Circuit Of Heaven (16 page)

“No, of course not. I just figured…Never mind.”

Nemo finally got around to getting himself a drink. He tried Irish whiskey this time, a double. He watched the band tuning, adjusting their equipment. They were using late-twentieth-century stuff. The twentieth century was hot in the Bin.

Jonathan finished off his wine and got himself another. “What’re you doing drinking wine, anyway?” Nemo asked him.

“Christ drank wine,” Jonathan said. “He even turned water into wine.”

“But I’ve never seen you drink before.” He’d always turned down Lawrence’s homebrewed liquor and beer.

“Good wine is hard to come by.”

“So if you found a bottle of wine outside, you’d drink it?”

“No. It’s far too valuable outside. I’d barter it for something more useful—food, blankets.”

“Does that mean that everything is useless in here because nothing’s hard to come by?”

“Faith is,” he said.

“I don’t know. Everybody seems pretty happy.”

“That’s not the same thing as faith.”

“You know what I like about you, Jonathan? You’re so damn consistent, but you always manage to surprise me anyway.”

JUSTINE
STEPPED
UP TO
THE
MICROPHONE
WITH
A
GUITAR
, smiling nervously at the crowd. She counted out the beat, and the drummer kicked them off. As soon as she opened her mouth to sing, her nervousness evaporated. Nemo expected her to be good. But he hadn’t expected her to be as good as she was. It wasn’t her technical proficiency. He’d heard stronger voices. It was the way she got inside each song, so that you believed she was the one who felt the broken heart or the desperate hopes or the intense love she sang about.

She didn’t talk much between songs. She’d just introduce the next one and move on. During the set, the club filled up until every chair was taken and people lined the bar. The applause was strong, and you could see her lighting up. Nemo was happy for her, proud of her, completely enthralled. He forget about everything but her, singing.

Finally, she stood at the microphone for a while, waiting for the applause to die down, looking directly into his eyes. “This will be our last song for this set. It’s an oldfashioned, real-world love story written by Aimee Mann, and I’d like to dedicate it to Nemo.” Everyone in the place followed her gaze, and a few hooted their approval. A guy said from somewhere behind Nemo, “Lucky son of a bitch.”

Nemo knew the song, “Coming up Close,” from the first chord. He smiled at her, a lump in his throat, seeing the two of them, as he knew she intended, as the lovers in the song. It told the story of two people who’ve just met. They borrow a car and drive out into the Iowa countryside one summer night to a deserted farmhouse where—

We thought just for an instant we could see the future
.

We thought for once we knew what really was important
.

But when the night is over, they simply part, apparently never seeing each other again. But it was the haunting refrain that got to him and brought tears to his eyes:

Coming up close

everything sounds like welcome home
.

And oh, by the way

don’t you know that I could make

a dream that’s barely half awake come true
?

I wanted to say—

but anything I could’ve said

I felt somehow that you already knew
.

Coming up close…

everything sounds like welcome home
.

Come home
.

Come on home
.

The resounding applause brought him back from the song—and the vast Iowa landscape he imagined as he listened—to this tiny bar in the Bin, Justine smiling at him, the echo of the last chord still ringing in the air. But he brought his feelings back with him intact. One kiss, one song—there was no point in counting. He loved her. He couldn’t leave her, not now, not tonight. He didn’t want to think beyond that. As Justine thanked the crowd, Nemo turned to tell Jonathan that he’d changed his mind, but Jonathan had already gone. He’d said he’d go when it was time for Nemo to tell her what he’d decided to do. He must’ve seen my decision in my face, Nemo thought.

She played two more sets. Nemo watched her and listened to her sing. He shut out the rest of the crowd and nursed a couple of drinks. They talked during her breaks, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes like they were the only two people in the place. He asked her about her music. They talked about old musicians and old songs. She asked him about where he lived. She wanted to know what his room looked like, so he told her.

He ended up telling her about his grandmother and N, and how this poor guy was in love with her, but nothing ever came of it. She agreed that was sad. The way she said it he knew what she was thinking, that if nothing ever came of them, it’d be sad, too. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell her he was in love with her, but he was thinking it the whole time.

Pretty soon the band was packing up, and he was the only customer in the place. The other musicians left, and Justine had disappeared behind a door beside the stage. The lights were dimmed. There wasn’t a sound but the Clydesdales. Apparently they never shut the thing off. No reason they should. Justine stepped out into the darkened room. She’d put on a black jacket for the night air. Her face, her golden hair, seemed to shine in the darkened room. Nemo felt his heart leap up, and he rose to his feet. It was finally just the two of them. He offered her his arm and she wrapped her arms around it and lay her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair and took her in his arms, kissed her like he’d never kissed anybody, and held her close.

“Guess we better go,” he whispered. It was closing time. Time to go home.

JUSTINE
KNEW
HIS
KISS
MIGHT
MEAN
ANYTHING
from good-bye to I’ll stay with you forever, but for the moment, she didn’t care what he meant, but what he felt, and she could feel it in his arms. But even as he held her, as he whispered in her ear that it was time to go, she was afraid he was going to leave her, that his feelings wouldn’t be enough, that he’d go back to his world, and she’d stay in hers. She looked up at him, tried to put on a brave face. She could barely make out his features. “Stay with me tonight?” she whispered.

His smile flashed in the darkness. “That’s just what I was going to say.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “I was afraid you’d say no.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “I can’t. Maybe it’s destiny.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in destiny.”

“I could learn.” He held open the door, and they stepped out into the street. The streetlights made it bright as day, though the sky was black, and the tops of the buildings disappeared into the darkness. He kissed her again, a tender, loving kiss, then looked at her face cradled in his hands, admiring her. She felt beautiful.

She screwed up her courage. “I have a crazy idea,” she said.

“I have a few of those myself.”

She laughed and ran her hands up and down his chest. “Good, but that’s not what I mean. I want to see where you live. I want you to take me to your home. I want to sleep in your bed.” She told him about Mr. Menso and the card he’d given her. She put the card in his hands:
Real World Tours—We Never Close
.

He turned it over, examining it, a funny half smile on his face. She had no idea what he was thinking. “I didn’t know anything like this existed,” he said, more to himself than to her, then looked into her eyes. “Sure. I’d love to take you home.”

REAL
WORLD
TOURS
WAS
THREE
BLOCKS
OVER
ON M, IN A row of offbeat shops and boutiques. It was impossible to miss. The front was lit up by a pair of torches planted in the yard. The flames snapped in the wind. Black smoke streamed into the darkness in thick coils. On one side was a novelty shop—whoopee cushions and the like. On the other was a palmist/tarot reader named Madame Ree. A neon sign in the window glowed red, then blue, then red again—
AURAS
CLEANSED
. “Nobody in the real world uses torches like those,” Nemo said. “They burn up too fast.”

The place was scrupulously ugly: the paint cracked and peeling, all the glass shattered with just enough wicked-looking shards to remind you of what should be there; the door hanging on one hinge from a rotting doorframe; the wooden steps warped and creaking; the thump, squeal, and scurry of rats under the porch. Nemo looked around the porch, up at the rust-streaked sign over the door. “Cute,” he said. “Why do you suppose people come here?”

“We don’t have to do this,” she said, but he shook his head and pulled open the door, which creaked theatrically.

“I’m curious,” he said.

Inside, it was strictly Bin, clean and pastel and carpeted up to the chair rail with fawn-colored plush. Ghostly holos of the real world played in front of the walls—Paris, New York, Buenos Aires—all in ruins; a weed-grown nuclear power plant; a huge fundie rally, their faces lit by a burning cross. It must’ve been a long time ago. There were too many faces.

A door opened in the middle of the rally, and a small, slender man in white robes stepped out, passing through the burning cross with a smile on his face. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Freddie. Welcome to Real World Tours.” He kept his hands hidden in the folds of his robe. His bare feet peeked out at the hem.

Justine showed him the card and explained that Mr. Menso had sent them and that they wanted to go to Nemo’s home in Richmond. Nemo remained silent, looking around, his brows stitched in thought. This was beginning to look like a very bad idea.

Freddie hugged himself. “That Warren, he’s a stitch, isn’t he?”

“I don’t really know him very well.”

“Well, trust me. A stitch.” He stepped up to a console atop a carpet pedestal in the middle of the room and ran his fingers over the keys. He studied the display and looked up, smiling at Nemo. “You’re a visitor!”

Nemo turned from New York, where a pack of wild dogs was chasing down a screaming woman in Times Square. The sound was down so low her screams were no louder than the rat squeals under the porch. “That’s right,” Nemo said quietly.

“Well this
will
be a first.” He looked at Justine, his eyes wide. “And you’re something quite special yourself.”

She smiled politely. She figured he was just flirting, though he seemed more interested in Nemo than in her.

“So where do you want to start? Anyplace you want. Guaranteed to be exactly up to the minute, down to the last little blade of grass. Except for the real people, of course. We don’t have all the uploads, and you get into reality conflicts anyway—it’s a big damn mess. But if you want the real-world people
experience
, I can patch in virtual actors doing classic little real-world things—screaming hell-fire and damnation, shooting each other, starving to death right before your very eyes—scripted not to hurt you, of course.”

He leaned toward Nemo confidentially. “Maria—she’s a regular—
loves
to hold the dying in her arms. ‘Mother Maria, full of grace.’ Ha!” he said, as if his saying it made it a laugh.

For a second, Justine thought Nemo was going to back out, and she couldn’t blame him. He leaned toward Freddie and said in a quiet, deadly voice, like an ax falling, “My room. Just us. No people.”

Freddie shrugged and cocked his head to one side as if Nemo had turned down the cut-and-perm special. His hands moved over the console as he talked. “We’ll start in your room, then. Wherever you go in, it’s a total replication. You can roam the whole godawful planet if you want to.” His hands were flying. “And let’s see there. Update with all available sources—mostly your memory, of course. Almost done. There.” He made one last pass over the console, and a door opened up in the middle of the nuclear power plant. “Okay then, just right through that door.”

“Then what?” Justine asked.

“You’ll be in his
room
.” Freddie looked at the display. “Richmond, Virginia. Hawthorne Av. That
is
where you wanted to go, isn’t it?”

“Where will you be?” Nemo asked.

Freddie scrunched up his shoulders in a parody of fear. His toes curled beneath his robe. “I’m going to pop into New York.” He shuddered. “It’s so dangerous.”

“Have a good trip,” Nemo said. “I hope someone kills you.”

For just a moment Freddie didn’t know what to say, then he shouted another “Ha!” and turned to Justine. “He’s so funny.”

“He keeps me in stitches.”

“How do we get back?” Nemo asked.

“Silly
moi
—I almost forgot. It’s a total replication. You can wander all over. But here’s the fun part—when you want to leave the program—or in your case when you want back into the
real
real world—just find a coffin and head home! Clever, don’t you think? Warren thought of it. I wanted to use a little remote control thingie, something real techno, but Warren said that would remind people of the illusion.”

“Warren helped cook this thing up?” Justine asked.

“Warren’s into everything. He’s deep into his own program.”

“I thought he just ran a bookshop.”

The same “Ha!” pierced the room, and Freddie rolled his eyes, but didn’t elaborate. He gestured once again to the open doorway, apparently impatient to experience the dangers of New York.

NEMO
AND
JUSTINE
PASSED
THROUGH
THE
DOOR
,
AND
THEY
were in Nemo’s room. It was almost pitch dark, just enough moonlight came in through the window to reveal the hulking shapes of furniture. Nemo closed the door behind them and opened it again. Real World Tours had vanished. Justine could barely make out the top of a staircase in the darkness before he shut the door again.