Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  The tang of the mustard, sweet of the ketchup, the stringent quality of the onions mixed with the spiced meat in an explosion that tantalized every taste bud in her mouth. She chewed, savored, then ate more, licking her fingers between bites. Kaila was so appreciative of the offering that she lost all sense of the world around her. She groaned with pleasure at the combination of flavors and textures. Only the food that she was consuming mattered. And when she had eaten the last bite, chewed every morsel and had swallowed, and just the flavors remained on her tongue, she returned to the realm of the real world. The vendor stood frozen in place, awe and pleasure painted his expression.

  “I’ve never seen anyone enjoy a hot dog that much,” he said with an admiring grin. Kaila noticed that his smile showed his small crooked teeth that were yellowed and stained with brownish streaks of nicotine.

  He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You can have another one, on the house mate,” he said with a nod. “I reckon it’s worth it to see you scarf it down with so much vim and vigor.”

  “I think she’s done.”

  Derrick pushed in beside Kaila. He snatched a handful of napkins off the cart and began wiping stray condiments from her lips and mouth. The scowl on his face said he was less than pleased at seeing her there. His chagrin did little to deflate Kaila’s high. But the sudden realization about how restricted her life had been in Wildwind gave her pause. The routines that had given her comfort before now seemed suffocating. The urge to have more real now multiplied.

  Derrick was oblivious to her revelation. He grabbed the corner of Kaila’s bag and tugged her forward, leaving Sugar standing on the street behind them. He had already managed to get Kaila a fair distance from the cart when the realization that he was taking her back to the brownstone made Kaila halt in place. She snapped the bag out of Derrick’s grasp. He glared at her with unabashed disapproval.

  “Don’t make this difficult Kaila, we’re going back inside, now,” he said. His words were crisp and direct. Ignoring his orders, Kaila shook her head. Now that she was out, there was no way that she was going back, no matter what Derrick said or did.

  A woman with a baby in a stroller moved toward she and Derrick. Kaila couldn’t help but notice how the baby bobbed up and down in the seat as if trying to bounce out. As they passed by Kaila the baby suddenly tossed a bottle at her leg. It hit the fabric of her sweatpants with a soft thud, landed on the concrete then began rolling away. Kaila pounced on the bottle somehow managing to keep hold of her computer and her bag in the move. The bottle was warm to the touch and greasy with what she assumed was baby saliva, since large globs of drool trailed down its chin. The baby boy was dressed in a blue onesie that showed off the rolls of his chubby thighs and pudgy arms. A navy fabric ball cap was positioned askew on its tiny bald head.

  The mother, who had just noticed that the bottle was gone, stopped walking. Before the mother could say anything Kaila pushed the bottle toward the baby. She leaned in close so their faces were just inches a part. Like everything else that had happened in the last hour, this too was a first for her.

  Kaila felt the hot breath of the toy-like being on her cheek, and was surprised at how sweet it smelled. And there were other smells coming from the little being, powder and sunlight and fabric softener, and a newness that said that this little life hadn’t been on earth for very long. The baby reached out both hands for the bottle, a wide toothless grin spread across its chubby face, more drool dribbled from his fat lips. Kaila stared into his huge blue eyes that sparkled with life. She wondered what he saw, if he knew she was crazy, or if that was something he would be taught later on in his life.

  When a damp pudgy hand clasped around her fingers she froze in place. She brushed a finger across the top of his hand that was still gripping her. The flesh was satiny and soft and like nothing she had ever felt before. The baby giggled at her touch then ripped off his hat, tossing it into her face playfully. The sound of his happy mirth was a melody. If there was a sound that represented all the good things that Kaila had ever known in her life, it would have been summed up in that one giggle. It was a sound that she would collect and file and retrieve again someday.

  Then someone was tugging on the back of her shirt, pulling her away again. When her fingers were snapped out of the baby’s grasp, it broke something in her. Because it made her realize that there would be no babies for her, no soft skin against hers, no toothless smile to greet her everyday: crazy people didn’t have children, crazy people didn’t have lives outside of Wildwind, crazy people were locked away forever, never to experience the real, the truth, beauty at its finest, found in the touch of a child. A tear wet her face, then another, until they were streaming down in a waterfall that seemed to have no end. And she felt something different, something that she would never have imagined or believed existed or that was even real, what it might have felt like to have been accepted unconditionally.

  CHAPTER 30

  At first Kaila allowed Derrick to lead her away, but when she realized that he was taking her back to the brownstone she stiffened her spine and wrenched out of his hold.

  Pauline’s face swam to the front of her mind. Everything that had happened so far had been in an effort to save Pauline, yet it seemed that the goal was slipping out of her grasp. Pauline’s time on earth was ticking away. Now more than ever, Kaila needed to wholly embrace that time mattered more than it had ever before.

  “I’m going to see Pauline,” Kaila stated.

  Derrick sighed. Though his lack of enthusiasm to save Pauline had been obvious, the reason for his halfhearted approach eluded Kaila. It didn’t make sense that he was so apathetic after the desperate plea he had made for her to escape Wildwind with him. But none of that mattered any longer; she was going, with or without Derrick.

  Kaila strode down the street, doing her best to ignore the people that were all around her, walking, talking, listening to MP3 players, tapping on smart phones, smiling, frowning…

  Then it came, for no reason other than the changing of the tides, a tsunami of emotions inundated Kaila. What had begun as an opportunity to dive into the deep end of life had rapidly shifted into a sensory overload, making it impossible for her to filter out all the sights, sounds, aromas, and all the things that made up the real world. There was no button to switch off that would bring instant silence, something that suddenly and unequivocally felt of utmost importance. She quickened her pace, moving against the wave of people that jostled and pushed at her. The spiders arrived promptly, not in battalion force, more like a few lone soldiers who traipsed across her flesh for a moment only to disappear again. It was almost worse than when they came in force because this way she had no idea when the next one would arrive.

  “Kaila, stop.”

  Derrick’s voice seemed at a distance, one that Kaila was quickly lengthening. She didn’t know exactly where she was going only that somehow she would find Pauline. As if by magic she would come across the right house, the right door and Pauline would be standing there, greeting her and then they would go to the cafeteria and they would eat…but that wouldn’t happen because they weren’t in Wildwind, they were in the real world and…

  She shook her head, her thoughts jumbled and tangled, making it difficult to remember, to know why she was there and what she was searching for. Without planning it, her feet stopped moving and she was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. She cradled her head in her hands, attempting to block it all out because it was too much, it was all too much. Kaila needed a chance to catch her breath, to be somewhere safe because this place wasn’t safe.

  “I am Trillian,” she bellowed at the top of her lungs.

  She clutched at her hair, tugging it until pain was all she felt and somehow it helped, distilled everything away.

  “Kaila, I’m here, come on.”

  Derrick’s voice was uncharacteristically soothing, like a shower in the morning, familiar and calming, it was what she needed, he was what she needed.
Then she was moving again, somehow without touching her, Derrick was guiding her away to another place, to safety.

  CHAPTER 31

  Kaila took the pills that Derrick offered and Trillian stepped in seamlessly, seeing and doing all that was required. Kaila rested and renewed until the need to find Pauline woke her again. Another day had passed, and now they were counting hours.

  CHAPTER 32

  It was uncommon for Kaila to return in the middle, but being outside of Wildwind made things no longer common, no longer normal. So when she found herself sitting across from a man who she had never met before, but who Trillian knew well, she was not as surprised as she might have once been.

  “So when you talk about it all being an illusion and that we are all one, are you speaking about the collective consciousness, where all thoughts are there for us to pluck from the universe?”

  Kaila blinked at the man.

  His silvery white hair was overgrown and stood on end. She gauged him as being somewhere between the middle and old. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt with meticulously ironed sharp creases. His mustache, bushy and overgrown, matched the color of his hair. For a brief moment Kaila wondered if she was actually seeing the ghost of the departed scientist Einstein, but on careful examination she saw the cracks in the veneer. For one, his eyes were wrong, pale blue not brown, his nose was thinner and less bulbous than the real man, and the lines at the corners of his face and down his cheeks that Einstein was famous for, were absent. But despite those facts this man might have fooled a few people on the street. Kaila imagined that instead of an Elvis sighting there would have been an Einstein sighting.

  “Who are you?” Kaila said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  The man, who had just been looking at her expectantly, shifted in his chair. He rubbed at the worn wooden armrests with his thumbs. The huge desk that he sat behind was all dark wood, with a green-shaded lamp at the corner. The surface of the desk was devoid of anything except for a leather bound notebook that from the looks of it he had been taking notes in.

  “Derrick,” the man said in a loud voice that was tinged by anxiety.

  And when he spoke, his distinctive British accent was just one more missing link in his attempt to fool people into believing that he was someone that he wasn’t.

  Kaila took a moment to glance around at the space she found herself in. She didn’t know the house where Derrick had taken her before very well, but she was certain that this place wasn’t it. The smell was different. This place was scented by old paper with a hint of lemon furniture polish and maybe even a little tobacco, like the kind that one of the orderlies at Wildwind used to chew. Unlike the other house, here the décor was more systematically arranged.

  Her eyes came to rest on the tall built in bookcases that backed the man. They took up the entire wall and were filled with thick volumes of leather bound books, interspersed with slender paperbacks that seemed out of place. Kaila got to her feet. She noticed that she was wearing clean clothes. The stink that had assaulted her the last time that Trillian had been in control wasn’t there. She lifted a piece of her coppery hair, studying it for a moment and when she found that it had been freshly washed, she was thankful that Trillian hadn’t forgotten the stringent hygiene rules that Kaila adhered to. Not waiting for an answer to her question, Kaila moved a few steps forward toward the man who cringed in his seat at her approach.

  Now that she was standing, Kaila had a full view of the room, back to front. It seemed to have been a study of sorts. The chair that she had been sitting in was burgundy and wing-backed with brass rivets securing the leather to the frame. She noticed that even after she had stood, the imprint of her bottom remained in the foam cushion. Two more chairs, much like the one that she had been seated in, filled the corners on either side of the double window at the back of the room. Chocolate brown roller blinds had been fitted inside the windows and were pulled down, hiding any view that existed beyond.

  The walls were painted a rich maroon with scalloped wainscoting in an antique white. Overhead, a large dome light in eggshell with a swirl of beige emitted a soft glow. Kaila moved toward the blinds. After a quick tug to each, they sprang up in rapid succession, revealing the view that had been previously been obscured. She noted that she was at least two floors up from the street below. The day was dreary and dark, grey clouds hung low in the sky, pressing down on everything below. Trees glistened with rain and leaves trembled in the summer storm.

  The street view was different than the other place she had been. People with multicolored umbrellas hurried down the sidewalks, most of their bodies were now hidden by their rain gear. There were no more babies, no more lovers leisurely strolling. Only those that needed to be out on this day were there. Seeing how it all had changed made her heart sink. Kaila knew that weather shifts and patterns were part of life, but up until that moment she hadn’t realized that she had expected everything to be sunny and bright in the real.

  She swept her gaze away from the window view and spotted the thin rectangle of her computer. Kaila surged toward it, grabbed it up and hugged it to her chest. It felt good in her grasp, as if a piece of her had been missing and now it had been put back in place.

  “Derrick.”

  His voice was shriller than before and to Kaila’s ears sounded slightly feminine. She spun to face him and saw that he was upright behind the desk. And now that he was at his full height she was surprised at how very diminutive he was, like a shrunken version of Einstein. When their eyes met, the fear in his gaze was obvious. This surprised Kaila since she hadn’t been attempting to scare him, not right then at least. Yet for some reason he stared at her as if she were a caged zoo animal that had been set free.

  His fear intrigued her more than she had expected. She rapidly forgot about the world outside. Kaila strode forward, closing the distance between them. His face contorted with worry, she grinned at his dramatic response. She hadn’t known until right then that she had been beginning to doubt her ability to intimidate, since Derrick was always unaffected by her attempts to be fearsome. Witnessing the man practically cower made her feel fearsome, like a warrior going to battle. When she reached his desk, the only space that separated them, he pushed away even farther, pressing his back against the bookcase that dwarfed him even more. He had grabbed his leather bound notepad and was now using it as an impromptu shield. Fake Einstein held the book in the very same way as a priest in a movie that she had once seen. The movie had been about someone being exorcised. In the movie though, the priest had been holding a bible not a notebook.

  The true fear in his expression encouraged her to lean a little across the surface of the desk. In response to her move, his breathing became even more stilted as his mouth worked to form words that combined into one plea.

  “Derrick. Now.”

  Kaila was already beginning to tire of the game when she heard the door behind her open. She shifted her eyes away from fake Einstein to where the sound had come from. Even before she caught sight of him he had said her name.

  “Kaila?”

  He said it with a question mark after it. At first this seemed weird to her that he appeared not to know who she was, but then she understood; Derrick had been expecting Trillian. Knowing her secret was out, Kaila pondered just how many people Trillian had revealed herself to, and what the repercussions of Trillian’s act would be.

  Kaila turned back toward the man.

  “Why did you ask me that stuff about the collective consciousness?” she probed.

  She had turned the tables and would now be the investigator, asking the questions that needed answers.

  He shook his head dismissively then pointed toward the door and then toward Derrick. This fake Einstein stood straighter now, exuding authority and presence. All hints of his fear had apparently melted away as soon as Derrick had walked in.

  “Kaila, this is Franco. Remember I told you that Franco wanted to meet you?”

  Kaila thought for a moment t
hen remembered that Franco had been the cause for the delay in seeing Pauline. She cast her eyes back onto Franco, then frowned her disapproval.

  “I have your medicine,” Derrick said.

  He had made his way to her side with barely a sound and was digging into his jeans pocket for something. Kaila noticed that he was perfectly groomed and styled with a black fleece hoodie over a black snug fitting tee and faded blue jeans. When he pulled out a tiny clear zipper bag, Kaila recognized several more of the pills that he had fed her before. Knowing what had happened the last time she had trusted him, she shook her head.

  “No,” she said simply.

  Then it came to her in a rush, time was rapidly slipping out of her grasp.

  “I want to see Pauline.”

  Derrick slipped the bag of pills back into his pocket. He nodded as if he might actually listen to her this time. But even his acquiescence didn’t quiet the dread that was beginning to work through her. A voice that wasn’t Trillian’s said that if she didn’t see Pauline soon, everything they had worked for would be lost. She wanted to predict what would happen, but she now realized that the longer she was outside of Wildwind the more she was losing her prediction skills. She was slowly forgetting how to predict and wondered if one day she would have all her skills ripped away forever. Kaila refused to let that happen. She was tired of this place that wasn’t Wildwind, she was tired of Derrick making excuses and putting her off, she needed to go. There was no other time, only now.

  “Fine, but if you want me to take you to see Pauline then you’ll need to take a pill for me in exchange.”