The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (42 page)

“You know this guy?” The cook hooked
a thumb doubtfully at Leland.

“Well enough,” Jack said, locked into
Leland’s angry stare. “We have some things to discuss. Why don’t we sit in that
empty booth over there?”

Despite an overwhelming urge to wrap
his fingers around Jack’s throat, Leland picked up his coffee and walked to the
booth. The most important thing—more important than anything else—was getting
out of here: out of this diner, out of this town,
out of this world
! And
Jack—
fuck all!
—was the only one who knew the way.

The cook bristled. “I don’t suppose I
could get you something to eat?” he began crisply, a prelude to his
this-is-a-restaurant-not-a-park-bench speech.

Turning sharply, Jack said, “As a
matter of fact, yes. I’m hungry for breakfast, and I’m in a hurry.” The
Caretaker produced a crisp twenty-dollar bill from his breast pocket, and the
cook’s eyes widened. “Do you have eggs?”

“Well … yes—”

“Fine. Two eggs, sunny-side up with
toast. White if you have it, wheat if you don’t. I like my eggs runny, so don’t
overcook them. I don’t suppose you have any biscuits, and perhaps some sausage
gravy?”

“I can make some,” the cook nodded,
eyes riveted to the bill.

“Excellent. Throw a couple of
biscuits on there and don’t skimp on the gravy.”

“No, sir. But the problem is—”

“Problem?” the Caretaker asked, his
tone suggesting that whatever it might be, it rested squarely on the shoulders
of the cook and no one else. “What problem?”

“Well, sir, it’s still early.” The
cook’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I ain’t got change for that kind o’ money,
sir.”

The Caretaker looked genuinely
puzzled. “I don’t need change. I need breakfast.”

He left the bill behind on the
counter and went to the booth, the cook following like a once-fed stray,
snatching up the money as he passed. “Can I get you some coffee with your
breakfast, sir? I just brewed a fresh pot. I can even offer you real cream.”

Leland shot the man a hateful stare,
but the cook only glared back, an expression that suggested anyone with only
sixteen cents shouldn’t be angry about the availability of cream he couldn’t
afford anyway.

“Yes, coffee,” Jack agreed. “That
would be wonderful. Bring me a cup and keep it filled.”

“Right, sir. If there’s anything you
need, you just holler.” And the cook dashed away to the backroom to get the
supplies he needed for the Caretaker’s breakfast.

“What the hell was that about?”
Leland demanded.

“That was about breakfast, Mr.
Quince,” Jack said earnestly. “Most important meal of the day, and I have a
craving for biscuits with gravy and some nice, runny eggs.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Leland hissed,
leaning closer. “I know you’re behind this. I know you think you got me by the
short hairs, but—”

“Here’s your coffee, sir,” the cook
said, placing a cup of coffee in front of Jack—cleaner than the one he offered
Leland—and half a dozen packets of sugar. Then he noticed the enraged
expression on Leland’s face. “Are you sure he’s a friend of yours, sir? I could
… well, you know.”

Jack simply shook his head to the
offer. “You mentioned cream?”

“Of course, sir,” the cook said
hastily, placing a small pitcher on the table, one he’d carried out with him
but apparently forgotten. “Fresh from the dairy this morning.”

“Thank you,” Jack said dismissively.
“I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

The man smiled and hurried back to
the kitchen.

Jack turned to Leland. “Don’t waste
time sniping, Mr. Quince,” he said placidly. “I won’t be here for long, and you
have a choice to make. This is your opportunity. You only get one.”

Leland knew where this was going;
he’d known the moment Jack pulled out a twenty-dollar bill to pay for a meal
that probably cost $1.25. He’d played this game too many times not to recognize
it. Jack was humbling him, making up the rules so that he would win, and
gloating over the results. He expected Leland to snivel and beg.
Please,
Jack, please don’t let me spend the rest of my life in a miserable shithole
like this. Please take me home. I’ll do anything. Anything. I’ll repent and be
a good person, I’ll be considerate of others and give to charity and donate
blood. Anything. Please!
Well that wasn’t how it was going to go down. “I
still know who I am. I may be down, but I’m not out; not by a long shot. I’m
not going to beg and grovel, and certainly not to the likes of you.”

The Caretaker only stared back at him
and shook his head. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Well
once, maybe, but not anymore. Things change.”

“People don’t.”

“They can, if properly motivated.”

The cook was back with Jack’s
breakfast, biscuits under a layer of gravy thick with sausage, the salty aroma
of spiced pork rising off the plate. Beside them, two eggs, the yolks jiggling
dizzily like a pair of sightless eyes. They seemed to fix on Leland, a mocking
stare, and he felt his belly tighten with sudden pangs of hunger. He wanted to
be revolted, but the sight of Jack’s breakfast made his mouth water. How long
since he’d last eaten?

“How’s that for ya?” the cook asked,
looking on expectantly.

Jack sliced into one of the eggs, the
yolk bursting open with bright yellow ooze. “Excellent.”

The cook nodded happily, adding another, “If you need anything, sir,
holler,” before leaving.

Leland sipped his coffee, but it tasted
weak and flavorless. He wanted eggs and bacon and maybe a Danish. And knowing
he couldn’t have them made him hate Jack even more. “That shit’ll kill you,” he
said blackly.

“Eventually,” Jack remarked with
toneless indifference, digging at the gravy sopped biscuits. “But you’re a lot
closer to that door than I am. Listen carefully, and you’ll actually hear the
squeak of the gurney wheels beneath you.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to
mean?”

“Forget I said anything,” Jack said,
favoring his meal to Leland’s dark expression. “You’ll probably live a very
long life—miserable, broke, and unhealthy, but long. Unless that problem with
your bowels turns out to be more serious than you thought. But forget about
that for now. In case you haven’t figured out the scale, I could have bought
breakfast and lunch for everyone in this diner with that twenty, and still got
back change. So what do you figure your chances are of making thirty-five
dollars before tomorrow night, seeing as how you don’t even have money for gas?
And you can forget those slips of paper in your wallet. You lost all your
savings on the ones you scribbled out when they bellied up. The other ones are
good picks; you and everyone else know it. They’re well beyond your means,
anyway; pie in the sky. The only block of stock you own is barely breaking
even, a weak, unsteady software company constantly chasing yesterday’s
technology. You hold onto it because it means you still have something, even if
it isn’t much. Low priced shares, no dividend, no growth; sell the block and it
won’t even buy you out of your current troubles. Not exactly the portfolio
you’re accustomed to, but like I said, things change.”

Leland watched as Jack pushed the hot
yolk from the egg with a corner of toast, using all the care and precision of a
barbershop surgeon suppurating an abscess, and felt his hunger wilt. No empty
prognostications or hollow threats and taunts, no, Jack was being his painfully
honest self, as straightforward as a hammer. He might be enjoying the grisly demise
of Leland’s life, but he was not embellishing upon it one bit. The one hundred
shares of stock Leland owned of Xever-Gapp totaled thirty-two dollars less
broker’s fees and taxes. And Leland also knew it was his most prized
possession, a narrow wedge carved from a pie that only a few ate from
gluttonously, and which most only dreamed of tasting. And this afternoon, he
would have to sell it, or come tomorrow night, he would be beaten or killed by
a pair of cops that knew—and that galled him more than anything else; they
knew
—they
could do it simply because he, Leland Quince, wasn’t worth a damn, dead or
alive.

“I suppose this fits your sense of
irony?” Leland observed. “Make a rich man poor. I’m just a plot twist to you,
aren’t I?” He tried to take a mouthful of coffee, a vain effort at dramatic
punctuation, but bumped the cup against his injured lip causing an involuntary
yelp of pain, and sending coffee dribbling down his chin.

Jack extended a napkin indifferently
and answered: “No, not really. This only serves to illustrate an option. This
is what you have. This is where you are. And unless you choose correctly, this
is where you’ll stay. You see, someone offered me a choice once, and I took it.
I didn’t have to. At least, I think back and tell myself I didn’t have to.
Maybe we only think we have choices, Mr. Quince. Maybe the decision was made
already. Options seem so much clearer when you’re looking back on them.”

“Everyone makes their own decisions,
Jack, good or bad.”

“Maybe,” Jack conceded. “But some choices
don’t feel so much like choices. If you’re drowning, and someone throws you a
rope, you can choose to grab it or to drown. The choice is still yours. But
maybe it’s not so much a choice at that moment of decision. Maybe it’s
something we do because we have to. Maybe it’s something in our own particular
nature. Lions don’t
choose
to eat gazelles over eating grass. Eating
gazelles is in their nature; they wouldn’t think to do otherwise.”

“So what? You’re here to offer me
another alternative, is that it?”

“Very good,” Jack nodded. “You’re
catching on. It’s entirely up to you, and I won’t pretend that this alternative
will be easy, but it will be more to your nature. Maybe that’s the thing, after
all. Maybe your nature has already chosen the way you’re to go, and the only
thing your brain does is rationalize why it’s not choosing the other fork in
the road.”

“Get to the point, Jack,” Leland
grumbled. Different parts of him were starting to ache from the earlier
pummeling, and he wanted nothing more than to go home (
wherever that was?)
and fall asleep after a couple aspirin and a few beers (
beers?
).

“The point is you’re going to have to
choose, Mr. Quince. This is the known.” He cast about at the diner, the street
outside, the alley beyond. “The unknown is out there if you want to go that
route, but you won’t know what form it will take until you open the door. And,
of course, by then it will be too late. All I can tell you is that it’s more
suited to you, to a man who likes his word to become law, his whim to become
edict. Don’t think I don’t know you. I do. I admit I dislike you, but I don’t
hate you, even though you gave me more than enough reason to. The fact is I’m
the only one who actually understands you, Mr. Quince. There’s a little of me
in you. A little of me that could be vain and arrogant, intoxicated off power
and wealth and the respect it commands. I won’t deny it. But it’s not me,
understand? I’m just not cut out for it.”

“Listen Jack, whatever lessons you
think you’re imparting while you bolt down that cholesterol plate are getting a
little lost. What do you want me to do?”

“That’s the point, Mr. Quince.
I
don’t want you to do anything. The question is what do
you
want to do?
I’m giving you a choice. This is your one and only chance to show me up, prove
you’re the better man. I didn’t give the others a choice; I simply gave them
what I thought they needed. They got destiny. No options or forks in the road.
No paths less taken. They go where they’re driven. Not you. I’m giving you a
choice. This world, this life, is choice A.”

Then the Caretaker reached into his
pocket and placed Leland’s Rolex on the table between them. But where it was
broken upon his arrival at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, now it was working, the
second hand ticking rhythmically around the dial, steady as a heartbeat. “This
is choice B.”

Leland stared blankly at the
timepiece.

“You’re right, of course,” Jack added
quickly. “That’s a little vague. Let me fill you in. In exactly four minutes, a
little girl is going to be in the middle of the crosswalk exactly half a block
down the street at the main intersection, to your left as you leave the diner.
A car going too fast trying to make the yellow light is going to hit her at
forty-two miles per hour. She’ll be killed instantly. All of this will occur in
exactly…” he looked at the watch face, “three minutes and forty seconds.”

Leland only stared at him, his face a
cleverly constructed mask that barely hid the confusion and panic leaping up
inside of him.

“Now you’re saying to yourself, why
should I care? Good question. The answer, as I’m sure you’ve guessed already,
is that you don’t belong here. You’re displaced in this world, and that’s
causing havoc with reality; nothing cataclysmic yet, but things are a little
skewed. You’re holding the fracture between two realities open, polluting this
world with the other, and vice versa. You’re a kind of snag in the tapestry,
and so long as you remain, the rip just gets worse and worse. Reality is locked
in a quandary. No one knows you’re to blame because, frankly, you’re too
insignificant to notice. But I expect
you’ll
notice. In fact, I’ll bet
you’ve noticed it already.”