Travellers in Magic (29 page)

“Find the next piece and push the button,” the voice said. And the next piece, and the next, and so on until she died. What
right
did the voice have? She deserved to know. She would go to the post office, she would confront them, him or her, and … and … And what? She couldn't think, could only hear the pounding of her heart. After I find this next piece, she thought. No, she thought. Do it now.

Before she could change her mind she picked up her purse and left the apartment. She looked up at the sky, the myriad stars, and felt a little safer. Nothing bad could happen to her beneath that bright canopy. She got in the car and turned the key.

When she heard the voice she thought she would die. It was true, then: the voice watched her at every moment, knew exactly what she was up to. She waited for her punishment. The voice repeated three times before she heard the words. “Go to Main Street and push the button,” it said. The voice thought it was morning! She felt silly with relief. The voice thought it was morning and was sending her to the supermarket. The voice was stupid, stupider than she'd ever hoped. Escape was easy. Why hadn't she done this before?

She drove away from the curb before she realized the voice wasn't going to tell her what to do next. She had to figure out her own itinerary. She thought of all the streets in the city, most of which she had never seen, separating and coming together in a great maze. What if she just drove away, threading through the city endlessly, timing herself by the dashboard clock to return in an hour? What if she got lost? The thought made her giddy. Then she remembered her determination. She thought she could find the way to the bank, and the post office, the woman at the bank had said, was just around the corner.

The city looked strange at night, different, as though it had another life. Two cars flashed their lights at her, on and off, on and off, before she realized she hadn't turned the car's lights on. She missed two turns and had to backtrack, once for fifteen minutes, spellbound by the dark night and the lights of the city, like stars scattered on Earth.

The post office was dark when she finally found it. No, she thought, despairing. I didn't know. It's not fair. She got out of the car to make sure. The post office was closed. She peered through the window, trying to see something in the gloom, then read the hours painted on the glass door, 9-5 Monday through Friday, 9-12 Saturday.

That teller must be crazy, she thought. How could I watch the post office during the day, every day this week? Doesn't she think I work? She went back to the car and sat for a long time. She felt frustrated, blocked at every turn. The voice was far too clever for her. So what if she had escaped it for a night? The voice would have her back. She was still a prisoner.

The depression came on her again, and this time she couldn't stop it by following the voice's instructions. She started the car and headed home. “Go to Main Street and push the button,” the voice said. Shut up, she thought. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

The man from the apartment next door was outside again when she drove up. “Hi,” he said when she got out of the car.

“Hi,” she said.

“This heat is amazing, isn't it?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. He seemed to want more from her. “It's really something,” she said.

“You know, on nights like this I just want to get away,” he said. “Just get into my car and drive. You know what I mean?”

She stared at him. He had said exactly what she was thinking. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I know.”

“Where would you go?” he said. “If you could. Anywhere at all.”

That was a hard one. She only knew the city, and the names of a few other cities she had seen while typing addresses. But which one should she say? Maybe a city from a billboard. She didn't want him to think she was stupid. He already thinks you're stupid, she thought. Most people don't take this long answering a simple question. Look at the expression on his face. She thought of their conversation last night and said finally, looking at the stars, “Up there?”

He laughed. “I'm with you,” he said. “I'm Russ, by the way. Your new neighbor. And you?”

“Vivian,” she said, since he had given only one name. Maybe he only had one.

“Okay, Vivian,” he said. “I'll see you around.”

“Bye,” she said. She went into her apartment. “Find the next piece and push the button,” the voice said immediately. She closed the door quickly, hoping he hadn't heard.

The voice got her to bed at eleven and then stopped. From eleven to seven in the morning was her time, time to think lazily and to dream. She usually fell asleep after about fifteen minutes. Tonight she wondered if she would sleep at all.

Lying there in the dark she called up a picture of Russ. Did he think she was good-looking? She had only one mirror, a small hand-held one, and what she had seen in it was discouraging. She was too pale, especially in comparison with the women on the billboards, and there was something else wrong with her face—it was too square, maybe, or too angular. The voice had never let her buy the advertised cosmetics and she didn't know what to do with them if it had.

He had liked her answer, though. What had he said? I'm going too. No, he'd said, I'm with you. She sat upright in bed as a new idea came to her. What if he had meant just that, that he was with her? What if he was from the stars, from the stars like she was, and he had come to take her home? In that case she had said exactly the right thing. But when would he take her? Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. She saw a group of people on a large ship, standing and talking and laughing, and one of them saying, “But what are they like? What are people on Earth like?” And she would laugh and say, “They're so strange. You wouldn't believe it. They have expressions like, ‘It's really something.' I mean, what does that mean?”

But the man—Russ—had taught her that expression. So he couldn't be from the stars, could he? She had invented the whole thing, and only because—because she didn't want to think about her other new theory. That she had set up the voice. That she was jailer and prisoner both. And that—even more terrifying—if she had set it up she could stop it. There was nothing to prevent her from never following the voice's commands again.

She drifted toward sleep. “I'm with you,” the man had said. “I just want to get away. Just get into my car and drive … Where would you go?”

She awoke the next day feeling profoundly different. I did it, she thought. Last night. I really did it. I got away. When the voice told her to wear her brown suit she put on her red dress instead and pushed the button. The voice calmly went on to the next instruction. She cooked her egg for five minutes instead of three. I can do it, she thought. Look, I'm doing it.

She felt dizzy with freedom. I'm going to go, she thought. I'm going to escape. Today. She had to stop, to rest her head on the coffee table, before the trembling would go away. Maybe last night Russ had given her a message from the people who lived on the stars. Just get away, he'd said. It was a little like the voice's instructions, but not as specific. And probably Russ is just some guy who's moved next door, she thought, but I need to believe he's giving me instructions. Just for now. I don't know if I can make it on my own.

She stepped outside. I can go
anywhere,
she thought. At the thought she nearly turned and went back inside the apartment, but she forced herself to go on. When she passed Russ's apartment she wanted to stop, to knock on his door and see if he had more instructions for her, something more specific. Instead she went to the car and got in.

“Go to Main Street and push the button,” the voice said as she started the car. She laughed out loud. She had known the voice was going to say that, but the voice hadn't known that she knew it. The voice was stupid, stupider than she was.

She turned the car around in a neighbor's driveway and headed toward Main Street. No, wait, she thought, panicking. What am I doing? Her hand reached out to push the button. “Turn left on Main Street and drive until Eleventh Street,” the voice said, “and push the button.” All right, she thought. I'll go to the supermarket and get on the freeway near there. She hoped she would do it. Panic was guiding her moves now, and she was no longer as certain as she was this morning. She gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Turn left on Eleventh Street,” the voice said, “park at the supermarket and push the button.” She drove on, watching the supermarket come up closer and closer on the right. Her hands on the steering wheel were clenched, bloodless. Russ wants you to do this, she thought. No.
I
want to do this. She passed the supermarket and turned onto the freeway.

For a moment she thought the strange noise she heard was the voice. Then she realized she was crying, crying and laughing both. “Turn left on Eleventh Street,” the voice said. She hit the button, hit it again and again, listening in wonder as the voice measured out day after day she would not have to live. She drove on, into the unimaginable future.

A
FTERWORD

The idea for “Daily Voices” came to me on a very long trip after my car radio had failed. I like stories in which some limiting paradigm is transcended, stories where the character, by redefining his or her obstacles, reaches some other level of reality.

A G
AME OF
C
ARDS

The doorbell rang at seven. Rozal looked through the peephole and saw two guests framed as in a picture, a woman with short brown hair and a tall gangly man carrying a bottle of wine. Helen and Keith—they'd been at the house before. Rozal opened the door.

“Beautiful house,” Helen said, coming in and slipping off her coat. Rozal nodded, not sure how to take this. Of course they knew the house belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Hobart.

She hung the coats in the closet; they had a faint perfume scent, and the smell that water brings out in wool. Was it raining, then? In the bustle that surrounded the preparations for dinner Rozal had not been able to go outside all day.

Helen paused at the framed mirror in the entryway and patted her hair. Keith scowled and grinned at his reflection, as if resigned to what he saw. The bottle of wine hung from his hand as though attached to it; he seemed to have forgotten it was there. Rozal watched as they made their way through the thick off-white carpet in the living room, leaving footprints as they went. The carpet had been vacuumed just minutes before the party and would have to be vacuumed again tomorrow.

She couldn't resist a quick glance in the mirror herself. Most Americans took her for older than her twenty-four years, but then most Americans looked far younger than their actual age. Her hair and eyes were brown and her complexion dark; they had called her skin “olive” at the immigration office, and she had looked the word up as soon as she got home, but she'd been none the wiser. She smiled at the reflection; she had not looked so healthy, so plump, in many years.

The doorbell rang and she hurried to answer it. A young blond woman stood on the doorstep, Carol, another frequent visitor to the house. As soon as Rozal hung up her coat she heard the bell again. This time when she opened the door she saw a good-looking dark young man, balancing on the balls of his feet in impatience. He had an amused, quizzical expression, as if he had put on a face to greet Mrs. Hobart.

Rozal had never seen him in the house before but she recognized him immediately from the movies she watched on her days off. He looked shorter than she would have expected. He said something to her in Spanish but she smiled and shook her head: no, she was not Spanish.

Mrs. Hobart had seated Keith and Helen and Carol on the sectional couch, and now rose to greet the new arrival. “Steve!” she said. “So glad you could make it.”

“Drinks!” Mr. Hobart said, coming into the living room and clapping his hands. Carol called for something Rozal didn't catch. Keith stood to hand over his bottle of wine and Mr. Hobart pretended to be angry at him; somehow it had been both right and wrong for Keith to bring the wine.

At a signal from Mrs. Hobart Rozal hurried through the dining room to the kitchen for the appetizers. The kitchen was at least ten degrees hotter than the living room: both ovens were on and the cook had set a teakettle on the stove for tea. Rozal nodded to the cook, who sat on a high stool near the stove and fanned herself with a magazine, but the other woman seemed not to notice her. There was some question of status between her and the cook that Rozal did not quite understand.

Rozal took the tray of appetizers out of the refrigerator and went back to the living room. The party had already divided itself into groups: Mrs. Hobart was deep in conversation with Steve, waving her cigarette smoke away from his face, and Keith and Helen sat a little uncomfortably on the couch next to Carol. “And what do you do?” Keith asked. His face was too long, and his jaw and forehead protruded a little.

“Keith!” Helen said, and leaned to whisper something in his ear. Rozal offered them an appetizer, trying not to look amused. She had seen Carol come up to the house and talk to Mr. Hobart; money and small plastic bags were exchanged. “I thought she had something to do with video,” Keith said, unrepentant. Carol laughed, and after a while Helen joined in.

Rozal returned to the kitchen for more appetizers. As she passed the wet bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room she heard a voice raised in anger, and she glanced around quickly. In the three months she had been with the Hobarts she had learned that though they rarely became angry it was best to pay attention when they did. But the shouting she heard was not directed at her. Mr. Hobart sat at the bar, speaking to someone on the phone.

“I just want to know where he is,” Mr. Hobart said. “No, he isn't here—that's why I called you. Well, how the hell should I know where he is?”