Children of Paranoia (44 page)

In my dream, a car pulled up in front of us as the two of us slept in our car along the side of the road. The car skidded to a stop, kicking up red desert sand, blocking any chance we had to escape. A man and a woman stepped out of the car. Both of them had guns in their hands. I recognized the woman. She was a pretty Asian woman. I couldn't place her at first because her face had changed, like it had been reconstructed somehow and not everything could be put back like it had been before. The man was a stranger. Every time I looked at him his face changed. Nose, eyes, hair color, lips, everything changed. Every time I looked he was a different person. He was everyone, everyone I didn't know, everyone I saw on the street and wondered which side they were on.

It was still night when they stepped out of their car. They ordered us out of our car. Then they walked us out into the desert. The sky was littered with stars. The man and the woman kept their guns pointed at us. I told them that you were only seventeen. I told them that you were off limits, that you were an innocent. They didn't seem to care. The man just kept asking me questions about the people that I'd killed. He kept trying to make me relive moments from my life that I wanted to forget. He was relentless, asking me about people I hadn't thought about for years, people whose lives ended at my hands.

I looked over at the Asian woman. I thought about Long Beach Island. I thought about Jared and Michael. I remembered that first night when Catherine had flirted with me. In a simpler world, I would have taken her home and we would have fucked until morning and then we would have gone our separate ways. I studied her face, her reconstructed nose and cheekbones. Her eyes looked the same but the rest of her face was different. She looked up at me as we walked. I expected her to be angry. She wasn't. “You look good,” I said to her, my voice loud enough for her and only her to hear. She started to respond but thought better of it. She smiled slightly, her lips curling up in the corners. Even in my dream, I wondered which of the two of them would pull the trigger when they shot me. I hoped it would be her.

We walked a long way into the desert. The cars disappeared over the horizon. Eventually, I turned to the man. “Did you follow us all the way from Charleston?” I took a deep breath. The air was cool and dry. It smelled of earth and stone. I looked over at Catherine again. She wasn't looking at me. She was gazing off into the distance, into the seemingly endless darkness.

“We followed you all the way from Montreal,” the man said. I didn't want to think about the bodies that had been left behind in my wake. No more. I was done.

“How are we going to do this?” I asked, turning to face the man without a face. All I could see was his ever-changing visage and the whites of his knuckles on his gun. He lifted the gun, his finger now tensing around the trigger. I stared up at the sky, not wanting the bullet to be the last thing I saw. Some of the stars had begun to disappear. The sound of the gunshot ripped through the air. I felt nothing. It was like Charleston all over again. The sun had begun to rise.

The sun rose over the flat desert like a fireball being lifted into the sky. There were no mountains to slow down the light from the sun, nothing to create shadows. The day came with the immediacy of a tidal wave. I turned to look at you, standing there in the purple light of early dawn. I turned to see whose gun had fired, to make sure that you were okay. You were fine. Your belly created the largest shadow in the entire desert. Its shadow looked like the shadow of a mountain on its side. There was silence. Suddenly I felt a burning in my left hand. I looked down. There was blood dripping from my hand. The ground was so dry that the blood pooled up on top of it instead of seeping into the earth. I looked at my hand. My ring finger was gone. I looked over at the man with the gun. His face had changed yet again. There was smoke coming from the end of the gun. He'd shot off my finger. The pain came slowly.

“What now?” I asked the man holding the smoking gun. I wondered if he was simply planning on dismantling me one small piece at a time.

“That's all we want from you,” he said. He slid his gun into the waistband of his pants. “Let's go,” he said to Catherine. She glanced at me and then at you and then she turned and the two of them walked away. They disappeared over the horizon.

I looked at you, standing in the sunlight. “He's moving again, Joe,” you said.

I flexed my left hand into a fist. The bleeding had already slowed down. “How does it feel?” you asked.

“It's okay,” I responded. I concentrated on the pain for a moment. “It's odd. I can feel the pain in my finger, my whole finger, even though there's no finger there anymore.”

“Phantom pain,” you said. “I used to volunteer at a hospital. I worked with amputees. They used to tell me that they could still feel their toes even though their legs were gone.”

“When did it go away?” I asked.

“Never,” you replied, shaking your head. “It's not so easy to let something like that go.” I looked down at my hand. The bleeding had stopped completely now. Now there was just an empty gap.

“Are we going to be all right, Maria?” I asked you. I couldn't ask you in real life. In real life, I had to pretend that I knew. It was only in a dream that I could ask you.

“Yeah, Joe. We're going to be all right,” you said.

“Why does it sound like a lie when I say it but the truth when you say it?” I asked.

“Because you've never been all right before, so you don't know what it feels like.”

I woke up as the sun began to rise behind us. I've never been one to read too much into dreams. I was just happy to have had a good dream for once. It had been a long time.

I started the car, put it in gear, and stepped on the gas again. I had filled up our gas tank about 150 miles ago. We still had a half a tank of gas. I drove for miles before I saw another sign of civilization.

We've been in Aztec, New Mexico, for over three weeks. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far, everything's been calm. It's serene here. It's hot during the day but you seem to be managing the heat well. It's nice and cool in the evenings. We probably should have gone farther. We probably should have kept driving. Maybe L.A., maybe farther. Maybe Mexico would have been safer. I don't know. But here we are, still in Aztec. I think you've decided that you want to stay here. I don't think we'll leave unless someone chases us away. That could happen at any minute. We're ready. I think we're more ready than last time. But for now, this place seems like home.

It was a lot easier to find work here than in Charleston. I knew a trade now. At least I knew enough to lie about how much I knew. Frank was a good teacher. I like the guys that I work with here. My boss is Mexican. His son works with us too. He was born in New Mexico. I'm the gringo. They like that. They like that the white guy is the low man on the totem pole.

We found a place to live. Jumping from place to place didn't help us any before, so we decided that staying in one place might be less conspicuous. We're renting a small house out in the desert. We pay weekly, up-front, in cash. There's no one else around us. When you look out the back windows, you can see for miles. Most importantly, we got you in to see a doctor. He wants to see you regularly from now through the birth. I told him that there was only so much we could afford. He didn't want to hear it. “Just come in every two weeks,” he said. Maybe someday we can repay him somehow. Our son is doing well. We're not out of the woods yet, but he's still growing, still developing. There haven't been any complications since we've been here. Still, on the doctor's advice, you stay off your feet as much as possible, lying in bed, reading books I buy for you from the convenience store in town. Your stomach gets bigger every day, your body changing shape for our son.

We never planned on staying, not in Aztec. When we got here, you needed to eat. You'd slept for almost twelve hours straight and were starving. We pulled into a small place for breakfast and sat at the counter. You began talking to the woman behind the counter who was serving us. She'd lived in Aztec her whole life. You started asking questions. She told us where we could find a place to stay if we wanted one. When I told her I was a carpenter, she mentioned a couple places where I might be able to find work. She didn't ask us questions. She didn't ask where we'd come from. She didn't seem to care. People pass through Aztec. That's just the type of place it is. I wonder how many people who pass through here are running from something.

After breakfast, we decided to take a little walk before getting back into the car to stretch our legs. It was a bright and sunny day. A few other people were out on the street, just enough to drive out the silence but no more than that. The little street was lined with shops. We seemed to pass a church every few blocks. You looked into the windows of the stores as we passed. I just kept looking at the faces of the other people on the street, looking to see if I would recognize one from that night in Charleston. We were walking slowly, worn out, and in no rush to get back into the car, since we didn't have a destination anyway. We were tired, tired of running and just plain tired.

One of the shops we passed advertised itself as a UFO museum, though it was a bit of a stretch to call it a museum. As soon as you saw it, though, you asked me if we could go inside. I couldn't see why not. The place didn't seem any less safe than any other place. We stepped inside, walking down a long aisle full of movies and books about UFOs that were for sale. There wasn't really much to look at except some old photos. You seemed to find it all fascinating. You walked toward the back of the museum, running your fingers over the old VHS tapes. Each one claimed to show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, evidence of alien visitations. While I didn't have an opinion on the matter, I didn't doubt that something like that could be covered up. The old man behind the counter looked up from his book for only a second, eyeing you as you perused his collection of memorabilia. He smiled at you and then went on with his reading. You walked to the back wall to look at some pictures. They were pictures taken at festivals celebrating the UFOs. You placed your hands behind your back and leaned forward, peering at the faces of the people in the pictures. You walked past more books, more videotapes. I stood near the door, trying not to forget that we still had to be careful. You pulled one of the VHS tapes off the wall, looked at the cover, and smiled. It was good to see you smile.

You put the videotape back and walked over to the front counter. I just watched you. You walked over to a large fishbowl that was on the counter, full of tiny plastic aliens. You picked one up out of the bowl and held it in your hand. It was a little green man with large eyes and a silver space suit. There was a sign on the fishbowl that said, “Adopt an Alien.” It claimed that for one dollar you could adopt an alien and all donations would go toward UFO research. You lifted the little green man to show it to me. “Look, Joe,” you said. “They love him.” Your faced beamed, you looked happier than I'd seen you since the first week we spent together.

I adopted you an alien. We haven't thought about leaving since.

It's been over three weeks since that day. I'm sitting in a foldout chair behind our home writing this to you while you nap inside. I've started running again. Every day your belly gets bigger and you seem happier. Your skin is darker now, tanned by southern sun. You look vibrant. I look forward every morning to watching you climb out of bed and get dressed. You get up at the first light of dawn so you can cook breakfast for me before I go to work. Every morning I watch you in the dim blue light as you climb out of bed, pull off the T-shirt you were sleeping in, and get dressed. I know that you can feel me watching you. You don't seem to mind.

We went to the doctor again today. He said that everything looks great. The pregnancy has lasted longer than we ever expected. The doctor told us today that you are basically full term. He expects the baby to come any day now. We've now been in Aztec for as long as we were in Charleston. My past recedes further away into my memory with each passing day. I'm happy to forget most things. Some things, I try to remember, just in case.

You never asked me about what happened the night we ran from Charleston. When I asked you, you told me that nothing happened. You just walked. At times, you thought you heard strange noises but nothing ever happened. I don't think you liked to talk about it. I think the fact that it had been so easy scared you. I don't know what I would have told you about how I survived that night even if you did ask me. You never did. I think you've finally decided that there are some things you just don't want to know.

I still try to figure it out sometimes, how I survived, why I survived. I've got some theories but none of them really makes sense. Maybe I should chalk it up to divine intervention. Something stepped in and saved me and our son. I should probably follow your lead. Maybe there are some things that I just don't want to know.

Our son was born today. He's beautiful. He's more than perfect. Perfection wouldn't be this special. His name is Christopher. He has your eyes. The doctor said that often, when they get older, their eye color changes. I hope his doesn't. I hope he has your eyes forever.

The doctor delivered him in our home. Apparently, it's not that uncommon an occurrence here. So many people, like us, don't have any insurance. He said he was just happy to help, that it was his favorite part of his job. You were so strong. I've never seen such strength in my entire life. You were quiet and determined, as if pain were just a nuisance you didn't have time for. I hope Christopher knows how lucky he is to have you for a mother. I hope he knows that nothing in the world will ever compare to the love and sacrifices that you've made for him. The look on your face when the doctor handed him to you for the first time was one that I will never forget. That look made everything I've gone through in my entire life all worth it. I've finally given something meaningful to the world.