Something clicked. “Wait. That's…"
“That, dear Collective is the same address I scribbled on a paper towel and stuffed between the breasts of Ms. Farrell. Do I have to explain everything to you?"
“I think so."
Fieldman laughed. “Of course I have to explain it to you, because you haven't been there yet, but you will be. 473 Winding Way is Susannah Winston's hideaway. Richard gave her the keys in case of an emergency. That's where she'll run."
And that's where Alison was going to run. And now, Leah Farrell. And undoubtedly, Ray Loogan. A Woody Creek reunion. I was forced to agree with Buddha. It had to admit it was brilliant, from a vengeance-is-mine point of view.
Up on the screen: Brad trying to make his way through the crowd. Along a few of the more popular tables, nobody was budging. Standing in line for twenty minutes for a free Dixie Cup full of booze had the Philadelphia socialites returning to their baser instincts. They weren't letting anybody through. Finally, after making his way around the long way, Brad found Alison. She had been standing in a corner, eating Jell-O from a cup with a plastic spoon. “Alison."
She looked up at him and smiled. “I want to go to bed, Brad."
“I know, sweetie. There's something we've got to do first. Then we can leave."
“Back to our house? Back to California?"
“Right back home, sweetie."
I'd been in their home-or at least a memory of their home-not too many hours ago. A comfortable place. I'm sure Alison was desperate to go back there, maybe burn some incense, roll herself up in a thick quilt, and fall asleep for about 10 years in a climate-controlled room. She never wanted to leave it in the first place, but Brad had insisted on the trip to Woody Creek, Illinois, to the “vacation cottage” by the river so he could finish his dissertation on John Donne. She'd gone along, not expecting to have someone knock at their door and her life to change in five abrupt seconds. Funny, the things you could intuit about someone after you've lived through their death.
Brad led Alison by the hand and headed back through the feeding frenzy. Along the way, he grabbed a couple of crackers and hunks of mozzarella cheese-Alison was still hungry. They made their way toward the museum's main entrance, which closed to the public for tonight's party, but served as a shortcut to the Ben Franklin Parkway, where they could easily find a cab to take them to 473 Winding Way.
It was an ornate set-up; three marble staircases, one leading down to the front glass doors, and two twins leading to a second floor. Brad paused to take it all in. I supposed there was no hurry now-why not soak up a bit of culture with the wife? All the pieces were falling into place; Brad Larsen simply needed to catch a cab out to the suburbs, stash Alison somewhere safe, then watch the fun ensue.
“Hello, Paul,” said a voice.
Much to our collective surprise, Susannah was standing on the staircase to the left. And aiming a pistol at us.
No, Fieldman muttered.
Brad thought fast. “I was looking for you. I wanted to see if you were all right.” Alison touched his arm and shot him a look-you know, one of those wife looks.
“Stop it,” Susannah said. “Just stop it. No more insults, no more games. One call to Richard and your life is over."
“This is none of Richard Gard's business."
Susannah paused, as if she were turning something over in her head. “I suppose you're right. This is between you and me, isn't it?"
“Right,” Brad repeated. “You and me."
“And her.” Susannah lifted the pistol slightly, and pulled the trigger. The bullet caught Alison high in the chest-not quite her throat, though not exactly at her heart. The impact knocked her down to the marble floor.
Blind fury ripped through Brad. I could feel the Brain Hotel quake.
“This is not going to be good,” Fieldman told me. Those were the first words to pass his lips that I ever completely believed.
Susannah lowered the pistol to her hip and laughed-a hollow, high-octave chirp. “It's better this way, Paul. I don't think she could have withstood the shock of hearing about how I sucked your dick last night."
Brad launched forward, ready to rip the woman's flesh from her bones.
Susannah took careful aim and shot Brad in the head. As awful as it must have been, I'm sure this was nowhere near as painful-I would assume-as seeing your wife killed. Again.
The view on the lobby screen flipped back and around. With a start, I realized that I wasn't a detached observer. Shit-I was shot in the head, too!
“Take this thing out of my chest and let me up,” I said in the most commanding voice I could muster.
“I can't do that, Collective,” Fieldman said.
“If you don't let me up, we're all dead."
“We're already dead."
Up on the lobby screen, Susannah Winston's face came into fuzzy view. Amazingly, our eyes were still transmitting, but our ears weren't. She was saying something I couldn't make out. Probably something nasty. Not to have sympathy for the devil, or anything, but I couldn't help but wonder what Susannah made of all of this. The poor woman was probably never going to trust another man for as long as she lived.
“You'll feel the fire, wench,” Fieldman said to the lobby screen with an unusual intensity.
Susannah walked off-screen.
Twenty-Four
H-Bomb in Vegas
Within minutes the Brain Hotel lobby was reduced to chattering chaos. Souls started flooding into the room, throwing a million questions at me. Tucked away in their own apartments, absorbed in their own pursuits, I guess they all had felt the shot to our collective head. I tried to explain things to everyone, even with the metal gizmo still lodged in my chest, which nobody seemed to notice. “Listen, everybody,” I said. “If we're all going to live, we're going to have to seize the body back from Brad."
“Not-gonna-happen,” Fieldman said in a sing-songy voice.
“Where's Paul?” Doug asked.
“Paul is dead,” I explained.
“That was a goddamned hoax,” a voice from the back cried out. “You've been listening to that Walrus song too much."
“Shut up, Tom,” somebody else said.
“Tell me one thing, buddy-boy.” It was Special Agent Kevin Kennedy. I hadn't spoken to him for eight months. He'd been lounging in his own retirement resort ever since I'd gotten him-or at least, his memory-in serious trouble with the Feds. Maybe his keen, analytical mind had noticed something important, something I'd overlooked.
“What's that?” I asked.
“How long before we all die and get out of this weird mental hell?"
I decided to go back to ignoring him.
Fieldman looked over the crowd of worried souls and lifted his arms like a priest giving a blessing. “Becalm yourselves! You must realize all of this is a computer simulation programmed to contain your immortal souls! We do not exist in real time! We are in no danger!"
“Shut up, asshole"-or a similar sentiment-was the collective reply.
I checked the lobby screen. A crowd of magazine staffers and drunken lawyers and floozies from steno pools across Center City-basically, anybody with an excuse to be here-started pouring down the stairs. Among them was Leah, who took one look at our bleeding body, then kept walking, a tiny smile on her face.
It was a surreal moment. A crowd of souls in an artificially-constructed hotel lobby within a single human brain, watching a crowd of the living-completely unaware they themselves were being watched-mediated by the body of a man with a massive head wound. I would have spent time pondering it, had my body not been fading away so fast.