He didn’t finish and I didn’t push. I briefly thought about temporal and spatial displacement. I knew what he’d started to say and the Event was something neither of us wanted to bring up.
He had a point, too. I likely wouldn’t have believed him. I would’ve been wondering if my friend was finally letting it all get to him and was falling over the edge. I would’ve gone anyway. But now I knew why he’d paid me more to make the delivery.
I was irritated, though. I had already promised to make another run for him in two weeks, but if he hadn’t been paying me another hundred and fifty bucks to go, I would’ve reneged.
Chapter Eighteen
HAVING LEARNED FROM MY FIRST GO ROUND, I got through my second trip to Blue Heaven without much trouble. There had been only one glitch.
Not at the guardhouse. Getting in was uneventful. I was delivering another brown envelope to the same place as before so directions weren’t necessary, and I knew not to ask any questions, not even the obvious one of why the hell they needed to ID me again when they knew who I was from the previous visit. I figured they were following orders and I didn’t need the suit coming out to tell me that.
The glitch came after I made the delivery and was making my exit. Trouble was, on the way back out I made one small misstep. I still wasn’t all the way convinced about “keep your mind on where you’re going and you won’t get lost” and for a moment I allowed my thoughts to wander, so, I got lost again. However, it was different from the first time.
I’d started back to the entrance and a chill breeze made me think of the boy I met two weeks before. I wondered how he was doing, if he still had the cap I gave him. I remembered the ragged jacket he was wearing and hoped he had something heavier for the winter. I snapped back to the present and found myself in front of a soot-smudged, frayed-around-the-edges little shop wedged between a couple of taller buildings. The taller buildings appeared to be unoccupied but the shop had an old neon sign in the window broadcasting the fact that it was a bar. I looked around. I was down one of those little side alleys I hadn’t ventured into before. I didn’t try to figure out how I got there.
The name of the bar was “The Hole in the Wall”. Kind of oddball but a lot more distinctive than the name of the one where I hung out in my neighborhood – “Bob’s”.
Annoyed with myself – and Blue Heaven for being such a pain in the ass – I stood there wondering if it was the same bar Adam had encountered. I was thirsty, so I went in.
The name was a good description of the place. It was small and the furnishing looked old and a little worse for the wear, but in contrast to its exterior, it was very clean. There was one booth up front and one in the back with three small tables in between. An old jukebox sat next to a pool table across from the back booth. As I’ve said, the place was small so there was only the one pool table. There was a rack of cue sticks displayed behind it and beyond that were two doors on the back wall. One, with a stylized placard showing male and female figures, was a unisex restroom. The door beside it displayed a dimly glowing red and white exit sign.
There was a man and a woman sitting at one of the little tables sipping drinks. The man, facing the door, looked up and nodded a greeting and the woman turned to look and gave me a friendly smile. That was surprising after the folk I’d seen the first time I was there. I nodded back. The only other person in the place was a man behind the counter whom I took to be the bartender.
It was around noon and the middle of the week so I was moderately surprised to see anyone there until I noticed it wasn’t strictly a bar. It also sold sandwiches, snacks, cigarettes, and magazines. I wondered if the jukebox worked but I didn’t plan to hang around long enough to find out. I slid onto one of the barstools at the counter and took a look at the menu, which included drink prices. After mentally going over my uncertain cash futures, I ordered water.
The bartender was not at all like the folk from whom I’d tried to get directions when I wandered off track the first time. With his bushy eyebrows and wire-rimmed glasses, he reminded me of my long ago late neighbor, Dave, though Dave had been taller and slimmer.
He was talkative and friendly and told me to call him “Joe”. A six-ounce glass of water went for anywhere between ten and fifteen dollars depending on where you were, and his was eleven but he only charged me five bucks. I think he took pity on me after seeing I was lost, and, he gave me the same advice as had the boy about how not to get in that state. Along with that, and what Adam said and the fact that it seemed to have worked the first time, I gave up my last doubt. I knew it was something I needed to retain in my sometimes-rambling mind in order to get back to the entrance.
After thinking about it, it struck me that the reason the people on the streets had appeared to be such unfriendly assholes might’ve been because they were trying their damnedest to make it to where they were going without losing their way. They had simply been desperate not to allow a distraction by some bumbling fool who had. Not friendly, but understandable now that I knew. I was lucky to come up on that kid and that he hadn’t run off, too. Maybe it was easier for the young to find their way.
That’s also when it occurred to me that there wouldn’t be much crime on the streets. If you happened to get past the guards, which wasn’t easy, then you’d have to be lucky to find somebody out on the streets to rob after which getting away could get complicated. Worrying you were going to be caught would be very distracting and being distracted was how you got lost. By the time you managed to find your way out – that is if you did – somebody would’ve alerted the guards who would be waiting when you finally dragged your lost ass back up to the entry. In fact, the worry of being caught committing any crime wouldn’t be conducive to finding your way around, though, with people being people, I was sure there were some types of lawbreaking that could be had in Blue Heaven.
I thanked the bartender, collected my thoughts, and tried for the entrance again, and that time I made it out without any problems.
Later, Adam laughed and shook his head at my blunder. “Better start listening, son,” he chuckled, as he verified it was the same bar he’d found.
He didn’t have to worry about me listening. I told him I’d do future deliveries for him – to other locations.
I wasn’t ever going to Blue Heaven again.
Chapter Nineteen
IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER MY LAST TRIP THAT I learned a few more things about Blue Heaven including the fact that most of the people worked for Semptor Labs.
I acquired that information from a client, a man who was a technician at one of the radio stations and lived in Blue Heaven at one time. He hired me to find his brother a couple of weeks after I made that last delivery for Adam to that disorienting locale.
“He’s not somewhere in Blue Heaven, is he?” I asked warily.
He shook his head. “No, he’s not. He headed out west a while back.”
I asked my client why he left Blue Heaven.
“My brother and I were roomies and we both left soon after… well you know soon after what.” He didn’t want to say the name. I didn’t blame him. “I was a sound tech for channel nine news and he worked at the airport. You know what happened to those businesses so we were out of work from the start. I’ve gone back a few times to visit a couple of friends but if you’ve ever been there you know how hard it is to find your way around, so I don’t go often.”