Rereading it now — now that we've finally got the go-ahead, which gives me the grisly opportunity to have a fresh attack of second, or two-hundred-and-sixty-fourth, thoughts about doing it — what I remember most was how OVERWHELMINGLY shut in and squashed and paranoid it was, Lois' first two years. Even "claustrophobic" sounds kind of loose and easy, compared to what it really was. I know, I said this at the beginning, I said I didn't want to go back there, back to that tiny cramped heavy scared space, I didn't want to have to live through it again to write about it. But it gets worse with time, not better. I can feel the walls leaning on my elbows and my head is suddenly the only thing keeping the ceiling up as I reread what I wrote. Even though mostly things didn't happen, you know? Mostly they were still just days . . . and oh-by-the-way the crazy, appalling obsessiveness of every one of those days. Necessary? Sure. Fascinating? You bet. A fun time? No cheezing way.
I also keep thinking about all the stuff I left out. Maybe I left the wrong things out, you know? Too late now. I can get back there even less now than I could five years ago, and I'm not going to try.
Which reminds me of the conversation I had with Eric after I'd given what I'd written to him to read. He didn't say anything immediately when he gave it back, although that wasn't necessarily a good sign. Eric's got human lately, by the way. He's got a boyfriend. Yup. Boyfriend. He says himself (I told you he'd got human) that it hadn't ever occurred to him that he was gay. He knew he wasn't very interested in girls and then just didn't think about it any more — maybe he was just 100 percent animal oriented — and Smokehill or any place where you're dealing with tourists all the time is not going to improve your opinion of the human race. Then one day Dan kissed him and (he says) it was like . . . oh.
He looked at me and I waited for the blast. It's not like he's not Eric any more, although the expression on his face was a lot more sardonic and a lot less toxic than it would have been before Dan. I tried not to shuffle my feet.
"Yeah, okay," Eric said finally. "Fair's fair. I was pretty much a bastard in those days and I was more of a bastard to you than to most people. But you were . . . bless your little pointed head, you were such a lightning rod for it.
"I don't deny anything you've said in here" — and he gave my manuscript a flap — "but there is other stuff. Like that your self-absorption was way beyond spectacular long before Lois." He brooded, continuing to give the big wodge of manuscript little jerky flips. The middle pages were starting to stick out from the rest. I probably wanted to be mesmerized by this because I didn't want to listen to what he was saying, but I did think about what was going to happen when those middle pages finished slithering out and you know how the harder you grab on to the outside the more of the middle waterfalls out. Maybe Eric and I could bond some more over putting them back in order. I don't think so.
"The best thing about YOU when YOU were a kid was that dog," he said. "That was a really nice dog and you did a really good job with him. So there: was that in your favor. Outside of that . . . you were so convinced you were the center of the universe — and the worst thing was you were right. You were the only child of the directors of the Institute, and the directors of the Institute were the rulers of the only universe that mattered. You bled arrogance like a slug leaves a slime trail."
Eric's way with words.
"Jake, stop staring at your manuscript and look at me," he said, testily. That sounded so much like the old Eric I had to smile. I also looked up. He smiled back, sort of, but it was a pretty steely smile. "I was the grown-up, so I admit it was my fault, and my responsibility, and I didn't do it very well. All right, I did it lousy. And it maybe needed someone like you, someone catastrophically self-absorbed, and someone furthermore who doesn't have a clue about anything but his own strange little world — have you ever had a McDonald's hamburger, for chrissake?"
"Once. I didn't like it."
Eric snorted one of his laughter-substitute snorts. "Well, come to that, I don't like McDonald's food either. But I was twenty-six when I applied for the job here. I'd spent twenty-six years living in cities. Where there are always people everywhere — their noise, their buildings, their garbage — even if you're out in what passes for the country there's a permanent light haze at night from the nearest city and you're still smelling car exhaust. And you can always hear a car on a road somewhere, or your neighbors' TV through the common wall — and your electricity comes on wires from the power station. It may have taken someone like you to raise Lois — to raise a Lois. Someone far enough out of what passes for normal experience to connect with a dragon. That didn't make you a joy to have around."
"A misfit," I said, half involuntarily. I didn't really want to encourage him to keep talking about this, but I couldn't help myself. "A mutant."
"Nothing wrong with your genes," he said, and I remembered that my father was his Staunchest supporter and Mom had actually liked him. "But a misfit, if you like. just as Lois is. And the misfit the two of you have made together is changing the world. And yes, I was jealous, when I got here, watching you. That's the part Martha's got right. If a fairy godmother had offered me the chance to be a misfit like you — to grow up in Smokehill, to know it as the only world there is — I'd have been all over her."
"I do — I don't — I read the news — " I started to say, I started to try to say with some kind of dignity.
"Oh, the news," Eric said, like you might say, Oh, the cat threw up, or Oh, that's chewing gum on the bottom of my shoe. He shook his head. "You've changed. Or I wouldn't be bothering to tell you any of this." He did his laugh-substitute again. "Hell, I admire you now — I wouldn't want to be Jake Mendoza, hero of the universe — anybody designed the logo for your cape yet? Only time I've ever seen anyone with his head that far up his ass just keep on going and come out into the sunlight after all. Wouldn't have said it was possible. All part of the new physics I guess. I'm just saying . . . you were a damned annoying little bastard."
Only half to change the subject, because I also really wanted to know, I said, "When did you figure it out — about Lois?"
Eric looked away — up, down, sideways, as if he was looking for an answer like a lost tool that he must have left around here somewhere. "I can't remember not knowing. But I can't remember some kind of blazing moment of Eureka! It must be that Jake's raising a dragonlet! either. It's such a long time ago. Thank god it's all a long time ago." He went silent and broody again, but this time he wasn't looking at my manuscript, but at me, and worse, he seemed to see what he was looking at. More not-shuffling-feet from Jake. "Do you find it hard to remember, now? To believe that it was as bad as it was?"
I nodded. "Yeah. And I like finding it hard to remember."
"Yeah. Worst for you. . .for you and for Frank, and maybe Billy. It still sucked for all the rest of us. First the dead dragon and the son of a bitch who'd killed her, and — that was enough. And all those ass holes wandering around, with their cheap suits and cheaper attitudes, demanding to know everything, including a lot of stuff they wouldn't be able to get their heads around anyway, but especially not when they'd already decided we were guilty and couldn't prove ourselves innocent. You couldn't turn around without another asshole wanting to know what you were turning around for. And we were guilty of course just not of what they thought they knew.