In the Path of Falling Objects (35 page)

If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?

A television. Just kidding. There wouldn’t be anywhere to plug it in. This is a trick, right? You left out the phrase “besides your wife,” right? Okay, so if I couldn’t have my wife OR my kids with me, then I’d probably be just fine by myself. I am an incurable loner at heart.

If you could travel in time, where would you go?

I would very much have liked to live in California during the 1880s. I know that’s a random choice, but I’ve always had a fascination for that time period, which is only part of the reason why I set a portion of The Marbury Lens in California during that decade. There were so many interesting political, social, and religious movements in America at that time, and those tremendous transformations in the ways that people looked at themselves and the universe—coupled with the anxious feeling of being right on the razor’s edge of this incredible twentieth-century future—really made for some potentially amazing adventures.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received about writing?

People who make it a practice to give advice about writing tend to give the worst possible advice. Here are my top three pieces of idiotic nonsense people will tell you about writing:

1.  You have to have a thick skin.

2.  “Show” don’t “tell.”

3.  Don’t quit your day job.

Those are all really wrong and meaningless, in my opinion. The only rule in my writer’s code is there are no rules.

What do you want readers to remember about your books?

I want my readers to find some personal connection to what I write. It’s hard for me to say just how much it means to me when I get letters or email from readers telling me how they’ve been impacted by one of my books. That’s the greatest thing in the world, and it seems like every one of those letters always tells me something different about how that connection was made.

What would you do if you ever stopped writing?

I would probably be an inconsolable grump, the worst neighborhood grouch in the history of neighborhood grouches. I can’t see myself quitting.

What do you like best about yourself?

I’ll tell you what I like least about myself: I take everything personally. I know that’s a critical weakness for someone who writes professionally because everyone in the business seems to repeat this you-need-to-have-a-thick-skin mantra (see above), but I can’t help it. I actually lose sleep over the littlest things people say or do.

What is your worst habit?

Evasiveness. When I don’t want to talk about something, I’ll craftily change the subject. My sixteen-year-old son, who is afraid of insects, is far braver than I am when it comes to riding on roller coasters.

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

Here we go again with the “bests” questions. I think I am a good father. I believe my kids will look back on some of the
things we’ve done together as a family as some of the greatest memories in their lives. That said, I am also very proud of all the books I’ve published—as well as those that will be coming out in the future.

Where in the world do you feel most at home?

Oddly enough, I feel most at home at home. I am a bit of a recluse, I suppose, and I greatly prefer the quiet of the countryside (where I live). I have never been able to understand the “dream” of living in a house that sits in a tight row of clone houses, surrounded by row upon row of other houses, in a neighborhood where you constantly hear the sounds of traffic and sirens.

What do you wish you could do better?

I wish I could speak Italian better. When I was a child, my mother could not speak English, and I spent many years in Italy, so I naturally picked up the language when I was young. Now, it’s difficult for me to form the words although I still can understand it very well.

What would your readers be most surprised to learn about you?

When I was a little kid, my family lived in a very old house that was actually haunted. And to be completely honest, I frequently saw the ghost of a little boy in it, but never told anyone until after we moved away, and then my mother told me that she saw ghosts in it all the time, too.

I guess in the old days, in other places, boys like me usually ended up twisting and kicking in the empty air beneath gallows.

It’s no wonder I became a monster, too.

I mean, what would you expect, anyway?

And all the guys I know — all the guys I ever knew — can look at their lives and point to the one defining moment that made them who they were, no question about it. Usually those moments involved things like hitting baseballs, or their dads showing them how to gap spark plugs or bait a hook. Stuff like that.

My defining moment came last summer, when I was sixteen.

That’s when I got kidnapped.

I am going to build something big for you.

It’s like one of those Russian dolls that you open up, and open up again. And each layer becomes something else.

On the outside is the universe, painted dark purple, decorated with planets and comets, stars. Then you open it, and you see the Earth, and when that comes apart, there’s Marbury, a place that’s kind of like here, except none of the horrible things in Marbury are invisible. They’re painted right there on the surface where you can plainly see them.

The next layer is Henry Hewitt, the man with the glasses, and when you twist him in half, there’s my best friend, Conner Kirk, painted to look like some kind of Hindu god, arms like snakes, shirtless, radiant.

When you open him up, you’ll find Nickie Stromberg, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and maybe the only person in this world, besides Conner, who ever really loved me.

Now it’s getting smaller, and inside is Freddie Horvath. That’s the man who kidnapped me.

Next, there’s the pale form of the boy, Seth, a ghost from Marbury who found me, and helped me. I guess he was looking for me for a long time. And the last thing on the inside is me. John Wynn Whitmore.

They call me Jack.

But then I open up, too, and what you’ll find there is something small and black and shriveled.

The center of the universe.

Fun game, wasn’t it?

I don’t know if the things I see and what I do in Marbury are in the future or from the past. Maybe everything’s really happening at the same time. But I do know that once I started going to Marbury, I couldn’t stop myself. I know it sounds crazy, but Marbury began to feel safer, at least more predictable, than the here and now.

I need to explain.

“Hey, kid.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me.

“Kid. Are you okay?”

A face leaned in close to mine. I could feel the warmth of breath.

“Do you need any help? Are you hurt or something?”

“Huh?” I put my hand up to my eyes. My head hurt. The guy was looking right into my eyes, like he was trying to see if anyone was really home.

“Did you take anything tonight, kid?”

I wasn’t sure where I was, had to think, remember. The man in front of me smelled like cigarettes and coffee. He was dressed all in green, a doctor or something. I thought I must have been in the hospital, but it was too dark.

“Where are we?”

“Yeah,” he said. I heard him sniff at me. “How much did you drink?”

“Huh?”

“Can you sit up?”

“I’m drunk.”

The man pulled me up. His hands felt warm, careful. When I sat up, everything in front of me spun like a compass needle in a hallway of magnets.

“Do you know where you are?”

No
.

“I was at a party. I was trying to go home.”

The man looked over both shoulders. I thought he was trying to
see if there were any other kids there, that maybe they’d know what to do with me. I could hear music coming from somewhere. I remembered, the park was in front of Java and Jazz. I heard jazz.

The man was still looking right into my eyes.

“Are you going to throw up?”

“No.”

“Where do you live?”

“Glenbrook.”

I tried standing, but it felt like there was no blood in my head. I fell back onto the bench.

“I’m a doctor at Regional. I’m headed that way. I can take you home, if you want.”

The man pulled me up from my armpit. “But you have to promise not to throw up in my car.”

“No. I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’ll be okay for me to walk.”

He let go of me. “Are you sure? It’s no problem.”

“I’ll be okay,” I repeated.

The man turned away. I fell down, caught myself on the pavement, and landed on my hands and knees.

He turned back. “I think I’d better call someone.”

He started to unclip a phone from the waist of his loose green pants.

“No,” I said. “Do you think you could drop me off?”

He smiled. He helped steady me on my feet. “Sure.”

He said his name was Freddie Horvath. He even gave me his card, which, I guess, was supposed to prove something. I didn’t know what to do with a doctor’s business card. I slipped it into my wallet, which I dropped when I tried putting it back in my pocket. Freddie laughed and picked it up, handing it to me.

“I remember what it was like, being a kid, too. You’ll be all right.”

He was nice, and I trusted him. But I was drunk and stupid.

I fell asleep again in Freddie’s Mercedes. I woke up when my head snapped forward. The car stopped somewhere. I couldn’t recognize the place, and had to think, again, about where I was, piece together the blurry sequence of disjointed events from the party: walking in on Conner and Dana, and ending up, somehow, asleep in this car that was now parked in front of a dark ranch-style house that I had never seen before.

“Stupid,” Freddie said. “I left my ID badge at home. I’ll be right back.”

He pushed his door open. I could have sworn he was wearing an ID badge when he found me on that park bench.

“Where are we?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re probably less than a mile from your house. I’ll be right back. Can I get you some water or something? You look like you could use it.”

My head pounded. My mouth was paper.

“Thanks,” I said.

He closed the driver door and walked around beside the car. I watched him as he came up and pulled my door open.

“Want to come in?”

I knew I was stupid, should have never accepted his help. But I rationalized that he was a doctor. Still, all I really wanted was to get home; and I wanted to speed him along, too.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”

Freddie smiled. “I’ll be right back, John.”

John?

I never told him my name. At least, I don’t think I did. I figured he must have looked at my driver’s license when I dropped my wallet in the park, because I’d never say my name was
John
.

I felt in my pocket. My wallet was still there.

I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

Freddie came back out in a minute, a plastic badge dangling from his breast pocket and a bottle of drinking water in his hand. He got in and started the car and passed the water to me.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

I was so thirsty. “Yeah. Thanks.”

I opened the bottle and drank.

I was unconscious before we made it out of Freddie’s driveway.

That’s how I ended up in that smoky room.

Freddie smoked constantly.

And it wasn’t until maybe a full twenty-four hours had dissolved invisibly past me — Sunday night — when I started to soberly realize that I was in a situation that seemed unreal, like something you’d only see on TV, something that would never happen to me.

But it was real.

Something hurts on my foot.

That’s the first really clear thought I have:
Something hurts.

I sit up. There is a constricting tightness around my ankle, cutting into me if I pull against it too much. That’s what holds me there. I’m lying on a bed. There are no sheets on it. I can feel the swirling grooves stitched into the mattress.

My hands are free. I sit up and rub my ankle. The binding feels like one of those heavy-duty zip ties, the kind cops use. That’s what it is. I feel the trap mouth where the toothed band has been fed through.

I see a slit of light along the floor. A door.

I run my hands over my body. Check everything. I don’t feel like I’ve been hurt. I don’t feel like he did anything to me. He didn’t. I am sure of that. But I’m lying there, stripped of everything I remember wearing, except for my boxer briefs, the same ones I put on when I got dressed for Conner’s party.

How long ago was that?

I try to think, feel around the bed to see if I might find my clothes, my wallet, something I can use to cut this goddamned strap off my leg.

Nothing. I track my fingers along the edge of the bed as far as I can, my hands blindly squeeze between the mattress and the foundation, probe the cool bare floor underneath. It is clean, but I can reach pretty far. I push my hand up inside the box spring. Something metal is there. I slide my fingers behind it and begin pulling.