Are You There and Other Stories (39 page)

Neil sat at a corner table by himself. The lost man-boy. He had a cup of coffee in front of him but no food. Freya sipped her orange juice and glanced over occasionally. Every time she did, Neil happened to be glancing at
her
, even as he tore open packets of sugar and emptied them into his cup.

When her eggs arrived, Freya picked up her juice and plate and carried them to Neil’s table.

“May I?”

“Sure.” He waved a packet at the empty chair, scattering white sugar crystals. Freya brushed the seat off and sat down.

“Are you feeling better today?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Good. I was thinking about something. I was thinking about how you said don’t worry about Mr. Pickwick.”

Neil smiled slightly.

“You don’t know it, but it was kind of coincidental. I had a cat named Mr. Pickwick. I know you were talking about the Dickens, from before. But it’s still a coincidence. It’s almost synchronicity, but not quite, I think. Am I making sense?”

“You are. But not in the way you think you are.”

“And what way would that be?”

“I wasn’t talking about Dickens, when I said the Pickwick thing. I meant don’t worry about your cat.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yeah.”

“I—”

“There he goes.”

Freya turned, almost expecting to see the yellow tabby padding across the diner. But it was the beefy bald guy of a thousand identities, or three anyway. He walked past, looking grim, and went into the Men’s Room.

“You’re quite taken with the swimming pool salesman,” she said.

“Filters,” Neil said. “Anyway, he doesn’t do that anymore.”

“No?”

“No. I had a bad dream, I think. I can’t remember it, but I know what I was thinking before I went to sleep. And I know I dreamed about something scary that I desired. There’s that residue in my mind, no specifics.”

Freya studied his face, looking for a clue that he was kidding, or setting her up for a punch line. No such clues were evident.

“So you dreamed he wasn’t a filter salesman and now he isn’t?”

“Yeah.”

“What is he now?”

“A poor slob whose wife left him last week and took his sweet daughter with her. He also lost his job, after showing up drunk for his morning shift and punching out his supervisor. This surprised both of them. Until then he hadn’t seemed like the violent type, despite the guns.”

“What guns?”

“Well, he’s always been a little paranoid and scared. More so than anybody ever guessed. He keeps a gun in the glove box of his Ford and a couple more in the house, plus a .38 in the ankle holster, like he’s a secret agent or something, except he isn’t. Not by a long shot. Shot’s kind of a pun. I used to tell nice stories about people, right? Now it’s mostly depressing stuff. Those eggs look good.”

“You should order some,” Freya said.

“There isn’t time.”

She thought he meant there wasn’t time before the bus left. But then, looking at him, at his haunted eyes, she knew he meant something else. Something terrible, maybe.

“So you think you know about Mr. Pickwick.”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me what it is about his eyes.”

“Eye. Not eyes. Did you ever think of dressing him like a pirate for Halloween?”

Freya put her fork down. “That was a good guess.”

“It wasn’t a guess. I told you: I make up stories about strangers, and then the strangers
become
the story I made up. I don’t want to do it, but I can’t help myself anymore. The stories happen. It’s like a reaction. Instinctive Inventive Reaction, I call it.”

“Eye Eye Are. Er?”

He laughed, and the haunted look fell away, briefly.

“I like you,” he said, “which is too bad. I’m kind of out of the people-liking business.”

“Me, too. Or I thought I was.”

“Because of Roger dodger?”

She stared at him.

“Yeah,” he said, “I know all about him.”

She sipped her orange juice, put the glass down. “I probably said his name in my sleep.”

Neil shook his head. “Nope.”

“Don’t tell me you made up a story about
me
.”

“I could prove it, but in a couple of minutes it won’t matter.”

She moved her glass around the table, sliding it on a film of moisture. After a moment she raised her eyes.

“Go ahead and prove it.”

“You’re a junior high school teacher from Phoenix,” Neil said.

“I told you that.”

“Right,” Neil said. “But you didn’t tell me about Roger.”

Freya waited, suspended between expectations. Her heart was beating faster.

“You didn’t tell me you met him in a chat room, and that you started a relationship with him that progressed to phone calls and then to visits. You didn’t tell me that he seemed to know all your secret places, that he convinced you that he was in love with you, and that you quit your job and moved to Seattle. You didn’t tell me that he turned out to be a manipulating, needy asshole who liked to hurt people, especially you. And you didn’t tell me that after a while it was you and Mr. Pickwick verses asshole Roger. The cat was a stray, and you took it in. Because even though you were living with the guy you felt dreadfully lonely. Worse than you had felt back home in Phoenix, and that was pretty bad. You didn’t tell me that asshole Roger threw a full bottle of Bud at the cat and hit it in the ass, and that Mr. Pickwick ran for his life out of that apartment, which is when you decided you had to do the same. You didn’t tell me that when the cab was waiting to take you to the bus station a couple of days later, after all the yelling and tears and threats, that you still couldn’t find Mr. Pickwick, though you’d seen him slinking around the alley. And asshole Roger made you get in the cab without your cat, and you did it because you were scared. Another stray that got away and went feral. You didn’t tell me any of that, did you?”

“No,” Freya said, her voice very small.

“See?” he said.

“It’s a trick.” She felt naked, publicly exposed. “You hypnotized me or something, back on the bus, and I told you all that.”

“Yeah. It’s a trick. I’m The Amazing Neil.”

“You don’t know me,” Freya said.

“You’re right. I don’t know who you really are. But you know what’s funny?
You
don’t know who you really are, either. Not anymore.”

“That isn’t funny, Neil.”

He looked down. “No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.”

His eyes shifted to the Men’s Room.

“Why do you keep looking over there?”

“No reason.”

Freya looked at the Men’s Room door.

“Now you’ve got
me
doing it,” she said.

“Anyway,” Neil said, “you don’t have to worry about your cat.”

“Maybe I never even had a cat. Maybe you just planted that idea in my head.” Her heart ached a little when she said it. Mr. Pickwick, as opposed to Roger, had been a comfort to her. It wasn’t even the cat she missed; it was the comfort. Another stray gone feral.

“Is that what you think?” Neil said. “That I ‘planted’ Mr. Pickwick in your mind?”

“No.”

“Because that isn’t what I do,” he said. “I don’t plant things.”

“What
do
you do, then?”

“I see somebody, and his or her face suggests a little story. So I listen to the story, add to it, embellish it. This only takes a few seconds. And the little story isn’t the
whole
story. It just gets things rolling.”

“You make people be something they’re not.”

“No. I give them lives they could have had but didn’t. Or maybe they had them in parallel dimensions, or a previous incarnation. Who knows? I don’t
make
anybody do anything. I wish I could. I’ve tried it.” His mouth turned down in a sour scowl.

“What happened?” Freya asked.

He shrugged. “There was a girl.”

He picked up his mug with both hands and slurped coffee. She thought he was pausing to gather his thoughts, but a minute went by, and he only stared, holding the mug up to his chin, elbows on the table, his eyes focused inward.

“What about the girl?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. Please.”

“You already think I’m nutty,” he said.

She did her one-shoulder shrug, but it was the other shoulder.

“Her name was Lynn,” he said. “She was totally random, nobody I knew or was likely to know. I was walking into a bank in Spokane, and she was walking out. One of those revolving doors. Her face. Oh, man, was she cute—but very sad-looking. And a story begins spinning itself out, something about a divorce, an empty bank account, embarrassment, a brave face, and a fast exit. At which point I tried to take control of the story. I put myself into it, which I think screwed it up. I’m the outsider, right? I don’t ever have a story to be in, not with anybody else. Anyway, I followed her down the block and found her crying in front of a Starbucks. And it was like she was
so glad
that I stopped and asked if she was all right. I have a kind face, non-threatening? I’ve heard that before. How far does a so-called kind face get you? It doesn’t matter. I’m totally used to being alone, I’m accustomed to the idea. With Lynn I reminded her of her high school crush, the one she always wished had asked her out but never did.”

“That was mean,” Freya said. “Making her believe that.”

His eyes widened innocently. “I didn’t intend it to be mean. I just wanted to meet her. I wanted her to like me.”

“Maybe she would have liked you anyway, without you changing all her memories around.”

“I doubt it. People tend to look right though me, Freya. Especially women. Anyway, I bought her a coffee, and we talked. She really was a sweet girl.”

“What about the bank account, why was it empty?”

“It wasn’t.”

“But you said—”

“That was
before
. Once I intentionally added myself, the back story changed, too. She told me she was crying because she was thinking about her best friend, who had told her she had breast cancer. Nothing to do with the bank.”

Freya thought for a minute.

“What if the empty account story was never real?”

“It would have been, if I’d left it alone.”

“You’re guessing it would have been. But maybe the stories in your head
don’t
become real. Maybe they’re just stories in your head. Did she
tell
you that you reminded her of the high school crush?”

Neil looked at his coffee mug. “No.”

“See? Maybe she liked you for being you, for bothering to stop and ask if she was all right. For your kind face, even. Is that so outlandish? Maybe you don’t have any weird power.”

“You’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

The Men’s Room door opened. Neil tensed, slopping coffee over the rim of his mug, then relaxed when the pony-tailed-hippie-looking guy stepped out, wiping his hands on his jeans.

“What, what is it?” Freya asked.

Neil slumped, placed his mug on the table. He rubbed his eyes.

“What you’re
forgetting
is all that stuff I know about you. The cat, Roger, the rough sex, all that.”

Freya blushed. “Maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

“I was thinking, maybe it’s that you read minds?”

“I don’t
read minds
.” He looked disgusted. “Jesus, that pseudo science stuff is reaching.”

“It makes more sense than the other thing. There’s at least
some
scientific basis for mind-reading.” (She was remembering an X-Files episode.) “What if you read minds without even knowing it? So you think it’s a story you’re making up, but it’s the truth to begin with. What about that?”

He gave her a weary up-from-under look.

“Never mind,” Freya said. “What happened with your bank girl?”

“I told you: Nothing.”

“You didn’t go out, or see her again?”

“No. She wouldn’t have wanted to see me again. I just caught her at a vulnerable moment.”

“That’s a dumb way to think,” Freya said. “Trust me. You know what your problem is?”

“Tell me, I think I need to hear it.”

“You’re afraid to let anybody know who you really are.” (She was thinking of a Dr. Phil book, but that didn’t invalidate the point.)

“Something funny?
I
don’t even know who I am. A long time ago—a
long
time ago, I think, I started telling stories about
myself
. Maybe it was because I was always alone, it seemed like, when I was a kid. It wasn’t such a happy home, all that crap you might expect. So I’d make stuff up, to escape. And the stuff was in my dreams, too. Maybe mostly in my dreams. You know dreams, there’s no bullshit. It’s the unconscious giving us what we think we deserve. But there’s something else, and you’re going to think I’m nutty, but what if when I started out I wasn’t even human? Because about half the time I don’t feel human even now.”

“Neil?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re nutty.”

“I
told
you,” he said. “You should have believed me.”

“How could you not be human? What else
is
there?”

“Listen. I travel around a lot. I used to like big cities, because there were so many people, so it seemed like it was less lonely, but it wasn’t. I’d hang out in my crappy apartment, go out to coffee shops, the movies, but I was always by myself. All those other people, it got depressing. So then I went the small town route. Like I had this idea it’d be Mayberry, you know, Andy Griffith, all that. But it wasn’t. People in those towns are suspicious as hell about outsiders. I feel like I’m at the end of my options. I’m
tired
.”

“How come you get to live in all these different places? What do you do for money?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Ah.”

“You mean ah-
ha
. Right? Well, you’re wrong. It’s natural that I’d be a writer. Like if you have a talent for constructive empathy you might be a counselor, or even a teacher, for instance. I have a talent for making stuff up.”

“Well, Neil.”

“What?”

“The last time I looked, writers are human like the rest of us.”

“Most of them are, I guess. Personally I don’t get along with the ones I know. They’re all kind of weird.”

“Thank goodness you’re not.”

“Yeah, thank goodness.”