The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (38 page)

Kreiger turned away and
stopped, something in the air catching his attention, unsettling and strange,
but familiar and comfortable also, like a memory from long ago, the world
before this one and the one before … and perhaps even the one before that. The
smell pierced the soft meat of his brain like a needle, ripping open dreams of
long ago.

He looked down at her,
the young woman locked in the passion of dreams. She had pushed the
sweat-soaked sheet aside, revealing herself, skin polished in the light. Her
breathing was short, insistent, her legs open, hips thrusting in sleepy
movements echoing activities more elegantly executed in some distant
dreamscape. She was trying to tighten her hold upon a lover separated from her
by a million parsecs of empty dream space. Small mewing sounds escaped her,
something between a desperate moan and an aching sob.

Kreiger leaned closer,
looking into her face, eyes moving beneath closed lids.

“Say hello to Jack for me,
won’t you?” he whispered.

At his name, Ellen arched
her back, surrendering herself to him.

“On second thought, don’t
bother. Idle conversation amidst love-play is a distraction.”

She offered no response,
but somewhere in a distant world, Ellen and the Caretaker were connecting on a
spiritual plane, a tantric feat to beat all sex magic and foolishness regarding
the seven sacred
chakras. Kreiger wondered if Jack had any idea how close he was to destroying
it all.

Lowering himself towards
her, he breathed in her breath, an open hand running down her sleeping form just
off the skin, feeling the heat rising from her flesh. His thumb grazed her
breast, feather-light, and he drank in her growing excitement, fanning down across
the flatness of her belly to glance the thin patch of hair concealing her sex.

And at that moment, he
kissed her, a touch as delicate as moonlight.

Ellen moaned,
surrendering herself to the passion that engulfed her in waves, and Gusman
Kreiger felt her lips kiss him back, the intensity pulling at him, dragging him
down, consuming him whole in the vast abyss of her dreams.

The white wizard jerked back,
and Ellen collapsed once more into the comfort of darkness.

“She probably thought I was
you,” he whispered, still struggling to collect himself. “Don’t say I never did
anything for you.”

Then he retreated into
the shadows of Ellen Monroe’s closet, licking his lips and savoring a taste he
thought he would never experience again.

Jack’s head snapped back
suddenly, striking the rear window of the ‘55 Ford pickup where he had been writing
since yesterday afternoon, the coffee no longer able to keep him from nodding
off.

Perhaps you need
something stronger.

Things were moving too
fast. The game had too many players, each with an idea of how it should end; everything
dangerously close to spinning out of control.

He could lose her
forever.

A loud caterwauling from somewhere inside the laptop woke him,
an alarm responding to his fingers settling heavily upon the keys as he drifted
off.

Or maybe it was Fate; Ellen needs you.

Jack set the laptop aside. As it went silent, so did the
world, the only sound the crackle of flame from the oil drum. He had dreamed of
Ellen again. She had materialized out of the night, ethereal and strange, her
skin transformed to gold as she stood before him, eyes shaded against a
brightness his world was excluded from.

Still out of synch.

They spoke, but he could not remember what she said. And the
more he thought about it, the more he forgot or fabricated; a lie more readily
believable. It wouldn’t matter, really. What they said to one another in dreams
was lost like childhood summer.

He remembered one thing, though. She asked him to touch her.
She was so insistent, eyes pleading, hand outstretched as if to confirm that
all of this could be real. But he would not; there were rules that must not to
be broken. He did not know why, but not knowing did not make it any less true.

But against reason and rule and sense, he reached across the
void and touched her, fingers pressed tip to tip.

The effect was
instantaneous. Ellen disappeared, wrenched away like so much smoke in the wind.
He was left with only the dust at his feet and the voice in his head:
dreams
are not to be taken; not stolen and sneaked through backdoors like discretely
wrapped bottles of cheap malt liquor finding their way into a late night
theater
. The dream had to be made real. That was what the Café was meant for;
what he was meant for.

He went inside, the
muscles in his back and neck stiff and knotted. He passed through the café’s kitchen,
toeing the large saurian tail that emerged from the walk-in freezer out of his
way. Whatever was attached to the other end—crocodile? dinosaur? dragon? he
wasn’t exactly sure—uttered a low, reverberant grunt that might have been a
purr or a snore or simply an expression of disinterest. Inside the diner, Jack
took a mug from under the counter and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee; the
one Hammerlock had brought out earlier was cold and nearly empty. Jack stirred
in cream and sugar then drank most of it while standing there in the silence
and the discordant light: bars of florescent-white, the cool glow of the
jukebox, the ember-red of the neon sign,
HOT
COFFEE ALWAYS
.

Maybe the dream wasn’t a
mistake, not just some undersexed fantasy, Ellen’s body slick and naked like a
nymph from the depths of a dark, underground spring. If it was only a dream
then where was the harm? And if it wasn’t, and he had actually touched her,
reached across time and space and the myriad folds of reality separating them,
then maybe she was ready; ready to leave the other place behind and make her
way back to the Wasteland and the Edge of Madness Café.

But if they really did
touch, others would know …
and they might follow
.

Things were moving so
fast, loose threads sewing themselves up. The end was near—or a new beginning
disguised as an ending; that was usually the way of it.

Jack’s second cup was
mostly espresso, dark brown and foamy before a generous helping of cream and
sugar was added. He carried it out to the old pick-up and sat back down to the
story, setting his fingers to the keys.

He needed her more than
she needed him. Not a day went by that he wasn’t more and more certain of that.
She occupied his every thought, not a word written that was not intended to
open the way between the worlds and bring her back. As he once sent her away down
the rabbit hole, and into that strange life of
Dabble’s Books
and
Serena’s
Coffee Shoppe
, he was now determined to bring her back. Not for her, but
for himself.

She was his salvation. 
It was selfish and foolhardy, even cruel. He only hoped she needed him as much.

*     *     *

Ellen awoke with a start, jerking herself
up suddenly from a dream that bore the strange undercurrents of a nightmare.
Outside, the sky was gray and heavy, the wind blowing through the open windows
of her apartment. Where the night before was sweltering, the morning had actually
turned
cold
. A storm was coming fast on the heels of yesterday’s
unseasonable warmth; overnight, the temperature had plummeted.

She tugged the sheets up around herself,
but to no avail. The wind was too cold, and she felt impossibly alone.

She wished Jack was there to keep her
warm.

The dream felt so real, a
lie perpetrated by the senses, the memory as vivid as any she possessed. But
then she woke up, still here; still alone.

They had only made love
once; that last night in the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. It was the last time she felt
any real sense of certainty about reality. Since then, everyone had tried to convince
her that it never happened, that it was impossible. She was a daydreamer, a
drug addict, disturbed, or even a plain-out liar.

But they were wrong. Jack
was real. And her dream was real—as real as the world outside viewed through a
pane of glass. Reality was perception, nothing more.
When I am awake, I know
that I am not dreaming, but when I am dreaming, I do not know that I am not
awake
. Or something to that effect. No one could tell her that she was not
dreaming now, or that what she thought was a dream wasn’t actually the reality
separated from this place by a wall of dream. It was not make-believe or
delusion or hallucination brought on by chemicals introduced into her brain. The
Sanity’s Edge Saloon was real just as Jack was real. Everything about that part
of her life was real, simply harder to see; to reach out for; to cross over—the
world outside of the glass.

Shivering,
she reluctantly climbed out of bed, her feet curling against the icy floor. She
quickly showered and dressed, pulling on jeans, a loose blouse, a vest she did
not remember buying and which served no practical purpose except to accessorize
her outfit. She would go straight over to Serena’s from the bookstore, she
decided, making a cup of coffee and finishing it while standing by the sink,
not bothering with breakfast. Then she took Jack’s book and left.

The
twisted rope of orange and yellow extension cords still twined up the
stairwell, but the rooftop was silent. Either Jasper was finished or Rose Marie
had had enough of his dream flyer project, and called him down for breakfast.

As it
happened, Rose Marie Desmond had not seen her grandson in over two days,
subject to a simple, inelegant geas set upon her by Gusman Kreiger. Rose Marie
Desmond failed to notice Jasper’s absence or the sounds he was making on the
roof, knowing only that Jasper was a good boy, and that he was helping out the
nice stranger. That was all Rose Marie Desmond remembered of Gusman Kreiger,
former leader of the Tribe of Dust, legendary Cast Out, and mad wizard who was
more than two thousand years old and fond of boasting about how he was once
mistaken for a messiah.

Indeed, a nice stranger.

Had Ellen known, she would have been more afraid. She would have known
for certain that she was right, that Jack and the Wasteland and the Nexus were
real. She would have known because Gusman Kreiger was supposed to be part of
that insistent fantasy—a very dangerous part—and his reality confirmed
everything that she believed. But Ellen didn’t know; faith demands belief in
the absence of information.

Scraps of paper and the earliest of autumn’s leaves skittered about the
street, gray clouds turning and boiling in the sky. Ellen could feel the
electricity in the air, a prickling of the soft hairs on the nape of her neck
even as the wind tugged at her sleeves and tossed her hair. A storm was coming,
and it would be big.

She walked quickly to Serena’s, getting an extra-large hazelnut coffee,
black because there were too many people in line for the condiments; too many
people altogether. Serena moved with her usual grace and efficiency, carrying
on conversations while she performed her tasks, hands moving as if without
thought or direction, always precise and accurate. But the constant flood of
customers monopolized her time; it was the busiest morning Ellen could remember
at the coffee shop. Serena confirmed that Ellen would be over at 1:30 sharp for
tea, and Ellen agreed before being asked to step aside by a sour woman in a
peacock dress inquiring about a decaf espresso; Ellen left before she felt
compelled to comment on the irony.

The bookstore was dark, the door still locked, the sign turned to read
CLOSED — Please
Come Again
. Ellen cupped her eyes to the glass, but the place appeared
deserted. Poking from under the door was the corner of an envelope. She
carefully slid it out, reasoning that if it was personal or of no interest to
her, she could simply slide it back under and no one would be the wiser. But
the envelope had her name printed on the front in Dabble’s fine, spidery
script. She opened it to find a small piece of paper folded in thirds around a
key. The note read:

Ellen,

I’m sorry, but some unexpected business has called me away.
Please open up the store this morning. If I am not back by 1:30, go on to your
tea. Just lock up the store before you leave. Don’t disappoint Serena. Thank
you for everything.

Nicholas Dabble

The request, while not
unreasonable, was unprecedented. She pocketed the note and unlocked the door,
turning the sign around to read
OPEN
, and nudging a small wedge of wood under the door to keep it
from closing. She turned on the lights and sat down on the stool behind the
counter. She thought to sweep the floor as a favor to Mr. Dabble, but every
inch was already spotless, as usual, and she could see no sense in doing it. Instead,
she sat behind the counter, drinking her coffee and reading from Jack’s book;
she opened it at random and read what she found.

*     *     *

Morning faded into
afternoon, and no one stopped in at the bookstore, or even passed on the
street. Ellen stared out the front window for minutes on end and saw not a
single person. The earlier hustle and bustle around Serena’s ended by eleven, her
place now similarly abandoned. The wind blew occasional drips and spats of rain
that never turned into anything more than small stains on the sidewalk, or
ghostly smears against the glass. No cars passed. No people passed. No birds
hopped along the sidewalk searching for seeds or crumbs. Nothing. The world was
waiting, caught on the edge of an event about to transpire, eager to watch,
afraid to involve itself. Witnesses all, huddled tight around the edges and
wondering at what was coming, and whether it could remain safely out of it.

At 1:30, Ellen turned off
the lights, turned the sign to
CLOSED
,
and locked the
door behind her. She replaced the key in the envelope and slipped it back under
the door, the telltale corner sticking out in case she needed to get back in.
She could not imagine a reason why. She had Jack’s book; she needed nothing
else. But maybe after tea, if Mr. Dabble had not yet returned, she would reopen
the store for him.

Thinking so, she left.

From one of the windows
over the bookstore, Nicholas Dabble watched. He had been there all morning,
listening to the sounds from below: the sound of Ellen breathing, her heart
beating, the pages turning. He could still taste her on his lips from the day
before.
Risky business, stealing a kiss from something like her.
But
worth it.
Through the heat vents, he could smell Ellen Monroe in his
bookstore: the clean scent of her skin, the artificial fragrance of flowers
that her shampoo left in her hair, the light trace of musk that she placed on
the insides of her wrists, along her throat. Was that for today’s tea?
Unlikely. Perhaps she merely thought so, the perfume intended for another.

He hid upstairs,
breathing her in, listening to her sounds, and remembering her stolen taste.
These things he would keep with him long after she left.

Outside, the world had
stopped.

*     *     *

Ellen stepped into the
street like an actor discovering too late that the budget had been pulled on her
movie and all of the extras, the behind-the-scenes people, the director, the
cast and crew, had all simply left, leaving the sets and props behind, empty
and purposeless. No cars or buses or trucks. No pedestrians or stray dogs. No
mournful sounds from the pigeons and doves that normally adorned the ledges and
rooftops. Only the wind remained, boiling the sky overhead. She was alone,
caught in the middle, the calm within the eye of the storm. She could sense the
electricity in the air, a sense of anticipation, of …
tightening
. Yes,
that was the exact word. It felt like reality was tightening, like it was
caught, its ends twisting and bunching as it turned mercilessly, trying to
break free … or destroy itself in the process.