it isn't the longing. Or the bravery. It's the trust. If Dad leaves a speed demon to babysit, the very act must signify it's aw-right, right? If he says a visit to Disney World is a Big People's business trip, then that's that. Trust doesn't fume off in a pout, like big brother Quiston, or wheedle like May or Sherree; but it does expect to have something brought back. It does expect to reel in something if it casts far and often and deep enough, like those faces on the ward. It does expect to slide in someday to more than a plate of dirt if it rounds bases enough. It expects these things because these things have been signified. That's what gets you.
Especially if you're one of those that's been doing the signifying.
So the discovery that I was having déjà vus did not bring me any ease. It only clarified the fearful murk that had been nagging me into something far more haunting: guilt. And when I closed my eyes to shut out the little face looking up from the book on my lap, I found my head crammed full of other faces waiting their turn. What was my mother going to say? Why hadn't I phoned? Why wouldn't I lend poor Joe a little support a while ago after all of it he's afforded me the last two days? Why can't I face those faces upstairs? I know now that it isn't my fear that chains me back. It's the bleak and bottomless rock of failure, jutting remote from the black waters. Onto this hard rock I am chained. The water pounds like blame itself. The air is thick with broken promises coming home to roost, flapping and clacking their beaks and circling down to give me the same as Prometheus got… worse! Because I sailed up to those forbidden heights more times than he had – as many times as I could manage the means – but instead of a flagon of fire the only thing I brought back was an empty cocktail glass… and I broke that.
I clenched my eyes, hoping I guess to squeeze out a few comforting drops of remorse, but I was as dry as the Ancient Mariner. I couldn't cry and I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't do anything about anything, was about what it came down to. All I could do was sit by myself on my godforsaken reef of failure, clenching my eyes and gnashing my teeth in morbid self-recrimination.
This is what I was doing when I realized I was no longer by myself.
"Squank!"
She was leaned over the back of the couch, her twin telescopes within inches of my face. When I turned she reared away, wrinkling her nose.
"Tell me, Slick: are you wearing that expression to match your breath, or are you this lowdown for real?"
When I regained myself I told her that this was about as real as it got, and as lowdown.
"Good," she said. "I hate a phony funk. Mind if I join you? I'll even share your troubles…"
She came around without waiting for an answer, tapping her way to a place beside me.
"So. How do you explain this hangdog face?"
"I swallowed more than I can bite off," was all I told her. I didn't think this myopic little freak would understand more, even if I could explain it.
"Just don't spit up on me," she warned. She leaned around to get a closer look at my face. "Y'know, dude, you look kind of familiar. What do they call you besides ugly?" She stuck out a skeletal hand. "I'm called the Vacu-Dame, because I'm out in deep space most of the time."
I took the hand. It was warm and thin, but not a bit skeletal. "You can call me the Véjà Dude."
She made a sound like a call-in beeper with a fresh battery. I guessed it was supposed to be a laugh. "Very good, Slick. That's why you look so familiar, eh? Very clever. So what's with all the pictures stuck on that book in your lap? Photos of your famous flashbacks?"
"In a way. The pictures are from a bus trip I took once with my gang. The book's an ancient Chinese work called The Book of Changes."
"Oh, yeah? Which translation? The Richard Wilhelm? Let me have a look at it, so to speak."
I handed her the book and she held it up to her face. I was beginning to suspect that this freak might understand more than I thought.
"It's the English edition. That's what I used when I first started throwing the Ching. Then I thought I'd try using Wilhelm in his original German. I wanted to see if it helped the poetic parts. I found such a veritable shitload of difference between the two that I thought, 'Shit, if it loses this much from German into English, how much must've been lost from ancient Chinese to German?' So I decide to hell with it all. The last Ching I threw I threw at my degenerate Seeing Eye dog for turning over my wastepaper basket looking for Tampons. The sonofabitch thought I was playing games. He grabbed the book and ran outside with it, and by the time I tracked him down he'd consumed every page. He was a German shepherd. When he found something written in his ancestral tongue he just couldn't put it down. What's all this glass underfoot, incidentally? Did you drop something or did I just miss a Jewish marriage? I don't care for dogs but I love a good wedding. It gives the adults an excuse to get soused and let all the dirty laundry hang out. Is that where you're bringing such a booze breath back from, Ace? A big wedding?"
"I'm bringing it back from Disney World, believe it or not."
"I believe it. On the Red Eye Rocket. Here, you better put your fancy book away before I see a dog."
When I tried to reach around her for my bag I bumped her staff. It tipped and fell before I could grab it.
"Watch it!" she shrilled. "That's my third eye you're knocking in the broken glass!"
She picked it up and turned around to stand it behind the couch, out of danger. Then she leaned close again and gave me a fierce frown. "You're the one broke it too, ain't you? No wonder you got such a guilty look on you, cursed with such a clumsy goddamn nature."
For all her frowning, I couldn't help but grin at her. She didn't seem as fierce as she looked, really. She might not have realized she was frowning all the time. She wasn't as hopelessly homely as she first appeared, either, I decided. Or as titless.
"Speaking of curses," I said, "what was that one of yours the other day? It was formidable."
"Oh, that," she said. The frown vanished instantly. She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins. "It isn't mine," she confessed. "It's Gary Snyder's, mostly, a poem of his called 'Spel Against Demons.' You want to know why I happened to memorize it? Because one time I spray-painted the entire thing. On a football field. Remember when Billy Graham held that big rally in Multnomah Stadium a couple of years back?"
"You're the one who did that?"
"From goal line to goal line. It took nineteen rattle cans and most of the night. Some of the words were ten yards big."
"So, you're the famous phantom field-writer? Far damn out. The paper said the writing was completely illegible."
"It was dark! I've got a shaky pen hand!"
"You were plenty legible the other afternoon," I prompted. I wanted to keep her talking. I saw her cheeks color at the compliment, and she started rocking back and forth, hugging her knees.
"I was plenty ripped is what I was," she said. "Besides, I recite better than I handwrite."
She rocked awhile in thought, frowning straight ahead. The sun was almost out of sight in the ridgeline across the river, and the light in the room had softened. The chrome trim was turning the color of butter. All of a sudden she clapped her hands.
"Now I remember!" She aimed a finger at me. "Where I know your melancholy mug from: the dust jacket of your goddamn novel! So far-damn-out to you too!"
She started to rock again. It wouldn't have surprised me to see her put her thumb in her mouth.
"I'm something of a writer myself," she let me know, "when I'm not something else. Right now I'm an astral traveler on layover. Too far over, too, after two days of Miss Seal's Bed and Breakfast."