Player One: What Is to Become of Us (15 page)

Bertis says, “I don’t see a ring on
your
finger, Pastor Luke,” and Luke is taken aback. “Ah. So now I’ve pushed one of
your
buttons. You don’t strike me as queer, so I’m going to have to guess that you’re damaged goods somehow. And you know I’m right, don’t you? Karen, what do you think — is Luke damaged goods?”

Luke thinks,
Man, this guy is good at creating awkward moments
. Then he looks at Karen. She’s standing halfway between him and Bertis, with her arms crossed. And he can tell from her face that she really does want to know why he has ended up alone.

“Let me get this straight. With everything that has happened — and is happening — you both want to know why I’m still single?”

Karen and Bertis nod.

“Okay, then . . .”

Why
are
you single, Luke?

___

Luke thought about this.
Why?

“Well, my dad was a pastor and so I rebelled — yes, son of a preacher man and all that, and let me tell you, it really is catnip to women — but then by twenty I’d seen enough of the world to know that we need to protect ourselves from ourselves, and I came back to the church. And . . .” Luke became as wistful as it’s possible to be while pointing a shotgun at someone’s aorta. “I knew I was a soul in trouble — that’s how I viewed it at the time. But when I went back to the church, the women there wanted a goody-goody, a private express lane to God, Ten Commandments or less. And the thing is, I was no longer a bad boy, but despite becoming a pastor I was never a goody-goody either. And nobody in the
middle
ever liked me. And you know, I’ve been here on earth for thirty-something years, and I don’t think there is even one person who ever really
knew
me, which is a private disgrace. I don’t even know if people are knowable.”

With those last words, Karen became totally focused on him.

“Figuring this stuff out takes time. I’m rambling. I’m human; I’m still trapped inside of . . .
time
. . . trapped inside the world of
things
.”

“Don’t stop,” said Karen. “You’re not rambling. Keep talking.”

“Okay, so, yes — I probably am damaged goods and, yes, I think I am a broken person. I seriously question the road I’ve taken, and I endlessly rehash the compromises I’ve made in my life.” Luke sat down at the table across from Bertis. Karen sat between them.

“Go on,” said Bertis.

“At one point, I really felt like I had a soul — it felt like a small glowing ember buried deep inside my guts. It felt real.”

“So then, who dumped you?” Bertis asked, adding, “Takes one to know one.”

“Does it matter?”

“It does.”

“No, it doesn’t, because none of it matters, because no matter what I do I’m going to inherit Alzheimer’s from my bastard father.” Karen’s eyes flared open wider. “That’s the real reason for most things in my life that go sideways. The day I turn fifty-five, my universe is going to start erasing itself. So what’s the point of doing anything?”

They heard some noises from out back.

Karen asked, “What is that?”

Bertis said, “I think those two are getting it on.”

More noise.

Karen asked, “She
is
over eighteen, right?”

Bertis looked at Luke, whose face featured a small pout. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?” asked Bertis. “Let me guess — you thought she liked
you
better.”

Karen butted in. “More important to me right now, Bertis, is what is your deal?”

“Excuse me?”

“You. Rifle. Killing people.”

“Karen, I can see you’re not a believer.”

“In what?”

“God. A great truth.”

“I’m listening.”

“You need to accept that your current path is death in disguise.”

“Go on.”

“You need to look at the universe as a place filled with huge rocks and massive globs of burning gas that obey laws, but then ask yourself, to what end? Remind yourself that we are living creatures — we have mystical impulses, impulses that tell us the universe is a place charged with mystery, not just a vacuum filled with rocks and lava. We’re all born separated from God — over and over, life makes sure to inform us of that — andyet we’re all real: We have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must.”

“Okay.”

“Your life is too easy, Karen. You’ve been tricked into not questioning your soul. Do you know this?”

“I’m listening.”

“Karen, tell me, what is the
you
of you? Where do you begin and end? This
you
thing — is it an invisible silk woven from your memories? Is it a spirit? Is it electric? What exactly is it? Does it know that there exists a light within us all — a light brighter than the sun, a light inside the mind? Does the real Karen know that, when we sleep at night, when we walk across a field and see a tree full of sleeping birds, when we tell small lies to our friends, when we make love, we are performing acts of surgery on our souls? All this damage and healing and shock that happens inside of us, the result of which is unfathomable. But imagine if you could see the light, the
souls
inside everybody you see — at Loblaws, on the dog-walking path, at the library — all those souls, bright lights, blinding you, perhaps. But they are
there
.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “You talk kind of pretty for a monster.”

Bertis swivelled his head to Luke. “You keep quiet.” He turned back to Karen. “Karen, I like you, and this could be the day you finally wake up from the long, dead sleep that has been your life until now.”

“So, you’re telling me I’ve been asleep for some four decades? What was it I was doing all that time, then?”

“I don’t know. Being a part of the world — being in time rather than in Eternity. I can hear your soul, Karen. I can hear it just a bit, creaking like a house shifting ever so slightly off its foundations. In my heart it feels like that moment once a year when I smell the air and know fall is here — except it’s not the fall, Karen, it’s forever. Take down the barricade and look out the door there. Look out into this terrifying and gleaming new century, where the sun burns the eyes of innocents, where the sun burns whenever and wherever it wants, where night no longer provides respite. Where are you to find mercy in a place like that? Where will you find the correct path? There will be anarchy. Office buildings will collapse, and when they dig through the rubble, the people who were inside will be found compressed into diamonds from the force. The diamond is your soul.”

Luke heard footsteps, and Rick and Rachel entered the bar.

“Ah,” said Bertis. “The lovebirds.”

Rick came in talking. “Hey, you — Bertis — how did you get up on the roof of this place, anyway?”

“There’s an Ontario Hydro truck with a cherry picker beside the east wall.”

“Well,
that
was simple.”

Rachel

Rachel asks Karen, “Karen, is this what dreams are like?”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Right now, like this — there are no lights, and yet things are still happening. Is this what dreams are like?”

“You mean you’ve never had a dream?”

“Not that I remember. Dreams are for normal people. I just sleep.”

“That’s so sad.”

“Why would it be sad?”

“Because . . .” Karen paused. “. . . Because dreams are part of being alive.”

“I think dreams are a biological response to the fact that our planet rotates, and that for a billion years earth has had both a night and a day.”

“You’re being unfair to dreams. They can’t be neatly put in a box like that. They can be wonderful.”

“But if you accept dreams, you also have to accept nightmares, and I know nightmares are bad things. And if dreams are so special, why is it that no person or company has ever tried to make a drug that leads to better dreaming? Sleeping pills, yes, but dreaming pills? Have scientists even asked that question?”

More candles are lit and Rachel sees Rick’s face glowing orange above a bowl lamp covered in white mesh and lit by a candle inside. He’s showing teeth, but the corners of his mouth are upturned, so she knows he is smiling at her. “No, Rachel, it’s not a dream,” he says, “just real life. Here. You. Me. Us. Now. And dig these cheesy candles, like we’re eating spaghetti at the restaurant with Lady and the Tramp.” Rachel is pretty sure she can now distinguish Rick from Luke. At this moment, it’s Rick’s voice that determines his identity. Rick — the father of her child as of mere moments ago.

As she helps Rick light candles around the room, Rachel wonders if he fathered her child because she is beautiful or because he is in love with her or because he is, as her mother would say, a dog. But how can a man be a dog? Or vice versa? And even if they could, why would being a dog be bad? Rachel’s father says that if cats were double their usual size, they’d probably be illegal and you’d have to shoot them, but even if dogs were three times as big, they’d still be good friends to people. Rachel sees that as a good way of comparing the two species.

Rachel replays her memories of the previous half-hour — both her normal memories and the backup copies generated by her brain’s amygdala. When Rick asked Rachel to come help him fix the leak that was allowing toxins into the building, she was happy to help. And then something new entered her life, something she couldn’t explain. Rick was standing on some plastic crates and Rachel was holding his legs, keeping him stable as he shut the window’s louvres. But when he was finished, he didn’t get down — and Rachel didn’t let go of his legs, even though Rick no longer required stability. She somehow knew that if she let go of him she would miss out on something she might never again experience. She felt, well . . . the thing is, she
felt
. She had feelings she had no words for — which is how normal people must go through life, ad-libbing through unclear situations, trying to label things that can’t be labelled.

Rachel thought,
Okay, God, I’ve been hearing a lot about you today. So this is the one time I’m ever going to speak to you, so you’d better be listening. Dear God, please send me a sign that this is how it feels to be human. Dear God, please send me a sign that this is how it feels to be a
woman
. Dear God, oh please, for once in my life let me be like the others — just this once and I’ll never bug you again. I might even believe in you. But if you’re going to do this, you have to do it now. It can’t be later. It has to be now, while I’m standing here in the storage room of a cocktail bar near an airport in the early half of the twenty-first century in the middle of the North American continent. It has to be now, while I’m holding these legs in my arms, feeling the muscles move within them, feeling their heat. I’m touching another person, and I don’t want to run away or scream — in fact, I want the opposite. So there you go, God — it’s all I’ve ever wanted and all I’ll ever ask you for.

And God gave Rachel what she wanted.

___

Rachel looked out over the candlelit lounge. No one was talking, so Rachel said, “Sometimes when things are quiet at home, I’ll play Scrabble with my family, but we remove some of the vowels to make the game more challenging. Do you have a Scrabble game here, Rick?”

“Nope. But can I get you a fresh ginger ale?”

“Thank you, Rick.”

The lounge was getting humid, and Rachel disliked that — the humidity felt like strangers were touching her. A part of her wanted to retreat into her Happy Place, but after recent events, the place no longer had the appeal it once did. Rachel figured she now had to be pregnant — she had to be, because she’d followed all the rules for getting pregnant. And besides, people can’t take babies to Happy Places because babies need to be cared for all the time. And strangely, going to the Happy Place would mean going back in time in a way that wasn’t good. Rachel had come too far in the past few hours — she had earned her right to be a part of the world. And besides, God had given her what she wanted. Perhaps God was the Happy Place and she’d been mislabelling Him all her life.

The blister-faced Bertis looked at her and said, “So, Rachel, what do
you
believe in?”

“Me? I believe in God.”

Bertis seemed surprised. Everyone did. “You do?”

Rick looked at her. “Really?”

“Oh yes.”

Rick said, “But I thought God was . . . I mean . . . you’re not really the God type.”

“No. You’re thinking of the autism spectrum personality cliché. I think God is real.”

Luke asked if she’d always believed in God.

“No. It’s a new belief.”

“Oh. But an hour ago you were asking us why normal people . . .”

Rachel saw where Luke was going. “People change, Luke.”

“Okay, but then, do you also believe in evolution?”

“Of course.”

“Doesn’t one belief cancel out the other?” Karen asked.

Rachel replied, “Not at all. God made the world, and how He went about doing it is whatever it took to get the job done. So it involved fossils and dinosaurs and billions of years. If that’s what was required to create our world, then what is the big problem? The world is here. We live in it.”

Luke asked, “You have no trouble with the time frames involved — all that time?”

“Luke, human beings were probably not meant to think about time. It’s that simple. When people think about time too much, it always seems to cause bad feelings. Infinity is the worst concept of all. What was God thinking when He invented infinity?”

Rachel was secretly loving God. She loved the way God could be used to answer all questions. She no longer had to think things through — although this was probably not the spirit in which one was supposed to embrace belief. She wondered what the fellow members of the Fifty Thousand Mouse Club would make of her conversion — if it would make them see her as less scientifically credible.

Bertis looked at Rick and said, “Hey there, Fornicator. First you made her a fallen woman, but then you redeemed yourself by making her a believer. Good work.”