They’d passed into California that morning, first through landscape no different from Nevada, then gradually through farmland, industrial zones, suburban tracts. Many of the buildings were obviously inhabited. They’d even passed a few cars on the highway, all of them solar models. The drivers had ignored them. They’d stranded on a quiet strip of highway between exits, dead, brushy grass on either side, but there were refinery towers and tall office buildings visible in the distance, and a highway overpass only a hundred yards ahead.
“What now?” said Melinda.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s walk up there,” she said, spooning out the last clump of food in the can.
The sky was bright but gray. Chaos squinted at what he could see of the town and didn’t say anything. He thought about how he’d wandered into the green and taken on the Moon identity. He wondered if something like that would happen here, and whether he could be conscious of it, and struggle to resist, or whether it would overwhelm him. He envied Boyd, who’d boasted of immunity to the changes.
“This is California, right?” said Melinda.
Chaos nodded.
“We can’t skip every town. Gotta go in sometime.”
“Okay,” said Chaos.
They walked to the overpass and up the embankment, following the smaller road a mile or so, past yards full of wrecked cars and a series of low, flat factory buildings with every window broken. They came to a place where a house sat by itself in a big, empty yard, and were about to walk past when they heard a voice inside.
Chaos started for the porch of the house, then stopped.
“Listen,” he said. “Remember before, the way I was somebody else? In the green?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“It didn’t happen to you the same way, did it?”
“I don’t know,” she answered in a pained voice. “I guess not. I mean, not like you.”
“You couldn’t see in the green, could you?”
“No.”
“But you could still remember before,” he said. “Kellogg and everything.”
“Yes.”
“And what did you think was happening?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You thought I was your daughter. It was like it was true—”
“You remembered both things,” Chaos suggested. “You remembered your real parents, but you remembered me too.”
She started to cry. They sat at the edge of the road in the bright sunlight outside the house with the voices coming from it, and she curled up in his lap, grew small and childlike again, and wept. He stroked her fur. When she stopped, he said, “I need your help.”
“How?”
“Keep me from forgetting. Don’t let me get lost like that again.”
“I tried sayin’ something, Chaos—”
“Kick me in the shins, do whatever it takes, okay? Because I’ve got a lot of things to figure out now. I can’t let myself forget.”
“Okay,” she said softly, then said, “I thought it wasn’t supposed to be like that. I thought that’s why we came to California.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just in case.”
“Okay.”
“There’s something else. Are you still having my dreams?”
She nodded fearfully.
“Tell me about it, when that happens. Let me know what you saw. Will you do that?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. She crawled out of his lap and dusted herself off, defiantly independent again. “All right.”
Chaos stood up and listened again to the voice or voices from inside the house. It wasn’t like one person talking, and it wasn’t like a conversation. It was something else which he remembered dimly from before, some other kind of talk. He wanted to remember. He stepped a little closer but still couldn’t make out the sound.
He went up to the porch, and Melinda followed. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and called out, “Hello?” No one answered. They walked inside.
The sound was a television set. It was playing in an empty living room. The house was furnished and neat. It was as though someone had just stepped out. Melinda stopped in front of the television, mouth open, astonished. The televisions in Hatfork were mostly bashed in; none of them had broadcast anything since the disaster.
Chaos left her there and walked through the house, knocking on doors and waiting for an answer, but none came.
He went into the kitchen. A breeze was blowing in through an open window over the counter, riffling the curtains. He tried the sink; the water ran. The drainer was loaded with dishes, some still wet. He looked in the fridge. It was full of plastic containers of food sealed with tinfoil or plastic wrap and prominently labeled with Magic Marker on white stickers. Melinda came in. He gave her a piece of cold fried chicken and a glass of orange juice, and she sat down at the table and ate noisily.
It was Wednesday. Moving Day again. Every Wednesday and Saturday, but Saturdays were simpler, because the boys were with their father. That was how she thought of him now, not Gerald, not my ex, but their father. Just drop the boys off on Friday, move alone on Saturday afternoon, and pick them up and show them the new place on Sunday night. Whereas Wednesdays she had to convince Ray and Dave to abandon whatever playthings or hideouts they’d latched onto in the current house and to say goodbye to the kids they’d befriended on the street, and then shepherd them into the car before the new family showed up to take over the house.
Today, as she moved the last of her bags of clothing out to the car, Ray and Dave were nowhere to be seen. She was late again; the neighboring houses had emptied, and she was afraid the boys were sneaking in basement windows to explore and ransack. Not a pleasant thought: if the boys were caught in an empty house when the new occupants arrived, they’d probably be issued a citation, and she was only two citations short of having to appear before the Luck Board and make another appeal. Ray and Dave were underage, so their citations counted against her. A few more times before the Board, and she’d be sent to a bad luck camp.
Except she probably wouldn’t. Cooley would see to that. She knew he would keep her where he had her: right on the verge of losing it all, helpless, dependent on his favors. It was his miserable, fucked-up way of flirting with her.
She scanned the street for a sign of the boys as she loaded her belongings into the trunk. She kept too much stuff when she moved, more clothing than you were supposed to have, and a small knapsack full of books, which you weren’t supposed to move from house to house at all—you were supposed to be satisfied to read whatever books or magazines you found in your new place, and not want to take any of them with you. Someone could give her a ticket for that, too, but she was cautious, camouflaging the books with oily rags and a kit of wrenches and screwdrivers and pushing them into the corner of the trunk, so they looked like something that went with the car.
She got in and honked, then started the car and drove slowly around the block to find the boys. It was 12:15, and the new families were beginning to arrive. She recognized a couple of faces, people she’d lived below or above or beside in some previous apartment building or neighborhood. She knew hundreds of people slightly, by sight. The system discouraged anything more than that; neighbors, even friendly ones, rarely bothered exchanging names.
Though the day was bright, it wasn’t too hot. The new address was all the way across town, but as long as it wasn’t too hot she wouldn’t mind the drive. They’d put her somewhere on the outskirts this time, an area beyond the old refineries, a place she’d never lived before despite moving twice a week. She’d heard the houses were big and isolated, which she wouldn’t mind. But there was no sign of the boys—until she turned the last corner, back to the house she’d just vacated, and found them standing on the curb with Cooley. He had his hands on their shoulders and a big grin on his face, the bastard. Had he caught them stealing?
Cooley was a Luck Investigator, and though she didn’t completely understand the organization of the Vacaville L
uck Institute, she knew he was somewhere near the top of it. Not that his work kept him from coming to pester her whenever he felt like it. She’d done her initial Luck test with him, and he’d taken a far too personal interest in her case ever since.
She’d scored low, very low. Low enough that she might have had to give up her car, let Gerald take the kids, and move right into one of the bad luck shelters, if Cooley hadn’t intervened—and Cooley would never let her forget it. He especially liked to drop in on Moving Day, when she was most flustered.
“Ray, Dave, come get in the car.”
“Hello, Edie,” said Cooley, stepping up with the two boys. “Lose track of the calamity twins here?”
She granted him the point; obviously she’d been looking for them. “Were they stealing?” she asked tensely.
Cooley was a wide man. That was the only word for it. He wasn’t fat—more like a skinny cartoon character who’d swallowed a door and retained its shape. He always wore suits, even in the hottest weather, and they hung on him like bedsheets drying on a line. His face was the same way, too wide, eyes too far apart, a reptilian smile that stretched on and on. Despite all this he was somehow handsome.
“No, Mom,” said Ray. “Mister Cooley was just showing us the sewers. There’s frogs living down there.”
“I found them at the end of the street,” said Cooley. “Saw you go around the block, and I didn’t think you’d seen us. So I walked back up here.”
“Dave thought you moved without us,” said Ray sardonically.
“I did not,” said Dave.
“Well, get in the car. Come on.” She held the door open. “Thanks, Ian,” she said to Cooley, hoping he’d leave. The boys climbed into the seat beside her, and she reached over and locked the passenger door. Cooley walked in front of the car and around to her side.
“New place is all the way across town,” he said.
“You’ve been looking at my file again.”
“I punch up your file and just let it sit there on the screen,” he said and grinned. “Like having a picture of you on my desk.”
“That’s nice.” She was weary of his insinuations.
“Well, you don’t know what’s nice about it yet. Your new place is just around the corner from where I’ll be living.” Cooley, like other high-level government officials, moved among a better class of houses, the kind she’d seen only on television. Of course, as he’d often pointed out, she could live in them herself—if she moved in with him.
“You’re in that little farmhouse behind the wrecking yard,” he said. “Nearest thing to my place. You’ll have to come see how I live up there. This takes away your excuse.”
She nodded back at the kids. “Maybe when they’re back at their father’s . . .”
“Ian has a treehouse in his yard,” interrupted Ray. “He said we could play in it if you let us, Mom.”
“You’ll disappoint the boys,” said Cooley.
“I’ve got to get moved in, Ian,” she said, thinking: You shit. Don’t play the boys off me like this. She released the handbrake and let the car inch forward. “Stop by later, when I can think, okay?”
“Tonight?”
“Try me. No guarantees.”
He smiled. “Good enough.” He gave a thumbs-up signal to the boys, and they returned it, unwitting conspirators against her. She drove away, leaving Cooley standing in the street.
It was indeed behind the wrecking yard, and behind the old VelaMint factory and the abandoned high school. It was the only house for miles around, a leftover from a residential neighborhood that had been demolished for industry. A little scary, thinking of just her and Cooley all the way out here alone. But it was only a few days. That was the good side of moving; it was always only a few days. She parked in the street outside the yard and gave Ray and Dave each a small bag to drag.
At the front door she sensed something wrong. Not the television playing; that was common. People left things running all the time, sometimes even the water in the sink. But there were sounds in the kitchen.
She went in to investigate, still holding her suitcase, the boys trailing behind her.
A very dirty man sat at the kitchen table eating chicken and drinking orange juice with a girl. Edie would have called the girl dirty too if there hadn’t been something more notable about her: she was furry, like a seal or otter. The man and girl looked up, still chewing, but didn’t say anything. Edie felt a surge of anger and confusion, but swept it away; she knew how to deal with this. It was a blessing in disguise. She only had to find her summons book, and she could give out a citation. Maybe she’d meet her quota this month after all.
She patted her pockets. It wasn’t with her. “Ray,” she said, ignoring the man and girl, “go to the car and find my ticket book. You remember what it looks like?”
Ray nodded, dropped his bag, and disappeared.
She turned back to the pair at the table. “I’m giving you a ticket. Then you have to move; it’s past twelve. I mean. I’m even running late. So, I’m sorry, but you’ve earned it. Where’s your car?”
The man swallowed his bite of chicken and said, “We left it by the highway. A ticket to what?”
“Mommy,” said Dave, “why’s her hair like that?”
“Dave, that’s not polite. Go in the other room, or help your brother unpack the car.” Dave went. “I’m sorry, he’s only six. You left your car where? By the highway?”
The man nodded. “It didn’t work anymore.”
Edie felt confused. Where were these two going? And how could they move without a car?
“I’m not from around here,” said the man. “I’m sorry. We needed to eat.”
Slowly the air went out of her. This wasn’t right. She wasn’t going to get to write a ticket after all. It was turning into more bad luck, more proof that her low score on the test really meant something.
The way things were going lately, the appearance in her house of the man and the furry girl would probably turn out to be a thing someone could write her a citation for.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Wyoming. Little America—”
“Hatfork,” said the girl reprovingly.
“—but we’ve been on the road for a while,” the man went on. “There haven’t been many good places to stop.”
“Well, that’s my food you’re eating,” said Edie. “And this is my house you’ve stopped in.”
“Your food?” said the hairy girl. “I thought you just got here.”
“As of twelve it’s mine,” said Edie. It was exhausting to think she had to explain moving to them. “Before that it was somebody else’s, not yours . . .”
The boys appeared in the doorway behind her, Ray with her summons book. “Here, Mom—”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Put it in the living room.”
“We’ll go,” said the man. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Edie said. “Why don’t you use the shower, catch your breath . . .” She couldn’t help wanting to introduce this person to some hot water and soap.
The boys were standing in the doorway, staring at the girl with the fur. The girl made her eyes wide and stuck out her tongue, and the boys tittered.
“Well, thanks,” said the man.
“Then you have to find another place to go,” she said quickly. “If you want to stay in Vacaville, you have to register, you know. Sign up for work shifts . . .”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll find out about all that,” He made it sound very unimportant. “I guess I will take that shower.” He got up from the table, leaving the remains of his meal there, and went past her and the boys through the kitchen doorway, his eyes lowered shyly.
Ray said to the girl, “Wanna watch TV?”
The girl didn’t answer, but squirted past Edie into the living room to follow the boys.
Edie unpacked the rest of the luggage into a pile on the living room rug while Ray and Dave and the girl sat watching television. “T
est Your Luck!” was on, the afternoon game show hosted by President Kentman. Edie could make out the sound of the shower running upstairs. After she emptied the car, she went in and cleaned up the kitchen, by habit cataloguing her new larder in the process. Then she made the boys sandwiches and went and sat and watched them watch television. Ray and Dave had a game of rooting for opposing contestants which turned any viewing of the show into a shouting match. The girl, meanwhile, sat transfixed and silent.
When the man came downstairs, he looked quite different. He’d found a razor, apparently, and scraped the shadow off his face. Though he wore the same drab shirt and jeans, his ratty hair wasn’t ratty anymore; it was slicked back wet over his head, exposing his forehead and eyes, which were strong, stronger than his mouth and chin. He suddenly looked nice. He met her eyes for a moment and then dropped them back to the floor.
“Thanks,” he said again. Then„ turning to the girl: “Go upstairs and get cleaned up.”
“Okay but come here and lookit this, Chaos.”
She pointed at the television, and the man went and stood behind the sofa and watched. Ray began explaining the rules of the game show in his most self-important voice, the one that reminded Edie of Gerald, and the man listened politely, his eyes fixed on the screen.
The girl got up and put her finger on the screen. “This guy is like Kellogg,” she said.
The man nodded. “Go upstairs,” he said softly. “We should leave before long.”
“Okay, okay.” She rubbed at her furry nose with the back of her hand, then finally tore herself from the television. “Where?”
The man pointed to the stairs, and the girl shuffled petulantly away.
Ray resumed his elaborate, incomprehensible description of the rules.
Edie left them there and went upstairs. She found the girl standing in the bathroom and staring at the tub. “What’s the matter?” said Edie.
The girl made a sour face. “You wanna show me how?”
Edie turned on the shower for her, and the girl said, “Can’t you just fill it up? I’ve done that before.”
Amnesia Moon Page 7