"Did you do a lot of drugs?" Phoebe said. "I've had my moments," Tesla said. "Why?"
"Because some of the stuff you come out with-it doesn't make any sense to me." She looked across at Tesla. "Like what you just said, about people thinking they're real. they are. I'm real. You're real. Joe's real."
"How do you know?"
"That's a stupid question," Phoebe said.
"So give me a stupid answer."
"We do stuff. We make things happen. I'm not like... like-" she faltered, searching for some frame of reference, then pointed at one of the coffee sippers, who was sitting on the curb scanning the cartoon strips in the morning's Oregonian. "I'm not in the funny pages. Nobody invented me. I invented myself."
"Just remember that when we get to Quiddity." "Why?"
"Because I think a lot of things got invented there." "Go on."
"And where things are made, they can be unmade. So if something comes after you-"
"I'll tell it to go fuck itself," Phoebe said. "You're ]earnings" Tesia said.
Once they were off Main Street the traffic lightened up considerably, and disappeared completely once they reached the road that wove up the flank of Harmon's Heights. It didn't take them all that far. About a third of the way up the mountainside it came to an unceremonious halt, without so much as a sign or a banier to mark the place. "Damn," Phoebe said. "I thought it went further than this."
"Like all the way to the top?"
"Yeah."
"Looks like we've got quite a hike ahead of us," Tesia said, getting out of the car and staring up the forested slope.
"Are you up for it?"
"No."
"But we're here. We might as well give it a try." And with that, they began their ascent.
In Ws long life, Buddenbaum had met many individuals who had tired of the human parade. People who had gone to their death with a shrug, content that they no longer had to witness the same old dramas played out over and over again. He had never understood the response. Though the general shapes of human exchange were unchanging, the particulars of this personality or that made each new example fascinating in and of itself In his experience no two mothers ever educated their children with quite the same mingling of kisses and slaps. No two pairs of lovers ever trod quite the same path to the altar or to the grave.
In truth, he pitied the nay-sayers; the souls too stunted or too narcissistic to revel in the magnificent minutiae that the human drama had to offer. they were turning their backs on a show that divinities were not too proud to patronize and applaud. He'd heard them with these ears, many times.
Despite the fact that his body knitted together with extraordinary speed
(in a week his defenestration would be an embarrassing memory), he was still in very considerable discomfort. Later, perhaps, when the avatars had arrived and he was certain everything was in hand, he'd take a little laudanum. In the meanwhile, his chest hurt like the Devil and he had a distinct limp, which gained him some unwarranted attention as he made his way out in search of a decent breakfast. It would be inappropriate, he decided, to go to the diner, so he found a little coffee shop two blocks from his hotel and sat by the window to eat and watch.
He ordered not one but two breakfasts, and consumed the better part of both in preparation for the exertions and lastminute panics ahead. His eyes scarcely strayed to his plates as he emptied them. He was too busy watching the faces and hands of the passersby, looking for some sign of his employers. It was by no means certain they would come in human garb, of course. Sometimes (he never knew when) they would descend out of the clouds wreathed in light: the wheels of Ezekiel rolling into view. Twice they'd come in the form of animals, amused, he supposed, by the conceit of watching the drama from the perspective of wild beasts or lap dogs. The one way they had never come was as themselves, and after years of doing them service he'd given up hope of ever seeing their true faces. Perhaps they had none. Perhaps the plethora of faces they put on, and their appetite for vicarious experience, were evidence that they had neither lives nor flesh of their own.
"was everything okay?"
He looked round to see his waitress standing at his side. He had not taken too much notice of her until now, but she was a wonderful sight: hair raised in a vivid orange hive, breasts rampant, face daubed and drawn and dusted.
"You're looking forward to something today, I can see that," Buddenbaum remarked.
"Tonight," she said, with a flutter of her mascaraed lashes.
"Why do I think it's not a prayer meeting?" Buddenbaum replied.
"We always throw a little party Festival Weekend, me and some of my girlfriends."
"Well that's what festivals are for, isn't it?" Buddenbaum said.
"Everybody has to let their hair down@r put it u@nce in a while."
"Do you like it?" the woman said, patting the hive affectionately.
"I think it's extraordinary," Buddenbaum said, without a word of a lie.
"Well thank you," the woman beamed. She dug in the pocket of her apron, and pulled out a little sheet of paper. "If you feel like dropping in," she said, proffering the paper. On it was an address and a simple map.
"We have these little invites made, just for the chosen few."
"I'm flattered," Buddenbaum said. "My name's Owen, by the way."
"I'm pleased to meet you. I'm June Davenport. Miss."
The addendum could not be ignored politely. "I can't believe you haven't had offers," Buddenbaum said. "None worth accepting," June replied.
"Who knows? Maybe tonight'll be your lucky night," Owen said. A
lifetime of yearning crossed the woman's face. "It better be soon," she said, more lightly than it was -felt, and moved off to ply the needy with coffee.
was there anything more beautiful, Owen wondered as he left the coffee shop, than a sight of yearning on the human face? Not the night sky nor a boy's buttocks could compare with the glory of June Davenport (Miss)
dolled up like a whore and hoping to meet the man of her dreams before time ran out. He'd seen tale enough for a thousand nights of telling there on her painted face. Roads taken, roads despised. Deeds undone, deeds regretted.
And tonight@d every moment between now and tonight-more roads to choose, more deeds to do. She might be turning her head even now, or now, or now, and seeing the face she had longed to love. Or, just as easily, looking the other way.
As he made his way down towards the intersection, where-Aespite the previous day's encounter-he still intended to keep watch, he chanced to look up towards Harmon's Heights. There was a mist cloud gathering on the summit, he saw, hiding it from view. The sight gave him pause. The sky, but for this mist, was flawless, which made him think it was not of natural origin.
was this the way his employers would come: down out of a clouded mountaintop, like Olympians? He'd not seen them do so before, but there was a first time for everything. He only hoped they wouldn't be too baroque with their theatrics. If they came into Everville like blazing deities, they'd clear the streets.
Then who'd go to June Davenport's party?
The mist had not gone unnoticed in other quarters. Dorothy Bullard had called up Turf Thompson, whose meteorological opinion she'd long trusted, for some reassurance that the cloud wasn't going to dump rain on the day's festivities. He told her not to worry. The phenomenon was odd, to be sure, but he was certain there was no storm in the offing.
"In fact," he remarked, "if I didn't know better I'd say that was a sea mist up there."
Comforted by his observations, Dorothy went on with the business of the morning. The first of the day's special events-a little pageant about how the first settlers came to Oregon, enacted by Mrs. Henderson's fourth-graders in the park, got underway ten minutes later than advertised, but drew a crowd of perhaps two hundred, which was very gratifying. And the kids were completely enchanting, with their little bonnets and their cardboard rifles, declaiming their lines as though their lives depended on it. There was a particularly affecting scene created around one Reverend Whitney (Dorothy had never heard of him, but she was certain Fiona Henderson had done her homework and the tale was true), who had apparently led a group of pioneers out of the winter snows to the safety of the Willamette Valley. Seeing Jed Gilholly's son Matthew, who was playing the good reverend, forging through a blizzard of paper scraps to plant a cross in the grass and give thanks for the deliverance of his flock quite misted Dorothy's eyes.