We continued walking, no one saying anything for a while. We came to a Mrs. Fields cookie counter, sandwiched in a hole in the wall between Standard Brands Paints and Standard Shoes. Ralph stopped walking. “Oh, you have to try one of these cookies. They’re the best in the world.”
We stood in front of the window, looking in at tray after tray of fresh cookies. I could smell the scent of baking, a full, sugary, chocolaty delicious odor.
The counter was not yet open, but Ralph rapped loudly on the glass, and an elderly woman in a red-and-white uniform slid the window aside, peeking out. “Yes?”
“We have some new recruits here, Glenda. Think you could spare a few?”
The woman looked at us, smiled hello, then turned back to the mayor. “Sure,” she said. “For them. You have to wait until regular business hours.”
“Oh, Glenda—”
“Don’t ‘Oh, Glenda’ me. You know very well that the only reason you wanted them to try my cookies is because you wanted one, too.”
“I can’t help it. I love your—”
“Oh, here. Take one and shut up.”
She handed Ralph an oversized cookie, passed others out to us as we stepped up to the window.
I bit into the cookie. I wanted to hate it, to prove to myself, if no one else, that I was not typical, not ordinary, not average, not exactly the same as Ralph in my likes and dislikes. But I loved the cookie. The taste was wonderful, a blend of chocolate and peanut butter that was like a concoction out of my dreams. The taste was so perfect that it seemed as though it had been created especially for me.
That was frightening.
Especially since I knew everyone else in town felt exactly the same way.
We stood there eating, making stupid small talk about how good the cookies were, and I looked around me. I’d thought Thompson would be a real town, a real community, not a corporate testing ground, and part of me wished I were back in Desert Palms. Part of me wished I were back in my apartment in Brea.
Part of me loved it here.
We continued walking, ending up back at city hall around lunchtime. Other people were in the building now—secretaries, clerks—and Ralph grabbed the file folder from his desk and took it and us upstairs, handing the folder to a woman standing behind a counter marked HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.
“Denise, here, will assist you in finding housing,” Ralph said. “She’ll assign someone to take you around until you find a place that’s suitable. I assume you’ll all need furnished places?”
We nodded.
“No problem.” He turned toward me. “I’d like you to come with me, if you don’t mind. I’ll help you find a place to live.”
I nodded. “All right.” I turned toward the others. “See you guys later.”
“Later,” James said.
“Bye.” Mary smiled at me. “I think we’re all going to be very happy here.” Her hand found Jim’s and held it.
“I hope so,” I said.
I nodded good-bye to Don and followed Ralph back downstairs.
In the lobby, the mayor turned to face me. “I like you,” he said. “I trust you. I have a good feeling about you. That’s why I want you to tell me about this Philipe.”
“What about him?” I wasn’t sure what he was after.
“Something’s been bothering me all morning. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I mean, he’s supposed to be your leader, he’s this brilliant guy, and he’s coming in sometime in the next few days, and you guys act like he doesn’t exist. Did you have some type of falling out?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Is there… something wrong with Philipe? Something I should know before he gets here?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“How can I put this? Certain people who are Ignored are… shall we say, disturbed. Something happened to them. Some short circuit in their brain. I’ve seen it before. We had one guy here who was a pyromaniac. Seemed like a perfectly normal guy, but he felt compelled to burn houses because he said giant spiders lived in them. There was another guy who thought he was communicating with an alien race that expected him to repopulate the world by impregnating dogs. We caught him mounting an Irish Setter. These people are few and far between, but they cause us a lot of problems.”
I tried to keep my voice light, noncommittal. “What makes you think Philipe’s like that?”
“I don’t know. Something about the way you guys seem all hush-hush about him. I might add that those other men were also very charismatic men. Leaders. One was a popular high school teacher. The other was my predecessor, the former mayor.”
“Which one was he?”
“The alien dog-fucker.”
“Philipe’s not like that,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment, studying my face, then nodded, satisfied. He clapped a hand on my back. “Okay, then. Let’s get you settled.”
I followed Ralph outside. Why hadn’t I told him about Philipe? About seeing him kill those two girls? About his “hunches” and his mood swings and his spells? Was it because I was more loyal to Philipe than to my conscience? Or was it because…
Was it because somewhere down in my superstitious heart of hearts I believed that Philipe was right, that if he had not killed those girls something would have happened to one of us?
No. That was stupid.
But Philipe’s “hunches” had always been right, hadn’t they?
Ralph was walking across the parking lot, toward a white city vehicle. “We have plenty of jobs for you if you want them,” he was saying. “Recessions never affect us here.”
I nodded, pretended as though I’d been listening.
“Take a few days off if you need to. Get adjusted. Then come and see me if you want to work.”
We got into the car, and he started talking about the furnished condo that was going to be mine. He broke off in mid-sentence as we turned onto a street festooned with banners.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“The Andy Warhol Day parade. It’s coming up this weekend.”
I noticed that the banners hanging from the streetlights and telephone poles were celebrity portraits, the Warhol photo-paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Fonda and James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor.
“Andy Warhol?” I said.
“It’s one of our most important holidays.”
“Important?”
“To be famous for fifteen minutes,” Ralph said. “To be noticed for fifteen minutes. That’s what we pray for. That’s all we ask.”
I was about to say something else, something sarcastic, but I stopped myself. What was I doing? Why was I putting down these people for desiring recognition, these people who had never in their lives been noticed by anyone? We had had our day in the sun. We had had our fifteen minutes of fame. Even if the Terrorists for the Common Man had never been recognized, our deeds were taken note of. We had the newspaper clippings and the videotaped newscasts to prove it. I recalled my own rage, my own desperation before I teamed up with Philipe, and I could not find it in my heart to condemn these pathetic souls for wanting the same thing I had wanted, the same thing all of us had wanted.
I found myself looking up at a giant poster of Warhol hanging from a temporary grandstand set up on the side of the street. “Hasn’t anyone Ignored ever been famous?” I asked.
“In 1970, we had a rock group from here that had a top ten hit. The Peppertree Conspiracy. ‘Sunshine World’.”
“I have that record!” I said. “I loved it! It was the first record my parents ever bought for me!”
He smiled sadly. “We all have it. We all loved it. Everybody loved it for a week. Now I don’t think you could find anyone who isn’t Ignored who has a copy. There may be a few forty-fives buried in boxes in garages here and there, but most of the records that were bought were probably tossed or given to the Goodwill or Salvation Army. I bet you couldn’t find anyone who even remembers the song now.”
“What happened to the group?”
“Teddy Howard’s our minister.”
“What about the rest of them?”
“Roger died of a drug overdose in 1973; Paul’s our local morning shock jock on the radio.” He paused. “And I was the drummer.”
“Wow.” I was impressed, really impressed, and I looked at him with renewed respect. I remembered sitting on my bed when I was little, two pencils in my hands, pretending to drum with the record, imagining myself on stage in front of thousands of screaming girls. I wanted to tell him this, but the funny/sad/nostalgic look on the mayor’s face told me that that might best be left for another time.
He turned down another street. “Come on,” he said. “It’s getting late. Let’s go see your condo.”
TWO
I found a job in the planning department of city hall, processing building permit applications. It was a boring job, but I was boring and I was surrounded by other boring people, so I guess, theoretically, I should have enjoyed it.
I did not.
That surprised me. My likes and dislikes, moods and rhythms had always been so perfectly in sync with those of Philipe and the other terrorists that I’d automatically assumed that life in Thompson would be relaxed and fun, that I’d be happy.
That was not the case.
It was not the fault of my coworkers, who welcomed me with open arms and even invited me out for happy hour at a Mexican restaurant at the end of my first day of work. It was my fault. Maybe I’d been expecting too much, had had my hopes up too high, but I was disappointed. The magic simply wasn’t there. I guess I’d thought that once I came to Thompson everything would be perfect, everything would fall into place—but it hadn’t happened. I was surrounded by a city of people exactly like myself, and I felt as alone and out of it as I always had.
My condo was nice, I had to admit. Ralph had set me up in a furnished two-bedroom split-level in a community called The Lakes, and I was next to a winding man-made waterway bordered by a fifteen-foot greenbelt. I had no complaints there. But somehow having so much room completely to myself seemed awkward, strange, and a little unsettling after spending so much time living in such close proximity to the other terrorists.
The other terrorists.
As I’d feared, as I’d known, we saw very little of each other after that first week. I invited James and Don and Jim and Mary to see my condo, and I went over to visit their new homes, but, intentionally or unintentionally, we were placed far away from each other, at opposite ends of the city, and none of us found jobs in the same area.
I had the feeling that this was planned, that it was done on purpose, but I could think of no reason why that would be the case. We were here among our own people. Why would we be purposely separated? It didn’t make any sense.
After all that time with the terrorists, I was probably just paranoid.
Whatever the reason, though, it was inconvenient for us to see each other.
And we started spending more time with our new coworkers and less time with each other.
I heard, third-hand, that Philipe and the others had arrived a few days after we ourselves had and, like us, had settled into the Thompson lifestyle, but I saw none of them and did not make any effort to look them up.
The Thompson lifestyle was different. As Ralph had said, everything was free. As far as I could tell, no money ever exchanged hands within the city. I saw no coins or dollar bills. If I wanted something, I simply walked into a store and took it. A shelf inventory was later taken, I suppose, and the results forwarded to the corporation.
Taking things from shelves was not new to me, but being seen was. I was used to walking through stores unnoticed, and it took me a while to get reacquainted with the fact that people could see me. I felt self-conscious in the midst of so much visibility, and it was several weeks before I felt at ease in public.
In addition to movies, videotapes, and cable TV, there was a museum in Thompson, filled with the most mundane art imaginable. There were also pop concerts each Friday in the convention center. And community theater productions of The Fantastiks and Annie.
I loved it all.
Everyone did.
But something was wrong. I was provided with everything I needed, surrounded by all the things that should have made me happy. Yet something was missing. I knew what that something was, but I didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to think about it.
There was a rumor in Thompson that there was a real town somewhere in Iowa, a city founded by Ignored people for Ignored people, and I told myself that if I could find that place I would be happy.
I told myself that.
And every so often I could almost make myself believe it.
THREE
It was the first Sunday in June. June 5, to be exact. During the past month, I’d invited James over for a barbecue and he’d canceled, and he’d invited me to meet him for drinks one Friday and I’d canceled, so I figured it was my turn again, and I went to Von’s to pick up some steaks. I thought I’d ask again if James wanted to come over for grill and grog. If not, I planned to ask Susan, this girl from the office who seemed to be showing a little interest in me.
I was pushing my cart through the supermarket, heading toward the meat counter at the rear of the store. I’d just dropped three boxes of Rice-A-Roni into the basket and I turned the corner at the end of the aisle.
And there she was.
Jane.
My first reaction was to hide, to duck quickly back down my aisle, pulling the cart with me, like a hermit crab retreating into its shell. My heart was pounding crazily, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I was thrown totally off balance. I had imagined variations of this scenario hundreds of times in my dreams, in my fantasies, and I should have known what to do, how to react, but the sight was such a shock that I was at a complete loss, and I stood there, at the head of the aisle, holding too tightly to my shopping cart, staring. I’d thought I’d forgotten the way she looked, the specifics of her face. I’d thought time and memory had blurred her into the generic. But I had not forgotten, not deep down, not where it counts, and it was painful to look upon her. That face, those eyes, those lips, they brought back a rush of memory. All the time we’d spent together returned in a flood of sensory overload. The good times, the bad times, everything.
She was wearing tight new jeans and a T-shirt, her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she looked achingly beautiful to me. I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was wearing the same ratty clothes I’d worn while washing the car this morning. She started to turn her head in my direction, and without thinking I backed behind a display stack of Tide boxes. My heart was thumping, my hands shaking. I was afraid. Afraid she still didn’t want to see me, afraid she would hate me, afraid she would be indifferent.
Afraid she was changed.
That was the big fear, that she was not the same Jane I had known. It had been nearly three years since we’d last seen each other, and a lifetime of experience had occurred during that period. We were different people than we had been, both of us, and maybe we weren’t compatible anymore.
Maybe she had met someone else.
That was the other big fear, the one I didn’t want to acknowledge.
I peeked around the boxes, inched my cart forward. Part of me wanted to run away and leave her to memory, convinced that meeting again would only shatter my long-held illusions. Nothing could possibly ever be as it was before.
But part of me wanted to talk to her, touch her, be with her again.
I watched her sort through packages of chicken breasts. I hadn’t thought I’d remembered her this clearly, but I had. I remembered everything about her: the way she blinked her eyes, the way she picked up meat, the way she pursed her lips. It was all there, in my mind and in the flesh, and at that moment I realized how much I truly loved her.
As if responding to some signal or vibration, she suddenly looked up, looked in my direction.
And saw me
.
We both stood there dumbly, staring at each other, unmoving. I watched her put the package of chicken breasts she’d been holding into her cart. Her hands were shaking as badly as mine were. She licked her lips, hesitantly opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it.
“Hi,” she finally said.
That voice. I hadn’t heard it in three years, but I remembered it perfectly and it was like music to me. There was a lump in my throat. My eyes were suddenly moist, and I wiped them with my fingers so the moisture wouldn’t turn to tears.
“Hi,” I said.
And then I was crying, and she was crying, and she was holding me, hugging me, kissing my wet cheeks.
“I missed you so much,” she said through her sobs. “I missed you so much.”
I held her tightly. “I missed you, too.”
After several moments, I pulled back, grasped her by the shoulders, and for the first time looked at her closely. She truly was prettier than ever. Whatever she had gone through during the past few years, whatever had happened to her, it had left her even more radiantly beautiful than ever.
I realized that I had not really thought of her as beautiful before, when we’d been living together. I’d been attracted to her, of course, but I had not seen in her this exquisite objective loveliness. She was beautiful now, though.
She was also Ignored.
That had not really sunk in yet. I knew it, recognized it, but somehow it didn’t quite register.
It also didn’t matter at this moment.
I looked closely at her face, at her mouth, at her lips. I looked into her eyes. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to bring up what I was thinking, what I was feeling. What were we now? Just friends? Old close friends who had met again after a long absence? Or was she feeling the same thing I was feeling? Did she want to jump back into a relationship, take up where we’d left off? There was so much to go over, so much to talk about. Yet as close as we were at that moment, as close as I felt to her, there was still a barrier between us. We’d been apart for a long time, almost as long as we’d been together, and we couldn’t read each other the way we once could.
The Ignored Page 31