Jonathan held up a hand. "It was just a part. All you could see was the makeup."
"You became," said Karl, "an icon. We saw your picture so much, you moved from the right-hand side of the brain to the left. You stopped being a visual image, you became more like a word sign. You became a meaning."
"That's the trouble with you intellectuals," said Moonflower. She slipped the satin dress off over her head. "You always stare at the images and tell us what they mean to you. You should ask us what the signs mean. We're the people who use them. You should be doing scientific surveys, not staring at your own belly buttons."
She walked away, naked. Her legs and arms were thin, her hips and stomach already settling down with age. Seagulls in the blue light played about her hair.
"You also ought," she said, "to go swimming." She dived into the pool and disappeared amid a flurry of bubbles, white like pearls.
"Let's get some chow," said Karl. "You haven't eaten anything since Bill's last night, and you lost that."
For some reason, Jonathan already had the car keys in his hand.
The new town center was a huge shopping mall that covered the end of Poyntz Avenue, where the bank of the Blue River had once been. Jonathan walked inside and his breath was taken away.
It was glass-covered like a train station, with huge hoops of light in a row along the ceiling's pinnacle. The floor was made out of brick and there were tall fountains and shrubbery in pots and walkways leading off down avenues of shops to the closed and darkened caverns of department stores.
Jonathan walked forward with tiny, almost fearful steps, looking about him. It was late and the mall was just as deserted as the rest of the town center had been in daylight. Somewhere, echoing overhead, were the disembodied voices of children and the imprecations of adults.
He tiptoed down the main corridor, where it was narrowed by flanks of white columns, and out into a wider space. There was the sound of splashing water and emptiness. A sign hung over it. PICNIC PLACE, said the sign in neon.
In the center of Picnic Place was a black, convoluted, and somehow Italian fountain, surrounded by palm trees. Empty tables were rimmed around it. Along the walls were franchises for Mexican or Italian fast food, and for something called runzas. The voices overhead still had to find bodies. An Asian Indian woman strolled past him in a purple-and-silver sari. Her sandals made a flapping sound.
In the far corner there were double doorways that seemed to promise a more substantial restaurant. CARLOS O'KELLY'S MEXICAN CAFE, said a sign. Jonathan seemed to waft into it. Suddenly he was standing before an empty front desk. No one came to help him. He felt foolish. He walked past a kind of structural screen of plaster, meant to suggest a Mexican building.
The place was a confusing welter of decor-stuffed foxes, Pepsi signs, cow horns, old tin advertisements of women who raised fringed skirts like theater curtains over their thighs, antique (perhaps) mirrors. A table full of male students as big as sides of beef roared with laughter. Jonathan jumped as if they were laughing at him. A waiter finally came up, apologizing. "Sorry, it's kinda late, I'm the only one here," he said. For some reason he had a flapper haircut, like a woman from the 1920S. He wore very baggy shorts almost to the knee. He sat Jonathan at a table and passed him a large menu encased in plastic sheeting.
Chimichangas, thought Jonathan. They had not existed a decade before. In the 1970S, you sat down to beans, enchiladas and chile rellenos. Who invented chimichangas? Were they authentic? If not, how long did it take for something to become authentic?
Time seemed to be leapfrogging over itself. Parts of it were missing. The sides of beef had been laughing so long and so hard they couldn't stop and one of them was in danger of choking. He made squeaking noises like a mouse. Jonathan felt distant from them, and sour. How did they get so big, so strong? He didn't want to eat. The waiter came, bringing him a microwaved chimichanga. When had he ordered that?
Jonathan was used to being friendly and tried to talk to the waiter. Was he a KSU student? How did he find time to do this and his homework? Jonathan was losing his conversational touch-university studies are not called homework. Jonathan felt like one of those plastic fairgrounds smiles had been stuck on his face. It was held in place by biting down.
What was he studying? The answer flattened the conversation like some pathetic animal run down on the freeway. The young man was studying the marketing of new textiles. Uh. Did that mean he researched what kinds of new fabrics people wanted?
Not exactly. It was more to do with pricing strategies. "Only people are beginning to tell me the market is bottoming out and I don't know if I'll stay in it." He had a pleasant, intelligent face, a hooked nose. He was enthusiastic when he found out Jonathan was from L.A.
"Oh, I love Los Angeles!"
"I love Manhattan," said Jonathan.
"How come?" the young man was mystified.
"Its history."
"Manhattan has a history?" The young face was crooked.
"Got more history than Los Angeles. Los Angeles, they just bury it under the freeway."
"Oh but the shopping is wonderful!"
Jonathan looked at his pleasant, intelligent face and said, "Your values suck."
Had he really said that? The young man was no longer there. A cold chimichanga was half-eaten on his plate, and Jonathan's throat and gut felt like a wall from which paint was peeling. He coughed slightly, and something really did seem to come free. He swallowed it. The stuffed fox, the orange lights, the drifting beer signs swam inside his eyes.
Jonathan got up to go. He forgot to pay.
Outside, there were humps in the parking lot, like that designer supermarket where there were buried cars for a joke. Knees jiggling uncertainly, as if he were trying to be hip, Jonathan walked forward.
Which car?
He found he couldn't remember the make or the model or the color. He was color-blind, and in this light, they would all look the same. He walked down a row, looking at license plates. He wouldn't be able to tell.
He panicked again. How am I going to get back? he wondered miserably. How will I ever find the car again, how will I get it back to Hertz? Jesus, I can't even go to a restaurant and park a car anymore. It was dark and traffic whined past on the big blue road around Manhattan where the river had been. Trucks, the odd car, wind, emptiness.
What am I going to do? he wondered.
Then he saw the sign, glittering on down the road. BEST WESTERN. Maybe a mile away. He began to walk.
There were ditches and treacherous green humps of manicured grass. Jonathan kept stumbling. He made a sound over and over, like he was about to sneeze. He was dimly aware of it. It was just how he breathed these days. When he was in trouble.
There were train tracks underfoot, hard metal, and splintering ties, and he kept stumbling. Why were there humps and train tracks? Would he get flattened by a train, or would he hear it first? And where was the other river, why was there only one river now?
A child's voice whispered to him: "There was a flood and the river moved."
Very suddenly, everything spun up and under and away from him. Jonathan lost his balance and fell onto the train track and felt the earth spin and his dinner pour back out of him. It hurt, as if he were vomiting up raw sand.
"I can't keep down my food," he said, feeling weak and a little bit tearful. His own body was something precious that had been lost.