Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  Since I got so little sleep, my session isn’t productive. Sometimes it isn’t, Indigo says. Sometimes, when you are distracted, and you dig deep enough into your brain, you find nothing but a series of scattered images. For me, it’s just blackness this time, a whole world of it. Nothing to grasp onto: just a bottomless abyss of darkness, accompanied by dizziness and a feeling of suction. Then the image changes, morphing into the silhouette of a small ship in a giant blue sea.

  I know I’m not supposed to analyze, but I can’t help comparing it to the Russian aircraft carrier. This ship is much smaller, and it has some sort of claw hanging from the back. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the aircraft carrier, but maybe we’ve moved on to another mission. I’ll never know.

  When I finally leave the viewing room, I glance toward the staff room, where Indigo has been for over an hour. He was too preoccupied with preparing for his next meeting to wait around until I finished my extensive post-session report. As soon as I finished viewing an hour ago, he rushed out to greet somebody waiting for him in the staff room. So, after I drop off my report in Indigo’s office, I join Jasper in the recovery room.

  “Up late, Calliope?” Jasper teases as I half collapse onto the other side of the blue velvet couch.

  I start to correct him, but I stop myself. My real name, which I usually hate, sounds beautiful on his lips.

  “Late enough,” I shoot back.

  “Why? Dreaming of me?”

  “I don’t dream,” I insist. “And if I did, it wouldn’t be about you.”

  “Everybody dreams.”

  “I don’t.” I shift uncomfortably on the couch, throwing a look toward the staff room door with the hope that Indigo will come out and save me from this conversation.

  “So then what does it look like to sleep?” Jasper asks. His lips are pressed tightly together, like he’s barely containing himself from laughing at me.

  “It’s like being dead,” I shrug. “It’s just blackness. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you’re blind in your sleep,” he says, scooting closer to me on the couch and wrapping his hands over my eyes so I can’t see anything.

  “Maybe you have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snap, but I don’t move to remove his hands.

  “I dream,” Jasper confides, still covering my eyes. “Sometimes I wake up screaming. And maybe I possibly even wake up crying, my pillow soaked through, but I wouldn’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  He drops his hands from my eyes and moves back to where he was originally sitting on the couch.

  Was he telling the truth? I turn to face him, hoping I can read the answer in his face, but it’s blank as a stone. “What do you dream about?”

  Jasper shrugs the question off. “We should try to communicate in our dreams,” he says, scratching the nonexistent dirt out from under his nails with a folded piece of white paper.

  “If I did dream, which I don’t,” I respond, “how would we do that?”

  “We each jot down an image we want to implant in the other’s dreams before we go to sleep, the weirder the better. Then, when we wake up in the morning, we write our dreams down. Then we read them to each other, and if you hear the image that you implanted, you have to tell the other person.”

  “Sounds interesting,” I say. But do I really want Jasper planting something in my dream? And how do I know if it’s really the image he planted, or if he’s just tricking me? “How do I know you won’t lie?” I ask.

  “You don’t.” Jasper grins. “But I won’t either.” Then, holding one hand up like a stop sign, he gestures behind his upturned hand toward the staff room door. “Check it out.”

  From this angle, I can see through the small window in the door, to where Indigo is talking to a pale, skinny guy with black bangs cut straight across his forehead. He’s wearing faded jeans with safety pins up the sides, a black T-shirt with the phrase Save the Planet plastered across the front, and black combat boots.

  “How do you think that guy got past Anthony?” Jasper asks.

  “Don’t you know who he is?”

  Jasper squints at the guy, but no recognition crosses his face. In the staff room, Indigo is talking with his hands, explaining something to the guy, and then he glances out the small window at us. He walks over and pulls down the shade, and their voices drop to a whisper. Game Over.

  Jasper looks at me and shakes his head. “Try me.”

  “Montgomery Cooper Junior,” I say. “The Montgomery Cooper?”

  Jasper looks blank.

  “Cooper Mining strike a bell?” I hum a short jingle (da-da-da-da-daaaahhhh!) and recognition registers across Jasper’s face.

  “The billionaire?” he asks. “I thought he was, like, a hundred years old!”

  “You’re thinking of Montgomery Senior,” I say. “Indigo is talking to Junior. I’ve heard that his dad was the meanest SOB on earth, and probably the most powerful. He owned half of the real estate in the city before he died last year.” I lean toward Jasper. “I heard that Junior inherited all forty billion of it, even though his dad tried to keep it from him.”

  “Poor guy,” Jasper says sarcastically. “And those were the only clothes he could afford?”

  “It is kind of sad! His dad actually made a public statement that his son was too incompetent to take over his business.” I glance over at the staff office’s closed door. “But Junior’s pretty cool: he’s given half of it away to environmental groups to clean up the mess his dad’s mines have left.”

  “So he’s a do-gooder,” Jasper shrugs. “He has the money to be one.”

  “Not everyone with money gives it away,” I protest.

  Just then, the door to the staff room opens, and the men come out. Up close, I can tell that Junior didn’t safety-pin his jeans together himself; they were manufactured that way. Even his black combat boots are polished too brightly to be punk. His whole look screams out that he’s trying too hard: anyone could see that just beneath the punk exterior, there’s a scared nerd poking his head out. It makes me like him more.

  “Then we’ll see you tomorrow,” Indigo says. He starts to pat Junior on the back, but Junior turns and awkwardly thrusts out his hand, and Indigo ends up patting him on the chest instead. Indigo barely notices, but Junior sees us watching from the couch a few feet away and steps quickly away from Indigo, blushing bright red.

  “Can you say awkward?” Jasper whispers. Jasper and I wave, and Junior nods and shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. The safety pins strain with the pressure.

  “Callie, Jasper, this is Junior,” Indigo says.

  “Monty,” he says. It comes out squeaky and prepubescent, and although he must be in his late twenties, he sounds like a kid.

  I’m sure I see Indigo blush, although it’s gone the second I see it. “Junior’s—I mean, Monty’s company was partly responsible for cleaning up after that toxic spill last year.”

  “There were hundreds of volunteers,” Monty responds. “And as Dad always said, I was just another face in the crowd.” His shoulders start to slump inward, but he pulls them back and forces a smile onto his face. “Tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow.” Indigo holds his hand out, but Monty just gives him a quick wave as he opens the door and walks out into the hallway.

  When the door shuts behind him, Jasper rounds on Indigo. “I thought we didn’t do that kind of work,” Jasper says. Indigo doesn’t say anything, but his lips tighten into firm pale lines.

  “What kind of work?” I ask, looking back and forth between them.

  “The paying kind,” Indigo says.

  “The selling-out kind,” Jasper retorts.

  “His company contracts with the government,” Indigo says. “It’s not like he’s some stranger off the street.”

  “Still, I didn’t come here to—”

  “My office, Jasper.” Indigo turns on his heel and walks into his office. Jasper rolls his eyes and follows.

  “G
et over yourself,” I hear Indigo say as he shuts his office door. I watch them for a second, trying to make out the angry words flying back and forth through the air. I can’t hear them, so, assuming they’ll work it out between the two of them, I head out of the office in time to catch the bus to Charlie’s house.

  When I get off the bus at Charlie’s neighborhood, the scent of sulfur is so intense it stings my nose. I don’t know how Charlie stands living so close to the salt flats, but I suppose their beauty outweighs the smell, at least on a day like today, when they are glowing bright pink, almost the same color as the hoodie I have on. Mother Nature freaks me out sometimes. Like, where’d she get the idea to put bacteria-creating algae in salt ponds that would make them turn all sorts of neon colors? Seems like something one of the potheads on the Berkeley campus would dream up.

  I knock on the front door of Charlie’s ranch-style home. “Charlie?” I call, and his mom pulls open the front door. Grace has gray hair, tucked back in a bun, and her skin is rosy, which she claims comes from her diet of brown rice and organic vegetables.

  “Hello dear,” Grace says as she opens the creaky screen door and pulls me into an embrace. “Any migraines lately?” I shake my head. “I’m so glad,” she continues. “Looking for Charlie?”

  I nod, untangling myself from her motherly hug.

  “Mom?” I hear Charlie’s voice call from inside the house. “Who is it?”

  “Why don’t you come in?” Grace suggests. “Have a cup of tea. I was just on my way out.” Grace always has a way of leaving Charlie and me alone just when we need it. She picks up her gray purse and tucks it under one arm, then sidesteps me to get out of the house. I let the screen door close softly behind me. The house smells like chamomile.

  “What a nice surprise,” Charlie says, wrapping his arms around me so tightly it tunes out the radio voices. In this house, I feel like I go from one hug to another. Not that I’m complaining.

  “I thought we could watch the sunset from here today,” I say, nestling deeper into his chest.

  A scream shatters my ears.

  “We can watch it with Colin,” Charlie sighs.

  “Callie!” Colin says and throws himself into our hug, crushing me between the two of them. “Callie Sandwich,” he giggles.

  “Hi Colin,” I muffle into Charlie’s shirt.

  “I think we’re suffocating her,” Charlie says, and gently pushes Colin back to give me some air.

  Colin looks at both of us with his “happy” expression. He’s been learning emotions lately. Charlie holds up a picture of a sad face, or a happy face, or an angry face, and Colin has to figure out which emotion it is expressing. Then, he tries to imitate it. Happy. Sad. Bored. Confused. Angry.

  Colin is doing his happy face right now, his lips stretching up to his nose in an almost maniacal way. “Did you know that it’s just small particles of dust, water, and pollutants that makes the sunset look so colorful?”

  “Reflecting the light, right?” I respond, and Colin’s grin gets larger. “Are you asking us to watch the sunset with you?” I ask, and he nods.

  Soon Charlie, Colin, and I are sitting on the front porch, staring over the salt flats as they turn from a bright pink to a murky red. The wood porch creaks under our weight. With my back leaning against the house, I spread my legs out over Charlie’s legs, so I’m half sprawled on him. He lightly rubs my hair with two fingers.

  “Did you know that the astronauts used the salt flats’ bright colors to help guide the space shuttle back to earth?” Charlie asks Colin.

  “Uh-uh.” Colin shakes his head.

  Charlie has told Colin this a thousand times, but Colin always wants to hear the story. “The astronauts were lost, just wandering around out there in space, missing home. They had gone too far into space to find their way back,” Charlie says. “But then they saw the salt flats, and they said it looked like someone had graffitied the earth to help bring them home.”

  Colin loves graffiti. Big red names edged in black lettering, yellow stars over highways, murals on the outsides of buildings. Last week Charlie caught him drawing on the outside of the house in marker. He is learning how to spell his name, and it took Charlie over an hour to wash C O L off the front of the house. I can tell Colin’s looking for a new place to draw by the way he’s scanning every square inch of the sidewalk below us.

  “There,” Colin says, pointing about a hundred feet down the sidewalk. He grabs a purple stick of chalk from the box on the stairs. “Prepare for light speed,” Colin says, and starts spinning his arms around in circles like he’s revving up. “One hundred thousand . . . one hundred and fifty thousand . . . one hundred and eighty-six thousand, two hundred and eighty-two miles per second,” he yells. “Light speed, go!” Colin runs off, arms whirling like an airplane, leaving Charlie and me alone. I snuggle up next to Charlie, and we watch Colin together until he plops down on the sidewalk a few houses down.

  “Thanks for being so nice to Colin,” Charlie says, and then we are kissing. Kissing Charlie is like swimming in a warm ocean. It gently carries you along until you’ve completely given up control, and you’re floating, mindless, gazing at the sky.

  His arms are around me, and as he pulls me onto his lap. I wrap my legs around his and lean all of my weight onto him. He puts one hand behind him for balance, and he holds me up, like he always does.

  A hand tugs on my hair, pulling my head backward, and my lips disconnect from Charlie’s. “Ouch,” I yelp.

  “I’ve gotta show you something,” Colin says, and grabs my hand, dragging me off Charlie’s lap and across the porch to the front door. Charlie follows a few feet behind us, sporting the “apologetic” look he’s been trying so hard to teach Colin.

  Colin drags me through the house and out into the back patio in the lush green backyard. My nose stings of salt, but I don’t mind the smell of salt here, because it mixes with the scents of mint and basil, sage and rosemary. In her overflowing flowerbeds, Grace grows medicinal herbs. It looks like they are all in flower now, which to Grace means she’s left them too long, and they’ve “gone to seed.” I think they’re beautiful.

  “This is base,” Colin says, leaning down and smacking the concrete patio with one hand. “One . . . two . . . three . . . you’re it!” he yells and runs back into the house. “CALLIE!” Colin screams from inside the house. “Come find me!”

  I smile at Charlie. “I’ll be right back.”

  Colin’s not in the living room, or the bathroom, or the den. He’s not in his bedroom, or the kitchen, or Grace’s room. “Colin!” I call, getting nothing but silence in return. He must be in Charlie’s room. Charlie lives in the basement downstairs. Grace works two jobs, so Charlie takes care of Colin when he’s not at school or working, and his bedroom is the only place he gets peace. Even I rarely go down there, since we usually hang out at my house, and even when I’m here, we’re usually upstairs with Colin, since Colin’s not allowed in Charlie’s room. But this time Colin’s broken that rule, so I open the door to the basement and head down the stairs, calling Colin’s name.

  In Charlie’s bedroom, I flip on the lights, and the stereotypical boy’s room springs to life: dirty laundry on the floor, plates of half-eaten food tilting off the desk, blue plaid comforter hanging off the bed. Colin is hiding under the bed, his eyes poking out from behind the blue comforter. But I don’t go to Colin right away, because hanging from every wall are framed photographs. Of me.

  In one, my hair is over my face so only one eye peeks out. I’m leaning against a eucalyptus tree in the Panhandle, wearing a brown cable-knit sweater that blends into the knotty wood. When did he take that?

  In another I am sitting in my bedroom window. It’s night, and the only light in the picture is from the lamp behind me. I’m only a silhouette of myself. I didn’t know he was taking pictures of me.

  “You were supposed to find me,” Colin whines as he crawls out from under the bed. “You have to say, ‘I see you.’”


  “I see you,” I say softly. I’m staring at a picture of me stepping out of my house, my coffee cup in my hand and my backpack swinging from one shoulder. How much has he seen?

  “Colin!” Charlie’s voice behind me is angry. “This was supposed to be a surprise!”

  “I forgot,” Colin giggles.

  “It was,” I say, turning to Charlie, “a surprise.” Although I don’t know if it was a good or bad one.

  “This is my exhibit.” Charlie sighs as he sweeps an arm around the room. “You weren’t supposed to see it until the opening.” He walks over and tilts a picture so it sits upright on the wall. “This is my favorite. You’re beautiful in every one, but in this one, you just look . . . I don’t know. Profound, maybe. Like you’re gazing into the past.” In this one, I’m standing in Death Row at Charlie’s work, looking vacantly at the Execution machine. My black hair is hidden under the pale pink hood of my sweatshirt, and my gray eyes reflect the machine’s little hanging man. The lights are winking around me, giving the scene this gritty retro feel, like I’m in an old arcade in Atlantic City or something. “My show is called Muse,” Charlie says. “As in, you.”

  I glance over the row of framed pictures, and it feels like every heartbeat is half-love, half-fear.

  “You know how I’m planning on majoring in portrait photography?” Charlie continues, “Well, there’s no one I’d rather take pictures of than you. I had kind of planned on it being an anniversary present anyway. But I don’t have to show them at my exhibit,” he adds, “if you’re not comfortable with it.”

  I glance up at Charlie’s lip trembling with worry, and I am sure that he doesn’t know anything about my job. Charlie is an open book, and in his eyes, there’s no suspicion, only a soft adoration that warms me from the inside out. I know I could ask him not to hang the photos, and he wouldn’t, but his show is called Muse. I never thought I’d be anyone’s muse.

  “I love it,” I say.

  “You do?” A slow smile spreads over Charlie’s face.