Circuit Of Heaven (12 page)

THEY
PLAYED
THE
FIRST
SET
PERFECTLY
.
IAN
DIDN’T
BANG
on the drums; he played them. His touch was flawless. He seemed to know the quirks of her phrasing and played off them. Rick, though he still looked haggard and sullen, seemed capable of playing anything. He never looked at her, but when she missed a cue and failed to come in with the verse, he covered for her effortlessly. John bobbed around the stage, a smile on his face, stitching the whole thing together with his bass. She found herself singing better than she thought she could. They kicked the last tune so hard, she wanted to shout with joy, but the only sound was the tiny Clydesdales passing over Ian’s head. Her new band was incredible.

“Second set?” Rick asked deadpan.

“I don’t think we need to,” she said. “You guys are really fantastic—the band of my dreams, like John said.” She smiled at John, and he smiled back.

“Does that mean we can leave now?” Rick asked.

She met his hard, level stare. “Look, I’m sorry about being uptight, okay? I’ll try to lighten up if you will. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, and it might help if we got along.”

“No problem,” he said in the same flat voice.

“How about I take you guys to lunch?” she asked them all. Only John nodded.

“Ian and I already ate,” Rick said.

“Then I’ll buy you a beer.”

Rick put his guitar in its case. He snapped it shut and turned around, the case under his arm. Ian stood up behind him, waiting. “Like you said, Justine, we’re going to be spending a lot of time together.” The two of them left. Ian turned and gave her a friendly wave as they cleared the door.

Justine stared after them. “What the fuck is his problem?”

“Rick’s okay. You just got to understand him.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t have to understand him, but go ahead, enlighten me.”

John shrugged. “If you want. It’s like this: The man wants to fuck you. When we were playing with your virtuals, he used to stand behind you and watch your butt moving with the music. But you’re in the band now. In his face all the time. Better to fuck the bar babes. Then leave town. He knows this. Believes it. But he still wants to fuck you. Pisses him off. You understand?”

“What in the hell makes him think I’d want to fuck
him
?”

John laughed. “They all do.” He lit up another cigarette.

“So what’s Ian’s problem? I suppose he wants to fuck me, too.”

“He goes where Rick goes. Like I say, all the girls go for Rick. Ian’s there for the runner-ups.” He picked up his guitar case. “So, Justine, where you taking me for lunch?”

THEY
WENT
TO A
BURGER
KING
,
ALL
DONE
TO
PERIOD
, INcluding holographic counter girls that took your order. It was John’s favorite place. She watched him devour two double-double Cheese Whoppers, a jumbo fries, and a large shake. She had another cup of coffee and a fried apple pie. She tried to talk to him, tell him about her weird dreams, but it was like talking to the holographic counter girls.

“They’re just dreams,” he said, his mouth full of whopper.

“But I’m all different people in them. I know different people. Everything looks like it’s before I was even born. Nothing is from my life, nothing.”

“So what’s the problem, Justine? Sounds pretty cool.”

She gave up, looked past him to the street outside, the beautiful spring day shining through the glass. “So what’s there to do in this town, John? I’ve never been here before.”

He pondered this as he chewed. “Go see the Bin,” he said and stuffed the last of the hamburgers in his mouth.

“We’re in the Bin.”

“I mean the facility. They’ve got tours and shit.” He had trouble getting the word
facility
past his burger.

He meant the machine itself—the virtual representation of where they all resided, like a camera filming itself.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to see it.”

“Why not? It’s cool.”

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Seems to me it’d be like visiting your own grave.”

John groaned and shook his head. “No, man. Don’t get weird about being in here. Trust me. You’ve done the right thing. I knew this girl once, got to thinking too much about stuff, just like you’re doing? Went and had herself
downloaded
into somebody’s body that was coming in. Can you believe that shit?”

“Is that possible?”

John snorted. “Stupid, but possible, if you got the connections. They rip off the body before it gets fried. Point is, She’s
dead
now. Pneumonia or some shit. Is that stupid or what?”

She didn’t answer him. She just shook her head. “I still don’t want to go see the Bin.”

He shrugged. “There’s always museums and shit.” He popped the last fry in his mouth, took one last noisy slurp at his shake, and stood up. “See you tonight, Justine. Thanks for lunch.”

“Would you like to take in a few museums with me?”

“Thanks Justine, but this is when I sleep.” He stood up and started laughing to himself. “You know what they used to say?
Ars longa, vita brevis
. I love that. Now everything’s
longa
. Think I’ll take a
longa
nap.” He shambled out the door, still laughing at his own joke.

She sat there for about twenty minutes, her elbows resting on the orange formica tabletop, nursing her cold coffee. “Hell with it,” she said. She went out into the street and looked up and down. She went to a tourist information kiosk a half block away and waited for a couple to finish using the console. Their baby sat in a stroller behind them fast asleep, bundled up for the arctic, even though it was in the sixties. She watched him sleep, listened to the sound of his tiny deep breathing that seemed to fill his whole body.

He was wheeled away, and she stepped up to the console. She started to push the museum icon, but she wanted something to take her mind off things. She was afraid she’d just roam through the museums and mope. And then it came to her. What she really wanted to do, more than anything, was go to a play. She pressed the theatre icon, and a dozen plays came up on the screen. She knew immediately which one she wanted to see.
Romeo and Juliet
was playing at the Shakespeare Theatre at two o’clock. A map to the theatre by Metro and by foot flashed on the screen. A pleasant voice asked if she’d like a printed map. She said no and took off on foot for the theatre.

There was a line at the box office, and the lobby was packed with people. She didn’t hold out much hope of getting in. But most everyone else wanted seats in pairs, and she was by herself. There was a lone seat available in a box practically on the stage. She hurried in as the lights dimmed and took her seat just as the chorus began to speak.

She’d read the play in English class. Her teacher, Sister Gertrude, had tried her best to bleed the passion from the play and leave only the carcass of Great Literature for her students’ dissection, but she hadn’t quite succeeded, at least not with Justine. Alone in her room, reading the play aloud, she’d imagined herself as Juliet, in love with Romeo.

And here on the stage was a Juliet whose passion matched the one she’d conjured as a girl. The actress looked young, as if she actually were the not-quite-fourteen Juliet was supposed to be. But she also had a low, sensual voice, and her slender body moved, in the presence of Romeo, not like a gangly teenager’s, but with the erotic sway of a passionate woman. Justine leaned toward her and was swept away. By the time the play was not yet half over, Justine felt the emotions the actress feigned, and Juliet’s words seemed to come from Justine herself:

Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night
;

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night

Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back
.

Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night
;

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die
,

Take him and cut him out in little stars
,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun
.

O, I have bought the mansion of a love
,

But not possess’d it; and though I am sold
,

Not yet enjoy’d. So tedious is this day

As is the night before some festival

To an impatient child that hath new robes

And may not wear them—

Justine couldn’t bear to listen as the nurse brought the news of Romeo’s banishment that would blight Juliet’s hopes. She watched numbly, knowing the lovers were doomed. Sister Gertrude had implied that Romeo and Juliet brought death upon themselves through their reckless passion. But Justine believed their passion was the single good in a world that refused to change. Little older than Juliet, all Justine could manage to say to Sister Gertrude in defense of the lovers was “But they loved each other—” before the sister’s smirk and the laughter of the other girls cut her off.

She’d never seen the play before, only read it. As words only, Romeo and Juliet had broken her heart. Now here they were, standing before her. The tears flowed down her cheeks as Juliet spoke the last words Romeo would ever hear from her, spoken, as her first vows of love, from her balcony. Behind her blazed a star-filled night, the faint light of dawn in the east. Romeo stood below, in the shadows:

O God, I have an ill-divining soul
!

Methinks I see thee, now thou art below
,

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb
.

Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale
.

By the time the play was over, Justine had cried herself out. Her crying had caught the attention of the man sitting next to her who’d patted her hand as Juliet died, and said, “It’s just a play, dear. No need to get so upset.” She bit her tongue and nodded politely, though she couldn’t imagine that Shakespeare would’ve shared the man’s sentiments.

Now she sat in her seat and watched everyone leave. She was glad to see there were a few others sniffling and drying their eyes. As she was watching the last stragglers disappear out the exits, Justine was startled to see Mr. Menso in the middle of the front row, his chin resting on his cane, smiling at her. He gave her a little wave and rose to his feet.

“Wonderful play, isn’t it?” he said as she joined him in the aisle.

“Mr. Menso, I can hardly believe you’re here. You’re almost the only person I know in this town, and I looked up, and there you were.”

“A pleasant surprise, I hope. I never miss
Romeo and Juliet
. It’s my favorite play by my favorite playwright.”

“Mine too.” She took his arm. She was at least a head taller than he was. They walked up the aisle and out into the day, still bright though the sun hung low in the sky. He headed west, toward his shop, and she walked beside him. It was hours before she had to be at the club.

“Did you ever see it with your sweetheart?”

He stopped and peered at her a moment. “As a matter of fact, I did. That was…let me see…seventy-five years ago. The idea was, you see, that the play would kindle a passion for me, but of course it didn’t work. She cried as you did today, and I comforted her. I asked her to marry me that night, and she said no.”

“I’m sorry.”

He chuckled. “Don’t be. She said no many times.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

He shrugged. “She married someone else.”

“I’m sorry. Is she still…”

“Married? Alive? No. She died out there.” He tossed his head over his shoulder to mean the real world. “I lost track of her for years after I came in here, but then I had news from a mutual friend. She lived to be eighty out there.” He shook his head and leaned on his cane. “Her husband died the year after I came in here. She never remarried. Lived for fourteen years with nobody to keep her company but her cats.” He smiled ruefully. “Guess I should’ve stayed.” He started walking again. “How are the dreams, by the way?” He’d picked up the pace, fleeing her sympathy, turning the subject away from himself. Poor, sweet man, she thought.

“I dreamed I was an old woman with arthritis. I could even feel the pain in my hands.”

“Did you read the Morse book?”

“No. I started it, but I’m afraid it seemed pretty silly to me.”

He smiled as if pleased that she didn’t like the book he’d given her. He was an odd little man. “Yes, I suppose it is. Perhaps your dreams are of a higher order than Ms. Morse is speaking of. Have another look at it. You may find something of value yet.”

“Well, actually, I did follow its advice in a way. I asked the woman who she was.”

“Well, what happened?”

“She spoke to me. The woman in my dream, that is. She looked into a mirror and said, ‘Hello, Justine.’”

“And what did you say?”

“Nothing. I woke up.”

He smiled. “Don’t wake up next time.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say. It was very spooky.”

“And what was her name?”

“I don’t know.”

They’d come to a small park. In the middle was a fountain with a pair of holographic dolphins leaping together as if in play. Mr. Menso had stopped again and stood staring at the fountain, as if he hadn’t heard her, nodding his head. She wondered if he was all right. “Mr. Menso?”

He turned back to her, cheerful again, but his eyes were sad. “I’m sorry, my dear. My mind wanders sometimes. So, tell me, how was your dinner party?”