Company Town

by Paul Neuhaus

  “You impulse-called now impulse-drive. I’ll get you a cotton candy.”

  “I don’t like cotton candy.”

  Blank sighed. “No cotton candy. No pie. You’re not getting into the spirit of this. Play along.”

  Henaghan’s grin widened. “Molly… I would love some cotton candy.”

  “Meet me under the sign that says, ‘Santa Monica Yacht Harbor Sport Fishing Boating Cafes’.”

  “Why do you have that committed to memory?”

  “I don’t know.” Blank hung up.

  Quinn took Santa Monica Boulevard all the way down to the parking next to the pier. She drove too quickly, realized she was driving too quickly and mentally teased herself for crushing on a stranger (and a woman at that). Still, she felt the excitement was doing her some good. It was, at the very least, masking her feelings about all the crazy shit going down. She locked the Prius with a beep and went up the sidewalk toward the entrance to the pier. There, as promised, was Molly Blank. All the way down, Henaghan hoped Molly would be dressed in another skirt, and Molly did not disappoint. Maroon skirt with a hem above the knee, and sandals made of woven cloth. Blank’s t-shirt depicted Mickey Mouse giving the finger. “There she is,” Molly said, going in for a hug. Molly was a terrific hugger.

  Released from the embrace, Quinn said, “That’s a classy shirt.”

  “I know,” Blank said. “I’m a true sophisticate. Speaking of shirts, What gives? You couldn’t dress for me?”

  Quinn flushed and scrunched her nose, realizing she still wore the sweats from her session with Taft. “I didn’t know I was coming until twenty minutes ago.”

  “Always, always, always have a little black dress in the trunk ,” Molly said. “You just never know.” Then she walked all the way around Henaghan, appraising her. Quinn became self-conscious. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, I just think you could do better. The lululemons work with your ass, but there’s no zing. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I’m zing-less.”

  Blank shook her finger at Quinn. “I didn’t say you were zing-less, I said your outfit needed help. You’ll have to come over to my place. We can talk about boys and swap outfits.”

  “You’re seven inches taller than me.”

  “I know,” Molly said with a wink. “I kinda wanna see you in one of my t-shirts.”

  What the hell is happening here? Quinn thought, fighting back another blush. She’d never even thought about having a lesbian experience before and here she was, having one. Or was she? Was she misreading the situation? Was she on the verge of making a fool of herself?

  Molly took Henaghan’s hand and led her under the sign and onto the pier. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s not get cotton candy.”

  They walked the length of the pier and back, always holding hands or standing close to one another. (When they got to the end overlooking the ocean, Quinn snapped a selfie of the two of them together.) Molly made frequent eye contact and smiled with genuine warmth again and again. They talked about nothing in particular, and that was what Quinn needed. She wanted the rush of this new relationship and none of the pressures of the outside world. That’s exactly what she got.

  About halfway back to the entrance, they saw, of all people, Barry Faber, walking with a date of his own. Faber was huge, and he dwarfed the girl he was with. She was thin, blond and couldn’t have been any more than twenty. The agent’s face lit up when he saw Molly (he didn’t recognize Quinn at all). “There she is!” he said. “There’s my sea cow!”

  Blank was mortified. “Hello, Barry,” she said, without breaking her stride.

  Henaghan looked back at Faber as they walked on. He was grinning. She suddenly thought less of him than she had following his breast cancer clinic speech. “What was that about?”

  Still flushed, Molly said, “Barry thinks I should lose a few pounds.”

  Quinn made a pfft noise. “He’s insane. You’re built like a brick shit house.”

  Molly laughed that deep, earthy laugh. “Thanks, girlfriend. When they were under the entry again, Blank said, “Forget Barry. When’s our second date?”

  Quinn looked away then back again. She hated that she’d blushed so many times during their pier adventure. “Is that what this was? A date?”

  Molly stooped a bit and kissed Quinn on the lips.

  “I’m on a leave of absence. And all my nights are free,” Quinn blurted.

  Blank laughed. “All of them? I got myself the most popular gal in town!”

  “Alright, alright. Don’t tease.”

  “I’m a teaser. Get used to it. How about tomorrow?”

  “So, you’re popular, too.”

  “I told you already: I haven’t worked in eighteen months. I’m not popular either. Plus I’m a sea cow.”

  “Where do I—” Quinn started to say.

  Just as she’d done at the Friar’s Club, Molly was already walking away. “My address is on your phone.” Then she stopped and went back. Looking down into Quinn’s eyes, she said, “I’m sorry. I assumed you’d pick me up. Is it okay if I be the girlie-girl in this scenario?”

  “Fine by me,” Quinn said, basing the assertion on zero prior experience. Still, she liked the idea.

  Molly Blank walked away again. “Seven o’clock,” she said without turning.

  When Quinn got back into her Prius, her phone rang. It was Taft’s Books. Before she even had a chance to say hello, Darren said, “Meet me at Griffith Observatory. At midnight.” Before she could say yea or nay, he hung up. Henaghan looked at her phone. Did that just happen? she thought. Sighing, she realized that it had. She dropped her iPhone on the passenger seat and pulled out of the beachfront parking lot. Whether she was up for another lesson or not wasn’t relevant, she had to go. Things were getting too weird for her not to be as prepared as possible. Still there was plenty of time before midnight and she had stops to make—the first being the Target in West Hollywood. A new wardrobe was long overdue.

  After a shopping spree and a sub sandwich, Quinn returned home.

  She didn’t put on any of her new clothes when night fell and she set off for her ride into the hills. Sweats again, this time with a light jacket. The altitude and the time of year would make Griffith Observatory chilly. Parking the Prius in the lot in front of the building, she noticed there were no other cars. It was eleven fifty-five. The Observatory was lit and she could see the bronze bust of James Dean on the complex’s right side. The building looked more or less as it did in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause. Dean, the movie’s star, would die that same year in a nasty car crash—thus becoming what Quinn called a Young Dead Legend. Like Kurt Cobain, Dean never descended into the mediocrity of middle age. He’d be judged forever on the basis of a small, mostly mistake-free body of work. Her thoughts turned maudlin (she wondered what it would be like to be a Young Dead Nobody), but she didn’t have time to dwell. Darren Taft’s car pulled in next to hers. Midnight straight-up. For being such a slovenly man, Darren was sure fussy about promptness.

  Once he killed his engine and shut off his lights, Henaghan got out of the Prius. He joined her on the lawn in front of the Observatory. “Jesus, dude. It’s cold out here!” Quinn’s breath formed a cloud and drifted around her head.

  Taft smiled at her. “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Temperature regulation. Like the yogis do.” He stopped. After several deep breaths, he held out his hand for her to touch.

  Henaghan touched her fingertips to Taft’s. They were hot. Without coaxing, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the cold in her body, banishing it.

  After a moment, she heard Darren say, “Stop!” He pulled his fingers away from hers and shook them. She’d made herself too hot. “Don’t overdo it.”

  Taft turned so they were shoulder to shoulder and walking toward the building, a domed structure with two wings.

  Darren looked down at her. “You know the whole thing where you pick up wha
t I’m doing by observation? That’s not normal. Just so you know. Most people have to struggle to learn this shit. You… absorb it. You’re Wolfgang Amadeus and I’m Salieri.”

  “Did you have a hard time? Learning the shit?”

  “I had a very hard time. I’m the fat underachiever from every movie about fat underachievers. They had to beat it into me. We’re gonna reach the limits real soon of what I can teach you. Then I’m hoping we can flip-flop and you can teach me.”

  The lights of Hollywood came into view behind Griffith Observatory. The building sat on a projection of rock above the town. “I was thinking… Is it some kind of reincarnation deal?”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “I look like the woman from my dreams. Aisling. I have power like she does.”

  “No. It’s a recessive gene resurfacing kind of thing.” He coughed into his fist. “You’re not Tibetan Buddhist, are you?”

  “Do I look Tibetan Buddhist to you?”

  One of his eyebrows went up. “Do I look Jewish to you?”

  She grinned. “No.”

  “I was asking because I didn’t want to offend you. Turns out reincarnation is bullshit.”

  “Shit,” Henaghan said. “I wanted to come back as Ava Gardner.”

  “I wanna come back as Ava Gardner,” Darren replied.

  By then they’d reached the Observatory. Taft climbed the steps on the right side of the building. The steps led to an expansive patio wrapping all the way around the back of the structure. Leaning on the railing, he said, “Hooray for Hollywood.”

  “That screwy, ballyhooey Hollywood.”

  He turned to her. “Yeah, I don’t wanna do the whole song.”

  “It’s kind of a shitty song.”

  “Amen.” Darren turned back to the vista beneath them. “I brought you here so we could do some real next-level wizard shit.”

  Quinn laughed. “Fuck, yeah.”

  “Remember,” he said. “We’re not in my basement. Which means no Circle of Protection. Moderate what you’re doing at all times. If a bunch of phantasms come at you, I’m getting the fuck out.”

  “Chivalry is not dead.”

  “Hey, you’re way more powerful than I am. Before this is all said and done, you might have to save my ass.”

  The girl nodded. “Alright. What’s on the menu?”

  Taft didn’t answer. Instead he rose up into the air so that his feet were level with Quinn’s eyes. He kept his toes pointed down as they’d done inside the Astral Plane. He waited there, looking down at her.

  Henaghan concentrated for a moment, finding her way. She rose into the air just as gracefully as he had and stopped when their pointed toes were level with one another.

  “Good,” Darren said. “Now do this…” As Quinn watched, the heavy-set man dissolved. He became more and more translucent until he was gone completely. “Don’t worry. I’m still here.” A disembodied voice to her right.

  “I know,” Quinn said. “I can sense you.”

  “Ordinarily, you wouldn’t be able to do that. I kept myself… sensible so you could find me. Stealth mode is no good if it only works on the muggles.”

  Again, Quinn concentrated. She felt no different, but in an instant, she knew she was invisible to normal eyes.

  “Did you figure out what I did?” Taft asked.

  “We’re halfway between the Physical- and the Astral Plane.”

  “Give the girl a cigar. I’m gonna keep it simple. With this being a Multiverse and all, you can do a whole lot more than just shimmy between planes.”

  “Save it for another night.”

  “My thought exactly.” With that, Darren drifted out over the town far below.

  Quinn found that, if she squinted, she could see Taft’s fuzzy shape hanging in space. An artifact of them both vibrating on the same mystic wave length. She directed her own body forward and was soon hovering next to her mentor. “What’s the goal here?”

  Darren laughed. “No goal. Every new wizard says, ‘When’re you gonna teach me how to fly?’ I was cutting to the chase.”

  Henaghan sighed. “Really? It’s midnight; I’m tired.”

  “I was kidding. Follow me.”

  With that, they swept out over the lights of Hollywood and arced back again to a small neighborhood next to the rise the Observatory stood on. As they flew down the tree-lined streets, Quinn saw the cars were morphing from twentieth-first century autos to mid-twentieth century autos. Late 1940s or early 1950s. When they came to a beautiful white home lit from within, they hung a left and went through the door.

  “Take it easy,” Darren whispered. “He can’t see us.”

  “Who can’t see us?” Henaghan asked. The foyer was empty. Then a man appeared with perfectly groomed black hair and silk pajamas. A handsome man. Quinn took a moment to recognize him. “Is that Robin Locksley?” she said.

  “It is.” Locksley was best described as ‘the poor man’s Errol Flynn’. He made several b-grade pirate and action adventure movies in the years after World War II.

  “Why’re we here?”

  “Shhh. Follow him.” Locksley passed them in the foyer and ascended the stairs to the second floor. Even though he couldn’t hear them, Taft and Henaghan went on tiptoe behind him (or the Astral equivalent). They followed him down a hall and into a lush master bed room. A four-poster bed that would’ve been right at home in Versailles. Furniture to match. Gorgeous, flowing window treatments. And a pig. The pig stood in the middle of the bed. Its pajama top matched Locksley’s but it wore no bottoms. It looked at Robin as he entered.

  “Now then, Archibald,” Locksley said. “Let use see what you’re made of.” With that the actor slid out of his bottoms and moved toward the bed.

  When Locksley coupled with Archibald, Quinn covered her mouth and flew through the windows. Taft wasn’t too far behind her. When they were even with one another, Henaghan burst out laughing. “Holy shit! Was that real?!”

  Darren tried to remain poker-faced, but couldn’t. “I’d like to apologize right now for besmirching the esteemed reputation of Robin Locksley.”

  “So, it wasn’t real?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Taft said. “Remember the whole Multiverse thing? I worked hard to find a parallel dimension where Robin Locksley was a pig fucker. It was just icing the pig was named ‘Archibald’.”

  “That was way fucked up,” Henaghan said, her eyes twinkling. “Just how many possible realities are there?”

  “Nearly infinite,” Darren said. “Whenever there’s a junction in life where something can go a million different ways, it does. When you’re at ground level, living your life, you’re seeing the one your reality chose for you.”

  “Whoa. You’re saying reality has intention?”

  They were drifting back to the Observatory. The mid-twentieth century became the early twenty-first. “I was waxing poetic,” Taft said. “If reality has intention, I’m unaware of it..”

  As soon as they touched down on the ground near their cars, they took on solid form. Quinn said. “Okay, so I don’t get it. What’s the lesson here?”

  “Between the flow of time, alternate realities, human perception… you shouldn’t take anything at face value.”

  Henaghan’s shoulders slumped. “Well, that’s fucking depressing. How will I know if what I see even applies to the reality I’m occupying?”

  Darren grinned. “Search me.”

  The girl walked around to the driver’s side door of the Prius. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m gonna go home and get into the fetal position.”

  “In some reality somewhere, you will go home and get into the fetal position.”

  She pointed her finger at him. “Stop it. That’s enough mindfuck for one evening.”

  “Sorry,” Taft said, but he was still grinning.

  “Hold on,” Quinn said, opening her car door and leaning against the body. “I’m having visions right now. A side effect of the phantasms I’ve got in my body
. What you’re saying is, not only are those visions suspect, so is this moment. Right now. With you and me standing out here in the cold.”

  Darren scrunched up his face. “Kind of, yeah.”

  “Nothing matters. I might just as well go out, buy the world’s biggest bag of weed and spend the rest of my days in a Playstation stupor.”

  “Don’t forget,” he said. “One or more Quinns will do exactly that.”

  Henaghan threw up her hands in frustration and screamed a little scream. “So, why bother then?”

  “Alright, hold up,” he said. “Don’t lose your shit. Take a step back. In at least one very important way, what I’ve told you doesn’t change a thing.”

  “How so?”

  “Sure, there’re multiple Quinns in multiple timelines doing multiple Quinn-ly things. That doesn’t effect this Quinn one bit. If you wanna forget the other Quinns and the pig-fucking Robin Locksley, go right ahead. Concentrate on who you are right now and where you’ve been and where you think you’re going. Just be aware that not everyone plays on the same level playing field.”

  Henaghan looked at him with mean little eyes. “I’m gonna need you to break that down for me.”

  “What I did with Locksley… You had to ask me if it was real. It both was and it wasn’t. I chose to show you that particular reality because, as far as I’m concerned, it was funny as shit.”

  “So, you’re saying someone else—someone without your gift for comedy and your good taste—might show me something altogether less amusing.”

  He pointed at his nose, pointed at her, and got in his car.

  Her mind swirling, Quinn watched him go.

  Before she left her apartment the next day, Quinn put on one of her Target acquisitions—a little black dress breaking at mid-thigh with matching black pumps. Yes, she’d gone full heel, something she hadn’t done since prom night. She thought she looked great (which was something she rarely thought about herself), but she keenly anticipated Molly’s reaction.

  Blank lived in West L.A., not too far from the 20th Century Fox lot. Her building was nice without being lavish. The apartment itself was on the second floor and Quinn trotted up the concrete steps in her heels. Molly was standing in the door, watching her. “Mmmm, mmm, mmm. Work them heels, girl.” She smiled from ear to ear as she ushered the younger woman into her place. When they were inside, Blank shut the door and bent to kiss Quinn on the mouth, this time with slight flicks of her tongue. Quinn became aroused. “Jesus, you look amazing,” Molly said.