I picked up the receiver. Dial tone fascinated me. I listened to it for a while, thinking that the disguise really was shit and someone should have recognized me by now. The man in the mirror put his hand up on the wooden frame. I made eye contact.
“So,” I said. “What are you in for?” He eyed me, annoyed.
“You know what,” he replied.
“Well, how is it in there?”
“You know that, too.”
“Not much of a conversation we are having.”
“Are you here to talk to yourself or to make a phone call?”
But that was the thing. I had the receiver in my hand, but I had no idea who to call. Not only did my mind fail to yield a single face it deemed capable of helping me, I also came up with nothing when I tried to at least think of someone who wouldn’t dial police as soon as they heard my voice.
“Call Paul,” the man in the mirror said suddenly. I stared.
Could I really just call Paul after six years? He had been my agent back when I was still trying to get parts in theater. He had been my friend long before that. I had fired him, because theaters were dying and because Jimbo could and did get me places Paul never would. The last thing he ever said to me — when he realized I was being serious — had been an expletive. Yet, his name was the only one presently available. I didn’t know whether it was because my fairy godmother slipped my mind, or there simply was no one else. Actually, I knew.
“Dial Pail,” I said loudly. Nothing happened of course.
“Damn it. What was his number?” I asked my mirror-self. “And don’t say ‘You know.’” He didn’t answer. Then I knew the number. Hurriedly, I punched it in.
Phone rang for ages. It’s been six years, I thought. He probably changed the number a long time ago. Hell, he could have died of a heart attack for all I knew.
There was a click, and Paul said, “Hello.” I almost hung up, but just squeezed the handle in my fist instead.
“Hey, Paul,” I said stupidly.
“Luke?” His voice dropped to almost a whisper.
“That was fast.”
“Did you kill that guy?” I don’t know why I was so surprised, but I was certain then that for a moment my heart stopped beating.
“How?” I breathed.
“I just watched a special about you on the news.”
“Did they say I killed him?”
“They said you’re wanted for questioning in connection to. Where are you?”
I was suddenly afraid to tell him.
“So, how’ve you been these last what, six years?”
“Don’t get stupid with me.”
“I need help, but I don’t know what kind of help. Can you help me?”
“I don’t know. I can try.”
“Just like that? After the way I treated you—”
“Did you kill the guy?”
“God, no.”
“Are you the same jackass who sent me packing June 9, 2027?”
“I don’t know. I might be.”
“I don’t think you are. That jackass wouldn’t have called me for help. Let’s meet so you can tell me what the hell is going on. Somewhere the cops won’t bother us. Wanna come to my place?”
“I’m on foot. So… no.”
“Where are you now?”
“In the old theater.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a gay bar somewhere on the North Side. Couldn’t tell you more.”
“I know that bar. Not that I… Nice move for you. How did you figure it out?”
“I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Be there in thirty minutes.”
“Thanks, Paul.” I hung up. And felt better. I discovered I had a friend.
When I returned to the bar, the booth was empty. My drink was on the table. I sat and waited for maybe five minutes, throwing periodic looks at the bartender, who wasn’t looking in my direction. Just as I was about to go and ask him if he’d seen where Iris went, it occurred to me that she must have simply left. Who the hell was Iris, anyway? Who was I to her? Some guy in some kind of trouble, who needed to make a call. She had facilitated that, and now went home to her eight siblings.
Raising the moist glass, I shrugged. Thanks, weird Iris. Cute nose. Have a nice life.
I was back at square one. No, actually square one was in my kitchen, of which I tried not to think and failed. An empty booth in the corner of a gay bar must have been somewhere between squares three and four.
Turning sideways, I slid all the way inside my seat, leaned on the padded wall and sipped on the brew, searching the surroundings for Twiddledee and Twiddledum. Out there in the twilight, amidst smoke and music from the last century, citizens in couples and groups bent over tables, screaming conversations I could not hear. Small projectors painted the swirling clouds red, yellow, green and blue. It might have been the drink, or the knowledge that an old friend was coming to rescue me, but sitting there, alone, with a ghost of a dead marshal hovering always nearby, I gradually acquired calmness like I could not recall to have ever encountered before. For the first time that day I consciously believed that I would make it without my pills.
A big-nosed man in a suit at the table nearby turned his face and smiled. I smiled back, certain suddenly that he had felt before what I was feeling now.
Why did the corpse of a U.S. Marshal occupy my kitchen? Who shot him? And since it was pretty obvious that whoever shot him did so to set me up, why? Competitors? Even if one was to allow that show business was tough, killing a federal employee to set up a rival seemed excessive. I mean, the guy was dead.
My smile was gone, but I had not deteriorated into a shuddering, sobbing pile of meat. Maybe the withdrawal was beginning to let go.
Some tall, skinny, blond kid in a dark t-shirt with “Beware! The Paranoids Are Watching You!” in glowing green runes across the chest paused by my booth, bent his neatly combed head towards me, grinned, and shouted that universe was a carp. Then he asked me for a smoke. I screamed I had none and he, still grinning, gave me the thumbs up and moved on.
I was also thinking about something Iris had said to me in the park. She had reminded me that I didn’t do it. Yes, I had run and that would make me seem guilty, but not to myself. I knew I was innocent. Whatever happened, that was the main thing I needed to remember. That, and the fact that until the cops figured out it wasn’t me, I better not let them catch me. I had told Jimbo I wasn’t cut out for military — that went double for jail.
I looked over and Iris was back. I blinked. She winked at me through the smoke of her cigarette.
“What the hell?” I shouted.
“What?”
“I thought you left.”
“No, we’ve only just come. I was in the girls’ room. Did you make your call?”
“Yes. Yes I did. Why the hell do they even have that thing back there?”
“Some people don’t want their conversations broadcasted.”
“There are easier ways to get some privacy.”
“Easier? For someone with tons of money, maybe.”
“Well, thanks for bringing me over, anyway.”
“So what now?”
“Now I’m waiting for a friend. He should be here any minute.”
“So you do have friends.”
“Just one, I think.”
“Better than none.”
“Yeah, I’m in good shape.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“What do you mean?”
“How long has it been?”
“What?”
“How long since you’ve downed a pill?”
“A pill?”
“A pill.”
“What makes you think—?”
“I can tell.”
“How?”
“The same way you can tell.”
“I wasn’t aware I could.”
“The guy with the nose over there.” She nodded without looking at the man who had smiled at me. I follo
wed her nod to make sure. Raising my hand, I looked at her with a patronizing smile.
“The idea of him taking pills has not even crossed my mind,” I told her solemnly. “And that’s the truth.”
“He doesn’t take pills,” she said. A feeling of slight disorientation came over me.. She grinned. “Not any more, I mean. Just like you.”
“The more I talk to you, the more I want to start again.”
She laughed.
“You’re becoming funny. But it’s not that kind of an addiction. Not like heroin, or meth. No one starts over after going without them for five days.”
I was going to mention that it hadn’t been five days yet, but refrained.
“Whatever,” I said instead. “The fact is I never had a clue he came near the stuff.”
“You exchanged smiles.”
“He smiled at me. I thought he was gay and decided to be polite.”
“Wrong. He smiled at you because he saw the same thing in you that you saw in him.”
“I didn’t see shit.”
“It’s the look in the eyes. Your eyes are beginning to look like kid’s eyes again. When you were on the pill you had robot’s analyzers of reflected sunlight instead of eyes. It takes five days on average to get rid of the glaze.”
This conversation was crazy, but by then I was getting used to her. Not only that, I enjoyed talking to her.
“What are you, an optometrist?”
She giggled and took a sip from her drink.
“What if I never took the stuff in the first place?” I asked. “I would have the same look then, right? ‘A kid’s eye.’ Sounds like a police drama episode.”
“You’re over thirty,” she replied. It wasn’t a question, but she paused until I fidgeted in my seat, shrugging. She continued then, as though making me feel uncomfortable had been some kind of a prerequisite for revealing the knowledge that was to follow. “If we’re talking about ‘industrialized’ areas of the planet, the odds of finding a clear-eyed homo sapiens are quite small. But to encounter a clear-eyed human being between the ages of thirty and sixty who never took antidepressants manufactured by Freedom Corp., the leader in pharmaceuticals, would be nearly impossible statistically.”
We stared at each other across the table. Plainly, the small talk was over. Iris had just sincerely shared something that was very important to her. She had just initiated me, a total stranger, into her inner circle. She had revealed the Ultimate Truth. Considering we’d only met an hour earlier, it must have been a sign of tremendous trust. Trouble was, I felt awkward rather than properly honored, because I was Luke Fredegar Whales. And Luke Fredegar Whales happened to have firsthand knowledge of the fact that Iris’s Ultimate Truth was a pile of crap.
“I don’t know where you got that from,” I started diplomatically, “but that’s a bunch of nonsense.” She did not reply, just looked at me intently. Undaunted, I cleared my throat and continued.
“I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I’m a well-known TV actor. I have dealt with Freedom Corp. personally. In fact, I did a commercial for them a couple of years back.”
“So?”
“So I, and people who watch television, have reliable information that ‘statistically,’ one out of every twelve Americans experiences frequent anxiety and depression. What is known to me as an insider is that also ‘statistically,’ out of those rough eight percent of the population, half never calls to get treatment.”
I fell silent. I had said all that needed to be said. She could do the math. Iris was a kook, but I liked her. She had helped me, so I didn’t want to hurt her with harsh words. I’d heard mentally ill people were really sensitive to that kind of thing.
I snuck a peek to check her reaction. Clearly, my clumsy attempts at diplomacy had failed. She sat motionless, staring at me. Squashing the cigarette in the ashtray, she immediately lighted another one. I felt bad. Had I not been in the situation I found myself in, I would probably not have said anything. In fact, under normal circumstances I would not only let it slide, but also would be well on my way of getting into her pants.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. At that, Iris burst out laughing. I decided to stop being nice.
“What pills did you stop taking, exactly?” She ignored the question. She was catching her breath.
“You should have seen your face,” she said once she caught it. I didn’t know what to think about that, and it was obviously useless to argue the point with her. I should have known better than trying to reason with a kook. Shrugging, I took another sip from my glass and turned away. Because of the noise, without eye contact her words seemed to reach me from far away. “First you’re shocking me with reliable information you got from a TV commercial and the very people who turned you into a zombie for god knows how long, and then, to top it off, you say you’re sorry for me. You thought I finally saw how crazy I was or something?”
Despite my effort, I turned and looked at her again. She wasn’t laughing now. If anything, as absurd as it sounded, it seemed she was the one feeling sorry for me.
“Hey, I know what you’re trying to say,” I said. “I know all about commercials being a little spiced up for appeal, trust me. But no commercial is that wrong. I could imagine the number being slightly off, but not anywhere near the insanity you’re spouting. And why would they even lie in the first place? What’s the point? What difference does it make? A commercial is there to sell the product. That’s a fact. How is saying it’s one out of a dozen instead of one out of three going to sell more pills? How?”
“You know how they always tell you ‘you are not alone?’” She asked in a normal voice, which sounded like a whisper. Ah, so you do watch TV, a fleeting thought. And then it hit me. I remembered. “Remember that time you heard it and decided to ask your doctor? One out of every twelve Americans…”
“I never felt so alone in my life,” I said, leaning back.
“It became obvious you were the one screwed up, not the world, right? You alone were the cause, and they were the only ones capable of helping you. The only ones who wanted to help you.”
“And the truth is what? The world is fucked up?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. Blame it on the world. It’s the easiest.”
“Wrong. Blaming it on yourself is the easiest. I am only human. It’s human nature. Errare humanum est. Blah blah blah. Society is built around that stuff. Everyone will support you, help you, cure you, as long as you are the hero and take the blame. Admit that you are nothing alone. Confess your goddamn sins.”
She fell silent and leaned back. I had to admit there was some sense to what she’d said, but that made it no less insane to claim everyone was on the pill. There was no way to keep a thing like that secret. In search of a different topic I looked to the bar. There, I quickly located the bartender (in fact, it would probably be harder to locate the bar itself), who was presently shaking his bushy head at a thoroughly fed guy in a short leather jacket. The latter then turned around and, leaning on the counter with his elbows, began to survey the premises. There was a thick mustache on his face, which I, for some unknown reason, resented. I slunk back into the depths of the booth, keeping an eye on the man.
“What’s wrong?” Iris asked.
“I think that’s a cop,” I said, staring straight at her. She made a face and turned to look. “Don’t look,” I hissed, but it was too late. The guy began moving in our direction. Maybe it’s a friend of Iris’s, I thought hopefully, but one look at her puzzled face was enough to convince me otherwise. Run? What if he’s armed? Of course he’s armed, he’s a cop. It might have been reasonable to imagine there was a good possibility of me avoiding him in a dark, smoke-filled theater, crowded, besides, with civilians, if I made a run for it, but I was afraid of getting shot even more than of going to jail. I put both hands on the table in front of me and waited. Soon enough he towered over.
“Luke Whales?” he asked excitedly. Iris was looking at me.
“Who?”
“You look different with that beard, but not different enough.” I said nothing, waiting. “Anyway, we have to go. Now.”
“Where to?”
“Out. Flee. The cops have surrounded the place.”
“What? How?”
“An anonymous phone call, usually. No time to meditate on that now, buddy. We have to leave.”
“A phone call? But no one…” And then a painful thought pierced me right through. Paul. But Paul is my friend. My only friend. He wouldn’t sell me out. I told him I was innocent. God damn it, Paul. He could have made that call precisely because he believed me.
“If the police were near we’d know,” Iris said suddenly. Just as she did, the music stopped, and the “No Smoking” signs above the bar began to flash.
“Let’s go,” the mustached man said, and we got up. No one turned to look at us, although there seemed to appear a general annoyed tension.
“Didn’t you say we were surrounded?”
“There’s a way out through the stage,” the guy and, amazingly, Iris said at the same time. She winked at me.
“So the police was here once during my time.”
We passed the curtain and ascended the steps to the stage. Iris moved the stepladder. Under it was a trapdoor, opening outwards. She climbed down first.
“After you,” the guy told me.
“Wait,” I said, halting. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh,” he chortled good-humoredly, offering a hand, which I expected to be sweaty, but it wasn’t. “Name’s Lloyd. I’m a big fan.
Chapter Six
Special Agent Brighton would have yelled, only FBI agents didn’t yell. Cop lieutenants yelled, and therefore yelling was beneath Special Agent Brighton. Instead, he spoke curtly but very civilly, while his eyes bore two smoking holes in the unlucky deliverer of news. In his white fingers the black notebook creaked, threatening to break in half.
Project Antichrist Page 4