Future Imperfect

by K Ryer Breese

  CHAPTER NINE

  ONE

  Dr. David Gore-

  Fuck you.

  – Ade Patience

  TWO

  What I do first is go to Vauxhall’s house.

  This is after I’ve dropped Belle off and after she told me that she forgave me for being so rude to her. This is after she told me that she knew I was just trying to process it all and probably just need a good night’s sleep. This is, of course, after she said, “You just call me when you’re ready to get back into it. Just think of me as your mentor!”

  At Vauxhall’s all the lights are off. She is asleep. It is nearly one in the morning.

  I have no idea how it got so late, but I need to see her right now. I walk over to her window and tap on it lightly. She doesn’t respond, so I tap harder. And I call out, kind of whisper yelling, “Vaux! Wake up, Vaux!”

  There is a rustling behind the blinds. A soft light comes on.

  Her face, all puffy with sleep, appears at the window, like a gorgeous spook show. When she sees me she grins and pulls the window up and open. Then she leans out, my Juliette, and asks, “Do you know what time it is?”

  “This is important,” I say. “It’s crazy the stuff I’ve found out.”

  “And what stuff would that be?” She is so cute the way she asks it.

  “Jimi. This whole thing is him, him setting it up, and it’s ugly, Vaux.”

  She puts on a sad face. It’s not acting.

  I switch gears. “Come with me for a drive,” I say.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah. Right now. Jump into some clothes. Come on.”

  Vauxhall shrugs, disappears back inside. I back away and watch a lone red car navigate slowly through a distant intersection. A dog barks. Leaves fall. Weather. Then Vauxhall reappears, jumps out of her bedroom window in jeans and a dark hooded sweater.

  THREE

  We drive to Stapleton Airport.

  The streets are empty.

  There’s this side road where the apartments edge the runways. I park there, right at the end of the street, with the hood of the car up against a chain-metal fence. We lie on the hood of the car. It’s hot but feels good.

  “We need to talk more about Jimi,” I say. “I need to tell you what I learned about him. It isn’t good, Vaux. What he’s done is-”

  Vaux shushes me with her index finger, soft on my lips. “Later,” she says. “Please? Just for a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  I calm down. A little.

  Lying there, we’re looking up at the sky and counting stars. Vaux points out a blinking light. One so distant it fades in and out of existence with every blink.

  “Satellite,” she says.

  Still watching the sky, she says, “My dad worked on satellites. Engineer. Did mechanical stuff for recon satellites like the Corona, later ones. My dad, I told you he killed himself, right?”

  I say, “No. At Oscar’s party, you just mentioned he’d died.”

  Vaux says, “He got laid off from his job, some bullshit company reorganization. Couldn’t get work after that. He just kind of collapsed into himself. You really would have liked him, Ade, before, when he was working and happy. He had such a great sense of humor. Self-deprecating. My dad came from a religious home, Grandpa was a rabbi, but we didn’t keep Shabbat or keep kosher or anything.”

  Looking at Vaux, at her looking up, I tell her I’m sorry, that I wish I could have met him. I tell her that he must have been an amazing person. I say, “Judging by you, an incredible person.”

  She says, “A funny story, he once put a prayer into one of the satellites. Tiny, on this sheet of thin silver metal. Took him a few weeks to etch it. Prayer was the Mi sheberakh, for healing, for relief of suffering. Dad told me, after it launched and we were looking at the sky once, that he wanted something good, even a little something good, up there in the cold night. Those satellites, he said, were reckless. Just our hubris. He wanted to add some real weight to them.”

  I look over at Vaux and want to kiss her. Soothe her the same as a prayer.

  Without turning to me, Vaux says, “I got my smile from my dad.”

  A few seconds later we’re surrounded by the unmistakable rumble of an airplane. I mention to Vaux that she should brace herself. The growl of the jet’s engines gets louder and louder. She takes my hand. Squeezes harder and harder as the noise of the plane comes closer and closer.

  Squeezing until it’s on top of us.

  And really, it almost is. The plane passes maybe a few hundred feet over us. For a few seconds, there on the hood of my car, we’re bathed in the red and white blinking lights of the plane as it glides overhead. Our hair blown wild by the rush of it. The car shaking. And then it’s over. The plane lands half a mile away.

  Vaux says nothing but she smiles.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “You bring all your girls here?”

  “Only the ones I think I’ll get lucky with.”

  “Ha.”

  “You must have some spot you take the boys? Your little nest?”

  “I was never that practical. You bring that Belle girl here?”

  “Belle?”

  Vaux makes a face. “Yeah.”

  “No. We weren’t like, you know.”

  “Serious?”

  “Right.”

  Vaux says, “Okay.” Then asks, “So what did you discover out there?”

  “There’s this whole world of people like us, Vaux. All of them with different abilities. All of them addicted and all of them lame. A world of losers who spend their days reading crystal balls and looking for lottery numbers. None of them is-”

  “Did they help you?” Vaux interrupts. “Did they show you how to stop it?”

  “Maybe. I’m getting closer.”

  “Do you feel good about it?”

  “Yeah. Underneath the bullshit, I think so. But Jimi, he’s known about these people too. He’s been to see them, asking them questions, getting his future-”

  “Looking for his dad,” Vauxhall says. “That’s what this is about.”

  “No, Vauxhall. It’s bigger than that. Did you know he killed his mother?”

  Vaux’s mouth falls, her eyes spin wide. “What?”

  “You never saw it?”

  Vauxhall’s eyes start to water. Her lips tremble.

  “I don’t know how come you never saw it. You saw everything leading up to it. The reservoir, where he swam in the snow and the ice. That day, he killed his mom. Pushed her out under the ice, weighed down with stones.”

  Vauxhall swallows a few times, sniffs, wipes her eyes, says, “There were things always blocked out, you know? Times when scenes, memories, would just end suddenly like the film ran out. And other times when the memories were just so choppy. At first I didn’t think much about it, but…”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “I don’t know who he is, do I?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not sure you do.”

  She moves close to me. Nestles up to me. Her face on my chest. Then she kisses me. I wipe her eyes and I kiss them. I kiss her face. Her neck. She kisses me back.

  Then Vaux starts to say something, but the car rattles and her voice is drowned out by the throb of another plane engine.

  In the flash of airplane lights, we kiss more and I move my hands along the lengths of her legs. My hands three places at once. The whole surface of them trying to take in the whole surface of her. I want to feel every inch and move up to her chest. These breasts that have enslaved her, the curves that make her a prisoner of stares, I have them in my hands and I want to sense every inch. I want to know every bump. Trace every vein. But we’re clothed. There are planes passing overhead. There are people watching us from their apartments. People in the sky.

  We stop, both together breathless.

  Vaux’s like, “Can we go somewhere else?”

  On the way to somewhere else we stop at Safeway. For condoms.

  Honestly, I do
n’t know what’s wrong with me. The part of me that needs for Vauxhall to go cold turkey, the part of me that wants nothing more than to help her go clean, that part is gone. It’s frightening how I know that doing what we’re planning on doing will only make me her accomplice and yet I don’t care.

  I’ve overruled myself.

  In fact: I’ve got the devil in me.

  We go to Sundial Park and I spread out a blanket from the trunk of my car under one of the fir trees at the far-west end. It’s late enough that the houses across the street are dark. No one on the road either. The cool air feels fresh and great on my skin. The moon is just a sliver, but it gives us the half-light we want. Just enough to make out shapes. We fold the blanket in half. Then we lie next to each other, both of us still as the park. We don’t talk and I run my fingers across Vaux’s face. Find her eyes. The faint brush of lashes. Her lips. Swelling. Warm. We undress each other. It’s not frenzied.

  We kiss and then I ask Vauxhall if this is really what we should be doing. Even as I say it I know, deep down, that I don’t believe it. We need this. I need this.

  “Why not?”

  “The Buzz,” I say. My throat is parched.

  “You don’t want to be with me?”

  “I do. Want it more than anything.”

  “What if I promise not to enjoy the high? Ade, I can do this. I’m only with you. It won’t be like that, like how you’re imagining it. Please.”

  I can’t speak. My voice is gone.

  Vauxhall giggles. “How about this is the last time?”

  I think I growl. Something terrible inside me needing out.

  Vauxhall laughs. “We’ll get married right after, okay?”

  And I pull her to me.

  There is no clawing and hissing the way you see people do it in movies. I am slow and convinced. We trace outlines, our fingers gliding and entwining when they meet the way planets spin around each other. I put my mouth on her. Vaux leans into my mouth. And then everything else, the supernova parts, happen magically. Our bodies take over and our minds shut off. I’m in the back of myself, watching myself explore. Watching myself relaxed and possessed at the very same time. Myself sweating and cooling off. Myself slow motion the way I am underwater.

  What happens next is hard to explain. What it is is science fiction. It’s impossible mathematics. It can only be love.

  My mind spins out above my body, above the roof of the house, and it goes up into the night between the stars and jumps through the clouds until the sides of everything come curling around me. The tunnel forms. It is a filigree of light and shadow and I move to the middle of it. The middle of everything.

  The tunnel doesn’t end, but I take a detour out.

  And what I see is not the future. I see Jimi.

  Jimi talking to Grandpa Razor and they’re sitting at a White Spot diner on Colfax sharing a plate of pancakes and talking amiably. I can’t hear really what they’re saying, but it’s a heated conversation. Some snippets sneak through. Jimi, wearing sunglasses and a beanie, is forking pancake into his face and asking, “But does he really need to die?” And Grandpa Razor, his beard all slathered in syrup, saying, “Of course, that’s essential. You’ve done so well this far. Don’t let everything fall apart. Keep it hidden, keep it safe.” Things go quiet again, the dialogue getting all fuzzy, until Jimi stands up and storms out. Grandpa Razor, that fat man, just sits there laughing to himself.

  And the vision ends.

  Back in the tunnel. The walls collapse in. The stars zip back into place.

  Then it’s just me breathing heavy in Vauxhall’s arms. My muscles are slick and electric. I sigh so hard that my body racks.

  Vaux asks, her voice barely a whisper, “Did you see what I saw?”

  “What?” My throat is so dry, it’s cracking my voice. “What did you see?”

  “Jimi. Jimi and some guy with a beard.”

  I’m surprised enough that most of my skin jumps.

  “I saw the same thing,” I say. “Them eating and talking.”

  “Oh, my God,” Vauxhall says. “This is so crazy. What just happened?”

  I fall back on the blanket and let all the air out of my lungs and push it up at the sky and the stars and the moon hiding somewhere on the far side of the universe. Vaux lies down beside me and covers herself with my shirt. She says, “The high, it’s like…”

  And I feel it too.

  It’s not the numbing, scattershot thrill of the Buzz. This is something new, something entirely different. This high feels, if anything, organic. It feels like it was made for me. Like stepping into a perfectly tailored suit. I can see my skin glowing. Vauxhall’s too.

  She says, “Maybe we cancelled each other out? Me seeing the past, you seeing the future. The two of us together, maybe what happened was we both saw the present. You know, it like evened things out. Just minutes ago, Jimi and that guy were eating and we just kind of eavesdropped in on them.”

  And it kind of makes sense. Yin and yang.

  “But why Jimi? I’ve never seen anything but myself.”

  Vauxhall says, “I don’t know. I’ve seen so much of Jimi’s past. Maybe I kind of directed it. You know, moved the frame over. Kind of a beautiful thing, don’t you think?” And when she gives me a kiss, there’s a spark like when you get static buildup from walking crazy in socks on a carpet.

  I go back over the vision in my head. “What was Jimi saying?”

  “I only heard part of it,” Vauxhall says. “They were arguing.”

  I sit up and tell Vauxhall that I know the guy Jimi was eating pancakes with. I tell her that he’s at the heart of this whole thing and that he knows how to find Poppa Ministry. I say, “Jimi being with Grandpa Razor, that’s not a good thing at all. I think it’s a setup is what it is. They’re planning something.”

  “You think this will happen every time, we, you know?”

  “God, I hope not,” I say.

  Silence follows. Both of us chewing it over.

  Then Vauxhall says, sitting up, “Tell me everything about the weekend.”

  I do. I tell her about Belle and the Diviners and how we went to the park and met up with the Metal Sisters. I leave out the Janice stuff, but I tell her about Slow Bob and Grandpa Razor. “With all the names and everything,” I say, “it sounds like something from a cartoon, but these people, I’ve seen them, Vaux. They know what they’re doing. I just don’t want to walk in there blind.”

  Vauxhall says, “Then you don’t.”

  I tell her I have an idea. I tell her it’s one that I hate but the only I think will work. But knowing what we know, I say, “It’s probably not safe. It’s certainly not safe.”

  And after I explain my idea, Vauxhall says, “I’m only doing this for you.”

  “Tell me it’s a terrible idea. What about what he did?”

  “But it’ll work.”

  “No. I know. But still, he’s-”

  “I’m not a wuss, Ade. I’ve known him long enough.”

  She kisses me so hard I fall over. On top of me, her elbows digging into my chest, she says, “Only for you, and only this once. I love you.”

  FOUR

  I’m at the Tattered Cover bookstore, trying to drink a coffee, trying to read through a copy of Juxtapoz, but mostly just driving everyone else in the place crazy.

  It’s because I’m shaking.

  The place only just opened ten minutes ago.

  My feet are kicking. My fingers tapping. I keep cracking my knuckles. I keep sighing a little too loudly. It’s like I’m sitting on the bench ready for my turn at bat and I’m always the next one, I’m stuck in this jittery limbo. Also I keep checking my cell.

  Vauxhall is with Jimi.

  She’s at his place. Doing things.

  My hand shaking as it stirs my cup of mint mocha for the eightieth time, I’m reminding myself why I set this up. I’m convincing myself, this for the ninetieth time, that Vauxhall going over there is worth it. That this needs to hap
pen.

  Fact is: I’ve whored my girlfriend out.

  The love of my life, I’ve sent her over to Jimi’s so she can jump his bones and read his memory. I’ve sent her over there so she can dig into his head and find out what he knows about Grandpa Razor.

  My stomach, it’s like someone else’s fist is in there going nuts.

  The reason I keep checking my cell is because Vauxhall told me it’d only be an hour. Just one hour and she can get the information and get out of Jimi’s house. Hopefully, get out of Jimi’s life.

  It’s only been twenty minutes.

  I’m sweating like it’s raining on me.

  My heart, it’s doing things it shouldn’t be able to.

  And worst of all, sitting here pouring more sugar into my already too sweet coffee, my anger is starting to surge again. My ears getting hot. My skin almost blistering. But then my cell rings and the anger, the stress, it’s almost instantly relieved.

  Almost.

  It’s Paige. I answer, voice strained, and she says, “I thought fall break was all about sleeping in. What the hell are you doing sipping coffee and reading, wait, is that a graffiti art magazine?”

  I’m confused only for a flash before Paige sits down across from me and winks. She makes a big dramatic show of flipping her cell off and then says, “I think you need to catch me up.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Paige says, “You know what’s really funny? I like to come here second Monday of the month, bright and early before Mrs. Schmidt’s class, and just flip through a few magazines and sip some coffee. Mostly I read the politics, though.”

  “You don’t ever come here, Paige.”

  She claps. “You’re right. I had a doctor’s appointment and was taking the scenic route, you know, Colfax, home and saw your car parked out front. What exactly are you doing here and why haven’t you called me about anything?”

  I tell Paige first and foremost that it’s been a crazy ride. I tell her, in no particular order, that Vauxhall and I had sex, that I’ve been hanging out with Belle, meeting a whole tribe of people with crazy abilities like mine, that I’m going to confront Jimi’s dad, and that there’s a really good chance something gnarly will go down. I say, “And it’s going to happen soon. Really, something super gnarly is about to happen in the next thirty minutes.”