The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2)

by Mark Reynolds

  ‘Round and ‘round.

  Beside the hut was a small clearing in the sand, a cross with a single word carved into the stone: NAIL.

  She was wrong. This was not a junkyard at all, but a boneyard, an unearthed grave left behind by the unburied, the last dying where they fell, remnants of some lost tribe, the Anasazi, the Tribe of Dust. Jack did not collect junk, only relics and tokens and remains from the past: past lives, past memories, past dreams. And he stored them here, a memorial to all that was gone.

  Her fingers traced the Celtic knot carved into the ancient stone, remembering another time, another life, a gargoyle more loyal than any dog. Nail sacrificed everything to protect her, managing even to reach back from beyond the grave, killing the Cast Out that attacked her as she fled the Saloon.

  She could almost have allowed herself to believe that the details of her memory were as words on a page, no more sentiment than paper and ink. But everything she remembered was true. The stone told her so. And with that, the realization that even in a place of limitless possibilities, death was irrefutable. What was gone was gone, and it would never be again.

  Walking back along the edge-side of the diner, she found a bright blue door marked RESTROOMS, its look typical of a gas station where such amenities were both an afterthought and an inconvenience. She peered inside, the restroom a perverse mix of a public and private bathroom, and the edge of a shallow wetland. The walls were partially tiled in mottled shades of white, blue, green and gray. The floor tiles, the same black and white checkerboard as the diner, were under a foot of water level with the bottom of the door, nearly covering the single concrete step leading down. Lily pads floated atop the surface, but she saw no sign of koi fish or minnows or dragonflies. Just plants. There was a sink and mirror, a garbage can in the corner below a paper towel dispenser, and a sea-foam green divider that offered some privacy to anyone using the toilet in the back corner. Along the opposite wall was an enormous claw-foot tub with an antiquated showerhead rising over it. The tub, like the toilet and floor, was filled with water tinged green by the lilies and cattails and rushes growing everywhere. A skylight overhead, some of the panes broken and missing, brightened the room like a sparkling woodland glade.

  Ellen sat down upon the threshold and dipped her feet into the water, cold and refreshing, a reminder of how hot the Wasteland sun was. If assumed to be a bathroom, it was disgusting. But if allowed to be an urban grotto, it was surreal, even pleasing, a natural pond of porcelain and water lilies, tiles and cattails, a return to nature. Jack’s world was uncomplicated, existing at face value. Stripped of the preconceptions and illusions of normalcy that made the world a trial, it was a paradise of simplicity.

  Acceptance will set you free.

  “There’s a better bathroom on the second floor of the garage,” Jack said from behind her. He walked up slowly, still looking sleep-worn. “It’s not as private, but it’s less overrun.”

  “Thanks, but I already found it,” she answered. “I was just enjoying the shade.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh-hmm.”

  He came up beside her and sat down, leaning back against the doorframe.

  “It won’t go away again, will it?” she asked. “Like last time, I mean.”

  “No, that was different. I wasn’t the Caretaker then. The focal lens has been replaced, and I understand everything so much better than before. The Sanity’s Edge Saloon was borrowed; it couldn’t last.”

  “Borrowed?”

  “It was left to me by Algernon. Nothing borrowed ever lasts for long. Sooner or later, you have to give it back, make something of your own. Or you lose it.”

  “And all of this is yours?”

  Jack offered a smile. “I guess you could say that.”

  “Have you ever considered the possibility that you really are crazy?”

  Jack stared out at the empty world of open sky beyond the edge. “Once, maybe, but not now. Normal is just a word that describes people you don’t know very well. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that … or something to that effect. Crazy is nothing more than a person traveling in opposition to the prevailing mindset. Time is flexible until proven to be a constant, then a constant until proven to be variable. If you talk to God, you’re praying. If he talks back, you’re a lunatic. Believe in God, and you’re well adjusted. If God believes in you, you’re either a prophet or a heretic—depending upon who’s writing the history book. A terrorist is evil, a patriot noble; both blow up buildings to make their point. The kind of insanity that you’re talking about isn’t a state or a disease; it’s a social condition. If I don’t cry at my mother’s funeral, I’m insane. If I cry over the death of a movie star, I’m insane. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, to get my head in order, I suppose. And I’ve stopped worrying about the labels.”

  “Is that what you’re still doing here?” she asked in all seriousness. “Getting your head in order?”

  “Yes and no.”

  She leaned over to nudge him with her shoulder, playful and meaningful both at once. “How about a straight answer?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “How did you know I’d come back?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And what would you have done if I never came back? If I’d stayed back there and kept working at the bookstore, going to the coffee shop, leading a normal life?”

  “I would have gone on waiting. When you left, you took a part of me with you. I knew then that I would wait as long as necessary, forever if I had to. But I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

  Ellen reached out, gently touching his temple with her fingers, feeling the heat off his skin. “We hardly have anything in common. Thrown together by circumstance, we barely know each other. So how can you be so certain?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then why worry about the circumstances. Everyone meets by accident, or fate if you choose to call it that. But no one dictates how things happen.”

  “You do,” she said.

  He was quiet for a moment, and Ellen thought he was considering his answer, shaping the words so that they might make sense, persuading himself even if he could not persuade her. Another moment passed, and still he did not answer her. Ellen thought he might not.

  Then: “It’s different.”

  More silence, more thoughtful answers. Ellen realized that it was not an answer Jack was offering, but a confession.

  “I didn’t design how we came together, or how we feel. I only constructed a way back, a means to find your way. But everyone chooses their own course.”

  “In a world built from daydreams and imagination, who we are may be the only thing that’s real,” Ellen said softly.

  “This place is real enough,” Jack said defensively. “It can provide comfort and shelter, cause pain and sadness. You can live here and you can die here. What more is there to reality?”

  “But it’s not real the way the rest of the world is real. This is an asylum, Jack, a controlled environment of your own devising. There is a world more real than this one; it’s out there. We came from that world a lifetime ago. Shouldn’t we go back?”

  “We will. When we’re ready.”

  She nestled closer, head against his shoulder, comforted by the feeling of certainty, of warmth. “Where will we go?”

  “Wherever we want. I wasted so many years of my life living out other people’s goals and dreams, so much time conforming to a misplaced set of beliefs and boundaries until I believed I was content with the hole I was in. Algernon showed me another way, and I can never go back again. We’ll go when we’re ready. And we’ll go wherever we like. Life’s too short to waste on anything less.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  They held each other in the shade of the building, seated by a grotto of porcelain and tile and water lilies, and for a time they were as lovers reunited beneath the shade of
a willow on the shores of a private lake known only to those who dream.

  * * *

  They slept together that night, holding each other close; spoons in a drawer. Pressed tightly to Jack, feeling his naked skin against hers, the safety of his arms around her, Ellen slept without dreams.

  A SEMBLANCE OF NORMALCY

  The following morning, Ellen woke up not for dreams or nightmares or even an alarm clock, but from hunger. Time might be meaningless, the café trapped in an everlasting present, but hunger was real.

  She snuggled into Jack’s embrace, trying to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away. She finally slithered out from under the covers, disentangling herself from Jack. He slept surprisingly heavy; maybe still recovering from his marathon of writing. Or maybe he simply enjoyed the peace that came from her presence. It was nice to believe that might be the case, that she might be as good for him as he was for her.

  Maybe it was even true.

  She walked quietly to the toilet, the desert air cold against her skin, the muscles in her legs still stiff from yesterday. Time aboard the dream flyer seemed irrelevant, but the soreness in her muscles risked to differ, further supporting the argument for staying in bed a little longer. Details of the mezzanine emerged with the new light, dawn reflecting through the lower garage like a river of amber.

  In this, the strangest of all places, she finally felt like she was on the path to normalcy.

  Noise from the toilet and even the shower curtain rings against the rod raised little more than a muffled grunt from Jack, so she took her time; there was nowhere to go, nothing to be late to, no one to be late for. Just the present, the invigorating spray against her skin, the warm cascade of water through her hair and down her body, each breath filled with steam. Every muscle yielded to it, melting her into the water and the heat, revitalizing her. Who had she been before she met Jack? She wasn’t really sure, her life a collection of moments in the present, the future unpredictable, the past unalterable.

  Who was she before?

  It doesn’t matter.

  Who was she now?

  You are complete.

  When she stepped from the shower, Jack was awake, watching her through half-closed lids as she toweled off. She let him, the idea making her spine tingle. Then she sat down on the boards to gather up her clothes, dangling her feet over the edge like a child on a seaside dock. “Do you mind if I borrow a clean shirt?” she asked.

  “Go ahead. There should be something in the green duffel bag under the bed.” Then he got up and went to the recently vacated shower.

  Ellen rummaged the duffel bag, finding a large, white T-shirt. That and jeans would have to do until she could find some clothes for herself. She left the rest of yesterday’s dirty laundry in a tidy pile; she would deal with it later. “I’m gonna go downstairs to the diner for something to eat,” Ellen said over the spray of water.

  Jack poked his head from the edge of the shower curtain, water dripping from his hair and face. “I’ll be down in a few minutes, but go ahead without me.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said, kissing him softly on the mouth, tasting mostly water as it ran down his face. She quickly turned away and went down the stairs.

  Jack arrived ten minutes later, hair still wet. Already the morning was warming up into another summery day. Another day like yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And tomorrow would be no different.

  Ellen sat at their small booth in the corner, a cup of coffee already poured, its aroma a blend of hazelnut and charred wood, the suggestion of predilections, compulsions, addictions. She made a cup for Jack, cream and sugar the way he liked it.

  Breakfast was simple. Jack produced a few frozen bagels from the walk-in freezer and an old toaster from beneath the counter. He’d managed to locate some cream cheese and a half-empty jar of raspberry jelly that, to Ellen, tasted like summers spent in the country, sweet and nostalgic, a flavor instantly capable of evoking memories she was not sure were entirely her own. Memories of days that seemed less complicated somehow by the distance of time, the filter of years that allowed you to forget the things that were unimportant, and keep only the things you liked well enough to remember.

  After breakfast, they made love.

  They had both risen from the booth, Jack about to clear the dishes when Ellen leaned in to kiss him on the lips.

  “You taste like raspberries,” she said.

  “So do you.”

  They ended up on the floor, sprawled naked upon the checkered tiles, each reveling in the other, survivors of a desert crossing who could never again look to water the same way.

  Holding one another, they lay on the floor, the air cooling their skin, a silence like the world beneath the ocean.

  “How much of this is real?” Ellen asked.

  “All of it,” he said. “We’re a million miles from anyone or anything recognizable as normal, but that doesn’t make it any less real.” Then he turned away and started to get dressed, looking uncomfortable about his answer, as if he had said too much.

  “What about the past?” Ellen asked. “The time before the Nexus and the Edge and the Wasteland? I hardly remember any of it anymore, only you and I. But nothing before. Was there a past before my job at Dabble’s Books, before the daily coffees at Serena’s, that first morning at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon? I don’t remember any of it except in bits and flashes.”

  “You’re not a construct like Kreiger claimed if that’s what you’re asking,” Jack said. “There’s no such thing. Kreiger never realized that. You came to this place the same way I did, and we each had a life before. Accident or fate, call it what you like, but we found ourselves here. I was meant to be the Caretaker. You were supposed to be passing through. Something happened along the way.”

  “But how much of it is real?”

  Jack smiled unevenly. “Some of it. All of it. None of it. It depends on what you mean by real.”

  “Reality isn’t usually subject to interpretation,” she said. “It is, or it isn’t.”

  “I think it can be more complicated than that,” he answered. “Reality can be like the floor or the table or air, or it can be what you believe.”

  “Just because you believe in something doesn’t make it real.”

  Dressed only in jeans, Jack retrieved his coffee cup from the table and went to get a refill, his third. Somewhere in their distraction, the breakfast dishes disappeared, leaving only the coffee cups behind. If Jack thought this was unusual, he gave no indication. “If you limit reality to what can be demonstrated, it breaks down, flies apart. I can demonstrate the evolution of species over time, the failure and extinction of some, the survival and success of others. But there are literally millions who would argue against me, say that I was wrong, spiritually misguided, even ungodly. In their world, their reality, I’m a heretical lunatic. Over two billion people assert the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing God they have never seen nor heard, but who came to earth as a man born of a virgin, and died that we could live on past our mortality as souls they similarly cannot prove, but which they contend are both real and incontrovertible. They don’t believe in ghosts, but their belief in the soul is unwavering. That belief is reality.”

  Jack stirred his coffee with undo attention, avoiding Ellen’s expression. She had pulled on her clothes during his speech, one she was sure he had made to himself a dozen times, repetition helping to support his theory. But in the open air, it sounded flawed and impractical, proselytizing for the sake of argument. Jack glanced up and shrugged, the clinking spoon falling silent. “We can live here if we want. And we can die here whether we like it or not. How much more real does it need to be?”

  Ellen considered his answer for a moment, and asked, “How long can we stay?”

  “As long as we want. As long as we need.”

  There was a catch, Jack’s answer too carefully worded for her not to notice. They could leave anytime they wanted. But make no mistake; eventually, they would l
eave.

  But when we leave, will we leave together? Or is this place just an illusion that we have convinced ourselves is real? Is it doomed to be unbound, undone by the reality of a world in which a former mortgage company analyst with a penchant for writing genre-fiction in his spare time would have no reason to know an ex-junkie mental patient working a job in a bookstore on a release program negotiated by her rich father to keep her out of jail or a mental institution. There would be no love, no friendship, no connection. They would not even be acquaintances, theirs the simple anonymity of strangers whose lives were not intertwined, not intricately connected, not even accidentally joined by happenstance, but paths that passed and continued on, unaware, unconcerned.

  And she still had not forgotten the wristband, the broken window, the blood; scars she did not remember getting, but there all the same.

  She said nothing, some questions not worth having answered, especially when there was nothing you could do about it. Instead she said, “I’d like to stay here a little longer.”

  “Okay.”

  Joining him behind the counter, she poured herself a cup of coffee. “So what will we do here all alone?”

  Jack smiled, an expression both sincere and a bit mischievous. “Stay up late, sleep in, and hopefully have more breakfasts like this one.” It seemed to please him to see her blush slightly at the remark. Then he added. “But I think mostly we’ll spend the time remembering the things from our past that we want to take with us, and forgetting those things we would rather leave behind. No one can tell us who we are anymore.”

  Ellen offered no reply; there was nothing left to say.

  “I need to do some writing,” he confessed. “If I don’t do it now, I’ll forget what I want to say.”

  She smiled reassuringly. There were things about Jack that she understood, and this was one of those things: writers write. “Find me when you’re finished.”