DISPERSION
Book Two of the Recursion Event Saga
Brian J. Walton
Camton House Publishing
Contents
Venice Beach
February 11
February 12
February 13
February 14
February 15
February 16
February 17
1. February 22
Also by Brian J. Walton
About the Author
Loved What You Read?
Venice Beach
1974
February 11
We fade in on the corner booth of the Venice Whaler, a salt-encrusted beach-side drinking hole far enough from the boardwalk to be free of the usual crush of tourists, and unpopular enough that our lucky booth is always available for the weekly night of drinks. The lighting is dimly lit net-noir, accented by drifting clouds of cigarette smoke. Props include rows of empty beer mugs and shot glasses. The costuming is anywhere from modern chic to surfer-bum laissez-faire. The soundtrack is a mix of Jim Stafford, Kool & the Gang, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. As usual, the dialogue is abysmal.
“Can you honestly believe,” I say to Jim with more than a little forced incredulity, “that the world isn’t going ten kinds of bat-shit crazy? Or, or, or are you actually happy living your life with the wool held over your eyes?”
“Now hold on!” Jim Gardner, professional journalist, aspiring novelist, and my roommate since our first year at Camton, points a long finger at me over his half-finished glass of Lucky Light. He stares at the ceiling, seeming to forget what he was about to say.
“I’m waiting,” I say with a shrug.
He takes a drink and then continues. “Despite that false dichotomy—”
Groans all around the table. “False dichotomy?” Longdale asks, rolling his eyes. Constance brushes back a strand of blonde hair, looking confused.
Jim barrels onward. “Despite the false dichotomy you made, I still want to hear why you think the world’s gone bat-shit crazy.”
“Ten kinds of bat shit-crazy,” Longdale says, correcting him. Longdale adjusts his aviators and leans back in the booth, putting an arm around Constance, his current squeeze.
“Well, go on,” says Nancy, Jim’s longtime girlfriend, giving me a supportive nod. I remember how she had come on to me that Halloween at Longdale’s pool house Senior year. We both came dressed as Cher. She used that as an excuse for incessant flirting the entire night before Jim had to tell her, putting it delicately, that I swung the other way.
You think the Cher costume would have clued her in.
“Two years ago,” I say, “a platoon from the Algerian Army went missing in Southern France, never to be heard from again. Just last year, the Prime Minister of Britain declared that the end of the world would happen by 2052 if everyone doesn’t stop driving their cars—he said he saw it in a vision. And, last month, northern French resistance forces found a city—a whole city—that had never even heard of the Algerian war.”
“What are you trying to say?” Longdale asks, pushing back of a lock of long, blonde hair.
“Do you ever get the sense that there’s something wrong with the world?” I ask.
The booth goes quiet. Jim and Nancy share a glance. Longdale slaps his hands down on the table. “Come on, fellas! The night is far too young for us to be wasting it on conspiracy theories. Another round, whaddya say?”
“I’ll get them!” Constance leaps up in a flash of blue jeans and rhinestones.
“You’ve got stop reading those tabloid rags,” says Jim.
“The Prime Minister story was from your paper!” I say.
Jim scowls. “Well, everyone reported that one. Besides, it’s not often that a leader of a world power starts spouting off nonsense.”
“And then there was President Ford,” Nancy says.
Boos around the table and cries of “impeach him!” Constance returns, balancing the five beers. She works the day shift as a waitress at a nearby diner and doesn’t mind making use of her skills during off hours.
“What did I miss,” she asks.
“Impeach him!” Longdale shouts again.
“Four more years of JFKI!” Jim exclaims.
“Can’t they change that law?” Constance pouts. “Eight years of that man was not enough.”
“Eight years of Jackie was not enough,” Longdale says, and Constance elbows him.
Longdale takes two from her, holding them out to Jim and me. “What should we drink to?”
I take the beer, holding it up. “Four more years?”
Jim stands, shrugging on his tweed jacket. “Hell, is that the time? Sorry fellas. Not all of us get the weekends off.”
“Not now,” Nancy says. “Vance just got here.”
I turn toward the door. Gregory Vance is pushing his way through the crowded bar, a dark-haired girl trailing behind him.
Jim shakes his head again. “Vance can have my beer. The news doesn’t write itself." He scoots out of the booth.
“See you back home,” I say, but Jim has already turned and is making his unsteady way for the exit, stopping to exchange hellos and goodbyes with Vance.
I turn to Nancy. “You’re not going with him?”
She shakes her head, sighing. “He has to be up at seven tomorrow. He’s only going to walk home and fall in bed. Anything would be more interesting than that.”
There's an expiration date in her look. Poor Jim.
Vance and his friend arrive at the booth. Vance is short and stocky with dark, wavy hair and an even darker beard. The girl with him has pale skin and dark hair that is nearly black. She has soft brown eyes—nice eyes—and an almost teasing smile on the edge of her lips. I decide immediately that I like her.
Vance glances back at the disappearing Jim. “What’s up with Jim tonight?”
“He’s got to work early tomorrow,” Nancy says.
“The news doesn’t write itself,” shouts Longdale raising his glass.
“The news doesn’t write itself,” we echo, raising our drinks.
“Hold the cheers!” I say, “We need more drinks!” I hand Jim’s forgotten drink to Vance and his date, offering it to either. I wave at the waitress and gesture for her to bring another.
“This is Aleisha,” Vance says as they slide into the booth. “We met in the psych program at Camton.”
“Tell us more,” Nancy says with a sly smile.
Vance sighs. “She’s an adjunct. I’m her TA.”
Whoops and cheers all around the table. The rest of us make our introductions. Constance is waitressing, but is working on her singing career. Longdale is studying to pass the bar and, most likely, politics after that. Nancy is a nurse. I mumble something vague about writing.
“So, what do you write?” Aleisha asks.
Nancy leans across the table. “Ellis here is a screenwriter.”
“Anything I’ve seen?” Aleisha asks.
I shake my head. “No, not yet.”
“He has a deal, though.” Nancy smiles at me.
Aleisha looks at me with interest. “Oh? What kind of deal?”
I attempt to hide behind my beer. “Calling it a deal is a stretch. I met an agent a month ago, and after about the fourth Jack and rum, we cooked up a story together. He took the idea to a director, and they asked me to write it.”
“They paid you good money to write it,” Longdale says.
I hold up a finger. “They gave me half, which is long gone—don’t tell Jim—and I only get the rest if they make the damn thing. I gave it to my agent on Friday. So, we’ll see.”
I shake my head. “Fine, it’s Bob Carr.”
Longdale gapes at the booth’s silent reaction. “Only the director behind Gomorrah’s Winter!”
“Am I supposed to know what that is?” Constance asks.
Longdale slaps himself on the forehead. “We saw it this summer… twice!”
Constance rolls her eyes at him and nestles back into his arms.
I shrug. “No one’s decided that they will make it.”
The waitress returns with Vance’s beer. He takes a long drink, then slams it on the table. “So what did I miss?”
Constance waves her hand at me. “Ellis was telling us all his conspiracy theories.”
“Oh?” Aleisha leans forward. “Like what?”
Longdale rolls his eyes. “Can we not get back on this?”
“No, this is interesting,” Vance says.
I wave my hand. “No conspiracy theories,” I say. “My only point was that there seems to be more weird things going on in the world than, I don’t know, when our parents were our age.”
Vance leans forward. “That’s right,” he says, an edge of excitement in his voice. “For example, did you hear about the town in France that didn't know about the war?”
I thump my fist on the table. “I was talking about that! Wasn’t I talking about that?”
Nancy nods..
Vance leans forward, narrowing his eyes. “The journalist who wrote on it said they all were talking about something they called The Cold War. They believed we had been in some decades long conflict with Russia. I mean, there was a bit of tension after World War Two, but nothing like they were saying. And here’s the weird thing. The whole town was convinced of this.”
“That’s so weird,” Constance says.
“It gets weirder,” Vance says. “They’ve found literature in the town that backs up those claims. Like posters and shit like that. And the town doesn’t have the facilities to make those kinds of things. So they came from somewhere else.” He leans back, as if his point has been made.
Longdale narrows his eyes, unimpressed. “So what?”
“Don’t you get it?” Aleisha says. “It’s like they came out of some time warp.”
“There’s no such thing,” Longdale says.
Vance spreads out his hands in a shrug. “I gave you some evidence. What more do you need?”
Longdale leans forward, jabbing a hand at Vance. “If something like that has happened to someone right here at this table, I’ll listen.”
A chill runs through my body. “Something like that happened to me.” All eyes turn toward me. Even Constance has lifted her head off of Longdale’s shoulder.
Longdale shakes his head. “You can’t be serious.”
Aleisha leans forward. “What happened to you?”
I feel a wave of anxiety. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”
Longdale smirks. “He’s bullshitting us.”
Vance doesn’t appreciate my back-pedalling either. “You can’t give us bait like that and then yank it away!”
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Sixteen years ago, when I was eight, I disappeared and, well… I lost a whole month.”
My friends glance at teacher in confusion. Longdale shakes his head. “What do you mean, lost?”
“I, uh…” I let out a breath. Five pairs of eyes are fixed on me. The booth is growing smaller, shrinking in on me and threatening to force all the air from my lungs. Christ—I’ve never told anyone this story. At least, not of my own free will.
“Well?” Nancy asks, her voice gentle.
I hesitate. Maybe I can think of something else? Dammit, I’m a writer after all. Though, I've never been much good on my feet. I swallow what feels like concrete powder. My throat feels dry as the Atacama, so I take a sip of my beer. “When I say I lost a month, I mean it’s gone. I have no memory of it. Like it never happened.”
Longdale smirks. “So, what do you remember?”
I take a breath. “One of my father’s business partners has a house up in the mountains. Big Bear maybe, I don’t remember.”
“My parents have a house on Lake Arrowhead,” Constance exclaims. Longdale elbows her.
I continue: “This guy invited our family up there for the weekend. One morning, my sister Allison and I walked down to the lake. There’s a path we could take through the woods. It was a long walk. About a half an hour. I remember it had rained. The sun was shining bright, and the air was crisp. It didn’t look like Los Angeles at all. But instead, like some foreign world. We came to this gully and went down through it instead of following the path. That’s when I saw the man.
“What man?” asks Nancy.
“He looked normal, except for the fact that he a man wearing a suit and smoking a cigarette while deep in the woods,. He turned around and yelled at us, as if I wasn’t supposed to be there. So I ran.
“There was this steep hill, and I fell down it, rolling all the way to the bottom. I must have hit my head because, at some point, I blacked out.
I pause. “This is where it gets hazy. I’ve been to loads of therapists and they’re convinced I’ve made some things up. They think I was abducted and held hostage. That I’m repressing things because of the trauma, yadda, yadda, yadda. That’s all bullshit. I’ll leave out what I can’t confirm. Here’s the facts. I ran away from this guy, fell down, and blacked out. When I woke up, it was already dark outside. I had been lying out there at the bottom of a hill for hours. I was scared. I didn’t understand why no one had come looking for me.”
“Shit,” Vance says. “You were out there all day?”
I nod. “I got up and started walking. It took me a while, I eventually found the path that my sister and I had taken and made my way back to the cabin where we were staying. But when I got there, the house was empty. The doors were locked, the lights were off, and the cars were gone. That’s why I started to panic. I could understand them looking for me and not finding me. But leaving? I ran to the neighbor’s house and knocked on their door. Of course they didn’t know who I was. It was the first time I’d been there. But as I explained what happened, they only grew more confused. There had been a search for a missing boy, they said, but it had been weeks ago. The search had already been called off. My family and my father’s friends had all left.”
“You’re joking,” Longdale is leaning forward, his glass of beer forgotten, a hint of a smile on his lips.
I shake my head. “The local police came and picked me up. I sat in the station for hours talking to a detective while I waited for my parents to make it up the mountain. He asked me all kinds of questions about who had kidnapped me, what they looked like. I tried to say I had only gotten lost that morning, but he didn’t believe me. So, I stopped trying to tell him the truth. I told him I remembered nothing about the guy that kidnapped me. He asked for specifics but I couldn’t give him any. I was afraid that if I made something up, someone would get in trouble who shouldn’t.”
“Oh my god,” Nancy breathes.
“When my parents came, they asked me the same questions, and I gave them the same answers. I said I remembered nothing. The police questioned people in the area, but with nothing solid to go on, they couldn’t make a charge. Eventually, everyone else stopped talking about it as well.”
“Wait, so were you actually kidnapped?” Constance is gripping Longdale’s arm like it’s a life preserver.
I shake my head. “I told you. All I remember is that fell down a hill and was knocked out. When I woke up, a month had passed.”
“What about the man?”
Vance’s date, Aleisha, is staring at me with a strange intensity.
“What do you mean?”
Aleisha gives a shrug. “He seemed like he didn’t want you there. That’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“I never saw him again. I haven’t even thought about him much, except that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t ran away from hi
m.”
“Maybe that man knows what happened to you,” Aleisha says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say with a shrug.
Longdale finishes his beer and slams it down on the table. “Or maybe Ellis here is making it all up.”
I force a smile. “You’re probably right.”
Constance lets out a small laugh, glancing between me and Longdale. I raise up a hand. “He’s right. He got me. It’s all bullshit. I’m a damn good writer, aren’t I?” Smiling, I stare around at the others, daring them to contradict me. Nancy and Constance slowly begin to laugh. Longdale joins in, and finally Vance, shaking his head as he does. I glance at Aleisha. She is gazing at me with a strange look that sends a chill down my spin.
I shout over the laughter. “A bottle for the road?”
There are cries of approval all around. I grin and turn, searching for our waitress in the crowd.
A bottle of Johnny Walker in hand, I weave my way to the door, following the others into the brisk, coastal air of Venice Beach.
“Till next time,” Longdale shouts, He is stumbling up the street, leaning heavily on Constance.
Nancy gives me a wave as she climbs into her car.
“Staying over tonight?” I ask.
Nancy shakes her head. “Jim’s on a story tomorrow. Has to be at the courthouse bright and early.” Nancy hesitates.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She looks down the empty street, then turns back to me. “Do you think Jim am I are going to last?”
“Last?” I ask. “What makes you think you won’t last?”
“I don’t know if we’ve… got it. That spark.”
I let out a sigh. I’ve had this conversation before. Being the gay best friend has turned me into a sounding board for every one of Jim’s tortured girlfriends. At first I was flattered. Now it’s downright tragic.
Dispersion: Book Two of the Recursion Event Saga Page 1