by Richard Cox
“Like what?”
“Like I don’t know anything. I don’t even know where I’m going after this. After I drop you off I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Hearing something like this yesterday was fascinating and a little bit frightening. Today it’s depressing. Especially since Runciter has made this connection with almost no prodding from me. I don’t even want to talk about this in the cab, because I’m afraid of what it might do to the driver.
Is this what I’ve become? A kind of carcinogen, leaving a trail of cancerous sentience wherever I go?
“I’m sorry,” is all I can say.
“You’re sorry? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I—”
“When that cop brought you to the cell, you asked what his wife’s name was. You were doing it to him, too, weren’t you?”
“What?”
“Ruining it for him.”
“Not on purpose,” I moan.
“I’ll tell you something else. I recognize you.”
“From where?”
“I’m not sure. I think I have an idea, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Does any of this?”
“Good point.”
We finally reach downtown. The streets are empty, which is pretty weird considering today is, um, Wednesday, I think. The driver makes a couple of quick turns and Runciter tells him to stop. The fare is $29 and I hand the driver $40 before Runciter can get the money clip out of his front pocket. He tries to give me a twenty but I tell him to keep it and get out of the car. I let the cabbie keep the change. I just want him to drive away before Runciter says anything else.
We’re standing beside a newer-model Cadillac, one of the new foreign car wannabes. Runciter hasn’t produced a key or any other sign of ownership, but he hasn’t walked away, either. There are a few other parked cars along the curb on each side of the street, but so far I haven’t seen a single pedestrian. Not one.
“So where do you know me from?”
“I’ll tell you,” he says, “but it has to be in the car. I’m taking you to the impound lot.”
Last night I wondered why Runciter was so intent on hanging out together. Is this why?
“Let’s go,” he says. “I want to hear the whole story.”
I could find a pay phone and call another cab. I could find a bus stop. There are many ways I could get home without Runciter’s help.
But what does it mean if I leave him alone now? Will I have to make this decision every time I meet someone for the rest of my life?
“I need to know,” Runciter says. “And I think you might be interested in what I have to say, as well. So get in the car. Please.”
“All right.”
He unlocks the doors and moments later we are headed south into the heart of the city.
THIRTY-SIX
“That’s one hell of a story,” Runciter says.
I began just where you might imagine—with the blue orb—and finished with Agents Scruggs and Smith agreeing to let me go.
“You realize they didn’t have to release you so soon. They could have held you longer.”
“Yeah, but for what? I don’t have what they want.”
“What I’m saying is they didn’t let you go out of the kindness of their hearts. They are surely following you.”
I look around, out the back window, and see a sedan of some kind a few hundred yards behind us. It could be them or it could be anyone.
“And you believe all this without question?” I ask Runciter. “The whole damned thing?”
“What other choice do I have? If I had left you alone back at the station, where would I be now? I don’t know where I live.”
This is completely ridiculous. I look out the window and notice we are finally beginning to encounter some light traffic.
“So you think, if you drove away, you would just vanish when you were out of my sight, and that would be it?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe for a while. But I think I would come back again.”
“Why?”
“The reason I remember you,” Runciter says, “is because I think we’ve done this before.”
“We what?”
“Your face is familiar to me, but even more than that, I get the feeling this whole thing is…well, is a rerun. I’m pretty sure this isn’t first time we’ve met each other like this, and part of me thinks we’ve done it a whole bunch of times.”
I didn’t think anything else could happen that would surprise me. Although now that Runciter has said it, I feel like I should have figured this out already.
But is it true? Are we on some kind of loop? Characters in a movie, and someone is watching the disc over and over?
Yeah, I know. Laugh all you want. But then give me a better idea, because I’d love to hear it.
The thing is, if this somehow were a film (or a story of any kind), and Runciter figured out the truth with very little assistance, and now he won’t let me go because he’s afraid he’ll simply disappear from reality…well, what sort of film is that? He wouldn’t be able to change anything scripted to happen, right? For that matter, neither could I. In fact, our knowledge of ourselves in such a story is part of the story and nothing we are consciously doing.
And yet in the past few days it seems like I have made many decisions to choose one path or another.
Think about throwing a football. Once that football leaves your hand, its trajectory and speed are known. Nothing is ever going to change that. You might say the wind could change it, but whether the wind would blow or not was already going to happen when the ball left your hand. The only thing you don’t know is where the ball will ultimately come to rest, because streaking across the field is a wide receiver. How do you know if the receiver will catch the ball? Can that be measured? Predicted with any certainty? What if the receiver decides intentionally not to catch it? How can that be known ahead of time by anyone but the receiver? Was it always going to happen that way or did the receiver affect fate at the point when the ball should have entered his hands?
Human brains make what appear to be conscious decisions hundreds or even thousands of times per day. So my question is this: Do our minds introduce free will into a universe where otherwise it does not exist?
For instance, right now you can choose to continue following along with me or you can go make yourself a cheeseburger instead. Is that decision yours? If it’s not, is there any reason to get out of bed in the morning?
So while my life over the past couple of days may seem like a story, and maybe everything I remember up to this point is all part of my character, the one thing I will not accept is that I have no free will. There must be a point to all this. I must be in this role for a reason. I can’t believe it’s all meaningless.
“What do you remember about me?” I ask Runciter.
“I don’t know. Nothing very concrete. It’s just a vague sense that we’ve done all this before.”
“Like déjà vu.”
“That’s exactly what it feels like,” he admits. “Maybe that’s what déjà vu is. A replay.”
Traffic increases markedly as we head south. By now we’re only a few miles from my house, and in another mile we will turn west and find the impound lot about a half mile down on the right. Between now and then I have to figure out what to do with Runciter, and what I’m going to do afterwards. It occurs to me that seeing Gloria may not be such a good idea. Maybe she’s better off not knowing the truth. Then again, if I never see her again, what happens to her?
“Hey,” I say to Runciter. “Can I borrow your phone again?”
“You think you have more messages?”
“No. Some of those messages were from my wife. I think I might want to call her.”
“I should imagine so,” he says. “Why didn’t you call her back before?”
“Because I’m not sure I want her to know the truth.”
He hands the phone to me.
“She’s probably wo
rried sick,” he says.
“She is. But is it better to worry or to be told your life isn’t real?”
“I see your point.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve dialed Gloria’s cell phone number from memory. Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever done it. But I’ve seen those digits many times on the cell phone display and I can picture them in my head.
I punch in the numbers. 314-1592.
And wait.
Weird tones.
A recording comes on and says “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again. Message three one four one five.”
I’ve seen the number a thousand times. I know I dialed it correctly. But when I enter it again and push “send,” I get the same result.
“Everything all right?” asks Runciter.
“I guess I dialed the number wrong. Let me try again.”
“You sure you have the number right?”
“Of course I know the number.”
“I was just asking because if you don’t remember it, you could check your voice mail again and get her number from the message envelope.”
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t think about that.”
I navigate to the “dialed calls” menu so I can easily redial my number and get into voicemail. But I guess I hit the wrong button, because instead of dialed calls I see a bunch of names, and at the top the display is the word “Inbox.”
The first name in the list is Sherri Solvig.
S-H-E-R-R-I.
Now I know what you must be thinking, which is the same thing I’m thinking, but come on…there must be plenty of people in the world named Sherri, scores of them just in this town alone.
Runciter looks over at me periodically while he drives. I hold the phone up to my ear and pretend to listen.
“She leave you another message?”
“It’s still not going through.”
“Want me to dial it?
“No, I got it.”
Runciter looks at me again, his eyes piercing, and I wonder if he suspects anything. But that doesn’t stop me from opening the message from Sherri Solvig, which says:
We’re still debating on how to proceed. Keep it friendly but don’t lose him.
It should be easy to hold your face perfectly still, to withhold emotion, but this text message, these two sentences, hit me in the gut like a suitcase nuke. Runciter knows Sherri? My Sherri? How in the hell did he end up in jail when I did? How on earth did we get put in the same cell together?
Runciter is looking at me.
I dial the number to my cell phone and wait for the voicemail to come on. Enter my password, go through the messages until I find one from Gloria and get the number. It’s nothing like what I thought. Not even close.
“Do you have a pen?”
Runciter reaches into the center console, and while he’s rooting around in there I hang up the call and go back to the text message list. There are couple of names I don’t recognize like Ragle Gumm and Tim Archer, and Sherri’s name again toward the bottom of the page. I scroll down a little and the name David appears.
Runciter hands me a blue Bic pen. I have nothing to write down because I’ve forgotten Gloria’s phone number.
“Shit,” I say. “I waited too long and it hung up on me.”
He’s on to me. Surely he must be. We reach a traffic signal and Runciter turns right, headed west now, and the impound lot is a half mile away.
“Almost there,” he says. “Bet you’ll be glad to get home.”
“You have no idea.”
“Do you live close by?”
“Yeah, not far. Less than a mile.”
I go back into voicemail and this time write Gloria’s number down on my hand: 555-2374. But there’s no way in hell I’m calling her now. I have to get my car and get away from this guy.
I hand the phone back to Runciter.
“All that and you aren’t going to call her?”
“We’re almost there now. I’ll just grab my car and drive home. She’ll probably be there anyway.”
This is a lie, as you know. She said in the message she was staying at Juliana’s.
“I really appreciate your help, man. Thanks a lot for driving me here.”
“So that’s it? You’re just going to take off?”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“I told you already: I don’t know where I’m supposed to go after this. I’m afraid the moment you leave I’m going to blink out of existence.”
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, either. But you can’t follow me around for the rest of your life.”
“If I don’t,” he says, “does that mean I’m dead?”
But the text message I read would suggest Runciter is lying. If he can have conversations with Sherri outside of my knowledge, that means he doesn’t cease to exist when I’m not around. It changes everything.
“All I know is I want to get my car and go home. You don’t understand how tired and hungover I am. I feel like someone poisoned me and left me for dead.”
Finally a sign appears on the right, blue letters on a white background. TAVERNER IMPOUND LOT.
“There it is,” I say.
Runciter parks in front of a trailer house, which appears to be the administration building.
“I’ll wait out here,” he says. “We’ll figure this out after you get your car.”
The problem is I don’t believe him anymore. The reason he’ll be waiting when I get back is not because he’s worried about disappearing from existence, but because he’s assigned to watch me. I know it. There is some kind of conspiracy going on here and everyone is in on it. Runciter and Sherri and David and all of them. Everyone. Even you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You’re all out to get me. Everyone is. I thought the story was about me, I thought I was the important one, the one breathing life into the existence of others, but no, I am being played, I am the fucking pawn, just like I’ve always been. The world is a joke and I am the punch line.
But instead of revealing this to Runciter, I pretend like everything is fine.
“All right,” I say. “Once they bring my car out we can figure out what we’re going to do next.”
“Okay.”
I get out of his car and shut the door. The building is just a few feet away, and there are a couple of steps in front of the door. The interior of the trailer is floored with brown shag carpet and walled with fake wood paneling. A short, stocky fellow stands behind a counter, cutting his nails with a pocket knife. The countertop is a thin sheet of glass and covered with smudges so numerous it’s almost opaque. The man is wearing a blue chambray shirt with a red-and-white name badge sewn into it. His name is Jason. An old paperback book lies open on the counter.
“Hi. The police sent my car here.”
He doesn’t even look up, just grabs a form from a nearby stack and pushes it toward me.
“Fill this out.”
The form is a few lines of contact information: my driver’s license number, the car color, make, model, year, and today’s date. I scribble out the answers and push it back to him. Above the clerk, a clock tells me on a bluish-green digital display that the current time is 6:49. For some reason I feel antsy, like I need to hurry.
“Hold on,” the clerk says. He picks up a two-way radio and barks into it a description of my car. Then he puts the radio down and returns to his book, still without looking up at me. According to the stack of business cards on the countertop, the clerk’s name is Jason Taverner.
“What are you reading?”
“A novel.”
“Really. What’s it called?”
Now Jason looks up at me, squinting, as if he’s having trouble seeing me.
“You’re awfully curious.”
“I’m trying to make conversation.”
“The book is called Radio Free Albemuth. Have you read it?”
“No, but I’ll bet you a thousand dollars it’s
a Philip K. Dick novel.”
“So it is, smart guy. But I don’t have any thousand dollars. Your car will be out front any minute now.”
I open the door and step out of the life of Jason Taverner. And now that I’ve done so, I have to ask: Is he still inside? Do minor “characters” really assume an ephemeral existence? Or has that all been part of the conspiracy? Are you all communicating without my knowledge, manipulating me, lying to me?
What the hell did I do? What do I have that you want? And why don’t you just take it? Why all the intrigue and trouble?
It’s brighter outside now, and the air is silvery with mist. Runciter’s car rumbles quietly, exhaling little puffs of exhaust. He hasn’t looked up at me yet because he’s hammering away at the buttons of his cell phone with both thumbs.
He finally glances up as I approach the car. I walk around to the driver’s side and he rolls down the window.
“They have your car?”
“They do. It’s supposed to be around any minute.”
Runciter nods. I hold his gaze, intentionally not looking away until he finally does. Other than the engine and exhaust, the world is completely silent. Not a breath of wind, not a plane flying overhead, no cars driving by.
“What are you going to do after this?” he finally asks.
“I’m going home to get some rest.”
“And me?”
Something flickers in my peripheral vision, something in the sky, and I turn to look. But whatever it was is gone.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“If the situation were reversed, I would help you.”
I stand there while time passes, and in the extreme silence I imagine I hear a clock ticking nearby, and the buzzing applause of a game show turned down really low.
Finally there is a low, crackling sound, tires on gravel, and my car appears through a gate on the right side of the trailer. The guy driving it pulls forward until he is almost even with Runciter’s car. He gets out and calls out my name.
“That’s me.”
The driver is short and his black hair is streaked with white. He’s wearing an Army surplus jacket with a bunch of pins attached to it. One of them says “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”