Circuit Of Heaven (19 page)

“I know who you are,” he said, and she felt a rush of fear.

“Who?”

“The woman I love.” He took her in his arms and held her close, whispered in her ear. “You know me, and I know you. The rest doesn’t matter.”

The sun had reached them. It must’ve been at least noon. “You have to get out of here,” she said. “You could die if you stay too long.”

“I’m used to that notion. Don’t worry. It’s only life-or-death after twenty-four hours, and I’m not even close to that. Besides, I want to take you somewhere while we’re here. Unless you want me to go.”

She held him tight and shook her head. “I don’t want that. That’s the last thing I want.”

THEY
TOOK
THE
METRO
FROM
NORTHSIDE
TO
AMPTHILL
, then walked east until they came to an old freeway with railroad tracks running down the middle of it. The concrete road was buckled and overgrown. “We follow the tracks,” he said, and led her down an embankment and through a hole in the rusty fence. They walked along on the ties and gravel, the only sound the crunch of their footsteps.

“Where’re we going?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise,” he said. “It’s my favorite place.”

She liked the sound of that. She tried to remember if she had a favorite place. She took Nemo’s hand and squeezed. This will do, she thought. This is just fine.

The tracks climbed and passed over the freeway. From there they could see the river glistening in the sun. The freeway came to the water’s edge and stopped. House-sized chunks of concrete dotted the river, the remains of the fallen bridge. “Floods chipped away at it,” he said. “It finally collapsed a few years ago.”

They continued down the tracks until they too reached the river. An ancient viaduct, a series of graceful arches, carried the tracks across the river, a hundred feet below, clear and clean and strong. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

He pointed across the river. “There’s a beach on the other side beside the viaduct. Jonathan was baptized there. He showed it to me when we first met. I’ve been going there ever since. I thought we might go for a swim.”

“You mean walk across the bridge? What if a train comes along?”

He laughed. “Then Real World Tours is seriously behind the times.” He reached down and ran his fingertips over the top of one of the rails and held them up to show her the rust. “These tracks haven’t seen a train for quite a while.”

She looked out across the viaduct, imagining what it would be like out in the middle, one hundred feet above the water and the rocks. “Is it safe?”

He laughed again. “In the real world it should’ve fallen into the river years ago. In here, though, everything’s safe.”

“I’m afraid of heights,” she confessed.

“So am I. But if you stick to the middle, it’s not so bad. Besides, in the Bin, there’s nothing to fear.” He offered his hand, and she took it. As they walked out over the water, the wind picked up, gusting hard. She tightened her grip, trying to keep her eyes straight ahead, reminding herself over and over that there was nothing to fear. About halfway across, the whole thing leaned slightly downstream, and there were cracks running through the concrete. She dislodged a stone with her foot and it rolled to a stop inside the rail. Nemo picked it up, tossing it over the side. She watched it fall for several long seconds and felt as if she were falling with it. She didn’t look down again. By the time they reached the other side, her knees were weak, and she felt dizzy. She sat down on the rails and put her head between her knees. Nemo sat down beside her.

“You do this often?” she asked.

“Whenever I get the chance.”

“There aren’t any beaches on the north bank?”

“I like this one.”

“You’re crazy, Nemo.”

“So I’ve been told.”

THEY
CLIMBED
DOWN
FROM
THE
TRACKS
TO
THE
UNDERSIDE
of the viaduct. The concrete arching overhead was smudged with smoke. Weather-beaten graffiti was spray-painted on the wall where the viaduct met the ground.
HE
DIED
FOR
US
, one said in red dripping letters. Above the words was a red cross with a stick-figure Christ painted on it in black. The paint ran down from his hands and feet. Beside that someone had painted
CHRIST
IS K
and then apparently run out of paint.

They walked down to the water and a small beach scatered with driftwood. She slipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the sand. The water was calm and deep, the base of the viaduct diverting the current.

“What do you say? Wash away your troubles?”

“Sure,” she said, and he stripped off his clothes, diving into the water. She pulled her dress over her head and dove in after him. The water was icy cold—a thousand tiny needles all at once. She rose up out of the water spewing and gasping, and he surfaced beside her. “They got the temperature right,” he panted. They raced back to the beach, scrambling onto the sand. The sun felt warm and delicious after the frigid water.

“I love to do that,” he said. “Mid-August it’s like a warm bath, and the sand’s too hot to stand on. When it’s like this though, it makes you feel alive.” He was laughing and excited, full of joy. Their eyes met, and he reached out and ran his hands over her wet skin, her shoulders, her breasts, her waist. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said.

She held him in her hands and guided him into her. “This is real, Nemo,” she whispered. “This is real.”

ON
THE
TRAIN
BACK
TO D.C.,
NEMO
STUDIED
JUStine’s reflection in the window as the world flew by in a blur. Their clasped hands rested on his knee. Their thighs pressed together. Her large eyes were oblivious to the countryside, to the skyline of D.C. ahead of them on the horizon. He guessed she was looking inside, trying to see the future. Just what he was doing. Only the near future was clear. In less than half an hour he’d be back in the real world, and she’d still be here, in the Bin.

All day he’d been forgetting where he really was. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t in his room—in spite of the smell of the sheets, the sound of the tree limb scraping against the gutter, the crack in the plaster, perfect down to each tiny fissure—he wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t swimming in the river. The chill water, the warm sun, the graffiti—they were all illusions. I was somewhere else, he thought. No place at all. Only now, I’ll remember Justine every time I lie down in my bed or swim in the river, and I’ll want to be with her. It won’t matter where. I’ll still want her.

He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. “Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

She turned to him, the corners of her mouth tightened with worry. “Do you want to?”

He smiled and kissed her cheek, and she softened at his touch, pressing her face against his lips. “No, I just thought I’d ask to make us both miserable.” He kissed her neck, and she drew in a breath and closed her eyes. “Why would I want to spend every minute with the woman I love, when I could be lying alone in my bed, missing her?” He kissed her eyes, her lips. “I showed you my world, now you have to show me yours.”

She looked at him, her eyes agleam, a loving smile on her face.

“Now, don’t start crying on me. I’ll be at your hotel by noon, and I’ll show you exactly how glad I am to see you.” He put his arms around her, and she nestled against him, just as the train began slowing for Pentagon Station.

THEY
WALKED
SLOWLY
TO
THE
LONG
ROW
OF
VIMS
AND
found the one Nemo had used to enter the Bin over twenty hours before. They stood there embracing, not speaking, not moving, like some statue of farewell, knowing that once they moved or spoke, they’d have to let go, and part.

Finally, she pressed her hands against his chest and whispered, “You have to go now, Nemo. Please. I’m scared for you.” She pushed herself away as his arms loosened and fell to his sides.

“I’ll see you at noon,” he said, and kissed her one last time.

They stepped into a pair of VIMs, looking into each other’s eyes as the coffin lids whirred closed, narrowing their vision to a slit, then snapped shut. He stared at the display screen and tried to relax as the coffin rotated slowly back. It seemed to take longer than usual. Twenty two hours I’ve been in here, he thought. Two hours shy of
can be fatal
. He didn’t know exactly what to expect—different people reacted differently—but it wouldn’t be fun. He’d had it drilled into him in health class: When the mind checked out, the body started gearing up to go it on its own. When the mind showed up again, it took them a while to reconcile their differences. If it’d been too long, they couldn’t work it out, and you ended up blind or lame or crazy or dead.

When the coffin was finally horizontal, green glowing letters flashed
DOWNLOAD
in his face, and he felt the familiar falling sensation, but this time it didn’t stop. He just kept falling, deeper and deeper. Red letters were flashing now, but he couldn’t focus on them. A loud buzzing noise blared and then stopped, and the lid swung open, even though he was still horizontal. He tried to get up, but his limbs wouldn’t do what he told them to. He fought down his panic and was gripped with nausea. His head was pounding.

A blue glowing shape appeared over him. “Are you all right?” it asked. “You set off the alarm.”

Nemo couldn’t focus on his features, but he knew it was Victor, the security guard. “Don’t think so,” he said, or tried to say. His mouth wouldn’t work right, and his voice sounded slurred and muddy as if he were talking underwater.

“You’ve been in too long,” Victor said, propping Nemo up, holding a cup of water to his lips. “Go slow. Remember to swallow.”

Nemo concentrated on drinking the water. It took a long time. Half of it dribbled out of his mouth, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Victor laid him back down and picked up Nemo’s feet, placing them against his chest. “Push,” he said.

At first Nemo couldn’t do it. He told his legs to push, but the message wasn’t getting through. He looked down at his legs to make sure they were still there, and that seemed to help. He finally managed to push, though it took two or three tries to do it a second time. When Nemo got the hang of that, Victor took Nemo’s feet in his hands and told him to pump his legs as if he were riding a bicycle. If he’d actually been on a bike, he would’ve fallen into a ditch, but he got to the point where his legs would move more or less when he told them to.

Then Victor put his feet down and stuck out a blue, glowing hand. “Shake,” he said. It took Nemo three tries—he kept misjudging the distance. “Squeeze,” Victor said.

“You’re wearing me out here,” Nemo mumbled, and it was a little easier to talk. He squeezed Victor’s hand on the first try. If I really worked at it, he thought, I probably could crush a robin’s egg.

“We’re going to rotate the
VIM
so that you’re upright, okay?”

“Sure,” Nemo said. “What the hell.” He could focus most of the time now, and his nausea had momentarily subsided.

“Keep hold of our hand. You’re strapped in. You won’t fall out.”

Nemo’s eyes told him he was slowly rising to an upright position. His guts told him he was tumbling through space. If it hand’t been for his hold on Victor’s hand, he was convinced he would do just that. It took him a moment to realize the coffin had stopped.

“We’re going to unstrap you now. Remember, you’re not weak. Your muscles are fine, they’re just slow. Take your time. Wait on your body.”

The strap slid from his waist, and he didn’t fall down. “What do I do now, dance?”

Victor alternately walked and dragged Nemo up and down the waiting room until Nemo was doing a reasonable imitation of a drunk one drink shy of passing out. Victor steered him to the train platform and held him up as they waited for the train.

“How long’ll this last?” Nemo asked. He got a little tangled up in the l’s and s’s.

“Get some sleep. When you wake up, you should be fine except for a headache and some dizziness. You’ll be extremely hungry for a while, but don’t overeat. Drink lots of water, and stay out of the Bin for a few days.”

Nemo shook his head violently and almost lost his balance. “Have to go in tomorrow. Noon.”

Victor sighed. “Six hours, no more. And get at least eight hours sleep first. Next time, Nemo, it will be worse.”

VICTOR
PUT
NEMO
ON
THE
TRAIN
HOME
. HE’D
JUST
BEEN
on Real World Tours version of this train, and they had everything perfect. Exactly the same. Only this time it made him feel as if he were being stretched across the landscape like a Dali clock. He closed his eyes, and that made it worse. He opened them back up and stared at his hands, gripping his knees. No one’s hand to hold on this train but my own, he thought. My body’s having its revenge. It knows what I’m thinking of doing.

Each time the train decelerated and accelerated for a stop, Nemo’s nausea came back with a vengeance. As soon as he’d recovered from one stop, the train would slow for another. He counted them off, bracing himself for each one, leaving a bit of himself behind at each station. By the time the train slowed for Northside Station, he didn’t think he could stand. He was having trouble holding his head up, and his eyes kept fluttering closed. He was right by the door, so all he had to do was stand up and take two lousy steps without falling down. Or he could try crawling out. He didn’t think he could crawl the four blocks home, but at least he’d be off this goddamn train.

The doors slid open, and Lawrence stepped through them, put his arms around Nemo’s waist and pulled him to his feet. Nemo couldn’t figure out what was going on. “What’re you doing here?” he managed.