Eleven Twenty-Three (19 page)

These men effortlessly re-write our past with
invisible ink while prancing along in the shadows of an illusory
present moment. They are unseen and never once considered by the
common people of the world as we carry out our mundane daily lives,
and yet everything we the hoi polloi will ever do was already
written, already glanced over and stamped a forged approval in a
room with no doors.

But you couldn’t despair at these
revelations, Hajime said. In fact, the only way you could know
these things and not immediately kill yourself was to take what
you’ve learned and use it to strengthen your resolve. You could
never give up, no matter how grim the situation became, no matter
how long the recession lasted, no matter how many soldiers and
innocent people died in Iraq, and no matter how close we were to
December 2012, the moment when all the ancient calendars of the
world ended.

“I’m
never
going to wind up in some
god-damned plastic coffin,” he said, and made another brush stroke
on the canvas. “That’s all there is to it.”

But the paleness of his complexion right now,
the way his hands are shaking as he grabs his bag and climbs out of
my car, the way he bundles up in his jacket and looks at the world
without a single glimmer of optimism, let alone a
plan
, in
his eyes—I know the truth.

The truth is that he was lying to me all
these years, and has already resigned himself to the bottom of that
plastic coffin, just another forgotten casualty obfuscated in the
cigar smoke.

“Unless an unforeseen circumstance screws
things up,” he says, “I’m going to go and get Mitsuko and Mark,
drive up to St. Augustine to check on the rents, and I’ll meet you
two at Tara’s place at seven tonight. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” I nod. He and I shake hands,
and I look him in the eye. “Be careful, man.”

“You too,” he says. “Both of you.”

Tara smiles weakly next to me, and Hajime
heads to his car. His hands are still shaking uncontrollably when
he fumbles with his door handle.

On the drive back into town toward Tara’s
parents’ house, neither of us says much. We don’t cry. We try to
look straight ahead, away from the sobs of the township. Smoke
dilutes our vision and hangs thick in the air like late-afternoon
smog on a windless day in Shanghai.

Glancing momentarily at another dead child, I
clench my teeth and wish I were back in China right now. I wish
that my father was still alive and that there was no funeral this
morning and that my mother wasn’t dangerous. I wish Tara and I were
both in the middle of a two a.m. dream in Mandarin subtitles. I
wish we had only the most optimistic, utopian visions of isolated
Lilly’s End—our grinning beach-town nestled snugly between luscious
mangrove swamps and sleepy fishermen’s wharfs—hanging suspended in
the black pools of our subconscious. I wish everyone else was alive
and well here and that none of this had ever happened, but I wish
we
were alive and well somewhere far, far away. It’s not
enough to still be breathing under this town’s hellish vapors; I
want to be on the other side of the world right now. I wish we
could wake up in the morning and eat freshly steamed
zongzi
in the cab ride to school and lick our sticky fingers afterward,
teach our pensive Japanese-hating students with gusto and American
fervor, and then argue over when our home countries “changed” with
the other Westerners over sticks of fatty
yao tse
and Cokes
without ice. I want to be in a KTV drinking lukewarm beer while
considering which waitresses are for sale.

But I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to
be strong. This is not the reluctant hero role I always prayed
would someday fall in my lap. I wasn’t aching for an apocalypse
like seemingly every other Generation Why American out there. I
never asked for tragedy on this kind of crippling,
nihilism-inducing scale.

Twenty-four hours ago, home was nothing more
than some lackluster Christmas presents and a whitewashed
eulogy.

“I just really wish none of this would ever
have happened, Layne,” Tara says out of nowhere, lighting another
cigarette. When she runs out, I’m not sure how she will acquire
more in a town of sudden shut-ins.

“Me too, Sunshine,” I say, in actuality
wishing I was in a Chinese Pizza Hut, laughing when the staff
fumbled with our orders.

Tara is the daughter of two once-prosperous
real estate agents. They live in a Spanish-style two-story house in
Orange Blossom Trace. Tara’s parents once made ridiculous sums of
money during the long-standing property boom across Florida. Their
income afforded Tara and her older sister Chloe a lot of nice
things while growing up: trips to Aspen, college dorms and new
textbooks, money for weekend jaunts to Orlando and Daytona, the
occasional bag of coke, candelabras for Tara and unexpected gifts
for Tara’s boyfriend Layne, and shopping sprees at Bed Bath and
Beyond for Chloe.

Since the disintegration of the housing
market in the last couple of years, however, things have been rough
for Bill and Nancy Tennille. Before Tara and I left, I was no
longer seeing the expensive model train sets erected in Mr.
Tennille’s shop out back. There weren’t any more lavish real estate
parties with rambunctious Botoxed women and droopy businessmen on
Vicodin hosted by Mrs. Tennille. The getaways to Nassau ceased. The
timeshare in Hawaii was no longer mentioned. I saw clipped grocery
coupons on the kitchen counter.

Things have been rocky within the family unit
as well. Tara told me that, after twenty-nine years of marriage,
her parents were a few sheets of paperwork and two signatures away
from a divorce. In addition to the vacations and soirees, their
former income yielded a lot of turned cheeks. Chloe had an eleven
thousand dollar credit card bill that her parents could no longer
afford to pay off every few months. Tara caused a huge controversy
herself when she announced she would be moving with me to Asia, and
that she would need her parents’ monetary assistance in purchasing
her plane ticket. Her sister called her pathetic for following a
fired teacher across the world. Her mother thought the trip was a
fantastic opportunity for adventure and networking—that is, until
she found out we would both be teaching. Mr. Tennille snorted and
commented that the entire trip was nothing more than “creating a
stop-gap in achieving your success in life.” Then he wrote her a
check.

When we left, Tara’s parents escorted us to
the airport. As we were about to go through security, Tara’s father
gave me an earnest handshake and genuinely wished me well, but the
hug exchanged between Tara and her parents was short and not really
worthy of an airport goodbye.

But right now, I’ve never seen Tara so
concerned.

When we pull into the driveway I see Chloe’s
350z pulled up behind the two BMWs in the garage. The whole family
is here. Before I can completely stop, Tara springs from my car and
runs toward the front door. She disappears inside. I put my Accord
in Park and take a deep breath, fingering the knife stuffed down my
pants. I wait a few seconds for a scream before sighing with relief
and heading for the house.

I don’t see Mrs. Tennille with them, but the
others are standing cluttered around the flat-screen television in
the living room, watching the news. Chloe looks like a slightly
thicker, blonder, hardheaded version of her younger sister. They
have the same hourglass shape and soft facial features, along with
similar imperfections. Tara has a small scar on her forehead, the
after-effect of a terrified wild rabbit she tried to pick up as a
seven-year-old. Chloe was left with a permanent cleft in her chin
following a car accident on I-75 several years ago. Their father
has the same fair hair as the girls, but is shorter than all three
women of the house and marked with old freckles and a pointed nose.
The two girls’ appearance comes mostly from their mother.

When I enter the room, I notice that Mr.
Tennille and Chloe have both been crying, and Tara has just
started. There is a thin trail of blood on Bill’s white golf shirt.
I take a place next to him and take in the images on screen: our
governor Charlie Crist signing a new bill, the flashes of cameras
documenting the occasion; a newscaster reporting on Florida Indian
casinos lobbying for the right to sponsor Vegas-style gambling; the
weather forecast for tonight; a Christmas miracle in Michigan;
reporters ordering us not to move during the following
advertisements; and then a stream of commercials for new
prescription pills we should ask our doctor about.

“They haven’t said anything about what’s
happening here?” I ask vacantly, suddenly pretty sure I need a
prescription for Lunesta.

“Not a god-damned word about it,” Mr.
Tennille says. “How are you managing, Layne? It’s good to see you
here.”

“I’m getting by, sir. But my mom, she—it
happened to her along with the others. She’s alive, but—I may not
look at her the same way ever again.”

“Same thing with Nancy. She tried to stab
me.”

Tara glances at her father nervously.

“She’s not—I mean—is she okay?” I ask.

“I had to give her a nasty bruise on the
head, but she’ll live. Chloe and I put her down in the bedroom not
long after it happened. I think she’ll be all right, but who knows.
How is your mom? Wasn’t the funeral this morning?”

“My mom will be okay, I hope. It happened
at
the funeral, as a matter of fact.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” he says. “What the
hell is happening to this town, Layne?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but Tara and I were just
on Massachusetts close to the police station and it was a mess down
there, too. It looks like it happened all across town.”

The nation and world portion of the weekend
news ends and a well-groomed man begins telling us how cold it will
be tonight. He points at Orlando, where it will be in the thirties,
and then points out that in Jacksonville last night it got down to
the mid-twenties and there were several reports of frost. Farmers
are warned to take measures to protect their crops.

“Thank you for being there with my daughter
this morning, Layne. Thank god none of this happened to either of
you. After Nancy went nuts and couldn’t get to me, she started
taking swipes at herself with the kitchen knife. It was the
scariest damn thing I’ve ever seen. After that she—”

The television instantaneously goes black. A
message flashes across the screen in the blink of an eye and is
gone. The news re-appears. No one says anything and Mr. Tennille
goes on with his story. But I know what I just saw written in the
blackness:

There is no escape.

“
Whoa
, wait up a minute,” I interrupt,
straining my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tennille, but—but did you guys
just see what flashed across the TV screen just now?”

Tara and Chloe look over at me with blurred,
fearful eyes.

“What was it?” Chloe says. “I didn’t see
anything.”

“Are you okay, Layne? I didn’t see anything
either.”

I approach the large plasma screen until it
is less than a couple of feet from my face. I inspect the colors
and movements carefully. The news has moved onto sports now, and
the commentators’ voices are ominous and booming this close to the
speakers.

“What’d you see, Layne?” Mr. Tennille asks
from behind me.

“The screen went black for a split second and
a white message popped up. Then it was gone before I even realized
what was going on.”

“Well what did it say?”

“It said there was no escape,” I report.
“That’s the message that came up. I know I saw it, even if it was
for just a moment. It said there was no escape.”

“But who would write that, Layne?” Mr.
Tennille asks incredulously. “Who would have the power to put
subliminal messages on the air for us to see like that? And why
would they say that to everyone out there across the state if this
was only happening here in town?”

“He said it was the chemtrails…”

“What?”

“I can’t be certain,” I continue, “but I
don’t think it was meant for everyone watching the news. I only
think it was meant for the people watching the news in
Lilly’s
End
. Someone is tampering with the feed and implanting messages
for the township to read.”

“That’s
bullshit
,” Chloe says. “Who
would write that? Layne, you’re seeing things.”

“I know what I saw just now, Chloe.”

“You’re sure, Layne?” Tara’s father asks me.
“You’re sure you saw that?”

I think back to the message, there and gone
in an instant just like what happened around town already.

“I’m
positive
. I was kind of staring
off while you were talking about Mrs. Tennille when it happened.
The screen went blank and it said, ‘There is no escape.’ I saw
it.”

“But who would write that to us, as bad as
things already are?” Chloe asks, crying again.

“Probably the same people who did this to us
in the first place, Chloe,” I tell her. “This isn’t some chemical
spill or something. It’s not a flu or a bug going around. Tara and
I were in town with Hajime earlier and it was the same shit
everywhere. Everyone lost it at the exact same time this
morning—around eleven-thirty or so. How does a thing like that
happen unless someone carefully planned it? Besides, I saw military
choppers of some kind flying low over town right after it
happened.

“I’m going to go and check on Mom,” Tara says
quietly, slipping out of the room with her eyes buried underneath
her fingers.

“You and your friends are fucking
crazy
,” Chloe whispers after her younger sister departs. “No
one would intentionally do that to us. Dad, tell him it’s
impossible. Tell him how absurd he and everyone else are being. It
was just a one-time thing. It was an accident—”