All the Birds in the Sky (22 page)

Ernesto sat in his usual chair, eating a microwaved TV dinner. He was in love with the invention of the microwave, both because it fit in with his love of instant gratification (“the lineaments of gratified desire”) and because you couldn’t leave food near him for more than a few minutes before it grew spiky white mold. He wore a silk robe, emerald pajamas, and fuzzy slippers, with William Blake’s poems perched on one knee.

“What the hell,” Patricia said before Ernesto could greet her. “When were you going to tell me about this plan to send me to Portland?” She almost knocked over the bookcase of Ideas Too Good To Be True.

“Please sit.” Ernesto gestured at a clamshell armchair. Patricia tried to rebel for a moment, then gave up and sat. “We do not wish to send you away, but we have spoken about it. You make it difficult for us to watch over you. People want to care about you, and you will not let them.”

“I’ve been trying.” She shuffled in her chair. This was the worst day. “I’ve tried and tried. Everybody gives me grief about Aggrandizement, but I’ve tried so hard. I’ve been so careful.”

“You are hearing the wrong thing,” Ernesto rose and stood close to her, so she could feel his unnatural warmth. “People warn you about Aggrandizement, and you keep hearing the opposite of what they are saying.”

Nobody knew why Ernesto was the way he was, but there were rumors. Like he’d cast a huge spell that had backfired. Or there’d been an endangered species, a rhino or something, and all the surviving animals had poured their life essence into one massive creature, which swelled with the lost potential of future generations. Maybe this towering gestalt stomped across the countryside, and everything it touched rotted. Blood bubbled from its eyes, ears, and stumpy toes, and it gave off an overripe stench. The creature, the story went, threatened a town full of innocent people until Ernesto took on its burden of excess life. Ernesto was so old, he’d gone to school back when Eltisley Academy and The Maze were still two separate schools.

“Everybody thinks Siberia was my fault,” Patricia said. “Because I was too proud or whatever. Too reckless.” In her mind, Patricia saw before-and-after images of Toby, first alive then dead, like a GIF from Hell. “They think I’m still too arrogant now. I’m just trying to help.”

“Listen harder,” Ernesto said. Most of the time, the thick eyeliner made his eyes appear lively, unfocused. But now, he seemed to see into the grungiest corners of Patricia’s psyche.

Ernesto went back to his chaise, and Patricia was left trying to figure this out. It was one of those annoying tests: both a dirty trick and a healing exercise. She was pretty sure she’d been listening just fine. She was ready to throw foodstuffs again.

“Fine,” Patricia said after she decided she wasn’t going to crack this tonight. “I will listen harder. And I will try to be less self-absorbed, and more humble. I will let people in, if anybody even wants to be my friend after tonight.”

“I spent thirty bitter years trying to find a way to leave this place,” Ernesto said so quietly, she had to lean perilously close. He gestured at the room full of books, with his eyes. “Until at last, I accepted that this imprisonment was a price that I had chosen to pay. Now, I enjoy my situation as much as I can. But you have not yet begun to experience the pain of being a witch. The mistakes. All the regrets. The only thing that will make such power bearable is to remember how small you are.”

He went back to William Blake, and Patricia couldn’t tell if this meant their conversation was over.

“So does this mean I’m not going to Portland?”

“Listen harder,” was all Ernesto said from behind the book. “We do not want to send you away. Do not make us.”

“Okay.” Patricia still felt raw and desperate inside. She realized she ought to leave before Ernesto offered to make her a cocktail next door, because she did not want to get falling-upwards drunk right now.

As soon as she got out of Danger, she saw her phone was full of texts and voicemails. She called Kevin, who was worried, and she was like, “I’m fine, except I need a drink.”

Half an hour later, she leaned on Kevin’s crushed-velvet frock coat and pounded a Corona in the swampy back room of the art bar on 16th, with fresh graffiti on the wall and a DJ spinning classic hip-hop. Kevin was drinking Pimm’s with a fat cucumber slice and not asking her what that scene at dinner had been about. He looked amazing in the bar’s golden light, sideburns setting off the smooth planes of his face.

“I’m fine,” Patricia kept saying. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m fine. I sorted it out.”

But as her tongue greeted the lime wedge bobbing up to the lip of the bottle and tasted the pulp mixed with beer, she remembered how Kevin wouldn’t even look her in the eye when everybody else was accusing her of being a toxic loner.

“We should talk about what this is, right? You and me. What we’re doing,” she started to say, trying to make herself heard over the DJ without shouting. “I feel like we tried too hard not to label our relationship, and that became a label in itself.”

“I have something I have to tell you,” Kevin said, his eyes bigger and sadder than usual.

“I am ready to open up about my feelings. I feel…” Patricia searched for the right words. “I feel good, about us. I care about you, a lot, and I am open to—”

“I met someone else,” Kevin blurted. “Her name is Mara. She’s also a webcomics artist of some renown. She lives in the East Bay. We met only in the past fortnight, but this already shows signs of becoming serious. I was not even looking, but my Caddy pinged me with twenty-nine points of convergence between Mara and myself.” He gazed into his Pimm’s. “You and I never said we were exclusive, or even that we were dating.”

“Umm.” Patricia chewed her thumb, a habit she’d quit years ago. “I’m happy, happy. For you. I’m happy for you.”

“Patricia.” Kevin took both her hands. “You are utterly mad, but delightful. I feel so overjoyed to have gotten to know you. But I have been a fool too many times already. And I tried, I really did, to talk to you about our relationship, on five separate occasions. In the park when we were roller-skating, and also at that pizza bar…”

As Kevin listed these moments, she could see them with perfect clarity: all the missed cues and deflections, all the abortive moments of intimacy. All this time, she had been thinking of him as the one with commitment issues. Somewhere along the line, she had become an asshole.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” Patricia said. She sat and finished her drink, until it was just lime rind and bitter pulp.

Patricia wound up in Dolores Park at midnight. The heat still felt as intense as direct sunlight, and her mouth was dry. She couldn’t go home and face Deedee and Racheline. For some reason, Patricia found herself calling her sister, Roberta, whom she hadn’t talked to in months (although she’d had a couple conversations about Roberta with her parents).

“Hey, Bert.”

“Hi, Trish. How is everything going?”

“I’m okay.” Patricia took a breath, which came out staccato. She stared at the playground rocket ship and the Victorian houses with their pregnant windows. “I’m sort of okay. I just … Do you ever feel like you’re just throwing away the people in your life? Like, being so self-centered that people just fall away?”

Roberta laughed. “I have the opposite problem: I have a hard time disposing of the bodies. Ha ha. Trish, listen to me for once in your life. I know we never got along and I was partway responsible for you running away from home. But one thing I know about you is, you’re a generous person. You’re a big bleeding heart. People have fucked with you, including me—especially me—so you have a lot of defense mechanisms. But you always put yourself on the line for other people. You don’t push people away—you try to do everything for people, and then they don’t get to do anything for you. Please don’t let any idiots tell you otherwise, okay?”

Patricia was bawling, even worse than before, right there in the park. She felt it pour down her face, and she was full of a sense that everything was broken and full of sweetness. She had never realized her sister thought that way about her.

“If anybody tries to tell you that you’re selfish,” Roberta said, “send them to me and I’ll snap their necks for you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Patricia stammered. They talked a bit more—about Roberta’s musical-theater disasters, and her latest attempt to go straight-edge—and then at last, Patricia felt ready to go home and face her roommates, who were on the couch like always. They slid over, without comment, to let Patricia watch TV with them.

*   *   *

PATRICIA HAD ANOTHER
one of her dreams about being lost in the woods, this time running with a pack of deer, a barbarian yell in her throat and the scent of tree sap in her nostrils. She ran with her elbows and her stomach and her knees, until she couldn’t breathe. Patricia stumbled and fell onto her hands, gasping, laughing. She looked up and there was that big bird-shaped Tree again, with the mindful gaze coming through its branches. Patricia walked up and touched it with her palms against its ropey bark, feeling the power rising and churning inside of it. Touching that weird Tree from her childhood fancies, Patricia felt as though she could heal an entire army with a single breath. Air rushed through the Tree, like it was drawing breath to speak to her in its stentorian whoosh … then she woke up. She’d overslept, in spite of her alarm.

*   *   *

PATRICIA WAS FIXING
Reginald’s sink, which had one of those glitchy new valves that were supposed to shut off the water after a couple minutes, and she found herself talking about her breakup with Kevin. “I mean, I guess it’s for the best, since it was never going to work. But it’s a symptom of the larger problem, that I never have time for anybody, and I keep isolating myself, and I’m basically doomed to wind up alone forever. Right?”

She expected Reginald to offer some bromides about how she just needed to be herself, but instead he said, “Get. A. Caddy.”

“What?” She nearly bonked her head on the sink.

“Get a Caddy. It will change your life, I am not kidding. At all. You become totally connected to all the people in your life. Not like regular social networking, either. It’s uncanny: You will just run into people you know, in person, when you most need to see them. I could barely afford one on my fixed income, but it turned out to be the best investment I ever made.”

“I always thought they were just for Mission hipsters,” Patricia said. “Anyway, it sounds creepy.”

“Seriously, no. It’s not creepy, and it’s so easy to use. It doesn’t spy on you, or tell you to stalk your friends. I’ve never felt like it was invading my privacy. It just … makes serendipity happen more often. It’s unobtrusive, and doesn’t give you a bunch of alerts. But you’ll always know what’s the one party you shouldn’t miss. I was feeling isolated, even with your much-appreciated visits. And then I got this Caddy, and I feel as though I’m back in my own life again.”

In spite of Reginald’s insistence that the Caddy was not at all creepy, his hard sell was in itself kind of creepy. He sounded like someone who had just joined a cult. Patricia vowed that she would never, ever buy a Caddy. Ever.

Two days later, Patricia was in the Caddy store, near Union Square. It was narrow, with curving walls that drew you toward the counter at the back, like a stream curving around some rocks. The walls seemed to glow. Patricia picked up a Caddy from the display on one wall, and the screen flared to life. There was a swirl of colors, and then it resolved into a wheel shape. The wheel had swirls coming out of its center, sort of like a Daoist symbol, and each of them got bigger at her touch. They included things like Communication, Orientation, Self-Expression, and Introspection.

She paid for the Caddy with her ATM card and felt like a total wanker. Next she would go get some giant square dark glasses and a medallion that changed color depending on how recently she got laid. God.

Still, it was a fun toy—and at this point she would try anything to make herself feel less claustrophobic and self-absorbed. Although there was something perverse about buying a device that offered a huge “Introspection” wedge, in the hope that it would make her more social.

That night, Patricia sat in bed and played with her new Caddy. It was not that different from a standard tablet, except for the guitar-pick shape, and the way it insisted on asking demented questions to customize your experience. Like, “Would you rather lose your sense of smell or taste? When was the last time you were glad you stayed up late?” There was a checkbox to disable the questions, but everybody said they made it work a million times better and they tapered off after a day.

And sure enough, after a few days, the Caddy was steering her oh-so-gently toward happy accidents and little discoveries. There was that little egg-themed restaurant in Hayes Valley, where everybody sat in egg chairs and ate egg dishes, from Scotch eggs to Chinese-style egg tarts. And drank cocktails with egg yolks. The whole place was an allergy waiting to happen, but it was also warm and cozy and there was a faint smell of butter and sugar in the air, making her feel like she was in her grandma’s kitchen and five years old.

The Caddy helped Patricia to figure out which bus to take to avoid being late for work, and when one of her mary janes broke a strap, the Caddy steered her to a hole-in-the wall place that fixed it on the spot. Within a few days, Patricia had a low-level awareness of what a dozen or so people in her life were up to at any given moment, without feeling overwhelmed. She managed to grab lunch with a very apologetic Taylor and make time for an ice-cream conference with Deedee and Racheline.

Then something weird happened. Right around the time Patricia had gotten used to the Caddy and started thinking of it as an extension of her personality rather than an appliance—after about five days, in other words—she started running into Laurence. A lot. At lunch, at dinner, at tea, on the bus, in the park. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal, since San Francisco was a tiny town, but after a couple days, it felt weird. She would see Laurence, say hi and mumble a few awkward words, and then bail. And then the process would repeat, a couple hours later. She would think he was stalking her, except that she was the least stalkable person ever. The third day, she tried shaking up her routine, going for vegan soul food in the Outer Sunset, and somehow Laurence was there, too, going to some kind of Musée Mécanique revival.