*
He told Darla about his dream, that once upon a time Provenance had been buried beneath the ocean, that fish and other, more ancient, sea creatures had swam through the room where he lay. He said that sometimes he was afraid to sleep for fear of drowning.
Darla turned from the window, one side of her face illumined in blue neon. “Why are you telling me this?” she said. “You’ll still do whatever it is you feel you have to.”
Snow wondered how he could get through to her, make her believe that he was capable of changing. He motioned for her to come sit beside him on the edge of the bed. She perched on one corner of the mattress, keeping some space between them. “I wish I could make you believe me.”
Darla frowned. “You think those dreams belong to you? That nobody else had them before you did?”
“I love you.” It seemed the right thing to say. It was what he felt.
She reached out and touched his face. Her palm was cool against his stubbled cheek. “There you go, see? Like that resolves everything.”
“I can’t go on living this half life. There are some things I have to take care of, then I’m leaving and I want you to come with me.”
She drew her hand back into her lap and stared at her fingers. “You have any idea how many times I’ve heard this before? I guess most people mean what they say. They have good intentions. If they don’t like who they are, then, if they have the will, they can find it in themselves to change. But you’re not coded like us. Our kind of life is not yours, you just don’t know it yet.”
Snow wondered if what she said was true. If he really was nothing more than an instrument, without any volition of his own. He moved along the edge of the bed until their legs were touching. She didn’t move away. “I am already changing,” he said, feeling it beneath his skin, inside his head, and in the giddy urge towards what he could only describe as abandonment.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “What’s changing in you is not what you think. You’re using me, Willard. You want me to show you how to get to Hector and the man he’s working for.”
For a moment he thought about lying to her again. “Yes. I am. I was. But not now. He means nothing.”
“Promise me you’ll let him live.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke and Snow sensed that no matter what he said, she wouldn’t believe him.
“Sure,” he said, not knowing if he meant it
Darla turned her face towards him and they kissed. There was something hesitant and contradictory in it, as if it signalled both the powerful and transient nature of their desire. He let himself fall back on the bed, pulling her down with him, his hands tugging at her blouse, reaching between her legs. She rolled with him, freeing her arms, unfastening her skirt. She kneeled over him and reached round to undo her bra, letting her round, plump breasts swing over him. The air shimmered and he saw small creatures float by in the gloom above her head.
“Wait,” she said. She climbed over him, picked her bag up off the floor and pulled out a CD. She slid the disc into the player on the side table. Snow heard a strange muffled waltz, and then a guy started singing, “It’s a wonderful life.”
As they made love, he felt the strange nubs of bone either side of her spine, and as he pressed there, she came mightily. His head was full of the sound of beating wings. Soon afterwards, he fell asleep. Though he didn’t remember it when he awoke, he dreamed she had pennies laying on her eyes.
*
As he pulled into the motel parking lot, Firstnighter’s elation began to wane. It had been a busy few hours and though everything was nearly done, the strain was beginning to get to him. He cut the ignition and closed his eyes, trying to get himself back in the right frame of mind. A few deep breaths later, he got out of the car and crossed the parking lot with a soundtrack playing in his head. Lalo Schifrin or Jerry Goldsmith, music that conveyed action and purpose. He felt himself grow taller as he stepped on to the wooden walkway that led to room 311. He saw himself in someone else’s shoes, a no bullshit type of guy. It was all about exuding authority, letting them know you were not to be fucked with. Outside the door he paused a little self-consciously, as if aware of the cameras. He looked up and down the walkway, just for show, then opened the door. The music’s tempo quickened as he stepped inside and moved around the room, touching things, familiarising himself with the details. It wasn’t easy trying to hold everything in his head. On the night table was a CD case, picture of a man with a burning head holding a spray of orange flowers. He took the disc out and put it in his jacket, putting a DVD with the word ‘Thingstable’ written on it, in its place. He returned the case to the night table, a counter to the awful thinning that robbed the world of certainty. It contained all the motivation Snow would ever need.
Of course the symmetry would have been better if it had been Willard who’d taken care of Escovedo. But Thingstable’s intervention had been accommodated. He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling his strength dissipate. That was okay. Everything was in place. The hard part was done. Events at El Camino were already receding, blurring into the distorted mess of random memories. Despite this, he could still see her face, the outrage and horror in her eyes. But that too would fade. As would the confusion and yes, admit it, the fear he had felt as he’d driven away from the bar, caught up in the madness and noise of some fucking street carnival. A long, paper serpent had snaked across the road in front of his car, its huge, gaudy head turning towards him, its fiery red eyes fixing him through the windscreen. He’d hit the horn but it had been drowned out by thunderous drumbeats and the endless popping of firecrackers. Even now, he didn’t know what they’d been celebrating. There had been angels too, gaudy and graceless, no regrets about their fall. No fucking hope there for Snow. Their wings were as useless as the whore’s dying words. They’d poured out of her in a torrent, as if she’d been trying to cram all her unlived time into her twenty-three years. When she was dead, he’d understood what Snow had seen in her. A weightlessness, like she had rid herself of some burden, accepted the true nature of things. The way ghosts do.
Afterwards, back at the apartment on Cockaigne, Firstnighter had edited the footage he’d taken from the bar’s closed circuit system, pasting in the images he’d shot, images whose placement and doctored obscurity suggested a number of possible interpretations. Part of him had found the whole process distasteful and vaguely disturbing, but he’d sublimated his unease into a scrupulous attention to detail. Only his muted anger at Snow’s inertia, and a subtle dread at Thingstable’s continued threat, had allowed him to stop tinkering with the images and save them to disc. He’d pictured Snow watching the manipulated footage, imagined how he’d feel as he saw those dead eyes staring up at him. He’d shuddered at the picture, surprised to discover he wasn’t immune to pain. Only men like Snow and Thingstable were capable of becoming familiar with the dead. The thought had made him feel a little more human.
He stared at the ceiling fan, wondering why it didn’t turn. For some reason, he couldn’t get the girl’s face out of his head. She’d confirmed his suspicions about Willard. Said he’d dreamed about angels and escaping the city. He’d told her he wouldn’t kill Hector, but he’d done it anyway. Out of loyalty to his man, Firstnighter had felt obliged to correct her on that. Let her know, at the end, that Willard was a man of his word.
Such things mattered. They were the invisible ties that held them all together. Loyalty, respect, fear. He turned on his side, pulling the sheet up to his neck. There was a smell other than his own on the pillow. Hers, he thought. Her perfume, her sweat, her sex. A feeling of tender pain washed over him as he tasted her in his mouth. Had he kissed her after all, in a moment of weakness? Snow’s girl? Hard to believe how men like that, men of substance, could leave themselves so open, so vulnerable. Not so himself. You had to put yourself beyond the mundane concerns of the world. Substance was an illusion, he believed. It weighed you down. All that really mattered was knowing your own people, keeping them close. His
were returning. They would be there soon.
*
The two musicians began another number as Snow made his second circuit of the bar. Still no sign of Darla. She’d sounded edgy when she’d called, scared even, but she sounded that way most of the time. A painbird, he thought, momentarily confused until he realised that was what the song was about. He wondered how the singer could know what he was thinking. He stood by the entrance and tried calling her. As he held the phone to his ear he noticed a man moving through the crowd towards the rear of the bar, his head turning this way and that, as if searching for someone. A ring tone cut through the jagged melody of the band. “Darla,” Snow said, when he heard a clicking sound, but there was no reply.
He made his way through the crowd to the booth where she had said she’d be waiting. A bunch of kids were arguing at the table. Something about the band and a girl. They drank vodka or rum mixers from bottles. Pushed to one side of the table were two tumblers and an empty beer bottle. Snow picked up one of the glasses and sniffed. Schnapps, Darla’s drink. She’d been pretty insistent that they meet, telling him she’d found out something important. Like maybe Hector had grown wings.
The lights flickered overhead as the music rose another notch. The guy he’d noticed earlier was watching him from across the room, trying not to show it. Snow half-recognised the face. Tension clawed at him, knotting his stomach. He left the booth, blending with the crowd who gathered around the dais where the band were playing. He slipped through the door leading down to the basement. In the quietened space he tried Darla’s number again. He heard the ring tone clearly. Keeping the phone pressed to his ear, he opened the door a fraction and peered through, scanning the crowd. Seeing no sign of the other guy, he went down the stairwell. The phone was still ringing, only now it seemed to have an echo, one which grew more distinct as he moved further along the hall. He held the phone away from his head, heard its tinny sound, then its muted echo from somewhere close by.
He stopped outside the men’s room, started to open the door. But the sound wasn’t coming from in there. He moved slowly past the ladies and found another door on his right. The ring tone came from the other side. He pushed the door open, meeting some resistance. He found a light switch and flicked it on. It was a small storeroom, full of cleaning equipment and a couple of stacks of plastic chairs. Stepping past the door, he let it swing shut. Behind it, Darla was propped up in a chair, her legs stretched out so that her feet rested against the corner of the door, her head titled at an odd angle over the back of the seat. The phone was on the floor at her feet.
Snow checked for a pulse and didn’t find one. Her face was still warm, and if it wasn’t for the ligature marks on her throat and the terror in her eyes, he might have assumed she was resting. He kissed her on the lips and left the room. He moved towards the far end of the hallway where another door stood slightly ajar. It opened onto a yard full of aluminium barrels and crates of bottles. There was a gate to the alleyway but it was locked. He returned to the hallway and saw someone outside the room where Darla was. Snow pulled out his gun just as the man turned. “Hector,” he cried out, squeezing a shot off at the same time as the man. Snow felt a hot stinging at the back of his head but managed to stay on his feet. He staggered past the fallen man without thinking, and hauled himself up the steps. The band were in full flow. Crashing through the press of frenzied bodies, he reached the door and stumbled outside and into the middle of a carnival parade crawling slowly along the street. His mind crumbling, he could do nothing to prevent himself from being carried along in the confusion.
*
The moon breaks through the clouds to reveal an unillumined St Christopher stumbling under his burden. Not just a kid, but a million winged insects. No way to count them all, Thingstable figures, even if he was so inclined. Always thought killing time was easy but all the hours he’s slaughtered have brought him no nearer to eternity. Nobody is coming, he finally accepts. Whoever it was has already been. His head is pounding and nothing feels the way it should. Just not good enough. Tonight he needs to be absolutely sure. Which means he’s going to have to go inside and see for himself. Find whatever there is to find, accept whatever it might mean. Furious, he gets out of the car, shuts the door and leans for a moment against the hood, searching for one good reason to leave. But there are none and so, reluctantly, he walks across the parking lot to room 311, stops outside the door, listens for a moment or two, then quickly, quietly, slips inside.
He goes to the bed and switches on the nightlamp, experiencing, not for the first time, one of those déjà vu moments. There’s a wardrobe in which he knows he’ll find a holdall with a pair of black jeans, some t-shirts and underwear in it. Binfuckingo! He removes the laptop and takes it to the bed. Next to an empty glass on the night table is the CD case with the man with a burning head on the front. He doesn’t want to watch it again. No matter what it shows, he’s almost sure he didn’t kill her. Ah, but it’s that ‘almost’ that’s brought him back here, that need for certainty. Because everything he’s ever done, was done for a reason, and if he has in fact killed her to no purpose, then, he believes, he has no more reason to be.
What is the opposite of déjà vu? he wonders. Something done that never happened. Watch it again and see if anything’s changed after the moment of being. He boots up the computer and slides the disc into the tray. Running it in reverse might offer him some new perspective. Pulling the crumpled blanket back off the bed, he touches the sheet. It’s still warm. He lowers himself on to it, resting his face against the indented pillow, amazed at how perfectly it fits his face. Feeling a warm stickiness there, he sits up and is unnerved at the sight of blood on the pillow. Touching his head he finds the fresh ooze behind his left ear. His mind is occluded by doubt. That’s the moment, he thinks, the one to work back from. Make it so it didn’t happen that way. Make it so the tale is open to some other interpretation. Imagine you are not him.
On his side, he stares at the scraps of darkness that spread like corruption across the screen. The shadows take on new forms whose significance he struggles to grasp. Butterflies or moths, their gauze wings imprinted with patterns of lifeless eyes. A few stuttered words, a scream and a splash of crimson. A secret narrative of dread embedded in familiar faces. But what’s most unsettling is the way he crumbles, the way that pieces of himself fall away like snow.
Afterwards, his shirt clammy with sweat, he shuts down the machine and returns the disc to the plastic case. Finds the bottle of Jack in the bathroom cabinet and pours himself a large measure. It’s sweet in his mouth, reminding him of another time. Catches sight of himself in the mirror on the wall over the dressing table. There is blood drying on his face. Raises the glass and watches his reflection mimic the gesture, a second too slow. I’m not the one, he thinks. The thought makes him shudder, quickening the impulse to get out of that place. He finished the drink and placed the glass on the night table. Took a jacket from the wardrobe and rummaged through the holdall, retrieving a couple of spare clips for a semi-automatic from the jumble of clothes and the length of nylon cord. He doubted he would need anything else. Leaving the room, he locked the door behind him.
Starlight fell on him like dust from heaven. His body tingling, he made his way across the parking lot to the blue Nissan. As he walked, he heard his cellphone ringing in his jacket. He ignored it, instead running his hands over the hood of the trunk and tracing the pattern of the holes he found there, imagining the light falling through them, calling someone back to life. Inside the car he saw the briefcase on the passenger seat. It reminded him of the disc, and of what it had cost him. She should never have been part of it, he thought, turning the key in the ignition. As he pulled away from the motel, he was struck by the silence in his head, the feeling of solitude. He took the ramp up on to the elevated freeway which ran north through Korby. There were no other vehicles on the road, and as yet, the skies held nothing but stars. The cameras drooped on their metal stalks, as if sleeping. Pro
venance dreamed of itself, of what it was and what it could have been. Throughout the entire city, the threat of subversion was at play. He could sense the possibilities, could almost reach out and touch the promise of abandon. It should be easy for him, being the last one. Keep on driving past the city line, out into the world beyond. He could, if he wanted to, still remember what it was like. But he didn’t try then, not wanting to push his luck.
Besides, there was still the briefcase, and the niggling possibility of what it signified. Snow thought he should open it, but he was afraid. If it was what he thought it was, if it was money, then the question he had to ask himself was, who was paying him? He slammed on the brakes and the car screeched to a halt. The cameras drowsed on, oblivious to his fear of himself, of what he was. He turned in his seat and reached for the case. The pounding in his chest and the sound of hollow laughter in his head made his hands shake as his fingers touched the locks. It’s yours, he told himself. Except that if he took it, Provenance would never let him go. Astorbilt, or whoever else had put it there, would wake up to the threat and buy off any angels who might still come through. He’d promise them a kind of heaven right here.
The sound of his cellphone stopped him. He removed it from his jacket, checked the display and tossed it on to the seat beside the briefcase. Turning back to the wheel, he put the car in drive. While the city continued to dream, he could still save himself. He took the next exit-ramp and headed for the high ground of Amity Park. As he drove, he pulled a disc from his jacket and slid it into the CD player. He stared at his bloodstained face in the rear-view mirror, his dark eyes still striving for something outside himself. As the road climbed up into the park, he wound the window down and in the sounds of the night rushing by, he heard the music of weightlessness.
The Dream Operator Page 5