River: A Novel (18 page)

 When all my
excess energy was spent, a Lulling headache was starting to make an appearance.
With another sigh I shut off the whirling piano recording; my muse for the
evening. Drifting through the dim hall, I glimpsed a door closing behind me as
I passed. It could have been anyone closing that door, yet Petra’s blank,
shunning stare from earlier popped into my mind’s eye. I vowed to make things
right with her. I would dispel any pain my apparent cosmic twin, or illusionary
forgotten self, may have caused.

 Dan was invested
deeply into his project, and I was ready to go. Unwilling to disrupt a dazzling
opus in the making, I signed that he should stay. He looked at me wistfully,
and I decided to fold. I’d had a lucky break today. Still a relatively free
woman, I didn’t want to lose my only friend in the world due to unrequited
affection. Though I did love Danny, I had a feeling it wasn’t enough, and as
strong as I’d seemed at rehearsal, I wasn’t convinced I could deflect any of
his attention. And my bones told me it would be a mistake to give in. 

 
I’ll be fine. Do your thing and be brilliant
. 

 Dan marveled.
My signing was either good enough to impress him, or he was falling. Hard. I
shooed him back to his desk, signing that we couldn’t be together all the time,
when he’d wanted to walk me home. He reluctantly let me go, and I thanked the
universe for getting me out of another possibly romantic interlude when I would
have to either awkwardly decline, breaking my best friend’s heart, or go with
it, possibly lying to the both of us in the end. Neither option was something I
could rationally deal with while trying to simply survive.

 Finally,
Dan pecked me on the cheek as I affixed a confident face for my first solo
stroll down the lulled streets of River.

This is
ridiculous.

 I never did
have a great sense of direction. Without a family tree, I didn’t know which absentee
parent to thank for that DNA inheritance, or perhaps it was the product of
taking subways and cabs all my life, but on my third try through the mirror
maze I was about ready to scream just so the Speakers would drag me out of the
silvery hell. Focusing at the cracks between mirrors, I calmed down enough to
ignore the dozens of blurry reflections of my beet red face, only grateful to
be alone in my humiliation. The theater and rehearsal spaces had been empty for
hours. I had yet to find out if there was a person in the front entrance ticket
booth, because I couldn’t
get
to the door.
 

 Walking
with purpose to the right, I took the first left instead of going straight. I
was about halfway through with only a few routes left to try. Attempting to
jump-start my lackadaisical intuition and avoid going in a circle, I took
another right, hoping to zigzag out of it. I’d never liked mazes, though I had
never truly been in one. Now, I hated them. Swearing internally, I stopped to
gain my bearings and calm down.
I’ll get out eventually
.
I hope
.

 The claustrophobic
feeling I was becoming accustomed to began to make me dizzy, along with the headache.
I rested my forehead on the cold glass, breathing in and out for a time. Movement
felt more productive than just standing there helpless, though, and I began to
walk.
It’ll
be fine,
I told myself.

  This is
so
not fine.

  As I
turned the corner of another reflected wall, my heart stopped at a black form
in front of me—an exit? Creeping closer, my whole body jumped when it moved. I
flattened myself against the mirror behind me, stifling a gasp. My nerves were
shot.

 Using my
last available analytical thought, I deduced that the person in front of me
probably knew how to get out of Das Hell Maze. Desperate, I went against my loner
instincts and followed. The figure was dressed in all black, with black hair
and black gloves. I did notice a white shirt collar, which made me feel better
for some illogical reason. I wasn’t sure if he‘d seen me, even though I walked
on my toes and tried to be silent, staying a beat behind every turn. The way
the mirrors were angled made me nervous that he would catch me following, but
the man never paused.

 All of a
sudden, I was out. After a blind turn, the exit appeared without warning. I
sighed in relief, wanting to laugh at myself and curse whatever designer had conceived
that
evil addition.  When I surreptitiously looked around for my superhero
savior, he was gone. I hoped I hadn’t made him more paranoid in this town by
following him, though it had been out of innocent necessity.

 Taking a
deep breath, I walked past the empty ticket booth and out the main doors,
smiling at my freedom. The daily panic attacks had actually been good practice for
me. Now, I knew how to calm down and breathe through them. With my glasses back
in place, I bit my tongue against the urge to hum as I walked. I was going to
need some gauze pretty soon.

 The streets
were beautiful, admittedly. There were old-fashioned streetlamps on every corner,
steam was drifting out of grates, and low violin music dissolved in time with
the frozen mist. I walked cautiously, dull paranoia an undercurrent to each
step. Even though I knew the music was doused with Lull, it helped me relax and
feel good about my earlier performance, up to a point. Rehearsals tomorrow
would give me some clue of what I was in for with the big show, but I didn’t want
to think about that. As my mind wandered into hazy territory, I felt drowsy
while reliving my dream from the night before….

 Running was
not helping, so I decided to fly over the fence. They were going to catch me
and kill me. Or enslave me in the worst way imaginable. I would have to go down
to the quarry bed and try to get across. If I didn’t try, I was dead anyway. Pushing
away all emotion, I scrambled up the fence, slicing my hands. I frantically pulled
my legs over the sticking barbed wire, just to lose my footing and ricochet off
the loose rocks. 

 The fall
was silent past the lengths of jagged stone to the black water below. In my
dream-mind, I went blank. I was neither breathing nor screaming; just dead
weight plummeting down the depths like any other object tossed into gravity’s
grasp. 

  I jerked
awake when the end of the fall came, just as all the times before.

 Why did I
keep having this dream over and over? It was the same in concept, but slightly
different each time, along with the paralyzing dream. They gave the impression
of being intertwined, and I couldn’t help but feel that these dreams meant
something. My mind seemed to be overloaded; memories came and went while I felt
more uncertain than ever about them. I couldn’t trust them to be real, yet I
wasn’t one hundred percent sure about the recollection I’d always had. It was
amazingly frightening to not trust my memories, but I had to accept that this
was how things were. Nothing was concrete anymore. I reminded myself that I had
to get through every minute and just survive. The past had its place, but I had
to move forward.

 One block
to go, I surveyed the downtown area. The gallery with the painting I’d seen a
couple of days before was across the way. The lighting was low and the windows
frosted, but the haunting work was still visible. Feeling apprehensive, I crossed
the narrow tram track to get a closer look. The painting wasn’t like anything
I’d seen before, almost purposely boring to an ordinary viewer. If one didn’t
focus on the figure drowning, it would just look like an ordinary landscape. Not
really knowing why the content engaged me, I decided it was the submerged figure.
Like anything a person was afraid of, I’d been drawn to stories and movies
depicting drowning my whole life. I think that suffocating is what obsessed me
the most—what a horrible way to go. I guessed that the artist used it as a metaphor
for life in River.

 In a fog, my
thoughts looped until nothing made sense. When turning to go home, a shadow
stopped me in place. The Lulling was making me woozy, although not nearly as
bad as the first night. It reminded me of severe jet lag, despite the fact that
my traveling experience was almost nothing. I stared harder into deep night as
the wind picked up. It flung my hair into my face, obstructing my view along with
the freezing steam. My eyes stung and watered from the cold air. After I
blinked and brushed my hair away, the shadow was gone, though the light hadn’t
changed.

 My senses were
dull and hyper-aware at the same time—a very strange, drugged sensation. Hurrying
to the apartment, I almost ran through the entrance, huffing and waving to Not
George. His blurred face seemed wary as I found my way to the elevator, rushing
to get behind a locked door. My shadow wouldn’t let itself be seen tonight, remaining
a mystery.  

…...............

Sleep was
eluding me again. 

 I had eaten
leftovers, practiced signing, and even tried something in the way of meditation
to calm my mind. My body felt exhausted, yet my thoughts raced in fitful circles.
Questions that I had been avoiding asking myself: who I really was, how I’d
come to this place, how I could possibly do the right thing without hurting Dan,
and who was going to get me through the performance in a mere forty-some hours.
The most pressing predicament in the sleepless, darkened room was the event I’d
procrastinated worrying about, now surfacing. The big performance had moved
itself to the frontline of my internal world of angst. If I bowed out, there
would be questions of my health and possible suspicion. That would not only
bring me into the spotlight but could put Danny in harm’s way as well.

 Meditation
was not my thing. I didn’t know much about it, other than when I’d watched Danny
in New York a couple of weeks ago hit a gong and light some incense after announcing
he was going to “
chill in a
cosmic way.
” He had closed his eyes
and sat still, which
was
a feat for him, so I imagined the practice
contained some merit. When the incense had begun to choke me, I’d retreated into
the next room and read until he’d emerged, proclaiming that it was time for
takeout. 

 Rubbing my
tired eyes, now I could only wish for reading material to distract myself from
impending doom. Even an air-conditioning manual or a phone book would suffice. As
much as I tried to relax, I ended up pacing and peeking out windows for evidence
of the shades that haunted me, real and imagined. The threat of Speakers
finding out I could talk, and then discovering Dan had the Lulling antidote,
was suddenly causing my heart to jump and my head to ache. The later it became,
the more fixated I was on the various consequences of our secrets unearthed. As
I covered my face and finally lay down, I was convinced I had to turn myself in
to save Dan from my dark fate. Succumbing to fatigue, I fell asleep on the white
fluff of a stranger’s sofa.

 Waking up,
I was relieved to have forgone dreams, feeling better than I had for days. My good
mood ended abruptly when I remembered where I was.

 It was past
dawn when Danny arrived. I hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep and sat on
the floor hugging my knees, wondering how it would end for me in River. If I couldn’t
return to New York, could I continue this charade? Surely I would mess up
eventually, either by laughing out loud or sneezing with vocals, or screaming
when the Speakers tore Danny away. I was deep in the obscurity of unknown future
events when a knock came at the door, jerking me out of my trance.

 
I’ve
got it.         

 “You’ve got
what?” Mumbling under my breath after letting Danny into the apartment, I
turned around to search for the coffee filters. “Have you been in your studio
all night?” He closely resembled the Dan I was used to: disheveled, wild eyed,
in need of a shower. 

 The
answer to your problem. 

 “Um, which
one?”

 Obviously
amused, he walked into the kitchen without answering and took a mixing bowl out
of the cupboard. I started the coffee, trying to guess what he’d conjured to be
excited about.

 “Is it
about my voice? Or the Lulling antidote wearing off?” He shook his head, but was
still smiling as he mixed pancake batter. Apple cinnamon today. My mood
improved somewhat as the scent of buttery apple pie filled the apartment.

 “Are you
going to give me some kind of Speaker repellent for when they come after me?” I
wasn’t wearing my glasses, but I could tell he was squinting at me sidelong
from across the room, his lips quirked with a raised eyebrow.

 “It’s
something you would have thought up… before,” I muttered. “You would have induced
hallucinations of pink elephants from the nectar of a fake flower in my lapel
or something.” He was shaking his head and pouring batter, now with a worried
furrow to his brow. For New York Dan, that solution would have been tame.

  
You don’t have to worry about performing tomorrow
.
I took care of it.
He signed with spatula in hand
.

 Now it was
my turn to be the skeptic. “How?” I asked, cocking my head to the side. Was he
a magician all of a sudden? “Did you resurrect my clone to replace me? You know—the
one who remembers and knows exactly what to do?”