Amnesiascope: A Novel (27 page)

The film was projected onto the white sail. Now and then the film would fill with a wind blowing from Canada through the craters; we were a black ghost ship called
Marat
sailing the Idaho plains. There was no sound from either the film or the audience until the end, which was greeted with a rising, sustained roar. I was relieved the movie was nothing like I imagined it. Somewhere between my review and this moment it had become its own thing. Afterward a tiny old man stepped in front of the blank white sail and, in the lights, merely waved; and as the people and cars were leaving I wandered toward the screen, drifting against the tide of the exiting migration. Just as I was beginning to think I was wasting my time, I saw him, surrounded by a crowd of festival officials and photographers flashing their cameras, and I stood there a while watching, ten feet away, only because I wanted to get a look at him.

God, he had to have been a hundred. But he seemed as sharp in spirit as he was feeble in body, basking in all the attention even as he looked like he had been around a little too long to take it all too seriously. And then in all the hubbub, there in the dark where I wouldn’t have thought he could possibly see me, he saw me. He turned, looked right at me and smiled expectantly, as though he was waiting for me to say something. I came closer and one of the officials stepped up to keep me back, but the old man signaled to let me through. People stopped for a moment, thinking he was about to say something and wanting to hear it; but I was the one who spoke. “Everything is gone from my life,” I told him. “Everyone has left. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore. And I’ve driven all the way from Los Angeles just so you could tell me.”

For a moment I thought he didn’t hear me. For a moment he turned back to all the other people trying to talk to him; but then he raised his hand and—

And Adolphe Sarre turns back to me with the same smile, no longer expectant but fulfilled, and at a volume I should not be able to hear but which I can make out perfectly, all he says is: “Embarrass yourself.” And we look at each other for one more moment before the crowd swallows him up.

I return to the car, get in and, at the first sane speed I’ve driven in three days and a thousand miles, head back the direction I came, the perfect Stuttering Fool of the American Tarot.

I cross the Idaho-Utah line and I don’t stop, because even if I had the money for a motel room, I’m not stopping anyway. Out of utter fatigue I pull over just shy of Nevada and sleep an hour, and then continue, passing Vegas a little before noon. A little after noon I’m back in California, Station 3 just beginning to filter in at the far end of the radio, and in a daze I take myself on into Los Angeles, nearly seventeen hours after leaving Craters of the Moon. Far past exhaustion, far past adrenaline, without a reason for being back, without a single reason to take me across one black ring after another into the bull’s-eye of Hollywood and then through the Black Passages on the other side, through Beverly Hills and out along the border of Black Clock Park into the Palisades, I pull my car off Sunset Boulevard and drive up to the same bluff where I went the morning after Viv and I kidnapped Sahara from the Cathode Flower, just in time to see the sun fall into the sea.

From the bluff I have the same view of the whole bay, the smoking ruins of Malibu to the north and, to the south, the paramilitary outposts of Palos Verdes. At sea the hundreds of Chinese junks that sail out this time each month depart with their mystery cargo.

Listen. I’m going to try one more time. I don’t promise anything will come of it, or that I won’t try to put it off for as long as possible, or that in the meantime I may not have to do something sensible first, like find Viv for instance. I don’t promise that the deep fault line that runs from my psyche through my brain out my front door and down the street won’t run all the way from L.A. to America and beyond, all the way from memory to the moment and back, splitting me up the middle and leaving half of me on one side and half of me on the other. Not far from this very bluff where I am now is the beach where I once told a woman about talking to myself; actually I can almost see the very place, right down there. Now, just for a while, we’re going to pretend that I’m talking to myself again, like I used to. Now, just for a while, we’re going to pretend—don’t take this personally—that you’re not here at all. Most of the best things I’ve ever said, the most fluid, stutterless,
sonorous
things, were to myself, and now I’m going to try one more time to say everything I can find in me that might be worth saying, and hope that whatever I find in me to say is only the road, and not the place to where the road is going. And then when I’m finished, perhaps I’ll be finished for good. There’s always the off-chance that, from another bluff, I’ll actually be able to see the place to where the road is going and that, having seen it, I’ll find that nothing else needs to be said. But there’s also the chance that, having seen it, I’ll find something entirely new that needs to be said, something I never knew before that I could say. And then, having tried one last time, perhaps I will try once more.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1996 by Steve Erickson

cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4804-1025-1

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com