Howard: Good question. Excellent question, Danny. You remember you fell out a window?
Danny nodded.
Howard: Well, a tree broke your fall. Thank God, buddy. No point in dwelling on it, but Jesus Christ, you know what I mean? Still, you hit the tree pretty hard, and you’ve got some cuts on top of your head that had to be stitched. As far as internal damage goes, meaning inside your head, the doc’s pretty sure it’s just a bad concussion.
Danny: This is the doctor who doesn’t speak English?
Howard grimaced. Yeah. He’s the best, supposedly, trained in Paris and all that, but the language thing is a nightmare, no question. Anyway, we’re getting through it. He’s given you some injections to keep your brain from swelling up, which I guess is important for the first twenty-four hours. And meanwhile we’ve been waking you up every thirty minutes to keep you from slipping into something called a “gripping sleep” or a “grabbing sleep”—there may be a translation issue there, but I’m ninety percent sure he’s not talking about a coma, just some kind of deep sleep that’s hard to get out of.
Nora: Remember the dreams.
Howard: Yes. Thanks. The doctor wanted me to ask if you’ve been having a lot of dreams.
Danny: I don’t think so.
Howard: See, that’s really good. Because apparently this gripping sleep or grabbing sleep has a lot of very weird dreams associated with it, lifelike dreams where you can’t tell if you’re asleep or awake. So I’m—I’m just incredibly glad to hear you haven’t been dreaming.
He leaned close again, his eyes scooping at Danny’s face. His breath had a strong mint smell, like he’d just brushed his teeth. Danny noticed sweat beading up on Howard’s hairline and realized that the new thing he saw in his cousin’s face was fear. Howard was scared.
Howard: Anyway, when you’ve stayed awake continuously for two hours, we can stop the thirty-minute checks. And as long as you get there within fifteen hours of the injury, which was—he checked his watch—about nine hours ago, we don’t have to go any further.
Danny: Further with what?
Howard: Well, the next step would be to airlift you to a hospital for a brain scan.
He said this casually, like it was basically nothing, and that gave him away. Howard was scared Danny was seriously fucked up—fucked up enough to die. But Danny didn’t feel scared, seeing this. The opposite, almost. Like Howard’s fear would protect him—like the job of being scared was all taken care of. Or maybe he was just too high.
Howard: But I’m not expecting that, and neither is the doctor. I mean, you’ve already been awake—another watch check—almost ten minutes. And you look pretty alert.
Danny: I feel pretty alert.
Howard: Good, good.
There was a pause. Danny felt exhaustion moving back in around him like a tide. He tried not to close his eyes.
Howard: So, ah—look. There’s something I want to ask you, Danny. It’s kind of delicate. He glanced at Nora and she moved away, over to the window. Howard leaned close, elbows right on Danny’s mattress, minty breath filling Danny’s nostrils to the point where they tingled on the inside.
Howard: I—I wouldn’t even bring this up yet, but the doctor says we’re supposed to keep you engaged as long as we don’t stress you. So you’ve got to speak up if you start to feel stressed. Will you do that, Danny?
Sure.
You don’t feel stressed right now?
Danny thought about it. He felt like someone had hacked open his skull with a hatchet, but that wasn’t exactly the same as being stressed. No.
Howard: So here’s my question. As far as your fall goes, it was…I’m assuming it was an accident?
The tube in Danny’s brain seemed especially long on that one. He looked at Nora leaning out the window and wondered if she was smoking. He noticed she had a decent ass. When Howard’s question finally hit his brain, Danny laughed.
Danny: If I wanted to off myself, don’t you think I would’ve walked up a couple more flights? Or better yet, jumped off a roof in New York and saved myself the jet lag?
Good. Good. Glad to hear it. Although…that’s not exactly what I meant.
Danny shook his head.
Well, I guess you’ve basically answered it. But you weren’t—no one helped you out that window at any point along the way?
You mean pushed me?
Or even, you know, nudged you.
Danny: The baroness?
It sounds farfetched, I know, but—you’ve met her, right?
The question caught Danny off-guard. He looked at the shape of his knees through the bedspread, purple velvet, similar to the baroness’s green bedspread except new. He felt like something hot had been tossed in his face. Howard seemed to take this as a yes.
So you know. She’s berserk. I have no sense of what her limits are.
Danny started to laugh, a jittery laugh that fluttered up from his chest like it might not stop. Then it did. It stopped when he asked himself if the baroness had pushed him out. Could she have done it so gently he’d hardly felt anything—tipped him just enough with those spidery hands to turn gravity against him? Had he even maybe felt it, a soft, soft pressure on his feet?
It was goofy. The drugs were messing him up.
Danny: She’d do this…because you’re trying to get her out of the keep?
Howard: Trying, yeah. She won’t leave it, we’re talking not for five minutes. Says she’s afraid I’ll lock her out and slit her throat—tells me this straight to my face. But I don’t get the feeling she’s really scared. It’s all part of a strategy: she wants me to do something so she can do something. But I don’t know what those things are.
Danny: She’s got weapons in there.
Howard had been looking at the fire. Now his head snapped around to Danny. Weapons?
Danny: A longbow, a crossbow. A battering ram. Oil to pour on people’s heads. He’d meant to keep this stuff to himself, save it for a time when he could use it somehow, but the bump of surprise on Howard’s face was tough to resist. And the fact that his cousin hadn’t already guessed about the baroness and Danny made him realize that he wouldn’t guess; it would never cross his mind. And being one foot away from someone who couldn’t imagine such a thing as Danny fucking the baroness made Danny feel like maybe he hadn’t really done it.
Howard: You’ve seen these weapons?
Danny: No. But I drank some very weird wine from her cellar.
Howard leaned back in his chair and looked at Danny in a new way, a way Danny had a feeling came from his business life. I’m amazed, Danny. Seriously, you’ve been here less than forty-eight hours, and you’re telling me stuff I didn’t know. It’s…impressive. Nora, how are we on time?
Nora was still at the window. She looked at her watch. Almost forty-five minutes.
Howard pounded out of his chair: That’s fantastic! This is huge, Danny, the best you’ve done yet. Let’s try to keep it going, okay? Let’s stay with this as long as we can.
Now wait a minute, someone’s got to be saying. Three pages ago Danny had been awake almost ten minutes, and now you’re telling us it’s forty-five? Are you kidding me? I could repeat everything they said on those three pages in five minutes tops, which means Danny should be awake seventeen minutes maximum. But hold on, bud, you’re forgetting two things: (1) Everything anyone said had to travel down a long tube to Danny’s brain, and so did his answers before they got to his mouth and (2) there were other things going on in the room that I didn’t write down because I would’ve needed pages and pages, which I don’t have, not to mention it would be boring as hell. Such as: Howard got up and poked at the fire. Nora shut the window. Howard scratched his head and blew his nose in a white handkerchief. Nora went into the hall to talk to someone and then came back. Howard’s walkie-talkie made a staticky noise so he had to fiddle with it to shut it up. Every one of those things adds time, to the point where if I’d told you an hour instead of forty-five minutes, even that would be re
alistic.
Howard: Danny? Are you with me?
Danny shut his eyes. The tiredness was pouring in around him, warm and sweet and sick, a thing you know is bad for you and that just makes you want it more.
A blast of mint—Howard was hovering over him. Don’t. Don’t close your eyes, Danny. For your sake—Nora, could you throw another log on that fire? Danny, open up.
Danny heard static on Howard’s walkie-talkie. He wanted to hold it. He tried to open his eyes. Can I hold the…
Howard: Danny? Fuck! He’s out again.
Danny: Can I…
The next time Danny woke up, his eyes stayed shut. But he heard voices and other sounds, too, like when someone speed-dials you accidentally and you get a crunchy sound of them walking and hear gurgly voices you might even recognize, and you yell out their name a few times before you get bored and hang up. But Danny couldn’t hang up. So he lay there hearing stuff like herballoo and shudding and scramshie, and then he felt a stab in his neck, right below his ear. His eyes popped open. Everything was blurry, but Danny caught a gray-bearded guy with a syringe moving away.
Then it got quiet. Danny thought he was alone, but when he turned his head there was Howard’s kid, Benjy, in the chair where Howard had been sitting. The kid wore long-sleeved pajamas covered with red fish. His dark hair was messed up, like he’d been sleeping.
Benjy: Did it hurt?
Danny looked at him, letting his eyes adjust. The kid’s pajamas confused him—was it big red fish eating little red fish, or were all the fish the same?
Danny: Did what hurt? Falling out a window?
Benjy: No. The shot.
Nah. That felt good.
Benjy frowned, like he couldn’t tell if Danny was kidding. Finally he said: Actually, I’m not allowed to climb on windowsills because it’s dangerous.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Benjy: Did your mommy ever tell you that?
Probably.
Do you have to go home now?
Why would I go home? I just got here.
Benjy: Is your home in an apartment?
Yeah. I mean normally it is, but right now I don’t have one. I’m in between places.
Why the hell was he explaining all this? Danny squirmed on the bed, looking for someone to rescue him from this kid. But as far as he could tell, they were alone in the room. Wind blew in through the window and shook the tapestries on the stone walls.
Benjy: Do you have a wife?
No.
My mommy is my daddy’s wife.
Yeah, I picked up on that.
Do you have a dog?
No.
Do you have a cat?
I have no pets, okay?
What about a guinea pig?
Jesus Christ! It came out loud, and Benjy looked startled. Danny hoped that would shut him up.
Benjy: Do you have any children?
Danny gritted his teeth and stared at the ceiling beams. No, I don’t have children. Thank God.
The kid went quiet for a long time. Finally he said: What do you have?
Danny opened his mouth to answer. What did he have?
Benjy: I said, what do you—
I heard, I heard.
What do you have?
I don’t have anything, okay? Nothing. Now I’d like to shut my eyes.
Benjy leaned closer. In his face Danny saw sympathy mixed in with a kind of cold curiosity you never saw in adults. They’d learned how to hide it.
Benjy: Are you sad to have nothing?
No, I’m not sad.
But he was. The sadness came on Danny suddenly and buried him. He saw himself: flat on his back in the middle of nowhere, with a smashed-up head. A guy who had nothing.
Benjy: Are you crying?
Danny: You’ve got to be kidding.
I see tears.
That’s just from the…my head hurts. You’re making it hurt.
Grown-ups cry sometimes. I saw my mommy cry.
I need to sleep.
Benjy peered at him. Danny shut his eyes. He heard the kid breathing next to his ear.
Benjy: Are you a grown-up?
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny.
Howard again. Danny opened up his eyes. The kid was still there, in Howard’s lap.
Howard: Okay. We’re back in business. You’ve been—ah, out for quite a while there, Danny.
Benjy: He was awake.
Howard: Benjy says you woke up while I was talking to the doctor outside. But Nora was here, and she says no.
Danny looked at Nora, who looked at one of the tapestries. So she’d left the room when she wasn’t supposed to, and she didn’t want Howard to know. Normally Danny would find a way to let her know that not only was she busted, but she owed Danny something for covering her ass. He couldn’t think how to do any of that now.
Danny: I thought the doctor didn’t speak English.
Howard rolled his eyes. We have a translator: guess who? It involves a fair amount of yelling. But the main thing the doctor said, he really stressed this time, is how important it is for you to stay awake. Danny saw the strain in Howard’s smile.
The kid’s eyes were on Danny, and the sadness came back down on him all over again. How had he ended up with nothing? Did he always have nothing? Did he really have nothing, or was this head injury just making him think he had nothing?
The walkie-talkie sputtered on Howard’s belt.
Danny: Can I have that, Howard? The…ah…. He was pointing.
Howard: This? Sure. He looked surprised, curious. He put the walkie-talkie in Danny’s hand. It felt the same as a phone or a BlackBerry or any of that stuff: compact, with a rubbery keypad, a heavy core to its small weight, which is where you felt its reach.
Danny pushed a button. Static. Such a beautiful sound! It shrank his sadness away in a matter of seconds, dried it up so fast that Danny knew it had never been real—nothing real could disappear that fast. At first all he felt was relief to be rid of the sadness, but within a minute or two that relief had tipped over into joy: he didn’t have nothing, he had everything. He just needed to be reattached to the everything he had.
Howard: What do you hear?
Danny smiled. Just static.
Howard: I’ve got more faith in your brain than I do in that machine.
Danny glanced at him. The kid in Howard’s lap was getting sleepy, his head resting on one of the chair’s cushioned armrests.
Howard: It could almost be your brain, you know? The machines are so small now, and using them is so easy—we’re a half step away from telepathy.
Danny: Except we’re talking to people who are there. You can hear them.
Howard laughed. They’re not there, Danny. Where’s there? You have no idea where they are.
Danny turned to him. What’s your point?
My point is, screw the machines. Throw them away. Put some faith in that brain of yours.
My brain can’t make a phone call.
Sure it can. You can talk to anyone you want.
Was this guy for real? He couldn’t be. Danny pushed himself into a sitting position, wide awake. You’re telling me I should talk to people who aren’t there? Like some loony tune in the street?
Howard leaned in close. He spoke softly, like he was letting Danny in on a secret. No one’s ever there, Danny. You’re alone. That’s the reality.
I’m the opposite of alone. I know people all over the fucking world.
Benjy jolted in Howard’s lap. He said a bad word, Daddy.
But Howard’s eyes were fixed on Danny. He seemed wide awake, too. What are they giving you, the machines? Shadows, disembodied voices. Typed words and pictures if you’re online. That’s it, Danny. If you think you’re surrounded by people, you’re making them up.
This is absolute crap.
I’m saying you’re the boss! Have some faith in the power of your mind. It’s doing more work than you realize. And it’s capable of so muc
h more than that!
Danny knew what he was hearing: a Motivational Speech. Before his pop gave up on him completely, Danny used to get one of these every few months. The message of a Motivational Speech was always the same: Your life is ridiculous, it’s shit, but there’s still a way to turn things around—if you do what I say.
Danny leaned toward his cousin. He talked right into his face. Howard, listen to me. I like machines. I love them. I can’t live without them, and I don’t want to try to live without them. To be honest, I’d rather cut off my balls than stay in a hotel like yours for one frigging minute.
Howard: Fantastic! Better yet!
Why?
Because it’ll mean that much more when you figure this out!
Fuck you, Howard.
Daddy—
Danny: You’re really pissing me off. Are you doing that for a reason?
Howard: I’m trying to keep you awake. This is the longest you’ve gone yet.
Danny felt a surge of rage. It gathered low in him, somewhere around his groin, which he actually felt stirring under the sheets. His voice came from high in his throat: I’m not interested in my brain or my imagination. I like real things, okay? Things that’re actually happening.
What’s real, Danny? Is reality TV real? Are confessions you read on the Internet real? The words are real, someone wrote them, but beyond that the question doesn’t even make sense. Who are you talking to on your cell phone? In the end you have no fucking idea. We’re living in a supernatural world, Danny. We’re surrounded by ghosts.
Speak for yourself.
I’m speaking for both of us. Old-fashioned “reality” is a thing of the past. It’s gone, finito—all that technology you’re so in love with has wiped it out. And I say, good riddance.
The rage plunged up through Danny. Fuck this guy. He’d cut Danny off from everything he had, but that wasn’t enough—now he had to convince Danny that it didn’t exist at all, that he was making it up! And he did it with a smile, like he was enjoying himself. Fuck this guy!
Danny couldn’t take any more lying down, he had to stand. He dropped a foot off the side of the bed and was halfway onto his feet before Howard realized what was going on. He put a hand on Danny’s chest and stopped him. Howard spoke very softly. Wait, wait, no, buddy. You’re getting carried away. The kid was still in his lap.
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