“I’ve come back,” she said, his book held protectively to her chest. Was she saving herself, or the dreamworld of his book? She wasn’t sure. But Jack had saved her once: her life, her sanity, maybe even her soul. It was her turn now to save him.
He stopped just within reach, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, days of pushing himself to the edge until he could no longer trust the truth of what he was seeing. He reached out slowly, cautiously, as if he meant to stroke the neck of a dove seated beside him on a park bench, or grasp a ray of sunlight. He touched her cheek, fingers brushing impossibly light against her skin, serving no purpose other than to confirm she was not a ghost.
“Jack?”
He fell before her, knees striking the pavement like rifle shots, and embraced her, arms wrapped about her legs, face pressed to her stomach, holding her to him, assuring himself she was real. The book slipped from her fingers and fell to the road, her proof of his existence now frivolous. “I knew you would come back,” he murmured. “I knew you wouldn’t forget me.”
She shushed him softly, running her fingers through his hair as she cradled him against her. She knew this. She knew this. This was the face of love, her love, fingers running through his hair. Jack Lantirn. She knew this. It was real. It was all real. And it always had been. “I’m here, Jack. I’m here.”
He reached up her legs and across the small of her back, hands tightening upon her, urgent in their silent appeal. She shivered at his touch, a wave of relief and excitement both, Jack’s hands pushing under her shirt to the bare skin beneath, making her breath quicken, her pulse race. She held him even tighter; touch, so long denied, now granted in full measure.
His fingers worked her clothes apart, leaving her naked, his face pressed to the exposed flesh, lips caressing her skin. She surrendered herself to him, to herself, desperately peeling away the coat, opening his shirt, hands running down the lean muscles of his back, neck, shoulders, hardened with unrequited longing and desperation. The morning sun burned against their naked skin, igniting shared passion; shared madness.
Tumbling to the street, their lips met, a love transcending words, flowing together as rivers, indistinguishable as the seas, inseparable, one body, one soul, the storm uniting into rain, streams into rivers, rivers into oceans. A bringing together of what was never meant to be apart, two who could never be separated, never be whole without the other. With each breath, she drew him in as air; with each kiss, he drank from her as water, their love as desperate as lost children, as ferocious as new lovers, as timeless as eternals walking the endless sands of a desert without end where the rivers long ago retreated beneath the veil of dust.
They stayed entwined within each other throughout the morning, making love on the roadway in front of the Edge of Madness Café, each breath taken from and given to the other, Jack repeating over and over, “I knew you would come back.” Ellen’s reply back always, “I’m here.” Two bodies of water held together by need, a desperate, splendid relief granted only to a select few who experience all of life’s moments of peace and happiness drawn together into a single, timeless episode, a moment of pure bliss and contentment.
Words fail.
THE HOUSE THAT
JACK BUILT
Finally, they moved inside; even love is not immune to the burning Wasteland sun.
Leading the way, clothes in hand, Ellen marveled at her surroundings while Jack followed a few steps behind, tugging on his jeans as he went, clothes draped awkwardly over his arm as he tried to walk and dress at the same time.
Ellen did not share his concern for modesty, her clothes falling in a heap on the floor.
One of the diner’s booths was littered with blueprints and schematics for a flying machine, draftsman’s tools and a dozen pencils of varying lengths scattered upon the tabletop of faux marble rimmed with chrome. Another booth housed an array of papers, chicken-scratched drafts, a worn, three-ring binder, notes like autumn leaves left on notepad scraps and Post-its. The only empty booth was in the back corner. Ellen walked towards it then turned and went behind the counter and into the kitchen, spellbound, lost as if in a dream, every detail registering unerringly: the buttery smell of stale popcorn from the small carnival popper on the counter, the small orange-light on the coffee machine announcing that a pot was brewed and ready, the song playing over and over on the jukebox, unable to mask the silence that permeated every surface, every crevice, every corner of the diner. The walls were pasted with posters and signs, fifties diner kitsch. One sign made it clear that neither smoking nor karaoke would be tolerated. On another wall, a poster of a super-heroine, dark and lithe and disproportionate, bristling with weapons and wings and a kind of angelic sadness. Another poster showed a young, winsome girl in black leather, a mischievous smirk on her lips and an Egyptian Ankh around her neck. B-movie posters for Reform School Girls and Reefer Madness. A faded recruitment sign from World War II, a sultry maiden wishing she could go off and fight for her country, empty promises for young men who would never return home.
Ellen turned, certain she was no longer dreaming, but moving without knowing where or why, a sleepwalker in the daze of post-coital bliss. The Edge of Madness Café felt so familiar. She had never set foot in it before, but in some ways, she had been here her whole life. The wooden surfaces of the western saloon were gone, replaced by polished tile, metal and glass. Even the jukebox was transformed to match the hard countertops and metal surfaces, the gleaming chrome, cherry red and electric blue. The diner had a machined quality different from the saloon’s living veneer, the barely controlled chaos graduating to a sense of order like a lunatic’s efforts at organization, a categorization of the deranged thoughts kept safely locked away.
Ellen felt completely at home.
Jack settled in the empty booth, leaning back against the window. He smiled at her, watching from under heavy lids, exhausted. Sleep would not be put off much longer. The world would just have to get by without its Caretaker for a time.
As would she.
“I thought I would get some water,” she said. “Do you want some?”
“Yes,” he answered vaguely. “Thank you.”
“It’s different from before.”
“The only things left are you and me.” His attention wavered, and he forced his eyes open. “Don’t worry about anything you see. Nothing will hurt you here.” He fell silent for a moment, thoughtful. “I might close my eyes; maybe fall asleep. Be here when I wake up.”
“Of course,” she answered.
He nodded, the back of his head rocking slowly against the glass like a person aboard a ship at sea, or maybe just keeping time to the music.
Ellen walked to the kitchen on slivers of light falling through the gaps around the backdoor. As her eyes adjusted, she found a long sink on the back wall, a tray of clean glasses air-drying in a prefabricated tray of sea-foam plastic. An enormous stove dominated one wall, a range hood leading to a ventilation shaft that was instantly lost in a complicated maze of pipes and vents that concealed the entire wall. Next to the stove was a small deep-fryer that smelled like cold French fries. And in the corner, a garbage can, the faint odor of coffee grounds and old fruit saturating the plastic. Everything was turned off, dark, cold.
She took two glasses and filled them from the tap, marveling at the soft, airy sound the water made, the subtle clink of glass on glass. More reminders of the pressing silence. Below the pass-thru window was a small prep table, a butcher’s block scattered with utensils, a thick-bladed knife. Opposite the stove was a walk-in freezer, the door ajar, a smell like melting snow and Freon creeping out upon thin wisps of fog.
And there on the floor, a reminder that this was Jack’s kitchen: a long, crocodilian tail trailed from the freezer, curled up against the door and out of the way. While she watched, it twitched slightly like a dragon caught napping, dreaming whatever such creatures dreamt before the world changed, and they vanished forever. The twitch of the tail caused another flicker of movement fr
om behind her, and she turned in time to see a smaller tail—gleaming and fat like an enormous salamander—pulling itself up into the dark confines of the half-opened oven, trying to escape notice.
Don’t worry about anything you see, Jack had said. Nothing will hurt you here.
Back in the diner, Jack was asleep in the corner booth.
Setting the water down on the counter, Ellen quietly dressed lest she confuse an abandoned roadside diner on the edge of nowhere with Eden—even if it was her idea of paradise.
She stepped out on the sidewalk into the glare of the sun, allowing herself to be consumed by it, embraced as she was embraced by the world of clouds, the endless sea, the landscape of dreams. She was a part of this world, the once-terrifying expanse of sun-blistered emptiness now her home, the place where all journeys begin and end. It almost overwhelmed the senses, the blinding brightness, the deafening silence, feeling nothing but the warmth of the ground beneath the soles of her feet, the heat against the bare skin of her arms and face, the wind moving her hair. She was back in that world of first moments, back in those first few seconds after she arrived, the sensory overload of the Edge of Madness Café, images invoking dreams, memories. Not a place of brick and mortar, tile and plumbing, metal and wires, this unassuming real estate was imagination realized; dreams infused into the dust and brought to life.
Ellen breathed in the sun-warmed air, and saw it all again for the first time. Worn sidewalk, sun-baked asphalt ribbon, endless sea of sand the color of bleached bones. Wind-scraped cinderblocks. Road signs worn and faded to ashen letters on silvery driftwood planks, nailed-up beach wreckage, lost ships from forgotten times. Three posts, Golgotha at sunset, markers of nonsense: YOU ARE HERE nailed at the top of a list of destinations: DREAMS. MADNESS. REALITY. STREET OF BROKEN DREAMS. THE WASTELANDS. MERCY STREET. NOWHERE. THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Notched edges of wood offered only direction, no indication of distance or what turns one would encounter along the way. No roadmaps in the Edge of Madness Café; life did not come with a manual.
Ellen turned in the road, arms held out like a child spinning in an open field, making herself dizzy. Her eyes were adjusting to the brightness, the glare burned against her retinas, the shadows behind her magnified.
More first moments. The diner of post-war chrome, metal and neon dulled with time until it lost the look of carhops and saddle shoes and ‘57 Chevies, rebel without a cause. Jack was from a later time, the building taking on a lonelier aspect, abandoned and tired, a whispered sound like old guitars, country-rock ballads from Bob Seger and the Eagles and Bruce Springstein. Born to run. Already gone.
She stood in the middle of the road, one end running off into the expanse of desert until it disappeared beneath a mirage of shimmering liquid air. The other direction ended abruptly just a few yards away, a place where all rules finally and absolutely failed, and proved irrelevant.
You were born of this madness, she told herself. And so was Jack. Kindred souls, a lifetime spent finding your way back to one another.
A small robot coaxed the dream flyer away from the edge, its features somehow familiar, but not like anything she knew.
Something from before.
The robot stopped and turned, its face of reflective glass vaguely resembling a rudely fashioned space helmet, the dark hemispheres bisected, metal teeth-like devices running the base of its head like a jaw trap. There was something. Something…
“Do you know where the bathroom is?” she asked.
The robot tilted its head in a strangely inquisitive gesture, and pointed towards the open garage door, hand over-large, the digits tipped in sharpened metal claws.
“Thank you,” Ellen said, but the robot had already turned away, now motionless, apparently waiting for something … anything … nothing.
Ellen turned away herself, unable to shake the impression of familiarity; just as there was something familiar about the café. It was not the same, no, but there were things, familiar things. It tapped her earlier elation, a sadness for something forgotten that was more painful for not knowing the nature of the loss.
Or maybe you’re just crazy.
The garage was brighter than she expected, opening into the junkyard out back. She found an old sink beside the Pepsi machine, the basin stained with hard water minerals. A small alcove beside the opened garage door kept an out-of-place coat rack and a calendar with a blonde playmate preening against a muscle car. Within the garage, a long workbench littered with projects in various stages of completion: an abstract clay sculpture, a sword missing its pommel, remnants of devices broken-down, half-assembled, or simply discarded. A pegboard over the bench held so many tools so tightly organized that it hurt her eyes to look at them. And the shelves and floor below Jack’s workbench were packed with worn boxes and dozens of mismatched cans of paints. Tucked under the tool bench—impossibly, she thought—was another dragon’s tail, dull green scales and spines the color of nicotine-stained teeth. It pulled in a little as she walked through the garage, scales scraping lightly over the cement as whatever was attached to the other end struggled to escape notice … and failed.
The back of the garage had a second story; rudimentary storage space converted to base living quarters. A steep metal stairway hugged the wall leading up to the industrial mezzanine, Jack’s edge existence, a world clinging to the walls around an empty, useless courtyard of concrete looking up at a sky of corrugated steel and an industrial ventilation fan. She followed water pipes up from the ground to the bathroom the robot alluded to. On the second level between a narrow bunk bolted to the wall and a shower stall mounted in the corner was a toilet, a plank bridging the gap to the adjacent wall where a bathroom sink and mirror were similarly displaced. Light spilled in from a huge hole knocked through the corner of the building near Jack’s computer desk, suspended on racks of machined steel in front of a too-tall leather chair likely stolen from a coffeehouse. Jack’s living conditions seemed perilously close to a prison cell: exposed, impersonal, teetering on the edge.
But in a world without inhabitants, what did privacy really matter?
Ellen used the toilet, more concerned about its safety than its immodesty. Erected on a temporary catwalk, plumbing holes crudely hacked through the mismatched two-by-eights that served as a floor, Ellen found herself looking down through the gaps to the lower garage; her toes curled over the edge.
She stepped carefully towards the sink, some of the planks simply laid over short segments of I-beams protruding from the wall, a temporary solution to an inconvenience and nothing more. Looking in the mirror, she saw her hair in disarray, victim of her flight from the other world and her morning’s tryst with Jack. She tried finger-combing some order back into it, but finally gave up. She was a lost cause.
A door off the back opened to a fire escape, aging varnish cracked and flaking from the dry wood, the glass clouded with brown, oily grime. Opening the door, she stepped through into the imagination of Jack Lantirn. Here was the madness the diligent structure, the meticulous chrome, the tile and neon worked to conceal. Here was the artist, not the façade, not the mask worn for normalcy’s sake, order prostituted to lend form to the chaos of dreams. Behind the writer and the pages he yearned for others to read lay the font from which those words sprung.
She stepped past a metal fire door, the words Scarlet Cinema painted in garish, red lettering, ghoulish and carnival-kitsch, Saturday night horror movie fodder. A sign taped to the door warned: DO NOT ENTER — Reality in Progress.
But this did not intrigue her as much as the view of the junkyard. Fenced in by a ramshackle barrier of chain-link, barb wire, and corrugated sheet metal, was a tightly enclosed spectacle as fascinating in its minutia as it was inspiring in its grandeur.
Awestruck, she descended, curiosity leading her out into the packed dust like a child on Christmas morning, full of wonder.
A wooden windmill squeaked and clacked in the breeze beside a two-story rocket with Buck Rogers fins and little hope of space tr
avel, a prop from a cheap sci-fi movie. A small, padlocked box bolted to the rocket’s launch pad promised rocket ship rides for a quarter. An old, red pickup hunched near the garage entrance like a dependable tool or a well-worn path.
She had dreamed of this, Jack’s madness contagious and her infected.
She carefully picked her way through the maze of scrapyard sentinels, nothing thrown away so much as left behind like books gathering dust on a shelf; not useless, only not used. Science fiction robots now rusted and still, staring in blind silence, no more certain of their existence than the faded ‘57 Chevy with its busted windshield, smashed headlights and missing wheel rims that sat rusting on its rocker panels. A paralyzed herd of machines waited by the fence-line like animals circled against the elements; hobbled mechanical elephants, three still standing, another collapsed upon it side, a fifth crashed headlong to the ground and motionless. Other steel carcasses littered the area, incomplete, their bodies scavenged, the elephant’s graveyard at the end of days. Half-buried in the sand, a skeleton of a long-deceased air whale beside the ruined railroad tracks, a forgotten detail from a not-so-distant past. A trio of lobster traps sat beside a small carnival wagon with a barred front, whatever creature intended for display in this desert menagerie escaped or dead. What was a manticore anyway?
A small makeshift hut hugged the world’s edge, wind chimes softly ringing from inside, the strange dwelling like a tree stump of metal and piping, nature and machine, the living and the dead. Through an open hatch, she saw the remnants of a squatter’s shelter: a blanket and sweat-stained pillow, an unwashed coffee mug, an old coffee pot and hot plate, empty soup cans, a water-pipe.
In her dreams, Jack lived here, lost in his own mind.
Ruined typewriters lay scattered in the sand like stepping stones. Someone had painstakingly inscribed song lyrics on the hatch’s door, Steely Dan’s Do It Again. She remembered it from the hospital, impossible to forget, spliced into an eight-hour loop, three times a day, seven days a week. Wheel turning ‘round and ‘round. She found herself rubbing at her wrist, scars she could not explain, could not remember, not quite.
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 39