huge plane, a plane that has tens of thousands of foot pounds of forward thrust, yet is helpless to go backwards.
Trapdoor number three: I had made two contradictory promises—to Natalie, that I would look for her mother; to Sula, that I would stay away from Mexico. When I made the latter promise I didn’t know we’d wind up in LA, with Mexico just down the road. It will be difficult to avoid at least one trip down there. I know the exact look I’ll get from Sula for breaking my promise. I’ll moderate my inconsistency with sub-promises—I won’t do this; I won’t do that—but how can that work when these sub-promises are appended to the main, already-broken one?
“Sula, do you think there’s a parallel world that exists, truly exists, where—I don’t know—this plane is called back?”
Sula puts her Scientific American in the seatback pouch, then gives me an assessing look. I’m supposed to be her one-man flight support team.
“Just as an example,” I say.
“You are trying to say to me that this parallel world could be this world?”
“I’ve just never understood how it works, that’s all.”
“Jim, nobody understands where such worlds could be.” She leaves it at that, but then decides that more is called for. “I am using your concept of Little God to help me with my fear to fly. Millions of cards in millions of boxes on millions of tables. He’s doing his best to keep this world going so we can make sense of it. He is a merciful god, yes? If we crash it is only because he has no choice. He must help the most of his people. Remember all this?”
She’s using my theory against me, well, for me—just against my present disposition.
Sula and I have discussed Little God several times. I can talk to her about almost anything, as I once could with Kirk. Like him, she likes unconventional theories and ideas; they invariably bring a smile. She doesn’t expand on them in the fanciful, ironic or excessive way Kirk would, the way he liked to pile it high until the whole thing came toppling down. The one exception is Little God. Here she did a Kirk and expanded my concept. Yes, she said, Little God carves a path through the infinite sea—Sula calls these configuration spaces—where each atom has a certain orientation and position. This path is our world, what we might call communal or shared reality. Maybe, Sula postulated, we are Little Gods of our own lives. Our task is to pick the right path that gives us a true story of ourselves, while being aware, as we move through the world, that we are many people, personas, emotions and beliefs. We are sailors with our eye firmly on our heading, yet always aware of where the coast lies.
How serious is either of us about all this Little God stuff? All I can say is that it almost always calms me down and makes me more accepting of the passive aspects of my life. For someone who can get as angry as I can, that’s a good thing. For Sula, well, we’ll see how she handles the takeoff.
I look once again—I’m continually looking—at this woman next to me. I try to imagine her thin and knowing frame riding next to me as LA winds by beyond her window—palm trees and taco stands; twenty-foot-high donuts; muscle cars and muffler shops. You get the picture. I followed my alter ego to London, met his father, then the ghost of mine. Now, by some miracle, all that has distilled into this being sitting next to me. How do these things happen?
There is a point during takeoff when a plane is going too fast to back out. It must rise and keep rising; anything less would be catastrophic. Sula and I are likewise going too fast now; from now on it has to be sky.
End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey M Anderson was born in San Francisco and grew up in the SF Bay Area. Since graduating from UC Santa Barbara in Economics and Russian he has divided his time between California and Europe. Currently based In England, Jeffrey writes short stories and novels. The sequel to Little God Blues is due to be published in April 2015. Another novel, about a road trip through a semi-dystopian future, is due out later in 2015. Jeffrey lives in North London with his wife and guitar.
Visit his website at: www.jeffreymanderson.com
Table of Contents
Part I CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
&nbs
p; CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
Part II CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
Part III CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
Part IV CHAPTER 1
Part V CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
ABOUT THE AUTHOR