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Diffstat (limited to 'unseen/Book 4/Claire')
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/1_tucson.txt | 821 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/2_mexico.txt | 284 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/experiment scene.txt | 141 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/intro to Claire, Sil and Waiben.txt | 6 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/lazlo shows up..txt | 67 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/notes.txt | 569 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present.txt | 0 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present_MetaData.txt | 18 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 1.txt | 86 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 2.txt | 35 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 4 flashback.txt | 289 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 5.txt | 12 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | unseen/Book 4/Claire/tucson_cuts.txt | 586 |
13 files changed, 2914 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/1_tucson.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/1_tucson.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f575f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/1_tucson.txt @@ -0,0 +1,821 @@ +Claire was still carting around her grandmother's ashes the day the bomb went off. She was eating toast, the little silver box in her purse caught her eye just as the windows began to rattle. + +The memorial service took place three weeks earlier, the first day after the rains stopped. The desert smelled of creosote, the rocks still looked wet and smooth, new. + +There was a sign at the top of the crest, yellow, black writing, the usual font. Beyond it the road ducked into the wash. Four crossroads downstream, nearly a mile and half by the river, police in yellow slickers leaned against their cars, huddled under umbrellas, smoking and staring out at the black desert somewhere beyond the halo of headlights. + +Claire arrived two days later. It was still raining. She watched the rivulets run down the window on the cab. An overweight woman at the precinct handed her a styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee. Claire cupped it in her hands and looked past the officer's deliberate expression, at her own reflection in the window behind him, her eyes lost in shadow, her wet black hair matted against her pale throat. She watched the drops of water come together on the glass, as they slid down, bumping into each, a drop and then another and another until they became a tiny river. Later a stream, then a real river, gathering up all that fell in its path, boulders, trunks of trees, automobiles. She shivered. + +There were papers. Claire scratched at them with a pen. The man by the exit handed her a plastic bag of soggy artifacts, a pen, a pack of gum, a wallet with an expired Diner's Club card. Claire walked out into the night. The rain still fell. + +Back at the hotel she peeled off her sopping clothing and climbed into the shower, shaking despite the hot water on her back. She began to sob and could not stop, she sat down on the floor of the tub. Unable to tell her tears from the spray of water overhead, she became aware of only her sobbing, her breath heaving unevenly. + +After the water had gone cold she got out and dried off, wiped the black streaks from under her eyes. She flopped down on the bed naked, perching the ashtray on the flat expanse of her stomach. + +She opened the top drawer of the night stand and pulled out the Gideon Bible. She closed her eyes and let the pages fall open. Psalm 9. She propped herself up against the head board and began to twist a Winston between her fingers until the tobacco started to fall out, collecting in the open Bible. She slowly picked at a brown ball of hash that smelled faintly of sweaty feet. It was slow going with her nails, bitten down to the quick during nervous border crossing and fidgety soldiers with guns. Eventually she managed to extract a few tiny flecks of brown tar which fell amongst the shredded tobacco. She gently tore the page from the bible and tilted the ends to collect the tobacco and hash in the middle. Once it formed a reasonably tight cylinder she deftly twisted up the ends and lit it. + +The splatter of rain against the window sounded obscene in the silence of the room. There is a special hotel silence, a quiet not found in an ordinary house. A silence you can't quiet put your finger on, the absence of something, no ambient noise, no refrigerator humming, no quiet throb of half-burnt out light bulbs, no soft gurgles in the sink, just pure muffled quiet. Perhaps there are too many bedspreads in one room, too many abstract canvases covering the walls, too much press-board furniture in too small of a space, muting the little human sounds, the shuffling feet of tired travelers, the flick of a switch, the rustling of crisp sheets, all is lost in a hotel room. + +The hash made Claire restless and hyperaware of the dripping, tick-tock splatter of the rain. She got up and walked to the window, pulling back the curtain. The perfectly grated pebble landscape of the hotel grounds below looked like a giant kitty litter box in the yellow light of the gas lamps. + +The cacti were coated so thickly in the soot of biodiesel delivery trucks that even the rain could not completely wash it away. She could see the airport parking lot shrouded in a fog of rental car exhaust. At the other end of the courtyard a line of taxi cab tailpipes puffed in the rain, misting the sliding doors of the lobby. + +She smoked in the darkness, admiring the dull blue flicker of Plasmatic screens emanating from the rooms across the courtyard, fellow travelers like moths drawn in by the vibrating strobe of a blue candle warbling in the night air. + + + * * * + + +The next morning Claire set the air conditioner to high and, by the time she stepped out of the shower, the room felt a bit like her apartment in New York. Still no refrigerator hum, but at least the indoor weather suited her clothes. She sat on the bed, lit the remnants of her joint and stared at the black dress hanging in the closet. A gift from her grandmother, never worn. + +The smoke curled up to the ceiling. Claire rooted around in the mini bar until she found a tiny bottle of whiskey. Six years. A grimace as the whiskey slid down. Gamma was gone. Gone. Not coming over again, not making Angel Food Cake for her birthday. Not asking how school was. Not checking to make sure she was still in bed and hadn't snuck out again with Lisa Colbert or worse, Troy Williams. Claire smiled. And then it faded. Gone. + +She pushed the thoughts out of her head, wondering instead what what he might look like. The black suit seemed inevitable. The hair a little more silver, eyes a bit blacker perhaps, wrinkled around the edges from six more years spent squinting in the desert sun. His hands a bit more like soft leather, the skin looser. She pictured him worn down, perhaps become pale from too much time indoors, his skin maybe now closer to the pale white of her own. + +She went to the sink and washed the remainder of the joint down the drain. She raised her arms before the foggy mirror and watched as dark fabric fell down over her head, a slight wiggle and it swathed her body like a shadow. Her grandmother would have liked it. + +Dressed and satisfied with her makeup, Claire raised the blinds and the midday sun streamed in the room. She drank a Coke and smoked a cigarette, waiting for the front desk to call a cab. + +Claire didn't talk to her grandmother at all after she left for India. It wasn't until four years later, having been halfway around the world and back that she picked up the phone and called. She remembered standing in the tiny kitchen of her New York apartment, fiddling nervously with the knobs of her stove while she dialed the number with her other hand. There had been a lot of crying, a lot of silence. Her grandmother saying over and over, I forgive you, I forgive you. She could see her grandmother through the phone, her hands fidgeting with the knobs of her own, much larger, stove. Two years later Claire was woken in the middle of the night by another call. + +A businessman already sitting at the bar turned to stare as Claire walked through the lobby. She pulled the sweater over her shoulders despite the heat, trying to look more demure, funereal, to hide the sanscrit on her shoulder. She settled into the back seat of the taxi and handed the address to the driver who plugged it into his tracker. + +Waiben did not answer the door. Claire was let in by a woman claiming to be her great-aunt, twice-removed, by marriage. The foyer was already crowded. Claire begged her way through, pretending to look for a bathroom. She ducked through the kitchen and went upstairs to the landing where she could see everyone below. He was there, the black suit was there. Otherwise he looked the same, perhaps a bit more silver in the hair, but remarkably unaged. Claire suddenly felt self-conscious, thinking she must surely have aged more noticeably. He did not see her at first, but then she began to stare in spite of herself, she could feel the room shrinking down to nothing, some invisible force compressing space, squeezing out the air from her lungs. She was wishing herself invisible, thinking of how to move through the crowd like one of Waiben's shadow particles, its mass visible only by watching those that gather and part around it. And then he glanced up at her. She turned and walked down the hall to the bathroom. + +Claire spent most of the quiet memorial service by herself, at the back of a crowd of people in folding chairs. Waiben had decked out the garden for the occasion, unlit tea lights hung by wire from palo verde trees, ocotillo bushes bloomed red flowers from their thorny branches. Along the outside edge of the chairs landscapers had installed a series of enormous clay pots full of milkweed and native thistles with yellow and purple flowers. + +Claire tried to listen to the eulogies, having declined to give her own, but she could only hear her own cruel, teenage voice echoing in her head, all the words that you can never, no matter how many phone calls, really retract. The words might not have lived on with the people you spoke them to, who knew already that you did not mean them, but they never left you, you had to keep chewing them over and over again. A potent mixture of cringing embarrassment and self-loathing washed over her as she listened to her grandmother's friends speaking softly through their tears. By the time Waiben got up to talk Claire could no longer hold her head up, nor did she feel much like eye contact with anyone, let alone him. She pretended to watched a Canyon Wren flitting around a particularly rotund barrel cactus, bouncing from the plump yellow flowers to the sandy ground and back, chasing some invisible thing. Its watery black eyes paused from time to time to take in the people, the dry salt trails of cheeks, the rustle of black chiffon, the creak of bones. She could feel the evening cool descending, a tuft of wind ruffled the wren and in a brown streak it disappeared into the sky only to return again after the service, as Claire stood as a parade of faces passed by in single file, the cool, wrinkled skin of her grandmother's friends clasping her hands and murmuring condolences before fading back into the house and out to their cars, the bird still hopping back and forth, undecided, chasing some phantom insect forever beyond its hooked beak. + +Claire stayed out on the patio long after the last mourner was gone. She walked through the cactus garden, noticing a few new additions, a few missing. It was becoming hard to tell where the garden ended and the desert began. Claire had the passing thought that perhaps, with enough momentum behind her, she might run straight off the ridge Waiben's house rested on, across the patio and the stone wall that marked the beginning of the garden, perhaps catching a favorable updraft and darting out over the desert like the vanished wren. + +She could hear his voice drifting out the sliding glass door before she was back up on the patio. Waiben was talking to the lawyer that had tried twice, unsuccessfully, to corner Claire and get her to agree to a time and place for all the necessary paperwork, as he put it. She heard Waiben say, we'll just take care of it all right now, and breathed a sigh of relief. There would be no ceremonious meeting, no reunion as Claire had been picturing in her walk through the garden, as she had been dreading ever since that first night, when she had stopped crying and realized that she was going to have to see him again. Claire slipped quietly in the side door and leaned back against it, closing it softly. A robotic sweeper rushed past her feet, swallowing up the trail of dust and sand the visitors left behind. + +She could hear Waiben and the lawyer walking around, presumably looking for her. The clatter of footsteps on the clay tiles echoed through the house. Finally Claire heard the clinking of ice cubes being dropped in glasses, and, steeling herself, she walked around the corner and ran headlong into the lawyer sending his drink down the front of his suit and his glass hurling through the air. + +After the lawyer changed shirts and Claire managed to get the excess of blood out of her cheeks, Waiben fixed up another round of tequila and then another and then another and finally the lawyer started in with house deeds, manuscript donations, bank accounts, bonds, securities, stock portfolios, charity organizations. Claire watched it blur by, signatures, papers in handsome faux leather folders, keys, business card, handshake and he was gone. + +She was outside before the front door closed. She sat on the edge of the patio and lit a cigarette. Distant thunderheads were forming over the Rincon mountains, obscuring the sunset. + +Waiben appeared beside her without a sound, her refilled glass extended in his hand. She took it. She noticed their fingers did not touch. + +He gestured to the small tin box on the table, beneath the photo of her grandmother with the garland wreath draped over it. The little box of ashes. Claire flicked her cigarette ash on the concrete and watched as wind carried it out over the gravel until it was battered to nothing. + +Claire picked up the little box of ashes. It was strangely heavy, not at all like the cigarette ash. She wanted to look inside, to see what she too might one day be reduced to, but she didn't want Waiben to see her. She wasn't sure if it was right to look at your grandmother's ashes. She wasn't sure at all what she was supposed to do with them. The lawyer had already made it clear that just scattering them to the wind was not, no matter how appealing it might have sounded, legal in any way shape or form. Claire was surprised, though not so much now that she'd had the time to process it, to learn that remains, even ashes, were considered a biohazard. + +Where do you think I should put these? Claire held the little tin box up suggestively, half-hoping Waiben would volunteer to keep them. + +Waiben took another sip of tequila, cleared his throat, shrugged his shoulders. + +Claire stared at the ice in her glass, willing it to melt. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to know what he thought. Her voice was on the verge of cracking. She spoke slowly, hoarsely. She lived here since she was sixteen... she knew not to drive in that arroyo. The police officer at the station wouldn't look me in the eye. They think she killed herself. + +Waiben didn't respond. + +You really think it was an accident? + +I don't know Claire. Is it important? + +Is it important? Fuck yes I think it's important. It's one thing to die, naturally or otherwise, it's a whole other thing to kill yourself... I just can't see gamma being able to do it, but. + +Waiben sighed and tossed the watery remains of his drink on a cactus. I don't want to seem unkind Claire, but your grandmother was capable of far more than you give her credit for. + +What does that mean? + +It means... It doesn't mean anything. It just means that she was more than your grandmother. That she had a life before you that you know nothing about. That I know nothing about. Neither one of us knows very much about her because we both knew her. + +I know something about her. I know she hated your fucking guts. + +Waiben smiled. Is that what you think? + +It's not what I think, it's what I know. + +Claire, you're confusing her protectiveness of you with a dislike of me. Your grandmother did not dislike me, she disliked you being around me. Important difference. + +Claire didn't respond, she had turned her back on him and was watching the night arrive over the Catalinas. She heard Waiben sigh a bit too heavily, she knew it was mainly for her benefit, and then the sound of the door opening and closing. She flicked the remainder of her cigarette into the garden and followed him inside. + +I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... + +He waved his hand, the other reaching for the tequila. + +I just. I just don't know how to this. Do we act like friends? Like we've always been friends? Like we've never been anything more? Am I supposed to not remember you naked? I am I not supposed to accidentally remember what you feel like inside of me because I remember another time you kept pouring drinks except they weren't tequila, they were cashew whiskey and then we had sex on the roof of that apartment building in Udiapur and I remember trying to think about how good it felt but mostly thinking about a rock that was digging into my hip the whole time...? + +Waiben started to laugh and then seeing that Claire wasn't finding it funny yet, he checked himself. Though not before he noticed her start to smile. + +Don't look at me like that. She turned her head away. I wasn't bringing up sex so you would want it, I was trying to figure out how this works. + +I don't know how it works Claire. I remember things too. Out of place. Out of context... And yes those things make no sense here, your grandmother, us, this house, this.... I don't know what you want Claire.... + +She turned to face him again, the humor faded from her eyes. Does it matter what I want? I don't want anything. + +He sighed and turned away. + +What do you want? + +I wanted to see you. Not like this exactly, but I guess I got what I wanted. + +You always did. + +Not always. + +No. + +Claire felt the past hanging around them, like the quiet air in an abandoned house, air that wants to move but simply can't, can't do anything but be quiet and still. I see you on the news sometimes... + +A smiled passed over his face, Claire felt something in him relax. + +Good or bad? + +She shrugged and tried to stall, well, hmm, a lot of people seem to think you're going to bring about the end of the world as we know it. That's impressive. + +He smiled and looked down, tracing the tip of his shoe in an invisible arc across the Spanish tile. And you? + +I don't think you want to end the world, but sometimes you can be awfully blind and stubborn.... + +Claire. + +What? It's true. You never believed I would leave you. + +Because I thought you loved me. + +I did. + +Then why... + +Because I needed to. But that's not the point, the point is I hope you're more aware and cautious with this experiment. If you're really trying to do what they say you're trying to do then, good god, I mean, what if you're wrong? + +If I'm wrong nothing happens he snapped. + +Right. Claire walked over and poured herself another drink. The tequila was beginning to make its way through her body, a warmth in the belly, a slight fuzziness in the temples... + +So. + +So. + +Crazy weather around here I hear... + +Yes. Well. I've been in Kuchchri fulltime for nearly a year so I actually wasn't here, but I read about it. + +You're living there now? + +Yes. I tried going back and forth for a while, but it... at some point it didn't make sense anymore... You'd be amazed, it looks nothing like when we were there. + +Is that good? + +Hmm. Not really? I miss the beginning. + +Everyone always misses the beginning. + +True. He swirled his drink and threw his head back swallowing the rest of the tequila in a single gulp. He started to pour another but then he paused. I can show you what you've been missing if you want. + +What I've been missing? + +In India. You must miss it sometimes? + +Claire smiled. Sometimes. + +She followed him up the smooth wooden stairs, down the hallway with its overlapping Moroccan rugs, dizzying patterns that still gave Claire a sense of vertigo as she walked by, into his office. It had changed. The bookshelves were gone, the books no doubt, like the artwork no longer on the walls, long since shipped off to India. There was just a couch and desk with an old wooden swivel chair. The barrenness of the room felt oppressive, like she was intruding on a past that did not want her. + +Waiben went to his desk and fiddled with a laptop. Claire sat down with a creaking scrunch on the leather couch facing the windows. She put her eye to the telescope just in front of her, curious about its trajectory, downward, away from the heavens to the desert below. She was both surprised and not to find a distant neighbor's swimming pool filling the lens. + +Claire was seventeen the first time she set foot in Waiben's office. She was wearing a bathing suit and dripping water from his pool on the dark oak floors and multi-colored Indian rugs. It was a warm day, the floors dried while Claire was in the shower, rising off the chlorine. She had only recently dropped out of high school and spent her days by the pool, worrying about why she didn't worry about the future. She was hiding the dropping out from her grandmother, though she was still going to night school, which was moderately better than spending her days staring out the windows of an asbestos-filled building at Flowing Wells High School. She had few friends to miss, just Lisa Colbert who lived down the street and few boys she had allowed to talk her into going for drives, which inevitably ended in the foothills full of awkward groping and sweaty hands. For Claire the only real problem with dropping out of high school was that there was nothing to to during the day. Until Waiben and his pool came along. She had already decided to try getting a tan. Claire was not good at sleeping and she had spent too much time staring her pale skin in the late night light of the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out where she was inside it and had decided it looked sickly, that it would be easier to understand if it were brown. + +She had started at the YMCA pool. No one accosted her, no one asked why she wasn't in school. But the old men touching themselves in the YMCA hallways soon drove her to sneak into the pool at the La Quinta resort in the foothills. At the resort no one asked why she wasn't in school because they assumed she was on vacation with her family. It worked well enough for two weeks. And then one day she was on bus, headed up to the La Quinta with a fresh supply of magazines when she saw her name on a building. Curious, she got out a few blocks later and walked back to the building, which turned out to be the University of Arizona's planetarium. She stood under the sign, staring up at her father's name and, for the first time since her parent's funeral, she began to cry. She cried most of the afternoon, sitting alone with her pale skin in the planetarium darkness. Later, as the sun was setting outside, she skipped night school and wandered through the halls of the science department, trying to imagine which office might have been her father's. She could almost see him, her cloudy eight-year-old memories rendering now with more clarity than she had ever dared to allow them. She saw him wearing a corduroy jacket, glasses sliding down his nose, a folder of papers in one hand, walking down the hallway of her childhood home lost in thought until he noticed her -- hey, Clairebear, whatcha doin? You wanna see a magic trick? -- And then he would tuck the folder of papers under his chin to free up a hand, and pull out his tattered handkerchief. With an exaggeratedly formal and awkward bow (on account of the folder full of term papers) he would wave the handkerchief about with great ceremony and then ball it up in his hand and somehow proceed to pull out all manner of stuffed animals, toys, books, household utensils, even her long lost baby tooth which he had somehow stolen back from the tooth fairy... And she could picture him here too, walking the halls, no Clairebear to interrupt him, no one clamoring for magic. He could pace endlessly, reading through a stack of papers as he went, crashing into anyone who wasn't alert enough to get out of his way, or perhaps eating one of his peanut butter and banana sandwiches, honey leaking out the side, running down his hand and dribbling on the carpet just as it did at home. She began to look for the telltale signs in the carpet under her feet. There was the occasional dark stain, a spot of black on the otherwise mottled blue carpet, but nothing that made her shoes stick, no trace of honey remaining. + +She was headed for the back door when she spied a light on at the end of a dead end hall. She tiptoed down to the doorway and peered through the crack in the door to see a man about her father's age bent over an ancient laptop computer, pecking at the keyboard in a way that bore no resemblance to anything a normal person would have regarded as typing, but seemed, from the steady stream of green type on the screen, to be producing words. Claire slowly stepped back and was preparing to tiptoe down the hall when his voice boomed through the door, if you want to spy on me, you'll have to do better than that. Show yourself. The figure spun around in its swivel chair and regarded the darkness of the hallway. + +Claire crept back around the corner and pushed open the door. She was midway through a hurried apology when she heard her name and looked up from the floor to find a very flustered Dr. Waiben shocked, mouth agape, Claire? He repeated. + +How do you know my name? + +I, um, Good god it's you... Here, here, he leaped up, kicked a stack of papers and a filing box to the floor revealing a desk. Sit. Sit. She sat. He sat. So, you really are... + +Do I know you? + +Know me, uh, no, no you do not. + +Then how do you know me? + +I knew your father... + +You worked with him? + +Ha. Work, er, Waiben was fidgety and awkward, work, well, yes, we did um, work together. We looked for thing... we made things... he was my friend... + +I don't remember you... + +Oh, you wouldn't Claire, you were just a uh, you were just a girl... I never, I don't get out much... + +Claire's instinct was to bolt out of the room, the conversation was simply too weird to bear, but slowly Waiben began to calm down and compose himself. Eventually he launched into a series of stories about her father. + +Claire listened, some of the stories even sounded familiar, she reasoned she had probably overheard her father's versions. Waiben went on and began to talk about projects, physics and other things Claire did not care to follow. She started glancing around the office, more of a cave really. A cave in which some crazed bear had decided to store all the remaining paper in the world. Behind Waiben's head, rising out of the sea of papers on a set of strange, waxy black shelves was a stuffed lemur, its bright, but very dead eyes staring at Claire. Beside it were various other slightly grotesque zoological ephemera, reptiles in formaldehyde, a coiled rattlesnake, a horned lizard with its forelegs pressed against the jar, a scaly gila monster, its beaded orange and brown faded by the glare of afternoon sun, a stuffed Toucan decaying on a broken palo verde branch, its gnarled scaly feet now held in place by wrapped metal wire. Higher up on the shelves there were fossilized trilobites propped on plastic stands and the ghost image of a fern embedded in shale. She shuddered at the sight of a blind newt sitting on the top shelf its head poked over the shelf, the regressive eye sockets covered by a fine milky fold of proto skin that did nothing to stop it from staring down at her, blind but knowing. + +Waiben seemed entirely unsurprised when Claire hesitantly told him that she had dropped out of school. He merely nodded, as if this was to be expected and asked what she did instead. When she mentioned she was wandering Tucson's pools by day, he insisted she come up to his house and use his. It just sits there all day, doing nothing, a total waste of university money, he smiled. They pay for the thing, it's a beautiful house, supposed to be for the president, but he already had an even more beautiful house, so I got this one. Claire just smiled and tried to pretend she did not notice Waiben's frequent glances at her legs, the milky white skin swinging back and forth as her feet dangled off the desk. She tried to tuck them under in the shadows of the desk, willed them to turn brown at least. She did not mind Waiben's glances so much as she minded her knobby white legs. + +It was a week before she decided she didn't care if Waiben was going to try to seduce her, she needed a private pool. She didn't call, but Waiben seemed entirely unfazed by her appearance at the front door. And the pool was, as advertised, quite nice, complete with a rock waterfall that fed in cool water, several floating chairs and a smaller jacuzzi off to the side. She decamped for the day. Waiben left for work not long after she arrived. There was no seducing, at least not on his part. Claire more or less had her very own, very large house with a swimming pool, cactus gardens, not to mention the robots and gadgetry that wouldn't be in the average home for another two years. She changed into her bathing suit and headed out to the pool with a Coke, a box of Twizzlers and a handful of magazines. + +Waiben was still setting up the link to the collider. Claire pressed her eye to the telescope and swept the lens up from the pool to the side of the mountain where dozens of new tract housing projects dotted the hillside. She saw an endless sea of scalloped terra cotta tiles and glowing blue windows of I2 monitors. She wasn't accustomed to seeing so much electricity being used so openly. The rolling blackouts in New York meant nighttime jaunts through I2 were a thing of the past. But here, in the desert, with solar arrays covering half the land between here and the border in Yuma, electricity was still everywhere. I2 glowed in nearly every living room window she could see, the cool blue light flickering as people roamed the streets of the digital world. + +Waiben was mumbling at the screen. Sorry, I'm having some trouble locating Kali, something about the proxies. + +Kali? + +My primary AIdaemon, kalis-23.in.amalthea.net. + +You're accessing an AIdaemon from here? + +Well, that's what the proxy bit is about, send the signal into an anonymizer, come out, connect to Kali and no one's the wiser. Except that it takes a while to set up. + +You don't worry about the possible consequences? + +Waiben shrugged. I'm an Indian national now and pretty high profile. They aren't going to disappear me. At worst I'll get deported and won't have to wait in the security lines in departure. Waiben glanced up from his screens and smiled. The computer beeped at him. I found it. Claire pushed the telescope away. + +A strange synthetic voice said, identify, please. + +Sorry. Hang on. Waiben put his thumb on the print reader and then the voice intoned, welcome Dr. Waiben, and who is your guest. + +This is Claire, she's approved. + +Noting that in the logs. + +Strike it from the logs Kali. He turned to Claire, I don't feel like telling the whole story when I get back. + +Very well, log deleted. What can I do for you? + +Watch this. Waiben smiled. He picked up a remote and pressed a button. The window in front of Claire went black and then flickered as it filled up with tiny white lines of code. The code flashed by in unreadably fast blasts and then an image of the Indian desert filled the window. Waiben walked over and sat down beside her, careful to leave a significant portion of the middle cushion between them. + +Kali, zoom and center please. Waiben's voice was unnaturally high pitched and he was over-enunciating the words, but Kali did not hesitate, zooming the camera down toward an enormous clearing. It was just after dawn in India, the sun streaked long soft shadows westward from very building and hill. Claire watched the shadows shorten, a perfectly discernable process when on was as near to the equator as the ten square miles on the the screen was. She had once walked over this desert, populated with small sand dunes, prickly pear with bright pink fruit, curious hard black beetles that had once crawled all over her skin while she slept on the sand, half wrapped in blankets. + +Waiben asked Kali to zoom again and it did, training its sights on a large shimmering building made almost entirely of glass. It looked alien, like some spacecraft had landed there in the middle of the desert, so out of place amidst the mud and stone houses that dotted the desert around it. + +It looks like the World's Fair came to town. + +Waiben smiled. It did. In a way. A bit more like gold rush I think. Or what I imagine a gold rush would be like. He shook his head and seemed lost in thought for a moment. Claire watched the creases at the edges of his eyes furrow and unfurrow and then the eyes brightened. You really should have stayed. Sometimes in the evenings when I'm stuck or just need to get outside for a bit I walk around the desert. Near where we used to camp. There are huge tent camps all around that area now. People coming from all over India hoping to find work. the camps are pretty squalid things, tents is an exaggeration I suppose. More like scrapyards turned into sleeping structures. And stores. Little carts selling dosas, samosas. You should have stayed for the food Claire. Ten times as many street food options as when you left. Well, no real streets I guess, but still the food. + +He paused. She smiled, but did not indulge his half-hearted attempt at what she suspected was some sort of nostalgic mental stroll, probably exactly the same thing he did when we walked around the tent cities, or scrap cities. It was a sleepy little town. She stood up and zoomed the camera. She could see the smoke of fires drifting out the scrap city out over the desert. She could picture all the Indian people, desperate for work, for something, coming like moths to a roaring camp fire, some finding what they were after, others blown right back out like ashes, drifting off into the desert. + +It was a sleepy town. No one did anything they didn't have to do. That's what I liked about it. She sat back down on the couch and faced him, leaning back against the arm. + +Waiben met her eyes for the first time that night. Well, it's not that any more. There are jobs now. People have money, they can buy the things they need. + +Do they really need them? + +Waiben's grimaced. Really Claire, those people didn't do anything because they didn't have anything. Remember our guide that first night on dunes? He didn't know what Nikes were. He lived on ten dollars a month. Don't try to paint that as some Rousseau paradise. You were there. You know. And we've changed their lives yes, but for the better. The India Airship Company that everyone is racing to copy? That's never going to work. The only reason the India Airship Company is profitable is because we paid their operating costs for the first six months. They brought in workers when the train tracks were buried and the spring sand storms. And I've tried hard to use local construction contracts, to help the local economy. Sometimes it's hard. Indian politick is a labyrinth and I'm not allowed into. Sometimes a first cousin's brother's nephew from Bombay shows up when I thought I was getting a local foreman. Sometimes no one shows up. + +Well, as long as they haven't picked up your work ethic. Claire smiled + +No. Generally speaking no. I have a few people that I consider reliable, but most of the complicated work is still done by the ex-CERN people. + +Under there? Claire gestured toward the screen, where the alien spaceship of a building sat gleaming in the morning light, but seemingly empty. It looks like no one shows up when you're not there. + +Waiben looked back at the screen. Oh that. That wasn't my idea. Some Indian architect won a contest and got to design the building. Hideous modernness isn't it? And all glass in the middle of a desert. Brilliant. No one works in there. It's was too expensive to cool so we moved everything underground. The plants like it, but you can't really see them from space. + +Claire tried to imagine Waiben in the subterranean world of apricot-tinged light that she had seen in the documentary films. Waiben in his office, toucan and blind newt on the shelves, him going over schematics, supervising the installation of magnets, super-cooled brass piping, copper piping. The army of engineers and workers at his beck and call, or at least she imagined they would be at his beck and call... to do do what? The goal, as Claire understood it, was to not just smash atoms as as older colliders had done, but to create universes, pulling energy out of higher dimensions by smashing together their shadows in this one. Practically speaking the plan to create a new source of energy, something beyond oil, beyond solar, something that could power half the world from a single source. It was either that or go back to airships, but so far that idea hadn't proved practical outside of India. + +Still get a lot of protestors? + +Well, unfortunately some people still think that accessing other dimensions directly will somehow harm this one. + +And you still don't. + +No. Why would I? The math simply doesn't allow for that. We've run countless simulations and formulas to predict all sort of outcomes. That's why I'm in India. If I were here, with no AI, I'd still be crunching numbers in a supercomputer somewhere. I've run more simulations for this collider than all the simulations run for all the colliders in the past combined. + +And you don't think there's any chance you're wrong? That the simulations are wrong? + +Waiben put down the remote and turned toward her. She could see pain in his eyes. Claire, dear god, please don't tell me you've fallen in with protestors? + +Claire smiled. No. Well, not for their reasons anyway. But what if they're right, just for the wrong reasons? + +What do you mean? Christ Claire for every person over there protesting there's a different reason. You should hear some of the things I've heard. There's a whole legion of Americans there, the idiots waiting for the alien ships to pop out of some other dimension or some nonsense. They brought crystals and they meditate and hum. I certainly hope you're not planning to join them. + +All I said was what if the protestors happen to be right, even if their reasoning if wrong? + +That would imply that you have some other reasoning that you think is right. + +No. Not really. Or nothing original anyway. I'm just not so sure you should go through with this.... She hesitated, not because I think it's going to destroy the universe, or this dimension or whatever, that's nonsense, but I am worried about what happens if you actually can access this dark world, or dimension or whatever. + +What do you mean? + +Who ends up controlling it? You? The Indian government? The Plasmatic corporation? What happens when ELO terrorists take over the building? What happens if the Protectorate gets a hold of your plans and builds their own? What if someone else figures out how to weaponize it? What if it turns into another arms race, everyone building their own? + +Waiben smiled. All things I've run simulations on. You really need to get out that hell hole in New York Claire, you're living in the past, AI is capable of things you haven't even dreamed of yet... + +Like what? + +Waiben smiled. I can't talk about that here. + +Is this place bugged? + +Probably. + +That's convenient isn't it? + +Come to India with me Claire, I'll show you. He rested his hand on top of hers. + +No. Let's not do this, please. + +Waiben sighed and pulled his hand away. He turned back to the screen which, somehow, in the middle of their conversation had drifted over to include a view of the tiny house they had once called home. + +Claire looked at it, tried to remember what it had felt like, but it seemed to her to have happened in another life, something she had read about in a story. She remembered Tucson. She remembered the day it became apparent that the Secession Act was going to pass. She remembered Waiben staring tensely at the TV then announcing he was not going to stick around and watch everything go to shit. She was almost twenty by then. So they had left. Decamped to India which had been courting Waiben and the collider project for several years. For a time everything was magic. A new world, the feeling that something was happening was infectious. The lived outside the chaos of the African oil wars, the breakup of the States, the creation of the Protectorate, all of it. Or almost all of it. When Russia cut off India's oil it brought the country to grinding halt. No oil meant no machinery, no electricity. The Indian government had been waiting for the Russian oil shoe to drop for some time, but it would still over a year before the grid was back up and running. In the mean time the desert sun beat down and there was no escape, not even a fan to move the hot, stagnant air of their house. Though she never blamed the heat, it was in the midst of the second summer that Claire began to sour on India, Waiben and herself. By the time she left Claire saw it as just another desert, slightly different plants, camels instead of horses, the mountains of the Pakistani border instead of the Catalinas, but still a desert, still her in the middle of it, feeling lost, like a spectator of her own life, merely watching what she was doing, not actually doing it. + +They both stared at the screen, at the roof they had shared so many meals on. One of my engineers lives there now Waiben said absently. + +Claire did not respond. + +I've moved over here, Waiben stood up and touched the screen, flicking it over several houses and then asking the daemon to switch to the internal cameras. + +You record the inside? + +Waiben shrugged. Contract requirement. There are perks that offset it. + +Waiben zoomed around the house. Claire thought about the last day she had been in India. A day identifiable to both of them as simply that day. Every timeline must have markers, watersheds at which events seem to begin and end, even if in truth there is always another day, the day before, the day before and never-endingly the day before. Eventually you must pick one and mark it. Maybe it ended that day. Maybe it ended earlier. That day was the result of other days, other choices. Like the day Waiben stopped writing his increasingly lengthy notes on books he believed she should read, things she should research in I2 and started making excuses that kept him home in the mornings, particularly warm spring mornings, when the desert sun was not yet too hot for the pool and Claire put on her bathing suit and lay in the sun with a glass of juice or peeled an orange as she read a book. Mornings Waiben spent upstairs, in this very office, finding excuses to look out the window, telling himself he was just glancing at the desert, just scanning the skyline, just, just. That day was the result of a series of choices, the flawed belief that you could make a thousand tiny little choices without ever needing to worry about the cumulative consequences. That day was the result of all his previous days. All her previous days. All of everyone's previous days, centuries and centuries of tiny decisions from billions and billions of people leading to a single moment in time. Every single moment in time, but more so that day. And yet now, here in front of her, the very house, the very landscape, very nearly that day, and yet it felt utterly unreal, it was a picture on a window, the glass opaque and blocking whatever might lie beyond with some vision of what came before. + +They sat in silence, the gulf between them too enormous now for death or deserts to span. The sun slipped behind the mountains, its memory played out on the clouds. Claire turned away from the telescope and stood. Waiben stood up beside her, they turned to face as the last light painted a streak of cloud in softly bruised purple, a black eye across the western skyline. For the first time she saw the years between them, the sag of skin around his wrist that she had never noticed before. He reached out and embraced her, his warm body pressed against her now in a feeling of defeat, of surrender far more complete than any he had given before. The evening shrunk now to night, pulling in reserve what remained, hunkering down in canyons and valleys, a laughing wind among the cottonwoods, waiting out the night. By the time the cab reached the city, streetlights washed the sand with a warm sodium glow. Claire sat silent, her fingers tightened around the box of ashes. + + + * * * + + +There was no one in the lobby as Claire walked through. A monitor scrolled a news ticker and flashed video updates in silence. Opening her room she felt a reassuring rush of cold air, like climbing out the the subway on a crisp January day. She took a shower. She lay down on the bed, and rolled a hash cigarette with another page from the Bible. When it went out she pulled another cigarette from the pack and lit. And then another. And another. + +She sat cross legged on the freshly made bed, the polyester of the cheap comforter scratching at her legs. The I2 was off, but Claire stared at it anyway, it was the focal point of the room after all. She stared at her reflection, sitting on the bed. She thought of Waiben's story about the mirror world. You've never heard of the mirror world? he asked as if the imaginary world were something everyone would be familiar with. They were in his office at the university, long before India, long before they began their affair. Claire had stopped by to ask him some questions about her father's book, a textbook on astrophysics, the orbit of planets, gravity wells, event horizons, worm holes. Words she had absorbed from a million places but never bothered to understand. Waiben helped her some, but he often detoured off into stories. + +The mirror world is a place just like Earth, it's a parallel earth if you will, and it isn't a mirror world because it mirrors ours, it's a mirror world because, well, you'll see. So it's like our world, but little things are different. For instance in the mirror world you might be boy, I might be a woman, and there were other things, cultural differences. There is no concept of God in the mirror world, no invisible thing out there to settle accounts, nothing that you must justify your silences to, your silences are simply your own to understand, or not. But one the of the consequences of the absence of God is the worship of mirrors. The mirror world people do not believe that mirrors are strictly reflections of themselves, rather they're glimpses of something very similar to ourselves, some other place, some other person that is like us, looks like us, reflects our movements, but not our thoughts, not our experience save for those moments when they mimic us in the mirror. So of course there are no mirrors in the daily life of these people. Mirrors are only in the temples where people go to observe their doubles, to spy on the other world. To know yourself is impossible, so many competing voices, but to know the other you is merely the perfection of imagination. Stare into the mirror and know. Whatever could possibly happen to you has already happened to the imagined you in the mirror, still a reflection, but a reflection of infinite possibilities. What is merely pleasant in this life has already become pleasure to the one inside the mirror. The priests had the most difficult job since they had the temptation to stare into the mirror all day and of course that's just what some of them did, mashing their skin at first, just to see how far the double image would go in mimicking them. And then some started to abuse themselves. Cutting skin, self-mutilation, self-flagellation. And of course the mirror image did the same and in the end some died, but then that posed an interesting problem -- did they die from their own wounds or did they die because they inflicted mortal wounds on their double? + +Waiben paused to take a drink from his spiked coffee mug. + +So which was it? + +Well, no one was ever able to prove either case to everyone's satisfaction. + +What happened then? + +It was all hushed up the way priests and secret societies do those sorts of things, can't let that sort of quandary drift out into the public mind you know. Chaos ensues. People start showing up at the temples at all hours of the night doing god knows what in front of the mirror... + +The thought of it now made her smile. She still caught herself at strange moments during the day -- waiting in line at the food bank, staring at the black glass windows, or late at night watching the street fires reflected in her apartment window -- wonder still if it was the double in the mirror that killed them or their own wounds. She knew it was silly and yet somehow she had never been able to escape it. She wondered about her grandmother's double, had it too died when the water and debris broke her body apart? Or, because there was no mirror to reflect it did she, the other grandmother, simply go on as she always had? Did she too have a Claire that abandoned her? Claire thought of the day she had finally told her grandmother she had dropped out of school. There would be no graduation, no ceremonial way to mark the passage between school girl and whatever came after. There would just be a sheet of paper neither of them would ever open, just a diploma in the mail that no one cared about. Claire sensed that she had somehow wronged the gods of passage, but it was simply the way it was. Perhaps the girl in the mirror had a graduation, some nice ceremony, some gifts, a new dress, maybe she was rich, a car, a boyfriend to kiss her late at night after the party was over and everyone had gone to bed, someone with whom she could fumble awkwardly because neither of them knew what they were doing. + +For Claire everything had been marked by someone who did not fumble, or did with words, but not when it came to taking off bras, deciding what to do today, tomorrow, the next day until she realized that few of her decisions were her own, and even the ones she thought she had made were colored by someone else. She began to retrace four years of her life looking for something she was sure she had wanted and came up empty. Terrified, she realized she had to do something that was purely her, her own fumbling. It wasn't until she decided to leave him that she understood what it meant to fumble, to wonder, to be unsure. She had already followed Waiben all the way to India. That day began in the evening, she had gone into town on her own, had dinner at Trio, a rooftop restaurant overlooking the desert to the west. She could see the shabby Indian apartment they shared. She ate her tandoori and watched the sun set. It was gorgeous and yet she felt nothing inside. She started packing her bags the minute she got home. Waiben arrived before she had finished. The conversation was a kind of fumbling, quickly disintegrating through shock, the pleading, then yelling. Her yelling had been unkind, but she never thought to apologize for telling him he had hypergraphia, and ought to seek a doctor, not a collider, but a goddamn doctor that can straighten your fucking egotistical head trip out from the reality the rest of us are living in. It had shut him up at least, but then she looked up from her bag and saw the look of pain in his eyes, saw that she was not just leaving him, but abandoning him, abandoning them, abandoning the private world they had lived in for so long, just the two of them, a little battle hardened unit against the world, the unseen support on which everything depended, abandoning him in it, alone in a private world that no one else could ever enter, stuck forever or forced to likewise leave it behind. She felt herself falter. Claire felt finally that she was fumbling with her own life, knew that she could choose right now, right here, in this singular moment between two entirely different lives and for a moment she almost stayed, but she knew deep down that she had to do it or she would spend the rest of her life wondering why she hadn't. She picked up a clay statue of Ganesh, hurled it at his head, grabbed her bag and walked out the door. Until today, it was the last either had seen of the other. She could still feel the same joy, the same sense of freedom and wonder she had felt the minute she sat down in the back of the rickshaw and watched her past slip by as she went her own way. + +Claire had run first to Mexico City where she found work assisting a professor at the University of Mexico. When Mexico joined UAS Claire caught a bus north to New Orleans where she lived until the first of the hurricanes came. Claire left on the first boat that would have her. It was on the boat that she met Sil, who had helped smuggle her into the Protectorate. Sil. She smiled, crushed out her cigarette. She could see herself smiling in the grayish reflection of the monitor. The room was silent. The sun was beginning to glow through the edges of the drapes. + +Claire took a deep breath and reached in her bag, pulling out her Plasmatic goggles and a small keyfob which had been handed to her by the driver that took her to the airport. She put on the goggles and logged in to the anonymous account that lived on the keyfob. She found Kali. It was hovering over a the virtual collider site, still online, but not controlled at the moment. Claire gestured to it, it came over and asked for a passkey. Claire said her name. Kali backed up and apologized, but said that it could not connect her. Claire tried again, this time using her first and last name. Kali lit up and asked what it could do for her. Claire brought up the code from the key and fed it to Kali. The daemon took off to do it's bidding, diving into the code structures of the collider, mining through algorithms and stored data from test runs and simulations, dumping it all into the data key. Claire watched as it inserted a backdoor and then wiped all traces of itself. Kali drifted away. + +When she was done Claire called the voice. + +I've got it. + +How much? + +As much as I can get. + +When will you be able to drop it off. + +I don't know. I may stay a while. I have things to take care of. + +I'll send someone to get it. + +Okay. I'll be at the hotel. You have the address. + +Yes. + +The line went dead. Claire threw the goggles across the room and finally allowed herself to cry. + +When she was done she packed up her things and left. + + + * * * + + +The porch was dark. The door too loud, squealing on its old hinges as it swung shut behind her and left only the stifling black silence of the house in front of her. She smashed her shin on the organ bench and knocked over an Easter card from her uncle before she remembered their was electricity. She fumbled for the switch and turned on the light. She stood in the living room, arms hanging limp at her sides. The off-white shag carpet gave way to the couch, carved wooden legs, threadbare cushions, some sort of nature scene in oil hanging above it, a duck or perhaps a loon, Claire wasn't sure, was taking off from a marsh, woodlands in background. The house was waiting for someone. Someone not her, someone not coming home again. She had as yet been unable to spend more than an hour in it and only then by convincing herself of little lies, that her grandmother was just running late from a doctor's appointment, stopped to pick up a prescription or perhaps a take out dinner, some of her favorite chili, the smell of which, to this day, made Claire nauseous. + +There had been no word from Waiben since she left his house a week ago. She assumed he had gone back to India. Claire had returned to her old haunts downtown, but the faces were different. College town, quipped the bartender at the Saguaro House, shrugging as if such things were to be expected. He had given Claire a free drink to lament the death of the Saguaro Cactus which had once grown in the middle of the room, stretching up toward the skylight. It had succumbed to the great something, turned first an unhealthy yellow and then the skeletal gray before it died. It happened not long after Claire left, some form of root rot the bartender said. A cross nearly the same height commemorated its passing. + +But the house would not die. Did not live. Sat silent, a witness, harboring opinions, but never forming conclusions, preferring to wait. She let her bag fall to the floor beside the easy chair that hadn't sat anyone in the fifteen years since her grandfather died. She walked down the hall, staring straight ahead, not wanting to look at the pictures, her parents at a shrine in Kyoto, Claire in striped, knee-high socks standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, her grandfather outside a tent in Panama, wearing fatigues and looking like a soldier. She went into the den where she had left her bags and took off her dress. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt before retracing her careful walk back down the hallway to the kitchen where she poured scotch in the same glass she's used the last three days. Then she retreated back out to the porch and lit a cigarette. Across the street was a row of identical and otherwise unremarkable brick ranch-style houses. Those that could had long since abandoned this neighborhood. Sometime after Claire left it had shifted from middle class to lower class, finally ending up stuck somewhere between the street preachers on Prince and the free needle dispensing clinic just two blocks west. But not her grandmother. She stayed to the end. + +The cigarette burned out between her fingers and Claire still wasn't sure what to do. She hadn't known what to do ever since she left the hotel. She had made a brief stab at cleaning out the house, even called relator to see about selling it, but ended up dissolving in tears before the assistant even put her through to the actual relator. The only thing she had managed to do was drink a lot and sleep off the effects during the days. + +As darkness became total the street seemed to perk up, she heard murmuring voices several doors down, dogs barked as children stepped out take up their nocturnal roles of hoodlums, petty thieves, B & E specialists. She watched as a woman stacked cord wood in an old oil drum and lit, placing a grate over the top. In Waiben's neighborhood there was plenty of electricity to be had, here only her grandmother could afford it. In the distance a bullhorn extorted the world to wake up, discover the one true god and repent from the ways of sin. Fix your eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Claire considered this for a moment, deciding it was the most intelligent thing she had heard since leaving Waiben's house. Eventually she went back inside, grabbed her bag and set out for somewhere brighter, walking quickly to the end of the block where the subdivision gave way to the larger streets that led downtown, past Munson's Garage, the ruins of the Desert Rose mobile home park. A few blocks later, around the corner and past a few University buildings, she reached Tucson Boulevard, the heart of downtown where the smell of rotting pizza dough and steak tacos mingled with stale alcohol and the pot smoke wafting out from the behind a dumpster in an alley. People walked the sidewalks, talking, holding hands. It was so unlike the New York Claire knew, where people huddling in the darkness and moved along the streets like shadows. + +Just outside the Saguaro House she finally saw a familiar face -- Gordon, a schizophrenic man with the pure white piano in the back of his pure white truck with its pure white canopy protecting it, alternated between playing a few bars and yelling at the small crowd that had gathered to listen. The fact that the only person she recognized happened to be bat shit insane was troubling. She flicked her cigarette in the gutter and went inside. + +Claire was well through her second whiskey before Kill Me and The Shrimp took the stage. No one in the bar stopped talking, no one ever had for any band. She had sat through three nights of bands already this week, bands with names so forgettable even the members seemed unsure at times. + +Claire sat at the back of the Saguaro House, perched on a bar stool beneath the club's only hint of electric light, a single 40 watt bulb that dangled like a solar umbilical cord from the water-stained ceiling. The light created a halo around her which most of the crowd avoided, preferring the standing tables in the middle of the room where small clusters of humanity leaned into the candlelight to see one another, but certainly there was no interest in what was happening on stage as Kill Me and The Shrimp began to play. + +Claire was not impressed, though she was somewhat surprised to hear what sounded like jazz. Or at least something that might have been trying to be jazz. Who the hell started a jazz band anymore? It might not be good, but, Claire decided, you had to give them points for creative recycling. And there was something strangely compelling about the name -- who was Kill Me? Who were The Shrimp? + +As it happened there was no Kill Me, just a bunch of The Shrimp. Most of the locals abandoned the Saguaro House halfway through the set, off to find some quieter spot more conversation conducive. Claire found herself at the bar talking to the band as they quaffed down their per diem of free beer. As far as Claire could tell, was their sole profit for the evening. Ethan was the drummer, the only one to formally introduce himself to Claire. He seemed eager to talk to her, attempting to piece together the apparently complex nature of Los Angeles bands, somehow wrapped around the idea that two can become one. There was, it seemed, a band called Kill Me Before I Die and another known as The Shrimp, named after a club misspelled The Shemp, a name taken from the lesser of the four stooges. But then through the joint miracles of sublimation and romantic emigration, the two became one, Kill Me and The Shrimp. + +How is Los Angeles? + +Messy. Ethan nursed the last swallow of a Guinness, swirling it around the bottom of his glass. + +Claire was going to ask what he thought of the Protectorate colonies, but she decided against it. Instead she just watched him watch the glass. She was afraid he might come to tears if the brown liquid were to disappear entirely. She offered to buy him another. He accepted. After a while Claire noticed she had half-turned on her bar stool to face him and Ethan had done the same, elbow on the bar, hand propping his head up, cocked toward her. It certainly seemed like there was an interest between them, it caught her slightly off guard. + +I grew up here, she heard herself saying. But I left years ago, things weren't really going my way... the other side of that romantic emigration thing. She smiled. But now I'm back because my grandmother died two weeks ago. + +Ethan mumbled an apology and downed the rest of his beer, moving on to the second glass. + +Without warning Ethan launched into a long diatribe about the Indian collider and how Kill Me and The Shrimp were planning to fly to India soon and play at the protest shows that were ramping up now that the collider was almost ready to come online. Claire said nothing, which was just as well, Ethan was full of opinions. It didn't take long for her to notice that he didn't actually understand what the collider was trying to do, he simply saw it as so many did -- marvelous, powerful and awe-inspiring. Whether that awe produced fear or excitement depended more on the person describing it than anything the collider itself might be capable of. Ethan for one seemed to think it was scary. Though he was at pains to point out that playing the protests would be a good move, music career wise, which he acknowledged was coloring his judgment. Claire kept her collider connections to herself and searched for a way to change the subject. Much to her horror she heard herself telling Ethan about her parents, pretty much a show stopper for getting someone to come home with you. She tried to lighten the story up, to make it less depressing, wishing in fact she hadn't mentioned them at all, but finding herself midway through the story before she could stop herself. + +Shortly thereafter Ethan politely excused himself and went off the load up his drums. + +Claire nursed the last of her whiskey and tried to decide if Ethan was really cute or if she had simply been in Tucson too long. She couldn't decide and in the end thought perhaps it didn't matter anyway. She downed the last of her drink, paid the bill and walked outside. Ethan and his band mates were leaning against their electrovan, talking to Gordon the crazy piano player who was in the process of inviting them to a desert bonfire party in the national monument just outside of town. Claire slid up next to Ethan and whispered in his ear, Gordon is batty, just so you know. Like clinical batty. Don't touch the piano, he'll flip out, germs you know... of course when he's on his meds he's a bit better, but I'm just saying... + +Good to know... but do you think the party is real? + +Oh absolutely. Or at least they used to happen all the time. Peyote parties, bribe the rangers, bring a hundred people, pass the cactus and everybody gets naked. That was before the contraction though, not sure what they're like now. + +Sweet, that's what we need to do, recruit new listeners. + +Right. He look down at his shoes. We just did the border crossing two days ago. + +Bad? + +Expensive. Slow. Lots of scanning. + +Claire nodded. Well, she pushed off the van with her elbows. Watch out for the vomit... and the cacti. + +Claire was already walking down the street, hands thrust in her pockets when Ethan yelled, hey, wait, you want to come? + +She spun around and her hair fell in her face. He wasn't ugly anyway. She considered it for a moment. Okay, sure, she smiled. + +There were already a dozen cars and trucks parked at group campsite five in the Tucson Mountains National Monument. A trail at the far end of the group camp loop led down an arroyo where, if you looked for the right clump of trees, or maybe it was a tower of stones, you could follow the remnants of a deer trail up to a large rock outcropping where indian paintings covered the mottled maroon and black rocks. + +The ocotillo spines looked like claws scratching at the cloudless sky as Claire, with The Shrimp in tow, walked toward the bonfire. In the distance the strobe effect of heat lightning blinked against the night sky. Claire kept to the edge of the fire light, seeking out the small line that led to a cooler of beer stashed under a picnic table. There were at least forty people Claire guessed, most sitting on tables, a few camp chairs dragged out for the occasion. Two lonely looking kids picked idly at guitars, and surreptitiously glanced around every so often to see if the group of girls sitting near them were paying any attention. But from what Claire could see they weren't, one girl was roasting marshmallows and then passing them to her companions who played with the soft molten sugar, enthralled by the power of hallucinogens and food science brought together. Claire didn't recognize anyone other than Gordon. It wasn't much past midnight and people were still streaming in out of the night, bobbing halos of flashlight moving through the dark desert, the occasional yelp of accidental cactus contact and general stumbling drunkenness. A girl in an emerald sequined dress, which sparkled like something out of Dante in the fire light, burned her hand on the dry ice. Someone was applying a salve and bandages. Claire gingerly slipped her hand into the cooler and grabbed the first two cylindrical objects she found, flipping one to Ethan, popping open the other for herself. They surveyed the indistinct shapes moving around the fire and watched as the other members of Kill Me and The Shrimp drifted over toward the light, introducing themselves to another cluster of girls who were already holding beer cans and looking aloof. + +Claire and Ethan instinctively moved back, away from the fire, lighting cigarettes, talking as harmlessly as they could. Eventually they found a place to sit in the soft arroyo sand, leaning back against a clump of rocks which they squirmed and wiggled against until the notches in their spines fit against the granite. They had stopped talking, there was only the quiet sucking sound of air hissing through their cigarettes, the faint crisp of burning tobacco... Claire stared at a Saguaro next to them, its silvery thorns like spiked asterisks punctuating the green ridges of smooth cactus flesh and reaching out to cover the valleys between them. Claire began to feel a waiting creep in, a tension that Ethan either didn't sense or didn't know what to do about. She nearly groaned when Ethan began to tell her something about the band, at which point she turned around, grabbed his head in her hands and pressed his lips to her own to silence him. She could taste the acrid earthiness of smoke in his mouth. The scruff on his face brushed against her skin and she thought for an instant about the Indian yogis that Waiben swore would lie on a bed of nails without feeling pain. She let him go and curled back a bit. He was smiling at her with a sort of goofy, puppy face that Claire instinctively wanted to slap, but she managed to restrain herself. Instead she just looked at him while she filled her hand with sand and let it run through her fingers. + +Then a smile broke over her face. Are you ready for the naked part? + +Definitely. + +Well... first there's customarily a chase... + +A what? + +Claire jumped up and and scampered down the arroyo, kicking sand at him as she went. + +Ethan spit and swore. She ducked behind a creosote bush and yelled at him to come find her. He stood up and walked down the arroyo looking for her. She backed up the embankment a bit and when he came into view she launched herself out wrapping her arms around him as she landed, straddled his waist with her legs. She lifted his chin up with her finger and they began to kiss. Before long his hands slipped under her shirt and she dropped her legs down to stand. His hand moved down inside her jeans while Claire fumbled with the zipper. Eventually she worked her jeans down to her ankles and pulled off her shirt. She grabbed Ethan by the shoulders and pushed him down until he was kneeling before her. Should have shaved my legs today she thought in passing, but then his breath was on her thighs. She squirmed and grabbed him by the hair, pulling hard enough that his face jerked to the side and she could see the whites of his eyes looking up at her with fear and surprise. She dropped to her knees facing him, kissing him, yanking his head to the side, her grip still tight on his hair. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, unable to work it out, she simply ripped it apart, biting his lip in the process. She broke away from his kiss, a faint saltiness in her mouth. She shifted awkwardly, pulling her legs out from under her, feeling the cool sand slide between her toes as she rolled backward. And then she kicked out her legs, up over his head using the crumpled jeans around her ankles to grab him by the back of the neck and force him down between her legs. She came twice before she let him up, careful to give him a few gasps of air every now and then but otherwise trying her best to smother him. Eventually she had had enough and pushed him over onto his back, she kicked her jeans off one leg and climbed on top of him, licking at the saliva on his chin. He slid inside her and she began to rock back and forth, but a scuffling in the bushes stopped her, the two guitar playing boys from the fire were crouched down, staring wide-eyed at Claire's breasts. She scowled at them, expecting them to run, but they didn't. Instead one extended a baggie, flipping it toward Claire. It landed in the sand next to her and she glanced down. Even in the moonlight she could clearly see the shriveled gray Peyote buttons. She shrugged and bent down to kiss Ethan again, her fingers digging in the sand until they curled around the plastic bag. She pried the seal apart with one hand and extracted two Peyote buttons, which she then popped in her mouth. + +He came inside her and she rolled off him on her back, the cold sand pressing against her bare back. They lay side by side, staring up the stars. She smiled and reached over for the bag, pulling out two more buttons. You want to try some Peyote? She ran a finger across Ethan 's lip and stuck it gently into in his mouth, pulling his jaw open. Her other hand brought up the Peyote which she slid onto his tongue. His face screwed up surprise and he spit the Peyote out into his palm. He looked down at them, grey and slick with spit. He looked back at her. + +You're serious? Where did you get these? + +She shrugged, does it matter? + +This is Peyote? He lay back down and help it up against the moonlight. + +Yup. + +You vomit? + +You do. + +Did you eat some already? + +Two. + +What's it like? + +Claire laughed and shrugged. I don't know, I've never done it. + +Huh. Ethan popped the buttons back in his mouth. They were crunchy and dry despite his spit. He nearly gagged as they made their way down his throat. + +How long does it take? + +Claire ignored him and rolled over, reaching for her jacket. She shook out sand and pulled out a cigarette. She stood up naked in the moonlight and watched as come dripped out of her, running down her leg. Ethan stared at her white skin even whiter in the pale light. She let him stare, his eyes and then his hands tracing the curve of her calf, the bend behind her knee, up to the soft skin of her inner thighs. She reached down and cupped a hand between her legs before he could get there. He looked up at her face and Claire scooped up a gooey mass of come and flicked it at him. Don't get all serious on me. And I have no idea how long Peyote takes Ethan. Something new. I think maybe you ask a few too many questions... + +He shrugged. People do say that from time to time... + +I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. She lay back down beside him staring up at the stars. They lay like that for a while, dozing at times into some light form of sleep. Claire could have sworn she was dreaming, but a dream that was no different than where she actually was... + +She heard Ethan 's voice say, Should we maybe, I dunno, head back to the fire? And the thought of it snapped her to. Lord no. Claire propped herself up on her elbow and lit another cigarette. The last thing I want if I'm going down some rabbit hole is to be around other people. Let's just stay here... + +You want to go again... + +She smiled. What if I throw up on you, isn't that a bit forward for a first date? + +... + +Plus I think I got sand in me... + +That's not be good. + +No it's not. + +They smoked in silence, waiting. + +Nothing seems to be happening... + +I think it takes more than ten minutes Ethan . + +Maybe we should eat some more... + +Claire grabbed the bag and held it up to the lighter. There were about two dozen buttons in it. He snatched it out of her hand and began digging through it. I say we eat these, Ethan held out about half the bag. + +Why not? Claire grabbed her half and popped one in her mouth, chewing it slowly. It tasted like powdered sour milk. + +It looks like ginger that you left in the fridge too long... + +You cook? + +I used to. + +Claire lay down on her back in the soft arroyo sand. Ethan finished the cigarette and lay down beside her. After a while she heard him say, I feel... Different. + +Me too. I feel happy. + +She closed her eyes and let her whole body relax as she breathed out. She saw a vast field of green plants, little white flowers, as far as she could see, like a tulip garden in Holland, but much smaller flowers, or she was much bigger, a giant. She tried to say something to Ethan, but could not speak. Her mouth moved, but the words were garbled and only gurgling sounds came out. She gave up. She stood, half-stumbling at the awkwardness of her body, lurching forward involuntarily, she felt a thick warmth in her mouth. She spit but nothing seemed to come out. She coughed and felt bile in her throat. She vomited but it was not vomit, a flower, a plant, the root and soil sliding thickly across her tongue. And then another. Tiny white flowers fell. She looked down and saw the plants protruding up around her, carrots, but they were growing upside down, pointy orange tips reaching for the sky. Claire felt the pinch as they slipped into her soles, puncturing the skin, growing up inside her, up her legs, thin green stalks in her veins and suddenly she was was on the ground again, pulled down by the roots running though her, the plant covering over her, breaking out through the pores in her skin, in her mouth, choking her, she gasped but could not breath. She stopped trying, and then the warm soil came over her, the musty scent of earth. Her lungs burned but the feeling was far away, and then there was darkness. + +She was floating in a pure black, vacuous emptiness, nothing below, nothing above, no up, no down. She held up her hand to her face, but she could not see it, only darkness suffocating her. She began to be afraid, but then she saw them, at the far edges of her vision, impossibly distance, a cluster of lights like nearly burnt out suns, the cool white light of neutron stars, not yet consumed in the darkness. They drew closer, though she could not tell if it was she to them, or them to her. They became more distinct, individual lights, not so much neutron stars as fireflies, darting and hovering in the night. After a while she noticed patterns in their movement. It looked as if each light were moving in a series of tubes, an endless cubical grid of invisible tubes connected by hubs like the toothpick and chickpea sculptures she had built as a child. Beads of yellow and white light moved through the grid. As she rushed toward them they broke apart into smaller lights, colored now, blues and reds and greens speeding along until she realized that she too was one of the lights, she could feel herself throb and pulse, something within her radiating out. Everything spun by in a dizzy pinwheel of color as she moved through the grid, disappearing into a hub and then feeling herself expelled back out of it again. Each time she moved out of a hub into a blackness there was an unbearable sense of loss, of total emotional emptiness that terrified her. Each time she felt as if there was no escape, that this was the emptiness that she would always exist in, would always feel. Sometimes she mutated through colors as she went, from the green throb of illness, a bout of Strep as child, her throat swollen with lumps and then through another hub and out she came pulsing blue as the ocean, her body slipping into a pool, the concrete cool and wet. Then came yellow, birds on the patio at the her grandmother's house, fighting over mottled sunflower seeds in the feeder, in and out another hub, this time red, the rage at the man at the door, her grandmother crying... and the pace began to accelerate, she felt her heart rate speed up and she became afraid, gasping and panting, the blood pounding through her so intensely she could feel her heartbeat in her belly, in her elbows, her knees and then came panic and terror, but then something was tearing at the blackness, ripping through it, scratches of white light seeping in from a above, blinding her. She looked up and saw a young doe chewing the grass that surrounded her. Claire lifted her head, the dirt and grass cascading off of her. Her arms were heavy, hard to lift out of the soil. The deer regarded her, neither curious nor surprised, it continued to chew, watching her. + +She pulled herself out of the ground and stood. The deer swallowed and then motioned with its head. Claire followed as it leaped up and bounded across the field and into a dark wood where she could see nothing. They walked on until gradually the trees thinned, the undergrowth tapered and they emerged onto a city street. She walked quickly, trying to keep up with the doe as it bounded ahead, then turned to wait, watching her struggle to keep up. That went on until she began to recognize where she was -- New Orleans, her old street, up to the landing of old her house, her old bedroom, the sheets were the way she had left them, crumpled and dirty, a rusty-brown spot on one side where she had passed out drunk without a tampon in. She felt herself blush but the deer seemed not to notice. He walked across the bedroom, stepping over Claire's crumpled dresses, around the overflowing laundry basket. The deer moved gingerly, its tiny hoofs navigating around a jewelry box that had fallen off the dresser, its back legs bending awkwardly to slip over the hope chest at the end of bed until it finally made it to the peeling French doors that led out to the balcony where it stopped and stared out at downtown. Claire walked around the bed, flipping the blanket as she went to cover the stain and followed the deer's gaze until she saw it: New Orleans was on fire. Smoke billowed from the windows of the high rises, tiny figures clinging to a helicopter that struggled to lift off under the weight, rocking side to side out of control until some fingers slipped and figures plunged down toward the street below. The strange block top of the Crescent City Residences erupted as if a bomb had gone off, spewing concrete and glass from its flaming mouth. The sound hit Claire in the plexus, a high pitch scream that came well after she saw the impact. Her turned her head toward the sea where she could see warships firing huge guns that lay like spikes on their decks. There was another burst of flame as shells rocketed into the wharf area hitting a series of warehouses that began to erupt in flames. The rockets came in faster now, hitting buildings all around her, flames leapt up, the shock waves rolled through the city, shattering glass and drowning out the screams, but Claire could see people running. An old women stumbling out a doorway, half on fire, the flames leaping in her hair... a boy wandering lost, tears in his eyes, mouth open in a mute scream... She turned back to look inland at the expressway heading out of town where there was already a line of people pushing wheelbarrows full of belongings, moving as fast as they could, keeping low against the median. Families pulling toy wagons overflowing with suitcases and clothes, dogs in baskets. She closed her eyes and looked away but the deer nudged her and gestured back, out the window. She looked again and it was night, the city burned, the roar of the fires was like nothing she had ever heard, a giant sucking sound that seemed to consume all other noise, pulling everything in on itself like a collapsing star. + +The deer turned and walked out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs and into the street where he stood, Claire at his side, watching the river of humanity rise up out of New Orleans and head inland like a tide swelling, their heads hung low. They walked in silence, parting around Claire like a river encountering a rock, not noticing or not caring that she was there. The deer began to walk through them, moving upstream against a great river of human detritus, Claire in tow, stumbling over the broken asphalt, chunks of concrete uprooted from the sidewalks, crumbled bricks and shattered glass from the still smoking rubble of the houses lining Lafayette where Claire and deer walked slowly, silently among the crowd. And then the doe turned down a side street, out of the flow of humanity and wandered into a door that led up a flight of stairs, around a widow's walk and into a set of doors which revealed not another room in New Orleans, but the little brick house that would not die. She stood back in her grandmother's living room, the carefully lathed wood railing that sectioned off the kitchen, the TV still there, the artifact of an earlier age, punctuating the room like an exclamation point, front and center and silent. The deer moved forward to the mantel above the television where the box of ashes sat atop the book, just as Claire had left them. The deer knocked the ashes off the book and stepped back, its coarse fur pressed against her leg. Claire stepped around it, gathered up the ashes and took the book in her hands. The deer stepped lightly over the matted white carpet and into the kitchen, Claire followed, moving around the corner until she saw her grandmother sitting there, sipping tea at the table, smoothing a yellow napkin slowly between her fingers. The deer walked through and stood behind her. Claire sat down at the table across from her grandmother and watched as her grandmother's mouth twisted and gapped, unable to form words, but producing a bubbling spittle that dribbled down her chin and sprayed onto the table in front of her. She nodded slowly, attempting a smile and brought the napkin to her lips, dabbling up the spittle from her chin. Claire began to sob, her grandmother's hand reached out, pressed on hers, cold and bony. She began to speak again, but only produced more bubbling, as if the sounds were only half fermented and oozing out, the white bubbles popped like sea foam sliding across her chin, a great wave gurgling unseen, deep down in her throat. Her mouth gapped and gasped like fish flopping on the shore until finally her throat began to murmur soft sounds and little beads of light began to emerge, small beautiful lights that flew up out of the bubbling spittle. They hung in the air like tiny lanterns suspended on invisible strings, dancing slowly in the still air of the kitchen. Her grandmother paused to catch her breath and turned her head to watch the beads of light hovering in the air. Suddenly Claire noticed her grandmother's jaw was broken and hung down, listing to the side where saliva dribbled out onto the floor, pooling in puddles of red and white... Claire half rose and put her hand to her grandmother's face but recoiled at the cold of dead skin. Her grandmother's hand moved up and touched Claire's own face, the cold bony fingers began to work at her jaw, moving it until Claire found herself saying, I love you ... and then suddenly the lights began to dim, fell out of the air, hitting the table and bursting into sounds that hit Claire's eardrums like the blast of the train whistle, screeching and unintelligible, until they started to faded away, dropping in pitch as the went. Claire could finally make out the sound, it rushed in at her, like a speeding train running her down at the crossing, fast approaching a sinister growl that began to howl. Claire jumped back in terror, knocking over the chair and falling back against the wall, the words were coming toward her, they were on her, crawling over her skin like curious scorpions, stinging painful barbs began to pierce her, she opened her mouth to scream and they rushed in diving down her throat and she could feel them squirming in her stomach as she squirmed on the ground, clawing at the yellow linoleum of the kitchen floor, trying to pull herself toward the glass door, gasping and crying, unable to scream. The door was open and she pulled herself out, following the deer's hooves which moved across the brick patio and out into the grass and sand where Claire clawed at the earth. And then the pain in her stomach passed as suddenly as it came and she pulled herself up and stood shaking. Looking around her again she saw that they were in the middle of a dusty street, old buildings with wood walkways lined either site, the wood rotted and gray, too long in the desert sun. The wind blew, a chair on a porch rocked back and forth, tick-tocking over the wood planks like a grandfather clock. Gusts began to pick up, gather into something steady and howling. The wind smelled of the sea, twinged with salt and moisture... The air seemed to gather up around them, little electric sparks, the palpable tension that precedes the thunderclouds. But there were no clouds, no thick black and ominous warning on the horizon, only a thin gray line, like a band of smoke running horizontally across the western sky. The deer stopped and cocked its head looking up at the shape in the sky, which was clearly growing closer, clearly moving toward them. Though it resolved itself moments before it arrived, it took Claire some time to realize that the smoke was in fact birds, an enormous flock of birds... gulls and cormorants, geese, robins and crows, pinyon jays, thrushes and desert warblers, all of them moving in a singular mass that came roaring overhead, a thousand tiny beaks, screeching and screeching, protesting at the unbelievable blast of wind that accompanied their arrival, blowing them from somewhere else, forced to ride along helpless for a while, until they were deposited somewhere else by a twist of fate. Claire looked around but there was no one, the deer was gone. The birds moved through in a hurricane of beaks and talons, her skin was cut, feathers beat against her ears and then, as quickly as they, came they left, pulled on by the invisible storm. Claire was alone. + + + * * * * + + +The light behind her eyelids was red. Claire opened her eyes slowly, squinting at the glare leaking in through the shutters. She felt a thread from the quilt tickle her lip, her eyes adjusted to the light and she moved her head to have a look around. Quite clearly her grandmother's house, but worse, quite clearly her grandmother's bedroom, quite clearly her grandmother's bed, the sheets Claire still hadn't washed... She sat up in alarm, extending her arm directly into Ethan's bare back. They both started. She wondered if her eyes were as saucer big and scared as his. + +Jesus. I didn't know... Sorry I ... How did we get here? + +Ethan sat up next to her. Are you serious? You don't remember Gordon giving us a ride? After you told him you would spit in his face and give him tuberculous if he didn't? + +I did that? + +You did. + +And we came here? And you stayed with me? + +Well, I can't say that was the highlight of the evening, but there were other moments such that I overlooked it. At least for now. + +I'm touched. She rolled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. But then she froze and spun around, popping her head out the bathroom door. We didn't have sex here did we? + +No. I tried, but you were pretty gone. + +Thank god Claire mumbled, ducking back in the bathroom and turning on the shower. She let it get steaming hot despite the fact that it was undoubtedly already scorching outside. She stepped in and let the water hit her full in the chest, little beads running down her stomach, she relaxed until she closed her eyes and saw her grandmother again, sitting in the kitchen. She could still hear it, feel the words crawling on her skin. She opened her eyes and tried to will the vision away, but everything she thought about seemed to keep coming back around to the white foam in her grandmother's mouth. She gave up and turned off the shower. + +When she stepped out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around her body, Ethan was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette and leafing through a copy of the Bhagavad Gita that Claire had been reading. + +Breakfast? She walked around the bed. + +Shower? + +Sure, I'll wait. Claire walked down the hall to the kitchen where she dug through the cupboards looking for the coffee. Eventually she found an old tin of Folgers, but left it where it was. She closed the cupboard and turned to face the table. She saw her grandmother, her mouth moving, gaping. Claire nearly screamed. But when she looked again it was gone. + +Her heart was racing. She half ran out of the kitchen, into the den where she found her clothes from the night before. She dug through her jacket for a smoke and pulled on an old t-shirt and skirt from her backpack. She took a deep breath and walked back out in to the kitchen, closing her eyes as she stumbled awkwardly around the table and fumbled for the sliding glass door. Outside the light was like a scalpel carving the world with singular, glaring precision. Claire felt like she was stepping out of a movie theatre at midday. She smoked her cigarette and tried to think of the good things she had seen last night, but quickly concluded that there really hadn't been any. And she had threatened Gordon? She had always known there was a reason she stayed sober most of the time, she had just never known exactly what it was. She flicked the cigarette in the dead grass and went back inside. + +Eventually Ethan came out, freshly showered and looking, if not Claire's type exactly, at least attractive enough. They walked downtown until they found a diner that was still serving breakfast at the crack of noon. Along the way Ethan plied Claire with questions about the Indian collider. She quickly realized that at some point last night she had been alarmingly forthcoming with her knowledge of the collider, though, as far as she could tell from Ethan's questions, she had never mentioned Waiben. At first she answered his questions with the sort of vague physics platitudes that she had heard Waiben drop to those whom he knew didn't really want to know the answer. But then around the time they settled into a booth at the tackily named Old Time Kafe, she realized that he genuinely wanted to know, so she started in on design as best she understood it, still able see the diagrams and chicken scratch scrawl of Waiben's notes. At one point Ethan stopped her. Is this really something that I'm going to understand? He was forking his way through a Texas omelette, a browned pile of eggs saturated in Pinto beans, salsa and a now liquified pool of sour cream. + +You should, it's along the same lines as music, just with different scales and resonances... + +Where's the backbeat? + +That's question isn't it? It's a mystery. + +I like it already. Except for the part where our existence is happening in the middle of some vibrating string. Guitar players always get all the glory. + +What about Phil Collins? Claire thought for a moment that Ethan was going to leap over the table and strangle her, but the rage seemed to pass as quickly as it came and he let it slide. + +So the strings vibrate... + +That's one way of looking at it. Another is that we, and everything else in this world, are shadows cast by objects in another dimension. + +So which is it? + +Both most likely. I always liked it better to think of it as the objects that cast the shadows we see, like the old Plato cliche about the shadows in the cave... Or think of it this way, since you're from L.A., imagine you're at a Hollywood party, the crowd is rather thick, and evenly distributed around the room, chatting. When the big star arrives, the people nearest the door gather around her. As she moves through the party, she attracts the people closest to her, and those she moves away from return to their other conversations. By gathering a fawning cluster of people around her, she's gained momentum, an indication of mass. She's harder to slow down than she would be without the crowd. Once she's stopped, it's harder to get her going again. That's mass, the crowd is the Higgs particle and it's in the process of interacting with the crowd that the starlet, or the type of particle we're used to seeing, behaves as if she has mass because of it. So the question becomes, essentially, does the intangible give rise to the tangible? Or is it the other way around? If Wai-they are right then the intangible gives rise to the tangible. And the intangible is extra-dimensional. Remember the Higgs Boson particle they found in Switzerland? + +Ethan smiled. No. + +Well, the theory was that an invisible particle, so small we couldn't detect it, almost a bit like the Aether of old, was what actually makes the larger particles we can see, electrons and so on, behave the way they do. They even had a name for it, the Higgs Boson particle and it, if it existed, would be the thing that bestows mass, it was to be, for lack of a better word the, god particle, because it creates everything else. So they found it, but it didn't behave quite the way they thought it would, so now they think the Higgs particle might in fact be not a particle but a whole other dimension or a dark world or... there are some other metaphors, but you get the idea... + +Ethan nodded and seemed satisfied with this explanation, though Claire knew was only about half-true at best, but Claire had lost interest. She couldn't shake a worried feeling that had been dogging her ever since she had become a bead of light traveling through invisible tubes. Jesus, she thought, maybe I'm still high. She reached into her purse to check the time on her com and noticed that both the box of ashes and the book from her hallucination were inside. She was just about to freak out about the discovery when her thoughts were interrupted by a massive concussive blast that rocked the building and rattled the windows. Alarms began to go off all up and down the street. Everyone outside had stopped and was scanning the sky. The sound was like the boom of a jet, but somehow different, more rolling, like an earthquake arriving from somewhere far away, except that the ground did not roll. + +Ethan looked at her. Claire shrugged. The restaurant was silent, even the cooks had stopped fussing at the flattop and were looking out the window as if waiting for another, but nothing happened. The other patrons began to whisper amongst themselves, sonic boom maybe... earthquake? + +Ethan shrugged and went back to his omelette, eating in silence. + +Claire pulled out her com. That's odd, my com is dead. + +Ethan pulled his out to check. So is mine. Protectorate networks are shit. + +Maybe. Claire got up and went to the counter and put on the open Plasmatic goggles. I2 was still working, but before she would log in she heard fighter jets coming in low over the city, well off the allowed flight path and much faster than Claire was used to, flying in pairs. The windows rattled again as the jets passed overhead, two then two more, then two more. They kept coming, a squadron's worth at least Claire thought as the goggles confirmed her retinal scans and granted her access to her I2 properties. There did not seem to be anything unusual happening in I2 at first glance, but as Claire began to walk around the room things started to disappear. First the Picasso over the sofa blinked out, replaced by the grey and white checkers of I2 canvas. Then the couch vanished, then the window and the view beyond. As Claire spun around things continue to disappear, someone was deleting her. She saw a glimmering in the corner of the room just before the walls blinked out, a shadowy wisp of a daemon and then she ripped the goggles off. + +She walked back to the table trying her best to look casual and unconcerned. We should go, she whispered. + +What? Wait a minute I want more coffee. Now, Claire hissed, tossing money to the man behind the cash register and not bothering with change. She grabbed Ethan by the jacket collar and pulled him up out of the booth. + +What the fuck Claire? They stood outside the restaurant as another pair of fighters roared overhead. + +I need to get out of here. + +Okay... + +Are you coming? + +Coming where? + +Well, back to the house for starters. + +Okay. + +When they got back to the house Claire threw her clothes in her backpack, grabbed two photos off the organ and gently placed the box of ashes and the book on top. She picked up the book again, wondering if it was worth the weight. It was nearly falling apart. Claire had found it when she attempted to clean out the house several days ago. The book had a silver lock on it, Claire had been looking for a key when she found a box of pictures and memories and tears had ended that project. She picked up the book and ran her fingers over the lock. It seemed like a journal. She dropped it back in her backpack. She was about to tighten down the top straps when she heard Ethan clearing his throat. She turned around and Ethan was behind her, pointing a rather large gun at her. + +What the fuck? + +Claire, okay, just, don't freak out. I just. Look I was hired to find you and get something from you. And I searched all through this house last night when you were passed out and I couldn't find it. And I watched you pack and I still didn't see it. + +You did find my grandfather's gun I see. + +Look. I don't want to be pointing this at you. I like you. But the man who hired me. + +Is going to kill you if you don't find what he sent you to get? + +Yes. + +I know. He's going to kill me too. I guess he's already trying. He's kind of a dick. + +Ethan smiled a bit. Yes, he is. But he pays well. + +True. He does. Claire was reasonably sure he wasn't going to actually shoot her. She tried to relax. They stood staring at each other in the still heat of the room, both unsure what to say. Finally Claire broke the silence. Are you really a drummer? + +This time Ethan couldn't stop himself, he smiled and looked like he might laugh, but he caught himself. I am. But I freelance. The Shrimp aren't exactly raking in the dough. + +What do you want to do? + +I want you to give me the datakey. + +I don't have it. + +He frowned. + +I mean I have it, but it's not here. + +Well then let's go get it. Where is it? + +I'll take you, but we need a car. + +Ethan sighed. He pulled out his com and held it up for Claire to see. Still dead. + +Use the old dialphone in the kitchen. + +You first. + +Claire walked past him, keeping her hands not exactly up, but where he could see them. + +She pulled the ancient touch tone phone off the hook and tossed it to Ethan. He dialed a number. Claire fidgeted with the knobs on the stove and stared into the darkness of the pantry, wondering if she could close and lock the door fast enough to keep Ethan out. And then what? She edged toward the darkness of the pantry anyway. She heard Ethan ask someone to go ahead and swing by. Then she heard confusion in his voice. What? Fuck me. Okay. + +What? + +Claire, what did you do? + +What? + +Apparently there's a Protectorate bulliten out for you. What did you do? What the hell do they want with you? + +Nothing. Well, I mean, other than accessing an AIdaemon to get that precious data your boss wants, nothing. + +Fuck. You used AI? Why would you do that? + +Claire shrugged. Self-destruction runs in my family. She suddenly felt the same sense of unbelievable joy she had felt in the rickshaw leaving Waiben. She felt almost whimsical. + +Fuck. Well, do you have a plan for getting out of here? + +Yes. + +Well, now would be good time to put it in action I think. + +Oh, well, I don't have a plan for getting out of here exactly, I have a plan for getting out of jail. + +What? + +I know someone that can get me out of jail. She smiled brightly. + +Who Waiben? + +She laughed so suddenly spit flew out her mouth. No. Not Waiben. + +I would think no going to jail would be a better plan. + +Yes. Yes it would. + +He was waving the gun around as he spoke and it began to make Claire nervous. She edged closer to the stove and began to involuntarily fiddle with the knobs. + +Don't get any ideas. + +What? + +The stove. You're thinking you could turn on the gas and blow me up or something. + +You really are stupid Ethan. Do have any idea how long it would take to file this room with enough gas to. Never mind. Besides, wouldn't that blow me up too? + +He looked down and said nothing. + +Throw me a cigarette. + +Ethan turn and grabbed the pack off the kitchen table and tossed it to her. + +She pulled one out. Got a lighter? + +He felt his pockets. No. Use the stove. + +Aren't you worried it's been running all this time and when I turn it on it'll blow up? + +You said... + +She turned the knob. Nothing happened. The sound of hissing propane filled the room. There's no automatic lighter, it broke when I was still a little girl when it was converted to propane. There's lighter in that bowl over there, she gestured to kitchen counter, where a fruit bowl full of papers, pens and scraps of junk sat, below the dialphone on the wall. + +Okay. Slowly though. Claire edged around the counter, sliding past Ethan who kept the gun trained on her. She pulled the lighter out the bowl and lit her cigarette. + +So now what? + +I need that datakey. + +I know. But it isn't here. + +We need to go get it. + +Okay. Let's go. It's only a twenty mile walk to the foothils from here. + +Ethan sighed and pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Claire stood by the sliding glass door, thing about the fact that Ethan was sitting xactly where her grandmother had been sitting in her vision. + +What? + +Nothing. It's just. What did you see last night when you ate the Peyote? + +Ethan smiled. Nothing. I spit it out when you started throwing up. + +Too bad. It was informative. + +How so? + +In a minute I'm going to break your jaw. + +What? + +In a minute I'm going to break your jaw. + +How are you going to do that? + +I'm not sure. I don't even want to do it. I'm going to feel bad about it for a long time, but I know it's going to happen. + +Why? + +Because I saw it. + +Really? In your vision? + +More or less. + +Huh. Ethan looked around the room. I don't see anything that looks jaw breaking. He turned toward the hallway and as he brought his head back around Claire pushed her foot off the wall and dove over the table crashing square into Ethan's chest. The chair toppled backward and the gun clattered across the linoleum floor skidding into the hallway. Claire scrambled up ignoring the searing pain in her arm and picked up the gun. Ethan lay on his back, still sitting in the chair, looking dazed. He was gasping for breath. + +Claire stood over him, gun pointed down. + +Well, I guess Peyote isn't a time machine. + +You. Knocked the. Wind out. Of me. + +Sorry. Now get up. + +He rolled over and stood up. + +Turn around and face the wall. He turned and stood against the railing that divided the kitchen from the living room. Claire walked around into the living room. Stick your hands through the railing. Stay. + +She walked back around, circling the table to stay way from him. She rummaged in the junk drawer and pulled out a roll of duct tape. She came back around and proceeded to duct tape his hand together. + +How am I going to get out of here? + +Claire set the gun on top of the organ and went over to her bag. She tightened down the straps and threw the backpack over her shoulder. + +I'm not really sure Ethan and, as you might suspect, I don't really give a shit. If I were you I'd start with your teeth. She came around the wall and stood behind him. Now you need to kick off your shoes. + +What? + +You shoes. I don't know how long it's going to take you to get out of there and I don't want you running after me. He kicked off his shoews. She leaned up against his back and put her arms around him. One me thing my dear. She unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. + +What the fuck Claire? + +She yanked down his pants and his underwear. Take them off. + +Jesus. He kicks off his panks with Claire's help. + +Well, it sure was interesting meeting you Ethan. She was out the back door before he could reply. She tossed the shoes and his pants on the roof and walked toward the back fence. She opened the gate, peering down the alley way. There was no one around, in fact it was eerily quiet. She put the safety on the gun, tucked it into her waistband and ran down the alley. + +She kept running through the network of alleys until they ran out and she found herself nearing Tucson Boulevard. Suddenly there were people, people all over the street huddled around old cars. Claire walked toward the nearest crowd. The broadcaster said, again we don't know much at this point, only that something has happened in the western UAS. What is it? Claire asked the man still sitting in the car. + +Don't know, something happened, all the networks are down. So far they aren't saying anything other than what you just heard. Something to do with that sonic boom I imagine. + +Claire left the people and started walking south. Five blocks later she found an empty street and walked down it trying car doors as she went. Two streets later she found what she was looking for, an old hand crank Electrovox. She released the emergency brake and pushed it forward. She opened the truck, lifted up the cover and started cranking the flywheel. A man came out of the house across the street and she was about to run when he asked, car won't start? No. Need help? That'd be great. They took turns cranking the flywheel. After a few minutes Claire jumped in the front and pushed the ignition wires together. The car lurched, coughed and died. She did it twice more before the engine finally turned over. + +The man smiled at her. Strange day huh? Half of I2 is gone. + +Really? + +Oh yeah, just gray squares where my whole neighborhood used to be, can't get anything delivered in. Strange day. + +Yeah. Well, thanks for the help. + +No problem. He smiled and slammed the door shut. + +Claire was headed down Speedway toward the freeway when she saw a military convoy pulling off the exit to the left of her. Claire floored it and slipped under the freeway grabbing the frontage road on the other side. She skimmed the freeway for ten minutes, running red lights the whole way. Once she was well on the east side town Claire finally got on interstate 10. diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/2_mexico.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/2_mexico.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c494efe --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/2_mexico.txt @@ -0,0 +1,284 @@ +Claire lay prone in the hot afternoon sun. Gravel dug into her chest and elbows as she balanced the binoculars in her hands. The narrow field of vision that came through the optics revealed the border, warbling in the heat. The road narrowed to two lanes in front of it and was flanked on either side by several sandbagged machine gun emplacements, though no one was, at the moment, manning the guns. She could see a full compliment of border guards, but most were lying in the shade of the trees off to the left, where a long-abandoned picnic area had once played host to families stopping for a minute on the way between Mexico and the United States. The customs building was small and glaring white in the sun. Claire could see a patch of blue on one wall, peaking through beneath peeling white paint to reveal what had once been an American flag. Around the front, next to the glass door was the Protectorate logo with blind justice and the familiar "to protect" slogan. Farther past the door she could see the large window where customs officials observed the crossing itself, though the sun was at the wrong angle to give her any idea who or even how many people might be inside. + +Spanning the road in front of building itself was a system of steel girders holding up scaffolding with more machine guns sandbagged some twenty feet up, above the Caution, You Are Now Leaving the Protectorate sign. Below that were several booths that once held officers who would simply look down, make an inspection decision based based on the biometric scans that surrounded the vehicles passing through. Now the lanes were barricaded off and limited to a single open lane. Clearly no one was just waving people through anymore. Claire knew the borders were tense. She had been reading about for the last two weeks in Tucson's dSheets. The UAS's decision to allow some forms of AI and it's ban of the Protectorate's bioengineered seeds had made the borders a focal point of what some thought would eventually lead to another round of fighting. + +Today there was just one biodiesel truck pulled to the side of the road, stopped a bit before the customs building. She could see the driver, hands zip-tied behind his back, sitting on a bike rack in the shade. Through the binoculars Claire thought he looked like a UAS citizen, though she couldn't see his wrist to tell for sure. He had a heavy black mustache that obscured his lips, but Claire thought he looked bored, not overly concerned that he was cuffed while three protectorate soldiers torn apart the back of his truck. He flinched when one of the soldiers pitched a box to the ground, but otherwise he did not seem worried. Or, Claire thought, he's just really good at hiding his fear. + +Beyond the Protectorate border she could see a stretch of no man's land, about fifty meters she guessed, full of barbed razor wire and warning signs about staying in your vehicle or being shot. The banner on the UAS side said simply welcome, though above it was the same type of scaffolding walkway, bristling with machine guns trained down on the no man's land. Again, there was no one maning the guns. Most of the soldiers must be inside she reasoned since there were few to be seen milling around the spartan building that she assumed held the customs and immigration office. There was no one on the UAS side waiting to attempt a crossing. The bulk of traffic coming in to the Protectorate in this region was passing through the much larger border to the west, just south of Tombstone. + +Claire set the glasses down and rolled over looking up at the sky. She watched a small, lonely patch of clouds blowing overhead. Now what? Clearly, she thought, there was no way to just waltz through, wave some papers, show a little skin and walk off into the UAS, where, although not entirely welcome, she was at least not a wanted fugitive. She was pretty sure that whatever the sonic boom had been had nothing to do with her, but clearly it had someone spooked. She was also beginning to think that her disappearing home room in I2 was also not directly related to her either. The man at the roadside outfitters store, where she had purchased the binoculars and a small alcohol-burning stove, was the fourth person to tell her that his I2 properties had evaporated. Claire was beginning to suspect massive server failure. She was also pretty sure that the server failure had something to do with the sonic boom. But the daemon sniffing around her half-deleted I2 space was definitely looking for her. Still, whatever had convinced the agents to leave her grandmother's house, she reasoned, was big enough that for now, she was insignificant. Whether or not she was insignificant enough to slip through the border without hassle was what she needed to find out. + +The Nogales border was not the most sophisticated she had crossed, but it still had several bioscanners and would definitely require her to show some sort of identification. She had no Protectorate biochip and nothing that identified her as being a citizen of UAS either. All she had was the forged Greenada passport Sil had given her years ago. She wiped the sweat from her brow and cursed herself for not buying sunscreen at the outfitting store. She rolled back over and stared at the sonic fence that ran as far as she could see in either direction from the border. People crossed the border all the time. Sil acted like it wasn't even something worth talking about. She had done it by sea with his help. But then Sil had the money to pay bribes and pass through borders unmolested. She was pretty sure he had never tried to actually cross the sonic fence. She was pretty sure no one who had ever tried to sneak through the fence itself ever talked about. If they did they did it would be with some jittery form of sign language since they would no longer have ear drums or a fully functional nervous system. + +She wondered how long it ran. She swept the binocular to the west and looked at the ridges of the hills. The fence ran up the first ridge and then disappeared. Eventually she found it higher up on the next ridge. Did it go all the way to the UAS border in Old California? Did it really cover every bit of those mountains or had they skipped a few places to save on funds? She wished she could get an I2 connection to find out. She didn't want to climb all over the mountains just to find out that it did indeed run the entire length of the border. She thought about her great-uncle who had once lived not far west of here, a little town called Arivaca. She had very dim memories of Thanksgivings at his house, perhaps even a Christmas. Before her parent's plane crashed. Before her uncle gave up and moved back to Tucson. She remembered the sunsets mainly, how beautiful the mountains looked, the bloodiest red sunsets she had ever seen, and then the clouds turned purple as the light waned and night descended. She remembered her father sitting out on the porch with her uncle, Claire playing with her toys on the steps in front of them. Her uncle's house had been on a small ridge that overlooked the hill country to the south. He would smoke cigarettes and talk to Claire's father. Sometimes they would see immigrants moving down in the arroyos, picking their way through the mesquite trees and cacti undergrowth, long before the sonic fence, long before the Protectorate. Then she remembered hiking around her uncle's property with her father, long, rattlesnake-infested grass and jagged lava rock made walking slow and painful. Claire remembered falling on a lava rock once, how it gashed her knee, how the blood ran down her leg. She remembered watching it fall on a stalk of grass, trickle down its length, turning it red like a silver of sunset. She remembered sitting on top of the hill, her father holding her as they watched two men walking through the arroyo below. That's the way to do it, Clairebear. Her father pointed at the men below. We'll go back that way, stick to the low country, the dry gulches, the sandy washes. You'll be fine. + +Realizing there was no other choice, Claire gave up on the idea of crossing over in the wilds of the mountains and crawled backward on her belly until she was sure she was out of view of any cameras or bioscanners. She stood up and walked back down the hill, through the mesquite and Palo Verde trees, down to the river where the stolen electrovox was parked in the shade of a cottonwood grove. She pulled a jug of water out of the trunk and drank deeply. She debated whether or not she should risk bringing the car. On one hand, she reasoned she was already wanted for using artificial intelligence within the protectorate, punishable by life in prison, so adding a stolen car, a hand crank at that, to the list hardly seemed important. On the other hand she didn't want the stolen car to be the thing that gave her away. There was some chance, with communications obviously glitchy, that whatever bounty or bulletin might be out there alerting the authorities to her crime had not yet made it to this particular backwater of the border. She decided she would ditch the car and cross on foot, perhaps see if the zip-tied trucker would give her a lift, provided he got across. + +She drove back to the main highway and into Nogales. The streets were deserted. She passed an abandoned petrol station that had been half converted to a biofuel depot and still smelled of rancid vegetable grease. The main drag, which led down to the border crossing, was lined with abandoned curio shops, falling down cinderblock buildings with broken windows and collapsing metal roofs, just intact enough to remind the locals of better times. Claire parked the car next to the rusted out hulk of an old oil-burning Ford. She pulled her bag out of the trunk and stepped through the shattered glass of a tourist shop. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out cracked pottery shards and old cisterns lining the shelves. Broken glass and smashed up shelving littered the floor. In the corner she found a pile of once colorful woven blankets, no covered in dust and rat droppings. She pulled her t-shirt over her nose and shook one of them out. She opened her pack and pulled out the gun. She stuffed it under the pile of remaining blankets. She pulled out most of her clothes and sorted them on the floor, bandoning everything but two pairs of pants and a couple t-shirts. She stuffed the banket down in the bag, tightened down the straps and threw it over her shoulder. She looked around the back of the shop for a hat, but found nothing. + +Outside the sidewalk cracks were full of weeds. plastic wrappers lined the curbs and lufted in the breeze that had begun to blow. She noticed an ominous line of clouds on the horizon and considered going back inside the shop to look for a tarp, but decided it might feel good to be wet. She set off down the street, headed for the border, wondering where the some ten thousand inhabitants of Nogales were hiding today. She walked by what looked like the old courthouse, or what was left of it, a mortar shell having taken out the columns and collapsed the roof, she could see piles of the roof and other rubble half-hidden in the shadows. Outside a cypress tree was beginning to uproot the steps. + +Two blocks later she found a few of Nogales's inhabitants gather in the shade around what looked like an outdoor comida. Deciding she didn't want to go to prison on an empty stomach, Claire walked over and took a seat under the tattered blue tarp that provided a minimal bit of protection from the sun. A few of the largely male crowd glanced up as she walked into the shade, but most ignored her. They were staring at the ground or off into space, lost in thought, memories of dread. They were gathered in a crowd around the central post which held up the tarp, an old Mesquite limb with a shortwave radio hanging halfway up the pole on the numb of a long-since sawed off branch. The men looked much like her, dirty jeans and t-shirts, theirs stained with bio fuels that Claire could smell over the smoky odors of burning cow shit and sizzling meat. Above the hook where the radio hung were several bag filled with water, which did nothing to keep the flies at bay. Claire swatted at the air as she fished in her bag for some sort of currency. Eventually she gave up on the flies and walked over toward the grill, where a several planks of ironwood laid atop a stack of bricks served as a counter. + +A woman with blackened teeth smiled and took her order in halting English. Claire watched as she pulled meat and tortillas out of an icebox and laid them on the grill. Claire turned around and looked back at the crowd, trying to hear what was on the radio. A few of the men were watching her now. She noticed suddenly that the crowd was quite young, not one seemed to be over forty. Migrant workers she decided, still coming north in search of stronger currency. One man, with jet black eyes and a mustache that hid his lips watched her closely, as if trying to decide her story. Claire met his gaze and he smiled. She started to smiled back, but decided against it. She turned around and pretended to watch a group of children kicking a soccer ball in an empty dirt field across the street. The air under the tarp was dead still. It was oppressively hot. The air weighed down on her, felt like a lead jacket at the dentist's office. The tarp occasionally flapped in the breeze. The sound reminded Claire of the sails during her voyage to New York. If only the breeze would come under the tarp Claire thought, but there were too many buildings around, the wind remained tantalizingly close, but gave no relief. The woman turned the meat over, smoke from the grill became thicker as the grease sizzled on the coals. Claire took her lukewarm bottle of soda and went back to the table. The radio crackled as she drank. The Spanish was too fast for her to follow. Her ears perked up at the words atacar and Nueva Orleáns, but she couldn't imagine how that might affect I2, or produce a sonic boom in Tucson. And then she remembered her vision, New Orleans on fire. She went to the counter and asked the old woman sitting on a stool what the radio was saying. The woman handed claire a plate of rice and beans with a few hunks of bony meat and several tortillas. + +Atacar. Oil thieves. + +Oil thieves? Nueva Orleáns? + +SÃ. The ships come, torres de perforación petrolera. + +Petrolera? Oil derricks? + +SÃ. Derricks. The woman smiled, revealing a badly blackened set of teeth. Soon petrol. + +Claire nodded and thanked the woman. She carried the plate over to her table. She doubted Nogales would ever get any petrol, but it certainly gave the Protectorate army a leg up and would no doubt break the back of New Orleans, which had always been too far from the rest of UAS to have any real hope of lasting. + +Claire sat back down and stared at the plate of food, but suddenly she was not hungry. Her head was spinning, her heart racing. Was it just a coincidence? If not what else was it? How did you possibly see the future by eating a cactus? + +She forced herself to relax. She took a bite of the beans and began to shovel more food in her mouth, swallowing too quickly to taste it, forcing herself to eat since she didn't know when she would again. + +After she had finished, failing to learn anyone for the shortwave, she set out toward the border. Before she was even within sight of the actual border she passed a troup of soldiers sweeping down the middle of the otherwise empty street. A few glanced in her direction but none of them said a word, marching silently, doggedly through the heat. It wasn't until she reached the border area proper that she began to think twice about her plan. She didn't get within 100 yards of the border before two soldiers approached her. Both had M60s slung across their waist, hands resting on the tops of their guns. + +Is the border open? + +The soldier studied her for a moment before replying. Why wouldn't it be? + +Claire stammered, I don't know, the radio, she gestured helplessly behind her. + +It's open. Follow me. He turned and began to walk away, the second soldier followed suit. + +Claire fell in behind them. The soldier held the door open for Claire and she stepped inside the immigration office. There was counter with on one at it, overhead a ceiling fan spun far to slowly to cool move any air. Paint was blistered and peeling off the ceiling. Claire walked to the counter and looked behind it to find a man in customs uniform sitting at desk, feet propped up. The desk was littered with paper that seemed to have simply been thrown there. An I2 monitor behind the man was playing snow. Perhaps they don't know Claire thought, suddenly thinking that she might get through without anyone the wiser. + +The man looked up as she approached, but did not speak. Claire said hello, her voice sounded loud and the man half-started as though he had not been expecting her to speak. + +I wanted to cross the border. + +The man sighed, heaved his legs the ground with exaggerated effort and finally shuffled slowly over to the counter, pulling a form off the desk as he went. He slammed the form down on the counter, I2 crapped out again. You'll have to fill this out. + +Claire let her packpack slide to the floor and grabbed a pen off the far end of the counter. She leaned over the form and began to write the name that appeared on her passport. + +Oh and hand me your bag, I'll run it through the scanner. + +Claire lifted the bag up and handed it over the counter, the agent shuffled slowly back toward a door, opened it and disappeared inside. + +He returned a short while later with the bag. Bag's fine, was his only comment before sitting back down at the desk and propping his feet up. He watched as Claire finished filling out the form. + +When she was done he repeated the slow process of disentangling himself from the desk and returning to the counter. He then shuffled back to the desk and opened an archaic laptop. He set the form beside it and slowly began to checken peck the information into the machine. + +It took twenty minutes, which, after handing over her very high quality forged passport, she spent outside smoking cigarettes with the soldiers. + +What are you planing to do in UAS? the shorter of the two asked. + +Claire told a story about looking for her nanny now that grandmother was dead. Even Claire was impressed with the heart-warming details she created out of thin air and it seemed to somehow endear her to the soldier, himself a family man as he repeated several time. The taller man said nothing, just smoked and stared at the no man's land behind them. + +TK she makes it through the protectorate side + + + + +Behind the counter, feet propped up like his doppleganger on the other side of no man's land, sat a decidedly different looking official. The man was dark-skinned, looked of mixed blood and wore a bedded neckless tucked into a smartly pressed uniform. His hair was jet black and greased back from his forehead which gave way to equally dark eyes. His mouth curled into a something between a smirk and smile as Claire approached. + +She set her passport on the counter. He waved his hand, as if the passport were unnecessary and Claire's heart momentarily leaped in spite of his somewhat sinister expression. Then he puled his legs smartly off the desk and stood up. He walked to the counter, back stiff in a military pose, but with a certain grace. He stared straight into her eyes and Claire forced herself to return his gaze. + +I2 is down on their side yes? He said it matter-of-factly, picking up her passport and flipping through the pages far to fast to read anything. + +Yes. + +Yes, I know it is. Because otherwise you would not be here Miss TK, because they would have seen the two open bulletins, one under the name on this passport and one under your real name. Our I2 is working perfectly well. So is our new AI bioscanner which you stepped through a moment ago. So I know these things. + +Claire lowered her head. She considered saying she wanted asylum, but decided to keep her mouth shut. + +He stepped from behind the counter to her side. Place you hands behind your back please. + +Claire felt the zip tie slip over her wrists and then tighten. + +This way please. He marched her around counter, through the office and into what Claire too to be an interrogation room beyond. + +The man pulled out a chair and pushed Claire down in it. He went back to the office and rolled his own chair into the room, sitting opposite her at the metal table. He unrolled a dPaper scroll and began to study it as if lost in thought. Claire wiggled in her seat, trying to find way to stop the zip ties from digging into her wrists. + +he looked up at her with a certain interest. I have always wanted to meet a terrorist. + +What? I'm not a terrorist. + +It says here you are. He slide the dPaper across the table until the screen was right under Claire's nose. Claire saw a picture of herself, at least half a dozen years old. The headline said wanted for the terrorist use of AI. + +Do you see what it says? Reward? Yes? + +Claire saw a considerable sum of money at the bottom of the very old photograph of her. It was more than she had been paid to steal the collider data. + +You know that the protectorate bombed Los Angeles and has attacked Nueva Orleáns? + +Claire looked up suddenly. Bombed? + +Yes. Bombed. Early reports called it a nuclear bomb, but it was not. It was several of their new digital bombs. Concussion blasts, network disrupters. Either way, an act of war. Again. + +She watched her face, looking for a reaction. + +And now you want in our country. A known terrorist... perhaps fleeing, perhaps having already made a deal... + +A deal? I didn't make a deal. You said yourself the I2 is out over their, I snuck through. + +Yes, it is. Perhaps you did. But that's awfully convenient wouldn't you say? + +No, it's not. It's just the way it is. + +The man smiled and stood. He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. He returned a few moments later with her backpack over his shoulder. He proceed to throw it on the table. He opened the top and bagan to pull things out, examining them briefly as he set them on the table. + +Eventually, when the bag was empty he tossed it on the floor behind him. + +He picked up a few of the clothes, shook them as if there would be something to fall out, eyed her suspiciously and then tossed them behind him, on top of the back. + +He inspected the blanket, curling his nose in disgust as he unfurled a cloud of dust from it. Stole this on the other side did you? + +She shrugged. + +He smiled. + +Only two items remained on the table, the box of ashes and the book. + +He picked up the ashes and shook it. + +Be careful with that, Claire spoke before she could catch herself. She lowered her head again. That's my grandmother's ashes. + +The agent recoiled from the box somewhat. He set it back on the table and opened the lid, peaking inside. You had your grandmother cremated? + +Claire looked down at the table, saw the ashes, a sandy brown and gray dust. She... her body was... She was killed in a flash flood. + +The agent crossed himself and put the lid back on the ashes. He did not say anything. He regarded Claire for a minute. She could feel his dark eyes beating down on the top of her head. She continue to look down, willing herself to tears, hoping that perhaps he would take pity on her. + +So you used AI inside the protectorate. That's a huge risk. That's life in prison. You must have had a good reason for that. Enlighten me. + +Claire shrugged. I didn't know it was an AI agent... + +He smiled. Yes you did. + +No I didn't. She glared at him. I just wanted to see my old house. My grandmother's death... I guess I was feeling nostalgic and wasn't thinking... + +That's not a very good story Claire. The man who paid you to get the information you have, would not be impressed. + +Claire felt the air suck out of the room, her head began to spin. She kept her eyes down trying not to betray the fear rushing through her, pounding in her veins and making her skin crawl. + +The immigration man just kept on smiling. + +I think, he said slowly, that you have the information on your person. + +I left it in Tucson. + +He arched an eyebrow. I doubt that very much. He walked around the table and pulled Claire up from her chair. He began to pat her down, feeling her pockets, the underwire of her bra, making sure to cup her breast in the process. She felt his breath on her neck, it smelled of fish and agave beer. She shuddered. + +He stopped and stepped back. It appear that you perhaps have it inside you... + +No. I left it in Tucson. + +He stepped in front of her and smiled menacingly. No. You didn't. + +He pulled a long knife from his waist band and placed it at her throat. If you know the people that hired you, and I know you do, you know that they want their information and they really don't care how I get it or what happens to you in the process. Do you understand what I am saying? + +Claire stared back in his eyes with hatred. I do. + +He slide the knife down and pointed the tip into her throat and then with single smooth motion, slashed the front of her t-shirt open, leaving a trailing cut down the center of her chest and stomach. A thin trail of blood began to leak out of it. + + +Claire's eyes never left the shining blade. The man flipped it lightly in his hand, hanging at his side. He brought it up again and held it to her face. His other hand reached under her shirt and pulled her bra out from her chest. He slid the knife under, letting the tight fabric of her bra push the point into her chest. Claire winced. Then he snapped the knife back toward himself, serving the bra. Claire threw herself forward as the knife went back, knocking the man off balance and sending the knife clattering across the room. Claire smashed her head into the man's head and the world went black, she saw stars, tiny points of light and then the room began to come back, a red overlay at first, but eventually taking shape again. The man was screaming. Claire rolled off him and threw herself to the floor in the direction of the knife. She squirmed until it was in her grasp and then she heaved herself up until she was standing. The man had slumped over onto the ground, bent at a strange angle, no longer screaming, Claire turned the knife in her hand and turned around, she squatted so she could see the point of the blade and then pressed it to the man's chest. She sat down with all her weight and felt the knife slide in. a gurgling sound came from the man['s throat. She felt something hot and wet splash against her pants and the back of her shirt. She stood up and turned around. Blood was pumping out of the man's chest in spurts. + +she leans back when he cuts the bra, pulling him away from the table and then when he cuts it, she falls on top of him and breaks his back against the edge of the table. Then she sticks the knife in him and kills him. Then she she pulls her legs through and cuts the zip tie off. Then she cleans up, leaves a note stuck to the man grabs her things and leaves. She takes the man's gun and makes a run for it. + +Outline: + +The soldiers find the man, but Claire is able to hide from them with the help of people in the shanty town at the board. Last scene she pulls out the ashes, opens the box and retrieves the key fob. She scatters the ashes on a hillside as the sun is rising. She sets out south. Then seque to Waiben being kidnapped. Then back to Claire losing consciousnesss in the desert. Then at the nunnery where she is nursed back to health and then smuggled south, down to the ameritown where Dean has his bar/whorehouse and Sil happens to be after escaping new orleans. + + + +Maybe Claire and Sil and Dean are trying to find Waiben to have him shut down the collider? + + + + + + +The desert stretched out before them, a void, grasses, sage brush, mesquite trees marking a river that Claire guessed was two or three miles from the small, featureless hill where she stood scanning the distance with the binoculars while, Chaz tried in vain to use an already tattered scrap of duct tape to make his Adidas hold up for another day of walking over a landscape dominated by sharp lava rocks, dry thistles and dead ocotillo bushes. Claire's own shows weren't in great shape either but she hadn't worn through the sole yet fortunately. She let the bincolurs fall around her neck and watched Chaz's back, the dirty yellow of his once white t-shirt soaked with sweat. It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning, they needed to find shade. + +It had been two weeks since they crossed the border. A shortwave radio in Marselo, a tinny five building village they passed through over a week ago had told them what they had already knew. "Nuclear devices" was a the phrase. It wasn't even translated to Spanish. Claire had peiced the rest together from her limited language skills. Los Angeles. Countless dead. Evacuation. Wind. Moving east. Symptoms. Emergency roadside clinics. Other words mashed in together that she didn't know, but could guess. Everything in the immediate fallout area had been evacuated, the borders were sealed. Quédese en casa. Mantenga la calma. La ayuda está en camino. América será vengada. + +Clarie caught the old man watching them out of the corner of his eye as he made a plate of tortillas and beans. She couldn't think of how to say radiation isn't contageous in Spanish. And then she began to wonder if that was true. Instead she sat in silence listening to the radio with the two women who sat silent and Chaz, who simply waited for her to tell him what was being discussed. Eventually the news stopped. An ad for laundry detergent came on. The old man set the plates in front of them and they ate. After dinner Claire managed to convince him to sell them a bag of beans and some torillas. She asked about water. Tanks, wells, anything, but the old man just shook his head. She wasn't sure if he meant no or that he didn't know. + +They spent the afternoon sleeping through the heat in the old man's living room and set out again when the moon rose. They pushing south, ostensibly away from the fallout zone, but Claire also knew they were now illegally in a foreign country in a time of war. She wanted to stay as far from the border as possible. After the first few days they realized they needed to avoide roads at well. So they walked through the desert grasslands instead. Often in silence. Each pushing themselves toward something that would make their flight worth flying for, but so far it was just desert and distant looming Sierra Madre to the east. According to an old map they found two days later at a long abandoned gas station there should be another town in just two more days walking time, but Chaz's crumbling shoes were slowing them down. Claire had always suspected that tennis shoes were not a wise purchase. Now she had unfortunate proof. + +I think it's about five miles to the river. Chaz made no reply. Claire had started to exaggerate distance whenever possible so Chaz would be happily surprised when something wasn't as far away as he had thought. Of course he still had eyes. He still knew where the tree line was. + +The terrain was getting worse as they moved southwest. Agave began to make the ridges impassable. All morning they had been traversing arroyos and following dry stream beds, only occasionally climbing the ridges to get their bearings and correct course. + +The sun was high in the sky before they reached the tree line and dragged themselves into the shade. There was no water. Claire cut a few prickly pear leaves and they sucked out the sour pulp for moisture. They put the last of the beans on tortillas and ate in silence. Chaz fell asleep and Claire stared at the map, willing it to show a river where there was, quite obviously, none to be found. She realized for the first time that they might well die out here. The thought produced a panic that rose up out of her belly, like an insidious snake clenching tighter around her chest as it move up her throat. She had to stand and pace for a few minutes before the feeling passed. + +She sat back down and stared at the map again. As best she could figure they were roughly half way between the the mountains and the coast in what had once been a flood plane, but was now just endless grass and desert. They could risk heading for the coast, Tordilla was probably no more than two hundred miles from where they were. Or they could change course and head east into the Sierra Madre where towns were scarcer, but water more plentiful. Claire set the map down beside her and put a rock on top of it. She slide down in the soft sand of the arroyo and propped her head against a piece of fallen mesquite. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +Claire's leg was asleep when she woke up; her body contorted around a white sheet. The pillow lay on the floor next to the mattress. She shook off the dirt before propping it back under her head. Claire was pretty sure she had been woken up by rat running over her leg but she tried not to think about. + +Windblown rain beat against the cracked windowpane. A trickle of water ran down the inside of the glass pooling in with its brethren when it reached the sill. The palm fronds beating against the metal roof sounded like the harsh crunch of chewed ice. The light was already almost gone, a dull grey twilight, the same dull gray twilight that had cast itself over the house for days had shifted to a smoky darkness as she lay watching the beads of water leak in the window and stream down to the floor where they found the cracks in the boards and disappeared under the house. + +The monsoon had finally arrived a week ago, filling their jugs as it run off the roof and postponing, at least for a few weeks, death by dehydration. Now Cholera or Typhoid were more likely. In the evening when the first ran came Claire ran outside and stood with her face up to sky, swallowing water as fast as she could justs like she had as a child. It was then, standing half naked in the rain that sde decided she would try for the sea. + +Later that night she lay on the floor and watched the water pouring off the roof in great sheets that splattered on the mud street in from of the hut and then began to roll down hill under the house. Lightening lit up the sky like like the thousand flash bulbs and Claire rolled over on her stomach to watch the water run under the house, digging gullies that she though might one day give the little hut a cellar, which made her smile, something she realized afterward, she hadn't done in months. Ever since then, around dusk, Claire would lie flat on her back on the floor, her head turned to the side and, in the illuminated glimpse of lightening flashes, she could see the dank dirt and yellow orange mold growing beneath the house. She did much the same thing the previous summer, when the stiffling still heat hung over the house and the world became so quiet she could lie perfectly still and hear the termites gnawing at the wood in the walls, eating out the house from a round her as she lay waiting. + +Chaz would come home in the evenings haggard, in a foul mood, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes, having spent the afternoon at the bar drinking the rot gut tequila that a few of the families still brewed in secret. Claire would watch him shuffle around the kitchen, open a can of stolen beans with the rusty knife he kept in his pocket, a knife that reminded her of the weeks in the desert when it had been all they had to cut into prickly pear ears and drink the foul smelling water of barrel cacti, which she had come to think might be worse than death itself until they got much closer to death... watching each other grow thin, eyes retreating into their sockets, skin leathery from the sun and lack of food... until Chaz announced that he was done trying to survive and sat down to die. + +Now the knife was so dull he could never stab it into the can with one thrust and would cut himself curse and grab the nearest rag, usually soaked in rancid oil or slimy black papaya seeds which would send him reaching for the faucet, too drunk to remember that there had been no running water for years. Defeated on all fronts he would then limp, dragging his bad foot behind him until, oveer to the couch where he would work at the can slowly, hitting the same mark until an opening formed and he poured cold beans directly into his mouth and eventually fell asleep without speaking a word to her. + +Later she would remove the can, tip him sideways and prop a pillow under his head. For the last week though she had been studying him, memorizing the lines of his face, the strands of hair hanging over his cheek, the the curl of his arms around the emptiness of the room, the sound of his breath as he slept... storing it up for the coming journey, trying to hold on to the parts she loved while letting go of the parts that had become something else, far different from the wide-eyed wonder, the bright willingness she had dragged into the peyote desert that first night in Tucson. + +She allowed herself one cigarette in the evenings, tobacco ground from whole leaves she bought in the market, which was really little more than two carts pushed into the shade of the pharmacia awning. She lit the cigarette and stood in the doorway watching the rain, thinking about how to procure some canned food for the trip over the mountains. Claire lived on fruit and soups made from vegetables she gathered and stole when she had to; Chaz still managed to find bags of rice, cans of beans and half rancid meat stolen from the men who paid him to drive the trucks. He had stopped sharing them with her some months ago, screaming about work and risk. It was the first time he hit her. + +Since then he had lived like a rat, secreting away stashes of cans, counting them in the mornings when he thought she was still asleep. She could hear the cans clattering in the quiet gray dawn just before the cruch of tires on the dirt and the slam of a truck cab door told her it was safe to get up. Claire had stolen a can of peaches from one of his stashes last week when the water ran out and she needed the liquid. She popped the top and poured the juice straight down her throat, letting a little trickle on her lips, the sugar burning the cracked and peeling red corners of her mouth. The next morning she woke up to fists raining down on her head slong with the lash of the belt she'd once forced him to eat, a detail that made her laugh inspite of herself, smiling up at him as the blood trickled out her nose.... But the salty taste lingered in her mouth after he had stormed out the door and made her think of the rumors that, on the other side of the mountains down by the sea things would be better. She sat in the doorway watching the trucks on the highway at the end of the street, realizing that her rarified oyster act had just been undercut by what Waiben would have called the crucible of reality... It was then that she realized that oysters were not so different from rats and that one was a delicacy merely the fickleness of whim... And she had plenty of time to study rats, sitting around the house during the afternoons, mending clothing and making watery soups from scraps of vegetables stolen during her morning walk through the neighborhood. Sometimes there was nothing and her hands would worrying the skin of her protruding hips, + +Two days later she stuffed Chaz's remaining stash of can in an old plastic sandbag sack she'd dumped out on the bed and covered with a sheet. The blue protectorate relief insignia bulged promentantly around the the water jug she'd stuffed inside hoping that it would last at least until she found streams in the mountains. It took both her hands to sling the sack over her shoulder and she still had no way to open the cans, save the industious use of stones, but nevertheless, undaunted she walked to the end of the street and turned east, heading up into the mountains... + +Over time she came to realize that he resented her more for making him live than for shooting off his toes. + + +Claire and Chaz deteriorate around the mention of waiben, distance, abuse but naturally the sex remains strong because its the only way they have left to communicate on the fundamental level at which all connections must happen be the connect mental physical or spiritual the commonality is depth and a particication in a realm beyond the waking one that surrounds us. + + + +not that this was change since the birth of El Norte, merely a change in the hands of power without the power itself seemingly affected at all. + + +from wikipedia: +Individuals experiencing starvation lose substantial fat (adipose) and muscle mass as the body breaks down these tissues for energy. Catabolysis is the process of a body breaking down its own muscles and other tissues in order to keep vital systems such as the nervous system and heart muscle (myocardium) functioning. Vitamin deficiency is a common result of starvation, often leading to anemia, beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy. These diseases collectively can also cause diarrhoea, skin rashes, edema, and heart failure. Individuals are often irritable and lethargic as a result. +Atrophy (wasting away) of the stomach weakens the perception of hunger, since the perception is controlled by the percentage of the stomach that is empty. Victims of starvation are often too weak to sense thirst, and therefore become dehydrated. +All movements become painful due to atrophy of the muscles, and due to dry, cracked skin caused by severe dehydration. With a weakened body, diseases are commonplace. Fungi, for example, often grow under the esophagus, making swallowing unbearably painful. +The energy deficiency inherent in starvation causes fatigue and renders the victim more apathetic over time. As the starving person becomes too weak to move or even eat, his or her interaction with the surroundings diminishes. + + + +.. the sand was so hot in those little valleys that even if you were watching them it was hard to detect movement because they were always shimmering with heat, warping and warbling the tree branches and rocks... But in the evenings the temperature was a little more bearable and that's when you'd see most of the people... My uncle owned the lot next to his place as well and there was an old barn, or more of a shed actually, gray, rotting wood walls, caved in sheet metal roof, but a structure that offered some protection... A lot of the bolder ones would spend the night there... On Thanksgiving and Christmas, which was generally to only time we went down there, I'd take out a plate of leftovers, some turkey and tortillas, corn mash, whatever we had, and see if anyone was staying the night. Ocassionally there was someone there and they'd hide at first but I knew enough Spanish to convince them that I wasn't going to hurt them or deport them or whatever. + +What'd your uncle do? + +Claire shrugged. He's part of the whole don't ask, don't tell generation. You know what I mean? They knew what was right somewhere deep down, they just didn't have the balls to act on it all the time so they kept quiet -- they didn't help, they didn't hurt, you know...? I wish he would have helped them... maybe he did, but I don't think so. Still. He was a good man. And he was gay, living out here in the desert, in about as "manly" a country as you'll find ... so I think he had a bit more empathy that most, certainly more than the rest of my family, most of them probably would have shot them if they had known they were there, but they lived inside the umbrella of their own experiences, which were pretty narrow... not that there's anything wrong with them, just that a whole lot of life seemed to pass them by... my grandmother was different though, she knew, she might not have always let on that she knew, in fact, she cultivated this aura of helplessness, partly I think it was the same generational thing, the female side of it, but partly it just the way she chose the exercise power, if you seem weak everyone ignores you, they don't any attention to you and so they drop their guard, forget you're in the room and reveal perhaps more of + + + +at's wrong with wandering in the desert, Claire mumbled under her breath. But then she gave in with a sigh. Okay, we'll go down to Nogalas and have a look. But if we end up in some FEMA camp I'm going to be pissed. + +Chaz laughed. You don't really believe in those do you? + +No, Claire smiled. But I bet they can set them up in a hurry. + + + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/experiment scene.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/experiment scene.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..449778f --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/experiment scene.txt @@ -0,0 +1,141 @@ + +Stepping out of the car felt moving through an airlock, the door hissed as it opened, the difference in tempature causing an airlock effect that never ceased to amaze her. The even felt l the dry heat of a convection oven whirling in what + +, Tucson in the evening, sunset, heat evaporating dry dead grass in the yard, not the perfect catalog house Waiben has imagined, sitting at the kitchen table staring out at the yard. + +She had trouble following his voice. It warbled like a finch fluttering about its cage. The heat was unbearable, the air so dead still and dry you could feel the sweat evaporating before it could even escape your pores. + + + +The clacking of Waiben's typing distracted her thoughts. She watched Jimmy tap his foot distractedly on the floor to some unheard beat, his unruly rag of brown hair and thick, black-framed glasses nodding unconsciously. She smiled, this why I come back, not for the world, but for my part of it. And then the guilt shattered her vision. She had wanted. She had wanted to tell him, but he so rarely stopped talking. Though she knew he talked during these comedown session mainly for her benefit, it did make it hard to get a word in edgewise. But she also knew that the longer she waited, the worse the guilt felt. She slowly drew herself up, wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked back and forth. "Jimmy." she said his name shyly as if not wanting to disturb him. "My grandmother died two days ago..." She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but her voice betrayed her. + +Jimmy sat stunned silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, Claire why didn't you..." + +"Don't be sorry Jimmy, she was old, she was sick." Claire sighed, she could feel tears coming to her eyes, but she lay back down and stared blankly at the ceiling. "Actually she didn't die, she killed herself." The tears came more freely now and she made no effort to hide her face from him. "I don't know why I didn't say anything. I thought maybe it would come up when I was..." She waited to see if he would finish the sentence for her. + +He shook his head, but said nothing. + +She gathered herself and looked at Jimmy pleadingly. "Well. Will you come to the funeral tomorrow?" + +"Of course." Jimmy rolled down the top of the greasy paper bag and rose to his feet. "Let's get out of here. I'll let him know we're leaving," he said and walked quickly from the room. + +She listened to his footsteps padding down the hall, a murmur of voices, she thought of cranes moving slow over the marsh, ungainly long legs tucked behind them, momentarily streamlined as if just an extension of their bodies, gliding low of the reeds an cattails, the musty smell of brackish water at sunset, the first crisp of fall harking in gusts of wind. + +Claire dropped the still burning cigarette in the waste bin and slowly sat up. The chair was exactly as it had been, worn arms gone from taupe to a bruised gray, stirrups pushed to either side. The metal table, the tray of needles and potions, Benzedrine alkaloids encased in syringes, opiate derivatives still lying unneeded, a broken piece of glass tubing with burned ends lay to the side. The waxy black shelves behind the tray were covered in a grotesque ephemera of zoological oddities, reptiles in formaldehyde, a coiled rattlesnake, a horned lizard with its forelegs pressed against the glass, a scaly gila monster in beaded orange and brown faded by the glare of afternoon sun, the stuffed Toucan decaying on a broken palo verde branch, its gnarled scaly feet now held in place by wrapped metal wire. Higher up there were fossilized trilobites propped on plastic stands and the ghost image of a fern embedded in shale. She shuddered at the sight of a blind newt sitting on the top shelf its regressive eye sockets covered by a fine milky fold of proto skin. She grabbed her coat from the rack and turned to leave. She flipped the light and turned to pull the door shut behind her glancing involuntarily at the top shelf where the two-headed cat stared down at her, four accusing eyes reflecting the dusting moonlight. + +In the car they didn't speak. Jimmy brought the Falcon up to speed and slid onto the interstate. Claire watched the caustic yellow glow of the city on the clouds in the rearview mirror. She smiled suddenly, "My grandmother told me once that she used to chew sand." + +"Chew sand?" Jimmy fingered the locking shifter and flicked ash out a cracked window. Wind hissed in the slipstream. + +"Her family came west in the dust bowl. My great grandfather was dying of tuberculosis, they brought him out on the back of pickup, seven kids and dying man." + +"Sounds like a Faulkner novel." + +"Yeah but my great grandfather mysteriously recovered and ran off with a VA nurse, never to be heard from again." + +Jimmy chuckled, "sounds even more like Faulkner." + +Claire stared out the window at the sagebrush racing by in streaks of pale green lit up by the headlights. "My grandmother said there was so much dust and dirt and grit that it just leeched into your skin, clogged all your pores... and there's her father coughing up blood on the bed of the truck... and Gamma and her brothers and sisters sitting there spitting out dust every few minutes, deaf with wind, no one talking, barely able to even see each other... let alone hear a conversation... and they rode like that for five days, all the way from eastern Kansas to here.... My grandmother told me that at some point she just decided to stop spitting out the sand, she let it collect on the edges of her lips and every now and then she'd run her tongue over her lips, draw the sand in her mouth and try to chew it." Claire laughed softly. "I'll never forget her telling me that, she was laughing when she finished the story and she said it was one of her happiest memories." Claire turned to look at Jimmy. "Imagine that Jimmy, imagine if one of your fondest memories was of chewing sand... I wish she had told me why." She turned back to the window and the tears came again. She watched them in the reflection, they rolled silently down her cheeks as if they, and indeed her own face, belonged to someone else + +The streetlights gave way to the dusty darkness of a gravel road, they were enveloped in a dusty cloud, Claire rolled down the window and stuck her head outside, tongue extended laughing and crying at the same time, the wind whipped her tears off her cheeks and carried them out into the parched desert night. The dust and sand stung her cheeks and filled her eyes. She ducked back inside the car coughing and spitting. "Crazy woman," she muttered. + +The bar was packed and sweltering, sticky bodies thronged together, scrunched shoulders and craning necks, trickles of sweat were visible on necks and earlobes as Claire struggled through the crowd trying to follow Jimmy toward the back of the room. Amid little grunts of pain, whispers of apology and finally a margin of cool air from the back door. Jimmy broke through, dragging Claire behind him to fall into a booth next to a half drunk and grinning version of Sil, animated like a cartoon in the dim light of the booth. "Jimmy! Just the man I was looking for, starter died this morning I had to kick start the beast to get here this afternoon..." His voice trailed off as he studied Claire's dusty face, "What happened to you?" Claire groaned and let her purse drop from her shoulder to the cushion beside her. "I was trying to chew sand." She laughed and took the beer that Sil held out to her. He shrugged but said nothing. Sil was probably the only person she knew who never insisted on sussing out some greater explanation, or at least if he ever did so he kept it to himself. She laid her head on his shoulder. He and jimmy begin to talk of motorcycles. Claire listened half heartedly, wishing that the music would begin. It wasn't that she minded so much the talk of carburetors and fuel pumps, she even had a motorcycle herself, a gift from Sil and Jimmy who decided that anyone crazy enough to catapult themselves into the psychedelic realm of elves and aliens ought to have no trouble riding a motorcycle. And the truth was she enjoyed it, she even enjoyed fixing it since between the two of them they seemed able to scrap together only enough money to by some late seventies vintage machine that had hitherto been resting in some junkyard the two of them frequented when they went scrounging for parts. All things considered she would have welcomed a distracting conversation, but she didn't want to talk about bikes, she didn't want to talk about anything that wouldn't matter tomorrow. Beside which it was February and only Sil was insane enough to ride his motorcycle in the freezing cold nights of February in Tucson anyway. She threaded her arm around Sil's working her elbom into the warmth of his belly and thought about his curious, impervious detachment to temperature. She recalled once staying over at his house and watching him step out for a cigarette barefoot in the snow. Claire had once witnessed him dip his fingers in boiling water to retrieve a bobbing potato with apparently no pain whatsoever, just an embarrassed blush when he caught her staring, mouth agape. + +Somewhere on the far side of the throng that was now backed all the way up to their both such that a row of shapely asses and thighs threatened to impinge on their drinks, a saxophone began to tune, squelching suggestively and then the kick drums thumped once or twice and the show started suddenly out of the chaos of tuning a half disernable melody began to emerge. Claire released Sil and climbed up on the back of the booth, spine arched and craned her neck trying to see over the crowd. All the shoulders and stooped backs turned just so, perfectly aligning the emptiness between Claire and the stage so that her eyes met those of the dancer onstage and cannot avoid but meet them again. A writhing serpentine figure that that spiraled around the man with the metal chest, or rather with the metal attached to his chest. To his face. To his lips. It sounded like Paleolithic cave drawings -- dueling sculptors chipping at the same stone, part horrific cacophony, and part terrifying clarity. The dancer fell to the floor of the stage and then began to rise in slow circling motions, spinning as if to slow the motion of the earth to rob it of some spped that would cause everyone in the room to suddenly sieze upon this moment as fragmentory, fleeting, but not yet gone, to sieze it and hold it and never let go. The trio had been in town for three weeks now, a long pause on a journey into something only dust and angels were really fully aware of, pausing here to pack out the Rattle Bar and Grill which had not seen the likes of such talent in all it's barren days and for which the owner, proprietor and occasional bartender Sil Hawkard had been paying handsomely. And he made sure to ply Claire with plenty of free beverages to entertain and enlarge the ever flexible nature of perception such that a certain dancer of curiously indecipherable ethnic origins who had tendencies toward the affections fay, cherry-haired young women might continue to take residence in the dilapidated guesthouse behind the bar over the increasingly vocal grumblings of the saxophonist and the drummer who understandably did not see a future for avant garde jazz in Tucson Arizona. + +Later the patrons couple off in a haze of alcohol and dust from taxis circling in the drive, and the night began to take on a bruised character, like a drunk beginning to sober in a cold lonely jail cell. + +Claire excused herself to the bathroom. Jimmy sat up straight and eyed Sil out of the corner of his eye, "You going to the funeral tomorrow?" + +Sil nodded and sat silent for a moment as if weighing out the words that both of them knew would be next. "She wanted to tell you Jimmy," He spoke slowly and stared at his empty glass, fiddling with it. "I think she just feels strange because you're there, in the room." He looked up at Jimmy. "She thinks you know things about her that she doesn't know." + +"I do." Jimmy spoke matter-of-factly as if it were a thing of no importance. + +"Well, I'm just saying, don't take it personally if she doesn't tell you things sometimes, she's just protecting herself." + +"You make it sound like we're lovers Sil." + +"What the hell does that have to do with it? If you were lovers she'd have told you already, it's always your friends that really hurt you." Sil smiled ironically. + +Jimmy pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the table but didn't light it. "This afternoon she became her grandmother." + +Sil's head snapped up to meet Jimmy's gaze, "What do you mean 'became'?" + +"It happens quite a bit, she becomes other people, sometimes her family members, sometimes distant relatives I'm pretty sure she never even knew... + +"Are you going to tell her?" + +"I can't Sil." + +"Fuck what Waiben wants Jimmy, the whole fucking thing is going o get shut down anyway as soon as he publishes this stuff, probably even sooner. He's already skating on thin ice at with the University, once they find out that he's convinced DMT gives you access to spirit worlds or whatever shit he seems convinced it does, he's fucking finished. The scientific element'll finally go out the window and he'll pick up and move on in some other fucking direction. That's what he always does. The man is batshit crazy..." + +Claire sat back down next to Jimmy and suddenly glared at Sil. "He is not." + +"Claire I've known him longer than you, trust me he's batshit crazy. For the most part in a good way, but you just never know... I've always avoided delving too deep into his craziness. Frankly there's no way of telling what's down there at the bottom. I mean do you know anyone else who's fallen out of an airplane and lived?" + +"He didn't fall, he jumped." + +"I rest my case -- bat shit crazy." Sil slumped back and swirled the drink. "Jasmine my dear, when you get a sec I need a splash." The girl behind the bar nodded but didn't stop rinsing glasses and stacking them on the shelf behind her. + +Claire continued to glared at Sil, but on the other hand she did half believe him. Waiben, or Scratch as Sil called him -- for reasons no one seemed to be aware of save Sil -- was, at the very least, eccentric. Claire desperately wanted to ask Sil more about Waiben, but had always refused to out of pride. She knew Waiben was Sil had worked together for years, but then he had just left. Dropped the whole thing without so much as a phone call. Bought the bar and hadn't, so far as she knew, spoken to Waiben since. Neither Claire nor anyone else had ever induced either Sil or Waiben to elucidate on the situation, though neither spoke ill of the other, provided bat-shit crazy was not considered ill. + +"You look like you're going to skin me alive," Sil met her definate gaze with what he undoubtedly considered a warm, open sort of smile but which Claire found somehow intruding, as if he were listening to her thoughts. + +"Naw. Market's dropped out in pelts." She took a last drag from her bottle of beer and faked a smile back at him. + +Jimmy had become sullen and quiet. He popped a handful of peanuts in his mouth and slid out of the booth. "Time for me to go I guess, you coming Claire?" + +"Naw, I'll stay a bit." + +"Okay. I'll see ya'll tomorrow." Jimmy walked over shook hands with the bartender and wandered out the front door. Sil and Claire watched him go. + +"You finally told him?" + +"Did he say something to you?" + +"He asked if I was going." + +"Oh." She felt a sicking pit open up in her stomach. "Can I stay with you tonight?" + +"You'll have to ride on the bike..." + +Sil fell asleep the minute he took off his clothes and sunk onto the bed. Claire ran the water, filling the bathtub. She slowly peeled off her clothing and stared at her body in the mirror. Her hair was stringy and dry, her face rimmed in a thin layer of dust. She sighed and walked back into the bedroom to retrieve a candle. She lit the candle and turned off the bathroom light. She turned off the water and sank slowly into the tub. The water enveloped her like an electric blank on a midwest morning, she lowered her body further into the water and slowly let her head go under. Her hair floated up and clung to the surface as the watery silence filled her ears and the rhythm of her own heart filled her ears. + +She remembered the last time she had seen her grandmother. They were sitting at the kitchen table the yellow flowered curtains puffed with the first cool breeze of fall. Her grandmother asked Claire for a cigarette. Claire protested at first but her grandmother said it didn't matter anymore, she might as well enjoy what was left. Claire ended up giving her a cigarette and fished out another for herself. Her grandmother struck a match and held it up for Claire who had leaned in to light, meeting her grandmother's eyes as she did, struck at once that though the skin of her face was loose and drawn, her eyes had the same liquid brightness of a baby, the seemed to crackle with life in spite of the dying that surrounded them. Claire sat back in her chair and studied her grandmother's face as she smoked, wondering what how it looked, young and smooth, before eighty years spent in and out of the desert sun. + +Claire remembered thinking that to some people the desert was a hot wind at the gas station, something passing through and to be passed through. Others saw a sunny retreat from cold wind billowing off northern lakes; some saw it as an endless playground of sunshine, golf and hotel pools. Her grandmother simply arrived in it one day, accepted it and tried to swallow it, literally Claire realized now. + +"It used to be so beautiful here in the fall," her grandmother was staring out the back door toward the mountains. "Those hills where covered with junipers and in the gullies there were enormous Sycamores and Cottonwoods that turned yellow and orange..." + +Claire looked up at the hills now covered in houses. She remembered dimly, as a girl, walking in the canyons with her grandmother and grandfather, gathering leaves and looking for wizards and fairies in the shaded glades of trees, the cool moist air near the water, the dry crunch of leaves under her young feet. + +"It still is beautiful, though," Her grandmother turned in her chair and flicked a bit of ash into the kitchen sink. "Claire." She stopped as if gathering something up within her, "I'm dying." + +Claire lifted her head out of the rub and drew her legs up, tucking her feet under her and wrapping her arms around her knees. + +What is age made of, what shape does death take as it drew nearer? Perhaps it takes no clearer shape, perhaps death remains forever a stranger, perhaps it's life that has sharper shape when death approaches. If life begins in pleasure and ends in pain is it therefore necessarily futile? Is it just an expansive joke, me being the product of endless strangers' pleasure, rooted in their bellies and born through their legs only to end in pain? And what? Along the way move to feel my own pleasure and bear out strangers of my own, slowly plodding toward the pain? She thought of Aldus Huxley and his anesthetized, hallucinatory suicide. Was that cheating? Was the pain necessary? Was it still possible to die with grace, naturally, without the infest of disease, that latter day stranger come to roost itself like so many passenger pigeons returned home? She thought of her grandmother's pain, swept up in the rising river, the boulders, she wondered if it had lasted, if it had passed quickly or never existed at all. She wondered what her grandmother had thought of, sitting there beside the river, soaked through by the rain, watching the water rise, the distant rumble of boulders beginning to move, the faint white noise of the coming flood... and then... what? Claire leaned her head on her knees and watched the candle flickering. She remembered her grandmother's eyes the moist vitality in them, the tiny universes of memory floating in a saline ether with faint but visible stars beginning to glow behind them. + + + + + The couch is rough on the back of her arm, she steels herself for the needle and it slides in, just under her skin meeting the vein and she can feel the warm rush of liquid, a mild swelling followed by the first sounds, it takes no more than a few seconds and already the room is changing, crystalizing and creaking as though turning to an icy lake and footsteps above creek like children skating out on a winteris day, the coat rack next to the door begins to take on an crystal stuckture the crashing begins slowly like a forest of firs shaking in the wind after an ice storm the great crashing of icecicles sloughing off the dark needles and then the roaring gets loader and she knows. The room is gone, she stands on a forest floor of matted wet sycamore leaves, thin streaks of lightning glow to her left toward the mouth of the canyon She feels it binding in, tightly stitching her in like a cloud eveloping the top of canyon. There is the familiar collapsing, the falling inward, from the warm belly up. The silver-scaled blindfish is caught in the mouth of a watery serpent, thin cocooned body wrapped in sticky, fibrous light, peeling muslin and gauze, with scarlet flakes of skin like milky stars screaming across the night sky. The bending cottonwoods mark the wind crawling out of canyons and rocky stream beds to snag the last autumn leaves, plucked and shivering down into puddles of rainwater spilled from leaf choked gutters, running down to rivers to sea to night to the moss slick depths of winding subterranean swells, the rumble of rising waters, boulders smashing bank and bone, swallowing shoots of sallow and debris, the drowning. Starbursts and flashes in parallax at the edges of the horizon where the sun sinks and a streak of cloud paints waning purple across the western skyline. + When + +She is tightly stitched in cloud. Returning again, collapsing inward, from the warm belly up. Rising out of the swelter of underworld night, a silver-scaled blindfish in the mouth of a watery serpent, thin cocooned body wrapped in sticky, fibrous light, peeling muslin and gauze, with scarlet flakes of skin like milky stars screaming across the night sky. The bending cottonwoods mark the wind crawling out of canyons and rocky stream beds to snag the last autumn leaves, plucked and shivering down into puddles of rainwater spilled from leaf choked gutters, running down to rivers to sea to night to the moss slick depths of winding subterranean swells, the rumble of rising waters, boulders smashing bank and bone, swallowing shoots of sallow and debris, the drowning. Starbursts and flashes in parallax at the edges of the horizon where the sun sinks and a streak of cloud paints waning purple across the western skyline. Claire stands at the basement window trembling, arms crossed over her chest, a cigarette clenched between her fingers. The color drains out of the day like bleached laundry on the line, an ebb tide of evening light retreated across the gravel parking lot, chased by the shadows of a train descending into a tunnel, plumbing the unknown depth of rock and sand beneath the well-lit fixtures of day. Claire takes a drag and watches a Canyon Wren hopping on the ground in front of the window, its watery black eyes pausing from time to time to take her in, a breath, a shadow, a movement, the dry salt of cheeks pressed together. She can feel the cold stillness descending just beyond the smudged shelter of glass, a tuft of wind ruffles the wren and in a brown streak it disappears into the sky. The day seems to suck in on itself, a collapsing uncertainty, like so many passenger pigeons, broken-winged and exhausted, returning home on foot. The afternoon shrinks into night, pulling in reserve what remains, hunkering down in canyons and valleys, a laughing wind among the willows waiting out the night. Claire's cigarette continues to burn, but she does not smoke it. She turns away from the window and sits down against the wall, opposite Jimmy. + He stares directly into the gray-green pools of her eyes, noting the saline scales clinging to her cheeks, but he does not see anything he recognizes, instead there lies only a thick absence, sewn like cobwebs choking Juniper boughs. Does this help? + Help? Claire turns away from him lies down on the floor to watch the thin gray ribbons of smoke drift up from her cigarette toward the asbestos ceiling where the smoke spreads out, billowing in all directions as if suddenly robbed of purpose, drifting aimlessly now across inverted fields of thread and fiber, plaster and silence, a ghost wandering up out of the building leaving behind a body of ash. + Jimmy sat back against the wall, one leg drawn up studying his fingernails, slowly trying to work the packed bearing grease and smoky motor oil from under them. After a while he gives up on his nails and reaches into a greasy paper sack and extracts a boiled peanut which he shells in one smooth motion extracting the flesh and flicking the husk into a metal waste-bin to his right. It's not a question of helping is it? + We're going to be shut down aren't we? + Probably. + Then was it pointless? + Probably. Maybe? I don't know. He eyes her suspiciously, unsure of what to say. You should ash, is all he can muster sliding the aluminum can toward Claire with an ear grating screech that echos about the room long after the waste bin come to halt next to her arm. + Ignoring the involuntary shiver down her spine, Claire distractedly flicks her cigarette toward the can, arcing a spray of ash which splashes against the side of the can and dusts down, a trail of unattached white flakes falling like dead skin, floating down from some unseen body already departed but reminders, remembrances still settling on the soft angora fibers of her sweater. The skin you couldn't escape, the dust on the shelves, thin layers of everyone coating the world in a barely discernible varnish. + It feels like... Jimmy, I need... + He looks at her as if waiting for the thought to be continued, but she does not indulge him. He returned to his peanuts. + Claire hooked a bit of her black hair behind her ear and watches Jimmy as he eats. He begins to talk in an abstracted, detached manner that she find tedious, speaking as if the words were merely ideas, had no value themselves but what a listener might attach to them. She was still caught between the two worlds and had trouble understanding why he couldn't see that every word had a meaning, that language was not an abstraction but the very thing that constructed the world he lived in, the world she was slowly returning to, wondering -- is it possible to live mythically?. We sew each vital stitch, but not without doubt; a cell cannot survive without each constituent part, this is why Darwin suffers his thumb. She remembered the colors mainly, in these re-entry moments -- the color removed from light, able to stand and dance on it's own like some synesthesia of sight and motion, vision and touch, such that, like remembering the image of a sleeping loved one long after they are gone, something inside you wanted to burst outward with an indescribable and joyful sadness, a complete and total synthesis of opposites, with none of the bore of happiness, no hackneyed sentiment, without cynicism, without skepticism, where the sun alights your every nerve and you know that for what seems like the first time that you exist, really exist. She thinks suddenly of something her grandmother has once said, once something dies, you can't make it live. But lingering in this boundary land it almost feels like you could raise the dead, like perhaps you have and you simply don't remember it. Here the pieces seem, if not to fit, to at least possess a cohesive integrity that could connect the disparity of the clothes and the body, the ship and the sea, the rain and the flood, wave over wave under, so much movement and still so still, as if the sky filled your skull. A realization of the imagination, as Sil had said. Sil had also once remarked that the danger with tapping into the vast realms of the imagination, which, as he pointed out, bore a more than passing linguistic similarity to the word magic, is that you might suddenly find yourself having called up something you cannot put down, a notion that continued to haunt Claire every time she returned. And yet Sil was so utterly unperturbed by the world around him that Claire found it difficult to imagine him ever truly afraid of anything, though there were whispers of something, something and then one day he simply did not show up. But Claire continued, not in hopes of helping anyone, but because she couldn't let go of the feeling that this was a way back, that the continual projection outward and its commiserate return inward would allow her just once to exist outside herself, to live for one fleeting moment as everyone indivisible. + Down the hall from where Jimmy and Claire lounged in the dwindling twilight, in a small room lined with bulging bookshelves stuffed to the gills with a collection of scientific volumes from the usual suspects like Freud, Jung, Einstein, Darwin and Bohr as well as more esoteric tomes from the likes of Korzybski, Reich, Tesla, Leibniz and others, Waiben sits in wrinkled slacks with a partly unbuttoned lab coat that reveals a stethoscope and a coffee-stained shirt beneath it. He wears headphones and pounds on a keyboard in bursts and stutters of clacking keys, but he stares straight ahead as if reading his words off an unseen screen over the wall in front of him, perhaps backlit by an unseen projector with glowing unseen Aeolight tubes requisitioned from the Army Air Corp cum Air Force dumping ground not five miles from this very hospital. Eschewing the tendencies of his collegues toward frazzled chaoic hairstyles, Dr Waiben's head is closely shorn which never ceased to amaze those previously familiar with him only through his works, which was admittedly a small, though devoted group. That he was the pre-eminint scholar in his field was unquestioned, however, the exact number of competing scholars was not directly known, but assumed by most to be fairly low, which is not to say his illustrious curriculum vitae was anything to sneeze at. There was a brief residence at the prestigeous Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University which many would have killed to get into, though Waiben's habit of applying rigourusly scientific tests to his collegues' somewhat questionable methodology put him on the outs and eventually he left for a stint in Vienna, and then to PanthÂŽon-Sorbonne where he took up redience in the Applied Mathematics department until the student protests of the 60s when, making the ill-advised assumption that democratic protest had a strong future in France, he had sided with the students and shortly found himself deported back to the American shores from whence he came. Having then taken up residence at the recently defunded and dispersed Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Wouden College of Parapsychology And Esoteric Electrical Phenomena (P.E.E.P), owing to his groundbreaking work in attempting to test Riech's still controversial orgone-based "cloud busting" theories (a project funded almost entirely by the equally controvserial Montasano seed company, rumored to be seeking yet another means of holding the industrial farming industry over the barrel as it were), he now found himself marroned here in the Arizona desert with the dubious destinction of being the only scientist in the country legally authorized to administer Dimethyltryptamine to a baker's dozen of carefully selected patients on the vague premise that DMT might be useful in rehabilitating certain psychological borderline cases back to what was culturally defined as workably human. How he had convinced not just the FDA, but also the stuffy starched collar suits that oversaw the budgetary constraints of the University of Arizona at Tucson that DMT was a viable research subject was something even Waiben was only dimly aware of and with the rapid approach of his yearly report his mind had lately been trying with considerable effort to recollect the exact wording of his original Q and A with the suits. + Waiben rewound the tape and turned the page. The clacking noise took up once more, seeping past the open door, out into the submerged watery darkness of the hall. + There had been a time when Waiben was quite certain that his work was worthwhile, worthy even. He like to style himself as a garbage collector of scientific theory moving slowly through long disregarded tomes to empiraically demonstrate them false, one by one. But it was this negative hypothesis which put him at odds with not only those others working in the "fringe" fields of science, who naturally disliked his sharply critical repukes of their theories, but also the more mainstream scientists who either dismissed him outright, or couldn't understand why he wasted his time with theories he inevitably proved false. Lately Waiben had started to sway toward this later argument and was seriously considering retirement at the relavitely ripe old age of sixty eight, "just about a Christie's worthy vintage" his erstwhile collegue and friend from his days at the Sorbonne, Vandamire Scott quipped. "What you ought to do my boy," Scott suggested, "is get out on the lecture circuit. Quite a lot of these up and coming American Unies are only too eager to lay their hands on someone like us, *studied in Europe* they always put on the flyers." Vandameer chuckled, "You might end up in a nearly empty lecture hall down the the Humanities ghetto (perish the thought), but you'd be surpirsed who turns up... quite a number of impressionable young women who turn to 'kooky' scientific tomes to spice up their otherwise dull poetry. And you'd be amazed how the May-November romance seems to sparkle for them, at least for a night or two." Waiben dismissed the later notion as predatory ("evolutionarily necessary," Vandameer retorted) and so he sat late in the evening on a Friday typing up notes while Scott shagged his way through Conneticutt having stopped over for an extended dalliance in Watertown the details of which he was only too eager to relay during a recent phone call -- nipples like summer fruit my boy... Do you remember when your skin was taught? Good lord! -- Waiben hung up mid sentence. Which isn't to say Waiben was above the occaissional abridged affaire de coeurs himself. Lately he found himself unable to concentrate when a certain subject, Claire Bierce, was in the chair, an ever-present scent of peaches seemed to accompany her into the room, a delusion which Waiben was pretty sure arose solely from him discovering via her background forms that she orginated from the state of Georgia. Nevertheless Claire possessed an undeniable precessence, a musicality in her very movement hinted not just at a willful inclination toward the sort of deparity that men find similatneously appealing and horrifying, but also a depth of character that made you want to sink into her thoughts as if collapsing onto a feather bed to disappear into the relaxed ease of sleep. But having already lost his longtime research assistant, who protested an "inability to maintain scientific integrity when Claire is in the room," Dr Waiben was wary of his owning growing inability to do likewise, but, or perhaps, as he was only now began to appreciate, *because of* this lack of scientific objectification, Claire had unquestionably become the most valuable subject in his experiement. Hippy enthusiasm not withstanding, it was surprisingly difficult to find people willing to subject themselves to the rigors of Dimethyltryptamine. Of the forty or so volunteers who showed up at the initital public cattle call, only seventeen had passed the prescreening and of those only a dozen had returned after their first dose, which was in hindsight rather large. In the course of the next six months he had lost another to possession charges and another to Ohio, which Waiben freely admitted was the most humilating thing that had yet happened in his research career. However Claire made up for it, not just in her lucid descriptions and remarkable ability to retain organized thoughts where even the most skeptical of the others turned to jellied, raving idiots, but because she made everyone around her want to continue in spite of the increasing sense of futility that pervaded everyone involved, including Waiben. So it was irritating when tonight Vandameer's skin comment had unwillingly crept into Waiben's mind as he watched Claire's face, the billowing softness of it, the slight hints of a laugh line, a crease of time only recently realized on the vast pallet of youth, and it began to consume him in a way that no skin had since that afternoon in the sun-drenched Parisian apartment when, for one strange moment, while inside a young exchange student who, one foot on the ground, one foot raised on a kitchen stool as Waiben entered her from the front, in a moment of glaze-eyed lust breathed, "you make me want to be a whore," an Arabian Nights-like celebration of decandance and depravity which might well have been the only thing that pulled Waiben's mind back from the diaphaneitous realms of feminality, where he was encountering for the first time the full force of his own soul, in the momentary and then sustained contact with her skin, so incredably hushed and enveloping, the nerves of his own skin, by comparison callous, dumb and uncouth, relayed back a sensation that hinted at the falacy of the seemingly indelable seperation of one body from the next and rather implied that there might be elastic mingling of bodies, a slipping, AEther-like permeability between everyone, as if by a passage through the core fires of sun, he had suddenly emerged in some parallel universe where the word soul had not yet been worn out. + + + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/intro to Claire, Sil and Waiben.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/intro to Claire, Sil and Waiben.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2eed343 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/intro to Claire, Sil and Waiben.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ +The mini blinds behind her made a metalic clicking sound whenever the door opened, strange currents of heat sucked into the stale air conditioned room and causing the blinds behind her to rise off the window sill and then clatter back. Claire considered the physics of it, the convection of hot air and cold and new that somewhere in the simple motion was a kind of precursor to a hurricane. She wateched receptionist swiveling unconsciously in her chair, smacking gum and talking to a friend on the phone. That the girl essentially had no chin was striking, so striking that on Claire's first visit she found herself wondered how anyone ever got passed it. At first Claire tried not to stare, glancing up from her clipboard furitively, letting her gaze drift down to where the girl's mouth seemed to just drop off into her throat. But now that she had overheard enough of the girl's conversation to lose any sense of sympathy she merely stared. It was afterall, not so much a deformity Claire decided, as a simple misfortune of bone structure enhanced by the headset that circled over from one ear to the other with a microphone extending out to where the ordinary person's chin would have been, but in the girl's case it simple extended out into thin air like a hitchhiker's thumb. +The pleather chairs made awkward noises whenever Claire crossed or uncrossed her legs and the hard wooden arm rests dug into her skin leaving strange patterns up and down her forearms. + +Claire watched a man about her own age receive the same clipboard she had and take he seat across the office. She shook her head and forced herself to concentrate, dutifully filling in the form, name, age, vitals, and then a short quiz she recognized as bearing some resemblance to the meigs brier eval form she had once filled out on a lark. +She glanced up occaisonally when the girl's conversation on the headset got interesting enough to warrant further attention, such that it took her over an hour to fill in the form, but she was relieved to know that the other applicant was taking just as long. + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/lazlo shows up..txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/lazlo shows up..txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c4146ec --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/lazlo shows up..txt @@ -0,0 +1,67 @@ +Waiben was well into his third bourbon, stumbling drunk around the kitchen, kicking a back of coffee about the warped linoleum singing softly to himself, tripping on a ripple in the floor and sprawling flat on the floor only to look up and see a pair of very dark, expensive looking leather shoes had somehow gotten through the back door. As he looked closer he noticed that the shoes appaeared to have feat in them and legs even, which were encased in black pants and led upward past an equally black suit coat to a familar and chill inducing face that was smiling down at him + Did I come at a bad time? + Christ. Have you ever come at a good time? How did you find me? + Come now doctor, this is no time for obvious questions. + Jesus. What do you want? + To save you from yourself. + Again? + Yes Waiben. + I fail to see why you insist on continuing this charade... + I know. But what you fail to see could fill a book. + Fuck you. + Well, it would be a significant improvement over your current situation. The man extended his arm down and helpt Waiben up to the kitchen table which he balanced on momentarily before easing into a chair. The main sat down opposite him, kicking the back door closed with his foot. + I suppose if you found me, that means they are close behind... + Yes. + So are we on to something then? Am I close? + The man smiled. Waiben, what you don't know could fill a book. + What about what you don't know? + Already in print. + Ha. Good one. Waiben rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. The man slid an envelop across the table, Waiben met his eyes briefly, he gestured for him to open it. Waiben pulled a string off the clasp and bumped the contents onto the table, a series of black and white photos grainy and out of focus but Waiben already knew the faces. + That was yesterday at LaGuardia. + Waiben looked closer, looking at the people in the background, a set of legs, a blurry skirt. + How much time do we have? + Well, they know you're here, but they're still in New York, meeting, figuring out the best way to procede. Maybe a week. Maybe two. + How did they? + Does it really matter? + Waiben pushed the photos away. Okay, what do we need to do? + Get rid of the girl. + What? + Claire. Get rid of her. + What do you mean get rid of her? Like kill her? + Waiben you're an idiot. And you're certainly not going to kill anyone. No, I mean break it off, distance yourself from her and destroy all the files you have, the tapes, everything. + Why? + + + + + + when the back door fell shut with a click and Waiben nearly fell over + + + + + +It was the first warm day in ages when Sil rode down to the campus. He parked the bike outside the science library and as he walked over toward the administrative building he took in all the girls dressed prematurely in their summer clothes and tried to remember why it was he had dropped out of college so many years ago. He lingered outside the double door for a minute listening the Waiben's voice, trying to gauge the reaction before he opened them slowly and slipped in without a sound. He stood against the wall in the back and eyed the panel, three men and two women sat majesterial at long table directly in front of Waiben who was talking about pyscology and the breakdown of the bicameral mind, the dislocation of the voice, the I from the position of external, the internalizing of the self and creation of the ego was an evolutionary necessity, but there is much that can be learned about consciousness by stepping backward..." Sil could tell the panel was unimpressed, the large man in the center who Sil thought would have looked more fitting in mutton chops, was pouring himself a glass of water. The woman on the end tapped her Parker on a legal pad and constantly pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her slender and apparently ineffective nose. Sil slipped out again and sat down on a folding chair in the hall. Waiben emerged with a clearly beaten look on his face. +"Syris," Sil called out as he walked out into the desert warmth. +"Sil. Was that you I heard come in?" +"Yeah." +"At least I can finish out the semester. I'm not going to, but I still get the money." +"That's good. How have you been?" +"I'm tired. And hungry, would you join me for lunch?" +The walked across campus to a small diner that served breakfast all day and Waiben ordered an omlette. Sil watched him eat and sipped a warm beer. "Do you remember Von Hock at Cambridge?" +"Was that the nut job that thought Yuri Gellar was visionary mystic?" +No. That was Von Statler, you're confusing your Germans. Von Hock was the one that thought Alexandrian Library was actually saved and squirreled away in the vault in Venice or something." +"Oh yeah. With the grad student..." +"Corrinne. Yeah. She spoke seven languages, did you know that?" +Waiben raised his eyebrows. "Well, I did hear she was quite talented with her tongue, but to be honest I didn't take it that way." +"Very funny. No. She was brilliant." Sil temporarily drifts. "But the reason I ask is that." He stops to take a sip of beer. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. +"You can't smoke in here." +"No, you can't get caught smoking in here." Sil lit his cigarette, holding it between his thumb and forefinger the rest of his hand curled over it. He took a drag and thrust his hand under the table. He exhaled down to his left and waved his hand to clear the smoke. "This is going to sound a bit crazy, which is why I'm telling you." +Waiben noticed for the first time that Sil looked slightly different, exhausted perhaps. There were dark rings around his eyes, his cheeks slightly sunken, his hand shook slightly when he reached for his beer. Waiben watched him as he talked thinking of the day, several weeks past that he had taken off his headphone and stood up from his desk to retrieve a book from his shelf and he had heard grunting and moaning. Waiben had been in academic setting long enough to know that the best course of action was to put on his headphones and go back to work, but he'd also been in academic settings long enough to not need to do anything more than that. Sil knew he realized, had probably known a lot longer than Waiben given Sil's preternatural intuition. +But as he listened to Sil's story he slowly began to doubt that his sleeplessness had anything to do with Claire. At some point a familar chill passed down his spine the likes of which he had not felt in years, probably since Paris. +"You think it's him?" Waiben said finally. +"Yes I do." + + + +
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/notes.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/notes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fec9b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/notes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,569 @@ +tPerhaps these two books are in fact that same. + +We start with Sil and Dean launching the boat, Sil off to handle the last big smuggling run, the intro to Claire who is in new york, the tanks come rolling in, Claire is taken prisoner, Sil sets off to find her. Dean is with the little girl? or she ends up with Sil? + +Or maybe Claire is not in new york, Maya is, Sil sets off to find her but never does. Instead he finds the little girl? + +How does Claire fit in in that scenario? + +how is the intro to the other book useful in that case? + +The three are friends? Is jimmy a separate character? is he dean? + +Is scratch lazlo? mellowed with age. even though he doesn't age. mellowed with the passing of time? + +Or do I just not want to write the first book and yet am scared to tackle the second? + +1 + + +She is tightly stitched in cloud. Returning again, collapsing inward, from the warm belly up, rising out of the swelter of underworld night, a silver-scaled blindfish in the mouth of a watery serpent, thin cocooned body wrapped in sticky, fibrous light, peeling muslin and gauze, with scarlet flakes of skin like milky stars screaming across the night sky. The bending cottonwoods mark the wind crawling out of canyons and rocky stream beds to snag autumn's last leaves, plucked and shivering down into puddles of rainwater spilled from leaf choked gutters, running down to rivers to sea to night to the moss slick depths of winding subterranean swells, the rumble of rising waters, boulders smashing bank and bone, swallowing shoots of sallow and debris, the drowning. Starbursts and flashes in parallax at the edges of the horizon where the sun sinks and a streak of cloud paints waning purple across the western skyline. Claire stood at the basement window trembling, arms crossed over her chest, a cigarette clenched between her fingers. The color drained out of the day like bleached laundry on the line, an ebb tide of evening light retreated across the gravel parking lot chased by the shadows of a train descending into a tunnel, plumbing the unknown depth of rock and sand beneath the well-lit fixtures of day. Claire took a drag and watched a canyon wren hopping on the ground in front of the window, its watery black eyes pausing from time to time to take her in, a breath, a shadow, a movement, the dry salt of cheeks pressed together. She could feel the cold stillness descending just beyond the smudged shelter of glass, a tuft of wind ruffled the wren and in a black streak it disappeared into the sky. The day seemed to suck in on itself, a collapsing uncertainty, like so many passenger pigeons, limping, broken-winged and exhausted, returning home on foot. The afternoon shrunk into night, pulled in reserve what remained, hunkering down in canyons and valleys, a laughing wind among the willows waiting out the night. Claire's cigarette continued to burn, but she did not smoke it. She turned away from the window and sat down against the wall, opposite Jimmy. + +He stared directly into the gray-green pools of her eyes, noting the saline scales clinging to her cheeks, but he did not see anything he recognized, instead there lay only a thick absence, sewn like cobwebs choking juniper boughs. "Does this help?" + +"Help?" Claire turned away from him lay down on the floor and watched the thin gray ribbons of smoke drift up from her cigarette toward the asbestos ceiling where the smoke spread out, billowing in all directions as if suddenly robbed of purpose, drifting aimlessly now across inverted fields of thread and fiber, plaster and silence, a ghost wandering up out of the building leaving behind a body of ash. + +Jimmy sat back against the wall, one leg drawn up studying his fingernails, slowly trying to work the packed bearing grease and smoky motor oil from under them. After a while he gave up on his nails and reached into a greasy paper sack and extracted a boiled peanut which he shelled in one smooth motion extracting the flesh and flicking the husk into a metal waste-bin to his right. "It's not a question of helping is it?" + +She ignored his question. "We're going to be shut down aren't we?" + +"Probably." + +"Then was it pointless?" + +"Probably. Maybe? I don't know." He eyed her suspiciously unsure of what to say. "You should ash," he said finally, sliding the aluminum can toward Claire with an ear grating screech that continue to echo about the room long after the waste bin came to halt next to her arm. + +Ignoring the involuntary shiver down her spine, Claire distractedly flicked her cigarette toward the can, arcing a spray of ash which splashed against the side of the can and dusted down, a trail of unattached white flakes fell like dead skin left behind, floating down from some unseen body already departed but reminders, remembrances still settling on the soft angora fibers of her sweater, the skin you couldn't escape, the dust on the shelves, thin layers of everyone coating the world in a barely discernible varnish. + +"It feels like... Jimmy, I need..." + +He looked at her as if waiting for the thought to be continued, but she did not indulge him. He returned to his peanuts. + +Claire hooked a bit of her reddish hair behind her ear and watched Jimmy as he ate. He began to talk in an abstracted, detached manner that she found tedious, speaking as if the words were merely ideas, had no value themselves but what a listener might attach to them. She was still caught between the two worlds and had trouble understanding why he couldn't see that every word had a meaning, that language was not an abstraction but the very thing that constructed the world he lived in, the world she was slowly returning to wondering -- is it possible to live mythically?. We sew each vital stitch, but not without doubt; a cell cannot survive without each constituent part, this is why Darwin suffers his thumb. She remembered the colors mainly, in these re-entry moments -- the color removed from light, able to stand and dance on it's own like some synesthesia of sight and motion, vision and touch, such that, like remembering the image of a sleeping loved one long after they are gone, something inside you wanted to burst outward with an indescribable and joyful sadness, a complete and total synthesis of opposites, with none of the bore of happiness, no hackneyed sentiment, without cynicism, without skepticism, where the sun alights your every nerve and you know that for what seems like the first time that you exist, really exist. She thought suddenly of something her grandmother has once said, *once something dies, you can't make it live*. But lingering in this boundary land it almost felt like you could raise the dead, like perhaps you have and you simply don't remember it. Here the pieces seemed, if not to fit, to at least possess a cohesive integrity that could connect the disparity of the clothes and the body, the ship and the sea, the rain and the flood, wave over wave under, so much movement and still so still, as if the sky filled your skull. "A realization of the imagination," as Sil had said. Sil had also once remarked that the danger with tapping into the vast realms of the imagination, which as he pointed out bore a more than passing linguistic similarity to the word magic, is that you might suddenly find yourself having called up something you cannot put down, a notion that continued to haunt Claire every time she returned. And yet Sil was so utterly unperturbed by the world around him that Claire found it difficult to imagine him ever truly afraid of anything, though there were whispers of something, something she had thus far refrained from asking him about -- and then one day he simply did not show up. But Claire continued, not in hopes of helping anyone, but because she couldn't let go of the feeling that this was a way back, that the continual projection outward and its commiserate return inward would allow her just once to exist outside herself, to live for one fleeting moment as not Claire but as everyone indivisible. + +Down the hall from where Jimmy and Claire lounged in the dwindling twilight, in a small room lined with bulging bookshelves stuffed to the gills with a collection of scientific volumes from the usual suspects like Freud, Jung, Einstein, Darwin and Bohr as well as more esoteric tomes from the likes of Korzybski, Reich, Tesla, Leibniz and others, sat man in wrinkled slacks with a partly unbuttoned lab coat that revealed a stethoscope and a coffee-stained shirt beneath it. The man wore headphones and pounded on a keyboard in burst and stutters of clacking keys, but he stared straight ahead as if reading his words off an unseen screen over the wall in front of him, perhaps backlit by an unseen projector with glowing unseen Aeolight tubes requisitioned from the Army Air Corp cum Air Force dumping ground not five miles from this very hospital. Eschewing the tendencies of his collegues toward frazzled chaoic hairstyles, Dr Waiben's head was closely shorn which never ceased to amaze those previously familiar with him only through his works, which was admittedly a small, though devoted group. That he was the preminint scholar in his field was unquestioned, however, the exact number of competing scholars was not directly known, but assumed by most to be fairly low, which is not to say his illustrious curriculum vitae was anything to sneeze at... having studied at the prestigeous Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University, he briefly took up residence there, though his leaning toward applying rigourusly scientific tests to his collegues somewhat questionable methodology put him on the outs, eventually he left for a stint in Vienna, and then to PanthŽon-Sorbonne where he took up redience in the Applied Mathematics department until the student protests of the sixties, when, making the ill-advised assumption that democratic protest had a strong future in France, he had sided with the students and shortly found himself deported back to the American shores from whence he came. Having then taken up residence at the recently defunded and dispersed Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Woulden College of Parapsychology And Esoteric Electrical Phenomena (P.E.E.P), owing to his groundbreaking work in attempting to test Riech's still controversial orgone-based "cloud busting" theories (a project funded almost entirely by the equally controvserial Montasano seed company, rumored to be seeking yet another means of holding the industrial farming industry over the barrel as it were) he now found himself marroned here in the Arizona desert with the dubious destinction of being the only scientist in the country legally authorized to administer Dimethyltryptamine to a baker's dozen of carefully selected patients on the vague premise that DMT might be useful in rehabilitating certain psychological borderline cases back to what was culturally defined as workably human. How he had convinced not just the FDA, but also the stuffy starched collar suits that oversaw the budgetary constraints of the University of Arizona at Tucson that DMT was a viable research subject was something even Waiben was only dimly aware of and with the rapid approach of his half yearly report his mind had lately been trying with considerable effort to recollect the exact wording of his original Q and A with the suits. + +There had been a time when Waiben was quite certain that his work was worthwhile, worthy even. He like to style himself as a garbage collector of scientific theory moving slowly through long disregarded tomes to empiraically demostrate them false, one by one, despite that fact that he tended to work from a negative hypothesis which put him at odds with not only those others working in the "fringe" fields of science, who naturally disliked his sharply critical repukes of their theories, but also the more mainstream scientists who either dismissed him outright, or couldn't understand why he wasted his time with theories he inevitably proved false. Lately Waiben had started to sway toward this later argument and was seriously considering retirement at the relavitely ripe old age of sixty eight, "just about a Christie's worthy vintage" his erstwhile collegue and friend from his days at the Sorbonne, Vandamire Scott quipped. "What you ought to do my boy," Scott suggested, "is get out on the lecture circuit. Quite a lot of these up and coming American Unies are only too eager to lay their hands on someone like us, *studied in Europe* they always put on the flyers." Vandameer chuckled, "You might end up in a nearly empty lecture hall down the the Humanities ghetto (perish the thought), but you'd be surpirsed who turns up... quite a number of impressionable young women who turn to 'kooky' scientific tomes to spice up their otherwise dull poetry. And you'd be amazed how the May-November romance seems to sparkle for them, at least for a night or two." Waiben dismissed the later notion as predatory ("evolutionarily necessary," Vandameer retorted) and so he sat late in the evening on a Friday typing up notes while Scott shagged his way through Conneticutt having stopped over for an extended dalliance in Watertown the details of which he was only too eager to relay during a recent phone call -- nipples like summer fruit my boy... Do you remember when your skin was taught? Good lord! -- Waiben hung up mid sentence. Which isn't to say Waiben was above the occaissional abridged affaire de coeurs himself. Lately he found himself unable to concentrate when a certain subject, Claire Bierce, was in the chair, an ever-present scent of peaches seemed to accompany her into the room, a delusion which Waiben was pretty sure arose solely from him discovering via her background forms that she orginated from the state of Georgia. Nevertheless Claire possessed an undeniable precessence, a musicality in her very movement hinted not just at a willful inclination toward the sort of deparity that men find similatneously appealing and horrifying, but also a depth of character that made you want to sink into her thoughts as if collapsing onto a feather bed to disappear into the relaxed ease of sleep. But having already lost his longtime research assistant, who protested an "inability to maintain scientific integrity when Claire is in the room," Dr Waiben was wary of his owning growing inability to do likewise, but, or perhaps, as he was only now began to appreciate, *because of* this lack of scientific objectification, Claire had unquestionably become the most valuable subject in his experiement. Hippy enthusiasm not withstanding, it was surprisingly difficult to find people willing to subject themselves to the rigors of Dimethyltryptamine. Of the forty or so volunteers who showed up at the initital public cattle call, only seventeen had passed the prescreening and of those only a dozen had returned after their first dose, which was in hindsight rather large. In the course of the next six months he had lost another to possession charges and another to Ohio, which Waiben freely admitted was the most humilating thing that had yet happened in his research career. However Claire made up for it, not just in her lucid descriptions and remarkable ability to retain organized thoughts where even the most skeptical of the others turned to jellied, raving idiots, but because she made everyone around her want to continue in spite of the increasing sense of futility that pervaded everyone involved, including Waiben. So it was irritating when tonight Vandameer's skin comment had unwillingly crept into Waiben's mind as he watched Claire's face, the billowing softness of it, the slight hints of a laugh line, a crease of time only recently realized on the vast pallet of youth, and it began to consume him in a way that no skin had since that afternoon in the sun-drenched Parisian apartment when, for one strange moment, while inside a young exchange student who, one foot on the ground, one foot raised on a kitchen stool as Waiben entered her from the front, in a moment of glaze-eyed lust breathed, "you make me want to be a whore," an Arabian Nights-like celebration of decandance and depravity which might well have been the only thing that pulled Waiben's mind back from the diaphaneitous realms of feminality, where he was encountering for the first time the full force of his own soul, in the momentary and then sustained contact with her skin, so incredably hushed and enveloping, the nerves of his own skin, by comparison callous, dumb and uncouth, relayed back a sensation that hinted at the falacy of the seemingly indelable seperation of one body from the next and rather implied that there might be elastic mingling of bodies, a slipping, AEther-like permeability between everyone, as if by a passage through the core fires of sun, he had suddenly emerged in some parallel universe where the word soul had not yet been worn out. + +Waiben rewound the tape and turned the page. The clacking noise took up once more, seeping past the open door, out into the submerged watery darkness of the hall. + +Claire was back now. With all the depressing letdown that inevitably brought with it. She distracted herself listening to Jimmy, but the utter disappointment of satiation would not retreat that easily and she had trouble following his voice. It warbled like a finch fluttering about its cage. The clacking of Waiben's typing distracted her thoughts. She watched Jimmy tap his foot distractedly on the floor to some unheard beat, his unruly rag of brown hair and thick, black-framed glasses nodding unconsciously. She smiled, this why I come back, not for the world, but for my part of it. And then the guilt shattered her vision. She had wanted. She had wanted to tell him, but he so rarely stopped talking. Though she knew he talked during these comedown session mainly for her benefit, it did make it hard to get a word in edgewise. But she also knew that the longer she waited, the worse the guilt felt. She slowly drew herself up, wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked back and forth. "Jimmy." she said his name shyly as if not wanting to disturb him. "My grandmother died two days ago..." She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but her voice betrayed her. + +Jimmy sat stunned silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, Claire why didn't you..." + +"Don't be sorry Jimmy, she was old, she was sick." Claire sighed, she could feel tears coming to her eyes, but she lay back down and stared blankly at the ceiling. "Actually she didn't die, she killed herself." The tears came more freely now and she made no effort to hide her face from him. "I don't know why I didn't say anything. I thought maybe it would come up when I was..." She waited to see if he would finish the sentence for her. + +He shook his head, but said nothing. + +She gathered herself and looked at Jimmy pleadingly. "Well. Will you come to the funeral tomorrow?" + +"Of course." Jimmy rolled down the top of the greasy paper bag and rose to his feet. "Let's get out of here. I'll let him know we're leaving," he said and walked quickly from the room. + +She listened to his footsteps padding down the hall, a murmur of voices, she thought of cranes moving slow over the marsh, ungainly long legs tucked behind them, momentarily streamlined as if just an extension of their bodies, gliding low of the reeds an cattails, the musty smell of brackish water at sunset, the first crisp of fall harking in gusts of wind. + +Claire dropped the still burning cigarette in the waste bin and slowly sat up. The chair was exactly as it had been, worn arms gone from taupe to a bruised gray, stirrups pushed to either side. The metal table, the tray of needles and potions, Benzedrine alkaloids encased in syringes, opiate derivatives still lying unneeded, a broken piece of glass tubing with burned ends lay to the side. The waxy black shelves behind the tray were covered in a grotesque ephemera of zoological oddities, reptiles in formaldehyde, a coiled rattlesnake, a horned lizard with its forelegs pressed against the glass, a scaly gila monster in beaded orange and brown faded by the glare of afternoon sun, the stuffed Toucan decaying on a broken palo verde branch, its gnarled scaly feet now held in place by wrapped metal wire. Higher up there were fossilized trilobites propped on plastic stands and the ghost image of a fern embedded in shale. She shuddered at the sight of a blind newt sitting on the top shelf its regressive eye sockets covered by a fine milky fold of proto skin. She grabbed her coat from the rack and turned to leave. She flipped the light and turned to pull the door shut behind her glancing involuntarily at the top shelf where the two-headed cat stared down at her, four accusing eyes reflecting the dusting moonlight. + +In the car they didn't speak. Jimmy brought the Falcon up to speed and slid onto the interstate. Claire watched the caustic yellow glow of the city on the clouds in the rearview mirror. She smiled suddenly, "My grandmother told me once that she used to chew sand." + +"Chew sand?" Jimmy fingered the locking shifter and flicked ash out a cracked window. Wind hissed in the slipstream. + +"Her family came west in the dust bowl. My great grandfather was dying of tuberculosis, they brought him out on the back of pickup, seven kids and dying man." + +"Sounds like a Faulkner novel." + +"Yeah but my great grandfather mysteriously recovered and ran off with a VA nurse, never to be heard from again." + +Jimmy chuckled, "sounds even more like Faulkner." + +Claire stared out the window at the sagebrush racing by in streaks of pale green lit up by the headlights. "My grandmother said there was so much dust and dirt and grit that it just leeched into your skin, clogged all your pores... and there's her father coughing up blood on the bed of the truck... and Gamma and her brothers and sisters sitting there spitting out dust every few minutes, deaf with wind, no one talking, barely able to even see each other... let alone hear a conversation... and they rode like that for five days, all the way from eastern Kansas to here.... My grandmother told me that at some point she just decided to stop spitting out the sand, she let it collect on the edges of her lips and every now and then she'd run her tongue over her lips, draw the sand in her mouth and try to chew it." Claire laughed softly. "I'll never forget her telling me that, she was laughing when she finished the story and she said it was one of her happiest memories." Claire turned to look at Jimmy. "Imagine that Jimmy, imagine if one of your fondest memories was of chewing sand... I wish she had told me why." She turned back to the window and the tears came again. She watched them in the reflection, they rolled silently down her cheeks as if they, and indeed her own face, belonged to someone else + +The streetlights gave way to the dusty darkness of a gravel road, they were enveloped in a dusty cloud, Claire rolled down the window and stuck her head outside, tongue extended laughing and crying at the same time, the wind whipped her tears off her cheeks and carried them out into the parched desert night. The dust and sand stung her cheeks and filled her eyes. She ducked back inside the car coughing and spitting. "Crazy woman," she muttered. + +The bar was packed and sweltering, sticky bodies thronged together, scrunched shoulders and craning necks, trickles of sweat were visible on necks and earlobes as Claire struggled through the crowd trying to follow Jimmy toward the back of the room. Amid little grunts of pain, whispers of apology and finally a margin of cool air from the back door. Jimmy broke through, dragging Claire behind him to fall into a booth next to a half drunk and grinning version of Sil, animated like a cartoon in the dim light of the booth. "Jimmy! Just the man I was looking for, starter died this morning I had to kick start the beast to get here this afternoon..." His voice trailed off as he studied Claire's dusty face, "What happened to you?" Claire groaned and let her purse drop from her shoulder to the cushion beside her. "I was trying to chew sand." She laughed and took the beer that Sil held out to her. He shrugged but said nothing. Sil was probably the only person she knew who never insisted on sussing out some greater explanation, or at least if he ever did so he kept it to himself. She laid her head on his shoulder. He and jimmy begin to talk of motorcycles. Claire listened half heartedly, wishing that the music would begin. It wasn't that she minded so much the talk of carburetors and fuel pumps, she even had a motorcycle herself, a gift from Sil and Jimmy who decided that anyone crazy enough to catapult themselves into the psychedelic realm of elves and aliens ought to have no trouble riding a motorcycle. And the truth was she enjoyed it, she even enjoyed fixing it since between the two of them they seemed able to scrap together only enough money to by some late seventies vintage machine that had hitherto been resting in some junkyard the two of them frequented when they went scrounging for parts. All things considered she would have welcomed a distracting conversation, but she didn't want to talk about bikes, she didn't want to talk about anything that wouldn't matter tomorrow. Beside which it was February and only Sil was insane enough to ride his motorcycle in the freezing cold nights of February in Tucson anyway. She threaded her arm around Sil's working her elbom into the warmth of his belly and thought about his curious, impervious detachment to temperature. She recalled once staying over at his house and watching him step out for a cigarette barefoot in the snow. Claire had once witnessed him dip his fingers in boiling water to retrieve a bobbing potato with apparently no pain whatsoever, just an embarrassed blush when he caught her staring, mouth agape. + +Somewhere on the far side of the throng that was now backed all the way up to their both such that a row of shapely asses and thighs threatened to impinge on their drinks, a saxophone began to tune, squelching suggestively and then the kick drums thumped once or twice and the show started suddenly out of the chaos of tuning a half disernable melody began to emerge. Claire released Sil and climbed up on the back of the booth, spine arched and craned her neck trying to see over the crowd. All the shoulders and stooped backs turned just so, perfectly aligning the emptiness between Claire and the stage so that her eyes met those of the dancer onstage and cannot avoid but meet them again. A writhing serpentine figure that that spiraled around the man with the metal chest, or rather with the metal attached to his chest. To his face. To his lips. It sounded like Paleolithic cave drawings -- dueling sculptors chipping at the same stone, part horrific cacophony, and part terrifying clarity. The dancer fell to the floor of the stage and then began to rise in slow circling motions, spinning as if to slow the motion of the earth to rob it of some spped that would cause everyone in the room to suddenly sieze upon this moment as fragmentory, fleeting, but not yet gone, to sieze it and hold it and never let go. The trio had been in town for three weeks now, a long pause on a journey into something only dust and angels were really fully aware of, pausing here to pack out the Rattle Bar and Grill which had not seen the likes of such talent in all it's barren days and for which the owner, proprietor and occasional bartender Sil Hawkard had been paying handsomely. And he made sure to ply Claire with plenty of free beverages to entertain and enlarge the ever flexible nature of perception such that a certain dancer of curiously indecipherable ethnic origins who had tendencies toward the affections fay, cherry-haired young women might continue to take residence in the dilapidated guesthouse behind the bar over the increasingly vocal grumblings of the saxophonist and the drummer who understandably did not see a future for avant garde jazz in Tucson Arizona. + +Later the patrons couple off in a haze of alcohol and dust from taxis circling in the drive, and the night began to take on a bruised character, like a drunk beginning to sober in a cold lonely jail cell. + +Claire excused herself to the bathroom. Jimmy sat up straight and eyed Sil out of the corner of his eye, "You going to the funeral tomorrow?" + +Sil nodded and sat silent for a moment as if weighing out the words that both of them knew would be next. "She wanted to tell you Jimmy," He spoke slowly and stared at his empty glass, fiddling with it. "I think she just feels strange because you're there, in the room." He looked up at Jimmy. "She thinks you know things about her that she doesn't know." + +"I do." Jimmy spoke matter-of-factly as if it were a thing of no importance. + +"Well, I'm just saying, don't take it personally if she doesn't tell you things sometimes, she's just protecting herself." + +"You make it sound like we're lovers Sil." + +"What the hell does that have to do with it? If you were lovers she'd have told you already, it's always your friends that really hurt you." Sil smiled ironically. + +Jimmy pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the table but didn't light it. "This afternoon she became her grandmother." + +Sil's head snapped up to meet Jimmy's gaze, "What do you mean 'became'?" + +"It happens quite a bit, she becomes other people, sometimes her family members, sometimes distant relatives I'm pretty sure she never even knew... + +"Are you going to tell her?" + +"I can't Sil." + +"Fuck what Waiben wants Jimmy, the whole fucking thing is going o get shut down anyway as soon as he publishes this stuff, probably even sooner. He's already skating on thin ice at with the University, once they find out that he's convinced DMT gives you access to spirit worlds or whatever shit he seems convinced it does, he's fucking finished. The scientific element'll finally go out the window and he'll pick up and move on in some other fucking direction. That's what he always does. The man is batshit crazy..." + +Claire sat back down next to Jimmy and suddenly glared at Sil. "He is not." + +"Claire I've known him longer than you, trust me he's batshit crazy. For the most part in a good way, but you just never know... I've always avoided delving too deep into his craziness. Frankly there's no way of telling what's down there at the bottom. I mean do you know anyone else who's fallen out of an airplane and lived?" + +"He didn't fall, he jumped." + +"I rest my case -- bat shit crazy." Sil slumped back and swirled the drink. "Jasmine my dear, when you get a sec I need a splash." The girl behind the bar nodded but didn't stop rinsing glasses and stacking them on the shelf behind her. + +Claire continued to glared at Sil, but on the other hand she did half believe him. Waiben, or Scratch as Sil called him -- for reasons no one seemed to be aware of save Sil -- was, at the very least, eccentric. Claire desperately wanted to ask Sil more about Waiben, but had always refused to out of pride. She knew Waiben was Sil had worked together for years, but then he had just left. Dropped the whole thing without so much as a phone call. Bought the bar and hadn't, so far as she knew, spoken to Waiben since. Neither Claire nor anyone else had ever induced either Sil or Waiben to elucidate on the situation, though neither spoke ill of the other, provided bat-shit crazy was not considered ill. + +"You look like you're going to skin me alive," Sil met her definate gaze with what he undoubtedly considered a warm, open sort of smile but which Claire found somehow intruding, as if he were listening to her thoughts. + +"Naw. Market's dropped out in pelts." She took a last drag from her bottle of beer and faked a smile back at him. + +Jimmy had become sullen and quiet. He popped a handful of peanuts in his mouth and slid out of the booth. "Time for me to go I guess, you coming Claire?" + +"Naw, I'll stay a bit." + +"Okay. I'll see ya'll tomorrow." Jimmy walked over shook hands with the bartender and wandered out the front door. Sil and Claire watched him go. + +"You finally told him?" + +"Did he say something to you?" + +"He asked if I was going." + +"Oh." She felt a sicking pit open up in her stomach. "Can I stay with you tonight?" + +"You'll have to ride on the bike..." + +Sil fell asleep the minute he took off his clothes and sunk onto the bed. Claire ran the water, filling the bathtub. She slowly peeled off her clothing and stared at her body in the mirror. Her hair was stringy and dry, her face rimmed in a thin layer of dust. She sighed and walked back into the bedroom to retrieve a candle. She lit the candle and turned off the bathroom light. She turned off the water and sank slowly into the tub. The water enveloped her like an electric blank on a midwest morning, she lowered her body further into the water and slowly let her head go under. Her hair floated up and clung to the surface as the watery silence filled her ears and the rhythm of her own heart filled her ears. + +She remembered the last time she had seen her grandmother. They were sitting at the kitchen table the yellow flowered curtains puffed with the first cool breeze of fall. Her grandmother asked Claire for a cigarette. Claire protested at first but her grandmother said it didn't matter anymore, she might as well enjoy what was left. Claire ended up giving her a cigarette and fished out another for herself. Her grandmother struck a match and held it up for Claire who had leaned in to light, meeting her grandmother's eyes as she did, struck at once that though the skin of her face was loose and drawn, her eyes had the same liquid brightness of a baby, the seemed to crackle with life in spite of the dying that surrounded them. Claire sat back in her chair and studied her grandmother's face as she smoked, wondering what how it looked, young and smooth, before eighty years spent in and out of the desert sun. + +Claire remembered thinking that to some people the desert was a hot wind at the gas station, something passing through and to be passed through. Others saw a sunny retreat from cold wind billowing off northern lakes; some saw it as an endless playground of sunshine, golf and hotel pools. Her grandmother simply arrived in it one day, accepted it and tried to swallow it, literally Claire realized now. + +"It used to be so beautiful here in the fall," her grandmother was staring out the back door toward the mountains. "Those hills where covered with junipers and in the gullies there were enormous Sycamores and Cottonwoods that turned yellow and orange..." + +Claire looked up at the hills now covered in houses. She remembered dimly, as a girl, walking in the canyons with her grandmother and grandfather, gathering leaves and looking for wizards and fairies in the shaded glades of trees, the cool moist air near the water, the dry crunch of leaves under her young feet. + +"It still is beautiful, though," Her grandmother turned in her chair and flicked a bit of ash into the kitchen sink. "Claire." She stopped as if gathering something up within her, "I'm dying." + +Claire lifted her head out of the rub and drew her legs up, tucking her feet under her and wrapping her arms around her knees. + +What is age made of, what shape does death take as it drew nearer? Perhaps it takes no clearer shape, perhaps death remains forever a stranger, perhaps it's life that has sharper shape when death approaches. If life begins in pleasure and ends in pain is it therefore necessarily futile? Is it just an expansive joke, me being the product of endless strangers' pleasure, rooted in their bellies and born through their legs only to end in pain? And what? Along the way move to feel my own pleasure and bear out strangers of my own, slowly plodding toward the pain? She thought of Aldus Huxley and his anesthetized, hallucinatory suicide. Was that cheating? Was the pain necessary? Was it still possible to die with grace, naturally, without the infest of disease, that latter day stranger come to roost itself like so many passenger pigeons returned home? She thought of her grandmother's pain, swept up in the rising river, the boulders, she wondered if it had lasted, if it had passed quickly or never existed at all. She wondered what her grandmother had thought of, sitting there beside the river, soaked through by the rain, watching the water rise, the distant rumble of boulders beginning to move, the faint white noise of the coming flood... and then... what? Claire leaned her head on her knees and watched the candle flickering. She remembered her grandmother's eyes the moist vitality in them, the tiny universes of memory floating in a saline ether with faint but visible stars beginning to glow behind them. + + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + +"It was a lovely service doncha think?" + +Claire felt a little vomit start to migrate up her throat, but she just smiled at her aunt and nodded. Claire hadn't been at the funeral. True, her body had stood between Sil and her Aunt, but she never heard the words and just watched dumbly as everyone dropped a handful of dirt down a whole that contained some shattered remnants of her grandmother that the fire department had managed to salvage from the river a full twnety two miles from the canyon where her car was parked. Claire had spent most of the brief cemermony watching the traffic on N. Oracle speeding along as usual. Afterward everyone retreated back to their cars and as Jimmy drove them toward the foothills for the reception at her Aunt's house Claire watched a group of hotair balloons begin to slowly lift off from the small airfield on the outskirts of town. She did her time making rounds taking in condolances from well-meaning family members she knew would drive home commenting on the tattoo on her wrist, the small diamond stud in her nose, the unkept wildness of her hair, the fact that she had not one, but two men with her, the fact that she hadn't been to church since the eighth grade when James Becker tried to rape her bdhind the chapel and she broke his nose with a brick, the later detail seemingly the ony one anyone cared to remember, she smiled but she sould see the clucking disapproaval in her both of her aunts and the slightly creepy leering grin of their husbands, one of whom had tried to kiss her at his own wedding three years ago. + +As always Claire used cigarettes to escape her family. She slipped outside at the earliest possible moment and sat down on the patio table to watch her young cousin. He marched up to her a plfastic fireman's hat wildly cockeyed on his head and strangely out of place with the suit he still had on. "How are you Darren?" + +He shrugged and looked at her shyly. "You have a picture on your arm." + +"Yes I do Darren. It's called a tattoo, it's ink embedded... + +"What's it a picture of?" + +Claire pulled up her sleeve so he could see the whole tattoo. "It's all the signs of the Zodiac in a circle... When were you born Darren? March?" + +He nodded but kept staring at her arm. "This is your symbol right here." She pointed to Aries, which he leaned in to scrutinize closer. "You're an Aries. That means your symbol is the the Bull. Very strong." + +He seemed please by this notion and Claire neglected to add that he would very likely grow up constantly falling in and out of love with a string of trailor park ex-wives spreading in his wake. + +"Which one are you?" + +"I'm Sagitarious, this on here, the little hook like symbol." + +"Why do you have a tattoo?" + +She smiled. I got drunk once and it seemed like a good idea was Claire reasoned, not the appropriate response to give a five year old, but somehow she had never come up with better one. "Why do you have a nose?" + +He laughed, "I dunno, everyone has a nose... do I have a tattoo?" + +She giggled and raised his shirt and begin to tickle him, "I don't know let's see..." + +He squealed and ran away, circling back around, but staying just out of arms reach. "I don't have a tattoo," he said finally. + +"No you don't. But you can get one some day if you want." Claire tried to picture her Aunt's face when Darren would relay this bit of information. + +"Are you on drugs?" + +"What?" Claire snapped around and grabbed him by the arm. "Who told you that?" + +"No one. I just heard my mommy say it to daddy this morning." + +"Oh she did did she? Claire sat back in the chair and pulled Darren up on her lap and wrapped her arms around him. "And what else did your mommy say this morning?" + +"About you? I think she said "You're anxious." + +"Do you even know what anxious means?" + +"Momma said you're anxious cause you want to know bout the hertiance." + +"How old are you Darren?" + +"I'll be six soon." + +"And your mother told you I was nervous about an inheritance..." + +"No she said anxious." + +"Right. Anxious. Because..." + +"Because you won't be getting any money." + +Darren's mother was looking out at Claire from behind the sliding glass door, she waved from behind the glass, comfortable in her air conditioned cocoon; Claire smiled and waved back stifling the urge to mouth bitch at her. Her aunt openned the door and beckoned Darren inside. He climbed off of Claire and wandered toward the door. Claire took another sip of the cheap boxed chardonney she had poured earlier, it tasted a bit like peach juice, but it was slowly having the desired effect. She stood up and wandered through the yard and out into the river gully running just beyond the back fence. There was a trail leading down in the general direction of the river and Claire followed it walking slowly and keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes and scorpions. A breeze had begun almost as soon as the sun sunk behind the Catalina Mountains, not strong enough to bend the stiff twiggy branches of desert trees, it moved though in whispers, puffs of air brushing against her cheek. She thought of airports, hospitals, departure points, the shuffling of human feet moving in and out of rooms like last quiet sighs of breath. Claire watched the river and wondered vaguely what its name actually meant. It seemed odd to her that she had lived next to or around the Rialto River for so many years without ever wondering what the word meant. She felt as if she were herself a desert only recently become aware that someone had flung a river down on her. Or with desert ambivalence she had always had a river running around her but had simply never noticed it. What then does the desert make of the river? As she studied the scene that was cascading down the slope and away from the organization of the manicured patio and yard, she decided that the desert seemed to ignore the river entirely. The river was starting to flood again, somewhere far upstream three days rain had been feeding until it swelled like a Christmas ham, but ten yards on either side and it was sand again. Stagnant pink sand interspersed with prickly plants and clumps of sagebrush and Mesquite trees, ironwood her grandfather called it. The sand didn't care for the water, didn't hold onto it, didn't even try, just let the water flow right on over it, puddle and collect, run off and feed into the river. Farther in the distance there were the mountains ringing the desert, keeping watch over it, making sure it behaved in some general way. + +She could see a figure emerge from the house and begin to slowly pick its way through the cacti and palo verde up the sloop toward the rock where Claire sit. It wasn't until he was halfway to her that she recognized Jimmy. He climbed up on the rock, but didn't say anything. + +She leaved her head on his shoulder. "Can I ask you a question Jimmy? It's a stupid question, but I read it in a magazine yesterday and I can't stop thinking about." + +"Shoot." + +"If you were going to do something for the sole purpose of getting in the Guiness book of world records what would it be?" + +Jimmy laughed. "That's easy. Land speed record. currently held by my uncle who drove a rocket powered car at 457 mph across a dry lake in Nevada." + +"Seriously? I mean your uncle is really in the Guiness Book of world records?" + +"Seriously." + +"Huh." + +"And you?" + +"I would skydive from the stratosphere like that guy did a couple years ago, only, obviously, I'd have to start higher." + +"Yes you would. Did you go through an astronaut phase when you were younger?" + +"Not really. Maybe. I don't remember." She took out another cigarette and lit it. Jimmy snagged it from her lips and took a drag. She watched him awkwardly puff out the smoke. "You know what I read once? The first thing an astronaut said the first time he orbited the moon... He said 'well, it's pretty gray.' It's pretty gray, Jimmy. It's pretty fucking gray. This asshole is the first fucking human to see the moon close up, to orbit around it in it's own gravity and he says it's pretty fucking gray. Fuck him." + +"He had an impoverished imagination." + +Her head snapped up from where it had been resting on her knee. "Life is a collision of imagination and observation, Jimmy, and he fucking failed." + +"Maybe." + +"No Jimmy. He failed. He was one of about thirty people that have seen the moon up close and all he got out of it was that it's gray. He fucking failed." + +"You're assuming that gray meant nothing to him, but what if his mother had gray eyes and that was the one memory that came back to him when he was overwhelmed by being that close to the moon?" + +She rested her cheek on her knee again and rocked back and forth for a minute before speaking. "You're sweet Jimmy. You always defend people and want to think the best about them. I love you for that. In spite of the fact that deep down you're cynical too. But you try and that's what I love about you." + +Neither of them said anything for a while. The watched the balloons drift slowly across the sky. + +"Are you okay?" he asked finally. + +"I think so. I mean she basically told me she was going to do it. I did my crying a few days ago, now..." She stopped. "I can't cry around them for some reason." + +"Yeah." + +"You know I once cried so hard I swallowed a moth." She giggled. "I was supposed to go out with this guy. This was junior high. Maybe high school. No junior high. Anyway we were supposed to ride our bikes to the park in the evening and he never showed up and I waited and waited. I was so in love with this guy. So at about 10 o'clock I'm out on the porch-sobbing... You know those huffing snorting kind of sobs that women make when they're really upset? Hyperventilating sobs... anyway, I was chewing gum. I always used to chew gum. So I'm in the rocking chair sobbing, arms around my knees... this is so pathetic... I inhaled a moth somehow and before I realized it I chewed him right into my gum. It was crackly at first, but then more like chewing feathers. I remember running in to tell my grandmoter I had eaten a moth... I can't believe she didn't laugh at me." Claire smiled and looked a Jimmy's brown eyes shielded from the sun by a red socks hat. "I had a lot of disturbing, uh, incidents in childhood. I used to kidnap cats when I was little." + +"Kidnap cats?" + +"Gamma wouldn't let me have a cat. She actually told me years later that she she didn't want the cat because she didn't want to become an old lady with cats. I mean after the plane went down... I dunno. She could occasionaly be quite vain. I think she felt awkward raising me at her age." Claire stopped. Jimmy could feel her body shudder against his. He pictured her face distorting, trying to swallow back tears like she had the night before. + +"Anyway," She sniffed and drew herself up laughing softly. "I would go out and steal them from neighbors... At first I just petted them you know. Then I got one to follow me home. I felt like he loved me more than his owners and I cried when Gamma took him home. I was probably seven or eight when this happened. After that I went farther from home, several blocks away where I knew Gamma wouldn't know whose cat it was and I would have to post signs, found: cat. That sort of thing so, you know, I would have the cat for longer." + +"Right." + +"But these cats wouldn't follow me home. Too far I guess. So I would save my lunch money and on the way home from school I'd stop at Circle K and buy myself a slushy and Moon Pie and can of cat food. Then I'd ride my bike past my house, way back into the subdivision and lure cats home by dragging the cat food on a string behind my bike. One time I pulled into my driveway with three cats running behind me." + +"You were a cat rustler." This drew a laugh. + +"Yeah. I guess I was. One time, after I posted a bunch of found cat signs and stuff this old lady came to our house to pick up her cat and she was so excited that I had found her cat she gave me twenty dollars -- which was a lot of money at that age -- and bells went off in my head. So then I started kidnapping the cats for profit. I mean, when I could. I tried to pick cats that looked pampered or that were sitting in front of old lady houses. You know lots of papers collecting on the porch. Beat up seventies sedans. Maybe that was me subconsciously realizing my grandmother's fears or something. Anyway I was pretty good at casing a block and finding the old lady cats. When they would come over I'd put on a cute little dress and smile and play dumb and they would give me a reward. One month I made $200. That's when my Gamma caught on." + +"What'd she do?" + +"Bought me a cat." + +"Smart." + +"Yeah, but by then I didn't want one." They sat in silence again. The balloons were higher now. AT some length Claire collapsed onto Jimmy's shoulder and sighed deeply sliding down so that her head was on his chest. "My family thinks I'm on drugs." + +"Of course you're on drugs, you have a tattoo." Jimmy smiled at her and she through her arms around him suddenly punching him softly in the back. "What? your aunt already grilled Sil and I about it. Plus Claire, you do take drugs twice a week." + +"That's different. And besides my aunt's been popping Somas since her car accident, that was two fucking years ago and she still acts like it's no big deal, but get a tattoo... Jesus. You know her own mother couldn't stand her?" + +"I'm sure that's not true..." + +"Wait until the executor reads the will... Oh and that's another thing, they're all gonna hate me... Gamma gave me everything, I asked her not to, I even threated to give it all to my aunt if she did, but she said it was for me." + +"So you have a house now and everything?" + +"I guess so, yeah. I don't want it though, I can't live there without her. It would be weird. Wrong. Why do I need it? I already have everything from my parents..." She turned on her back and let her head rest in his lap. She looked up at him; his eyes were shadowed by a Red Sox hat that Sil had given him. His lips were red and seemed suddenly incredably close. She drew in a breathe, closed her eyes and slowly lifting her head until her own lips pressed against his softly. + +When they returned to the house Sil was in the backyard engaged in some sort of complex war-like game of super soaker mayhem with Darren. Sil stood in the middle of the yard with a super soaker in each hand looking not unlike the cover of Rambo firing dual streams of water at Darren who also had two super soakers, but was crouched behind a cactus biding his time. When Sil's streams fell short darren was up in a nearly identical fashion, hosing Sil down. Sil made no effort to dodge out of the way instead he resolutely pumped the super soakers building the pressure back up. Claire noted from the look of Sil's suit this had been going on for some time. She and Jimmy stepped through the gate just as Sil rose up, super soakers recharged. He half turned and faced both barrels toward them, a wicked grin crosed his face. She and jimmy both froze. "Don't even think about Sil," Claire warned. "I will not be laighing." + +"This is Armani man," Jimmy added. + +"Okay. Darren, the war is over, you win." Sil walked over to the table and laid down the guns. Darren tore about the yard in circles, "I win! I win I win I win!" + +Sil stripped off his jacket and wrung it dry. "Not Armani," he said drily. He fished a pack of cigarette out of the coat pocket and lit one. "So Claire... Do you know a friend of your grandmother's named Ambrose?" + +"No." + +"Hmmph. Neither does anybody else here. Well. When we were leaving the cemetery, this man came up to me, greeted me by name and asked me to give you this." Sil produced a slightly soggy business card and handed it to Claire. + +She looked down at the tattered peice of paper. "There was a finely drawn image of two fingers about to grasp the tail of a dragonfly. To the left of the drawing was a partially smeared scrawl of handwriting that read: "Call me." Claire turned the card over and read a local number. "Did he say what this was about?" + +Sil took a drag and eyed her suspiciously, she blushed slightly under his gaze. "No. He just said he was an old friend of your grandmother's and that he wanted you to get in touch with him as soon as possible." Sil sat down in a patio chair. "At the time I didn't think much of it, but then when I was inside talking to your aunt about it... the fat one, what's her name again?" + +"Debbi." + +"Right, Debbi. Anyway I was asking her if she knew if your grandmother had any friends by that name and it suddenly occurred to me that he had greeted me by name. Granted a lot of people know my name from the bar, but I didn't recognize this guy and all the sudden it creeped me out. I dunno, maybe he just overheard someone else say my name or something... he was at the funeral. He stood in the back opposite us. I vaguely remember him. Probably he just heard you call my name... Anyway, I relayed the message. My work here is done." + +"Yeah. Thanks." Claire stuffed the card in her pocket and went inside. Jimmy sat down next to Sil and bummed a drag. + +"So." + +"So." + +"Oh fuck off man. I was out here chasing that little monster with super soakers for the last half hour. That hill might seem like it's far away, but it isn't." + +"What do you want me to say?" + +"That it wasn't what it looked like." + +"What if it was?" + +"Then you need to pay your tab." + +"What?" + +"Your tab at the bar. Pay it." + +"Fuck you Sil. It wasn't me." + +"Funny. It sure looked like you." + +"Whatever man. It could just as easily have been you if you'd wandered up there." + +"Mmhmm. But I didn't." + +"And so what? no one else can either?" + +"What happened to objectivity?" + +"Is that what this is about?" + +"No." + +"Well." + +"All right. Sorry. It's none of my business." + +"Then why..." + +"Forget it." + +"She'll go home with you anyway." + +Sil sniffed sarcastically. + +The glass door slid open and Claire emerged with another drink in hand. "What are you talking about?" + +"Jimmy's love life," Sil chuckled. + +"Oh." Claire turned crimson and sat down next to Sil. + +"So he told you?" + +"Told me what?" Sil asked cautiously. + +Claire looked back and forth at them suspiciously. She sighed. "Jimmy's heart belongs to an online porn star." Claire collapsed in giggles which she tried to contain in the harsh glare of Jimmy's scowl. + +"She is not a porn star. And she has a name." It was Jimmy's turn to blush. + +"Oh yes, her name Sil, is Haley Wilde -- wild with an e mind you," Chloe giggled again momentarily. "So tell us Jimmy," Claire straightened her back with an audible popping noise, "does she or does she not earn a living by video taping herself having sex and then posting those videos on web?" + +"She does, but she only has sex with her boyfriend..." + +"Whom she claims to be much in love with..." + +'...and other girls." + +"And other girls" + +Sil's eyebrows shot up his forehead accenting the fact that a good half inch of the left one was missing, "wait, you're in love with a lesbian who loves her boyfriend?" + +"Yeah." + +"Shit." + +"Shit is right." Chloe drained her glass and looked at Jimmy cockeyed. "Jimmy you're an idiot and I mean that in the best way possible." She reached over and grabbed Sil's drink. "Oh and the best part is she has a tattoo of dolphin where her pubes should be." + +"Lasers. Problem solved." Jimmy waved his hand. + +"You're better off learning to love it." Sil snatched his glass back from Claire and in spite of it's obvious emptiness, tipped it toward his mouth. + +"I kind of already have," Jimmy smiled sheepishly. + +Night drew up like the pony express, expected on time. Claire's relatives slowly trickled out the sliding glass door to reiterate their condolances and drive back to their lives, clucking along the way. As Jimmy predicted, Claire got out of the car at Sil's house. Sil stood in the drive watching the Falcon disappear in a cloud of dust down River road. Claire had already gone inside. Sil walked up to the porch and sat down in the dilapidated rocking chair left behind by the previous tenant. After a while Claire's head poked out the door and she informed him that she was taking a shower and going to bed. He nodded. The bats were darting across the glowing, city-lit horizen. He heard the water running. Sil stood and walked in to the kitchen to retreive a bottle of Stags Leap Petite Syrah he had been saving for some time. He returned to the parch and sat down with the corkscrew. He popped the cork and took a draw from the bottle. + +After a while Claire came outside wrapped in Sil's robe. She sat down on his lap and picked up the bottle. She tilted her head back and let the wine run freely down her throat. Sil watched her face. She set the bottle back down on the porch. + +"Was Jimmy serious about that girl?" + +"What? The porn star? Yeah pretty serious. He made me watch a few videos and asked what I thought. It was weird, like when you meet someone's new girlfriend only this was just a girl on a screen talking dirty, but not really dirty, more like cutsy dirty. And touching herself. It faded out as she was licking her fingers." + +"Hmm." Sil shrugged. "Does she seem like a good person?" + +"Well... I must admit there is something about her... I mean I haven't seen a lot of pornography, but she doesn't strike me as someone cut out for it, which probably means she's a decent person. And she's goregous. But I mean, she's trying to internet sex star and she already has a boyfriend -- can you really be in love with someone that unattainable?" + +"Love doesn't seem to abide hopelessness." Sil reached down and started to take a pull from the bottle of wine, but Claire stopped him and pulled the bottle from his hands. She cupped bother her hands around Sil's stubble covered cheeks. She held his face like that for a moment and then shifted her wieght on his legs and let go of his face. He reached down and picked up the bottle again. She sighed. "I'm sorry Sil. I don't know why I kissed him..." + +"How did..." + +"Sil. You don't exactly have a poker face. Well, actually your face is pretty good, but your eyes give you away." She lay back against him and nuzzled her head under his chin. "It doesn't matter... his lips were just there... I needed to feel them, to feel something..." Her voice trailed off into the stoic stillness of the desert night. They watched a small lightning storm on the horizen, thin little bolts zig-zaged down into the sodium glow of the city. Sil thought about something his uncle had once said about lightning being six times hotter than the surface of the sun and yet generally less than three-eights of an inch thick. + +Later Claire stood up and lightly kissed his cheek, lingering for a moment to feel the roughness of his beard against her own skin. And then she stood and disappeared inside. After a while Sil rose drunkenly from the chair and stretched his back. He leaned down to grab the bottle of wine and stumbled toward the grassy desert unzipping his fly as he walked. Leaning his head back to swig from the bottle he paused to stare at the particles of starlight sneaking through the bruised clouds. He began to piss on the grassy desert sand, thinking that you adjust your breath to the one who breathes beside you. You lie very close, still and alone. + + + + + + * * * * * + + + + + +Sil was up with the sun fumbling in the half dark kitchen trying to find a grinder to go with the coffee beans already measured out in a cup sitting on the counter. He recalled with some amusement the apartment in Boston that he and Waiben had shared for four years, something his girlfriend as the time has considered exceedingly strange, "he's like what, sixty?" she used to say and then nothing more until Sil would correct her, "sixty-two actually." Sil used to wake up to Waiben singing "you got to get behind the mule every morning and plow" while he hunted around the kitchen for coffee beans. At that time they still had the old icebox that Waiben had found on the side of the road and patched up. Since it did the job neither of them thought to replace it for the better part of a year. When Waiben drank too much and passed out before sundown, he'd forget to restock the ice. The melted remnants of the previous day's block of ice would eventually force open the door and the contents of the icebox, including the bag of coffee would go crashing to the kitchen floor, skittering about on the icy water until they found their way into all kinds of strange places. "You got to get behind the mule every morning and plow" Waiben would sing while he slowly gathered everything up and restocked the icebox. When he invariably found the coffee lying in the farthest crack, he would squat down and scoot it along the floor over to the table, laughing and singing "...every morning and plow...every morning and plow..." Once Sil had crept up quietly to watch and he witnessed Waiben do a little dance, all crooked and insane owing to a bad knee that made his dancing hover between pathetic and comical. He would start gyrating at the waist, flopping his arms about while he sang. That first morning when Sil saw him do it, he momentarily thought Waiben was having a seizure the way he convulsed wildly about. Later Sil found out the line was a Tom Waits' lyric. + +Sil shivered as the grinder spun and he lit a cigarette waiting for the kettle to boil. He stepped gingerly across the freezing floor to stand by the open flame of the the stove. He glanced back toward the bedroom where he could see Claire sleeping. A ray of sunlight shot through the uncovered window to the right of the bed and the light slowly expanded, covering first the table and then worked it's way toward the white sheets where Claire lay. Her face was obscured in a swirl of coppery hair that spread out over her back and onto the pillow next to her, but her back was exposed and revealed her ivory skin marked here and there by the lines of pale brown, evidence of a spaghetti strap top worn in the sun, perhaps a bathing suit worn by the pool, the cholrine smell of summer suddenly washed over him and he was lost contemplating the linguistic transition from bathing costume to bathing suit until she stirred slightly in the bed and sheet moved to reveal the preternatually bright ink of the tattoo on Claire's lower back. The color of water and Lotus leaped up out of the white sheet as if heliotropically seeking the nearby patch of sun. Claire shifted again arching over and the tattoo moved into the sunlight. Sil momentarily closed his eyes and bit down on his already tightly clenched fist until it hurt far more than he had intended and the desire to leap on the bed and somehow dissolve himself over her somehow like a liquid banket of skin until he sunk into her, obliterating himself in the process like a stream ducking into the mouth of a cave bound for underground and never to return, had passed. Eventually he retreated back to the kitchen lest he act on impulse, though he was dimly aware that he wasn't so much restraining himself as merely postponing the inevitable with the vague promise of the indefinite. + +Coffee in hand he swung open the front door and stepped gingerly out onto what had once been the porch, but now served mainly as a means to inject splinters in his cold bare feet. The truth was Sil wasn't impervious to pain, he simply ignored it. He stepped slowly over the brittle gray wood and out into the sandy yard. He lit another cigarette and stretched his back in the sunlight. He turned and looked back at the house. The roof was rotten from termites and an extended family of rats lived in the ceiling panels. The walls were paper-thin, insulated with spider webs and the only heat came from the anceint pot bellied stove that spit sparks on his living room floor every time he opened it. He sat down in the middle of the desert driveway and watched a plume of dust forming in the distance, near the highway. That would be Jimmy he decided. The only thing that brought anyone out to this godforsaken stretch of land was necessity or occasionally the desire for something that could not be eaily obtained elsewhere. Sil sipped his coffee and waited. Eventually Claire emerged from the house behind him, coffee in hand and speaking in a slightly higher than normal pitched morning voice that drove Sil to parodoxical spasms of lust and tenderness. Before he could achieve the sort of niranic state he felt the voice would one day lead him to, the phone rang. Sil continued to sip his coffee but stepped inside to listen to the machine when it picked up. A crackling voice hestitated and then begin to ask for Claire. Curious Sil walked in and picked up. The man from the cemetery greeted him once more by name and asked for Claire. Sil hesitated but leaned out the front door and handed her the phone. He wandered off to the kitchen and began making breakfast. Claire came in just as Sil slid the eggs out of the pan onto the black beans and tortilla's already piled on two plates. "Everything okay?" + +"That man. The man you met yesterday... he wanted to know about Gamma's things..." She stared out the kitchen window at the clouds, thinking about the man's voice, something in it seemed to ooze and flow like sap or the sludge at the bottom of a cup of Turkish coffee, lavish with timbre and an opacity that reminded her curiously of the way her own voice sometimes sounded when she first made the leap into the hyperreality of DMT, as if he were speaking not with his toungue and lips, not even with his throught or diaphram but from someplace much further down, someplace anchored in rock and mode of words, as if he were caling them up. Aware suddenly of how long she had fallen silent she watched Sil carry the plate over to the table where she sat and tried to make her voice sound commonplace, "and then I dunno, he wanted to know if it would be alright to come by my grandmother's house and look for some book." + +"How does he know your grandmother again?" Sil sat down and began eating. + +"He said he knew her when she was a girl, but he didn't really elaborate." + +"So did you say he could come by?" + +"Yeah, but I didn't say when. He said he'd call next week. He's quite nice. I can't place his accent though." + +"Did he have an accent? I didn't notice." + +They ate and then Sil turned on the stereo and busied himself cleaning up the dishes. Claire lit a cigarette and stared out the sliding glass door at the desert. The clatter of dishes mixed with the music, violins and spoons, bass lines and sautee pans, snare drum and water mingling like sand paintings held together in precise stillness. The songs of time passing, the rattle of dishes wiped dry on the counter and laid up in mahagony cupboards, the green paint on the walls and French cafe poster over the shelf where Sil stacked his herbs. Claire had always admired Sil's house, which, in spite of being nearly abandoned in outward appearance, or perhaps because of its outward appearance seemed to her somehow ceremonial in its inner fasticidousness, which is not say that Sil was organized or neat by any means, but rather that everything felt as if it were exactly where it was supposed to be, regardless of where that might be, the dust on the bookshelves, the towel curled round the back of the sink to stop a leaky faucet, she tried and failed to imagine any of it changing. *Your grandmother had something that belongs to me, something I gave her a long time ago, but which I would like to have back.* The voice seemed to be in her own head she realized suddenly, that was what reminded her... it had the same quality of the voices that spoke inside her own head but which she was fully away where not "her," the only way she had ever been able to explain it to Jimmy was to compare it with an echo, your voice, but no longer in your possession, as if it were merely using you as a canyon in which to bound about like a child bouncing a ball off the walls of a corridor. + +Around noon Sil dropped Claire off at her grandmother's house. It wasn't until she stepped inside that the full force of it hit her, the air was stiffling, she felt as if her lungs were collapsing, a supernova of yellow kitchen walls, blue daisy curtains collapsing in on her, a bowl of rotten grapes on the counter, her stomach turned at the sunken orbs, already flakes of white mold spreading across them. She felt herself trying to suck in air and finding none, began to choke, a bit of bile in her mouth. The windows seemed to bend with caustic desert light, the glass warped and laughing at her. She felt herself gasping for air and retreated sobbing to the porch to where she spit out an orange gray bile and collapsed on the steps. "Once something dies you can't make it live," her grandmother was pulling out a dead basil plant accidentally left out and caught in a frost, it's gray wrinkled leaves made crisp crinkling sound against her skin. "It's the same with people Claire, once they're gone you can't get them back. Well, usually anyway." She chuckled lightly. Claire turned to look at her. "Everynow and then you might run across some people that do come back after they're gone the first time, but they're rare." + +Claire stopped crying and went back inside to get a tissue and blow her nose. Something about the mundanity of her mission perhaps, but this time the house felt neutral as if it no longer cared who came and went within it's walls. Claire stood at the kitchen window looking at the Sahorro cactus in the yard. She remembered planting it as a child, digging the hole with her shovel and how the man from the nursery helped them lower the small cactus in the hole, all of them gingerly avoiding the downward hooked thorns. In the twenty five years since the cactus has grown over six feet, but still somehow Claire felt, looked younger than her and she was sure would outlive her and then some. + +She avoided the closets, started in the bathroom where there was only one photograph, her great grandfather in an gilded oval frame. She studied it for a while thinking how strange to see someone she was directly descended from and yet might well have been an image in a textbook, so utter without connection or reference to her own life. He looked like a statue, something used a basis for fountain sculpter, his shoulders draw up sharply, the antiquated upright posing style of the day, trapped without color on a photographs stool, cursed to yellow with age. A small crack in the photograph had begun to peel and the left side of his face was cripped white and obscured. She spent the afternoon pitching lotions and powders in a trashbag, dried out, crusted Lancome bottles, Tylenon that had solidified to a single clump, hemroidal creme that she refused to touch without the aid of a tissue, Windex and Clorox, bottles of pills and medicines long expired, a deck of cards she kept, she shut her mind down and nothing produced any emotion save a frizzled and frayed toothbrush which should have been replaced months ago and Claire remembered saying as much to her grandmother and how she had simply shrugged. Claire sighed heavily and went outside for some air. + +It was well past dark by the time she went home. There were four garbage bags out front of the house, when Jimmy picked her up. They drove in silence and didn't say a word walking up Claire's steps. Inside the door she turned and they tore at each other's clothes. + + + + * * * * * + + + +It was the first warm day in ages when Sil rode down to the campus. He parked the bike outside the science library and as he walked over toward the administrative building he took in all the girls dressed prematurely in their summer clothes and tried to remember why it was he had dropped out of college so many years ago. He lingered outside the double door for a minute listening the Waiben's voice, trying to gauge the reaction before he opened them slowly and slipped in without a sound. He stood against the wall in the back and eyed the panel, three men and two women that sat majesterial at long table directly in front of Waiben who was talking about pyscology and the breakdown of the bicameral mind, the dislocation of the voice, the I from the position of external, the internalizing of the self and creation of the ego was an evolutionary necessity, but there is much that can be learned about consciousness by stepping backward..." Sil could tell the panel was unimpressed, the large man in the center who Sil thought would have looked more fitting in mutton chops, was pouring himself a glass of water. The woman on the end tapped her Parker on a legal pad and constantly pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her slender and apparently ineffective nose. Sil slipped out and waited in the hall. Waiben emerged with a clearly beaten look on his face. + +"Syris," Sil called out as he walked out into the desert warmth. + +"Sil. Was that you I heard come in?" + +"Yeah." + +"At least I can finish out the semester. I'm not going to, but I still get the money." + +"That's good. How have you been?" + +"I'm tired. And hungery, would you join me for lunch?" + +The walked across campus to a small diner that served breakfast all day and Waiben ordered an omlette. Sil watched him eat and sipped a warm beer. "Do you remember Von Hock at Cambridge?" + +"Was that the nut job that thought Yuri Gellar was visionary mystic?" + +No. That was Von Statler, you're confusing your Germans." They laughed. "Von Hock was the one that thought Alexandrian Library was actually saved and squirreled away in the vault in Venice or something." + +"Oh yeah. With the grad student..." + +"Corrinne. Yeah. She spoke seven languages, did you know that?" + +Waiben raised his eyebrows. "Well, I did hear she was quite talented with her tongue, but to be honest I didn't take it that way." + +"Very funny. No. She was brilliant." Sil seemed temporarily distracted. "But the reason I ask is that." He stopped to take a sip of beer. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. + +"You can't smoke in here." + +"No, you can't get caught smoking in here." Sil lit his cigarette holding it between his thumb and forefinger the rest of his hand curled over it. He took a drag and thrust his hand under the table. He exhaled down to his left and waved his hand to clear the smoke. "This is going to sound a bit crazy, which is why I'm telling you." + +Waiben noticed for the first time that Sil looked slightly different, exhausted perhaps. There were dark rings around his eyes, his cheeks looked slightly sunken like someone who hasn't slept in weeks; his hand shook slightly when he reached for his beer. Waiben watched him as he talked thinking of the day, several weeks past that he had taken off his headphone and stood up from his desk to retrieve a book from his shelf and he had heard grunting and moaning. Waiben had been in academic setting long enough to know that the best course of action was to put on his headphones and go back to work, but he'd also been in academic settings long enough to not need to do anything more than that. Sil knew he realized, had probably known a lot longer than Waiben given Sil's preternatural intuition. + +But as he listened to Sil's story he slowly began to doubt that his sleeplessness had anything to do with Claire, nor very likely did it have anything to do with anything altogether human. At some point a familar chill passed down his spine the likes of which he had not felt in years, probably since Paris. + +"You think it's him?" Waiben said finally. + +"Yes I do." + + * * * * * + + + + +It was summer. A dry scratchy heat hung around the porch where Claire sat sweaty and sipping a beer. + +The man wore a black suit that Claire immediately sensed was probably more expensive than the car sitting in her driveway. His face was partially obscured by noontime shadowes cast by the brim of an understated fedora, but when he smiled she could see perfectly straight, white teeth. + +"Claire?" + +"Yes." + +"It is a pleasure to meet finally." + +"It is?" + +"Your grandmother spoke of you constantly." + +" + + + + + + -------------- + +segue to end with the mention of the book and Ambrose's contact info he leaves. start Romanian section. + + +Sil runs into jazz musicians in NEw York at some point. + + + +leap backward in time to Sil and Waiben in Massachusetts. + + +Ambrose dangled hand over the edge of the boat until the river tickled the hairs on his wrist. He straightened the oar against his chest and shifted the hat over his eye to shade the afternoon sun. He closed his eyes and heard the lazy progression of guitar chords echoed by bass notes and strummed in time to asdkfj;k kl;asdfj klj, he could still picture her on the stage, the over-dramatic sweep on an arm, the singular wrechedness of the lines that echoed out of her mouth, the shockingly blond exotica of her hair that seemed to toss about her in the dim candlelit stage and the gruff hand on his shoulder jaring the whole vision to a close. + +From the shore he could hear the occasional bleet of sheep and coppling of horses hooves stamping the dusty road that paralleled the river. He though her riding in some expensive coach, footman atop next the driver waiting to dismount and open her door with a flourish and bow. + +He smiled and fell asleep. The boat continued to drift with the current justling occasionly against the sides of the river where overhanding limbs scratched at the his hat and the bow rebounded lightly off sunken rocks and gnarled watery roots entrapped by last year's flood. + +The noice of the city awoke him from the river dream far before he actually passed beneath the monolithic and slightly charred remains of the parliment building and the wakes of small steamers forced him to once again man the oars. took the lee side of the island keeping an eye out for his mother ont he bank but she appeared to have already left. He lay low against the gunwale peeking up a bit to see if his brothers had come in yet, but their boats were nowhere to be seen and he knew that his brothers had already gone with their father to the Bastich. To drink whisky on the square and wouldn't be home until late with the sounds of breaking glass and cursing coming out of the forested darkness as he had heard late at night all his life. + +He brought the boat downstream past the dock and then expertly dug one oar into the current as a fulcrum while windmilling the other to excute a nearly perfect circle on a dime. He then put his eight against both oars in the relative lee of the dock pausing only to cast the line to the man on the dock who caught it and pulled him the rest of the way in. + +At the Bastich Tavern he found his father and three brothers drunk in the corner he grabbed a mug at the bar and went to drain a bit from each over the surly cries of theif and good for nothing, which like the + + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e69de29 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present.txt diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present_MetaData.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present_MetaData.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..96fd528 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/present_MetaData.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18 @@ +Created: 22 January 2008, 22:25 +Modified: 31 July 2008, 22:40 +Status: N/A +Label: No Label +Keywords: + +Claire meets Sil +They go out to the bar that Dean owns. sex scene +cut experiment scene +death of her grandmother. +Scene with Dean at the funeral +Laslo shows up at Waiben's house +Sil leaves +lazlo visits Dean +Claire and Dean parting ways. +Claire and Waiben in bed +jump back to buda +Jump to Sil in new orleans
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 1.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 1.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d9d7cb6 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 1.txt @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +It was a cool spring evening, he had switched off the air before she arrived and opened the windows on either side of the bed. Faint strains of car horns downtown, children playing in the neighbor's yard, cicades like violins, the murmer of pigeons cooing in the raingutters outside above the window. The thin white curtains lufted lightly out in a puff of breeze and he watched, craning his head on the pillow as small gray-brown clumps of coalguated dust pushed off the ends of the fabric, out into the air like trapeze artists swinging from the rafters of a circus tent. He imagined them crawling out of the unused air vents poking out from the stained-pine baseboards, hiding around the bedposts, clinging in the wind. + +Is what we're doing worthwhile? She took a drag off the cigarette and let the smoke evaporate slowly out of her mouth. He watched it drift up toward the ceiling, a soul leaving a body. + +Waiben shifted his leg so that his foot rested on the bunched up comforter at the foot of the bed, elevating his knee, but causing his already withering penis to slide off his leg, looking pathetic and leaving a trail of come through the hair on his thigh. He wiped it up onto his hand and stared at the gleaming wetness. Worthwhile? + +Yes. He looked at his now prominently featured leg, riddled with thick gnarled scars and now quite obviously shorter than the other. He compared it to her leg extending out of the white sheet and curling over, not touching his. He thought about how she never seemed to touch him afterward and wondered if that revealed some revolsion or just a lack of intimacy, which then sent off wondering which would be worse. She was watching his face, he could feel her eyes surveying the terrain, gauging, hoping for some elaboration, but he refused to turn his head. Her eyes were like hurricanes on the weather report, swirls of white and dark spots where the storm bore down on someone, when it was the weather you could get by feeling sorry for others, but now they were bearing down on him, a wind was gathering on that side of bed and no divider or trundle would spare him, especially after he told her and the real cleaving began. + +Worthwhile. He repeated it as if the sound would somehow give it greater clarity. It slid off the tongue, it was a slippery word, compound, complex. He steeled himeself momentarily and then rolled over glancing at her eyes as he snatched the cigarette from between her lips and brought it, lipstick smear and all to his. The smoke tasted like stale air trapped in a basement with rotting rats and cochroach carcasses, it made his lungs recoil. Secretly he hated cigarettes, he hated that she smoked in his house, in his bed even, but in the year and a half that they had been enjoying these afternoon trysts he had never once set foot in her house. It wasn't the first time he had thought about it, nor was it the first time that the thought of it had made his own house seem older, his bookshelves more disheveled, the pictures hanging in the afternoon sunlight even more faded, the walls even more yellowed than they were. He imagined her house, bright and airy, the sort of place with a cool, clean tiled counters in the kitchen, yellow walls with framed black and white photos she had no dount taken when she was younger, a bedroom where everything was white and contrasted with the deep mahogany bedframe, the sort of place where catalog photographers spent their days off. Or perhaps she lived in a cheap apartment, some roach infested nightmare, he had no way of knowing. He was too embarrassed to ask. They had simple gone back to his house one afternoon, he poured her a drink and they did very little talking. In fact he had tried to talk and she simple grabbed him by the back of the neck and silence him with her mouth. It was sexy at the time, but thinking of it now he couldn't help realizing that it was precendant setting, it was a distancing action, it was a classic psycological defense mechanism and he of all people had failed to see through it. He realized, not for the first time, that was what irritated him that she was always in control. Despite being almost two decades older he was never in control when she was around. Not here, not at the lab, not during the experiments. + +He took another drag off the cigarette and handed it back to her blankly, turning his attention to the tuba propped up in the corner. It had been in the corner for nine of the ten years he had lived in this house and yet he had never once played the thing, never once even picked it up since he laid it there in the corner, propped against the chaotic bookshelving his ex-wife had built in a moment of inspiration. The saw she used was likewise gathering dust in the shed out back, along with paint that colored the bathroom, several old aplliances so rusted and collapsing in on themselves that it was difficult to assess exactly what their function had been. That's where everything goes, off to its respective shed to die and rot above gound or below. Waiben avoided the shed. When he went in the yard at all it was usually late at night, stumbling drunk looking for somewhere it pee. + +What are you thinking about? + +Nothing. The word worthwhile. + +The tuba for instance, was it worthwhile? He had given it to his wife for her forty-fifth birthday, she had played in a high school marching band, he always found it hard to imagine, her dimunitive five foot four frame with a tuba strapped to it, towering over her head like a balloon ready to tear itself out of a child's hand. This particular tuba had probably once belonged to a musican who knew how to use it, someone who had likewise marched in parades, high school football halftimes. But now it sat, tarnished brass religated to the status of prop, some distraction in the corner of the room for others to comment on, oh you play the tuba? No. It was a gift for my, nevermind. In the end it meant almost nothing to him, was it worthwhile? Is anything worthwhile, really? Was it worthwhile when it was a gift? In that moment of presentation did it fulfill its final act and collapse willingly even into the corner until such time as it would no longer exist at all. And when it ceased to exist would it then cease to be worthwhile? If it ever had been? + +So what do you think? + +I guess it depends on who you are, what you're talking about. + +I'm me, you are you. I'm talking about what we're doing? + +You mean now, here in this bed? + +No. I mean the work. + +Yes. It is worthwhile. It will help people. He said it slowly, listening to his voice harden around the words, waiting to see if he still believed them. + +You honestly believe that? + +He knew she just wanted to pick a fight. It was how she always left. It was how he knew at the end of day she felt nothing at all for him. It was simply easier for her to be with people she didn't like, detested perhaps, because then it was easier to leave. She was forever leaving. + +No. + +Then why say it? + +He thought about it. He thought about the lifeless tuba in the corner. He didn't want to tell her the truth, he knew as soon as he told her they would no longer have any connection at all, that the one common point would be severed and all that would be left was shared moments, memories that would fade blur and distort until they were nothing more than fodder for some poorly written memoire. Time cheapens everything, rust and decay always win in the end, in the physical and in memory, time rots the past like termites devouring wood until there's nothing but a spider webbed skeleton that stands for just a moment past its time and then collapses to dust. Worthwhile means that you want to do it again. And he did, he wanted to go straight back to the beginning and do it again. But do it right this time, screen the candidates more carefully, choose different assistants, to undo it all so that it was a shiny brass tuba again, bouncing playfully on the shoulders of his own smart uniform, marching in marshall patterns around the field, deep basenotes rumbling the bleachers and the cheers from everyone filling the night air. + +She took the cigarette back and leaned over to ash it on the floor. You don't take me seriously. I'm a lab rat that you happen to like fucking. + +Claire. He started and then stopped, allowing the truth of it wash over him, settle in and feel it before he proceeded to deny it. You aren't a lab rat. + +I'll also never be your wife. + +I know that damnit. What makes you think I want you to be my wife, have you heard me ask you to be my wife? + +Don't be cruel. + +It was the first time he had ever felt in control. He felt monstrous, cruel and strangly satisified. He heaved himself out bed before she could retort and stumbbled past the tuba toward the bathroom. He crashed unceremoniously down on the toilet, too little energy to even stand. He began to pee, thinking that he had been here for ten years, digging and plowing and sowing for little more than a Starbucks employee's wages, reaping what little the hail and the hot winds of academia were willing to grant. When he was done he stood and washed the come off his hand staring at his gray stubble and nearly bald head in the mirror. Enjoy it old man, that was the last time. + +She climbed atop him and sank down. He reached up and held her breasts, but she quickly grabbed his wrists, pinned them back behind his head and began the grind down on him, mashing her clit against his pubic bone. He began a familiar trip through the variety of memories he had carefully designed to sustain himself, a cotten hankerchief wrapped around his bleeding hand, the dream of the woman in the storm, sitting on her stoop, watching the flying snakes dance through the heavy air, the Red Sox in 1982, the rusted chevy he leaned against pouring vodka on his hand, the stinging raw white flesh folding back as his palm extended revealing a deep pale crevease of once-sealed flesh, the 1978 Boston Massacre four-game sweep, the thin blue pin stripes of Yankee uniforms, he could feel she was getting closer, he dismissed the images and wrestled free of her pinning grip, rolling her over and laying into her roughly, sweat pickling on his brow and back, she squirmed and he left a sense of relief, he ducked his head into her neck and slid out, a warm jet of sperm on her clenched thighs and he rolled over wandering if she cared that he had come. + +They lay silent, him staring at the ceiling, watching the fan drift lazily around, like a giant like a tape sprocket with tape streched so thin it was invisible, tiny cobweb fibers connecting him back, looping through all the sounds over again, warbled and unintelligible as if the conversation hadn't happened yet. As if the Dean hadn't ever stood from his maghogany desk, open the double doors, paused to eye his secratary's cleavage as he passed and walked down the hall to the elevator and smiled to himself as he pressed the down arrow. As if he hadn't stepped off at the basement floor and marched down the hall, his footsteps clicking smartly on the cold formica tiles until he came to Waiben's open door and tapped lightly. As if he hadn't entered before Waiben could say otherwise and rather proudly, without a word, laid the letter, typos and all, on Wiaben's desk before piroetting on the heals of his Italian leather shoes and marched smartly back down the hall to the elevator. As if his fat fleshly meatstick fingers hadn't pushed the up arrow with such self-satisfaction, his thick dull eyes taking in the secretary again before he disappeared into the stale, dank world where he existed solely to satisfy himself. + +Waiben turned off the bathroom light, emerged back into the bedroom and stood naked next to the tuba. If I wanted a lab rat I would use rats. And no, I don't know if it mattered. But it's stopping next week so this whole argument is moot. + +Who's arguing? She sat up and leaned over to flicked the cigarette out the window into the dry grass. + +You mean he shut it down? He can do that? + +It was a committee decision, I was there. I had my say. He's just an errand boy. + +So it was nothing? Just a bit of their game and we're gone? + +More or less. Yes. + +I want to disembowel him. + +As much as I hate him, it wasn't him. He doesn't even have the intelligence to concieve of decisions like that, let alone make them. + +It doesn't matter. There is always some one higher, some string or wire or something pulling something. In the end the blame is where you assign it. He has to answer to me. Part of me wants to do the same to you. + +So what are you going to do? + +Nothing most likely. She lay back and craned her arm out the window flicking the cigarette outside. What kind of car does he drive? + +He thought for a moment and smiled. A Toyota Celica I believe. + +She laughed. + +Then she got out of bed and began to collect her clothes. She pulled up her jeans, buttoned her shirt, walked over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He heard her footsteps pass through the living room, the front door close and then silence. He went to the kitchen and poured a glass of bourbon. He threw back his head and then poured another. He wandered back into the bedroom. He could still smell her. He picked up the tuba ackwardly, the cool brass felt strangely enticing against his skin. He walked out into the backyard toward the shed. + + + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 2.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 2.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f64c4ad --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 2.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +The rain started before she was home, huge drops, slow at first one and then two and her windshield was covered. She sat at the stoplight watching the read light warble through and water smeared windows. A thin wire of lightning snapped down out of the cloud and lingered in her eyes long after it had retreated again. She looked the review mirror and made a feeble attempt to straighten her and quickly decided it didn't matter. It was over. Dean would be there when she arrived and he would know either way. He already knew. She had made no attempt to hide it from him. +It was nearly dark by the time Claire rolled under the carport, out of the downpour where Dean was standing, leaning against the neighbor's car, cigarette dangling from his lips. The night was pleasant, almost cool, whisps of mist floated out of the rain and under the roof of the carport. + Dean said nothing, watching her as she got out of the car. + Sorry I'm late. + He shrugged. + She felt guilt creaping in and tried to stop herself, but then felt guilty about the idea of being able to stop feeling guilty. + He flicked the cigarette out into the rain. + Let's keep this short Claire. I don't want a big scene. I just left my wife. + What? + Come on, I told you I was going to. + Jesus Dean. + And now I'm leaving you. In fact I'm leaving the this town too. + What about the bar? + Dean smiled cruelly. I let her have it. + Oh. Claire shift her feet. Where are you going? + To find someone you wouldn't want to find. + You know where he is? + Yes. + How? + Ask Waiben. He knows where he is. Though if things go well, I don't expect he'll be there much longer. + Claire felt her chest tighten. I must say I didn't... + You didn't what? + I just... + Claire, I know you don't love me. I don't love you either. I needed a way out. You were what I needed. + You were what I needed too Dean. + Well then. + You want a drink? + Are you serious? + Yes? Why not? Dean smiled. We're free Claire, we're all free. I love you. But I'm not in love with you, never have been. So why can't we just get a drink like two normal friendly people? + Claire felt something insane leaking in, a kind of giddiness she hadn't felt in months. Like something was lifting off of her, dissolving around her. + + + +back to Waiben pissing in the yard, Laslo shows up. + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 4 flashback.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 4 flashback.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dd81e1d --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 4 flashback.txt @@ -0,0 +1,289 @@ +"It was a lovely service doncha think?" + +Claire felt a little vomit start to migrate up her throat, but she just smiled at her aunt and nodded. Claire hadn't been at the funeral. True, her body had stood between Sil and her Aunt, but she never heard the words and just watched dumbly as everyone dropped a handful of dirt down a whole that contained some shattered remnants of her grandmother that the fire department had managed to salvage from the river a full twnety two miles from the canyon where her car was parked. Claire had spent most of the brief cemermony watching the traffic on N. Oracle speeding along as usual. Afterward everyone retreated back to their cars and as Jimmy drove them toward the foothills for the reception at her Aunt's house Claire watched a group of hotair balloons begin to slowly lift off from the small airfield on the outskirts of town. She did her time making rounds taking in condolances from well-meaning family members she knew would drive home commenting on the tattoo on her wrist, the small diamond stud in her nose, the unkept wildness of her hair, the fact that she had not one, but two men with her, the fact that she hadn't been to church since the eighth grade when James Becker tried to rape her bdhind the chapel and she broke his nose with a brick, the later detail seemingly the ony one anyone cared to remember, she smiled but she sould see the clucking disapproaval in her both of her aunts and the slightly creepy leering grin of their husbands, one of whom had tried to kiss her at his own wedding three years ago. + +As always Claire used cigarettes to escape her family. She slipped outside at the earliest possible moment and sat down on the patio table to watch her young cousin. He marched up to her a plfastic fireman's hat wildly cockeyed on his head and strangely out of place with the suit he still had on. "How are you Darren?" + +He shrugged and looked at her shyly. "You have a picture on your arm." + +"Yes I do Darren. It's called a tattoo, it's ink embedded... + +"What's it a picture of?" + +Claire pulled up her sleeve so he could see the whole tattoo. "It's all the signs of the Zodiac in a circle... When were you born Darren? March?" + +He nodded but kept staring at her arm. "This is your symbol right here." She pointed to Aries, which he leaned in to scrutinize closer. "You're an Aries. That means your symbol is the the Bull. Very strong." + +He seemed please by this notion and Claire neglected to add that he would very likely grow up constantly falling in and out of love, with a string of trailor park ex-wives spreading in his wake. + +"Which one are you?" + +"I'm Sagitarious, this on here, the little hook like symbol." + +"Why do you have a tattoo?" + +She smiled. I got drunk once and it seemed like a good idea was Claire reasoned, not the appropriate response to give a five year old, but somehow she had never come up with better one. "Why do you have a nose?" + +He laughed, "I dunno, everyone has a nose... do I have a tattoo?" + +She giggled and raised his shirt and begin to tickle him, "I don't know let's see..." + +He squealed and ran away, circling back around, but staying just out of arms reach. "I don't have a tattoo," he said finally. + +"No you don't. But you can get one some day if you want." Claire tried to picture her Aunt's face when Darren would relay this bit of information. + +"Are you on drugs?" + +"What?" Claire snapped around and grabbed him by the arm. "Who told you that?" + +"No one. I just heard my mommy say it to daddy this morning." + +"Oh she did did she? Claire sat back in the chair and pulled Darren up on her lap and wrapped her arms around him. "And what else did your mommy say this morning?" + +"About you? I think she said "You're anxious." + +"Do you even know what anxious means?" + +"Momma said you're anxious cause you want to know bout the hertiance." + +"How old are you Darren?" + +"I'll be six soon." + +"And your mother told you I was nervous about an inheritance..." + +"No she said anxious." + +"Right. Anxious. Because..." + +"Because you won't be getting any money." + +Darren's mother was looking out at Claire from behind the sliding glass door, she waved from behind the glass, comfortable in her air conditioned cocoon; Claire smiled and waved back stifling the urge to mouth bitch at her. Her aunt openned the door and beckoned Darren inside. He climbed off of Claire and wandered toward the door. Claire took another sip of the cheap boxed chardonney she had poured earlier, it tasted a bit like peach juice, but it was slowly having the desired effect. She stood up and wandered through the yard and out into the river gully running just beyond the back fence. There was a trail leading down in the general direction of the river and Claire followed it walking slowly and keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes and scorpions. A breeze had begun almost as soon as the sun sunk behind the Catalina Mountains, not strong enough to bend the stiff twiggy branches of desert trees, it moved though in whispers, puffs of air brushing against her cheek. She thought of airports, hospitals, departure points, the shuffling of human feet moving in and out of rooms like last quiet sighs of breath. Claire watched the river and wondered vaguely what its name actually meant. It seemed odd to her that she had lived next to or around the Rialto River for so many years without ever wondering what the word meant. She felt as if she were herself a desert only recently become aware that someone had flung a river down on her. Or with desert ambivalence she had always had a river running around her but had simply never noticed it. What then does the desert make of the river? As she studied the scene that was cascading down the slope and away from the organization of the manicured patio and yard, she decided that the desert seemed to ignore the river entirely. The river was starting to flood again, somewhere far upstream three days rain had been feeding until it swelled like a Christmas ham, but ten yards on either side and it was sand again. Stagnant pink sand interspersed with prickly plants and clumps of sagebrush and Mesquite trees, ironwood her grandfather called it. The sand didn't care for the water, didn't hold onto it, didn't even try, just let the water flow right on over it, puddle and collect, run off and feed into the river. Farther in the distance there were the mountains ringing the desert, keeping watch over it, making sure it behaved in some general way. + +She could see a figure emerge from the house and begin to slowly pick its way through the cacti and palo verde up the sloop toward the rock where Claire sit. It wasn't until he was halfway to her that she recognized Jimmy. He climbed up on the rock, but didn't say anything. + +She leaved her head on his shoulder. "Can I ask you a question Jimmy? It's a stupid question, but I read it in a magazine yesterday and I can't stop thinking about." + +"Shoot." + +"If you were going to do something for the sole purpose of getting in the Guiness book of world records what would it be?" + +Jimmy laughed. "That's easy. Land speed record. currently held by my uncle who drove a rocket powered car at 457 mph across a dry lake in Nevada." + +"Seriously? I mean your uncle is really in the Guiness Book of world records?" + +"Seriously." + +"Huh." + +"And you?" + +"I would skydive from the stratosphere like that guy did a couple years ago, only, obviously, I'd have to start higher." + +"Yes you would. Did you go through an astronaut phase when you were younger?" + +"Not really. Maybe. I don't remember." She took out another cigarette and lit it. Jimmy snagged it from her lips and took a drag. She watched him awkwardly puff out the smoke. "You know what I read once? The first thing an astronaut said the first time he orbited the moon... He said 'well, it's pretty gray.' It's pretty gray, Jimmy. It's pretty fucking gray. This asshole is the first fucking human to see the moon close up, to orbit around it in it's own gravity and he says it's pretty fucking gray. Fuck him." + +"He had an impoverished imagination." + +Her head snapped up from where it had been resting on her knee. "Life is a collision of imagination and observation, Jimmy, and he fucking failed." + +"Maybe." + +"No Jimmy. He failed. He was one of about thirty people that have seen the moon up close and all he got out of it was that it's gray. He fucking failed." + +"You're assuming that gray meant nothing to him, but what if his mother had gray eyes and that was the one memory that came back to him when he was overwhelmed by being that close to the moon?" + +She rested her cheek on her knee again and rocked back and forth for a minute before speaking. "You're sweet Jimmy. You always defend people and want to think the best about them. I love you for that. In spite of the fact that deep down you're cynical too. But you try and that's what I love about you." + +Neither of them said anything for a while. The watched the balloons drift slowly across the sky. + +"Are you okay?" he asked finally. + +"I think so. I mean she basically told me she was going to do it. I did my crying a few days ago, now..." She stopped. "I can't cry around them for some reason." + +"Yeah." + +"You know I once cried so hard I swallowed a moth." She giggled. "I was supposed to go out with this guy. This was junior high. Maybe high school. No junior high. Anyway we were supposed to ride our bikes to the park in the evening and he never showed up and I waited and waited. I was so in love with this guy. So at about 10 o'clock I'm out on the porch-sobbing... You know those huffing snorting kind of sobs that women make when they're really upset? Hyperventilating sobs... anyway, I was chewing gum. I always used to chew gum. So I'm in the rocking chair sobbing, arms around my knees... this is so pathetic... I inhaled a moth somehow and before I realized it I chewed him right into my gum. It was crackly at first, but then more like chewing feathers. I remember running in to tell my grandmoter I had eaten a moth... I can't believe she didn't laugh at me." Claire smiled and looked a Jimmy's brown eyes shielded from the sun by a red socks hat. "I had a lot of disturbing, uh, incidents in childhood. I used to kidnap cats when I was little." + +"Kidnap cats?" + +"Gamma wouldn't let me have a cat. She actually told me years later that she she didn't want the cat because she didn't want to become an old lady with cats. I mean after the plane went down... I dunno. She could occasionaly be quite vain. I think she felt awkward raising me at her age." Claire stopped. Jimmy could feel her body shudder against his. He pictured her face distorting, trying to swallow back tears like she had the night before. + +"Anyway," She sniffed and drew herself up laughing softly. "I would go out and steal them from neighbors... At first I just petted them you know. Then I got one to follow me home. I felt like he loved me more than his owners and I cried when Gamma took him home. I was probably seven or eight when this happened. After that I went farther from home, several blocks away where I knew Gamma wouldn't know whose cat it was and I would have to post signs, found: cat. That sort of thing so, you know, I would have the cat for longer." + +"Right." + +"But these cats wouldn't follow me home. Too far I guess. So I would save my lunch money and on the way home from school I'd stop at Circle K and buy myself a slushy and Moon Pie and can of cat food. Then I'd ride my bike past my house, way back into the subdivision and lure cats home by dragging the cat food on a string behind my bike. One time I pulled into my driveway with three cats running behind me." + +"You were a cat rustler." This drew a laugh. + +"Yeah. I guess I was. One time, after I posted a bunch of found cat signs and stuff this old lady came to our house to pick up her cat and she was so excited that I had found her cat she gave me twenty dollars -- which was a lot of money at that age -- and bells went off in my head. So then I started kidnapping the cats for profit. I mean, when I could. I tried to pick cats that looked pampered or that were sitting in front of old lady houses. You know lots of papers collecting on the porch. Beat up seventies sedans. Maybe that was me subconsciously realizing my grandmother's fears or something. Anyway I was pretty good at casing a block and finding the old lady cats. When they would come over I'd put on a cute little dress and smile and play dumb and they would give me a reward. One month I made $200. That's when my Gamma caught on." + +"What'd she do?" + +"Bought me a cat." + +"Smart." + +"Yeah, but by then I didn't want one." They sat in silence again. The balloons were higher now. AT some length Claire collapsed onto Jimmy's shoulder and sighed deeply sliding down so that her head was on his chest. "My family thinks I'm on drugs." + +"Of course you're on drugs, you have a tattoo." Jimmy smiled at her and she through her arms around him suddenly punching him softly in the back. "What? your aunt already grilled Sil and I about it. Plus Claire, you do take drugs twice a week." + +"That's different. And besides my aunt's been popping Somas since her car accident, that was two fucking years ago and she still acts like it's no big deal, but get a tattoo... Jesus. You know her own mother couldn't stand her?" + +"I'm sure that's not true..." + +"Wait until the executor reads the will... Oh and that's another thing, they're all gonna hate me... Gamma gave me everything, I asked her not to, I even threated to give it all to my aunt if she did, but she said it was for me." + +"So you have a house now and everything?" + +"I guess so, yeah. I don't want it though, I can't live there without her. It would be weird. Wrong. Why do I need it? I already have everything from my parents..." She turned on her back and let her head rest in his lap. She looked up at him; his eyes were shadowed by a Red Sox hat that Sil had given him. His lips were red and seemed suddenly incredably close. She drew in a breathe, closed her eyes and slowly lifting her head until her own lips pressed against his softly. + +When they returned to the house Sil was in the backyard engaged in some sort of complex war-like game of super soaker mayhem with Darren. Sil stood in the middle of the yard with a super soaker in each hand looking not unlike the cover of Rambo firing dual streams of water at Darren who also had two super soakers, but was crouched behind a cactus biding his time. When Sil's streams fell short darren was up in a nearly identical fashion, hosing Sil down. Sil made no effort to dodge out of the way instead he resolutely pumped the super soakers building the pressure back up. Claire noted from the look of Sil's suit this had been going on for some time. She and Jimmy stepped through the gate just as Sil rose up, super soakers recharged. He half turned and faced both barrels toward them, a wicked grin crosed his face. She and jimmy both froze. "Don't even think about Sil," Claire warned. "I will not be laighing." + +"This is Armani man," Jimmy added. + +"Okay. Darren, the war is over, you win." Sil walked over to the table and laid down the guns. Darren tore about the yard in circles, "I win! I win I win I win!" + +Sil stripped off his jacket and wrung it dry. "Not Armani," he said drily. He fished a pack of cigarette out of the coat pocket and lit one. "So Claire... Do you know a friend of your grandmother's named Ambrose?" + +"No." + +"Hmmph. Neither does anybody else here. Well. When we were leaving the cemetery, this man came up to me, greeted me by name and asked me to give you this." Sil produced a slightly soggy business card and handed it to Claire. + +She looked down at the tattered peice of paper. "There was a finely drawn image of two fingers about to grasp the tail of a dragonfly. To the left of the drawing was a partially smeared scrawl of handwriting that read: "Call me." Claire turned the card over and read a local number. "Did he say what this was about?" + +Sil took a drag and eyed her suspiciously, she blushed slightly under his gaze. "No. He just said he was an old friend of your grandmother's and that he wanted you to get in touch with him as soon as possible." Sil sat down in a patio chair. "At the time I didn't think much of it, but then when I was inside talking to your aunt about it... the fat one, what's her name again?" + +"Debbi." + +"Right, Debbi. Anyway I was asking her if she knew if your grandmother had any friends by that name and it suddenly occurred to me that he had greeted me by name. Granted a lot of people know my name from the bar, but I didn't recognize this guy and all the sudden it creeped me out. I dunno, maybe he just overheard someone else say my name or something... he was at the funeral. He stood in the back opposite us. I vaguely remember him. Probably he just heard you call my name... Anyway, I relayed the message. My work here is done." + +"Yeah. Thanks." Claire stuffed the card in her pocket and went inside. Jimmy sat down next to Sil and bummed a drag. + +"So." + +"So." + +"Oh fuck off man. I was out here chasing that little monster with super soakers for the last half hour. That hill might seem like it's far away, but it isn't." + +"What do you want me to say?" + +"That it wasn't what it looked like." + +"What if it was?" + +"Then you need to pay your tab." + +"What?" + +"Your tab at the bar. Pay it." + +"Fuck you Sil. It wasn't me." + +"Funny. It sure looked like you." + +"Whatever man. It could just as easily have been you if you'd wandered up there." + +"Mmhmm. But I didn't." + +"And so what? no one else can either?" + +"What happened to objectivity?" + +"Is that what this is about?" + +"No." + +"Well." + +"All right. Sorry. It's none of my business." + +"Then why..." + +"Forget it." + +"She'll go home with you anyway." + +Sil sniffed sarcastically. + +The glass door slid open and Claire emerged with another drink in hand. "What are you talking about?" + +"Jimmy's love life," Sil chuckled. + +"Oh." Claire turned crimson and sat down next to Sil. + +"So he told you?" + +"Told me what?" Sil asked cautiously. + +Claire looked back and forth at them suspiciously. She sighed. "Jimmy's heart belongs to an online porn star." Claire collapsed in giggles which she tried to contain in the harsh glare of Jimmy's scowl. + +"She is not a porn star. And she has a name." It was Jimmy's turn to blush. + +"Oh yes, her name Sil, is Haley Wilde -- wild with an e mind you," Chloe giggled again momentarily. "So tell us Jimmy," Claire straightened her back with an audible popping noise, "does she or does she not earn a living by video taping herself having sex and then posting those videos on web?" + +"She does, but she only has sex with her boyfriend..." + +"Whom she claims to be much in love with..." + +'...and other girls." + +"And other girls" + +Sil's eyebrows shot up his forehead accenting the fact that a good half inch of the left one was missing, "wait, you're in love with a lesbian who loves her boyfriend?" + +"Yeah." + +"Shit." + +"Shit is right." Chloe drained her glass and looked at Jimmy cockeyed. "Jimmy you're an idiot and I mean that in the best way possible." She reached over and grabbed Sil's drink. "Oh and the best part is she has a tattoo of dolphin where her pubes should be." + +"Lasers. Problem solved." Jimmy waved his hand. + +"You're better off learning to love it." Sil snatched his glass back from Claire and in spite of it's obvious emptiness, tipped it toward his mouth. + +"I kind of already have," Jimmy smiled sheepishly. + +Night drew up like the pony express, expected on time. Claire's relatives slowly trickled out the sliding glass door to reiterate their condolances and drive back to their lives, clucking along the way. As Jimmy predicted, Claire got out of the car at Sil's house. Sil stood in the drive watching the Falcon disappear in a cloud of dust down River road. Claire had already gone inside. Sil walked up to the porch and sat down in the dilapidated rocking chair left behind by the previous tenant. After a while Claire's head poked out the door and she informed him that she was taking a shower and going to bed. He nodded. The bats were darting across the glowing, city-lit horizen. He heard the water running. Sil stood and walked in to the kitchen to retreive a bottle of Stags Leap Petite Syrah he had been saving for some time. He returned to the parch and sat down with the corkscrew. He popped the cork and took a draw from the bottle. + +After a while Claire came outside wrapped in Sil's robe. She sat down on his lap and picked up the bottle. She tilted her head back and let the wine run freely down her throat. Sil watched her face. She set the bottle back down on the porch. + +"Was Jimmy serious about that girl?" + +"What? The porn star? Yeah pretty serious. He made me watch a few videos and asked what I thought. It was weird, like when you meet someone's new girlfriend only this was just a girl on a screen talking dirty, but not really dirty, more like cutsy dirty. And touching herself. It faded out as she was licking her fingers." + +"Hmm." Sil shrugged. "Does she seem like a good person?" + +"Well... I must admit there is something about her... I mean I haven't seen a lot of pornography, but she doesn't strike me as someone cut out for it, which probably means she's a decent person. And she's goregous. But I mean, she's trying to internet sex star and she already has a boyfriend -- can you really be in love with someone that unattainable?" + +"Love doesn't seem to abide hopelessness." Sil reached down and started to take a pull from the bottle of wine, but Claire stopped him and pulled the bottle from his hands. She cupped bother her hands around Sil's stubble covered cheeks. She held his face like that for a moment and then shifted her wieght on his legs and let go of his face. He reached down and picked up the bottle again. She sighed. "I'm sorry Sil. I don't know why I kissed him..." + +"How did..." + +"Sil. You don't exactly have a poker face. Well, actually your face is pretty good, but your eyes give you away." She lay back against him and nuzzled her head under his chin. "It doesn't matter... his lips were just there... I needed to feel them, to feel something..." Her voice trailed off into the stoic stillness of the desert night. They watched a small lightning storm on the horizen, thin little bolts zig-zaged down into the sodium glow of the city. Sil thought about something his uncle had once said about lightning being six times hotter than the surface of the sun and yet generally less than three-eights of an inch thick. + +Later Claire stood up and lightly kissed his cheek, lingering for a moment to feel the roughness of his beard against her own skin. And then she stood and disappeared inside. After a while Sil rose drunkenly from the chair and stretched his back. He leaned down to grab the bottle of wine and stumbled toward the grassy desert unzipping his fly as he walked. Leaning his head back to swig from the bottle he paused to stare at the particles of starlight sneaking through the bruised clouds. He began to piss on the grassy desert sand, thinking that you adjust your breath to the one who breathes beside you. You lie very close, still and alone. + +Sil was up with the sun fumbling in the half dark kitchen trying to find a grinder to go with the coffee beans already measured out in a cup sitting on the counter. He recalled with some amusement the apartment in Boston that he and Waiben had shared for four years, something his girlfriend as the time has considered exceedingly strange, "he's like what, sixty?" she used to say and then nothing more until Sil would correct her, "sixty-two actually." Sil used to wake up to Waiben singing "you got to get behind the mule every morning and plow" while he hunted around the kitchen for coffee beans. At that time they still had the old icebox that Waiben had found on the side of the road and patched up. Since it did the job neither of them thought to replace it for the better part of a year. When Waiben drank too much and passed out before sundown, he'd forget to restock the ice. The melted remnants of the previous day's block of ice would eventually force open the door and the contents of the icebox, including the bag of coffee would go crashing to the kitchen floor, skittering about on the icy water until they found their way into all kinds of strange places. "You got to get behind the mule every morning and plow" Waiben would sing while he slowly gathered everything up and restocked the icebox. When he invariably found the coffee lying in the farthest crack, he would squat down and scoot it along the floor over to the table, laughing and singing "...every morning and plow...every morning and plow..." Once Sil had crept up quietly to watch and he witnessed Waiben do a little dance, all crooked and insane owing to a bad knee that made his dancing hover between pathetic and comical. He would start gyrating at the waist, flopping his arms about while he sang. That first morning when Sil saw him do it, he momentarily thought Waiben was having a seizure the way he convulsed wildly about. Later Sil found out the line was a Tom Waits' lyric. + +Sil shivered as the grinder spun and he lit a cigarette waiting for the kettle to boil. He stepped gingerly across the freezing floor to stand by the open flame of the the stove. He glanced back toward the bedroom where he could see Claire sleeping. A ray of sunlight shot through the uncovered window to the right of the bed and the light slowly expanded, covering first the table and then worked it's way toward the white sheets where Claire lay. Her face was obscured in a swirl of coppery hair that spread out over her back and onto the pillow next to her, but her back was exposed and revealed her ivory skin marked here and there by the lines of pale brown, evidence of a spaghetti strap top worn in the sun, perhaps a bathing suit worn by the pool, the cholrine smell of summer suddenly washed over him and he was lost contemplating the linguistic transition from bathing costume to bathing suit until she stirred slightly in the bed and sheet moved to reveal the preternatually bright ink of the tattoo on Claire's lower back. The color of water and Lotus leaped up out of the white sheet as if heliotropically seeking the nearby patch of sun. Claire shifted again arching over and the tattoo moved into the sunlight. Sil momentarily closed his eyes and bit down on his already tightly clenched fist until it hurt far more than he had intended and the desire to leap on the bed and somehow dissolve himself over her somehow like a liquid banket of skin until he sunk into her, obliterating himself in the process like a stream ducking into the mouth of a cave bound for underground and never to return, had passed. Eventually he retreated back to the kitchen lest he act on impulse, though he was dimly aware that he wasn't so much restraining himself as merely postponing the inevitable with the vague promise of the indefinite. + +Coffee in hand he swung open the front door and stepped gingerly out onto what had once been the porch, but now served mainly as a means to inject splinters in his cold bare feet. The truth was Sil wasn't impervious to pain, he simply ignored it. He stepped slowly over the brittle gray wood and out into the sandy yard. He lit another cigarette and stretched his back in the sunlight. He turned and looked back at the house. The roof was rotten from termites and an extended family of rats lived in the ceiling panels. The walls were paper-thin, insulated with spider webs and the only heat came from the anceint pot bellied stove that spit sparks on his living room floor every time he opened it. He sat down in the middle of the desert driveway and watched a plume of dust forming in the distance, near the highway. That would be Jimmy he decided. The only thing that brought anyone out to this godforsaken stretch of land was necessity or occasionally the desire for something that could not be eaily obtained elsewhere. Sil sipped his coffee and waited. Eventually Claire emerged from the house behind him, coffee in hand and speaking in a slightly higher than normal pitched morning voice that drove Sil to parodoxical spasms of lust and tenderness. Before he could achieve the sort of niranic state he felt the voice would one day lead him to, the phone rang. Sil continued to sip his coffee but stepped inside to listen to the machine when it picked up. A crackling voice hestitated and then begin to ask for Claire. Curious Sil walked in and picked up. The man from the cemetery greeted him once more by name and asked for Claire. Sil hesitated but leaned out the front door and handed her the phone. He wandered off to the kitchen and began making breakfast. Claire came in just as Sil slid the eggs out of the pan onto the black beans and tortilla's already piled on two plates. "Everything okay?" + +"That man. The man you met yesterday... he wanted to know about Gamma's things..." She stared out the kitchen window at the clouds, thinking about the man's voice, something in it seemed to ooze and flow like sap or the sludge at the bottom of a cup of Turkish coffee, lavish with timbre and an opacity that reminded her curiously of the way her own voice sometimes sounded when she first made the leap into the hyperreality of DMT, as if he were speaking not with his toungue and lips, not even with his throught or diaphram but from someplace much further down, someplace anchored in rock and mode of words, as if he were caling them up. Aware suddenly of how long she had fallen silent she watched Sil carry the plate over to the table where she sat and tried to make her voice sound commonplace, "and then I dunno, he wanted to know if it would be alright to come by my grandmother's house and look for some book." + +"How does he know your grandmother again?" Sil sat down and began eating. + +"He said he knew her when she was a girl, but he didn't really elaborate." + +"So did you say he could come by?" + +"Yeah, but I didn't say when. He said he'd call next week. He's quite nice. I can't place his accent though." + +"Did he have an accent? I didn't notice." + +They ate and then Sil turned on the stereo and busied himself cleaning up the dishes. Claire lit a cigarette and stared out the sliding glass door at the desert. The clatter of dishes mixed with the music, violins and spoons, bass lines and sautee pans, snare drum and water mingling like sand paintings held together in precise stillness. The songs of time passing, the rattle of dishes wiped dry on the counter and laid up in mahagony cupboards, the green paint on the walls and French cafe poster over the shelf where Sil stacked his herbs. Claire had always admired Sil's house, which, in spite of being nearly abandoned in outward appearance, or perhaps because of its outward appearance seemed to her somehow ceremonial in its inner fasticidousness, which is not say that Sil was organized or neat by any means, but rather that everything felt as if it were exactly where it was supposed to be, regardless of where that might be, the dust on the bookshelves, the towel curled round the back of the sink to stop a leaky faucet, she tried and failed to imagine any of it changing. *Your grandmother had something that belongs to me, something I gave her a long time ago, but which I would like to have back.* The voice seemed to be in her own head she realized suddenly, that was what reminded her... it had the same quality of the voices that spoke inside her own head but which she was fully away where not "her," the only way she had ever been able to explain it to Jimmy was to compare it with an echo, your voice, but no longer in your possession, as if it were merely using you as a canyon in which to bound about like a child bouncing a ball off the walls of a corridor. + +Around noon Sil dropped Claire off at her grandmother's house. diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 5.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 5.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8681aa8 --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/Unused/tucson 5.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +new intro to set up claire cleaning the house and falling in with Dean + +It wasn't until she stepped inside that the full force of it hit her, the air was stiffling, she felt as if her lungs were collapsing, a supernova of yellow kitchen walls, blue daisy curtains collapsing in on her, a bowl of rotten grapes on the counter, her stomach turned at the sunken orbs, already flakes of white mold spreading across them. She felt herself trying to suck in air and finding none, began to choke, a bit of bile in her mouth. The windows seemed to bend with caustic desert light, the glass warped and laughing at her. She felt herself gasping for air and retreated sobbing to the porch to where she spit out an orange gray bile and collapsed on the steps. "Once something dies you can't make it live," her grandmother was pulling out a dead basil plant accidentally left out and caught in a frost, it's gray wrinkled leaves made crisp crinkling sound against her skin. "It's the same with people Claire, once they're gone you can't get them back. Well, usually anyway." She chuckled lightly. Claire turned to look at her. "Everynow and then you might run across some people that do come back after they're gone the first time, but they're rare." + +Claire stopped crying and went back inside to get a tissue and blow her nose. Something about the mundanity of her mission perhaps, but this time the house felt neutral as if it no longer cared who came and went within it's walls. Claire stood at the kitchen window looking at the Sahorro cactus in the yard. She remembered planting it as a child, digging the hole with her shovel and how the man from the nursery helped them lower the small cactus in the hole, all of them gingerly avoiding the downward hooked thorns. In the twenty five years since the cactus has grown over six feet, but still somehow Claire felt, looked younger than her and she was sure would outlive her and then some. + +She avoided the closets, started in the bathroom where there was only one photograph, her great grandfather in an gilded oval frame. She studied it for a while thinking how strange to see someone she was directly descended from and yet might well have been an image in a textbook, so utter without connection or reference to her own life. He looked like a statue, something used a basis for fountain sculpter, his shoulders draw up sharply, the antiquated upright posing style of the day, trapped without color on a photographs stool, cursed to yellow with age. A small crack in the photograph had begun to peel and the left side of his face was cripped white and obscured. She spent the afternoon pitching lotions and powders in a trashbag, dried out, crusted Lancome bottles, Tylenon that had solidified to a single clump, hemroidal creme that she refused to touch without the aid of a tissue, Windex and Clorox, bottles of pills and medicines long expired, a deck of cards she kept, she shut her mind down and nothing produced any emotion save a frizzled and frayed toothbrush which should have been replaced months ago and Claire remembered saying as much to her grandmother and how she had simply shrugged. Claire sighed heavily and went outside for some air. + +It was well past dark by the time she went home. There were four garbage bags out front of the house, when Jimmy picked her up. They drove in silence and didn't say a word walking up Claire's steps. Inside the door she turned and they tore at each other's clothes. + +Flashback to Sil and Dean having ti out and parting ways. + diff --git a/unseen/Book 4/Claire/tucson_cuts.txt b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/tucson_cuts.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b3e227b --- /dev/null +++ b/unseen/Book 4/Claire/tucson_cuts.txt @@ -0,0 +1,586 @@ +Before she could answer Ethan's head jerked to the left and the side of it seemed to melt away, as if his face were dissolving. His mouth was still moving as he collapsed down to the floor. A split second later the glass door shattered. Claire covered her mouth to keep from screaming. She backpedaled into the pantry and looked around for somewhere to hide. She climbed inside the dryer and flung the door up to close it behind her. She heard a crashing sound, splintering wood, the front door being bashed in. There were voices, muffled murmurs making their way inside the dryer. Then yelling, very loud yelling, still too muffled to make out. Then the house was quiet again. Claire waited. She forced herself to wait longer. Then she began to feel light headed and decided taking her chances was better than suffocating. She pushed the door open with her head and found that both her arms and her legs were asleep. She rolled herself out of the dryer and lay on the cool floor while the blood returned to her extremities. Eventually she pulled herself up and peeked out of the shadows. There was no one in the kitchen. Ethan's body still lay on the floor where it had fallen. She crawled along the floor, past the stove where a huge puddle of blood pooled out from his head across the linoleum. She saw little chunks of bone and skin stuck to the wall. She kept her head focused down on his feet and gently rolled him over. The gun was covered in blood, but still there. Claire wiped it off on Ethan's shirt and pulled out the clip to clean it. It wasn't loaded. Fuck. She pulled herself over to the wall and slowly peeked her head up over, looking through the railing. The front door had been broken in half and the street was visible beyond it, but there was no one there. Claire stood up and darted down the hallway to her grandmother's room. She opened the closet and threw her hand up on the top shelf, feeling around until she found a box that rattled. She pulled down the bullets and hurriedly shoved them in the clip, her hand shaking as she did. She jammed the clip back in the gun and slid back the top releasing a bullet into the chamber. She walked back down the hallway, peeked around the corner. There was still no one there. She crawled across the floor, trying to stay below the window, until she could reach her bag. + + + +You should have seen it Claire. Bringing those magnets across the desert was unlike anything I've ever witnessed. We went down to Bombay, just to watch them unload the things. They're bigger than the huge flatbeds that dragged them over the desert. There were protestors from all over the world down by the docks. I'm sure you've seen some of the protests that we've had... Well, for this protest everyone came over to Bombay and they were trying to block the docks. I went partly to see the magnets and partly to make sure things didn't get out of hand... as if things are ever in hand in India, but anyway, all the protestors are at the end of the docks and the workers start pulling the magnets out on these cranes that were brought especially to do this and only this, everyone is chanting no more wars or some nonsense and then the first magnet comes up out of the hull of the ship and it's like the opening of Star Wars when the massive ship goes overhead. It cast a shadow over the whole dock area and all the chanting stops and everyone, even me, is standing there, mouths hanging open in shock. I'd never seen anything so massively large in all my life. Such a monstrosity that the sheer size of it hushed several hundred people that had, up to that point, been getting more unruly by the minute. Waiben shook his head. It was something. And then the the crowd part and the magnets passed through without a word. No protest, no incidents, nothing. All the way across the desert. I got to ride in a helicopter that followed the trucks. There were half a dozen heavily armed helicopters, Royal Guard troops on the ground, riding in armored vehicles, AI predator drones flying along side the helicopters. It was wild. + + * * * * + + + +The plane banked hard and Waiben just barely grabbed his scotch before it slid off the table in front of him. He tucked the glass in his elbow and hurried fastened his seatbelt. As they leveled out and swooped low over the Mountains Waiben could see the clouds around TK observatory, wondered what poor scientist up there had seen the same sizmograph readings he had and unlike Waiben, was unable to do anything other than wait. Wait so see what the anomoly was, an earthquake perhaps... Waiben doubted most anyone would have made the leap to nulear detonation, it simply wasn't something the average imagination was yet able to wrap itself aroun, the inconcievable being comes conseizable only after... the real fallout of historical event is simply that it is now added to realm of possibilities -- no one in Washington had believed the early reports of the haulocaust not because they denied the facts, Waiben believed -- with the sort of 20-20 hidesight that comes naturally to scientists -- but because there was quite simply no precedent in their imaginations, nothing that so much as hinted such a monsterous thing could happen... and yet it had. Waiben imagined the response to the bombs in Los Angeles would be much the same -- disblief, denial, not this time because the bomb itself was unthinkable, afterall hundreds of nuclear bombs had been detonated, but only twice on people, and only then in war... the onlys, the qualifications still kept it out the general consciousness of the world... leaders might threaten, militaries puff their chests, but everyone deep down knew that no one was that crazy. + +Unless of course they happened to have access to Pesident Nadar and know what had been obvious to Waiben the first time their eyes met -- this man is insane. Of course it was very likely, Waiben reflected, that Nadar thought the exact same thing about him, though of course for wholely different reasons. But as soon as Waiben had first met with the president he had broken out in the cold sweat and hurried home to scan the globe and I2 in search of some place where perhaps sane people still held power, or, even better, where power was so dispersed that it effectively ceased to exist in any practical way, turned in on itself and became the furthest extremes of what Kafka parodied, which Waiben reasoned, was actually not hard to avoid -- you just need to make sure you stayed well clear of such a hydra like structure's many mouths. Stay out the mouth, stay out of its power. It was this line of logic that made him remember India. It was a return visit that convinced him the future lay there. + +The co-pilot emerged from the cockpit with a clipboard that Waiben already knew held their bogus flight plan, one that called for them to head north east to Kansas City. The co-pilot flopped into the chair next to Waiben. + +So was that what I think it was off to the west? + +Probably. It's been some time coming. + +So where are we really going. + +Where do you think? + +For good? + +If you want... why, something down there you'll miss? + +Tacos? + +Waiben smiled and nodded. He reached for the clipboard and studied it for a while. Stay low, under 4000 if we can, until we hit Mexican airspace. Then climb a bit and put out a distress call asking if we put down in TK by Corpus Cristy. It's a small airport, by the time they figure out we aren't inbound we'll be in international airspace and it won't matter. Then we refuel in St. Kitts and make the hop to Ferdinand Poo. Then we'll figure out where the cards have fallen... + +The co-pilot looked up from his notes, where they've fallen? + +Look. I don't know who did it, I don't know if it's all a big government conspiracy to enact martial law or if it's some rogue group acting on their own... it doesn't matter. I know what the consequences will be. + +Everything will change. + +Exactly. Except where we're going. + +Well, then I guess we better get there. + +The sooner the better. Waiben said as the co-pilot headed back to the cockpit. Waiben looked down at the desert below watching the shadow of the plane skim along the speckled brown and green landscape. + + + +------------------ + +Waiben sat across the table from her. Her hands trembled a little as she wrapped them around the empty glass. + +Can I get you some more? She looked in his eye for a sign, a dropping of formal guard, some acknowledgment that this was the first time in six years that they had been alone together in the same room, that can I get you some more was in fact the first words they had spoken in six years, that he had studiously avoided her throughout the afternoon, always seeming to move ten steps ahead of her, a shadow preceding himself, as if he somehow held back more light than most people, had some extra light absorbent clothing, his dark, but not African skin, something Central Asian perhaps, but there was nothing there and so she nodded and he stood, the chair making a harsh scraping noise in the silence of the house. She gingerly slipped out of her own chair and walked out onto the + +---------- + + +under the first blue sky to blow through after a week of torrential spring rain. The lightning storms, brutal even by Tucson standards, sent enough white hot bolts into the sandy expanses surrounding Tucson to keep the glass collecting hippies in business for months to come. + +The rains fell hardest on the upper slopes of the Catalina Mountains, splashing through the pines and cedars, dripping down the leaves of red-barked manzanita and mountain laurel bushes to the needle-covered forest floor. Rivulets gathered beneath the pine needles and made their way to gullies, joining forces as as they sloshed into ragged ravines, tiny streams that met up on the sandy lower slopes of the mountains, where the desert reached up with rock and gravel for the taking -- pebbles at first, a few moving some yards while the stones held on for the larger waters. Further down creeks began to attracted larger hunks of granite, pulling them toward the point at which everything converged in the Rialto River where stones met with boulders and whole trees torn out the ground by the angry waters, churning now with an eye to the south, some insane dream of siestas in the Mexican shade, unaware of the boulder choking dams that awaited it and willing to smash steel and bone on its the way to the sea. + +------- + +Claire's jazz discernment skills had been honed over the last six years in New Orleans, though in truth after her discovery of Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra she pretty much wrote off the rest... why keep searching if you've already found what you were looking for? Kill me and Shrimp seemed to have been inspired by some of the progressive jazz meets downer rock that had briefly flourished in Chicago some years back, a revival of an even earlier experiment along the same lines, what happened when bored white kids tried to apply math and theory to jazz. A likable, but somewhat cold form of music, made all the stranger by the warmth of what it had grown out of ... Kill Me and The Shrimp ended up, as best Claire could sort it out, as a revival several times removed -- how do you get from the Harlem renaissance, to Miles and Charlie Parker running off into experimental land to frolic amongst the confusion and find great profit in the adoration of white listeners desperate to escape the musical dead end of big band swing to a jazz rock fusion. She twisted the lineage around in her head as the band played, trying to follow the melody lines, but like the history it ended up a tangle. In the end she decided that while Kill Me in the Shrimp didn't have much to add to a line of musical pedigree so twisted and confusing PhDs were offered to those who could sort it out, somehow there was s + + +-------- + +Where is Medina? + +Waiben looked up from his collection of monitors. Back in Mexico I believe. After you left I stayed in India. I sent her some money, and arranged for her to go back if she wanted. + +Claire nodded. That was nice of you. + +He shrugged and turned back to the screen. + +True. Well, I'm in no hurry. Just an empty hotel room waiting for me. Claire put her eye back to the telescope, I'm enjoying the view. But she was thinking that it would have been even nicer to find Medina and bring her back for the funeral. Though Medina had never met Claire's grandmother, Claire had come to think of Medina as a sort of surrogate mother and sometimes forgot that Medina was not in fact her grandmother's daughter. + +Medina would come by around noon to prepare lunch and the often untouched dinners. At first Claire didn't speak to her much, they were both, for different reasons, shy, Claire, like all only children, had no trouble ignoring her, not that she was rude, not that she didn't care, not that she was even shy, though sometimes she was, but simply that Claire was so used to total immersion it was always easy to ignore anything that might be happening outside that moment's immersive object. And then one day Claire couldn't focus and so she went in the kitchen and watched Medina cook, noticing that she seemed to pay attention to things Waiben never recorded in his food journals, like what a sauce tasted like, or how fresh the eggs were. + +Claire was halfway through commenting on the fact that Waiben seemed utterly unconcerned with the taste of food when she realized that Medina did not seem to speak much English. Later she was thankful Medina hadn't understood her since she soon realized that Medina wasn't tasting the sauces for Waiben, but for herself, to make sure she was meeting her own standards or living up to the invisible pressures she felt. At the time Claire slunk out of the kitchen feeling like a fool, but the next day she noticed Medina struggling to read one of Waiben's notes and so she translated as best she could with pantomimes a bit of broken Spanish picked up on schoolyards until Medina understood. It wasn't long before Claire spent all her time in the kitchen when Medina was there, leaving Waiben's books and her own notes scattered on the dining room table to talk in halting Spanish with Medina. Over the course of two years Medina became nearly fluent in English and Claire nearly so in Spanish. Medina was from Montepio, Mexico, a small town by the gulf. Her father had been a salt worker, her mother kept busy with half a dozen children, of which Medina was the eldest. Claire had been reading Anna Karinina at the time and consequently much of Medina's stories blended together with Tolstoy's romanticized vision of Russian Peasants and Claire's own escapist imprints of what life in small Mexican village surely must be like, though these illusions were somewhat shattered when she learned that I2 had made its way to Montepio. That modern trappings like online human assistants and Your Man in India (Medina looked at Claire like a she was a simpleton when Claire said that YMII seemed like it would, well, be something that involved people in India) had led Medina to Waiben and consequently to Tucson was Claire's first hint that he was not as decidedly anti-net as he seemed. But she was disappointed to learn that Medina had not slipped clandestinely over the border at night as Claire imagined, but arrived unceremoniously in Waiben's personal jet and, with his escort and few envelopes of money, simply skipped customs and moved straight to the apartment he had already rented. + +Why exactly Waiben had spent the time, effort and money to bring Medina Stateside when there were hundreds of Medinas already in Tucson was something Claire never thought to ask. It seemed beyond a doubt that Medina was in fact the only one who could do what she did as well as she did it and Claire was simply unable to imagine anyone else doing it. + +And yet now, staring through the telescope, for the first time Claire wondered, why Medina? + + +---------- + + + +So she did what she had been doing all year, she went to the library and logged into I2. The first thing she found were clinical papers and scholarly sex studies which she skimmed for bit and decided that such meta-game critiques were unimportant to the actual play of the game. Then she tried porn, but found that all the looks of love were staged. Well, not all, but the rare instances when it wasn't staged were too few and far between to bother sorting out. The only real thing Claire recalled learning from porn was that the game board of sex was infinite, but there were some places and some cards she was pretty sure did not appeal to her. That and that other men apparently like to slap their cocks against your pelvis, a habit she was glad Waiben seemed unaware of. + +Finding porn a dead end, Claire turned next to art. Still photography had a way of capturing the sexiness of individual moments in a way that its video counterpart seems to glossy right over without giving the view time to appreciate it. Photography told the story of s single moment, it left the moments that led up and the moments that came after to the imagination, which was far more powerful than any other piece in the game of sex. + +Naturally it wasn't long before Waiben's books began to change. It started with Reich, perhaps an innocent choice on his part, perhaps not, but soon she found Henry Miller on the table. Miller was what Waiben's note called a sensualist, a word that would forever remind her of The Brother's Karamazov, in a good way, but she found Miller decidedly short on the actual sex bits and she told Waiben as much. The next week there was the The Story of O. Now were getting somewhere thought Claire as she read with one hand. Next up with the Marquis de Sade, who might have had something to say about sex, but Claire never found it because the book was, without a doubt the worst writing Waiben had ever set on the table and she threw to book out the window of the bus one day on her way back downtown and refused to have sex for a week. It was Anne Laroque that opened her eyes to more possibilities than anyone else. It was the words that drove her mad, it was always words, whispered in her ear and the lay next to each other, breathed through the phone while he was at work, she by the pool, hands between her legs. Words that opened the doors in her imagination and led her to places she had never known. She latched on to Anne Laroque's Sleeping Beauty series in way that she hadn't bonded with any book since she read Flowers in the Attic at the tender age of ten. + +It was sleeping beauty that made her ask Waiben for a spanking and it was there, bent over his knee, relishing the devilish tingle in her skin every time his hand came down that she knew the way forward. The next week she convinced him to wrapped his hands around her throat, starved of oxygen as the blood rushing throughout her, circulating in pulses, drawing through the heart, picking up speed headed for the brain where the hands built tension, pressure, a vacuum opening up in her head, and then the release, the collision of everything all at once in deep thrusts of blood, air, flesh and static pops of light at the edge of her vision. Before long Claire was reading books on knots, sailing manuals from the nineteen century, discovered on the back shelves on a used book store in Albuquerque where they spent his birthday, to celebrate openly where no one knew them. Waiben played along at first, submitting to the handcuffs, the tickling, the ropes, the riding crop, but grew wary of the darkness in her eyes during those moments when he was helpless... then it went further, she produced real whips, clamps, electricity, until his bedroom had begun to resemble a strange cross between a medieval dungeon and an auto body shop. + +It was then that Waiben left the tantric book on the table. There was no note, just a slim illustrated volume with sanscrit text. Claire poured over it, having already grown bored with kink and fetishism. She was searching for something more, stumbling forward blindly, groping for the point of the game. There had to be something beyond mere kink, the fetishism of behavior, something more. She could feel something beyond every time she came, some glimpse of something hidden that was so fast and so disorienting as to be totally unprocessable, but it was there nonetheless. And she found it in the half decayed sketches of 2000 year old book. + +A few days later Waiben came home to find the whips, chains and auto body shop accouterments gone. Claire was sitting naked on the bed in a half lotus position, meditating with a vibrator between her legs. He almost burst out laughing, but somehow managed to quietly back out of the room without disturbing her. He went downstairs, outside to smoke a bit of hash. He reviewed his notebook, a record of Claire's experiments very different than her own, lacking the more ambient descriptions, but detail enough that he could review nearly two years worth of sex at a glance, complete with an index by date. Two years he decided was long enough. He waited until she came down stairs, wearing a silk robe and talking about tantric sex to ask if she would like to go with him to India, where they were talking of building a collider, something Waiben had been trying, unsuccessfully, to raise money for for years. He tried to work it in casually, using the tantric opening to make it seem like to fit, but the very next day he was at the jeweler's picking out something simple and elegant that he would hide in a shoe at the bottom of his suitcase and, as it turned out, never remove. + +---------- + +she became insatiable, both out of desire and out of curiosity. It seemed somehow inevitable in hindsight that she would take him down roads he had never considered, only dimly knew existed, that the beginning was half sex, half wrestling was the signpost he had missed, that it would end as it began in a kind of playful violence that neither he nor she could ever really control. The problem, as she remembered it was that his curiosity had never quite extended as far as hers. He was older, had already been with many women and had certain tastes as one acquires with experience in anything. He did his best not to let them get in the way, but he was not prepared to go as far as Claire wanted to go. + +Outwardly little changed save the sex. She began to come by earlier, stopped spending her morning staring at the light in the entryway and spent ti staring at the ceiling his bedroom, or more often, the closet across the room. + +Waiben still left for the university and came home in the evenings to an empty house, but a house tinged with the smell of her, of them, of something he could never identify, not their sweat, not the come, not a perfume, not a shampoo or deodorant, something organic and seeping out of her that lingered long after she was gone. He would sit at his desk, papers spread out before him, inhaling, feeling a renewed energy creep over him that often lasted well past midnight. + +---------- + + + + + +what began as a harmless spank, a playful snap from a wrinkled dress and the command, get back to work, turned soon enough into a craving, a need that grew out her from someplace she had previously kept locked up ... + +... and then on, so far neither of them could ever really see the end of it and it scared him more than her she realized toward the end, not that he was afraid of her or what grew between them, but that he could not go as far as she was willing, that he would have to stop before she reached the end. Somewhere in the middle, the work on the collider began to change, no longer was it an abstract thing he worked on during the day, she began to demand progress, to see sketches, to hear of successes and failures... no longer was Waiben carrying on the work of the dead, but carrying on the work, the demands, of the living, the living who would push themselves beyond any reasonable human limit and drag him along beside her until it was no longer a thing separate from him, it was a thing growing out of him, a thing she was forcing out with every bit of semen, spit, saliva, sweat and blood, the red welts on his skin, the blue bruises on her breasts, and it grew, sketches on paper, graphs, remote experiments in the Alps, a curiosity as insatiable as appetite itself, linked, inexplicably to the boundaries they pushed together, penetrating another world, creating a space that did not previously exist ... She never had the heart to do the math, was afraid of what it would say, preferred to remain limp in chains, wrapped tight in plastic, breathing in gasps, shaking and raw from the sodomizing handle of a bullwhip while Waiben sketched diagrams on an enormous piece of graph paper hanging on the wall in front of her... Sometimes she found bits of it in him, begging on hands and knees, watery eyes, hoarse voice crying out directions between bloody gums licking at the steel teeth of the chastity belt, gumming mercilessly in self-flagellation as Claire with the no 4 bic wrote furiously trying to keep up with both pen and whip, to lay plans to push this world into the next... + +---------- + + + + + + + + +Occasionally she would pilfer a book from Waiben's shelves or read one of the books he left on the table for her, physics textbooks mainly, so of them mentioned her father, she read half-understanding, frequently pausing to stare off at the Catalina mountains in the distance. She that Waiben took a mad scientist's delight in learning that she was actually reading the books he left so she began to stop by more frequently in the evenings. One night, sitting on the desk that had, for a brief period of time somehow managed to shed its portion of the world's paper, she noticed Waiben glancing periodically at her legs. She tucked them back under the shadows of the table and Waiben went on about rules for reading. No, not rules exactly, he bit his lip in thought and for once seemed to measure his words rather carefully, rules are not good, suggestions based on experience, that's what I'd call them... She listened, but she was thinking about her legs and what they might mean to him. + + +The suggestions, as it turned out, were pretty benign. Read non-fiction in the morning. Not immediately after breakfast when the food might make you feel sluggish, but soon after digestion had settled down and the brain was well primed to absorb convoluted subjects like string theory with the sort of sharpness that cutting edge science requires... you must have the mental acuity and prowess necessary to wade through the conjecture and theory to find those nuggets of truth that might lurk in the corners obscured by poor writing, substandard testing and all manner of other sins found in non-fiction authors... it's not that they aren't good at their craft, it's that their laziness is less forgivable Claire. Waiben popped a fresh piece of Nicorette in his mouth and continued. If fiction writer is lazy, the result is just a bad book, if it's non-fiction, well there's more damage to be done isn't there? Untruths, half-truths, lies, we're led astray, and to half-understand something is far more dangerous, unforgivable even, than to remain ignorant of it altogether. The devil is in the details okay? Never forget that. It might be a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason, the devil really does live in the details. And the devil is what we're after in this world. + +Just before summer arrived Claire was forced to finally tell her grandmother she had dropped out of school. There would be no graduation, just a diploma in the mail. Claire ended up tearfully confessing one night, though she carefully left out anything about Waiben, not so much to hide him from her as to avoid discussing her parents. Instead said she had been spending her days at the mall, the Y, the library and other places she reasoned her grandmother would believe she had been. Later she realized she should have told her the truth, that one day she went looking for her father and found someone else entirely. + +With night school over, Claire had no reason to go downtown in the afternoons so she stopped dropping by Waiben's office, which was just as well since Waiben's classes were out too and research had kicked into overdrive. Consequently Claire saw more of Medina, the housekeeper who came by each day to clean, tidy up and make dinner for Waiben, than she did of Waiben. It wasn't long before Medina insisted on making Claire lunch every day. Her persistance reminded Claire of her grandmother. Claire wasn't sure if it was so much a desire to feed her, as a desire to confirm that Claire actually ate her lunch, which gave Medina some satisfaction, unlike the meals she prepped for Waiben, which half the time he never came home to eat, leaving the tupperware in the refrigerator for days until Medina or Claire threw it away. Waiben had already explained his eating system to Claire, which, like the reading system, was a kind of self-optimization designed in part for convenience and in part to make him more productive. Waiben ate frequent small meals throughout the day to avoid the mental lag he claimed was associated with the digestion of food. Claire had never noticed such a thing, save perhaps for Thanksgiving day, but Waiben claimed he had documented the effect. In fact, he showed her years worth of meticulous records detailing his eating habits in a collection of spiral bound notebooks. It's a food database. A what? A food database... that what that produces the why... What? Have you ever had a brilliant idea? Uhm. Of course you have. Haven't you ever wished you could have more brilliant ideas? I guess so, yeah. Well, I wanted more brilliant ideas too, like you father Claire, he swore brilliance came from peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Well, I tried that, it didn't work for me. So I started keeping track of everything I ate to see if there was some connection between any brilliant ideas and what I had eaten that day... Was there? Of course. If there wasn't we wouldn't be having this conversation. Never mind Claire, another time. + +Eventually she got her hands on the food database. It was everything. Literally everything Waiben had consumed and any variation in mental state that a particular food or combination of foods might produced. She spent a whole day by the pool reading through the food database, learning in excruciating detail everything Waiben had consumed for the last three years. His breakfasts consisted of fruit and slow carbs -- eggs and black beans with a bit of spinach or green lentils, egg whites and spoonful of flax seed oil. Several hours later he would eat a hobbit-inspired second breakfast of spinach or other vegetables mixed with Pinto beans or half a chicken breast, followed by another piece of fruit. Afternoons meant a light meal at two, a few ounces of grass-fed, organic beef with asparagus or fish with more lentils. He would stop for snack of fruit and a touch of bread in the evenings before settling down to a larger, protein-heavy meal around eight. At first the regularity and lack of variety appalled Claire, but then she noticed his notes claiming increased energy and corresponding developments in his work. He seemed to become more efficient over time, even having time to add more detailed notes as time went on. Waiben was also a fervent consumer of tea. Not, she noted one day when she decided to try some, the sort of tea most people kept, which was sold in boxes that contained bags which were dunked in water. Waiben used raw tea leaves when possible and brewed his own private combinations of various leaves from around the world. Medina would combine the dried leaves according to his instructions, label the results and store them in the cupboard. One concoction Waiben favored involved Yerba Mate and an Oolong Tea by the name of Honey Dan Chong, a name Claire like so much that for a while she swore she would name her first child Honey Dan Chong. + +Claire was both fascinated and appalled by the food database, which, perhaps more than anything else in hindsight, had piqued her curiosity about Waiben as an actual person, more than just a link to her lost father. Her fascination with the food notebooks lay in the simple act of doing, that you could in fact record in minute detail everything you ate. Perviously Claire had not considered this within the realm of things you could do. It deeply offended her teenage sensibilities about freedom, priorities and the seemingly grave importance of only doing things that mattered, but it was yet another thing to be added to the list of things you could do. In the end, at least with the food notebooks, she ended up giving in to her curiosity and began to record her own eating habits, starting, as Waiben suggested in a card attached to the chartreuse spiral bound notebook she found wrapped up just inside the front door one morning, without changing her existing eating patterns, simply noting what she ate and how she felt after eating, if she did in fact feel anything noticeable at all. And she did. Feel that is. Eventually the Cokes and Twizzlers, which she noticed on rereading her notebook often made her briefly alert, but then sluggish and inclined to napping in the sun, were replaced with more fruit, water and occasional cups of tea, though she found, much to her disappointment that neither the Yerba Mate or the Honey Dan Chong agreed with her stomach or brain. + + + +She began to read with greater intensity, spending far less time staring off at the Catalina mountains, less time by the pool even, and more time at the table, books spread out before her, taking notes and recapitulating much of what she was reading. Looking back on it, it was fairly obvious that Waiben had essentially tricked her into going to college, his own private college, with its rather strange curriculum, equal parts fiction and non, imaginative and mundane, a college where the main curriculum seemed to be her, or her understanding of herself, which, she realized later is perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to study, the one thing that no one else can possibly understand, the you that is you, separating the innate from the personality, the personalities from each other, digging deeper and deeper until you where swimming in depths where the light was so faint, gravity so weak that it was easy to loose track of which was up, which down and where, if anywhere, you might have been headed. + +But the beginning was nothing but wonder and astonishment. So pleased with the her food notebook experiment and the resulting dietary experiments, Claire began to experiment on herself in other ways and kept detailed notes about what happened. She accidentally became a prolific writer, expanding from simple food databases to more elaborate journals about what she was reading and what she was thinking. She wasn't entirely sure that she understood herself any better because of it, but rereading what she wrote later, she found she was able to do something she had never done in school: learn. She learned in a way she never had before, going beyond the pure statistical data that school had tried to shove down her throat, to something far more valuable and interesting, a way to cultivate her own curiosity. She began to notice things she had never seen before, patterns that surrounded her, patterns of eating, patterns in books, patterns in thoughts, patterns in the light in the entry way, patterns in the rugs upstairs, patterns in the rippling of the swimming pool. She even began to notice a pattern in the books left on the table for her to read. Three months into what was to become her longest running experiment, yoga, she realized that the soon after she had begun her food experiment Waiben had left the first edition translation of the Yoga Sutras. That she moved from food to Yoga seemed so natural at the time, it wasn't until later that she saw Waiben's hand guiding her. It made her wonder what it was he wanted. She dug out the copy of the Yoga Sutras and reread the post-it note still stuck to its tattered green cover saying that it was essential for anyone who wanted to understand the why that came with the what. At the time she had simply signed up for a few classes at the YMCA and then surreptitiously downloaded a few videos at the Library's I2 terminal which she then ferreted onto a thumb drive. + +It wasn't long before she could bend both physically and mentally in ways she had previously never imagined, carefully recording her progress in an ever growing collection of notebooks. + +Exactly whom she had found was still not clear to her even now, but with her grandmother gone she did know that Waiben was her last remaining link to her parents and that thought made her want to run. Run as far and as fast as she could, back to her life in New York, as far from Tucson and Waiben and India and all the rest as she could get it. And yet here she was, sitting on the cool smooth leather of his couch, staring out the desert she could just never seem to fully escape. No matter how far she ran, some desert always appeared. She wondered if she would ever just accept the desert, but deep down she already knew the answer. + +It was the same answer she had always had, no. She said no to school, eventually she said no to Waiben and she always said no to the desert, though she would not, when things first started, had thought of it that way. The closest she came to no for a long time was its bastard cousin, why. Only the facts ma'am. But why? + +She began to notice the gaps in Waiben's notes more than the notes themselves. It was the first sign of trouble, but at the time Claire simply thought Waiben was being too clinical, never she noticed, recording how something tasted or whether a particular dish had a pleasing assortment of color, how much he had been craving a particular food, a rare hanger steak for instance, something Claire frequently found herself craving. Nor did he record details about the room around him, the color dishes, which lights were on, the candles burning of the table, whether the sunset was still filtering in the picture windows in the back of the house or if it were dark whether or not the moon was visible through the curtains in the dining room. Claire set about to, as best she could correct these oversights in her own recordings, giving them, she imagined, a more readable touch, something more than simple facts, though she did consider that perhaps such descriptions could be facts, records of how a room looked, impressions on her mind yes, words she filtered, formulated and strung together, different perhaps than the words another might have chosen, but facts for her nonetheless. Subjective facts, Waiben called them. The facts of your own impressions which were, at the time, all you had. It was only in hindsight, through historical artifacts like writing that it was possible to combine words, images, photographs, descriptions, paintings, video, surveillance footage and the rest into some sort of collectively agreed upon objectivity. There was nothing in the actual moment save you and your own impressionistic facts. + +Claire found this realization troubling at first. Waiben did not. He seemed perfectly at ease with the idea that everyone was recording something different, billions of highly refined cameras with incredibly sophisticated lens and highly evolved processing software each trapped in its own infinite loop of unknowing. The real knowing he said coyly, comes from those who trust their facts, but never completely. Claire found the statement deliberately obtuse, but later, when she began to meditate it made more sense. She found, as Waiben already had (though in his case it was with LSD), that there were two observers, one personal and trapped, and another that was neither. The man over the horizon Waiben called it. To Claire it seemed more like a source of what many people call the soul, a thing outside of, but intertwined with, everyone, like a voice just over the horizon, calling her name, though like most Claire had not yet found the courage to follow it. Not that the brain would be damaged or anything permanently altered in her body, but that some things once seen cannot be unseen and the perspectives gained from such sights might have an impact on your outlook, on how you lived your life that led in a direction you did not think you wanted to go. + +The battle between the essence and the personality, Waiben called it. He being a proponent of following the leads, going past the line and damn hell and high water, let's see what's out there people, a speech Claire found incredibly naive for the forty-eight year old man who, in any case, had ceased his own self-experimentations in the drug realm before Claire had even been born. Not that the drugs themselves had changed much, though Waiben swore the pot was stronger, but the world, the set and setting had certainly taken a turn for the worse. Waiben shrugged it off, the world has always been ending, ask anyone in history he said wryly one night, sipping Malbec by the pool, she dangling her feet in the water, watching the undulating light in the bottom of the pool. Okay, she thought, but what if eventually they're right? How long can we go on with the sneaking suspicion that the world is ending before it turns out we're right? Even worse what if our beliefs are in fact bringing the end of the world closer, because we believe in it, it begins to believe in itself? + +Recalling it now, as Waiben fiddled with his servers and agents behind the desk, only made Claire want to write down her reflections upon reflections in the little black leather book that was forever in her bag, but she restrained herself. She was thinking about the stack of notebooks in the back of her closet at the apartment in New York, she had not reread them in several years, did not want to revisit everything, preferring in the end to use the recording as way to put it all to rest, the exact opposite of what she had imagined herself using them for when she was actually writing them. + +She found herself thinking about one of the last fights she and Waiben ever had, she was already packing her bags, grabbing her clothes out of the dresser in their shabby Indian apartment and shoving them in worn out backpack. He had moved past pleading into yelling and she retaliated by telling him he had hypergraphia, and out to seek a doctor, not a guru or a collider, but a goddamn doctor that can straighten your fucking egotistical head trip out from the reality the rest of us are fucking living in... it had shut him up at least, but then she looked up from her bag and saw the look of pain in his eyes, saw that he knew she was not just g him, but abandoning him, abandoning them, abandoning the private world they had lived in for so long, just the two of them, a little battle hardened unit against the world, the unseen support on which everything depended, abandoning him in it, alone in a private world that no one else could ever enter, stuck forever or forced to likewise leave it behind. She felt herself falter, it was the moment at which Claire saw with absolute clarity how she could choose right now, right here, in this singular moment between two entirely different lives and for a moment she almost stayed, but she knew deep down that he was right about one thing, damn hell and high water, she was pushing on. She picked up a clay statue of Ganesh hurled it as his head, grabbed her bag and walked out the door. Until today, it was the last either had seen of each other. + + +-------- + + + +She spent the morning in the kitchen, watching the light in the entryway. The sun streamed through two abstract stained glass windows on either side of the front door and filled the entryway with kaleidoscopic patterns that moved and shifted with the light and made it Claire feel as if she had just stepped into a gothic cathedral. It lent a sense of ceremony to her morning that made it seem more purposeful than it did on the bus ride, which she mainly spent sitting in silence, headphones plugged in, jealous of her fellow passengers and the new immersive goggles that were all the rage. Sometimes she took her headphones off and listened to the people around her talking to unseen entities somewhere in the world behind the glasses. Claire could not afford the googles so she got by with stained glass windows, headphones and jealousy. + +Once the sun had crept higher and reduced the entry windows from the mystical to just pretty colored glass, + +-------- + +That day was also the result of a book. One Claire had found on her own in the footnotes of some other book Waiben had left. She went to the library in search of something by Wilhelm Reich, which she found and read nearly breathless. + +That day Waiben made excuses for himself, to himself, to his colleagues. He came home early. He came home early to see her because that day the morning was no longer enough. That day he wanted more. + +That day Claire made excuses to herself. She took off her top and lay in the sun feeling risque and thinking about Reich, about Waiben, about time, about time. And then that day he appeared in the afternoon. Long after she had put her clothes back on and come inside, but long before she had ceased to think about him. + +That day she simply asked him if he would like to have sex with her. + +Part of her simply wanted to feel what it was like, part of her wanted something more. + +He was sitting on the couch, she on the floor. The coffee table between them, the green fronds of a fern half-hid her face. They were flirting over Reich. And then she stood up and asked if he wanted to have sex with her. Just like that. + +As was his habit when life confounded him, Waiben said nothing at first. Then something flared in Claire and she moved toward him, planting her hands on his chest and driving him back on the couch. Or perhaps you'd like to wrestle. + +He caught her wrists in his hands and started to push her away, but she simply twisted and fell forward, pressing her body against his. He could feel her shirt against his, the thin bones of her wrists in his hands, her breasts pressed against his forearms and he knew it was over. + +He tried to turn her over but she resisted now, wrestling him for real, with a strength that he would not have thought she had, until she ripped her arms free of his grasp, spun him over on his side until he collapsed onto the couch and she lay triumphantly on top of him, breathing hard, but staring down with a defiant look in her eyes that he would never forget. She leaned down and thrust her tongue in his mouth clumsily, groping her way forward like a blind woman. She pulled off her clothes, he his and she climbed astride him as he guided her down onto him. + +They stumbled through it from beginning to end, making it up as they went along, creating a private world just for two. She remembered strange moments. The first time she took him in her mouth, the softness of the skin on his penis, the slight rasp of his tongue between her legs, the way smell of sex mingled with the lingering smell of refried beans still on the stove, the moment she realized that they could do it again. And again. Forever. + +She remembered writing about it later, trying to record all the sensations, the feelings that defied words and in the end deciding that, for her, sex was like discovering the world's best game and she was angry that no one had told her the world's best game existed. She had of course known that sex existed, but she had no idea and nothing she had ever heard or seen regarding sex would have led her to believe that it was the world's best game. Yet it was clearly was. It reminded her of the first time she had eaten mushrooms and decided that she simply must live in the psychedelic world of mushrooms for the rest of her life, the only difference being that when she woke up the next day she changed her mind about the mushrooms, but she never did change her mind about sex. It was still definitely the world's best game. Assuming you did it right, which as far as Claire knew she had. But then she started to think that perhaps, if sex was the world's best game, then she out to learn more about it, see how big the board was, what the different pieces could do, learn the hacks, tricks and discover any still-secret levels that she might want to open up. + + + + + +TK continue in this vien until we hit the part where they travel to India, then drop in the prospector thing and tie it together with tucson, claire's interest in yoga, etc. + + + + +All the while Waiben worked on finding a new home for the collider he still hoped to build, despite the death of his colleague and the loss of the site in Japan. The reorganization of government meant that there were no federal grants left. The collapse of the banking system and the subsequent seizure of the Federal Reserve had sent the moneyed elite scurrying for cover, many moving off shore, to the more stable economies in Eastern Europe, China and India. No one had any interest in such a colossal project of very dubious financial value and, given the astronomical odds against succeeding, not even the promise of controlling a potentially unlimited source of energy was enough to entice the once powerful bankers into backing anything so risky. + + +When Nadar was elected president, Waiben's forutnes changed. Somewhere in the middle of promises that he would reign in the people's movement, restore order to the economy and remold America as a land of producers, Waiben's project found its way to the president's desk. Waiben suspected it was the result of some clerical error, a secretary spilled coffee on the paper that should have been sent in with the morning breifings was ruined and in her haste she had simply plucked Waiben's out of the stack and sent it instead. However it happened, Nadar took to the project and flew Waiben to D.C. post haste and explained to the good doctor that his collider was to the space project of the decade, something to capture the public imagination Nadar said. Waiben simply nodded and then found himself flying back and forth to Washington for most of the next year. Later, in the wake of the riots, when Nadar moved the presidency to New York Waiben began to wonder if the promised money would ever materialize. There was talk in the halls, when Waiben walked by voices dropped to whisper. He knew that something much larger than him was happening all around him, but he had never cared for politics, considered it simply a bad hangover from early primate territory games. He did however have presense of mind to notice that he had thrown is lot in with a rather dangerous seeming crowd. by then he no longer cared and of course, even if he had he would have been powerless to do anything about. Waiben loathed Nadar, loathed the fact that he needed him, loathed the fact that if he succeeded the bastard would control what might be the most powerful tool in the known world -- a tiny little sun locked underneath an endlessly sunny desert. After six months of hounding, proposal and counter proposals Waiben finally caved to the government's demands and the money began to flow. +spent his time wandering the cold metal world of the city thinking, with alarming frequency, that he missed the smell of her. + + + +It went on for three years, playing out not unlike the Nabokov novel that Waiben now rounded up and destroyed in the fireplace, a ceremonial act he preformed with some drama the night after her eighteenth birthday. + +The affair began normally enough, just as Waiben had envisioned it so many times in his head, but then it began to spinning away from him and eventually away from her... +In the center the collider grew, their offspring, burrowing into a desert womb... a monstrous creature of tubing and pipe, enough copper wires to fund a small nation, not to mention the liquid hydrogen which was plentiful enough to put the better part of Tucson in cryogenic suspension ... the myriad ancillary gear and tools -- compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics, even entire refrigeration plants. The tunnel itself was 24 miles in circumference, and lay some five hundred feet beneath the earth, encased in granite and laced with magnets, drawing everything toward itself, so powerful even gravity would collapse in its depths -- the finite made infinite. Not made, revealed, as she had revealed to him... the finite always more than the historical artifacts we take it for, the line tilted on its axis to reveal a circle, observations made and then demarkations drawn in the settling dust of aftermath. There are however markers in the present, gut rumblings, a nebulous feeling of inevitable doom that dogs many from their earliest years, portending *something* -- some indistinct, cloudy something, which was no less real, no less *happening* for its vagueness. Instincts, insights, flashes that reveal too much, too fast, leaving behind a seared in vision but nothing on which to pin the impending dread, that nonetheless are the only distant early warnings available before the historians return to sweep up the dust and debris into tidy printable pages for children to pour over. + +Claire saw the end long before Waiben, saw him disappear into the game she had invented, saw him disappear into the collider, the peculiar male fixation of building despite the obviousness that decay always wins, in this dimension and most likely all others. Nothing can really be destroyed, nothing can ever disappear, only change forms to something indistinguishable from nothing. And even the change was deceptive, something perceived more through the flaws in the observation than any real change, at the quantum level very little changed, save in the center of the sun, or the center of the collider, where atoms would turn to something beyond atoms. She began to withdraw from him, to let him go and he, despite the warnings all round him, the missed dinners, the nights out with friends, even the fire dying out in her eyes, could not see or refused to see -- even now she was not sure -- that there could be only one ending. + +It started as Waiben began to gain some notoriety, as the project picked up speed and money he began to appear on the news broadcasts, installed I2 feed, and Claire began to question it, to question him about the colossally arrogant waste of money in a world that was, perceptibly now, coming apart at the seams, but what better way to tear it limb from limb, my dear, to ensure the total destruction and rebirth ... so long as it was being built anyway... may as well answer some questions so we can all move on now folks ... might as well take it for a spin, no? So now... what the hell *does* happen to gravity when a particle is obliterated? Only Waiben and Nadar really cared, and only Claire really understood. + +The locals didn't give a damn, which bought Waiben some time with the pitchfork and torches crowd. The collider served its purpose in their eyes -- created jobs, drew in investors, turned Tucson into a thriving example of American ingenuity in the midst of chaos, cults and failure. But Waiben had overheard whispers around the staid university about the, "er, dear me, how do I say this..." the *nature* of some of the recent arrivals, drawn to the collider, to the jobs, to the thriving oasis in the desert like moths to a roaring camp fire, only to end up ashes blowing right back out, gray dust drifting off into the night air. Lately there had even been a few scraggly suspicious looking types with placards announcing the inevitable end of the world... It began to turn Tucson into the modern day equivalent of vaudevillian circus side show. Wild-eyed, but more or less taciturn physicists were the first to arrive, a semi-suspect collection of characters that began turning up late at night slurping espressos in elbow-patched tweed. Many such characters wandered the stacks of the university library in a caffeine-induced haze, pulling down old tomes, flipping the pages without reading a word and then returning them to their spot on the shelves and again wandering the halls purposefully trying to look purposeless, hoping vainly that they might bump into someone, perhaps Stanslivski or even the Hungarian, Dacha Mailfay, rumored to be in town consulting on the finer points of universe creation... + +As time passed the locals began to sense a slight variation among the scientists invading their previously seldom noticed city -- mathematicians began to arrive in droves, with the ill-kept hairdos popularized by their demigods Feynmann and Einstein. Even those with little interest in the outcome of the collider flocked in right alongside fervent, even worshipful, believers that the math must be put to the test. Their enthusiasm percolated slowly, building throughout the cold winter until it reached a sort of fever pitch at the beginning of April, just a week before Claire decided she had had enough, enough of Waiben, enough of the collider, enough of the desert and so hitched a ride east, eventually jumping down from a big rig cab door into the muggy July of New Orleans where she finally found something that felt like home. + +But behind her in the west where the sun never sets, Tucson continued to grow and spasm with the influx of engineers, construction contracts of a size and magnitude no one had witnessed in decades, enough money to lend the entire city more than a little hint of good old wild west danger, the likes of which locals had not seen since the wild and wooly days of uranium prospecting nearly a half century earlier. And of course with the scientists -- generally still able, despite their enthusiasm for the mathematical satisfaction of literally seeing particles smashed off into any one of the now confirmed 26 other dimensions, were, so long as they stayed out of the cantinas and taco stands where the cheap Mexican imports flowed like cocaine over the border, generally a very sober and serious lot -- came the more enthusiastic, the starry eyed mystics talking of the Deity and the dimensional possibilities... where God might truly be found. The hundreds of crystal sellers and heavy metal seekers down from the north with every variety of calcite, pyrite and complete novella-length explanations of why you must, simply must have a Agate or at least, god, you don't even own a dinosaur fossil? Here just take it, take it, I don't even believe this stuff, mainly a hustler really, leaning in with conspiratorial smiles and the faint scent of whisky hanging from bearded chins, but even I can't bear to see someone with no, absolutely no way to draw on the compressed, compacted, and therefore endlessly potent, power of geologic energy.... + +The alien ship greaters were always the last to arrive, requiring some time to detect more earthly concerns like the fact that all their crystal vendors seemed to have mysteriously decamped Sedona and headed somewhere else, where probably there was also a good chance of the mother ship popping up, unpredictable as it was. Come to find, this lot did, that the mother of all dimensional openings was being constructed right here in Tucson, libel to just spit out some sort of hexahedral multi-dimensional craft chock full of little green men probably just seconds after it went on line... + +For the locals he only real plus to the maelstrom of weirdness that had descend on Tucson was the auxiliary support, the pick ax vendors of old, tagging along behind the miners, keen to make a real profit and well versed in the sorts of goods that everyone, starry-eyed mystics on up the line, had some use for, like taco trucks come all the way from Los Angeles, a flood of out of town cab drivers (finally no waiting for a cab on a Saturday night, almost like New York Claire had marveled walking out of the airport terminal), musicians, bands that had previously never considered making the drive to Tucson began to pour in, playing gigs in whatever wayward bar would have them and bringing naturally a flood of new and much higher quality drugs and willing dealers along with them. + +It was in the latter that Claire sought refuge, out of the proper world of atoms and the sting of the whip into something more tangibly beyond, no waiting for particles to collide, no multi-billion dollar investments, just a drop or two of this on the tongue, there you are now dear ... until the day she had jumped in the car with a couple of peyote dealers headed for Texas and disappeared. + + + +------------- + + +So Claire began a new routine: dress for school, get on the school bus as she always had, though now her backpack included a change of clothes and a bathing suit. Once at the school walk down to Prince Avenue where she would catch the 17 bus downtown and then transfer to the 105X which took her up Swan where she would, on occasion see Waiben in an identical bus, southbound for the University. From Swan the bus turned left onto Sunrise, then Skyline and into the foothills beyond. From the last stop it was a ten minute walk to Waiben's house, which she would open with the key he had given her. + + +---------- + +The day sucked in on itself, a collapsing uncertainty, like so many passenger pigeons, broken-winged and exhausted, returning home on foot. + +------------ + + +, and Claire already knew it wouldn't matter what the band sounded like, or wished themselves to sound like, since, at their best, most of these recently arrived musical nomads were just nascent sonic ideas, hatched by children, unsure yet of what shapes and forms the hungers they felt would take in the world around them; unsure even of what the hunger might be, only that they salivated even when the bell did not ding anymore, when no time was marked, no passage given, no launch attended, waking only to find themselves at sea, tiny paper boats tossed in the ocean of sound ... + + +--------- + +The marker for Claire was much clearer, a tattered notebook she found on Waiben's deskt on day when he had come home early to watch the world series. It was an ordinary spiral bound notebook, curled and creased with use, hand drawn tables on each page noting what seemed like food, but was interspersed with random snippets of equations and occasionally what looked like computer code. What is this she asked, holding up the notebook while Waiben hunched over his monitor watching the game. Huh? Oh, that's my food database. Your what? It's a food database. What is that? Waiben sighed and looked up from the game for a minute. It's everything I'v eaten for the last five years. Actually that notebook is just one year but there are some others over there on the shelf. What's the point? Waiben looked exasperated, but said simply, it's a record of the what that produces the why. What? Claire, have you ever had a brilliant idea? Uhm. Of course you have. Haven't you ever wished you could have more brilliant ideas? Yes. Well, I wanted more brilliant ideas too, like you father Claire, he swore brilliance came from peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Well, I tried that, it didn't work for me. So I started keeping track of everything I ate to see if there was some connection between any brilliant ideas and what I had eaten that day. Was there? Of course. If there wasn't we wouldn't be having this conversation. He turned back to the screen and mumbled, they aren't very interesting, but if you want, feel free to read it. + +She did, finding herself variously fascinated and appalled by the notebooks, which, perhaps more than anything else in hindsight, had piqued her curiosity about Waiben as an actual person, more than just a link to her lost father. Her fascination with the food notebooks lay in the simple act of doing, that you could in fact record in minute detail everything you ate. Previously Claire had not considered this within the realm of things you could do. It deeply offended her teenage sensibilities about freedom, priorities and the seemingly grave importance of only doing things that mattered, but it was yet another thing to be added to the list of things you could do. In the end, at least with the food notebooks, she ended up giving in to her curiosity and began to record her own eating habits, starting, as Waiben suggested in a card attached to the chartreuse spiral bound notebook she found wrapped up just inside the front door one morning, without changing her existing eating patterns, simply noting what she ate and how she felt after eating, if she did in fact feel anything noticeable at all. And she did. Feel that is. Eventually the Cokes and Twizzlers, which she noticed on rereading her notebook often made her briefly alert, but then sluggish and inclined to napping in the sun, were replaced with more fruit, water and occasional cups of tea. She began to read with greater intensity, particularly her father's rather confusing books on physics. She noticed she spent far less time staring off at the Catalina mountains, less time by the pool even, and more time at the table, books spread out before her, taking notes and recapitulating much of what she was reading. Looking back on it, it was fairly obvious that Waiben had essentially tricked her into going to college, his own private college, with its rather strange curriculum, equal parts fiction and non, imaginative and mundane, a college where the main curriculum seemed to be her, or her understanding of herself, which, she realized later is perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to study, the one thing that no one else can possibly understand, the you that is you, separating the innate from the personality, the personalities from each other, digging deeper and deeper until you where swimming in depths where the light was so faint, gravity so weak that it was easy to loose track of which was up, which down and where, if anywhere, you might have been headed. So much easier then the simply stare into the mirror and think that perhaps somewhere in that other world, in that other pale skin turned brown there were all the possibilities already played out, simply there in all their splender rady to chosen if only, if only the mirror would mimic you, would show you some path, but there was nothing just the back night air, the warm water that surrounds you with uncertainity. + +But the beginning was nothing but wonder and astonishment. So pleased with the her food notebook experiment and the resulting dietary experiments, Claire began to experiment on herself in other ways and kept detailed notes about what happened. She accidentally became a prolific writer, expanding from simple food databases to more elaborate journals about what she was reading and what she was thinking. She wasn't entirely sure that she understood herself any better because of it, but she began to notice things she had never seen before, patterns that surrounded her, patterns of eating, patterns in books, patterns in thoughts, patterns in the light in the entry way, patterns in the rugs upstairs, patterns in the rippling of the swimming pool. She even began to notice a pattern in the books left on the table for her to read. Three months into what was to become her longest running experiment, yoga, she realized that soon after she had begun her food experiment Waiben had left the first edition translation of the Yoga Sutras. That she moved from food to Yoga seemed so natural at the time, it wasn't until later that she saw Waiben's hand guiding her. It made her wonder what it was he wanted. + +It was the same answer she had always had, no. She said no to school, eventually she said no to Waiben and she always said no to the desert, though she would not, when things first started, had thought of it that way. The closest she came to no for a long time was its bastard cousin, why. Only the facts ma'am. But why? + +She began to notice the gaps in Waiben's notes more than the notes themselves. It was the first sign of trouble, but at the time Claire simply thought Waiben was being too clinical, never she noticed, recording how something tasted or whether a particular dish had a pleasing assortment of color, how much he had been craving a particular food, a rare hanger steak for instance, something Claire frequently found herself craving. Nor did he record details about the room around him, the color dishes, which lights were on, the candles burning of the table, whether the sunset was still filtering in the picture windows in the back of the house or if it were dark whether or not the moon was visible through the curtains in the dining room. Claire set about to, as best she could correct these oversights in her own recordings, giving them, she imagined, a more readable touch, something more than simple facts, though she did consider that perhaps such descriptions could be facts, records of how a room looked, impressions on her mind yes, words she filtered, formulated and strung together, different perhaps than the words another might have chosen, but facts for her nonetheless. Subjective facts, Waiben called them. The facts of your own impressions which were, at the time, all you had. It was only in hindsight, through historical artifacts like writing that it was possible to combine words, images, photographs, descriptions, paintings, video, surveillance footage and the rest into some sort of collectively agreed upon objectivity. There was nothing in the actual moment save you and your own impressionistic facts. + +Claire found this realization troubling at first. Waiben did not. He seemed perfectly at ease with the idea that everyone was recording something different, billions of highly refined cameras with incredibly sophisticated lens and highly evolved processing software each trapped in its own infinite loop of unknowing. The real knowing he said coyly, comes from those who trust their facts, but never completely. Claire found the statement deliberately obtuse, but later, when she began to meditate it made more sense. She found, as Waiben already had (though in his case it was with LSD), that there were two observers, one personal and trapped, and another that was neither. The man over the horizon Waiben called it. To Claire it seemed more like a source of what many people call the soul, a thing outside of, but intertwined with, everyone, like a voice just over the horizon, calling her name, though like most Claire had not yet found the courage to follow it. Not that the brain would be damaged or anything permanently altered in her body, but that some things once seen cannot be unseen and the perspectives gained from such sights might have an impact on your outlook, on how you lived your life that led in a direction you did not think you wanted to go. + +The battle between the essence and the personality, Waiben called it. He being a proponent of following the leads, going past the line and damn hell and high water, let's see what's out there people, a speech Claire found incredibly naive for the forty-eight year old man who, in any case, had ceased his own self-experimentations in the drug realm before Claire had even been born. Not that the drugs themselves had changed much, though Waiben swore the pot was stronger, but the world, the set and setting had certainly taken a turn for the worse. Waiben shrugged it off, the world has always been ending, ask anyone in history he said wryly one night, sipping Malbec by the pool, she dangling her feet in the water, watching the undulating light in the bottom of the pool. Okay, she thought, but what if eventually they're right? How long can we go on with the sneaking suspicion that the world is ending before it turns out we're right? Even worse what if our beliefs are in fact bringing the end of the world closer, because we believe in it, it begins to believe in itself? + + +----------------- + +We seek it wherever we go, we seek until we become, even in our own homes, tourists, simply passing through in search of something else, some dark mass that only grows more confusing the close we come to it. + +---------------- + +old end to ethan and claire + + + + + + + + +Ethan we have to go. + +What? Wait a minute I want more coffee. Now Claire hissed, tossing money to the man behind the cash register and not bothering with change. She grabbed Ethan by the jacket collar and pulled him up out of the booth. + +What the fuck Claire? They stood outside the restaurant as another pair of fighters roared overhead. + +We need to leave. Now. + +What? Why? I mean... + +Are you coming? + +Where are we going? + +Claire was already walking down the street. We need to get to the base in the next 15 minutes. + +What base? What are you talking about? + +The Air Force base. + +Is that where the plane museum is? Ethan was runing to catch up with her. + +It's near there. + +Isn't that on the other side of Tucson? + +Yeah. + +there's no way... + +I know, but I have to try. + +We don't even have a car... + +Claire was trying to door of every car she passed. Two blocks from the diner a door opened. She got in. + +What are you doing? + +Trying to steal this car... + +Shit. He ran around and climbed in the passenger's side. Do you know how to start this thing? + +It's a stick, Claire said testily as she released the emergency brake. + +It's a piece of shit. + +Yes, but we can push it and it will start. She opened the door and climbed out, keeping one hand on the wheel to steer it out the parking space. Ethan climbed out the other side and they began to push. After a few minutes they had it out of the parking space and rolling down Tucson Boulevard. Once it had a bit of speed Claire jumped in and popped the clutch. The car lurched, coughed and died. They did it twice more before the engine finally turned over. + +The both ducked back in the car and Claire floored it. + +Do you think this is a good idea? + +What stealing a car? + +No. I know that's not a good idea. I mean driving toward an Air Force base. I mean, there are a lot of planes taking off, he twisted his head to look out the top of the windshield as two more fighters passed overhead. I'm assuming that all these planes, which seem to have missiles hanging from their wings, means the something, um, threatening and scary is going on and yet, you want to drive *toward* an Air Force base. Seems like they might not react well to that... + +That's a possibility. Claire ran a red light and Ethan hurriedly fastened his seatbelt. So are you going to tell me why we need to leave. + +My friend left me a message, he said he was leaving right now. + +And who is this friend of yours, an Air Force pilot or something? + +Not exactly no. + +Then what the hell is he doing at an... + +Does the name Waiben mean anything to you? + +You mean like Dr Waiben? Sorta crazy guy that built the collider and might be trying to end the world? + +Well, yeah, that's him, but he isn't trying to end the world. Or at least I don't think he is... + +Oh, fucking great. I feel so much better now that I absolutely know this is a terrible idea... + +They raced down the freeway, weaving in and out of cars. As they got closer to Davis Monthan more planes began taking off, much bigger planes. Planes even Claire recognized as bombers. And in the middle of them they noticed a private twin engine jet lift off and promptly break off to the east. + +That was him wasn't it? + +Claire didn't answer. She was looking off to the west, at the gap between the mountains where the freeway headed west toward LA. There was a thin trail of smoky cloud lifting up into the sky, so skinny, so frail from her vantage point on the freeway, but so clearly and distinctly mushroom shaped. And then behind it she noticed another, and another. + +Jesus. + +Ethan followed her gaze. Is that what it looks like? + +I don't know but if it is... + +If it is, we need to get the fuck out of here. + +Claire pulled to the side of the road and they got out of the car. A few hundred feet ahead of them a truck stopped and two men climbed out of the cab looking west. + +Ethan was using his hand as a visor, squinting in the afternoon sun. That's an atomic bomb cloud. I mean, that's how they look in movies. + +Suddenly Claire understood, that was the shock wave... + +Shit. + +Shit. + +Where you do think it's coming from? + +I don't know... there's nothing out there... Yuma's south, San Bernardino is north of that, it almost looks like... She turned to Ethan. It must be LA. + +Well fuck me. How long to you think we have? + +Have for what? + +Before the radiation and everything gets here... + +Christ, I have no idea. I mean it takes 8 hours to drive it... so if the radiation is in the atmosphere... is that how it works...? + +How the fuck would I know? + +Well, I guess we don't have much time then. + +We should get going then, once people realize... + +It'll be a mess. + +Where do we go? + +I dunno. South? + +Where is the jet stream right now? + +Claire just stared at him. + +South sound good to you? + +Claire nodded. We need food, canned stuff. Some clothes. + +Okay, rob a store or something? + +I was thinking my grandmother's house, but maybe a gun would be good... + +A gun? Okay. Do you have a gun? + +No. + +Well, let's get the food and we'll go from there. + +They drove in silence, each scanning the streets to see what was happening, but so far no one seemed to have noticed the cloud, off the elevated freeway it was difficult to see, still too low on the horizon and hidden by the mountains. Claire fiddled with the radio but it was dead, the entire FM band silent. + +At her grandmother's house Claire grabbed her barely unpacked bags and threw them in the trunk of the car while Ethan emptied the cupboards into trash bags. Claire took a last look around before she closed the door behind her, not bothering to lock it. + +They were driving down Prince Ave headed for the freeway when they saw the first military convoy pulling off the exit to the left of them. Claire floored it and slipped under the freeway grabbing the frontage road on the other side. They skimmed the freeway for ten minutes, running red lights the whole way. Once they were well on the east side town Claire finally got on interstate 10. + +You know what'll be hilarious? Ethan lit a cigarette and cracked the window. + +What? + +If it turns out we're wrong and we just stole a car, emptied out your grandmother's house and hit the road for absolutely no reason at all. + +Claire smiled in spite of herself. + +-------------- + + +Claire background (add to meeting drummer scene) + + + only that she had lived for so long alternating between a steady diet of music theory to hone her classical cello playing skills and Physics which she had fallen into through the very bookshelves just out reach now, downstairs. The final answer to her singular fascination with the blurred image of a cat-gut string in vibration, which had first somehow cast its spell over her after her dear departed father had given her her first instrument -- an old uekele bought for next to nothing during a stopover in hawaii just one year before he and her mother had perished off the coast of Japan. But the end had come far before Waiben was able to stop it, set in motion by a simple question, what if we are really gaussian blurs, vibrating like strings, reshaping, texturing and layering in the very same way that cello can transcend time and bring back the dead. A notion which sent her music teacher into paroxial fits of rage, metaphors are not science, nor are they music. + + +TK + + + + + +Claire had run straight from what she had called home since her parents died when she was twelve, to the one man her grandmother blamed for their death. By the time Claire left Tucson for good three years later, her only living relative had cut her off completely. + +Claire was never sure how, but one day, two years after leaving, a letter found her dilapidated brownstone in the far reaches of Brooklyn. She saw Tucson on the return address and her heart leaped, thinking it might be him, but it wasn't, it was her. Not an apology, more knowing than an apology, the letter had given her pause, made her wonder for a fleeting instance how much her grandmother knew... not apology, an understanding that even now nothing had healed, that the wounds were as fresh as the day Claire had turned her back on him, knowing he was not a monster, worse, he had found the monster in her. But the letter had a phone number and after a month of debate Claire summoned the courage to call it. Her voice sounded frail through the telephone wires. They spoke haltingly at first, clipping each other's sentences, but then her grandmother began to tell Claire stories of her parents, picnics in the desert, the Neil Diamond records her grandmother played to lull Claire to sleep when her parents were away in Japan. She even spoke of the crash, the phone call, the officers at the doorstep, the funeral in Los Angeles, stories of events Claire had been too young to understand. + + + + +static electicity scene to go with waking up with the drummer in a cheap motel room: + +shuffled her feet across the room, past the enormous bed, up behind Waiben and touched his earlobe, unleashing the static charge with a marvelous blue spark that yielded and yelp and a jump. + +Damn you... + +Sorry, couldn't help myself. She flopped down on the couch, maintaining an arms length distance between their bodies since she had not yet decided how the evening would end. + + + +cuts from Waiben and Claire's meeting after the funeral: + +She occupied herself by the pool, swimming when the spring heat required, but mainly reading his books, jumping randomly about from physics books, Kurtzwell, Feynman, Einstein to psychology, and other physicists she knew from her father's conversations, carefully, though not necessarily consciously, avoiding her father's own books, some of which were co-authored by Waiben but which he had already tucked away in corner shelves, keeping them away from her immediate attention. When she grew tired of cosmology she journeyed upstairs to the library where Russian novels held her attention for an entire summer, her pale skin turned a dark brown beside the pool, drinking Coke through Twizzlers and following Dostoyevsky through the tormented religious debates of a crumbling Russian society, chasing Tolstoy across frozen landscapes so different than the one that surrounded her it might as well have been the moon. + + + + + +cuts about claire's past: + + A sympathic music teacher in high school, thoroughly sick of her endless questions about the nature and behavior of that vibration had gently suggested she ask the physics teach who had simply shrugged and handed her a book on string theory. Of course then String theory fell out of favor in favor of the more promising comprehensive theory of everything which, though it certain sounded intriguing, Claire was disappointed to learn had little if anything to say about things that vibrated and was consequently of little interest. Still she had discovered at the fine institution of the University of Arizona that there were in fact a few string theorists still hanging about, talking quitely at tables in the quad. They may have looked like survivors desperate to find any scrap of hope or some news from a homeland they feared had been forever decimated by the damnable everything, that precense so all-encompassing that it left little room for what was left of their own visions carefully preserved now in memories of vibrating strings expanding and compacting in kind of musical harmony visible only to those with the ear for it, their secret reduced not to ashes, but discredited as a secret not worth keeping, not worth digging for, like the little glass jars Claire had found digging in the yard as a child which, to her great disappointment, turned out to be not message bottles left over from the time when Arizona had been an ocean floor, but simply cast off junk, soda bottles discarded by careless workers, buried in the sands of the desert, the glass glazed and softened by wind, water and time, all of which, + + +nother graf about the grandmother + +Some where in the middle of the lightening and rain and creosote smells, Claire's grandmother, took her own life, largely, Claire suspected, out of bordem, not to say that her life was boring, rather that she was, after a respectable one hundred years, simply feeling as though she had overstayed what might be considered a polite amount of time. Later claire would significantly amend that judgment, but at the time it offered some amount of comfort, which was more recently helped along by two muscle relaxers she had found in the bathroom cabinet of what was now, according to a young bespecalled gentleman in a too-tight cheap blue suit, who claimed to be her grandmother's attorney, her house. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, the muscle relaxers that is, but now she found herself somewhat confused and, if it were possible, lost in a strange house. + +Back out in the main living room area a significant crowd of people claiming to be her grandmother's friends were milling about, talking in subdued whispers, shaking their heads and generally behaving very funereal, which, were any of them really close to the mysterious and often aloof Adamina Zindelo, they would, Claire felt, have known that about the last thing the woman would have wanted. + +Claire looked again at the small memorial service card and wondered abscently what her childhood would have been like if her name had been Zindelo. She was momentarily thankful for her father who passed along the more banal Petsha. The small lamenated card had a thin clipping of an obituary in the Tucson Sentinal, not the longer more extensive and some might say scandelous piece in the Sun which dredged up the old rumors of affairs with congressmen and other suspect behaviors that, surely Claire thought, were a bit passe in this day and age of celebrity oil wrestling and holographic sex clubs. The memorial service had been held on the Govenor's estate just outside of town, in the hills beyond the now crumbling remants of old Tucson, a prop set and backdrop for hollywood's never-ending fascination with the wild west that had, to the proreitars dismay, ended. , provided a backdrop for a number of speakers -- none of them Claire -- to wax various degrees of eloquent, heaping enough praise, hackneyed sentiment and banal platuitudes to bury her departed grandmother under a stinking heap of bullshit for all eternity. Claire's grandmother had never been a particularly kind person, not to her and certainly not to most of the people who gathered under the remaining scatter of bruised clouds to send her on her way. Which, as it turned out, they did by maintaining the fakeness and bullshit for one more day, which when Claire got to tthinking about it, was probably entirely appropriate. + +"She introduced me to my husband..." + +"Always gave to the church..." + +"Remembered our family each Christmas..." + +Claire briefly considered leaping up to podium, pushing aside the speakers and screaming off a list of things less savory -- insider trading allegations that never formalized, suspicious wire transfers that might or might not have removed a key tenant holding up a real estate deal, or perhaps mention the open pit mines she had funded, the Uranium prospecting outfit she financed (long since sent to prison for its participation in the incident at Two Guns) or any of the other more colorful parts of document pile Claire had been sifting through ever since the phone had shattered her otherwise peaceful afternoon lying on the couch, underneath a blaneket so soft it seemed made of puppy ears, alternatly reading a book on the history of Mexico and staring out the windows at the wild and wolly spectical of untamed lightening trying its best to fry the sauguro's on the ridgeline behind her appartment building. + + + +So claire also took the easy way, or planned to anyway hoping the muscle relaxers would induce a sort of brain state that would lend itself to fainting and allow her an excuse a avoid mingling with the increasingly hungry vulture-headed crowd is the other room. unfortunately the muscle relaxors ended up being something a little bit different than advertised. + + + + +Old description of the desert: + +In her car the desert rushed by in dull hues of gray sand and rock, surging together in the moonling, lapping at the foothills of Mount Lemmon where the Palo Verde and Mesquite stood out, stark siloettes... Claire could see the now the bark wandering line of the Rialto River, looking like an after thought, an architect’s final over the top push on an otherwise sedate and monochromatic palette, the design committee so adament, we simply must have water, you have got to put water in there somewhere damn it... and so the frustrated and over-worked architect picked up a muddy brown brush and simply drizzled it Pollack-like on the ground, a splattering drip of water that Claire knew she would never be able to look at the same way... + +old trip to tucumcari: + + + + * * * + + +The real strangness held off until Tucumcari, New Mexico, a small collection of 1950s hotels, some slightly more modern fast food chains, gas stations -- an otherwise lackluster community precense congregated like a cyst around the I 40 expressway somewhere just over the Arizona border. + +The Large Hadron Collider was designed to test where gravity goes when particles are smashed and as it turned out, largely discredited string theory because the gravity did not in fact appear to slip into some posited extra dimension, in effect vibrating right out of the string and into the brane the held it in place, but instead appeared to just transfer itself around in this same, rather disappointing universe. But while gravity may have ruined many a physicists passing enchantment with string theory, theoretical mathematicians like Claire were undaunted, they were after all quite accustomed to problems without solutions and had never been particularly interested in gravity to begin with. Most prefered the pure realm of numbers but Claire was more interested in where the maths and strings, like the musical strings that had piqued her interest in the first place intersected with her. Harmonic resonance was her holdout and in that she found a welcome home at the university of arizona which had, ever since the economic collapse in the east become a hotbed of castoff academics, discredited string theoriest and all manner of other castoffs who found themselve unable to produce as their academic oversight committees phrase it and were thus dispatched out of the ahllowed halls and into the larger world where they primarily spent their time searching for new hallowed halls to slip into. So it because a kind of their sceintific gold rush moving westward like the nuclear physics rush to los alamos in the 1940s or the electricty rush to colorodo in the teens only this time it was string theorists and psycologist who made the trek leading to a rather interesting, some might say potent, campus potential into which Claire had innocently wandered some seven years ago. Now approaching the end of her own student career she + + Disappointly none of them seemed to know much of anything about strings beyond the need to periodically change them on their guitars and bases. + +The drummer had elected to travel a day ahead of the others and seemed if not brimming with knowledge to at least show a willingness to listen to Claire talk about strings. + +I thought that the string theory was discredited a while back, something about being untestable + +Claire rolled her eyes. + +that's true she said patiently, but that really only bothers physicists. It works perfectly well as a mathematical framework. In fact if left to the realm of pure math, string theory already is a theory of everything. + +But if you can't test it... + +What if we just aren't looking at the problem the right way? What if we can test it but we aren't going about the right way? We're looking for an empirical way to test it. What if it can only be experienced, not observed. + +Okay. How would it be experienced? + +Maddy took her eyes off the road long enough to shoot Claire a meaningful look that amounted to roughly, stop. now. + +I don't know yet, that's what I'm working on. + +In addition to playing the cello. + +Yes. + +That's quite a little resume you have there, Chas settle back into the back seat and crouched down to light a joint. Does pot help? + +Claire took the prooffered joint and smiled. sometimes, though to really understand string theory we're going to need something stronger. + +What like coke? + +Consider this, strings are tiny, vibrating things that we primarily observe as points or particles right? + +If you say so. + +Well then what happens to the particles as the vibration changes, as we move from say D flat to E? + +You really do study classical music don't you? + +Claire ignored the comment and continued. The answer is, theoretically of course, that the particle changes too. String theory says that any elementary particle should be thought of as a tiny vibrating line, rather than a point. The string can vibrate in different frequencies just as a guitar string can produce different notes, and every frequency appears as a different particle: electron, photon, gluon and so on. What you get is a world where you look at a particle and it has a positive charge say and then the string shifts and poof it has a negative charge. + +Okay. + +No, not okay. That's serious problem. + +Right but didn't Eistien already show the problems with observation and time and all that realativeity business? + +That's right, but this is slightly worse because what we are seeing is actually not at all what is there. It's one thing to say that something is only the thing it is when it's observed, it's a whole other type of problem if what you observe is only the _effect of something else_ happening when you observe it. What you have then is quite a bit like poking your head in Plato's cave and momentarily seeing the shadows. Rather than believing the shadows are the real deal because of a lack of information, you're thinking the shadows are real because you have false information. + +But you have false information in both cases? + +Right, but in the second case you believe your information is correct because it fits with what you expect, that's the worst kind of false information you can have because you have an entire mathmatical model that tells you it's true. + +So string theory means Eistien was wrong? + +No not really, that shadows are still shadow, they behave the same way, they just aren't actually what they appear to be? + +So what's the point of all this? + +Claire though for a minute, opening the glove box and pulling out a cigarette. The point is that, given the theory, assuming for a moment that it's true, it would be possible for to divergent realities to intersect. + +What does that mean? + +Well, for one thing, a lot of the weird shit that happens might not really be that weird. And I guess at the same time it might be far far weirder than we imagine. I mean, on some level if string theory is right all bets are off, there's no telling what it would mean. + +intersection of two separate realities. |