Axis of Aaron (42 page)

“She must have loved you enough to marry you.”
 

It was a presumptuous thing to say. Ebon was suddenly sure that regardless of what he’d thought earlier, Vicky didn’t know him well enough to say such a thing. He didn’t like her talking about Holly. It felt too tender, too precious and damaged. But he didn’t rebuke her.
 

He thought about what she’d said. Strangely, his memories of those times weren’t as rose colored as he’d expected. They felt dark to him now, every tick of Holly’s eyes sinister, full of lust. He recalled times they’d had sex, and with them he recalled the many times her needs had been too much for him and she’d left unsatisfied. Where had she gone? He didn’t know. Those jumbled memories formed a soup of desire and writhing, with little emotion holding them together. He saw timelines like jumbled filmstrips, all in a pile and out of order, no rhyme or reason between them. In his mind’s eye, the pile was full of burnt ends, as if the film had been caught in a projector and burned behind the white-hot bulb. His memories of Holly were half ashes, damaged and charred. Too many were missing — or scratched raw by someone’s angry blade until they were no longer visible for what they’d once been.
 

Ebon felt his head wanting to swim. He held it firm, trying to summon a pleasant memory with Holly. He saw only fire and twisted metal. He felt only empty.
 

“I suppose,” he said.
 

“How did you meet?”
 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”
 

Vicky reasserted the comforting hand on his leg, then moved to sit beside him on the divan.
 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me about it, so long as you talk to someone.”
 

“What are you, a psychiatrist?”
 

 
“Almost. I came close to becoming a psychologist — not a psychiatrist, but close enough — before meeting the woman who became my first design client a week before my final exams.”
 

“I don’t really want to lay down on a … ” Ebon chuckled, realizing he was already sitting on something very much like a stereotypical shrink’s couch.
 

“What have you told Aimee?”
 

“Everything.” Or at least, everything that was comfortable to tell, or that felt good to say because it was cathartic. Aimee had heard about the worst of Holly, surely suspecting that it was skewed from reality. But Ebon had needed to get it off his chest.

“And you’re not mixing signals?”
 

“How?”
 

“If Aimee was an old girlfriend, she might not be the best person to talk to about this because one set of memories and impressions will color the other. You’ll tend to project one woman onto the next.”
 

“It’s not like that.”
 

“Did you and Aimee ever sleep together?”
 

“No.”
 

“Did you want to?”
 

“I don’t really want to be psychoanalyzed, Vicky.”
 

“I’m just trying to help.” She smiled, but Ebon, looking at her, flinched back. For a moment — really just the blink of an eye — she’d looked very different. For that fraction of a second, he’d been looking at a slimmer woman, less buxom, with narrower but still attractive features. Her skin had been darker, her hair still red but somewhat more artificial, as if she was natural but had enhanced the depth of nature’s gift. Then it was gone, and she was back to being Vicky.
 

“Aimee and I are just friends. What we had — what we
almost
had — was a long time ago.”
 

“But you carried a torch, right?”
 

Again, the scene shivered. The other woman was in front of Ebon, but seeing her was like trying to outrun your reflection.
 

“No.” He hadn’t. Really. They’d run into each other on LiveLyfe just after Holly’s death, and they’d started laughing at old times. It had been platonic, and remained so. In the intervening years, he’d barely thought about Aimee at all. Just as he wasn’t thinking about how his hand, beside Vicky’s, had become that of a rotting corpse.
 

Ebon jumped up, away from Vicky. His hand went behind his back but his other hand was afraid to touch it, fearful of what it might find.
 

“What?” said Vicky.
 

“I should go.”
 

“Right now?”
 

Ebon breathed. Slowly, keeping his arm side-on and away from Vicky, he slithered his hand out from behind his back and peeked covertly down. It looked normal. Totally and completely normal.
 

A stark but crystal clear thought marched into Ebon’s mind:
You’re going crazy.
 

With neutral eyes on Vicky, Ebon watched his internal vision as puzzle pieces slotted into place: losing Vicky on the beach, that first day he’d seen her. Becoming disoriented and lost without reason, in the empty subdivision. The strange, changing nature of Aimee and her cottage; the pushing of the ocean; the way Aaron’s horizon had seemed to tip and spin. He’d lost wedges of time, initiated an intimate relationship with a woman he didn’t know. He’d sailed west and ended up east, twice. He’d seen a carnival vanish, then reappear.

The problem wasn’t Aaron. It wasn’t the others.
It was him.
 

“Stay,” Vicky whispered. “Stay with me and dance.”
 

“Dance?”
 

She stood to meet him, then reached over and clicked on an old radio. It was the kind of thing that nobody owned anymore. He’d only seen this kind of radio once before. His parents had owned one, and had kept it in their living room through his teen years.
 

Vicky clicked on the radio and took Ebon’s hands, leading the left one to her swaying hip.
 

“I love this song,” she said.
 

It was “Wonderwall” by Oasis.
 

Ebon swallowed, compliant, his hands and feet nudged around the large open space beside Vicky’s dining room table, its top still set with finery and food. The song ended, then started again, on a loop.
 

“I have to go,” he said.

“Don’t go.”
 

“I shouldn’t be here.”
 

“This is where you belong.”
 

“No. It’s not right. Nothing is right.”

“Aren’t you comfortable?”
 

“It doesn’t matter.”
 

“It’s cold outside.” Vicky pulled back and looked Ebon in the face. In another odd blink, she became the other woman. Then Vicky. Then the other woman. “If you leave, you’ll have to go out into the dark.”
 

“Only for a while.” Aimee’s cottage was maybe a ten-minute walk. It would be unpleasant, given the drop of mercury that happened after dark, and he’d almost certainly trip over everything due to the lack of a decent moon. But he couldn’t stay. Suddenly, his anchor of comfort felt uncomfortable.
He had to get back to Aimee.
 

“Don’t leave, baby.”
 

“‘Baby?’”

“Stay with me.”

“I’m … I’m … ”
 

“You’re what?”
 

I’m falling apart,
he thought.
I’m losing my mind. I can’t tell which end is up and which end is down, but at least I’m beginning to see that
I
am the problem. And while it’s true that I can run but not hide, there are plenty of reasons to run. And to fight for what must, somewhere, be true.
 

Ebon pulled his hands away from Vicky’s hand and hip. She held tighter than he’d thought, and his hand felt raw, rubbed to bruising. The sensation was like the ripping of a Band-Aid, but once Ebon was moving, moving further became easier.
 

“I’m tired,” he said.
 

Vicky looked almost hurt. “So lie down here.”
 

“I can’t.”
 

She tipped her head in a way that was almost condescending, seeming to say,
Oh, sweetie, you don’t see what’s right in front of you
. “Of
course
you can. You
should
. You
must
.”
 

“This isn’t right,” he repeated.
 

“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” she said. “But doesn’t it feel good regardless?”
 

Ebon stepped backward, moving toward the door. Vicky seemed to shimmer, becoming one woman and then the other. Thoughts of Holly and Aimee, stirred like angry wasps, swarmed in his head as the old song looped on the much older radio.
Aimee the friend.
Holly the whore.
Good conversation. Good riddance. And Ebon a pawn in between, out of his mind only if he chose to be.
 

“Don’t go, baby,” Vicky pled.
 

“Thank you,” Ebon replied. “For everything.”
 

He slipped through the door and found himself outside, the only light coming from Vicky’s shimmering windows. The world was hollow and silent, as if Ebon was its lone occupant.
 

It was difficult to leave the light of her doorstep. But once he started to walk even the uncertainty held a dark and brooding comfort.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Three Beads on a Braid

TRUTH.
 

THE WALK WASN’T NEARLY AS daunting as Ebon had imagined. The sliver of moon provided adequate light once his eyes adjusted, and the shoreline, though mostly deserted of its summertime occupants, wasn’t entirely abandoned. A few incandescents here and there lit patches of beach as he walked, and just as the ocean had so recently sent him back to Aaron, a similarly strong force now seemed almost friendly, determined to keep Ebon where he was, while nudging him toward where he needed to be.
 

That place, he thought as he walked, had to be
the truth.
 

Ebon slowly realized that he hadn’t been seeking the truth; he’d been working to
justify
. He’d wanted to make things okay, because they weren’t okay at all.
 

He had to reach Aimee’s. She would help him discover the truth, then face it.
 

This wasn’t simple insanity. Everyone seemed to agree that crazy people didn’t suspect themselves of madness, and Ebon, right now, suspected it plenty. But the doubt itself implied reason, which meant that some of what was happening around him had to be real and not just the works of a leaky mind. It seemed impossible, and he was alternately sure that it was a stupid notion and that it was brilliant. The cool, dark salt air gave Ebon nothing to hold onto. It was like ascending a greased ramp with no handholds.
 

One moment, Ebon believed he was losing his mind — the conclusion that had felt so certain back at Vicky’s, when she’d seemed to change before his eyes, or when his hand had appeared to rot and fall apart. Or, for that matter, when he’d fainted and been hurled back into that old memory of Holly. That had felt quite real. The memory had slipped away bit by bit afterward like any dream, but his mind’s chronology wanted to wedge it in the middle of his visit to Vicky’s, as if he’d taken a break from their dinner to visit a day years in the past. He couldn’t remember everything about that day now, but what he did recall was a dagger to the gut. He remembered a soft bed, spongy pillows, Holly smiling inches from his face. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t summon hatred for her within the context of that memory. And there was something at the dream’s end, right before Vicky had reappeared above him …
 

But Ebon couldn’t remember what it was.
 

And then, as he walked, the next moment would usher in an equal but opposite certainty. He’d decide that he wasn’t losing his mind at all. He couldn’t be, because he was
considering
the idea, and crazy people didn’t do that. This was happening for real. It was impossible, just like the alternative. Ebon had never gone crazy before, but felt quite sure it looked nothing like this. He was confused, but only because of the changes. None of his individual experiences were confusing once he was actually in and adjusted to the moment. None felt unreal, or dreamlike, or like he was floating. Because after all, how could false visions have such
substance?
When he’d been boating (Good God; had that been just a few hours ago? The answer depended on how crazy he was,
har-har
), he’d felt the crisp certainty of the wheel under his hands the entire time. He’d heard the crash of the waves around him, the crack of thunder, the blue-turned-white fury of the waves as they’d shoved him back to shore. He’d smelled the fuel reeking from the bilge. He’d even tasted the ocean’s salt as it whipped about him.
 

If he was insane,
which part
of the experience had been insanity? Had it been the crisp reality of motoring toward the mainland, or the crisp reality of being shoved back to Aaron?