The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (43 page)

Leland snatched Jack’s hand in a
tight claw, catching him with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. “If I
don’t belong here, get me out.”

“I can’t. It’s out of my hands now.
You wanted the right to choose, remember? Well, now you have it. Choose to stay
and the fracture will close, leaving you stuck here until the day you die. And
I wasn’t lying about that bowel thing. Or you can follow the advice of a little
girl who’s going to die shortly if you don’t hurry.”

“What?”

“You’re running out of time, Mr.
Quince. The only one who knows where you’re supposed to go and how you’re
supposed get there is about to cross the street a little too abruptly. She
won’t look both ways because she thinks the car will have the good sense to
stop for a red light. She’s only seven, and she doesn’t yet realize that
reality seldom does what you expect it to do. She’ll die, and with her, your
only way out. But it’s your choice, Mr. Quince.”

Leland’s lip curled into a snarl.
“This is so typical of you, Jack. You talk all about your second chance, but
that’s just another word for running away. That’s all you did; all you’ve ever
done. You run away. The Saloon wasn’t an opportunity for you to fulfill your
dream. It was just an excuse to run away from a shitty life that you were
failing at. But instead of trying to fix it, you ran away, just like you always
have. And now you’re taking it out on me.”

“No, Mr. Quince. I chose the Saloon
over my old life, and I’m letting you choose as well: save her or don’t. Stay
or don’t. You know the stakes. Keep all of this, or try for what’s behind door
number two. But don’t take too long to figure it out.” The Caretaker tapped the
watch crystal meaningfully. “You have less than two minutes.”

Leland glared accusingly at Jack, his
hand folding over the watch. “You call this a choice?”

“Yes. The problem is you see choices
too narrowly. You think a choice is filet mignon or Chilean sea bass. A choice
can be as simple as whether you eat, or whether you starve. All choices have
motivations behind them that make the options unequal. Sometimes, they hardly
feel like choices at all. But they always are.”

“You’re fucking insane!”

“I doubt it. But you really are
running out of time.” Jack returned to his half-finished breakfast, remarking
only, “Fifty seconds, Mr. Quince. Time’s wastin’.”

Leland rose slowly, skull throbbing,
an overwhelming urge to start bashing the young man with his fists, to beat the
smugness from his face, to beat him like he had been beaten. The Caretaker was
twisting him around like a puppet, playing with him, trying to break his spirit
like an insolent child breaking so much expensive china. And what he hated most
about it all was the deep-rooted sense that Jack was right, that Jack
understood him, knew what he wanted, what he needed, and what it would take to
break him. Jack had cut him open, spread him out like a book, and read his
secrets, saw all of his flaws. He had found the way in through Leland’s armor
to the things Leland hated and feared most: mediocrity, poverty, helplessness,
powerlessness. Leland’s secret demons, Jack sentencing him to an eternity of
life with them as his tormentors, furies who would dog his miserable life to an
indigent’s grave. Leland Quince wanted to beat Jack to death, plain and simple,
not for doing this to him, but simply for knowing this about him.

The watch in his fist cut at his
palm.

“Fifteen seconds,” Jack said
absently, shoveling up a gravy-laden biscuit trimmed in sticky yellow egg.

Leland fled the diner, turned left,
and ran.

Through the glass he saw the booth
where he sat with Jack only a second ago. It was empty; the Caretaker was gone
as if he had never been.

*     *     *

She stood on the edge of the
sidewalk, a little girl with dark, curly hair staring at the
DON’T WALK
sign across the street. Leland tried
to shout, tell her to wait, but running a block left his lungs aching and
turned his words weak and non-specific. He could not even remember her name. It
was on the tip of his tongue only a moment ago, but no longer. The world fell
out of step, the second hand no longer its regular rhythm, but one degrading,
slowing, running down. The world was caught in a thick molasses that made it
all draw out before him, each movement, each moment, a lifetime typified by
desperate inadequacy.

The traffic light blazed a stark
amber color. The
DON’T WALK
sign flashed red. The little girl—
what the hell was her name? Think,
damn it! Think
! —stared down at her feet, or maybe something in the gutter.
A car sped towards the intersection, polished black with gleaming chrome trim
that glinted small arrows of early morning light.

The signal changed to red, naked and
accusing.

Across the intersection, the sign
changed to
WALK
.

The little girl—
Lindsay! Her name
is Lindsay
! —looked up at the sign across the street as if startled from a
daydream, and started forward.

The Mercedes zoomed through the first
second of the red light without slowing. It all seemed so clear now: the
trademark insignia, wide silent tires; good for traction and reduced road
noise. She wouldn’t hear it. The driver behind the tinted windshield, cell
phone cradled between his head and shoulder, distracted; he wore dark glasses,
useless in the early morning twilight. Did he see the red light or the little
girl? Did he care?

A car blew its horn—
too late!
—and
the girl stopped, looked up.

Leland sprang from the sidewalk,
nearly colliding with a metal light post as he leapt straight at Lindsay and
the onrushing car. He snagged the back of her coat with one hand and pivoted,
literally throwing her at the curb, his own momentum carrying him into the path
of the oncoming car.

The black car swerved, its side
mirror striking him from behind, knocking him to the gutter. He sucked air
painfully, wondering exactly what differentiated the pain of broken ribs from
that of a ruptured kidney.
I’ve changed my mind, Jack. I don’t want this.

The Mercedes skidded to a halt and
the driver stepped out: crisp white shirt, vermilion tie, useless shades, a
cell phone in his hand momentarily forgotten. “What the fuck is wrong with
you?”

Leland glared venomously at the man,
unable to reply as he tried to catch his breath. Suddenly, this was
his
fault?

“You ran a red light you stupid
jerk,” Lindsay hollered from behind, a child’s shrill, petulant complaint.
Leland turned and saw her, her eyes glistening with tears of pain, anger and
fright. Her mouth was set in a firm pout that might just as quickly dissolve into
hysterical sobbing. She was rubbing one elbow and there was a very small cut on
her forehead that trickled a thin line of red towards her left cheek.

The man from the Mercedes stared at
her a moment, his mouth reduced to a narrow, indecisive crease. A horn blatted
from the car rounding the corner into the newly blocked lane, the driver
gesturing angrily at the Mercedes man, a pantomime of impotent obscenities.
Leland rose, a little unsteadily, glaring at the Mercedes driver whose
discomfort over the rapidly devolving situation was growing more apparent.

Finally, in what Leland guessed was
an effort to save face, the Mercedes driver yelled, “Look before crossing the
street next time.” Then he ducked into his car and punched the accelerator,
tires screeching as he pulled away. The new car followed without stopping, and
fifteen seconds after it began, it was over, leaving only the wounded behind to
testify.

“He woulda killed me if you hadn’t
pulled me outta the way,” Lindsay said, coming over to him. “Are you okay?”

Leland hunched over, hands on his
knees, sucking deep, painful breaths. The agony in his right side had
diminished a little, less sharp than a broad flower of anguish. He would
probably live—
if you called being run down and left in a gutter living?

“Mr. Quince?”

Jack said she knew the way out of
this madness, but what did that mean? What was he supposed to do? “What?”

“Thank you.”

He looked back at her, sucking at the
tattered inside of his lower lip. She’d obviously been hurt when he threw her
out of the way, but she didn’t cry. He admired that. He didn’t cry when the car
hit him, and she didn’t cry either. “Are you badly hurt?”

“I hit my head,” she replied. “But I
think its okay. You?”

“I think I’ll be all right. Come on.
Help get me out of the street before some other asshole tries to finish what
that guy started. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Uh-huh.” She placed an arm around
his waist, little more than a steadying effort; she was too small for anything
more.

“‘Cause your head’s bleeding.”

She placed a hand to her forehead and
winced, the small cut already slowed to a few tiny, jewel-like beads of blood.
She took her fingers away, examining the red smear between her thumb and index
finger. “I’m okay,” she repeated mechanically, and for no reason he could
fathom, sucked the blood from her fingers.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got a first
aid kit in my cab.”

She nodded and together they walked
down the street in silence. A dented, metal box was under the cab’s passenger
seat, a red cross painted on the lid. It was exactly where he knew it would be.
And the realization of that fact made him want to run away screaming. How easy
it would be to slip into this reality, accept this new role as his own, these
new thoughts as his own, even as his former life—his real life—screamed in
agony over the sufferings it was forced to endure, and the slow, agonizing
death that was overtaking it. Leland Quince, Wall Street’s Wrecking Ball, was
dying the long, painful death, the erosion of his being, a consumption of his
identity. And when that body was dead and gone, he would be left with Leland
“Quincey” Quince, cab driver and professional loser. There would be nothing
else then but blind, bitter acceptance, and dreams that would drive him awake
in the middle of the night, screaming.

But Lindsay could save him; Jack
promised she would.

Seated in the open door, feet
swinging, she sat patiently while he fumbled with some topical ointment that
looked like black axle grease. He daubed it into the cut, then covered it with
the smallest bandage he had in the battered tin, one that would cover the cut
and pull the least amount of hair later when it needed to be changed.

Who are you?
he heard a voice asking over and
over in his mind. A firm, angry voice. The voice of a winner that could not
stomach losers. The voice of success that did not tolerate failure. The voice
of a former life very much afraid that the future held no place for him.
Who
are you?

“Is that better?”

She nodded.

He stood up and had to steady himself
against the cab. His legs ached from crouching, his right kidney felt like
someone had punched it repeatedly, and he could still feel the agony in his
groin if he moved wrong.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Mr.
Quince?”

He sucked several slow, careful
breaths. “No, I don’t think so. But I will be. I hope so, anyway.” Jack said
there was a better place than this, a better
reality
than this. One more
suited to him. Not easy, but more to his liking. And only one person could tell
him where it was. “Lindsay?”

“What?”

“Do you know where we’re supposed to
go from here?”

She shrugged. “Sort of.”

Leland scowled almost as a reflex,
and hoped belatedly that she would mistake it for a grimace of pain. “What does
‘sort of’ mean? Do you know where we’re going? What we’re looking for?”

“I know … a little,” Lindsay
confessed unhappily, searching for words that could more precisely describe the
nature of her
understanding
. But there weren’t any, and what she found
would only upset Mr. Quince. “I don’t know exactly where we have to be. Not yet.
I just know which direction we have to head in.”

Leland nodded, closing the passenger
door and circling around the taxicab. He climbed in, a slow process so as not
to aggravate any existing pains, and looked at the little girl’s expectant
face. “So, what way now?”

She looked away, face tight with
concentration as if she was trying to wrestle something from memory. “We need
to go south.”

“South?”

She nodded.

“South,” he repeated, and started
working a knot of pain with his thumb and forefinger that felt like a nail
driven straight between his eyes and left to rust. “And which way is south?”

Lindsay looked down the street where
the glimmering disk of overcast sun lazed in the new sky, gray clouds already
sweeping across the horizon to obscure it from view. “Go to the corner and turn
right.”

Leland looked ahead to the sun,
feeling like an idiot. If he had thought for even a moment, he would have
remembered the points of a compass: he was facing the sunrise; south was to his
right. He had been shown up by a seven-year old; a smart, defiant seven-year
old with an understanding of how to escape this nightmare they were trapped in.