High up on the dial, past all the softcore sumo and night hunts of the snow owl, was a show I'd never seen before. The Realms, it was called, or at least those were the words that pulsed continuously in the corner of the screen. Sometimes there was a graphic, too, a sketch of a thatch-roofed hut. The whole thing was hard to follow, all dissolves and bleeds and wipes. Nude people drifted in and out of mostly empty rooms. Sometimes the rooms had chairs in them, or a ceiling fan, or a pail of soapy water. One room was knee-high with topsoil. A man in buckskin and a ski mask stabbed at the dirt with a shovel, let the blade scrape concrete. Now two women cuddled in a hammock, talked in low grave tones.
"Woodland apes," said one.
"Spawn of," said another.
She pointed across the room to where a man stood eating some whitish substance from a peel-off container. It took me a while to place him. The bones in his face had slid around a bit, the skin was bumpier, seamed.
But it was absolutely Bobby Trubate.
"Guess you're wondering what the hell is going on," he said now to the camera. "Let me explain something about the Realms. The Realms is the Realms. My new friend Warren said that. I couldn't agree more. The only thing I'd add is that the Realms is the Realms is the Realms. It's where we all truly live. It's not fantasy. It's not reality. It's not another world. It's not television, though you're certainly welcome to tune in. It's not the Internet, though I think you're lost if you're not already a part of our online community. It's not a movement. We hardly move at all. It's not a paradox, but it's guaranteed to blow your mind. It's not even a business, though we do accept all major credit cards. Would you like to see something? I'd like you to see something."
He led the camera through a door into a narrow room. There was a hospital bed, a bony old man up to his ribs in sheet. The walls were a trompe l'oeil of desert dunes and sky. The trick didn't quite take. You could see where the paint got grainy, the streaks of charcoal underneath. The old man sat up in bed. His hair was patched and stiff, his arms spindly, his skin stippled with rot.
"Good morning, evening," Trubate said to him softly.
"Good afternoon," said Heinrich.
Now the screen went white. The rest of the evening's local cable line-up started to scroll. Something called Landview Today was on next. Sallow men in varsity satin argued the merits of a new turnpike toll. I tugged a fresh Dixie cup from the stack, grateful for such distraction after the shock of seeing Heinrich. Christ, how long had it been? How long in Pangburn Falls? How long in the guilt room? How long in the Landview Inn Motel? It feels of an evening with your Dixie cups, your rye. It could be years. Carthage gets covered with Tunisian condos, or moves to Tennessee.
How long had Heinrich known he was sick?
"Time has never lost in overtime," he'd told me once.
Whatever was having at him now was no mystery plague, either. It looked like a good old fashioned tumor party, cell bullies pulling the body dirtward. I stared at the TV, tried to focus on the Landview spat, blot Heinrich out. I was listing toward support of the toll hike when the liquor put me under.
Near dawn there was a noise at the door. Some carouser in the wrong keyhole, I figured, a demo-kit pilgrim back from a sports bar score.
"Who's there?"
The lock clicked and Fran Kincaid walked in, kicked off her shoes. She had a maid's apron on.
"Do you want me to wear this?" she said.
"Don't you own the place?"
"This is fantasy time."
"It's a little late," I said. "Or a little early."
"I had to finish the books. I promised my husband I'd get the books done. Now do you want busty mature woman sex or not?"
"Sure," I said.
"No mommy tit shit. We're beasts of the field, okay?"
"Okay."
Fran was no stranger to the field. When we were finished I watched her shimmy back into her jeans, fix her hair in the mirror as though trying to approximate the wife her husband had last seen, the bitch who hadn't done the books yet. I could smell bad hubby a mile away. It smelled like me. She balled up the apron and stuffed it in her pocket.
"Did you enjoy yourself, William?"
"I did," I said. "But I still can't get over the fact that your name is Fran Kincaid."
"It's the doppelganger effect, I guess."
"Something like that," I said.
"You really miss her, don't you?"
"Who?"
"Stop lying to yourself, William. You are you, and that's all there is to it. You just need a little continuum awareness, is all."
"The Realms," I said.
"I couldn't watch last night," said Fran. "I told you, I was doing the books. But my husband tapes them all. That Bobby Trubate is a dreamcake. Now, William, it's time for me to say good morning, evening. I've got a lot of work to do. As you may have noticed, I don't just sit on my butt all day. Checkout's eleven-thirty."
I checked out around ten, bought some gas, got back on the highway heading west. I'd never seen the heart of the country. I figured it all for corporate parks and sick prairie grass. Apparently there were also some malls. I pulled off into one in Ohio, bought a knockwurst sandwich and a bag of chips-"flavored with other natural flavors"-sat on a wrought-iron bench in the middle of a freezing atrium. The coffee shop across the way had a brick facade and ornate signage much like that used in commercials to convey the supposed muffin-consciousness of Industrial England. A big blond cop walked out with some kind of roll in his hand. He put his boot on the bench.
"Yum," said the cop. "Mocha bagel."
"I got knockwurst," I said.
"Get it with golden mustard?"
"I did."
"Smart move."
"Thank you."
"You're not from around here, are you? I can tell by your mannerisms. You use your hands a lot."
"I'm eating."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"What do you think of cops?"
"Cops," I said.
"I want to write a TV show about a cop and another guy. The cop part is easy, but the other guy, what he thinks about the cop, I need to do research. So I'm asking all the smart people I meet what they think about cops."
"Why do I qualify as smart?"
"The mustard. Your mannerisms."
"Who's the other guy?" I said.
"He's this guy. He's not a cop. It's becoming a real pain in the neck. I'm blocking on the non-cop mentality. Can't you give me something?"
"Cops have guns," I said.
"That's it. That's all I needed. I knew you were the guy to ask. Fare thee well, me. Good afternoon, breakfast."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm just beginning to pick up the lingo."
"I should get going," I said.
I got some news on the radio. The oldest man in the world had just admitted to lying about his age. "I feel bad about it," said Willett Phillips, fifty-three, "but the yogurt people dangled a lot of cash in front of me." Harvard seniors were gearing up for an international event they'd organized for credit, A Day Without Exploitation. The CEOs of several major corporations had already pledged to pay overseas factory workers minimum wage for the day. Some American-based companies had promised full health benefits for the twenty-four-hour period. "If I'm going to lose my arm," said Glen French of Flint, Michigan, "I pray it's on Tuesday." Speeches and a concert were planned. In other news, the third unclaimed nuclear device in as many weeks had been detonated over the Pacific, this time in the vicinity of the Cook Islands. When asked to comment, a spokesman for the State Department said, "Somebody's having some fun." Meanwhile, advertisers were lining up to air spots on The Realms, the runaway underground multimedia hit to be pancast by several networks and content companies at once. Said Realms creator and host Bobby Trubate from his headquarters in Death Valley, "We'd do this for free, but we wouldn't. The main thing, though, is to win people over to the idea of spirit-based branding. We're a spiritual delivery system. People are tired of reality, and they're too smart for fantasy. It was just a matter of time before somebody figured out what was next. This is the marketplace of ideals, and we mean to corner it. The Realms is just the tip of the ice pick. I want our advertisers to know that. The dream of the wireless Xanadu is alive. I'm literally on the verge of decreeing stately pleasure domes, here, people."