Past continuous, p.9
Past Continuous, page 9
To be rational.
I’m walking up to Paige’s place now.
I don’t know what she’s going to tell me when she opens the door.
My heart is beating so fast I’m worried it’s going to jump the rails.
My body continuing its war against this world.
This isn’t happening, is what I’m telling myself.
It isn’t.
I’m sure, totally hoping to be sure, that I’m still in the tank. That I’m still in the Glove’s apartment. Whatever happens next, regardless of how bad it is, how emotionally devastating it is, I don’t want to believe it’s real.
For me right now this is either a fantasy. A hallucination.
Or I’m sure of nothing.
This has to be fake.
Paige swings open the door and jumps on me. Hugs me tight. She doesn’t look different at all. She’s wearing the same pj’s she’s always had. And as I step into her house I notice that it looks the same too. Her room. Exactly the same.
Paige is jumping up and down in place.
Her hair bouncing.
Her smile bouncing.
I take a seat on the edge of her bed and the dam in her mouth bursts.
“So? Did it work?”
“Yeah. I feel different. Good.”
“And it’s all gone? Like removed?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“That must be freaking strange. Like when you think back to your childhood is it just a blank or something?”
I try. It’s a blank. I nod.
Paige seems relieved. Then she changes gears. “I can’t tell you how stressed I’ve been. You haven’t done anything this crazy in months. I haven’t been that mad at you since last summer. This has been so like emotionally insane and the past few hours have … Wait, why’s your forehead bleeding?”
“Vauxhall’s gone,” I interrupt.
The look on my face should tell her everything she needs to know.
“Yeah. Okay. You said that name before. Who’s that?”
“Stop messing around, Paige. I’m serious.”
Her smile fades. She screws up her face. “Yeah. Fine. Who’s Vauxhall?”
That pisses me off and I stand up ready to storm out of the room. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, Paige. So not cool. I went to her house and it was empty. She’s moved and she’s not answering her cell. I’m in a panic!”
“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. Please, sit down.”
I wait a beat and then sit again.
“Look, I’ll help you find her. Is there any place she hangs out?”
“Yeah. With me. I don’t know…”
“And where did you meet her?”
I groan. “Stop it, Paige!”
“Ade.” She slams her hands down at her sides. “What is your problem?! I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about, this Vauxhall chick, but it’s starting to really freak me out. And you look like you’re on drugs. Are you?”
“Yeah,” I say, remembering the mushroom drink. “But I’m not screwing around.”
“I knew it.” Paige sits in the chair at her desk and shakes her head. “Why don’t you go home and sleep it off. Did the dude you saw give you drugs?”
I stand up. This isn’t working.
“I’ll call you later, babe.”
And I march out of the house with Paige behind me rubbing my shoulders.
“I’m just glad everything worked out. That it’s over and nothing went totally—”
“I just wish you could be serious for once.”
I step outside. Turn around.
Paige just shrugs her shoulders and says, “I’m sorry you’re so out of it.”
I roll my eyes.
“Here,” Paige says. “Let me at least get you a Band-Aid.”
THREE
I go back to the Diviners.
Band-Aid and all.
On my way there I call everyone I can think of. Everyone programmed in my phone. None of the people I wake up have ever heard of Vauxhall. Not Borgo. Not Heinz. Not anyone. All of them sleepy and mumbling, they say, “Never heard of her. Why are you calling me in the middle of the night about this?”
I try Vauxhall’s cell number again and again.
Her voice mail is the same. It’s her voice. It’s unchanged.
By why doesn’t anyone remember her?
Why isn’t she here?
At the Diviners, I walk through the lobby and find I like the art.
I don’t want to break the sculptures.
I make my way to the front desk. Dude is still there. He eyes me.
I say, “Penthouse. They’ll be expecting me.”
He still calls up. Says, “Same guy back again.”
Then he hangs up.
He frowns at me and says, “You know where the elevator is.”
And I take it. The video screen is not of a babbling brook but of a wheat field with wind whipping through it. Clouds on the horizon. Thunder rattling in the distance. It is a window to another world. And it is not the least bit soothing.
The ding happens.
The door whooshes open.
I walk past the portraits and they are all the same.
The door, as before, is opened a crack.
I step inside and the room isn’t white anymore. It’s black.
Black couches. Black curtains. Black fridge. And on one of the black couches is Gilberto. He’s sitting with the guy wearing the gas mask. Both of them are wearing all black.
Gilberto stands and claps his hands. “Good work,” he says. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. It worked. But … tell me about Vauxhall.”
Gilberto cocks his head to the side. Looks at the guy with the gas mask on.
Gas mask guy shrugs.
Gilberto says, “I’m not familiar with that name.”
I try not to let my surprise show. The shock hits hard though. A block of ice lodged into my heart.
“Why don’t you know that name?” I ask.
“Just not familiar.” Gilberto shrugs. “Is this person someone I should know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. You’ll have to introduce me to, uh…”
“Her.”
“Right. That all you came back here for? To ask me about this Vauxhall girl?”
I walk over to the window and look down at the city, at the highway. The order has reversed. Now the other lane is filled. Cars all coming toward me. Strings of white lights.
“I told the Glove what you wanted me to. He had no idea what you were talking about,” I say.
Gilberto says, “Yes. He told me.”
I spin around. “You’ve seen him. Can I talk to him?”
“Of course.” Gilberto smiles. Then he turns to the dude in the gas mask.
Gas mask guy stands up, undoes the straps on the back of the mask, and lets the thing slide off into his hands. Then he looks at me. The Glove.
I want to scream in his face.
What, I don’t know. But I know I want it to be loud.
“I told you it wouldn’t be painless.”
And I punch him. Straight in the dude’s wheezy stomach.
He folds like a lawn chair and gasps and coughs and then laughs. Yeah, laughs. Laughing like maniac. Pulling himself together he says, “When you realize what’s going on, you’re going to lose it. Again.”
I pull the guy up by his shirt. Me, suddenly the bully.
The thug.
“What did you do to me?”
“Nothing you didn’t already do to yourself.”
I’m tired of the riddles. The bullshit. I just want an answer that makes sense.
“Where is Vauxhall?”
“Downtown … Purple Lounge … with a friend.”
I let the Glove drop to the floor and pull myself back together. Actually sigh.
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” I say to the entire room.
Gilberto just stares at me. Eyes burrowing beneath my skin.
The Glove picks himself up, dusts off, and then sits back down beside Gilberto. They actually do a little fist bump, which is not only totally strange for Gilberto but it tells me this whole thing is a charade. Both of them are screwing with me completely.
“When I come back here, I’m kicking both of your asses,” I say.
It’s only when I slam the door behind me and I’m in the elevator headed down to the first floor and the night and my lover, that I realize I didn’t get a flash of the future when I touched the Glove.
I saw nothing.
I shake it off as a fluke.
FOUR
The Purple Lounge is this ’50s-style diner.
It’s got everything done up in shades of purple. The servers all cruise around on roller skates and the food is pretty much chicken-fried only. As in chicken-fried steak. Chicken-fried chicken. Chicken-fried fries. Oh, and the mascot is this fat, purple chicken. Usually you see the poor schlub in the costume on the corner throwing feather-shaped coupons at scared passersby. One of those places.
I don’t bother with my car.
The Purple Lounge isn’t far from the Diviners’ new loft so I just book it across town. I run down Larimer and then take the 16th Street Mall up to Wazee. I’m surprised at how warm the weather’s suddenly gotten. It’s like ten degrees warmer suddenly.
Gotta love Denver.
The chicken guy is on his corner and as I run past him he throws coupons in my face and makes his clucking sounds.
I make a mental note to kick him in the balls sometime.
I push through the line at the entrance and then walk into the restaurant casually, trying to maintain some semblance of cool. I don’t know who Vaux is here with. Who the friend is. Maybe if she’s cheating on me I want to sneak up on them. Though just the thought of that has my stomach in knots.
It looks like the Purple Lounge has become the spot to be seen in.
Place is crawling with teens.
I make a second mental note to take Vauxhall here on the next Date Night.
I’m rounding a corner near the bathrooms when I spot her. She’s wearing a ’50s-style dress with big black-and-red polka dots and has this big red bow in her hair. She looks amazing, bright red lipstick on, and her eyes just gleaming.
Seeing her melts away all of the anxiety.
It just floods out of my muscles and then dissipates like it’s evaporating off the surface of my skin. Seeing her sitting there, talking, it’s like diving into a cool pool after wandering in a desert. The release, the relaxation, is instant.
I actually laugh to myself. How could I have gotten so freaked out?
How did I let Paige and Gilberto and the Glove twist me up into knots like this?
I shake it off, take a deep breath, and then notice the guy Vauxhall’s at dinner with.
He’s tall and thin and he’s … ME.
Yeah, me.
Not the me that I am right now. He’s dressed super preppy and he doesn’t have the haircut I have. Doesn’t hold himself the way I do. He doesn’t speak with his hands like everyone says I do. But the guy is me. He has my face.
He is Ade Patience. Only different.
I stand frozen, staring at him.
Could I be losing my mind?
It’s like there’s this funhouse mirror across from Vauxhall and I’m seeing myself reflected in it. Like she’s batting her eyes at a reflection of me that’s off.
The guy, this other me, he senses something’s up and turns around and actually stares at me and the feeling is like having a laser beam shot through my heart.
It’s like staring into a cold sun.
I’m losing my mind.
Then the clone smiles. Even his smile is mine.
I’m not sure what to do. Vauxhall leans in and asks the guy about me. She’s looking at me like she doesn’t know me and pointing at me and asking this guy who’s supposed to be me who I am. If that makes any sense at all.
For a second I think maybe I somehow switched bodies. Maybe that is me sitting and having dinner with Vauxhall. I turn and look at my reflection in a window. I look the same. So who the hell is this other guy?
I’m losing my mind, sure of it.
So I walk over.
And as I approach the table, the copy of me leans back in his chair. The expression on his face, which is exactly the expression I’d have on my face if some dude who looked an awful lot like me walked over to interrupt my dinner with Vauxhall, communicates his displeasure. Intense displeasure.
Already I can tell that me and my clone aren’t going to get along at all.
Walking that distance, maybe thirty feet, dodging other tables and passing diners, I keep my eyes on Vauxhall. It’s only been a day since I saw her last but it feels like years have passed. Decades. Centuries. The world has turned to dust in her absence.
When I reach the table the first to speak is the dude.
“What’s up?” he asks. Pissed.
He even raises one eyebrow the same as me when I’m annoyed.
I ignore him. “Can I talk to you, Vaux?” I ask.
She screws up her face. Looks to the dude, confused.
Then, to me: “Do I know you?”
“It’s me. Ade.”
She shakes her head. My face not registering.
My voice shaking, I say, “Ade. Ade Patience. I need to talk to you.”
She looks uncomfortable.
The other me says, “You need to back the hell up, bro.”
The way he talks is nothing like I talk. The guy’s a douche.
He stands up, gets in my face. Puffs out his chest like he’s going to fight me.
“I don’t know who you are,” he says, trying to control the timbre of his voice, trying to keep it down so as not to disturb all the Purple Lounge patrons. “But you don’t know her and you don’t know me. I suggest you turn back around and leave before this gets crazy.”
“Crazy?” I don’t budge. I don’t even blink. “Please don’t play games with me, Vauxhall. This has been the worst night of my life already. Please don’t—”
Vauxhall shakes her head. “I don’t know you.”
“You’re freaking her out,” the dude says.
Looking into this guy’s face is like floating under my own reflection.
The differences are there. Obvious. He’s got acne scars on his cheeks that I don’t have. He’s got stubble that I’ve never been able to grow. His pupils are a lighter shade. Other than that, though, he’s a replica.
I say, “Don’t you find it funny that we look exactly the same?”
Dude looks to Vauxhall. She shrugs.
“Listen, tweaker,” he says. “You need to back the eff up.”
I turn to Vauxhall.
“Don’t you recognize me?” I ask. “Don’t you see that we’re the same person?”
She honestly looks like she’s going to lose her shit. This is bad.
To the guy she says, “Let’s just leave, Karl.”
The me named Karl says, “No. This punk needs to leave.”
And he pushes me just to get the point across.
Being pushed by your mirror image is a strange thing. Feeling your own hands push you backward is like being disembodied. The push doesn’t do much to convince me. If anything, it backfires. Now I want to talk to Vauxhall even more.
“Vauxhall,” I say. “Please, just give me one minute.”
Karl is fuming. He raises a fist.
But Vauxhall stands up. Says, “Okay. Fine. One minute.”
I look at Karl and nod and then turn and walk with Vauxhall across the restaurant to the windows near the entrance. As we pass by, all the other diners watch us. Everyone staring. Whispering to each other. I follow Vaux, lost in the scent of her hair. Her perfume washing over me. Already I’ve forgotten about Karl.
We sit next to each other, Vauxhall at least five feet away from me, arms crossed, on a long couch next to the hostess. The hostess smiles at us, all uncomfortable.
I don’t like being this far away from Vaux. Feels terrible.
I must be sick. I’m sure this is like a fever dream.
I’m sure that I’ll wake up in a few minutes and this whole thing will be a dream.
Vauxhall says, “So?”
I collect myself. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. I know things got a little nuts the last few weeks but—”
Her blank expression tells me my worst fears are real.
She doesn’t know me.
She’s not joking around.
This is a nightmare.
I start over. “Okay, look, I don’t understand what’s going on here but you and I know each other. We’ve known each other for a long time. I, uh, I’ve known you before I even met you. That sounds crazy but it—”
“Totally crazy. I’ve never seen you before.”
“But I look just like that Karl asshole,” I say, gesturing back to the other me who is glaring at us from the table. Grinding ice cubes with his molars.
“Why do you think you know me?”
“We’re the same, Vaux. I have abilities like you do. The Buzz.”
“What?”
“Remember Jimi? The Diviners?”
“No. What is this about?”
“It’s about us.”
Vauxhall looks down at her feet and says, “Listen, I think you’ve got me confused with someone else. Maybe I look like someone you know or something. Maybe you’re just really messed up. But I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. And if you don’t leave me alone right now, Karl is going to hurt you. Bad.”
I lean in and try to take Vauxhall’s hand. She moves it away fast.
Like I’m poisonous.
“I know what you can do,” I say. “What you can see in the heads of the guys you’re with. What that feels like. How you liberate them from their nightmares. Even the ones they never knew they had. I understand it…”
And for the first time, even as brief as it is, a flash of recognition sparks in Vauxhall’s eyes. She narrows her eyes, whispers, “How do you know about that?”
“Because I’m like you. I was like you.”
“But—”
I say, “We beat it together. We conquered our addictions and it made us incredible. Like superheroes. But things went bad for me. It’s complicated but I’m here now, I’m back, and I need you to be with me.”
