He knew it was coming. Sighed hard.
I said, “I need your help something awful.”
Long story short, he cleared his afternoon and here we are. Still, he’s not at all psyched. And when he sees Grandpa Razor shuffling in like an old Sasquatch, he really makes it clear this in not a good idea. All raspy in my ear, Dr. Borgo’s like, “This is not the place to be doing something like this. This is totally unhygienic and unsafe.”
“Besides,” he says, “there is no evidence whatsoever this will work.”
Grandpa Razor overhears, moves his head side to side like a robot, and then says, “It might not work, you’re right. I’ve done this three times and there was one time where the lady didn’t wake up for a week. She got something out of it, but it wasn’t like I’d planned. Not really.”
Dr. Borgo gives me this look that suggests we leave immediately.
I tell Borgo to just relax a little. I tell him that, and this is just yet another reminder, I have never seen myself in a coma in the future, so the odds are that even if this doesn’t work it won’t have any serious, lasting effects. I say, “Everything I know points to nothing really bad happening here. Future looks hunky-dory, Doc.”
But Grandpa Razor clears his junky throat. He looks at me, tilts his head disapprovingly. He says, “Janice seems to think that what she and Katrina saw of your future, well, what you saw of your future, is getting not so good. Sure, no coma. But they said the future isn’t nearly as bright as you’re suggesting. I think we can both agree that being in a wheelchair, being a lifetime member of the neurotic club, has a few drawbacks.”
I want to smash this fat guy’s face, but hold back.
Instead, I say, “Tell me how this is going to work.”
Grandpa Razor takes a seat at the head of the table; the chair groans. “You are going to go sleepy and I will be right here, my hands”-and he wave them in the air-“at your temples. I will be eating, this…” He pulls a tin of what looks like canned fish from out of his left pant pocket. “This is something Icelandic, it’s specially prepared shark meat, and I’ll be enjoying it, chewing it very slowly, while you do your thing. Think of this as a human electrical grid. I will boost your abilities, allow you to interact directly with a future. Not sure whose or which one yet.”
“And Jimi’s dad?”
“He, being the psychic troublemaker he is, will, of course, be instantly attracted. You just hanging out in some quasi-liminal space and him just… Look, the details of the procedure don’t really matter, right? What matters is you getting in there and trying to figure out whatever it is you’re trying to figure out.”
“Changing the future.”
Grandpa laughs. Really, it’s more of a burp. He says, “Sure, of course.”
Then he pats at the table with a pudgy paw, says, “Hop on up.”
I do.
It’s now, of course, that Borgo gets really vocal. His hands up, head shaking, he says, nearly shouting, “This isn’t going to work. No. No. No. Not like this, Ade.” And then, turning to me, leaning down, getting close, he says, “Ade, these medications, this setup, it’s not going to get you where you want. I mean, you need a concussion. Just putting you into some drug-induced coma isn’t going to do it. That makes sense, right?”
Grandpa Razor laughs all hearty. “Oh, that won’t be a problem.”
He holds up a billy club. “I’m actually pretty good at this,” Razor says. “Just a quick flick of the wrist and we can knock you down plenty fast and, well, kind of gently.”
I lie down on the table and Dr. Borgo stands over me. He puts in the IV line. He loads up the meds, measuring the doses extra carefully. The needles go in, the needles come out. Almost immediately I feel drowsy. Doubt it works that instantly, but it might. And then Borgo backs up, anxious to the end, and Grandpa Razor appears hovering over me, his face a bearded blimp.
“’Night,” Grandpa says.
And then he whacks me in the temple with his billy club.
THREE
Again with the beach.
Back at Cherry Creek Reservoir.
Looking at the sand, it being night and the place desolate, I tell myself that I’ll never willingly come back here again. I tell myself that not even for a million dollars will I have my feet in this sand another time. Out loud, to the bugs and the lamps hovering over the tennis courts and the sickly lap of water, I say, “I’m thinking this place could really use a massive parking lot.”
And from behind me comes a response. “Wouldn’t help,” the voice says.
Per usual I’m not at all shocked to see Jimi’s dad in his Mexican wrestling mask. He’s standing behind me, hands in the pockets of his white suit pants, and his mask is gold. He says, “What happened here, it’s going to keep happening. Asphalt or not.”
Poppa Ministry’s close. If I slip off my shoe and throw it at him, at this distance, I’d probably get him right in the face. That’s good to know.
I say, “So lay it on me. What do you want?”
Poppa says, “I want to help you.”
“And why couldn’t you help me before? You know, when we were on the beach. The other beach, I mean. The future one.”
“You weren’t ready. Your mind wasn’t.”
“And how’s that?”
“You needed to be clean. Totally clean. I want you to understand, Ade. To see through all the fog, to make sense of this.”
“One of those conversations, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re not a parasite? Some sort of psychic junkie that’s like-”
“Not at all, Ade.”
And Poppa Ministry takes off his mask. There’s a zipper in the back and the sound of it is long and loud. Like a train getting nearer. I brace myself for anything. At this point, I’m expecting him to be melted like a monster or to be a woman. I’m expecting anything but what I actually see.
Poppa Ministry, the masked man, he’s my dad.
Even though I’m not really in the here or the now, even though my body’s lying on a cold table in Grandpa Razor’s filthy basement, I can feel myself physically start wobbling. My knees are broken, not holding me up. My eyes, they just suddenly start watering like I need to sneeze. Only I don’t. Only my heart is overwhelmed.
My dad, it’s him from twenty years ago.
I’ve seen photos of him like this. With his big head of thick dark hair and his thin eyes and his nose, my nose. In the photos he’s smiling and he’s looking beyond the camera, he’s pointing up at the sky, he’s noticing something at his feet, but here on the beach, my young father is looking straight ahead at me. He is not broken. He is not sleeping. He is not dead.
Neither of us move.
The mask sparkles in the sand.
I can’t speak, so he speaks for me.
“I’m sorry to do this to you, Ade. To surprise you this way. I wanted to tell you the very first time, but the connection… It wouldn’t have worked. I had to…” And he pauses; somewhere dark a duck sounds. “You’re in big danger, son. You know what happened on this beach, what Jimi did to his mother. If you kill him, if you come here and let the future play out, it will only make him stronger.”
I summon words. I say, “That sounds awfully fairy tale, Dad.”
He laughs his laugh, the one I grew up with, and says, “I knew this was going to be difficult to explain. I should start by telling you that I’m not who you think I am, that I’m not-”
And I interrupt him, “You can save me the evil-genius speech, Dad. How are you even here? How are you not in a coma right now? How are you, like, almost my age?”
He sits down in the sand, smiles up at me. “I figured out I had an ability when I was just a kid. When I tried really hard and really concentrated, I could send myself out of my body. I could project myself into other people’s heads. See what they could see. Into their dreams and, well, if they had visions of the future or the past or whatever, I could send myself there too.”