Hell's Half Acre (8 page)

Miller nods. His throat is full of blood, he says.

I stare at him, unblinking. That doesn’t seem good. Does it?

It probably won’t kill him.

The redhead chokes and spits blood. I shoot a glance at the doors and they remain open, for now. The air shimmers between train and platform. The redhead will soon be blowing bubbles with blood and I wonder if I should just get off. John Ransom Miller is looking more and more like a psycho and maybe I don’t want him to think I’m following him but the doors will surely close soon and I can see myself standing on the wrong side of them if I get off too quickly and Miller decides to hang around and torture the rabbit some more. I shove my hands into my pockets, gaze up at a snarl of graffiti where someone has written you are beautiful in black ink. Beneath it, someone else has written or else you’re dead.

I scratch my head.

The doors have been open forever. John Ransom Miller crouches down to face the bleeding redhead, who is still hunched over with his face in his hands. Miller smiles warmly, tenderly.

My skin crawls.

Miller reaches into his breast pocket and the redhead flinches. Miller laughs and hands him a gray silk handkerchief. The redhead stares at it as if he’s never seen a handkerchief before, as if this might be some kind of trick. Miller shoves it into the rabbit’s hand and says softly that no one ever died from a nosebleed. The redhead gurgles back at him and John Ransom Miller shrugs.

He nods at me. Are you coming?

I’
M GETTING COZY WITH THE IDEA THAT TIME IS CIRCULAR
, that lost time will come back.

Behold.

I find myself outside in the final minutes before dark falls over California and I am confronted by an apocalyptic sunset. The odds of this happening today and not tomorrow seem astronomical or anyway too staggering for my small brain to contemplate right now. The hills before me are splattered with some kind of freak sunlight that appears to exist on a physical plane but is forever shifting from one form to another and is therefore impossible to contain. If only I had an instant camera, then I would never need step outside again. I despise cameras, though. They butcher your memories and anyway when you’re an old man drooling yellow shit down the front of your pajamas and your eyes are long gone, what good is a boxful of shitty snapshots that have turned green with age.

Nothing is real to me anymore. The world around me has been systematically reconceived through digital imaging and computer animation until every
flower and raindrop is pure and flawless as the flowers and raindrops of the book of Genesis. The new world is brought to life in high-density pixels and is then transferred to human memory. The digital sunset always looks better than the real thing, always. Because a sunset generated by the basic package of yellow sun and blue sky is unreliable. Today it may be stunning, hypnotic. Tomorrow it may be lifeless and dull, a white sky scorched with yellow. Tomorrow the sky will be velvet.

Beautiful or not, it disappears. The sky goes dark and what are you left with.

The image stored in my head suffers rapid decay and within hours I will be unable to describe the sunset that I have just witnessed without accessing the false but technically perfect sunsets that I’ve seen on a thousand television and computer screens. I have no personal memories that are untainted by media and marketing and I often suspect that I am dead but still functioning. My heart is raw and pink, a package of ground beef wrapped in plastic. My body is composed of shatterproof glass and fluoride and vitamins and sheep hormones and recycled copper wires. There is no poetry in such a being but neither is there fear. I tumble easily into the void and I am safe as a kitten in the bony confines of my own skull. If I can afford the proper software, then I can download anything imaginable. The physical world is getting less and less realistic by the minute and eventually I will learn to pay it no mind.

Twilight, now.

John Ransom Miller and I have been walking for nearly an hour, most of the way uphill, not talking. I am chewing a hole in my lip. Miller is much too cool and friendly and unconcerned about my sudden presence in his life. The silence is heavy between us, but not
terribly unpleasant.

What’s your name? he says.

First names are dangerous, I say.

Why, he says.

The intimacy, I say.

My legs are heavy and I hope Miller doesn’t try to run away. The BART station is a long, long way down. He won’t run, though. John Ransom Miller could not be any less afraid of me. But he might like to fuck with me. I would probably fuck with him, if our positions were reversed. Miller nods and again I have the sticky feeling that he can hear my thoughts.

Yes, he says. Intimacy is a tricky thing. I would think it’s hard to kill somebody if you are in the habit of calling them by their first name.

I whistle through my teeth, irritated. Why don’t you have a car? I say.

Miller shrugs. I have two cars. Three, actually. I had a driver for a while, a guy who wore one of those fucking sailor hats. I don’t know. I started to hate the cars after a while. I would sit in traffic, listening to Mozart and drinking bottled water and it was like my soul was trapped in a Mason jar.

The hole in my lip is getting bigger. It will bleed, soon.

I like cars, I say. I believe in cars.

What about the soul, he says. Do you believe in the human soul?

No. But I think mine would be perfectly safe in a Mason jar.

Miller stares at me, unblinking. You might want to punch holes in the lid, he says.

Okay, I say. What makes you think I’m going to kill you?

He laughs. You would be wise to kill me, that’s why. You would save a few lives and probably your own sanity. But you won’t kill me.

You won’t even try.

That’s a good answer, I say. Damn good.

By the way, he says. You can call me Miller for now.

His voice trails away from his mouth, exhaled like smoke. There is a narcotic quality about it, as if it comes from inside my head and now a feeble smile drifts unwanted across my face, a polite muscle spasm. Which bugs the shit out of me. This is my face, right. This is my fucking face and I will be one sorry meatpuppet if I ever lose control over who sees me smile. When and where and so on. I keep shining my crippled smile at this man and I may as well piss myself on a crowded bus. I may as well be a whore with a weak bladder. I abruptly take the gun from my pocket and Miller doesn’t blink. I wave the gun at a low stone wall that creeps along the side of the road and tell him to just sit the fuck down. He shrugs and sits down, crossing his legs and fiddling with the crease in his trousers.

Are you okay? he says. You look green.

Miller is one of those rare fuckers with a psychic sense of smell. He takes one sniff and he knows you. He knows things about you, things you might not want him to know. He should have been a cop, probably. The funny thing is I am starting to like him, and this idea makes me feel slightly carsick. I tell him to get up and we keep walking. I put the gun away and try to relax.

Pretty sunset, I say. Don’t you think?

Miller shrugs. I saw a peculiar story on the news the other day. A newspaper in China confessed that they’ve been falsifying their weather reports for the past twenty years.

What do you mean?

They would claim that it was sunny yesterday when in fact it rained.

Revisionist weather, I say. That’s brilliant.

Isn’t it?

What the fuck, I say. It’s nice to meet you, Miller.

Miller yawns. You never know when that person will come along, the person you have been waiting for.

Yeah. What is that supposed to mean, exactly?

Life, he says. It’s often a dull dream.

I scratch my head and suddenly I hear something like the manic hum of locusts but it’s only the drone of rubber tires on blacktop as two boys cruise by on mountain bikes.

They look like brothers, I say.

Miller and I turn to watch as the boys disappear over the next hill.

Poof, says Miller.

Like they just fell off the edge of the earth, I say.

Amazing, says Miller. How easily a child can vanish.

Miller takes a sheaf of mail from a bright metal box on the side of the road. The box looks new. The surface is shiny as a silver dollar and unblemished by bird shit, but there is a nice round bullet hole in the thing’s belly. The hole is black around the edges and I poke two fingers in there without lubrication. It was a big bullet.

You have enemies? I say.

No, he says. The neighborhood kids. I love it, though. I love it when the kids have spirit.

I finger the hole. That’s some fucking spirit.

Miller might be a liar. He might not be. He has the eyes of a sleepy blackjack dealer and why should I care if he wants to lie about a misplaced bullet. I lie all the time, to myself and others. I lie whenever it feels right. I’m a cheap rug. I am not very good at lying, however. Jude
can always sniff out a lie before I take another breath. Then again, she’s a woman. Jude says that if a woman has ever fucked a guy and studied the ugly contortions of his face, the face that he wants to hide from sight, then she knows the machinery behind his mouth and eyes and thereafter she always knows when he’s lying.

Anyway.

I shot up a few mailboxes when I was a kid, with a pellet gun and later a .22, a rifle meant for shooting squirrels. This hole came from a big gun, a serious gun. Miller has got Dirty Harry shooting at his mailbox and it’s none of my business.

Not yet, says Miller.

What? I say.

It’s none of your business, he says. Yet.

It is still not quite dark but the air is the color of blue plums. A black Mercedes rolls past with headlights off, eerily silent. It looks like a tank on a night mission. A white moth flickers past my face and I wave it away, distracted.

Do you want to come in? says Miller. Have a drink?

I sigh. Are you going to be doing a lot of that?

What? he says.

Oh, you know. Reading my mind and that sort of thing.

Miller laughs. I can’t read your mind, man. I pretend that I can.

Uh huh.

It’s easy, he says. People aren’t very complex. You take a stab at what somebody is thinking. Then politely spit it out like a piece of gristle. And even if you’re wrong, it makes people nervous. There’s no better way to fuck with a snotty waiter, or a salesman. Try it sometime.

Interesting, I say. Do I look like a salesman to you?

Why, he says. Are you nervous?

Miller pushes open the iron gate that opens onto a downward drive lined with gravel and heavy flat stones the color of cigarette ash. The front yard is a hillside, wild and dark with twisting rose bushes and exposed roots. The house is barely visible from the road. The white moth returns to strafe my face and I wonder if I’m glowing. I try to catch it in my fist, to kill it. But the little bastard is too fast for me and I clutch at the air like a spastic. I lower my head before it decides to fly down my throat. Miller starts down the slope and I follow him.

The house of Miller is bewildering, and much larger than it looks from the outside. He gives me a rapid tour of the lower level, telling me there are nineteen rooms in all. The house is primarily constructed of stone, but some of the walls are made of glass. The house is cold and dark and I imagine it is cold and bright by day. There are three floors, or levels. The house is not vertical, but staggered. It clings to the hillside like a giant spider. Two massive trees come up through the back of it, like twin spines. A complex series of wood platforms is built around these trees, with rope ladders connecting the various levels. The kitchen door opens onto level two. I stand in the doorway, a goofy smile on my face.

It’s like something out of a fairy tale, I say.

Miller is pouring tall glasses of bourbon and soda.

Yeah, he says. I think the guy who designed it was out of his mind, however.

How’s that?

Miller shrugs. You can feel it. There’s madness in the walls.

Ah, yes. Madness in the walls. I hate it when that happens.

Miller stirs our drinks with what appears to be a bright blue chopstick.

Do you live alone? I say.

Not exactly. He hands me a drink, very strong.

The kitchen is black tile and bright steel. Harsh white light. Functional, cold, a surgical theater. I imagine myself laid out on the island with a mask over my face and tubes running in and out of my belly, surrounded by a crew of silent men in dark red gowns. I doubt there’s anything in the refrigerator but olives and French mustard and spare plasma.

Come on, says Miller. Let’s go to the lizard room.

A long, windowless room that glows from the light of twenty-two terrariums. These contain lizards, iguanas, chameleons, and various snakes. Obviously. I walk the perimeter and look them over. I am fond of reptiles, generally. Because they can sit on a rock for two days without moving. Because they are untroubled by the loss of a limb and more than likely will grow another one. Because they methodically seek out sources of heat, but will not necessarily perish without it. Their chances of survival on this planet seem so much better than ours and I think Miller is wise to be friendly with them. The last terrarium along one wall houses a very large boa constrictor, coiled and sleeping. I stare at him for a while and I think I would like to hold him, to close my eyes and wonder at his strength.

It’s too bad you didn’t come yesterday, says Miller.

Why is that?

It was feeding day, he says. The boa put on quite a show.

Does he have a name?

I’m sure he does, says Miller. But I don’t know it.

There are two black leather chairs at the far end of the room. Miller sits in one of them, his legs stretched out and his feet up on a round coffee table of solid, roughly cut glass that looks like a block of
ice. The wood floor is stained the color of black cherries and down the middle of the room runs a narrow Turkish rug, green and gold. The rug comes to an end under the glass table and the colors melt and magnify. The walls are painted a dark, faintly metallic green.