The cell found no signal, so she went for a walk and found a diner across the road, one of those dilapidated old stainless steel road restaurants built in the Forties, a trough to feed the truck drivers and other rubes bobbing up and down Interstate 35. It did have a decent signal.
Through the creaky door, Karen took a seat on a cracked vinyl bench and ordered coffee. A waitress in a pair of tired nursing shoes and shockingly wild orange hair brought her a mug. It was late, even later in Philadelphia, but she had to talk to her son and tell him she finally understood. She dialed, and it rang for some time before a very groggy James answered.
“Hey, Mom, what’s up? Kinda late.”
“Jimmy, I’m so sorry.” Karen bit her lip and trembled. “So sorry.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about?”
“I believe you.” A knot formed in her throat. She sipped some coffee.
“Huh? Believe what?”
“I believe it,” Karen said, a little loudly. She looked around to see if anyone was listening—nobody was. “I believe you can see them,” she added in a more hushed tone.
“Oh, okay. I see. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why have you changed your mind?”
Karen paused. She didn’t want to admit going to Pat for verification.
“Your drawing convinced me,” she said, “I did a little checking. It’s a type of virus, a type that can cause a migraine.”
“Ah, okay. Wow! Someone believes me. Well, someone sane. I told Gabby the other day and she believed me, all right, but she thinks Jesus is coming back with the Grays.”
This was going much better than Karen had expected. “Why did you want me to know?” she asked. “Why did you show me that painting yesterday?”
“Honestly?” He paused. “I don’t know. It’s a pretty big burden to carry around. Oh, and it should be kind of obvious, but I always wanted you to know!”
That went into her heart like a knife, though James had said it without a trace of vindictiveness. He added, “Look, it’s fine. I understand what it must have been like for you. Anyone would have done the same as you did, Mom. It’s fine, really.”
Karen paused for a long minute. “What can I do to help you with this thing?”
“Just knowing I’m not nuts is a great start. I don’t know. I’m a little curious, I guess. I wouldn’t mind finding out why this is happening.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“No, not really, but being able to tell when people are dying is pretty scary. It’s not something I would have volunteered for, but I’m thinking I should find out more. If it can be switched off, maybe that’s a way to go, too. I just don’t know, though.”
“We need to be discreet about this, honey.”
“Uh, ten years of doctors and shrinks? I’ve learned how to be discreet.”
That knife again. “Well, that’s kind of the point, Jimmy. You could end up as a freak or an inmate if the wrong people get involved. It might be better just to sit on it. Do you think you can do that?”
“Hello? Thirty-two years of sitting on it?”
“Yes, but you have come in out of the cold now. And things have changed, right?”
“What, people are more accepting of freaks?”
“No, what I mean is that your abilities seem to have been augmented by the accident. If this is for real, you don’t know what sorts of things might pop into that head of yours. It’s worth bearing that in mind.”
“Yes, that had occurred to me, too. So what do you suggest?”
“Well, I could examine you discreetly and see if there is anything outstanding that could explain how it is you can do this. We could also try a few experiments to ascertain if it is really happening.”
“Mom.”
“No, no. I don’t doubt you; it’s just that I am still a scientist, and experiments have to be repeatable. Sorry, baby, but that’s what I am!”
“Okay, Mom. Can we talk about this later? I need to get some sleep.”
“Right. Sleep tight, Jimmy. I’ll be back on Thursday, and we can talk more then.”
“Well, I was thinking about getting away for that weekend; can we make it next Monday, maybe?”
“Yes, of course, whenever you like.”
“Night, Mom.”
Eleven
James’ sensitivity to tiny things that went bump in the night wasn’t the only thing that changed after the accident. His lukewarm attitude towards Peggy also enjoyed a re-heat. He found himself thinking more and more about her—more than he had when they were together. It had never been a torrid affair, not for James, at least. For Peggy the attraction was solid, irresistible, like gravity. But even for her, this love wasn’t what she had dreamed about as a little girl, or even necessarily what she had wanted as a woman. James certainly loved Peggy, in his way. James had never dreamed of love as a boy.
He called her.
“Hey, you,” Peggy said. “How’s life treating you in the most boring city on earth?”
“Not too bad, aside from the crappy taxi drivers.” James laughed. “A New York taxi would have at least been aiming for me.” Just hearing her voice felt good—physically, viscerally good.
“Well, it’s a quality town, New York.”
They chatted for ten or twenty minutes and the strong feeling of well-being increased, and finally James blurted, “So you want to get together sometime?”
“Really? I thought you’d found God down there or something,” Peggy cracked. “But sure, I’d love to. What did you have in mind?”
“Nothing heavy. Weekend in the country, maybe? We could dip our toes in a pond, and you could pick blueberries while I paint landscapes in a straw hat. How about New Hope?” A quiet weekend wouldn’t hurt. It would be quite good, even. Peggy was a lot of fun to be around.
“That little bed-and-breakfast on the river just north of the town? You know, the one on stilts?” she suggested.
“Yeah, sure. I remember.”
~* * *~
James packed and fired up the Honda. He’d had the Matchless sent to his mother’s, and picked up a little blue Hornet from a dealer he knew. It wasn’t a big bike, but it was powerful, willing, and much faster than he was used to. The bark of the little engine rattled back off the cliff faces as he roared along the river road. The trees formed long green tubes. Pinpricks of sunlight perforated the canopy.
In no time, New Hope was in sight. The old town was a bit run-down now, its cafes and antique shops frayed along their edges and needing a lick of paint. It was chock full of weekend Bohemians—wealthy ex-hippies now employed as stockbrokers or lawyers. These would be the type who would have a James Weems original on their walls.
He rumbled down the steep driveway to the bed-and-breakfast. Peggy was already there, yanking a suitcase out of her trunk. She looked great, as she always did. Blond and athletic, she had a freckly, country-girl type of beauty that not even New York had been able to scrub away. “Hey, babe!” she called out. She dropped her bag and joined James as he dismounted. He pulled off his helmet, and she grabbed his tousled hair and gave him a quick kiss.
James held her close, and then at arm’s length. “Hey. Great to see you. Did you have a nice drive?”
“Yeah, fine. And I had all the comforts of home. No bugs in my teeth or anything!”
“Oh, yeah? How boring.” He laughed.
The B&B was a modern, wooden chalet on stilts, less than fifty yards from the river. The swiftly flowing Delaware cooled the air and brought a fresh, soft smell to the balcony, but the room was humid and made a nice home for a few unsavory residents. James was better at canceling them out, but there they were, at the edge of his consciousness, needling him.
They dropped the bags and took her car to her favorite cafe for burgers. That place wasn’t the cleanest, either, but being with Peggy was a distraction.
“So you’re feeling okay? No pain from the injury?” Peggy knew about the accident, but that was a
ll she knew.
“Yup, raring to go.” James winked.
Peggy shoved her shoulder against his and laughed. “You!”
They wandered around the town for a while, enjoying the summer evening. The fireflies were out, and the baking heat of the day was losing its edge. They checked out some live music, but decided to pass. It was nicer to just kick around, drink coffee, and talk crap. They went into a touristy coffee shop, ordered, and then sat among the dream-catchers and homemade candles.
“Ever think about what color days are?” Peggy mused.
“What, like Wednesdays being yellow and Thursdays and Fridays two different shades of blue?”
“Well, yeah, but what color is the sky on your planet? Fridays are bright green, muh’dear. Mondays are red, and Sundays are black.”
James frowned, and in a mock-serious voice, said, “What about Saturdays?”
“Any damned color you like.”
The waitress dropped the check and James shaded his eyes with his hand, a little embarrassed to have been caught in such a silly conversation. When the waitress left, Peggy laughed. “What? You actually care what she thinks? Wuss!”
She was great, so confident. James loved her. He had never been in love with her, though, and he had no idea why. There was chemistry, and they were friends, so it should have been perfect, but it just wasn’t.
They stayed out till late evening, had a couple of drinks at the Apple Jack Hotel, and then went back to the B&B. In the cool of the night, down by the river, they kissed. It was a moonless, colorless night, and waves of cricket legs, rubbing resinous in the dark, filled the air with squeaks. The fireflies were out in thousands, millions, winking across the wide river.
James kissed Peggy again, more deeply, and they settled onto a bed of moss at the back of the building. The dull light from a window shone in her green eyes, and she ran her hands up the back of his neck, through his hair, pulling it to a peak at the top of his head. She giggled. Her smile vanished, and she grabbed his head and pulled his lips to hers. He kissed her deeply and squeezed her waist, a hand on each side.
“Let’s go inside,” Peggy whispered. She led James in, hand in hand, and they fell on the big old bed, entangled, stripping by degrees between kisses and embraces. They had no say. Nature, chemistry, the stars, the weather—whatever, they did not know—they were supposed to be there now. This was supposed to happen. Her face changed before his eyes, her beauty magnified through the lens of a droplet in time, and he saw millennia pass in her emerald irises. And in her turn, James was irresistible to her. His smell, the way his skin felt. She wanted to have his child, but she wouldn’t do that; she had sworn to herself that she would not. The crickets ratcheted through the darkness as they drifted off in each other’s arms.
James slept deeply at first, but then he dreamed. At first they were standard fare, just dreams—dreams anyone might have. But then he saw a large area of spheres, much larger than the golden grapes he had seen, and much more colorful. These resembled beach balls, a sea of them stretching as far as he could see. On closer inspection, he saw that they were beach balls, ordinary multi-colored dime-store things. They even had nipples. This had to be a dream, he thought. Some of the beach balls vibrated and buzzed. There were much smaller spheres, dotted with five-pointed stars, about a dozen of them evenly spaced around each beach ball. They bounced insistently against the beach balls, ultimately puncturing them, and then slipped through the tiny perforations and disappeared inside. Then those odors and the sounds and sensations he’d felt in the hospital came, and more and more of the little spheres appeared. There was a sharp, quick rattle, like the sound of hundreds and then thousands of dominoes falling in sequence, and James realized that this was no dream. As dozens of the starred balls popped back out of the punctured beach balls, the rhythm of the signals grew more strident, like a chant. But James remained calm and dispassionate.
The action of these things was very different from the bacteria James had observed in himself, but while the tune played by these microbes was different, it did have a pattern. He listened. The noises became sharper, and he realized the creatures were talking to one another, that the rattles he heard were some form of communication. And from the patterns of their chatter, images emerged: fields, like fields of wheat, houses, and barns. It was insane, but there was no mistaking this. After a few more cycles of the song, he thought he understood the message. The communiqué had been a call to build farms.
The scene evaporated and James awoke, refreshed, but very puzzled. He lay there wondering until Peggy woke, then they went out for breakfast.
She noticed a change in him and asked nervously, “You’re very quiet this morning. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, just need to get some food and coffee into me.”
Peggy knew when James was lying. She also knew when to let it pass.
The smell of waffles called to them, and they followed it into a bright little cafe. As they sat down in the booth and James faced her, he could clearly sense the beginnings of a cold on Peggy’s pretty face.
Twelve
“Go away! You don’t expect me to believe this, do ya?” Pat was more than a little bemused, and try as he might, couldn’t hide it from Karen. “Keep the day job, love, you’ll never make it as a comic.”
“I know, I know. I didn’t believe it myself for over twenty-five years, Pat, but there it is. Whatever it is, it’s real.”
“Ah, you know yourself, there are a hundred, a thousand million more rational explanations for this.”
“Of course there are. Don’t you think I know that? I’ve thought of dozens, hundreds. I’ve been explaining it away for years. What I know now is that James suffered because I did.”
“Ah, poor little fella. But he turned out just fine, Karen.”
She shrugged. “Anyhow, it’s in the past now. I need…well, he and I need to figure out what to do about this.”
“Why do we have to do anything? He’s grand. And I’m sorry to have to say, I’m skeptical—very skeptical. This smacks of aura reading, or some sort of rubbish like that.”
“Yes, I realize that, but I believe him. It’s hard to explain, but I know him so well, and I just have this strong intuition about it.”
“Ah, taking it on faith! Tch tch!” Karen winced, and Pat instantly regretted having said it. “Sorry. But you know I have to take all this with a bucket of salt. Things much more mysterious than this are debunked every minute of every day.”
“Yes, yes, I know. You’re not the only one around here with a Ph.D. But, maybe we could do a few tests and gather some measurable evidence one way or another.”
“Are you suggesting that he’d submit to becoming a guinea pig?”
“Well, he’s done some crude experiments himself. Yeah, he’ll want to get to the bottom of this.”
Pat put on his serious scientist face, a face he boasted that he’d learned studying men who wore lab coats in B movies. “I see. Did you have anything in mind, Doctor?”
“Well, we do have a big hospital full of sick people at our disposal,” Karen said.
“So you’re suggesting a mystery tour of the sick, the lame, and the dying?”
“Um, a bit crudely put, but yes.”
Pat’s brows arched high over the rime of his specs, and he pursed his lips with delight. “Sounds like fun.”
“Pat!”
“Well, it could be,” he said with an exaggerated, exasperated shrug.
“Not funny,” Karen pouted.
~* * *~
The cell rang as James walked through his door—his mother. When he mentioned the weekend with Peggy, he heard barely suppressed squeals of delight.
“Good for you,” she said, “but I called you for a reason. I need to ask you something.”
James stripped off his leather jacket and straightened it carefully on the hangar before putting it in the closet. “Yeah, what’s that?”
“Do you still want to explore this who
le thing?” She gulped and added, “I mentioned it to Pat and—”
“Mother!”
“Okay, sorry. I took a liberty.”
“That’s a bit more than a liberty!”
“Okay, okay, relax. He won’t tell anyone else.”
Resigned, James said, “Well, what did he have to say?”
“He’s skeptical.”
“Great. Someone else who thinks I’m nuts.” James kicked his boots off, and let them fly up against the back of the closet a little harder than strictly necessary. Klunk klunk.
“No, he doesn’t think that.”
“Well, what was the point of that, then? Look, I don’t want the world knowing about this, okay?”
“I agree, James. This should be kept very, very quiet. Believe me, I know. But this might help you to a closer understanding of this thing, whatever it is. Also, we cannot ignore the possibility it might be causing you some harm. If it is, we need to know.”
“Yeah, I understand all of that, but I’m still—I don’t know.”
“Are you getting cold feet?”
“It could be that in this case ignorance is bliss, but no.”
“James, ignorance is precisely that: ignorance. Look, honey, we should look at it. Just informally and on the Q-T, I promise you that. Pat and I have some ideas. Would you talk it over with us?”
“Why not? I guess. When?”
“We could drop by tonight. Your place?”
“Yeah, what the hell? We can talk, anyhow. No harm in that.”
~* * *~
James met them on the doorstep. Eyeing Pat warily, he said, “Hi. How are you guys tonight?”
“Grand! Just grand! How’s yourself?” Pat replied, his sharp chin sharper still for his mad grin. James twitched as if he were something under Pat’s microscope, but took Pat’s hand when he offered it.
When they were comfortably seated in his flat, Karen leaned forward and said, “We have an idea. We were thinking you could come out to the hospital and meet a few patients.”
“And tell you what I see in them?”
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