The Ignored (45 page)

Was that what would happen to me?

You’re almost there.

I said nothing of my fears to Jane. I knew that was wrong. I knew I was
falling into the same pattern as last time. I should be sharing everything with
her. We should be facing all problems together. But for some reason I could not
bring myself to confide in her. She would probably be even more frantic than I
was. And I didn’t want her to go through the hell I was going through.

But at the same time, I did want to talk to her. Desperately.

I didn’t know what was the matter with me.

I told her I had witnessed the murder and had been the only one to see
the murderer. But I did not tell her why. I did not tell her what had really
happened.

The creepiest thing that week was my meeting with Steve. He was a
full-fledged lieutenant now, and the chief had put him in charge of coordinating
security at city hall. On the off chance that the murderer might strike again at
the scene of his original crime, the chief was asking for a maximum ten-second
response time to a disturbance anywhere in the building. This way he figured the
murderer could be caught in the act.

Steve was asked to implement this policy, and he met with me in order to
more accurately determine how quickly the murderer had moved from the elevator
to Ray’s desk, how distracted he had been by the other people in the office, how
quickly he had disappeared after being spotted. He gave me a no-nonsense
official phone call on Thursday asking me to meet him in the planning department
before lunch, and after spending the morning on neighborhood patrol, I arrived
on the second floor at eleven-thirty. Steve was already there.

And he didn’t recognize me.

I knew it instantly, although it took a few moments of by-the-book Q&A
for the fact to really sink in.

He did not know who I was.

We had spent all that time together as terrorists, as colleagues,
friends, brothers, and now he did not even remember me. He thought he was
meeting me for the first time, that I was simply a faceless bureaucrat from city
hall, and it was unnerving to speak to him, to know him so intimately when he
obviously didn’t know me at all. I was tempted to tell him, to remind him, to
prod his memory, but I did not, and he left without realizing who I was.

There were no more murders, no assaults, no sightings, and gradually the
police began to lose interest in me. I was transferred back to city hall, told
to keep my eyes open and report anything suspicious, and was promptly forgotten
about. In the planning department, my return was not noticed or remarked upon.

I had completed my first week of work since returning when I saw the
mayor coming toward me across the first-floor lobby on my way out. I waved to
him. “How’s the search going?” I asked. “Any leads?”

He said nothing, looked at me, past me, through me, and continued
walking.

When I awoke the next morning, there was a new tree outside our bedroom
window.

I stood in front of the window, staring, a clenched, tight feeling in my
chest. The tree was not a small sapling or a potted palm that someone had placed
in our front yard. It was a full-sized sycamore, taller than our house, growing,
deep-rooted, in the center of the lawn.

It had purple leaves.

I didn’t know what it was or what it meant, I only knew that it
frightened me to the bone. I stood there, unable to take my eyes off the sight,
and as I stared I saw the front door of the house open and Jane walk across the
lawn to get the newspaper from the front sidewalk.

She walked through the tree, as if it weren’t there.

The clenched feeling grew, spreading within me, and I realized that I
was holding my breath. I forced myself to breathe. Jane picked up the paper,
walked back through the tree and into the house.

Was it an optical illusion? No, the tree was too clear and definite, too
there
, for it to be a mere image.

Was I crazy? Maybe. But I didn’t think so.

Oh, the things you’ll see….

I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and hurried outside. The tree was
still there, big as life and twice as colorful, and I walked up to it, reached
out to touch it.

And my hand passed through the bark.

I felt nothing, no warmness, no coldness, no displacement of air. It was
as if the tree weren’t there at all. I gathered my courage, walked through it.
It looked solid, not transparent or translucent, and while walking through I saw
only blackness. Like I really was inside a tree. But I felt nothing.

What the hell was it?

I stood there, staring up at the purple leaves.

“What are you doing?” Jane called from the kitchen.

I looked back at her. She was watching me through the open window with a
puzzled expression, as though I was behaving incredibly stupidly, which I
suppose to her I was. I walked around the tree, then across the grass to the
front door. I went into the kitchen, where she was mixing batter for blueberry
muffins.

“What were you doing out there?”

“Looking at something.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

She stopped stirring, glanced at me. “You’ve been behaving strangely
ever since that murder. Are you sure you’re all right?”

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

“You know, a lot of people who witness violent acts, even policemen, go
to counseling to work through what they’re feeling.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Don’t get so worked up. I’m just worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“I—”

“I’m fine.”

She looked at me, looked away, went back to mixing the batter.

The tree was still there after breakfast, still there after I took my
shower. Jane wanted to go to the store and pick up some groceries for dinner,
and I happily volunteered to go for her. She said fine, she had a lot of work to
do around the house anyway, and I took the list she gave me and drove off.

I’d been acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, but I
saw other purple trees in the park, red and black bushes growing in the center
of Main Street, a silver stream passing through the Montgomery Ward’s parking
lot, and it was obvious that overnight something really bizarre had happened.

Had happened to me.

No one else in town seemed to see these manifestations.

Jane had asked me to go to the IGA—she liked their produce better
than Von’s of Safeway—and while inside the supermarket I saw another tree,
identical to the one in my yard, growing out of the meat counter, its branches
passing through the ceiling.

I stood there staring at the tree as other shoppers passed around me.
There was no way I could live with this day in and day out, no way I could
pretend to live a normal life while fantasy forests were popping up around me in
the midst of my ordinary surroundings.

Was this what had happened to the murderer?

I quickly got what I came for and hurried home. I found Jane mopping the
kitchen floor, and I put the sack of groceries on the table and came right out
and said it: “Something
is
wrong.”

She looked up, not surprised. “I was hoping you’d tell me what it was.”

I licked my lips. “I… see things,” I said. I looked into her eyes,
hoping to see a hint of recognition, but there was nothing. “Do you know what I
mean?”

She shook her head slowly.

“There. Outside.” I pointed through the window. “Do you see that tree?
The one with the purple leaves?”

Again she shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I don’t.”

Did she think I was crazy?

“Come here.” I led her into the front yard, stopped at the base of the
tree. “You don’t see anything there?”

“No.”

I took her hand, pulled her through the tree. “Still nothing?”

She shook her head.

I took a deep breath. “I’m fading away,” I said.

I told her everything. About the clown, the police, Steve, Ralph, the
people at work who no longer saw me. About the trees and bushes and streams I’d
seen on my way to the store today. She was silent when I was through, and I saw
tears in her eyes.

“I’m not going crazy,” I told her.

“I don’t think you are.”

“Then why—?”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

I put my arms around her and held her tightly, and she cried into my
shoulder. My own eyes were overflowing. Oh, God. Was I going to be separated
from her again? Was I destined to be parted from her once more?

I pulled back from her, tilted her chin up until she was looking in my
eyes. “Do you still see me?” I asked.

“Yes.” Her nose was running, and she wiped it with the back of her hand.

“Am I… different at all? Do you think about me less often? Do you
forget I live here?”

She shook her head, began to cry again.

I hugged her. That was something. But it was only a temporary respite, I
knew. She loved me. I was important to her. No wonder I would linger longer in
her consciousness. But eventually, inevitably, I would fade from her sight, too.
I would move in and out of focus. Maybe one day I’d be home and she wouldn’t
know it. I’d be sitting on the couch and she’d pass right by me, calling my
name, and I’d answer and she wouldn’t hear me.

I’d kill myself if that happened.

She grasped my hand firmly. “We’ll find someone,” she said. “A doctor.
Someone who’ll be able to reverse it.”

I turned on her. “How?” I demanded. “Don’t you think if there was a way
to do that it would’ve been done already? You think everyone likes living here?
You think they all wouldn’t want to be normal if they could, if there was a way
to do it? Christ!”

“Don’t yell at me. I just thought—”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t think.”

“I didn’t mean they could actually reverse the process, but I thought
they could slow it, stop it from progressing. I thought—” She burst into tears
and ran away from me, across the grass, into the house.

I followed her, caught up to her in the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” I said,
holding her, kissing the top of her head. “I don’t know what got into me. I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean to get mad at you.”

She hugged me back. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

We stood like that for a long time, not moving, saying nothing, just
holding tightly to each other as if that embrace could keep me anchored so I
wouldn’t fade away.

I called James that night. I wanted to talk to him, wanted to tell him
what was happening. The more people I brought into this, the more people who
knew, the more heads we had working on the problem, the more likely it was that
something could be done about it.

He answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“James!” I said. “It’s me!”

“Hello?”

“James?”

“Who’s there?”

He couldn’t hear me.

“James!”

“Hello?” He was becoming annoyed. “Who is this?”

I hung up the phone.

I had not seen Philipe since the day of his departure for the White
House assault, had not heard a word about him since his return. But I wanted to
talk to him. I needed to talk to him. If anybody could understand what had
happened to me, if anybody could do something about it, it was Philipe. He might
be psychotic, but he was also the most competent, ambitious, and farsighted
person I knew, and though I had a lot of reservations about contacting him
again, I had to do it.

I just hoped he could see me.

I tracked him down through city hall’s computer. I found him living in a
small one-bedroom apartment in the run-down west side of town. Here, amidst the
less well tended residences of the city, the attempts to individualize houses,
duplexes, and apartments were not as visible, not as obvious, and the entire
area seemed especially nondescript. It took three passes for me to even find his
apartment building.

Once I did locate where he lived, I parked on the street and sat for a
few moments in my car, trying to gather up enough courage to knock on the door.
Jane had wanted to come, but I’d vetoed that idea, telling her that Philipe and
I had not parted on the best of terms and that it was probably better if I went
alone. Now I wished that she had come with me. Or at least that I’d called
Philipe ahead of time to let him know that I wanted to see him.

I got out of the car, walked up to apartment 176. I knew if I waited any
longer, I would probably talk myself out of doing it, so I just forced myself to
go up to his door and ring the bell.

My heart was pounding as the door opened, my mouth suddenly drained of
saliva. I took an involuntary step backward.

And there stood Philipe.

My fear disappeared, replaced by a strange, heartrending sense of loss.
The Philipe who stood in the doorway before me was not the Philipe I had known,
not the boundlessly forward-looking man who had recruited me into the
terrorists, not the take-charge leader who had led us through our adventures,
not the crazed delusional psycho of the sandstorm night, not even the defeated
would-be hero who had returned from Washington, D.C. The Philipe who stood
before me was a pathetically average man. No more, no less. The seeker and
searcher who had once seemed so bold and charismatic now looked gray and
nondescript. The brightness was gone from his eyes, the spark that had once
animated his features apparently extinguished. He looked exhausted, and much
older than he had the last time I’d seen him. He was a nobody here in Thompson,
and I could see how that weighed on him.

I tried not to let the shock show on my face. “Hey, Philipe,” I said.
“Long time no see.”

“David,” he said tiredly. “My real name’s David. I just called myself
Philipe.”

My name is not David! It’s Philipe!

“Oh.” I nodded, as if agreeing with him, but there was nothing for me to
agree with. We looked at each other, studied each other. He saw me, I realized.
He noticed me. I was not ignored by him. But that was small consolation. I
wished I had not come.