Deep breath. Both of them. Jackie had been watching a leaf on a branch outside wave back and forth, almost falling but not.
“And this piece of paper.” Steve held up empty, pinched fingers attempting emphasis. He looked at his paperless hand. Jackie showed him the paper in her own.
“What about it?” Jackie asked.
“What? Oh. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I forget. There are so many things to know, so many things to find out. I lose track of where I am in the maze.”
He used his hands to indicate a maze. (Think of the common gesture for maze.)
“The main thing,” he said, “is to just enjoy what you have. The paper trick is cool. Do it again.”
She did not.
“But definitely don’t go looking for King City,” he said. “People like to think that there are places other than Night Vale out there what with all the desert, but it’s just not true. You try to go to a place like King City, you probably would never come back.”
Steve paused.
“I don’t think that man has given the paper to the person who was supposed to get it yet,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” she said, trying to encourage without seeming too eager.
“I think he’s looking for one particular person, and he hasn’t found them. It’s a message, and the message hasn’t been received yet, you know? I wonder what happens when whoever is supposed to get that message finally receives it. Could be something very bad. Real bad.”
The door opened. Diane walked in. The noise brought Steve back to himself.
“Hey there,” he said. “Your friend Jackie and I were just talking about you. Good things, of course.”
Diane glared at the nineteen-year-old, who returned her glare defiantly.
“Not my friend, Steve. Jackie, whatever it is that fascinates you about my life and the people in it, I need you to let go and leave us alone.”
Jackie felt herself regarded not as a woman or a human, but as a teenager. She had a rush of anger that felt embarrassingly young but that she couldn’t suppress.
“I’m looking after my own life, man. What I want to know is why you always seem to end up involved.”
“I’m sorry, Diane,” said Steve. “I thought. I mean, I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, Steve,” said Diane. “I know you love a good conversation. Jackie, what are you doing here? Are you researching me? Following me?”
“You’d love it if you were that interesting.” Jackie stood up so quickly that her folding chair tumbled backwards into the popcorn machine. Steve and Diane winced, but nothing visible happened, and so they relaxed.
Jackie didn’t like how the situation was going, but she also didn’t know how to change the momentum. She came right up to Diane’s face, like a child fighting on a playground, or like a larger, older child fighting in a bar. Jackie felt unsure and silly and young, and she channeled the discomfort of that feeling into anger and projected that feeling onto Diane.
“I already have one sullen teenager in my life. Go home, Jackie.”
Jackie felt stupid (Oh, Jackie, did you ever think of just turning twenty?), and so she yelled: “Do you have to show up everywhere I am all the time?”
“This is the PTA room. I am on the PTA.”
“Whatever. I’m out of here,” Jackie said, and then pointed at Steve. “Steve, we’ll talk more about King City later. Tell Janice I said hi.”
“Okie doke. It sure was nice to chat.” And he meant it, which was the worst part about Steve Carlsberg.
Jackie stormed out of the door, not wanting to leave this way and hating herself for doing it.
Diane stared at Steve with new curiosity, wondering if this was the first time she had ever actually wanted to know something that Steve could tell her.
“Steve. What do you know about King City?”
Chapter 25
There was a Troy who swept up at the movie theater.
There was a Troy who never left his home.
There was a Troy who was a therapist.
There were so many Troys, and Jackie tracked them all. She had a notebook and a camera, and soon she had a record of every Troy in town. She kept a lot of notes, not because she was good at investigating, but because it gave her something to do, and helped keep her from drifting off into confusion and despair over the terrifying implications of Troy’s multiplicity.
If she stopped note-taking long enough to think, she would grow dizzy in a spiral of questions: Do they know each other? Are they the same age? Were they all born, or were they just there one day? When she found herself thinking for too long, she would make another note, maybe about how humid it was (“neck feels sticky, even in the shade”) or what color the clouds were (“green with purple stripes—looks like rain”).
Today Jackie was following the Troy who was a loan manager at the Last Bank of Night Vale (“We put our customers second, and our apocalyptic prophecies first!”). This Troy had very regular hours, not just at his work but in his life outside of work, and so he was especially easy to tail.
It was the third hour of work for him, and he would be going to lunch soon. Lunch was usually a salad or something light, except for the one day a week he went to Big Rico’s Pizza. She watched him through the window, humming and smiling at customers.
There was a Troy who drove a cherry red Vespa while wearing a light blue helmet.
There was a Troy who drove a 1997 Plymouth minivan.
There was a Troy who drove a taxi.
Do some of them live together? Are they working on a single plan? Were they artificially created by the government?
Too much thinking, she was feeling nauseous. She wrote a note about the lunchtime crowd in the street (“it’s lunchtime. there’s a crowd in the street.”).
Troy was eating at his desk today. Salad. He did nothing unusual with the salad. He ate it. She watched him eat it from her car. No one cared about a woman staring through binoculars from a parked car. It was a common sight. There were three other cars with binoculared, watching women just on that block, and that was light by Night Vale standards.
She hadn’t been able to get Troy to stop and talk to her. They always avoided her, most not with the same sprinting desperation as the Troy who worked at the Moonlite All-Nite, but with the same result. Not a single Troy would get close enough for her to ask questions. She had even tried making an appointment with the therapist Troy, but when the time had come a short, balding man in a vest had been sitting across from her instead.
“I’m afraid there’s been an illness going around,” he said. “He’s asked me to cover his clients for a bit. Now tell me, what do you remember, specifically, about your childhood?”
She had gotten up and walked out without saying a word. She would stay focused. No matter what Diane had said, she was old enough to concentrate and do this. It was probably better that she was young. Her body was stronger and faster, her mind was more open. Youth was better than age. It was good that she had been young for so long.
The next day the Troy therapist had been back at work, no sign of an illness. But Jackie knew that, if she burst into the building, the balding man would be back, asking her about her childhood.
There was a Troy who lived in an apartment building near the community radio station.
There was a Troy who lived in the housing development of Coyote Corners and collected windowsill cacti.