The Danger of Being Me (10 page)

I lift the frame away from the shelf, and hold it in the glow of the laptop screen, and stare into the past. I don't quite believe that we could ever have been so young, even though just fifteen years have passed since I snapped this photograph.  Fifteen years gone. And then the unbearable truth crashes down on me, and it is the only truth that matters. Fifteen years tomorrow.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, and feel ice in the back of my throat. I look from one face to another across the photograph, across the years, and think of the lives that we have built beyond each other. The truth is as heartbreaking sometimes as it is inescapable, but that will change tonight, for a few hours. We will meet at the Serenity Tavern in downtown Prophecy Creek, such as it were, and we will drink to life. We will drink to death. We will drink to remember. We will drink to forget.

A chill that has nothing to do with the temperature rushes up my arms and down my back, and I smile into the darkness. I can't help it. Standing here in this entreating darkness wearing only my boxerbriefs, I feel the past and the present and the future all brushing up against one another in an overlapping jumble.

My digital clock flickers, and in the brief instant between 3:22 and 3:23, this vast equation that is life balances itself out.  Time reaches an improbable equilibrium. I smile, and shake my head. At three-thirty in the morning, I can believe that.

Because of her. The constant. My truth.

She lies on her side under a bundle of ultramarine Egyptian cotton. Her disheveled hair splays out against her pillow as the darkness pulls in tight around her like the delicate breath of her own mortality. Her hip curves smoothly through the shadows as I listen to the syncopation of her steady breathing.

In the brief instant between 3:22 and 3:23, I am struck by how improbable it is that she should be here in this outcome, this place, this moment with me of all people. After everything I've put her through, it seems rather impossible that she could still have chosen to spend her life with me. Impossible, and true.

Yet I know, in this brief instant between 3:22 and 3:23 on a March morning, that she is the only truth that matters.

And as I watch her sleep, and listen to her breathe, I am sure that she knows it too. Of course she does. She always knew.

I set the framed photograph on the desk beside my laptop, and grab a pair of khaki dress pants off the floor. I climb into them, pull on a
Flogging Molly
t-shirt, and tread barefoot across the carpet to her side of the bed. I crouch beside her, watch her for a moment. Her soft face is unlined and untroubled; I memorize it one more time. She exhales as I brush my fingertips through her hair. I draw a deep breath, and a bouquet of spearmint and lime floods through my lungs. She stirs, twists in the sheets, and burrows back into her pillow. Then I stand from the bed and wander out down the hallway toward the living room.

A fine film of ephemeral light overlays the sleek silence of no-time darkness. I cross the room, slip my feet into the pair of Skechers tucked under the couch, and step out into the foyer.

I pull the front door open. A whiteout presses itself against the glass door as the first real snow storm of the millennium ramps up. Projections call for about eighteen inches of snow. It won't be as bad as the blizzard that dropped four feet of snow on Prophecy Creek during my sophomore year and shut down every school in Wenro County, but it might get close.

I push the glass door open and cross the threshold out into that blistering swirl. The storm bites at my face and hands, a great starving beast with invisible teeth and icy venom.

It's not a blizzard. There's almost no wind, and at this hour, almost no sound either. But the storm churns in a shifting haze, beating its fury against the world.  My senses crackle

The snow touches down like the whispering of a madman, layers on layers like fresh and unending insanity. The air tastes metallic and brittle, like a deep breath might shatter the night. The sodium-vapor lamp above the door throws a barren light that scatters off each twitching flake until everything is white.

I think of my unimaginable novel, finally finished, stored on a bit of plastic and metal smaller than a car key. I think of those last eight words. I wonder if I will ever write again after tonight. I consider that perhaps I have only one story inside me, a literary cancer that had eaten its way into the dark hollow of my spine

Just one story that I was forever drawn back to.

Until it was finished.

Snow flickers against my cheeks.  Now that my story is done, I wonder if I have anything left to say.

I shake my head and laugh at myself, shattering the silent night. Tonight is not the time for that decision. I wrap my arms around my chest, holding in my warmth as my breath billows in a shuddering mist. I won't be out here much longer, but another thirty seconds feels right. Enough to cleanse the psyche.

And as I watch the sky fall in furious sheets across the length of Likewise Terrace, I spot a small shape across the cul-de-sac. It moves low to the ground, not much more than a grey silhouette against the static of the storm. I track the shape through the surging blur as it passes my Jeep Liberty and crosses the lawn. As it strides up the walkway to the porch, the shape resolves into a cat, and it climbs the three steps to my feet.

It shakes off its coat of snow like dandruff.  It picks up more immediately, and hardly notices. I watch the cat approach, sniff at my pantleg, then rub the side of its head against my ankle.

I smile down at the stray. The cat rubs the other side of its head against the other side of my ankle, then looks up at me as if surprised to find something connected to this ankle. And when I see the cat's face, my smile falters. That one ear is notched is not surprising; the cat wears no collar or tags. What strikes me now is the cubist constitution of colors that mark its face.

The right side is the color of nor'easter snow, the left side the color of charcoal, and right down the center from ears to nose is a streak of scarlet nearly the color of blood. The eyes are a faded green, and as they look up at me, dispassionate and inquisitive, I feel like they somehow know me. Like this animal has come here to find me. Like it has, perhaps, been sent here.

Sure. At three-thirty in the morning, I can believe that.

I crouch, and offer a hand to the cat. My knees crunch like aluminum cans being crushed; my thirty seconds are about up. The cat sniffs at my fingertips, which have gone numb, then rubs its face against my palm. It looks up at me again, as if to ask if that's enough or if it will have to prove itself some other way.

"Galen?" I ask for no particular reason. The cat meows, except that no sound comes out. As if this cat has talked itself hoarse on more important matters. Electricity sweeps down my back, thrills me, fills me with fantastic terrors never felt before. The hairs down the back of my neck stand on end.

The cat stares at me. I am sure that it senses my reaction. It seems intrigued. I reach for its head. It doesn't flinch away as I scratch the back of its neck and behind its ears. It seems satisfied that I've received whatever message it's come to deliver.  I stand, and it heads toward the glass door, glancing back to make sure I'm following. I pull the door open, and the cat strides inside, shaking itself off again in the foyer. I step in after it, starting across the living room toward the hallway again.

The cat follows at my heel. It neither hurries nor lingers, neither afraid nor confused. It waits for me to step out of my Skechers and tuck them back under the couch.  Then it strides in after me and begins investigating its new surroundings.

I swear to myself that if I see any Missing Cat flyers, I'll return the animal to its rightful home. Except that I already know that's a lie. So it works out well that I never see any Missing Cat flyers. I start toward the hall as the cat curls up in the papasan chair. By sunrise, I will already think of the cat as Galen, but for now, it is still just an anonymous stray.

I spare the cat one last glance, then head for the bedroom. I round the bed to the desk, shut down my laptop and close the lid. A fine film of ephemeral light slips through the blinds, reflecting off the glass of that framed photograph beside the computer.

I lift the frame and look into the past.  I still don't quite believe that we were ever so young.  I smile down at the picture as Winnie smiles back up at me, and Ben flashes his rock-horns at me in his best Gene Simmons impersonation, and Helen cocks an eyebrow at me somehow both patronizing and curiously alluring, and Phil glances sidelong at me. Ethan doesn't even bother to look at me as he wears that impossibly knowing grin.

I round my side of the bed and set the framed photograph on the bedside table, between the digital alarm clock and my hardcover copy of
Doctor Sleep
. Right where it belongs.

Then I slip under the comforter without a sound, and listen to the intermittent ticking of snowflakes dashing themselves against glass. I nestle in behind her, fitting myself against the curve of her back, feeling the syncopation of her steady breathing. She stirs as I wrap my arm around her waist, holding onto her, clinging fiercely to the only truth that matters. My truth.

She murmurs to herself in a dreamgibber that's part Aramaic, part Mandarin, part Quenya. Then she burrows back into her pillow and drifts back into the sea of dreams. I bury my face into the splay of her disheveled hair. Her delicate bouquet of spearmint and lime floods through my lungs, and I smile.

And in the moment before I sink down into sleep, I remember Ethan and a snatch of lyrics from a David Bowie song.

4.

"Ground control to Major Tom."

Ethan snapped his fingers in front of my face, and my eyes snapped back into focus.  I lowered the camera, and saw Winnie and Phil and Helen and Ben staring at me.  I don't know how long I had tuned out for, but it was long enough for Ethan to leave his seat and cross the room.  He waved a hand in front of my face.  "Anybody home?"

I turned to him and smiled, laughing.  The sound of it made Ethan laugh, and I saw Phil and Helen grinning as well.  Ethan peered into my eyes, and told me, "looked like the screensaver popped on in there for a second."

I laughed again.  It was a light, transcendent sound in my own ears, and it made me smile.  "Maybe a little."

Ethan clapped me on the arm and headed back to his own seat.  I rounded the table again, slipping the camera into the pocket of my jeans.  "Fifteen years from now," I said, dropping into my chair beside Helen, "I'm going to be a multiple-Oscar winning screenwriter in Los Angeles, and I'm not going to remember a single one of you."

Ben snorted.  Ethan shook his head.  "But the $64,000 question is this," I said, leaning over the table toward Winnie.  "Who will play Winsome Aconia Donne?"

"And the yellow question is this," Phil said.  "Where's Checkpoint Charlie?"

"Hold on a second," Ethan said, turning in his chair to look at Winnie.  "Your middle name is Aconia?"

Winnie nodded, that faint smile playing across her lips as she popped a handful of Reese's Pieces into her mouth.

Ethan flashed a disappointed grin.  "I feel like I could have done so much with that piece of information."

"Danica McKellar would be perfect," Winnie said to me, "but she's studying math at UCLA at the moment."

Ben laughed.  "Well she's certainly got experience."

"Checkpoint Charlie?" Phil repeated, louder.

Ethan glanced across the table at him, shook his head, and said, "Berlin."  Phil nodded, dug a blue pie-piece out of the box, tossed it over the gameboard.  Ethan caught it on the fly, slid it into his gamepiece, and rolled the die.

He moved his piece clockwise around the gamewheel as Winnie asked him, "Who would you have play you?"

Ethan considered, then said, "Kevin McKidd."  Winnie stared at him blankly for a long moment, so he added, "the kid who died of toxoplasmosis in
Trainspotting
."

"Oh," Winnie said, her voice strangely muted.  "Because I could totally see you being portrayed by Fred Savage."

Helen laughed.  "Tell me you're not serious," she said.  "Can you imagine Fred Savage faking a Scottish brogue?"

"It'd be a fucking travesty," Ben said somberly.

Helen nodded.  Ethan glanced to Winnie, offered her a lopsided smirk.  Winnie sighed through that faint smile.

"What's a narwhal tusk made of?" Phil asked.

"Adamantium," Ethan said, lobbing the die to Ben.  He bent forward over the table onto his elbows, turned to Phil, and asked him, "How about you, Mr. Michener?"

Phil didn't even hesitate.  "Ian McKellan in the opening sequence, Charlie Carmichael in the flashbacks."

"That's kind of sweet," Winnie said.

"I can feel the cavities forming already," Ben told her.

"You're just jealous," Helen said.  She turned to Phil, leaned in, and said more softly, "He's just jealous."

"Of course I am," Ben said sarcastically, rolling the die and moving his gamepiece.  He gave Phil a bored stare and said tonelessly, "Just read the questions, Bassanio."

Phil cocked an eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth turned up as he pulled a fresh card and read, "What blew up at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937?"

Ben thought for a brief moment before answering, "the
Hindenburg
."  He snatched up the die, rolled again before Phil even got a fresh card back out of the box.

"No doubt Ben envisions himself played by Sylvester Stallone," Helen said, "or Arnold Schwartzenegger."

"Warwick Davis," Ben said, moving his gamepiece four spaces counterclockwise without looking up at her.