Amnesia Moon (21 page)

“It's what you do. Your choices.” She sipped her drink. “Who you make yourself into.”

“So I'm not supposed to care who I was before?”

Dawn shrugged. “Care if you want. Just don't make everything depend on it. Because you'll never be sure.”

“What about you?” Everett said, suddenly furious at her smugness. “Why is it so easy for you? Do you remember everything before the break? Is your life now consistent with what it was then?”

“I'm mostly interested in forgetting what I was before,” she said.

Everett weighed the notion of remembering too much, so much that you wanted to forget. He felt a flare of envy. Though it might not be that different, he supposed, from wanting not to dream. From drinking to blot out Kellogg.

“Were you married to Harriman, before?” he asked. “You're married, right?”

“Our alliance goes a long way back. It's not what you think, perhaps.”

“What is he, some kind of dream scientist? What was he before?”

“His research was along those lines. The break changed it, like it did everything, of course. But I don't want to talk about Harriman. The subject bores me.”

Everett slumped deeper in his seat, weary of pressing for answers that didn't satisfy. His gaze drifted out past the bar, through the front window, a pane cracked and repaired with masking tape and framed by dusty, obsolete logos.

There was someone he recognized on the street outside. Something, rather: the televangelist. It stood lecturing or reprimanding two small boys, who for a moment reminded Everett of Ray and Dave. But they weren't, of course. Just two boys. Everett watched as they ripped loose the televangelist's supply of pamphlets and scattered them on the avenue, then ran. The robot laboriously bent to gather the fluttering papers.

“Weren't you going to play some pool?” said Dawn unexpectedly to Fault.

Fault nodded, taking the hint, and slid out of the booth. Everett watched him approach the table, weaving his head nervously as he addressed the players.

“I want to talk to you about the girl in the dreams,” Dawn said.

“What do you mean?”

“Gwen, right? You're in love with her. That's what you came back for.”

Everett nodded, too tired and possibly too drunk to argue.

“Cale wants you to make his world real.”

He looked away, not wanting to confirm it. He'd seen Dawn's contempt for Cale at the party.

“So he and the girl can be alive,” she pressed on. “Don't lie, Billy told me all about it.”

He met her eyes again and knew it was as good as nodding.

She scooted up against him in the booth, until shoulders, hips, and knees were all touching. “Listen,” she said. “I have a better idea.”

“Better than what?”

“Make me into Gwen.”

“I don't understand.”

“Use your power to turn me into the one you want. Then she'll be alive, and you'll have her. You can do it, you know. Make me into her, and we'll get away from here together. We can go to the house you dream about, if you want that.”

He closed his eyes, then lifted his glass and drained it. He felt her hand on his thigh.

“That's somehow disgusting,” he managed to say.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Do you mind if I ask what's in it for you?”

She laughed and gripped his leg. “I could say that's none of your business, Everett. But I'll tell you. I would be young again—not that I'm old. But your Gwen is very young, like you. And I want my life to change. And you turn me on. Your power turns me on.”

He didn't say anything.

“She would be real, Everett. I know how much you want that. You wouldn't have to wonder anymore.”

“What about Harriman and Ilford? What about their plans?”

“I'd be happy to see their plans go up in smoke, dear.” With the hand that had been on his knee she reached up and turned his face towards hers.

“Give me a kiss,” she said.

He put his mouth on hers and tasted her breath. It was sweet, like apple juice. He'd somehow been expecting something bitter. Ash, or vinegar.

She turned her body towards his, and they moved together in the booth. Everett felt unstitched. The canned roar of the jukebox, the smell of sweat and stale smoke, the clack of billiard balls, Dawn's tongue in his mouth and her hand on his leg—all drifted apart like islands, to reveal the sea or fog that lay between.

He sat up and shook his head. Dawn opened her eyes, smiled petulantly, and drew away.

“You're not Gwen yet, you know,” he said, wanting it to be a vicious remark, wanting it to express his entire cosmic bitterness.

But she was still smiling. “No. Not yet. But I'm not half bad.”

He pushed out of the booth and made his way to the men's room, and stood, wobbling in place, at a stall. Fault came in after him, still carrying a pool cue.

“You all right, Everett?”

“Let's get out of here,” said Everett.

 

He stood and looked up at the low sky, the vault of fog that pressed down on the black bracket of trees. Dawn had dropped them at the end of Ilford's driveway, and then her car had slipped invisibly into the night, the sound of the motor trailing away to silence.

For a moment he regretted letting her go. He could have gotten free of Ilford's looming house, could have followed Dawn to her bed and asked her questions. Her appeal was tied to what she seemed to know. He hated himself for the need that drew him to her. For his pastlessness.

He turned towards the house and encountered Fault, waiting for him. Suddenly he was filled with loathing. “You're the universal yes-man, aren't you?” he said.

“What?” said Fault, gaping through the darkness.

“You'll pimp me to anyone. Ilford, Cale, now Dawn—”

“That's a little harsh, Everett.”

“Everyone wants a little piece of me,” said Everett. “Except for you. For you I'm bait.”

“There's a lot you don't understand,” said Fault.

“Do you even care which side you're on?”

“I'm a survivor,” said Fault indignantly. “Like you, like anybody else. I do what I have to do. You don't know about my problems, Everett. You don't know what happened to me.”

There was silence then, as they stood in the dark on the drive. Everett heard his own breath, felt his own thick pulse swollen with alcohol. Before him glowed the windows of Ilford's living room, beacons in the fog. The basement apartment was unlit, invisible.

Finally he said, “You're right. I don't know what happened to you.”

“That's right.”

“So tell me. What happened to us in the break? What happened to Cale?”

“Things could be a lot worse.”

“Who are you protecting? Ilford? Cale? Or yourself?”

“I'm not—”

“Tell me what you know, then.”

“I can't.” Fault turned away and walked towards the house.

Everett stood, infuriated, wanting to go the other way, into the fog and night. Instead he followed, moving into the circle of light that came from the windows. At the entrance to the basement he caught up with Fault again.

“I want a dose tonight,” he said.

“Go upstairs and go to sleep. You're running through my supply.”

“Give it to me, Billy.”

“Shut up, don't talk about it out here—”

“Downstairs, then.”

They went into the basement.

 

 

 

 

“You were away for so long,” said Gwen.

“I've been busy,” he said. “Things have been complicated.”

She drew him to her, into her arms where she sat on the sketch of a bed in that empty space. He felt her touch like an echo, a whisper in the language of memory.

But he was tired of whispers.

“You have to find a way for us to be together,” she said. “I can't stay here waiting for you anymore. I can't stand it.”

“It's not that simple,” he said.

“Cale said there was a way.”

“Cale thinks there is a way. I don't know what I think.”

“He said you could finish what he started,” she said. “When he called me back, when he helped me come back. You could bring me into the world again.”

Everett flinched. “Maybe. Maybe I could do something like that.”

“Cale thinks so, Everett.”

“Does Cale . . .” He stopped. It didn't matter if Cale came here. The thoughts she voiced were Cale's. It was better, in fact, to think that Cale came here, came to her in person and spoke. Better than thinking he'd somehow programmed her from afar. If it was that way, he didn't want to know.

He pulled away.

“Is something the matter?” She looked into his eyes.

“I need to know who I am.”

“I know who you are.”

“Tell me.”

“You're Everett, in love with Gwen. Everett with Gwen. Just like I'm Gwen with Everett, Gwen for Everett.” She blinked, looked down, then found his eyes again. “Do you love me, Everett?”

“Yes. But I'm not—”

“Then I know you.”

“But you don't,” he said. “You don't know me.”

“What do you mean?”

He slid away from her on the bed. “Will you let me show you something?”

She nodded mutely.

He took her to Hatfork.

 

They stood in the parking lot of the Multiplex, the sun beating down on them, the desert air already drying their mouths. The theater's sign still shouted that Chaos was the only thing playing. The empty black lot burned them through the soles of their shoes. Squinting, he pulled her by the hand into the shelter of the entrance.

“Everett,” she started.

“You have to call me Chaos,” he said. He pulled out his old keys and unlocked the door to the staff entrance, and they stepped into the hall that led to the projection booth.

“Why should I call you Chaos?” She leaned back against the corridor wall, looking frightened.

“Because that's my name here.” He reached out and touched her shoulder, and smiled slightly. “It might even be a name I gave myself. Because I'm part of why it's like this, here. I helped make this place.”

“I don't understand. Places don't matter anymore. That's what Cale said. He said he could make any kind of place he wanted. And that you could too, Everett.”

“This is different from the places Cale makes. I mean, I didn't make it by myself. I didn't even like it. But it's a part of me, it's the part of me I can remember.”

He closed the door behind them, sealing them in the gloom. But he knew the way, would know the way forever. Grasping her hand, he led her up the stairs.

The projection booth was just as he'd left it, just as it always had been, the old machines layered in dust, his stained blankets balled underneath the couch. His cigarettes were where he'd left them, and he realized he hadn't had a smoke since hitting the road. He thought of that day, his argument with Kellogg out at the reservoir, his flight. He broke the spell of memory, led Gwen to a seat on the couch, and lit candles in the corners of the booth.

“This is what?” she said. “Where you lived?”

“For five years.”

“I thought that was wrong, Everett. Cale told me you thought it was five years, but it wasn't really.”

All she knew was what Cale told her. Everett saw that Cale had done his best to prepare her for her time with him, for her chance to be real.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “This is where I've been, this is what I remember. It was five years to me.”

She shook her head, then stopped and stared at him, frowning. “You look different.”

He nodded. His hair was a thatch here, his skin sunburnt, his teeth unbrushed.

She leaned back on the couch. “Okay,” she said. “I've seen it. Now I know.”

“No,” he said. “You have to—you have to come with me. See it. I need you to see it all.”

He took her in the car, and they drove through town. They went to Decal's first. Everett introduced Gwen, and Decal smiled his ragged grin and shook her hand. Decal gave them two quart containers of alcohol, which Chaos locked in the trunk. At Sister Earskin's he added a container of soup and two baked bird legs wrapped in recycled aluminum foil. Kellogg's Food Rangers still hadn't turned up any new cans. Chaos wondered how long it was since he'd seen a can or a Food Ranger, and a corner of him thought to wonder if the Rangers had actually existed in the first place or whether they were just another part of Kellogg's lore.

Then he drove them out to the edge of the desert, to sit by the crumbled salt dunes and watch the sunset and eat.

His thoughts were distant, and he and Gwen were silent for a long time. Finally, in the smallest voice she possessed, she said: “Did Cale make another place? A house for us? Like where you lived before?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't we go there,” she said, “instead of here?”

“I want you to see me here.”

“Why?”

“You need to know this part of me.”

“It's the worst part of you, Everett. You don't need this. You ran away from this.”

“I—” He couldn't find the words.

“What?”

“Isn't that the idea, in love?” he said. “That you should be able to love the worst part?” But he knew this was beside the point, that he was talking about love when he should have been talking about real and fake.

“I don't know,” she said.

“Well, I think that's all there is of me now, Gwen. The worst part. This part.”

“I think you're being miserable,” she said. The piece of bony meat she held, she placed it back on the foil. “And I think this food tastes rotten. I can't believe you had to make up all this garbage, make this whole screwed-up place, just to drag me here.”