Amnesia Moon

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Fair enough,” said Harriman. “But he must also understand that his best chance of realizing them is with our assistance. His specialness has been more a plague to him thus far than a blessing. Isn’t that right, Everett?”

  Had it been a plague? He gulped down another bite of sandwich and said, “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  “You’re selling his sense of social injustice a little short, Dawn. Everett has been traveling, and he’s seen, more than you or I or anyone else here, probably, just what the misuse or neglect of this sort of potential can mean. You left people behind in your journeys—didn’t you, Everett?—probably in some pretty dire straits.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, thinking, trying not to think, of Edie.

  “Am I wrong to assume that if you could change things, here or elsewhere, for the better, that it would matter to you?”

  “If I believed that . . .” What had Ilford been telling these people? What promises had he made? “But I’m not sure I do.”

  “Right.” Harriman clapped him on the shoulder and grinned again, as though Everett had passed some test. “And so that’s what we’re here to show you. How you can. But let’s do as Ilford said, and talk later. I’m going to get another drink.” He went in the direction of the kitchen.

  Dawn had moved to the couch, where she sat looking bored beside another, somewhat older man who had gray hair and a dark mustache. Two other couples stood nearby talking quietly, working on drinks, and when Everett looked their way, they were quick to smile back at him. It was a room full of seemingly ordinary people, yet in the midst of the tapestry of disasters the world had become, it had a chilly, preserved quality, like a wax museum. He wondered if the cabal of leaders who ran Vacaville looked something like this before they transformed themselves into television stars and comic-book superheroes.

  When he turned again, the mustache-man and another woman had stood and Dawn was making introductions; Sylvia Greenbaum and Dennis Ard were the new names, which Everett struggled to retain. Sylvia Greenbaum’s eyes were bugged, and her full lips were slightly blistered. This, together with her explosive gesticulations, made Everett want to back away. She resumed a story.

  “—it all came down to a tug-of-war between these two. Tree was this shambling old man, he liked to roam around picking mushrooms and talking to cows, just a feeble, eccentric old man, but he had us believe he was a German rocket scientist and that he’d blown up the world! We were supposed to feel all this guilt for him, through the dreams, because he was so sure he’d caused it all to happen. And then Hoppington was in this cart thing, like a wheelchair, but he was young.” She stopped and smiled shyly at Everett. Then the mustache-man put his hand on her shoulder, and she was encouraged to go on. “He was totally crazy, worse than Tree. And the two of them kept wrestling for control, back and forth . . .”

  Everett must have looked contused. “Sylvia’s talking about West Marin,” said Dawn. “That’s where she was before she came here. She’s like you, she escaped.”

  “It’s probably still that way,” said Sylvia. “We were all trapped there for what felt like years. The most god-awful place, except Ilford was telling me you’d been to the one where everything is green? I still can’t imagine that.”

  “I’ve been to places worse than that,” said Everett.

  “You mean where they’re having that war with the aliens? Have you been there?”

  “Uh, not that one.”

  “Dennis, tell Everett . . .” Sylvia nudged Dennis Ard. At the same time Dawn Crash looked at Everett, rolled her eyes, signaling exasperation, and slipped away.

  “I’ve been getting these dreams, ever since the break,” explained Ard, a little shy. “From somewhere back east, I don’t know where. They’re the most degrading dreams, about how I’m sick and worthless, diseased inside, and if I talk to anyone else or tell them who I am, I’ll poison them too. I’ll drag them down into this diseased, degraded world. I don’t know why, I just seem to have a special receptivity to this awful dreamer, whoever he is, who’s very far away. No one else has ever dreamed for him.”

  “Dennis has been living here ever since the break,” said Sylvia. “It’s not like he went out looking for this.”

  “Anyway, it’s been a terrible struggle for me. I wake up each day convinced I’m this awful diseased thing the dreams say I am. I have to be told over and over that it’s not true. I won’t admit who I am, or sign my name, or anything else that might spread the disease. But you don’t need to hear this.” He sighed heavily, looking close to tears. “The point is, it recently changed. When Ilford brought you back here, I started dreaming for you instead.”

  “Ilford didn’t bring me back,” said Everett. Here was one point he was clear on. “I just came.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Ard continued. “Anyway, it’s the first rest I’ve had. I just wanted to tell you. And to thank you.”

  “You’re . . . welcome,” said Everett.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Sylvia. “I think the work you’re doing with Ilford and Harriman is very exciting. Maybe soon you’ll be able to do for West Marin what you did for Dennis—”

  “I’m not exactly working with them yet,” said Everett.

  Dawn was back, tugging on his arm. “Excuse me, Sylvia,” she said. “I have to steal Everett here.” She steered him away towards a small study behind the stairs. He looked back with longing at his plate but didn’t resist. She pointed him to a chair in the darkened room and shut the door behind them, then ground out her cigarette in a tray on a small table. He sat on the thick carpet instead of the chair, and Dawn plopped down beside him.

  “I didn’t mean to trap you with Sylvia and Dennis,” she said. “They insisted on meeting you.”

  “You all want to meet me,” he said.

  “Dennis tell you about his problem?” Dawn leaned in close to him, too close in the dark for him to read her expression.

  “You mean how he picks up the dreams.”

  “Yeah. Did I tell you my theory about that?”

  Was she implying that they’d spoken before? Was he supposed to remember her? He felt confused, but he put it aside. “No.”

  “Well, the one who keeps telling him he’s a worthless lump of disease? The one nobody else hears?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think it’s his ex-wife.” She laughed sharply.

  “So there are dreamers here,” he suggested.

  “Well, there’s you.”

  “This place can’t be free of it.” Everett thought of the fog surrounding the house, of No Alley’s strange isolation in the city, and Cale. Cale’s partial incarnation in his father’s face, and ghostly existence in Billy Fault’s refrigerator.

  “Take a look around you,” said Dawn. “We don’t have to move every three days, we don’t worship the television. This isn’t Vacaville. Nobody planned this.”

  “You know all that from my dreams?”

  “I know about Vacaville from a lot of people. It’s not that far away.”

  Everett shook his head, trying to sort out his thoughts. He could hear the party going on, the clink of glasses, the murmur of voices. “Planned things, bureaucratic places like Vacaville—those aren’t the only kind. Those are the exception.”

  “Christ, Everett, we’re going to have to listen to Harry talk about this stuff,” Dawn said in an exaggerated, sultry tone. “We’re going to talk about it all night. I just wanted to get a minute alone with you first.”

  “Okay.”

  “I find your dreams sexy,” she said, her breath on his cheek. “I just wanted to say that. Is that all right?”

  Everett nodded.

  “What do you think of me?” She tilted her head away but moved her body closer.

  “I’m reserving judgment,” he managed.

  “What,” she said, “is this scene a little too much for you?”

  “I haven’t been in that many . . . scenes lately.” Not this kind anyway,
he thought.

  “I want to see you again, Everett. When we’re not at a party. Can I ask that?”

  “Sure.”

  She leaned over and kissed him, once, on the lips. At that moment the doorknob clicked and a wedge of light shot across the small room.

  “There you are,” said Fault, grinning at them. “Ilford’s wondering.”

  “Ilford can wait,” said Dawn.

  Fault sat down behind them. He didn’t speak, just brought out a kit of syringes and a vial from his jacket pocket.

  “Is that Cale?” asked Dawn. Everett just sat, openmouthed and wondering.

  Fault raised an eyebrow. “Why? You want some?”

  “Why not?” she said.

  “It’s for Everett and me,” said Fault, a bit nervously. “Only way I can take these little gatherings of Ilford’s. Thought it might help him too.”

  “Give me some.” She stretched her arm out towards him, made a kittenish, pouting face, like someone years younger.

  “What we’re proposing is very simple,” said Harriman Crash. He paused for effect, and Dawn, on cue, sighed loudly. “So far you’ve been operating at random. I can help you refine the ability, to develop complete control over it.”

  “You want a dreamer, you mean,” said Everett. “Here in the one place there isn’t one.”

  Ilford started to speak, but Harriman raised a hand.

  “Not so simply,” he said. “We’re more responsible than that, Everett, as well as somewhat more ambitious. With your help we’d like to create a broader coherence, a sort of viral coherence that would roll outward from here, reclaiming other territories, other realities. Of course this would take time.”

  “How?”

  “We’d have to teach you to use your talent, make you visible to yourself. And to stay clear of entanglements with other dreamers, like Kellogg.”

  “I thought you didn’t have dreamers here. I thought you weren’t worried about that.”

  “A talent like yours could awaken others, Everett. If we don’t proceed carefully. Or it might act to protect itself from our tampering, and turn us all into carrots or horseshoe crabs.” Harriman laughed.

  “I don’t have that power,” said Everett. “I can’t do what you’re talking about. Maybe I change the locks on car doors, little things like that.”

  “Consider letting us show you how wrong you are,” said Ilford.

  “Consider saying fuck off to these vultures,” said Cale from where he sat perched on the back of the couch.

  Dawn emitted a shriek of laughter, drawing confused looks from Ilford and Harriman, and a panicked glare from Fault.

  Cale had appeared the moment Fault injected Everett and Dawn with the stuff from the vial. He stood in the room among them, visible, audible, real. “Hello, Cale,” Dawn had said sardonically. Cale only snorted in return, then nodded at Everett and said, “Where have you been?”

  “Don’t talk to him in front of Ilford,” said Fault anxiously. “Nobody else can see or hear him, but if you—”

  Then Ilford had come in and hustled them out into the living room again, to confer with Harriman Crash. And Cale had followed.

  Outside the windows the fog was in darkness, and the living room again glowed as if it were the only room in the world, as if the furnishings were lit from within. Dennis Ard, Sylvia Greenbaum, and the others were gone. The party was down to its essential members.

  Now Dawn got up, rattling the ice cubes in her otherwise empty glass, and went into the kitchen. In the silence that followed, Everett saw that Ilford and Harriman were waiting for him to speak. Cale, behind the couch, seemed equally expectant.

  The gold clock on the table clacked softly.

  “I want to know how it got like this,” Everett said. “The dreams, the dreamers.”

  “There’s a lot I could say on that subject,” said Harriman. “But it would all be guesses. Just interesting guesses.”

  “Self-serving guesses,” said Cale, heard only by Everett and Fault.

  “A gestalt urge for coherence, after the rupture,” Harriman went on. He fingered his heavy black glasses. Everett suspected that if he moved them to another position on his bald dome, the watery, unfocused eyes would move with them. “Forgive me if my speech lapses into metaphor. When the change occurred, the human need for order suffered a terrible blow. This great need resulted in the widening of a channel, a compensatory receptivity to dreams.”

  Dawn returned, her glass full. Cale leaned his head back, rolled his eyes upwards, put his thumb to his lips, and mimed gargling. Dawn just smirked and raised her glass to him.

  Everett tried to ignore them. “People can’t want to live the way they are,” he said.

  “Living under the regime of an eccentric dreamer may be better than suffering through the disjointed, amnesiac period that followed the disaster.”

  “And it might not be worse than listening to Harriman talk,” said Cale.

  Dawn snorted and spat out a mouthful of her drink. Fault immediately reached for a napkin and began dabbing at the wet mark on Ilford’s couch. Ilford turned to her, puzzled. As Everett watched, an expression of throttled fury crossed Ilford’s face, then subsided.

  Everett then noticed that Cale was staring at his father with a very similar look, but one that didn’t subside.

  “As in previous eras, the leaders are not necessarily those who are wisest or strongest,” Harriman continued, oblivious. “They are the ones with a certain fixity of vision. And with the most comforting explanation for the disaster. That’s the appeal of the conventional millennialism of your friend Kellogg. He struckall the traditional notes of sin and repentance.”

  “Like being stuck in a broken elevator with Bob Dylan,” suggested Fault, giving up on the stain and tossing the balled-up napkin at Cale. It passed through him and fell to the floor.

  “You strike those notes yourself, Harry,” said Dawn with false brightness.

  “But all of this is neither here nor there,” said Ilford testily. He appeared to be fighting some horrible battle to remain calm, almost as though he sensed Cale’s presence in the room. Everett wondered if he was the only one who noticed.

  “There are lots of theories,” Ilford went on, practically through gritted teeth. “Theories are like the disaster, different everywhere.”

  “Last time Ilford got this worked up was when Vance came through here,” said Cale, moving around behind his father. “Interesting guy.”

  Everett tried not to stare. He hadn’t seen Ilford and Cale this close together, unless he counted the way they mingled in Ilford’s face.

  “True enough,” said Harriman. “Our emphasis should be on the opportunity—”

  Cale continued, talking over Harriman. “Vance passed through here just after the change. You should meet him. He’ll give you another point of view.”

  How can I meet your friend Vance, Everett wanted to say to Cale, when I can’t meet you?

  “—only reasonable for us to want to protect our vision,” Harriman was saying. “Isn’t it, Everett?”

  “Get away from them so we can talk,” said Cale.

  “Look at him,” said Dawn suddenly.

  “Look at who?” said Fault, panicked, clearly thinking she meant Cale.

  “Everett, that’s who. He’s exhausted, Harry. You and Ilford have to let him get his bearings, for Christ’s sake. You’re just bullying him with all this nonsense.”

  “Dawn’s right,” said Fault quickly. “I’m feeling a little wasted myself.” He sagged back in his seat on the couch, obviously relishing the prospect of an end.

  “Don’t say yes or no tonight,” said Harriman. His expression was challenging, one eyebrow raised above the black frame of his glasses. “Just say that you’ll sleep on it, so to speak.”

  “Okay,” said Everett.

  “It is getting late,” said Ilford. “Let’s have a last drink.” He spread his hands. “Brandy?” He looked a little desperate, as if in another minute he mi
ght try to drink the varnish off the furniture.

  Everett went outside, trailed by Dawn and the version or projection of Cale.

  At the very doorstep they were cradled in fog. It clung to the eucalyptus branches and blocked out the night sky. Dawn lit a cigarette.

  “I went to Gwen’s room today,” said Cale, hurrying, as if he was going to fade soon.

  “Gwen is the woman in the dream, isn’t she?” asked Dawn, blowing out a gust of smoke that floated up into the fog. The question was directed at Everett. Now that it didn’t matter, she acted as though Cale didn’t exist.

  “It’s none of your fucking business, Dawn,” said Cale, surprisingly loud.

  She raised her eyebrows and stepped away from them, but not so far that she couldn’t eavesdrop. Or would Cale’s words sound in her mind at any distance, until the dose of him wore off?

  “You saw her?” asked Everett.

  Cale nodded. “I spoke with her.”

  “You did?”

  “She wanted to know when you’d come back.”

  It tore at him, unexpectedly sharp, to think of her there, asking for him. He wanted to object, to argue that she couldn’t possibly experience any gap between his visits, that she didn’t exist if he wasn’t there himself, hadn’t called her up.

  But to want that was to believe that she wasn’t real, and that Cale wasn’t real. That the two of them were only memories, waking dreams, and nothing more of them was left now. And he couldn’t believe that, couldn’t let himself.

  Even as Everett thought this, Cale began to fade.

  The next morning he left at daybreak and walked down the hill without seeing anyone from the house. By the time he reached the Submission, the streets were coming to life. He walked the broad avenue, savoring the anonymity, the indifferent, glancing contact with the people he passed. His dreams hadn’t preceded him here.

  The Mexican shopkeepers began the day by dragging their milk-crate seats out to the curbs, the peddlers by laying out their wares: loose floppies, broken solar laptops, sealed bottles of pills, sets of stolen keys for houses in Ate Hashberry and the Callisto, each tagged with a hand-lettered address. Everett walked up to a vendor’s stand for a quesadilla, then realized he had no money with him, that he didn’t know what passed for money here anyway.