Luminarium (33 page)

He tried to imagine Sam sitting in an auditorium, shaking hands with his neighbors, joining them in song.
Adaption’s not such a bad thing.
There was something too obsessive and controlling—too hopelessly Samlike—in Sam’s very resolve to reinvent himself from scratch. But on some level wasn’t he right? How would it feel, to slide out of everything one was, like from an old skin?

His hotel, once he finally found it, charged him an extra fee for the safe he didn’t ask for in the closet of his room, and some other kind of additional tax or fine assessed for not being a resident of Florida. He crawled into bed, and went online, returning to the avatara.us website he’d been directed to after receiving that poem last week. Gone, nothing but an ad farm in its place. Out of ideas, he moved from one Hindu site to another. He read about Shiva, lord of sleep, entropy, and the abyss—the originary source of all, to which all would return. He read about the Hindu trinity, again like the Catholic one but predating it by a thousand years: Shiva the father, source of all; Brahma the holy spirit; Vishnu the son, the one who incarnates, comes down to earth in the form of avataras—Buddha, Christ, Mohammad (and the Twelfth Imam, too, whenever he arrived)—all happily incorporable by the allemblobulating Hindu cosmology under the rubric of Vishnu. He read more about the nine major avataras that had come, and the one, Kalki, prophesied to come. He read how these ten avataras, from fish to human, were thought, more esoterically, to symbolize the stages of the spiritual evolution of humankind; how all the others had prepared the way for Kalki, who would finally rouse humanity from its slumber of ignorance to the waking consciousness of divine life itself.

Ignorance.
There it was again.

What did the word even mean?

Inner George snickered.
Now
that’s
ignorance.

At last, he began to drift, and the next thing he knew, he was in a place as black as space, as close as skin, airless and hot. From somewhere near came the sound of children laughing. A magic show, he understood; he was inside the black satin walls of the old, giant magic hat’s false compartment. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe, could only wait, hope, trust that soon he’d feel the backs of his brother’s fingers, reaching down the nape of his neck, taking hold of his collar, pulling him out. At some point, waking up a little but still under the sway of dreamlogic, he wondered if somehow the dream could be George’s, not his; after all, George had always been the one to hide in those hats. Then he was dreaming again, believing he was still awake. An explosion went off. A war of some kind, it seemed, and he was tied down, a prisoner, and had to wake up but couldn’t. Another blast. Screams in the distance. He breathed and breathed and at last tore awake with a shout.

The explosions were the rumbling of roller coasters.

The screams were, in fact, screams.

He got up, showered, dressed, took the elevator down, and found his minivan in the sun-baked hotel lot, so sleepy he felt oddly tranquil, as if his body might still be up in that bed, snoozing away, dreaming all this. The hotel’s surroundings, a maze of looping service roads around the backs of amusement parks, while desolate and surreal, didn’t seem downright malevolent, the way they had by night. Over the park walls, people could be seen waiting on the various scaffolded staircases, every so often climbing a step. They’d slide or ride back down and then start climbing and waiting again, like so many Sisyphuses burdened with beach towels and cameras. It certainly was sunny, anyway. And peaceful, despite the occasional screams.

Proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum
mechanics argue that given an infinite number of universes, some, by mere statistical chance, will have cosmological constants hospitable to life; and thus, according to this “weak” anthropic argument, living beings are once again accidental as ever. Adherents of the “strong” anthropic argument, on the other hand, affirm that the cosmos is in some way constructed with life in mind, a planned community, as it were, something perhaps not unlike—though of course on a larger scale—the town of Celebration, USA.

Drowsier now than when he’d set out from the hotel, feeling, in the thick heat, like he was swaddled in a blanket, Fred parked the minivan in a lot on the outskirts of town and boarded a bus disguised as a trolley car, driven by a bus driver disguised as a trolley driver, with outsized epaulets on his shirt and a cartoonishly tented black cap. The trolley/bus wended through the residential neighborhoods, and Fred occupied himself spotting the various house styles he’d seen depicted online—Colonial, French, Victorian, Classical, Mediterranean, Coastal. Homes came in seven different size categories here as well, he’d read, ranging from apartments to estates, the economic strata set apart from block to block but joined at the alleys, bungalows abutting manors, to allow for a comfortable balance of hierarchization and integration. To encourage pedestrian traffic and neighborly interaction, the houses were set close together; the garages were stowed in back alleys; the streets—regularly powerwashed, just as they were at Disney World—were built curved and narrow.

Fred disembarked in the downtown area, and explored a few commercial streets, mists of lite rock emanating from little speakers at the bases of the trees. At the café whose photo he and Sam had scoured for women under sixty, he found a seat on the patio and ordered breakfast. As he ate, swathed in a sunbeam angling under the awning, he took turns gazing out over the placid man-made lake across the street and observing his fellow patrons. At the next table, an elderly couple with matching work done, their weatherproof skin fastened taut beneath marcescent chin bones, alternated chewing their waffles and greeting acquaintances with radiant smiles. Yet also in evidence were a young couple, a middle-aged couple, a family with small children and teenagers; whether these were actual residents or the visitors of older relatives, Fred couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t feel nearly as out of place as he’d anticipated.

After breakfast, with an hour still to kill before the realtor appointment, he toured the walking paths through the slivers of preserved wetlands separating the housing enclaves, then meandered through a neighborhood or two. Hummers and little electric buggies passed in more or less equal proportion, the latter vehicles carrying sun-hatted retirees in the open-air seats. He had to admit that the houses, even from close range, looked as new as they had in the pictures. Sunlight sparkled in the leaves of trees propped by sturdy wooden braces. He passed a team of green-jumpsuited gardeners, swarming one such tree the way the TSA agents had swarmed his carry-on bag, adjusting the braces and gazing up the length of the trunk, ensuring its straightness. Fred’s usual impulse would have been to root out something nefarious about the freaky neatness, but the neatness itself, the utter placidity of the place, made the very attempt to do so seem unnatural, a strain where none was required.

As he headed back downtown, the sunlight seemed to brighten even more. The glare was back, though it felt less, this time, like the light was coming to claim him than he was already on the other side, safely ferried through the gates. He wondered if the town’s residents might actually feel this way, if only a little—like they’d arrived, like they were fully, truly home, and could at long last just relax. Looking up for that skylight in the sky, he almost bumped into a map stand, at the top of which, in a miniature pediment, was housed the town seal: a silhouette of a tree and a picket fence and a girl on a bike, her ponytail flying behind, a puppy in chase, and the words
CELEBRATION, FLORIDA, EST. 1994
circling around the scene. He gazed at the image. He gazed at the 1994.

Arriving at the
real estate agency, he was greeted by a receptionist with eyes so blue and crystalline he wanted to cannonball into them and never reappear.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Her hair was shoulder-length and dark, her skin just slightly tanned. She wore a navy jacket and skirt and a bright floral-patterned blouse, open at the neck. If he’d ever encountered a more beautiful being, he couldn’t recall it.

“I have a session—
appointment.
” He hadn’t had occasion to speak a complete sentence to anyone since New York, and he tripped over the words. With half his toiletry items confiscated, he hadn’t shaved, not wanting to lather with a bar of soap, and had brushed his teeth with water. He hadn’t yet gotten a haircut, either, something he was planning to do later today for the interview tomorrow. He was wearing George’s ridiculous checkered shoes, as usual. He became conscious of all this under the receptionist’s diaphanous gaze, which narrowed, slightly dubious.

“Who’s your appointment with?”

He hadn’t anticipated the question. “I don’t know. My … my assistant set it up.”

Substituting the word “assistant” for “brother” was a snap decision. It seemed to buy back a little of the respect he’d lost in those doll-like eyes.

“No problem at all,” she said. “What’s your name?”

To his surprise, he hesitated. “Brounian. Fred.”

Perhaps it was just his own unease she was picking up on, but he thought he saw the secretary’s lips momentarily flicker, like he’d just handed her a cold, dead fish.

“Fred Brounian,” he clarified.

She checked her computer. “OK, I’ve found you. You’re seeing Phil Jeffries.”

Phil Jeffries.
Fred repeated the name to himself, thinking how much lighter and brighter it sounded. A Florida name. Two first names, really, no weight, no history, a name made of nothing but beginnings. The secretary lifted the receiver and pressed an extension. “Hi,
Fred Brounian
is here?”

With each
Fred Brounian
, the jagged contours of his life—almost blanched away by the sun and the languor of his morning walk—reappeared a little more. Here was Mel poking him like a button for an elevator that wouldn’t come, saying she didn’t want to marry a clammed-up clam, a locked-up safe with nothing inside. And Fred saying they shouldn’t get married, and Mel crying, flinging her engagement ring down the garbage chute. And a nurse pinching open the meatus of George’s member and shoving in a catheter, impossibly wide but in it had gone, shove after shove, in and in and in, all the way to his bladder, urine dribbling out the other end of the tube into a kidney-shaped tray.

The secretary hung up. “He’ll be right out, Mr. Brounian.”

“Freddo,” he blurted.

“Freddo?”

At first he didn’t understand her. He thought he’d said Fred. Or that’s what he’d meant to say. Or maybe he’d meant,
Oh, call me Fred.
He was already nodding before he processed that final
o
. Beyond humiliated, pretty much giving up at that point, he just kept nodding, resigned to the secretary calling him by a name that could have belonged to some hobbit mob henchman.

“OK,” she said, to his wonderment, without apparent sarcasm, “
Freddo
.”

Coming from her slyly smiling lips, the name sounded almost rakish.

“And you are?” he said.
Freddo
said.

“Christine.”

“
Christine.
” Freddo drew out the last syllable, like he didn’t want it to end. Freddo had just a hint of that TSA agent’s Brooklyn accent. Fred was diving into those eyes of hers, infatuated with her a little, but much more with his own potential for oblivion. “So.
Christine.
You live here? In Disney World?”

Disney World. Rather witty of Freddo. Fred was impressed. Christine treated him to a pursed-lipped smile.

“Sure do,” she said. “And you know, they don’t own us anymore. They sold off the whole downtown in 2004 to another company.”

“They did?” The news, to Fred’s surprise, put a sudden weight in his chest, an almost holomelancholic sense of longing and loss. It was as if she’d told him that the Almighty had just sold off the cosmos to some rich guy down the block, then packed up a few lightning bolts and rainbows and left.

She seemed to pick up on his disappointment. “But they’ve still got offices here. And it’s still their vision. It’s a wonderful place to live.”

It was her job, he knew. But her enthusiasm seemed genuine. What did it matter who owned it, Fred remonstrated, or maybe this was Freddo. The founder’s glow was still here, after all. And so was Christine—she’d told him, he just remembered, that she lived in town.

“Then there are really people our age here?” As soon as this was out, Fred realized she was probably a dozen years younger than him. Freddo, however, didn’t really seem to give a shit. “I mean, you know, it’s not just retirees?”

“Oh, no. All ages.”

“Huh”—nodding—“and what do people around here do for fun?”

Fun
, Fred thought. It was a phenomenon so far removed from his own life he never would have thought to ask about it. Freddo, on the other hand, was apparently a man who took his fun seriously.

“There’s plenty to do,” she chirped. “What’s fun for you?”

Good question. What would a man named Freddo find fun?

Dogfighting.
This from Inner George, sneaking back into Fred’s consciousness so seductively Fred almost said it aloud. With Freddo’s help, he shoved George back out, along with the catheter, the engagement ring, and all the other junk. No. Not dogfighting. But something edgy.