Look At Me_ A Novel Part 33

The consolidation of these signals and notions into a plan was a physically galvanizing event; Moose replaced his ma.n.u.script with great care, locked the drawer, then strode from his office without pause, kicking shut the door, ascended the stairs and left Meeker Hall without so much as a glance in the direction of Rasmussen's office. Then he huffed his way from the deserted college campus along serpentine paths drenched in the surreal rhythms of locusts.

One-half mile later, awash in sweat, he found his station wagon parked in its designated spot outside his apartment at Versailles. For perhaps fifteen seconds, he contemplated going indoors and leaving a note for Priscilla, who was at the hospital, explaining his unscheduled departure for Chicago. But no. That would impede his present momentum, and momentum was so hard to sustain. Go, he thought. Go! He had his wallet and his Visa card-hit the road, Jack! The very idea of departure made him giddy, and Moose struggled to calm himself, to anchor his mood like someone trying to peg down an unruly tent in a very strong wind (how he loathed metaphors, their coupling of unlike things into grotesques, like minotaurs), but the tent was too big, the wind too strong-his good mood continued to billow and flap untethered as he pulled out of Versailles with a whoop, punching the radio dial until he found an oldies station, music from the seventies, hey this was great; Moose sang along with "Hotel California" as he careened down East State in his low-slung station wagon, finessing his way around Lincoln Town Cars driven by white-haired ladies whose faces were only inches from the winds.h.i.+eld. Eventually he circled onto the interstate. Ah, what happiness came of sheer motion, just letting it rip. No wonder the highway was an American icon for freedom! To h.e.l.l with pills, Moose thought. Motion therapy-why not? Mutatio loci! Mutatio loci! And it wasn't just that a voyage such as this reminded him of the blind, easy days before his transformations-it was simply that moving felt good. And it wasn't just that a voyage such as this reminded him of the blind, easy days before his transformations-it was simply that moving felt good.

The phrase broke across Moose profoundly, moving feels good moving feels good, a phrase that was not only inarguably true (proof being his present fizzing state of near hilarity), but (better yet) whose truth was blessedly independent of the minotaur of metaphor. Moose scrabbled in the glove compartment for a notebook in which to write-someone was honking, oh, s.h.i.+t, he'd swerved out of his lane-he tooted his horn and grinned, he was so happy! Splayed the notebook between his thighs and wrote, or hoped he was writing, Moving feels good Moving feels good, la-dee-dah, heart racing, skipping beats. Motion-curative? Motion-curative? he scrawled, then was distracted by signs for O'Hare airport to his right, signs that reminded him of his plan, as yet unrealized-undivulged-unresearched-to take Priscilla to Hawaii. Would he ever do it? Could he? These questions affronted Moose like a flock of blackbirds flapping so near to his face that he wanted physically to bat them away (and they were only metaphors!). And now here came the ominous sensation once again, an icy premonition of doom. Moose fought it back- he scrawled, then was distracted by signs for O'Hare airport to his right, signs that reminded him of his plan, as yet unrealized-undivulged-unresearched-to take Priscilla to Hawaii. Would he ever do it? Could he? These questions affronted Moose like a flock of blackbirds flapping so near to his face that he wanted physically to bat them away (and they were only metaphors!). And now here came the ominous sensation once again, an icy premonition of doom. Moose fought it back-I am a fighter, he thought. Surely the problem was that he was out of practice, not having traveled anywhere in so long. A trip to Chicago would be the best way to start-get his feet wet, as it were, go to the lake with its chalky limestone rim, go to the places his father had taken him as a child-yes, a melting sensation of relief notified Moose that this was indeed the right choice, the best choice, and, best of all, the choice he had already made. the choice he had already made. He was halfway there! And if that venture proved successful-he was accelerating again, fleeing the contortions of O'Hare airport for the refuge of motion itself-if all went well in Chicago, then perhaps he would be ready to attempt Hawaii. He was halfway there! And if that venture proved successful-he was accelerating again, fleeing the contortions of O'Hare airport for the refuge of motion itself-if all went well in Chicago, then perhaps he would be ready to attempt Hawaii.

By one-thirty, a twelve-by-twelve-foot square of corn had been mowed, cleared, tamped, doused in water and buried under a layer of bright orange sand-a tiny patch of Technicolor beach secreted among verdant farmland. The farmer's two sons began dragging load after bristling load of sticks and twigs and kindling wood with their heavy work gloves, piling it onto the sand into a th.o.r.n.y tower that reached higher than the surrounding corn.

Somehow, Irene had managed to find two men to dig the ditch. They arrived in a pickup truck, one tall (Mike), one short (Ed), their sad, floppy faces like diagrams of the damage wrought upon human skin by prolonged exposure to sunlight. As they climbed from their truck, shovels in hand, Thomas sidled over to Irene, who was standing beside me. "They look a little," he said, and moved one hand ambiguously.

She nodded, watching the men. "I'm surprised," she said. "The one I talked to sounded."

"The heat. We don't want."

"I couldn't tell."

"Voices," he agreed.

"Is this an actual conversation?" I asked. "Do you really understand each other?"

They both looked startled. "We're just saying the men are older than we expected," Irene said, coloring slightly.

But Mike and Ed were ready for work, needed work-for the money, of course, but also because this job had emanc.i.p.ated them from an afternoon of the computer courses they'd been forced to take since the banks got their farms: how to create a file, write a letter, make a chart. They took the cla.s.ses to please their frightened, crabby wives, who somehow expected them, at fifty-eight and sixty-one, to reinvent themselves as middle managers. All this I gleaned from listening to them talk while I waited for Irene to return with the Grand Am (she was buying lunch), so I could crawl back inside it. Thomas stood near me, eyeing the ditch diggers, wincing at the whistling noises their lungs made (smokers both, packets outlined in their breast pockets), the way their sclerotic bellies strained the belts of their work pants.

"How you guys doing?" he asked, with anxious friendliness. "You feeling okay? You want to take a break? It's pretty hot out ..." But Mike and Ed were fine, they said, just fine. Dirt shot off their shovels and sweat veered among the exotic tributaries of their faces.

Irene returned with sandwiches and sodas and potato salad, which she arranged in the open back of the film crew's van. This makes.h.i.+ft buffet, along with a few curious spectators who had joined our ranks (friends of the farmer and his children) began to make our escapade feel like a real shoot. As we ate, sitting cross-legged along the edges of the cornfield, swatting flies, Grace's car turned off the interstate and bobbled up the dirt road, rousing clouds of dust. Halfway up, she stopped, and Pammy and Allison got out along with Allison's new boyfriend, a youth whose startling beauty brought us briefly to a standstill.

"Who the h.e.l.l is that kid?" Thomas asked me, nearly choking on his tuna sandwich.

"I have no idea," I said. "I mean, he's a local kid. He spends hours on the phone with my niece."

"What a face," Thomas said. "He's a star, look at him. Look at that face Look at that face!"

The teenagers trudged up the road, the boy awash in those same baggy pants I'd seen on kids in New York, clutching a skateboard under his arm. With perverse antic.i.p.ation, I awaited what I knew was coming next: "We've got to find a way to work him in," Thomas muttered.

"I don't really see how."

But already Thomas was up and away, sandwich abandoned to the dust, hightailing it over to Irene (eating a BLT alone inside the Grand Am, talking on her cell phone), whose job it had become to grant his wishes.

I rose to greet the kids. With touching formality Allison introduced me to the boy, whose name was Ricky. He grinned as I shook his spindly hand-a sweet, irrepressible grin that he yanked away a moment later and folded inside an origami of teenage caginess. He was olive-skinned, with bright dark eyes set wide apart, white teeth inside a broad, mischievous mouth. Yet his beauty was irrespective of these features; it was more, somehow, ineffable. In the middle of a cornfield, a drop of beauty had landed. And despite all that I knew, I could not help feeling that this boy was numinous, an articulation of some deep wonder that would fill his life. He wandered off with the girls, then mounted his skateboard and leapt in the air, kicking the board from underneath him in an apparent effort to perform some trick. He landed on his knees in the dirt, waving that grin like a flag.

I went back to the Grand Am and kept reading.

53We drove-I drove-into the next day and through it. Occasionally we paused for food. Never at McDonald's, though. Z refused.As the hours wore on, I got tired. Then more tired. Then catatonic. But something made me put off stopping. The mood of expectation was delicious. It tingled between us all the way through Pennsylvania.Finally, an hour after we crossed the line into Ohio, we stopped at a motel. In the weak, dusty daylight, we slept.I woke three hours later. I turned on my side and watched Z sleep. His stern, gaunt face."Who are you?" I whispered. "Who is Z?"The world felt right. The miles of highway, the trucks howling past. Sc.r.a.ps of voices from the parking lot outside our window. A child crying, an engine thrumming to life. "Honey, is Angie's Ponzy doll in the back seat?" Step step step.I couldn't see these people. Just a s.h.i.+n, a hand between the blinds. Within minutes they would be gone. Off to live out their lives.I was smiling.Then Z woke. Flinched awake, eyes grabbing at the walls. "Hey," I said. "It's okay." I touched his shoulder.He stared at my face. Through it. Then he sprang from the bed and stood naked. Slim, tense. The cheap, drab room all around us."Hey," I said. "Relax."

Moose rolled into Chicago reluctantly, before the pleasures of driving had nearly been exhausted. If only it were farther away! He had considered staying on I-90, but while the thought of continued driving was viscerally appealing, the thought of doing so without any clear destination made him profoundly uneasy. So he exited I-90 onto Belmont and soon found himself surrounded by Chicago's achingly familiar outskirts, a crowd of old friends he hadn't seen in years: flattish limestone buildings the same yellow as castles, cast-iron bridges crawling across overpa.s.ses. Young black kids in the street-Chicago!

Ah, the lake! Moose's heart stretched inside his chest at the sight of it, the beautiful smiling lake encircled by a necklace of the most exquisite high-rise buildings he'd ever seen, some long and slender as spinal cords, others gleaming coolly behind gray-blue Bauhaus gla.s.s. Moose was hurtling south on Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive, grooving to the Stones' "Miss You," full of mission, full of purpose, Jesus it was hot, like the bready exhalation from inside an oven door. "Ah ah ah ah ahahah. Ah ah ah ah ahahah," he mooed along with Mick. It was 3:00 P.M. P.M., the lake flecked with boats.

He exited the drive onto Michigan Avenue and drove past the old yellow water tower that had survived the fire of 1871, antic.i.p.ation roiling within him as he approached the Chicago River, that sulky waterway whose opening had continually filled with sand in Chicago's early days and had to be dug out; a river that had flooded each spring, along with much of the city, until eventually Chicago raised its streets by as much as fourteen feet. And of course the old railroad lines, depots where the first grain elevators were built-Moose felt himself borne aloft by a nearly unbearable excitement at the thought of spending the day exploring these relics, basking in their gritty afterglow, and yet, even as his station wagon hurtled into the Loop, toward the University Club and its rattle of silver and stooped, elderly waiters who had worked there more than half their lives, even as he ploughed toward raspberries and defunct slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants now refurbished as riverview lofts, an exhaustion overcame Moose without warning, as if he'd already done and seen it all too many times. The railroads, the raspberries. Enough.

Moose pa.s.sed over the Chicago River, rumbling metal under his tires. A column of greenish water, old stone skysc.r.a.pers, the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Tower, and then they were gone and he was riding into the dark, shady Loop toward the Art Inst.i.tute. He made a sudden left into Grant Park. Something had s.h.i.+fted in his mood, he was slipping, falling, sliding, but it wasn't the icy current so much as this exhaustion augmented by the feverish activity of the park itself: picnic blankets, children, gra.s.s, Buckingham Fountain with its trumpets of water, Jesus get me out of here, Moose thought, finally easing onto Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive and turning around, heading north, back in the direction he'd come from, fleeing the Loop, where he had arrived only minutes ago in triumph.

The icy current had wrapped one tendril around his ankle, and Moose accelerated to escape it. Time to get out of the car. He could go to Fuller-ton Beach. And the memory of it-perhaps twenty visits to Fullerton Beach stretched over his lifetime-a.s.sailed Moose in one dense pellet of sensation: hot dogs, Milk Duds, fishy sand dappled with cigarette b.u.t.ts, the roar of children-gone, he'd bypa.s.sed that enjambment of sensation along with the beach itself. Now he imagined turning off Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive and heading west into Old Town, and was bombarded with another compressed anthology: burning charcoal, ivy s.h.i.+vering over brick, the laughter of girls, that sweet, colored juice that came inside shapes made of wax-gone. But leaving a mark, a dent. Like the apple bruising Kafka's beetle, each of these pellets of recollection lodged in Moose's flesh, releasing its cargo of memories of all the things he had lost- "Not lost! Gained!" Moose thundered aloud, but now, mercifully, that debate (lost or gained?) was supplanted in his mind by the proximity of Belmont Harbor and the yacht club. Yes, this was the place; Moose eased the station wagon into a parking s.p.a.ce, desperate to free himself of its cha.s.sis, whose sole purpose, it now seemed, was to hold him still so that these bullets of memory could a.s.sault him, enter his flesh and release their shrapnel of foolish and unreliable nostalgia.

He didn't even lock the car, so glad was he to be rid of it.

Hoofing it north alongside Belmont Harbor toward the totem pole, however, was not exactly a cure for reminiscence. The heaviness of the trees, the smell of them, the tint of paint in the playgrounds, the phrix phrix of wind over the lake, all of these transported Moose directly to childhood, visits to the city with his father that he'd antic.i.p.ated days in advance. A quiet, distinguished man, his father, the sort of man who counted out his change to make sure he hadn't been given too much, a man with hands like catchers' mitts, big and warm and soft. But something strange had happened-now Moose's own hands had grown enormous and clownish, and the little boy who had held his father's hand was gone, swallowed by this ma.s.s of Moose's present self. So intense was his memory of that boy that it seemed to him now that they were walking side by side-Moose and Moose the boy-walking together past the gleaming white fibergla.s.s hulls, Moose holding the boy's hand in his own mitt-sized hand. of wind over the lake, all of these transported Moose directly to childhood, visits to the city with his father that he'd antic.i.p.ated days in advance. A quiet, distinguished man, his father, the sort of man who counted out his change to make sure he hadn't been given too much, a man with hands like catchers' mitts, big and warm and soft. But something strange had happened-now Moose's own hands had grown enormous and clownish, and the little boy who had held his father's hand was gone, swallowed by this ma.s.s of Moose's present self. So intense was his memory of that boy that it seemed to him now that they were walking side by side-Moose and Moose the boy-walking together past the gleaming white fibergla.s.s hulls, Moose holding the boy's hand in his own mitt-sized hand.

"Come on, let's go to the water, let's look at the lake," he found himself saying aloud to this boy, coaxing him, trying to win his happiness the way one courts the fickle pleasures of children. "This way," he said gently, wheedlingly, rallyingly, and they walked, Moose and his diminutive companion, around the edge of Belmont Harbor, past the totem pole, up toward the bird sanctuary and then to the edge of the lake, the great flickering oceanic lake that could look milky and tropical in sunlight (as now) or greenish-gray beneath clouds, that during storms could rage in tones of purple-black. And Moose finally did what he'd been longing to do: climbed over the seawall and perched on a cube of concrete with the boy beside him, that mischievous boy he had been, that happy, blind boy, looking out at the sunlight striking the lake with sparks, listening to sounds of locusts although there were none, they had ended with the cornfields. Clicking noises, amoebic phantoms waving their tentacles from the sky; Moose observed these phenomena, which he recognized as hallucinations induced by the excited state of his thoughts, observed them in part to avoid looking at Moose-the-boy, who was watching him. Moose felt the boy's eyes on his face, a prolonged stare that would be rude in anyone but a child, a stare Moose put off returning for as long as possible because he knew it contained a question he could answer only with the greatest expenditure of energy (and right now he was so tired), and perhaps not even then: What had happened to him?

At three-thirty, the film crew tested its rain machine, which malfunctioned spectacularly, spraying sideways in thousands of gus.h.i.+ng projectiles that inundated camera, crew, sound equipment, spectators, the remains of our lunch, and Thomas, who was howling into his cell phone an instant later. "What's this ca-ca you've sent me?" he shouted, sounding ready to weep. "It soaked my-fiddle with what? Look, I'm not a mechanic. I need rain! Without rain, I'm totally f-"

Irene tapped his shoulder and pointed at the sky, where sallow, ambiguous clouds had begun to loiter. Thomas nodded, taking this in. "The what? Okay. Okay. Now look, supposing it actually did rain? We could shoot, right? Yuh, with this equipment. No? What if we bought ... no? Even with-no? Okay, okay ..." He glanced at the film crew, who had gathered around to listen. "Well then you better figure out how to get another friggin' rain machine over to ..."

He paused. Hear no Evil was sending him a signal, although the density of his facial appurtenances made expressions difficult to isolate. "I, uh ..." Thomas said, and paused again. We all paused. "Lemme call you back." He folded up the phone. "What?" he yapped at the sound engineer.

Hear No Evil was looking at the sky. "That's one old mongo storm you got coming," he said, a lick of antic.i.p.ation in his voice.

"Yeah, but according to your boss we can't ... unless you ..." Thomas c.o.c.ked his head with sudden interest.

"f.u.c.k the boss," Hear No Evil said, tongue flas.h.i.+ng metal. "Let's shoot in the rain."

The other two instantly concurred. "Let's. Let's f.u.c.king do. Shoot in the. Rain, rain," they murmured. And at last, in this mutinous accord, the wholesome boys' wish to rebel, to resist the old hierarchies and pioneer new ways of living in the world, found its full and perfect articulation. Thomas nearly swooned with relief. "Danny, you're the boss," he informed See No Evil. "Tell us what you need."

And Danny did, along with the others-even the nameless PAs-all of them issuing orders with clipped authoritarian zeal that raised immediate questions about the genuineness of their nihilism. Irene duly transcribed their commands into her notebook: tarps, stakes, umbrellas, clear plastic. When volunteers had been dispatched to purchase these items, Thomas helped the crew to wipe down its wet equipment. Then he swallowed three Advils with Dr. Pepper and joined Irene beside the narrow ditch where Mike and Ed were still digging away. The men had ceased to talk, and now there was just the tinny crunch each shovel made as it broke the earth, a faint jingle as it flung off a streak of dirt that hovered midair like a bit of cursive, then dissolved and fell to the ground. Thomas turned to Irene. "Alas-"

"I know, I know," she said, and smiled. "I was thinking the same thing."

At four o'clock, we gathered around the Grand Am for a script meeting, using its hood as a kind of table. Allison, Pammy and Ricky stood at the outermost reaches of earshot, gazing into the distance with extravagant indifference while they eavesdropped.

"Okay, everybody, listen up," Thomas said, surveying a few pages where Irene had blocked out the action. "Here's what happens before the camera rolls: Charlotte's car goes out of control on the interstate. It spins, flips, rolls, lands"-he waved in the direction of the tower of brambles, where Speak No Evil raised his motley of tattooed arms to the sky-"in this cornfield. Car goes up in flames. Charlotte gets out ..." Now he paused, turning to Irene. "Wait a minute. How does she get out of the burning car?"

"The Good Samaritan," Irene replied.

Thomas frowned. "The ... ?"

"Someone pulled her out of the car. She doesn't know who it was. It's right here!" Irene rapped him on the head with the script. "You haven't been doing your homework."

I stared at Irene, a.s.sailed by a brief, hallucinatory sense that the gesture I had just witnessed-rapping, accompanied by scolding-belonged somewhere in the vast family tree of behaviors known as flirtation. But no, I decided. That simply wasn't possible.

"Thomas?" I said. But he wasn't listening.

"Good Samaritan, okay. So in that case we'll need another actor!" he said, a helpless grin routing his face as he simulated a genuine search for candidates among our ranks. "Hey, what about you?" he called to Ricky, who was standing on his skateboard, immobilized by the pebbly dirt. "Want to be in a movie?"

"Thomas," I said again.

"Doing what." The kid was wary, expressionless.

Thomas ambled over to the gaggle of teenagers. "Well, see, you'd be helping Charlotte get from her car, which is supposedly out there in the field where that guy with the tattoos is standing, between the rows of corn"-he indicated the ditch where Mike and Ed were digging-"to that camera over there, where Danny is. But what you've already done, what we don't see," Thomas went on, "is you've pulled Charlotte out of the burning wreck and saved her life. Which I guess makes you the hero. You'd be playing the hero."

"Subtle," the kid said, allowing himself a modest smile.

"Hel-lo-o!" I called, waving my arms. "Thomas!"

"Char." At last I had his attention. A look of pure bliss had encompa.s.sed his face. He had the kid. The beautiful kid was his.

"Not to burden you with details," I said, "but how do I walk through a cornfield when I'm completely unconscious?"

"Where does it say you're unconscious?"

"I don't care what it says," I said. "I'm telling you. I was unconscious."

Irene began to explain, but Thomas raised a finger and came around the Grand Am to where I was standing. He put one arm around my shoulders and walked with me down the road a bit, away from the others.

"Char," he said, when we were alone, "if I could rewrite history, if I could turn back the clock, I'd have us all set up in that field with cameras and lights and sound all ready to go when you landed there the first time. That would have been a thousand percent better, no question, because it would have been real."

I pondered this odd picture and said nothing.

"But the fact of the matter is, we weren't there." He said this with a kind of apology, as if he had promised to do a job but failed to complete it. "So we're coming at this in retrospect, trying to evoke the essence of what happened," he said. "What've we got to work with? We've got an event that only you saw and can remember, and frankly, you don't remember very much-"

"Because I was unconscious," unconscious," I couldn't resist pointing out. I couldn't resist pointing out.

"Fine. You were unconscious. Two," he was ticking them off on his fingers, "two, we've got this chance now to start over, create the event from scratch-to improve on it, if such a thing is possible. Not that it wasn't better the first time-" His hands rose, fending off any such suggestion. On their descent, they seized my shoulders. His face was so close to mine that I smelled Dr. Pepper on his breath.

"What am I saying? I'm saying forget all that, Char. Forget what happened. This This is what happened, and it hasn't even happened yet! It can happen any way we want!" His eyes crackled with evangelistic zeal. "And for our purposes, I think it's infinitely more dramatic if you walk out of the cornfield with that drop-dead gorgeous kid. As your agent, as your manager, as the producer and director of this project, that is my advice to you. Am I making sense?" is what happened, and it hasn't even happened yet! It can happen any way we want!" His eyes crackled with evangelistic zeal. "And for our purposes, I think it's infinitely more dramatic if you walk out of the cornfield with that drop-dead gorgeous kid. As your agent, as your manager, as the producer and director of this project, that is my advice to you. Am I making sense?"

What could I say? Thomas always made sense. "Yes."

"Okay." He gave me a little coach's pat and we returned to the Grand Am, where a separate colloquy had apparently taken place in our absence.

"Ricky wants his sister to play the Good Samaritan," Irene sang out, with a cheeriness that betrayed her dread of Thomas's reaction.

"What sister?"

"She's seventeen," Ricky said. "She just, I don't know, it like fits her better than me."

Thomas gaped at him, unable to believe the kid was slipping through his fingers. He seemed completely at a loss. Ricky tried again to explain. "She's the type who would actually save a person's life, know what I'm saying?" he asked. "Like, she could really do that."

It was sweet the way he said it. He loves his sister, I thought.

"Okay, how do we find her?" Thomas sighed, then added under his breath, to Irene, "Let's just pray they look alike."

"She's at work," Ricky said. "TCBY. I don't know the number."

"That'll be easy," Thomas muttered to Irene. "There's only one every fifteen feet."

"Highcrest Mall," Ricky said sullenly.

Irene called information, wrote down the number and handed it to Thomas, along with the phone.

"Name?" Thomas called as he dialed.

"Charlotte."

"I mean your sister," Thomas said, his voice brittle with impatience.

"Charlotte. Her name is Charlotte. My sister."

Thomas shut the phone. For a moment his head hung in a kind of bow, and when he lifted it again, his face had been rinsed of anger and hara.s.sment and was br.i.m.m.i.n.g instead with an awed delight that made him look about six. "Your sister's name ... is Charlotte Charlotte?"

"Ding ding ding."

Thomas grinned-a grin that was like curtains flung open, a grin I couldn't help mirroring, despite the fact that I loathed him, rued the day that our paths had crossed and (briefly, in moments) wished him dead.

Thomas touched two fingers to his lips and raised them to the sky. "Kismet," he said.

Somehow, without Moose's even realizing it, the hazy blue sky of mid-afternoon had clouded over and swelled with what suddenly looked to be rain clouds. How long had he been sitting here? Moose wasn't sure, having fallen into a sort of trance as he gazed at Lake Michigan. The water had been light, aquamarine when he'd first sat down, but now it was gray-brown and opaque, the color of waves in nineteenth-century paintings of gun battles at sea. Moose pretended to study the lake and its variegations, pretended the way a person might pretend to whistle merrily during a stroll through Chicago's South Side-to conceal his awareness of some danger close at hand. The ominous presence was lurking behind him, a presence whose vast and imposing shape Moose could not ignore for very much longer. Finally he turned, slowly, nonchalantly, turned as if to look back at the park, the distant tennis courts whose thop, thop thop, thop he faintly heard from where he sat. There was no one behind him. Or anywhere near him. He was alone except for a few joggers and one or two loping Labradors the color of chocolate. He was alone. And what exactly was he doing here? he faintly heard from where he sat. There was no one behind him. Or anywhere near him. He was alone except for a few joggers and one or two loping Labradors the color of chocolate. He was alone. And what exactly was he doing here?

Moose rose to his feet very slowly, as if awakening from a nap, his every move calibrated to conceal what was actually going on inside him: an incipient roar of fear at finding himself in Chicago-so far afield! How would he ever get back? The distance between his present location and the tightly framed world in which he pa.s.sed his days felt beyond negotiation; the relative spontaneity and lightheartedness of the visit was lost upon him now, as he slowly-painfully slowly-began walking back in the direction of his car beneath the bruised and swollen sky, a sky on the verge of some violent discharge. Alone, Moose was alone, no one even knew he was here! All around him, in those gla.s.s apartment buildings overlooking the lake, lived a legion of strangers, people who didn't know, who couldn't see, and Moose was alone because his vision had divided him from these people-had altered him internally so that the child he'd once been, the little boy who had walked alongside him earlier today, by the lake, when the sun was out, no longer recognized him.

And only now, as Moose huffed toward his car past sailboats rocking in Belmont Harbor like cradles in the rising wind, only now did he permit himself to turn his mind to his niece and her defection. "I don't want to be like you," she'd said, "I want to be like everybody else." And a worse thing, too, a thing whose exact contents he mercifully could not recall, the gist of which was that she would rather die than live a life such as Moose's own. And even as he recoiled, half staggering at the impact of these memories, Moose understood.

The car, the car-he limped toward it, collapsed behind the wheel and began to drive, but driving failed now to relieve him as it had earlier today; a worrying thought intruded as he nosed into traffic on Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive, the traffic of beachgoers fleeing the impending storm. A worrying thought: he'd gotten into this car intending to go to the University Club for lunch as his father used to do, but he hadn't been able to. In fact he'd barely managed to drive into Chicago and sit by the lake. Or rather, he'd done it easily enough but now wished he had not; it had taken too great a toll. Simple things were becoming so much harder to do. Simple things were becoming so much harder to do. Would he ever don a suit and spoon those raspberries from a silver bowl? Why did this seem a fantastical wish? Would he ever don a suit and spoon those raspberries from a silver bowl? Why did this seem a fantastical wish?

The answer lay in the vision itself: a different man than Moose was the one who thrived in this new world, a sociopath who made himself anew each afternoon, for whom lying was merely persuasion. More and more they ruled the world, these quicksilver creatures, minotaurs who weren't the products of birth or history, nature or nurture, but a.s.sembled for the eye from prototypes; who bore the same relations.h.i.+p to human beings as machine-made clothing did to something hand-st.i.tched. A world remade by circuitry was a world without history or context or meaning, and because we are what we see, we are what we see we are what we see, such a world was certainly headed toward death.

Moose drove west on Addison toward I-90, forcing himself to move slowly, slowly, though he wanted desperately to flee. Only this studied languor could halt his progress into panic. Because Moose and his ilk were not part of the great glittering future that everyone seemed to believe was now upon them; they crouched in its cracks, its interstices. They had before them a herculean task of persuasion: warning people without souls, people a.s.sembled from parts like shoes or guns of a hundred years ago, that a world populated by such as themselves was doomed. And Moose had failed-failed in all these years to explain to even one human being what had happened to him that summer afternoon when he was twenty-three, driving home from Hank Sternberger's parents' house in Wisconsin. A moodiness had been on him for weeks, a deep preoccupation whose catalyst was a tourist pamphlet on Venetian gla.s.sblowing he'd flicked open while watching football in someone's rec room. Clear gla.s.s, perfected in Murano circa 1300, gla.s.s that made possible windows, eyegla.s.ses, mirrors, and eventually microscopes and telescopes. These simple facts, mentioned in pa.s.sing, had hijacked Moose's imagination. The birth of clear sight, of people's awareness of their outward selves-these seemed the origins of a phenomenon whose reach extended all the way to the present day-screens, frames, images-a world constructed and lived from the outside.

He'd been alone in the car that day, or he likely wouldn't have noticed something amiss on the gra.s.sy embankment beside the interstate, would not have pulled over onto the shoulder in the first place. A b.i.t.c.h nursing a few pups, it turned out to be-a cur, a mutt-what was she doing there? His car on the shoulder, the dog and her wretched pups sprawled panting in the longish, blighted gra.s.s, and for some reason (and here was the gap, the st.i.tch, the missing step in Moose's personal history) personal history) for some reason, rather than get back inside his car and continue home, rather than haul dog and pups into the backseat and drop them off somewhere more hospitable, Moose had left his car parked beside the interstate (dangerously) and climbed the parched, gra.s.sy slope that hugged the overpa.s.s, climbed without knowing why, then sat immobilized looking down at the traffic, hypnotized by the flux and flow that had surrounded him only minutes before, a crush of humanity in whose midst he had subsisted blindly, un-reflexively until that moment. Hours pa.s.sed, so many that when he looked again, the b.i.t.c.h and her pups had vanished. He lay on his back in the gra.s.s and let the sky push against his face. From somewhere came the whistle of a train. And Moose had understood that it was over: the trains, the factories-the world of objects was gone and imagery was ascendant, whirling over tiny filaments of connection he could actually for some reason, rather than get back inside his car and continue home, rather than haul dog and pups into the backseat and drop them off somewhere more hospitable, Moose had left his car parked beside the interstate (dangerously) and climbed the parched, gra.s.sy slope that hugged the overpa.s.s, climbed without knowing why, then sat immobilized looking down at the traffic, hypnotized by the flux and flow that had surrounded him only minutes before, a crush of humanity in whose midst he had subsisted blindly, un-reflexively until that moment. Hours pa.s.sed, so many that when he looked again, the b.i.t.c.h and her pups had vanished. He lay on his back in the gra.s.s and let the sky push against his face. From somewhere came the whistle of a train. And Moose had understood that it was over: the trains, the factories-the world of objects was gone and imagery was ascendant, whirling over tiny filaments of connection he could actually hear hear ama.s.sing hungrily, invisibly beneath the soil. Wires that weren't even wires. Information that lived on the very air. ama.s.sing hungrily, invisibly beneath the soil. Wires that weren't even wires. Information that lived on the very air.

Now Moose drove so slowly that the cars behind him began to honk. It was starting to rain, big sloppy drops spilling onto the winds.h.i.+eld. No thunder yet. His driving was stymied by a clobbering sensation of loss. But what exactly had he lost? Himself as he had been, firm-bodied and flabby-minded? Some clarity of vision he once had possessed? Or was it the old, dormant chamber of his bicameral mind calling out to him, reminding him of the days when rocks and trees and statues had spoken with the voices of G.o.ds?

[image]

55We showered. Wriggled back into our clothes. Stepped from our motel room into the empty parking lot.It was dusk.Sleep had made an end to the previous day. The day when driving to Rockford, Illinois, together had seemed like a good idea. Or even a reasonable idea. An idea that was appealing in the smallest possible way.I filled the gas tank. Dust and squashed bugs and bird s.h.i.+t were baked onto my beautiful blue car.We had ridden in silence before. Top down. A br.i.m.m.i.n.g, windy silence.This one was vacant. It roused in me an urgent need for talk: "Road." "Signs." "Sky." "How was?" "Where were?" "Radio." "Temperature." Forced conversation hovering over a void.Z listened to my efforts with a dazed look. With each word, I was becoming less the person he imagined.I saw this clearly. But I couldn't stop.

I read, sitting in the Grand Am with the light on in hopes that the battery would expire, a subversive impulse I was having more and more as I observed the mounting juggernaut around me. Each time I looked up, I saw volunteers returning with gigantic blue plastic tarps, which the mutinous production a.s.sistants began tying to stakes in preparation for rain. There was no question now of a storm; the tarps bellied and rattled in the rising wind, and clouds like three-dimensional bruises were bearing down, leaking occasional drops. Lightning bit at the edges of the sky.

By now, a multicolored chain of cars reached all the way down to the interstate, and spectators continued to ama.s.s, milling about under flowered umbrellas, waiting for something to happen. When Thomas knocked on the window of the Grand Am and asked me to test the ditch, these onlookers pressed toward me with interest. I left the car and walked the length of the ditch. Now, at last, I discerned its purpose: to lower me three feet below the surface of the field, so the corn would tower over me as it would have last August, presumably, had I been able to walk.

"Beautiful work," Thomas commended Mike and Ed when I emerged from the ditch. "Smooth. Even. You guys are real professionals." The men nodded politely, sucking their Winstons, but when Thomas turned away, they shook their heads.

And then the girl arrived. Charlotte.

I recognized her instantly-before I saw her, it almost seemed, as if some part of me had remembered the name, or her brother's face from the photographs in Ellen's dressing room. She parked down the hill and came into sight on foot, walking briskly up the slight incline, her narrow frame silhouetted against the dreadful sky. She looked different, I saw this even at a distance. No more gla.s.ses. The dreamy quality I remembered had burned off, leaving in its place what I guessed was maturity, though it registered as sadness. No one seemed to notice her, and as she scanned the group for a face she knew, our eyes touched briefly, then hers moved past without recognition. Of course, I thought-that day I had looked like no one, wrapped in a scarf, sungla.s.ses and pancake makeup pasted over my bruises. But even as I congratulated myself on having eluded identification, I had a feverish impulse to speak with this girl, to remind her of our previous meeting.

"Sis," Ricky called. He went to Charlotte and brought her to Thomas, who was adjusting the camera. I watched Thomas turn and see her, watched the crestfallen look he tried unsuccessfully to mask as he measured the distance between sister and brother. He nodded, smiling frozenly. He was at my side three seconds later (I counted). "We've got to lose the girl," he said.