"It's a long fucker of a story," she said again. "Your daughter's gonna be okay, but you need some work. Maybe a staple on that gash. You opened yourself up there pretty good."
"Yes," he said. "I did."
She paused, looking at him speculatively. "Shit, maybe I oughta tell you. While you're still too toxed to get frantic."
She had gotten to the part about Mexico when the police arrived.
20
The brain feels no pain.
Who had said that-Frank Sinatra or the Beater? Jim Morrison or Visual Mark? Mozart, or Canadaytime? The Living Sickle Orchestra… or that strange red-headed doctor?
Her mind turned fitfully like some sleeping giant in the grip of a dream about to become real. Real dreams.
Come along with me.
When was I ever not there for you?
There was a pause long enough to live and die in. Her point of view panned very slowly to the left and came to rest on her own face. Somehow it wasn't a shock to find she was looking at herself, because it wasn't her point of view. The taste of Mark was in her mind, and it was a taste, not a feeling, not a sense of presence, not a physical pressure but a taste.
She heard the scream of a jumper lifting off vertically, but the sound was muffled. Her point of view was still fixed on herself; she looked a little sour, she thought.
I didn't think you'd come. Mark's voice, addressing her. She saw her face shift its attention to him, or rather, to her new point of view.
I did, she saw herself say. I got them Bad Old Cosmic C-Word Blues Again.
His confusion was a light metallic something on her palate. What does 'c-word' mean?
It means continuing to believe even when you don't feel it. Not letting go even when you can't find squat to hold onto. Going all the way from the beginning to the end.
The scene melted away, leaving her in darkness. She became aware belatedly of an ache in her head-several aches in various spots-gone as soon as she thought of it, and then someone's voice, coming out of nowhere:
ATTENTION, GINA.
"Right, she mumbled. "You don't have to shout."
SORRY. YOU'LL GET USED TO IT. PLEASE CONCENTRATE.
We've been through this one before.
PLEASE MAKE A BOX.
"What kind of box?" she asked.
A SMALL CUBE. PLEASE VISUALIZE A SMALL CUBE. There was a pause, and she had a sense of someone speaking in another room, just beyond her hearing. PLEASE VISUALIZE A SMALL CUBE.
She obeyed, and the cube was there in front of her in the blackness. Somewhere people were applauding. She could not hear it, but she knew.
MAKE ANOTHER, requested the voice. There was a taste of plastic and metal. She obeyed again, and the requests went on, becoming more complicated, until the blackness had filled, overflowed, and filled again; still, she went on.
"We're going to play some music now, Gina. We'd like you to just let your mind go with it the same way you would if you were creating a video for it. All right?"
Video?
First you see video…
"All right?"
Video-
Then you wear video…
"All right?"
Video…
Then you eat video…
"Just run with it. Let the pictures come. All right?"
Video.
Then you … be…
It came easy, nothing too active but strong, a good, fine beat. This was an old one, one she'd heard not too long ago, or a hundred years ago, in a graveyard. Live music, remember it? Nothing like live music, nothing like it.
The Beater went past, whirling like a dervish, a younger version of a businessman with a good cosmetic surgeon. A flying multitude came after, dancing in the darkness, becoming sign and wonders in the night sky.
They were colors now, making patterns in the black, spurting, retreating, spreading down the bowl of the sky. Colored light streamed down into her hand; she flung it back up again, making new patterns. The colors came down to her again, and she hurled them back into the air each time, until the darkness had been completely covered over.
New colors came up from the east then, mixing with the night shades, tunnels of gold cutting through to push the night away. She moved back, trying to see it all at once, and suddenly she was falling softly backwards, and she kept falling and falling until she couldn't hear the music anymore.
A hand came out of nowhere to hold hers. Mark. She gripped his hand firmly, intending not to let him go.
The lake rippled under the cloudy light, putting more damp into the grey day. She looked down and saw the water lapping gently at the rocks strewn around the shoreline.
She turned her head through the gray air, feeling the cold move past her face. Mark looked better, younger; he was smiling just a little slyly, as if he had a secret he had not quit decided to tell her. He turned her around and walked her along the edge of the lake.
"What are we doing?" she asked, stumbling a little. She wasn't a country person by any stretch of the imagination. Th heels of her boots kept skidding on the rocks and pebbles.
"Taking a rest." His voice sounded smoother, almost musical. "Taking a rest in a secret place." He went on speaking, but she did not hear his voice as much as she felt it. It was a good feeling at first, a sense of being with him greater than anything she had experienced before.
The feeling of closeness intensified; sometime later she realized she was straining away from him even as she kept a grip on his hand. Abruptly his hand twisted out of hers, and she was moving away unhurriedly but quickly.
There was a long hiatus-or possibly a short one, she couldn't tell; her sense of time was gone-and then she seemed to be coming up out of a sleep almost deep enough to be coma.
HELLO, MARK.
The voice was back. He wanted to wiggle with pleasure. It had been stone-home lonely in here without the voice. Wherever here was.
WE'D LIKE YOU TO MAKE SOME MORE PICTURES FOR US. IF YOU WOULDN'T MIND.
Hell, no, he wouldn't mind. Making pictures was what he did, didn't they realize that by now?
THIS TIME, HOWEVER, WE'D LIKE YOU TO TELL US WHERE THEY COME FROM.
He smiled to himself. Nosy, nosy, nosy. Where did they think they came off? Who did they thing they were? It was enough that he made pictures. Christ; he didn't understand where half of them came from himself.
NOW, MARK, SURELY YOU CAN TELL US ABOUT SOME OF THEM.
Drifting along in the something/nothing/whatever, he could not imagine why they thought it was important. It wasn't important. Who could know for certain, anyway? The pictures just came, that was all. Life just came. When you came across something in life, did you get to stop and ask where it was from? Excuse me, is this for real, or is someone making this up on me? Forget it. Damned Schrodinger world, for chris-sakes.
ALL RIGHT, LET'S TRY THIS: ARE THEY MEMORIES?
Once you've thought of it, it's all memory. Don't you know that, homeboy?
He could feel them giving up and retreating. He made pictures anyway, whether they were there or not, all the time listening to the music playing on and on in his mind. Even in the something/nothing/whatever, the program director never took a break. Thank God.
She woke with the feeling that she had been asleep for days.
The semidark, windowless room was little more than a closet, but nicely appointed-everything she needed was built in, and small as things were, she almost didn't have to get out of bed for most of it, or so it seemed. But she did get up and take a few steps around the center of the room, holding her back. The mattress of the tiny single bed was entirely too soft.