The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (45 page)

Whatever became of him? Memories
separated by so much time, she could no longer remember his name or what he
looked like, details lost to the years. Mother left and grandpa passed away.
Grandma followed shortly after, unable to live without him. There were no more
summers in the country. Now there was only the city and daddy, her always underfoot.
There were drugs. A breakdown; maybe more than one. An attempt at suicide, or
maybe the misunderstood effects of some recreational drugs. Treatments. More
drugs, but different from before. Another breakdown. More treatment. And
somewhere during all of that, her childhood was lost, recovered only as stolen
moments snatched from the air like a child armed with a butterfly net swinging
at a whirlwind of swirling leaves.

Ellen took a drink, the
lemonade still cold, still nostalgic, still everything it promised, and
wondered why everything couldn’t be that simple. Her skin beaded with sweat,
glistening like dewdrops across the back of her hand and forearm as her bare
skin drank in the sun, and for a time it was summer like it was long ago,
before everything became complicated.

She put her head down,
allowing a drowsy kind of sleep to steal over her, and descended into
daydreams. And in these dreams, she knew him, the boy from down the road during
those summers lost so long ago.

*     *     *

“Be careful you don’t
burn,” Jack said.

Ellen turned her head
slowly, regarding him. He did not seem uncomfortable about her sunning herself
naked on the roof of the car. Neither did she. It felt entirely normal—insofar
as anything could be argued as such in this place. Normal was out of place
here; nothing grew or flourished in the Wasteland. Instead things waited, or
they passed away. This was not a place that was dying or running down; this was
a place that was already dead, everything simply bones baking under the sun,
crumbling back to ashes, back to dust. And they were merely revenants of the
graveyard, haunts of the old house, shades of former lives at a defunct rest
stop on a dead road. They were waiting, Jack and her; waiting to move on.

Or fade away.

Resting his chin on his
forearm, Jack reached out and lightly touched the skin between her shoulder
blades, finger tracing along her spine to the small of her back, chasing beads
of sweat. His touch sent a thrill through her nerves, awakening passions,
memories, questions.

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“When Oversight talked
about the Wasteland, she spoke of it like Purgatory, a world for the dead.”

“I remember,” he
answered, tracing figure-eights along her back, playful, teasing.

“It’s different now,
isn’t it; less threatening than what she experienced. But in some ways, it’s
still the same. Everything is dead: bones and graves and junked cars and
scrapped machines. The Egyptian statue. The soul cages.”

“Uh-hmm,” he murmured, fingertip
running up to the edge of her shoulder, her neck, the knot of her spine.

“Was she right?”

“Was who right?” he
asked.

“Oversight. Was she
right?”

“About what?”

He was being deliberately
evasive, she knew. “Is this place death?”

Jack gently massaged the
back of her neck, considering; information could be slippery, even dangerous.
Finally, he said, “Not in the way you mean. This isn’t a destination; it’s just
a place along the way. You shed the things from before that have no use, and
you move on. If this place seems like death, it’s because it represents that
moment of transition, of change. It’s the edge where behind you lie all the
solid moments of the past, precious in our mind but unobtainable and useless to
the journey forward. And ahead of us lies nothing but wide-open sky, everything
possible, nothing actual. This place is not an ending or a beginning. It’s both
because they’re both the same thing.”

She let the silence
settle between them, considering his explanation and listening to the sounds of
the Edge of Madness: the clack of the windmill, the squeak of old gears and
rods, the soft ring of chimes, and the rattle of chains shifting in the breeze.
There was a hum, maybe from the ice machine or a vent to the kitchen; she
wasn’t sure. It was calming, though. She let it dull her senses until she almost
believed that Jack’s speech—her questions, his answers—were all just parts of
some vivid daydream.

His fingers lightly
brushed her temple, and he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “I’m
not afraid. I know you’re looking out for me.”

His touch retreated, and
she felt his lips upon her arm, cool against the heat of her skin. Then
footsteps as he turned to leave. “You may want to turn over soon, so you don’t
burn.”

Ellen followed Jack’s
advice, but to no avail; his answers made her restless, unable to enjoy the
simplicity of daydreams. Not for getting burned, she was forced to abandon the
sun in favor of something more distracting.

Wrapping the blanket around
her, she walked through the silent, metal boneyard, clothes in hand. The small
robot watched her, head following as she passed, polished features offering
only reflections; no insight; no answers.

She went straight to the
shower, the water cool against her skin. Jack continued to work at the words on
the computer screen, hunched forward in his chair, oblivious. It was something
about him she had grown to understand, or maybe simply to forgive. They were soul
mates, kindred sprits, each completing the other.

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“What would you like to
do this afternoon?”

To her surprise, he
answered, “Do you want to see a movie?”

*     *     *

The Scarlet Cinema was
not a large theater; it was not even a large
room
. A narrow aisle sloped
up towards the projectionist’s area, walled away from the rest of the so-called
theater by a partition of red-painted cinderblocks, a single square left empty
where the projector lens extended like some curious nocturnal animal. But for
the screen, the entire room was red: dark, thick, bloody, awash with rust and
streaked with soot, the crust of a newly healed wound. The floor was timeworn
nap, crimson to match the crushed velvet and cracked leather seats and faded
burgundy of machine-sprayed metal, steel worn through, dark and unreflective.
In the corner, a garbage can sat empty and unused while loose popcorn kernels littered
the floor amidst old bags and empty cups. Like any theater, the Scarlet
Cinema’s cleaning schedule was not strictly adhered to.

Jack offered to get some
popcorn from the diner and a couple cans of soda, promising not to be more than
a few minutes. Ellen said she would find them a seat; there were only four. She
picked the back two and sat down, the seats broken in just enough to be
comfortable without being busted. Slouching down, she kicked her feet over the
seatback in front of her and waited defiantly for the usher to come and tell
her to put her feet down—but no one did.

Life at the Edge of
Madness had its perks.

Jack came back with a
bowl of popcorn and a couple cans of Mountain Dew, bumping the door wide with
his hip and scooting in before it could close again, shutting out the daylight.
He handed her the popcorn and deposited the sodas into the cup-holders in the
armrests. “I need to get the movie set up,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

She nodded as he slipped
behind the heavy velvet curtain, catching a glimpse of the projectionist’s
booth’s walls: unpainted cinderblock wallpapered with dozens of low-budget,
B-movie posters.

“I can’t make any
promises,” Jack called through the hole. “I was never exactly an audio-visual
wiz. And there’s no telling what some of these movies are gonna be like, but …
maybe …” Ellen thought he was drifting into some kind of apology about what he
was doing, his silence its own form of amends. Then he added, “I think you’ll
like this.”

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t think it has a
title,” he said. “I’ll get the lights.”           

The theater went dark and
Ellen let the question go, the sweet loginess of the afternoon creeping across
her, loosening her focus. The projector made a soft
brrrrrr
noise behind
her, and the screen lit up with an introduction of numbers counting backwards
while Jack adjusted the focus. Drifting down into the seat, she inhaled the
aroma of buttered popcorn from the bowl balanced on her stomach, and listened
as numerous speakers surrounded her in sound, the story unfolding in celluloid,
artificial life in an artificial night.

*     *     *

The image fades in,
grainy nineteen-fifties Technicolor. An elderly man behind a wooden desk,
black-rimmed glasses, brown suit, bow tie. Behind him, shelves of books, possibly
a medical office or private library. He addresses the camera.

“The human condition
is unique in that it is composed entirely of our sense of time. Events that have
gone before become our past while the future is planned for but remains a
mystery for which we are never truly prepared. Our present state is little more
than a collection of our past experiences; stored memory drawn upon when
deciding the direction to take towards the future, one we know has an
inevitable conclusion, but which we deny the immediacy of.

“One
curiosity is that while the past imprints itself upon our memories much the way
this image is imprinted upon a strip of celluloid, we are selective about what
we recall. Memories become lost in our subconscious, altered or repressed out
of necessity or self-defense or the lack of reinforcement. Few remember the
process by which we learned how to form words and talk, or the rigorous
coordination of movements and balance that allow us to walk. The experience
bears little relevance, and so we file it away like a book in a library.

“So why
are some memories buried? And why are other memories—those painful or debilitating—not
repressed so as not to inhibit our decision-making? Often we attribute enormous
significance to the immutable events of the past while affording little
emphasis upon the present, the only true state of reality. The past is a
blueprint, a collection of ideas and events that can aid our understanding of
how things happen, demonstrate the repercussions of our actions and the actions
of others. But the past does not control the future. It does not dictate our
actions or their outcomes … unless we allow it to.

“As a
technique, hypnosis has proven successful in enabling a person to access
suppressed memories and draw the necessary tutelage without dwelling upon the
emotional scarring of those same events.

“While
hypnosis as a parlor trick is amusing,” the narrator smiles condescendingly, “Its
therapeutic value is vastly more useful. In the relaxed state of hypnosis, a
person can access any memory, regardless of age, complexity or relevance, and
learn from that memory as they would any experiential event. The technique begins
with relaxation: a comfortable position, a soothing tone of voice, even the use
of a rhythmic device or sound such as a pocket watch or metronome like the one
I have here on my desk.”

He turns his attention briefly to the small musician’s metronome, the
arm beginning to sway back and forth, slow arcs emitting a dull knock at each end.

“We could even employ a simple series of numbers, typically counted
backwards, in a steady, rhythmic tone like this: three.”

The scene splices to a movie reel countdown, a sweeping arm revolving
through the number three before cutting back to the man behind the desk. He is
closer now.

“Two.”

Again, the scene cuts
away: to the countdown, the number two. Then back to the narrator, the frame
tightening, his face even closer. Off-frame, the metronome knocks.

“One.”

The scene cuts to the
final countdown, the final arc of the arm, the final number and tock of the
metronome.

Fade to black.

A young girl sits by the side of a country road, high summer, the
grass in the field behind her pale under the sun like drying hay. She is on the
edge of her teens, not far past her tomboy phase, her legs still long but not
as spindly as the year before. They look good in shorts, of that she is aware.
She doesn’t quite have breasts yet; T-shirts look better loose—less
unflattering. Her face is pretty. She sits on the edge of a grassy, waterless
ditch and throws stones at small targets on the other side of the road: a chunk
of broken glass, a discarded pop can, a cigarette filter.

She glances over her shoulder at a distant farmhouse: white Victorian
with a treeless yard, red barns with tarpaper shingle roofs. A boy crosses the
field from the farmhouse. He looks to be the same age; not really a boy, but
not quite a teenager either. He wears his hair long because it bothers his
teachers. He keeps one hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans. The other
holds a couple green soda pop bottles, their necks snuggly locked between his
knuckles, beads glistening the length of the glass to spill by the wayside. He
heads towards the girl.

Behind him in the pasture is a red ‘55 Ford pickup, the once-fire-engine
red gone pale and dull under the years of sun. Grass stands to its rocker
panels and one headlight is broken. Look close and you’ll see a bullet hole in
the tailgate that dates back to 1969; no one has ever said where it came from;
no one has ever dared to ask.

The boy’s shadow falls momentarily across the girl before he sits down
opposite her, Indian-style in the prickly August grass. “Brought you a Mountain
Dew.”

He extends his hand, one bottle tilting up towards her. The girl takes
it wordlessly. From his pocket, the boy produces a small bottle opener, opening
his own before passing it to her. She accepts it with a wry look.

“What?”

“Did ya get ‘em?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Couldn’t find ‘em.”

She nods and smiles knowingly before tossing the bottle cap; an absent
gesture, the cap spins artfully across the road and hits a flattened pop can—
spang
.
“Maybe it’s just as well. If your grandparents came back and found it gone,
you’d be royally busted.” She takes a leisurely sip from the bottle.

“That’s just it. They’re gonna be up in Watertown all day. Grandma
even fixed me a supper and everything before she left. They’d never know.” He
turns and looks at the old pickup, clearly disappointed.

“Are you sure? Cause we could be to the old rock quarry and back in
plenty of time if they weren’t gonna be home early. There wouldn’t be anyone
there but us. We could swim all day.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s no use. I can’t find the keys anywhere.” He
gives another disappointed look at the red pickup.

“Well, if you’re sure they won’t be home, we’d better get going.” She
stands up, brushes off the back of her jeans, and starts walking towards the
truck.

The boy jumps up and follows, confused. “It’ll take us half the day to
walk.”

“It’ll take us half an hour to drive. You can drive, can’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. Well, sorta. But not without the keys.”

“Your grandfather doesn’t keep ‘em in the house, remember? He throws ‘em
under the seat so he can always find ‘em when he needs ‘em.” She turns, looking
at him with a wild, mischievous smile; a smile he likes in a boyish way a man
might later consider a sign of love. “I knew you wouldn’t find ‘em.”

She turns and runs to the truck, laughing excitedly as the boy chases
after. Each leaps into separate doors and meets in the middle. The boy reaches
under the seat, pawing until he produces the single ring on a leather fob, a
lone pair of keys. It takes a couple tries with the clutch and the gas before
the truck starts without stalling, then backs around in a lazy circle until its
nose is headed down the dirt road that runs up over the farm and into the woods
to the old quarry. He eases it into first and rolls forward.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Awestruck, he clumsily shifts into
second, paying excruciating detail to his driving. “I don’t even have a
swimsuit or anything.”

Hands braced on the door and the dash, the truck bouncing and dipping
along the dirt road, the girl holds her face to the open window, the wind
blowing her hair. “So what. I don’t either. No one will be up there; we won’t
need ‘em.”

The red pickup pulls away along the dirt road into a shaded wood. Scene
fades to black.

*     *     *

Ellen jerked slightly, feeling like she had momentarily nodded off. The
movie felt like her daydream—or maybe it
was
a daydream: the young boy
from down the road, she the young girl. Celluloid images like windows into her
past. But were they real? Was she watching memories or
constructing
them, fabricating a past, an insulated layer of lies?

The Scarlet Cinema rolled the next movie.

*     *     *

Dry afternoon, seasonless plains, New Mexico badlands. A young man
leans on a slat-board fence in the backyard of a rundown ranch, chin resting on
the fold of his arms, staring off into the distance: dry, flat ground as far as
the eye can see, iron-rich earth the color of terra cotta, old flowerpots,
shriveled weeks-old oranges. No trees. No plants. No distant buildings or signs
of habitation. Mountains in the distance, low and dull against the burned-out
sky. He sighs.

Stretched out on top of a picnic table is a young woman sunning
herself; she raises her head. “What is it?”

“We gotta get out of here,” he answers.

She raises herself up on one elbow, shading her eyes. “Why?”

“‘Cause if we don’t, we’ll eventually disappear like the rest of the
world out there.”