So. Now I was here, in an abandoned neighborhood, on a gray afternoon, with the invisible sun drowning in the ocean as the hour raced toward evening and the wind blew sand down the empty street. But why was I here, what did I want? I felt like I had been on automatic pilot ever since I’d left Ravenette’s loft, drawn to this place by some feeling, some huge, gaping hole that had suddenly opened up inside me that I thought I could fill by coming here. But why? The best I could do was trace my lemming-like journey to this abandoned building to the sense that something was waiting for me here and I, in turn, for it. Him. Him. Was that what I expected? What I had wanted Ravenette to reconnect me with—the shadow on the fire escape that, for my entire life, I had been claiming was just a dream? Well if so, why did I think I’d find him here, in this shell of a building, this old ruin where Avi once took me to listen to the raspy beep that was the sound of satellites signaling their ground stations? That was something like forty years ago. What a ridiculous idea it was to think that even a shadow man might be found in the same spot where, decades ago, he had listened to the radio with a child.
But thinking that I was being an idiot didn’t deter me from taking a few steps into the trees to try to approach the building. There was a tangle of roots and broken branches underfoot and my way was partially barred by a dense growth of brambles. I got just close enough to look toward the back of the building and see that the fire escape was still there—rotted, rusted, missing many of its steps, but still attached to the building. Gazing upward, I could see the part of the fire escape where I had sat, waiting for Avi to return. In his place had come a shade, a stranger, who had raised his finger to make me hush while he tuned in . . . something. Ghost signals whistling in the universal darkness, perhaps—that is, if Jack Shepherd was to be believed.
I stood there for a while, looking up at the fire escape, waiting for something to happen. To see something that, of course, it was impossible to see again. But still I kept looking until I knew that there was no point anymore. It would be evening soon, and too dark, too cold, too lonely to hang around here any longer.
And so I turned back, heading for the train. But finally, I could at least do something that I had been unable to do for most of the afternoon—give a name to what was bothering me. As I walked quickly down the deserted street, listening to the fading sound of wind and waves, I knew what I was feeling. I knew exactly. I had seen nothing; nothing had happened. And because of that—precisely, unquestionably because of that—I was disappointed.
~V~
As the train rattled back along the trestle bridge that crossed the bay, I could see a few thin streaks of gold along the horizon where the sun was displaying the rays of light it had been barred from presenting all day because of the heavy cloud cover. These remnants were gone in a few minutes and the sky began changing itself into its nighttime regalia, complete with blurry stars and a crescent moon.
As we rode along, something changed inside me as welclass="underline" the feeling of disappointment I’d been so easily able to identify turned black and ugly and boiled itself back into an angry state. That didn’t really surprise me; I was pretty good at turning an uncomfortable feeling I couldn’t do anything about into one that I could. Disappointment was depressing and hard to get rid of; anger could be directed outward, at somebody. It could be wielded. It could be used.
There was a half-hour ride ahead of me on the elevated tracks before the train descended into its subterranean tunnel, which meant that I was able to get a cell phone signal. I was alone in the train car, though I don’t think the company of other people would have stopped me from pulling my cell phone from my shoulder bag and dialing Jack Shepherd. I needed somebody to be mad at and since I’d already taken my shot at Ravenette, I decided that the next person on my list was Jack.
I didn’t expect him to pick up the phone himself, since I assumed that the number I found in my cell phone—the number he’d called me from, twice—was his studio. I thought he’d have a secretary or a producer or whomever they had at radio shows to screen for inappropriate callers and calm down crazy people. But after just a few rings, there was Jack, saying hello in his deep-toned radio voice.
“It’s Laurie Perzin,” I said, and then I hurried on before he could even acknowledge me. “Why didn’t you tell me that your girlfriend was a member of the Blue Awareness?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t pretend you don’t know. Ravenette.”
“Wow,” Jack said. “You’re kidding. Well, for the record, I barely know the woman. And I certainly had no idea that she was Aware.”
I didn’t want to listen to him; I just wanted to keep on telling him why I was upset. “She set me up. She wanted me to come to her place so she could give me a recruitment pitch. Apparently, my engrams are out of whack. I need a lot of treatments with that idiotic Blue Box thing because my neural tissues are withering away even as we speak.” Listening to myself repeat this stuff only made it sound even more like lunacy. “You wanted me to go see her—don’t tell me you’re not involved in this.”
“I’m going to have to tell you that because it’s true. But I also have to say ‘wow’ again. She seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to try to recruit you—if that’s what she was up to. I mean, I’m sure you’re a fascinating person and all that . . .”
I cut him off quickly. “What’s the Wild Blue Yonder?” I demanded.
Suddenly, there was silence on the other end of the phone. The train was now rolling through a long strip of marshland. On the far horizon, I could make out the lights of the control tower of Kennedy airport again, but outside the train windows there was nothing but tall grass and cattails.
“She told you about that?” Jack asked, finally.
I barely registered his actual words, but the sound of his voice set me off again. “And that stupid Blue Box. I told her I have one at home and that when I was a kid, I used to zap my stuffed animals with it. The whole thing is idiotic.”
“She told you about the Wild Blue Yonder and you told her you had a Blue Box.”
“Yeah?” I said, tuning him in again. “So?”
“So a couple of things. Let’s start with I’m pretty shocked that she mentioned the Wild Blue Yonder to you. Awares are usually very secretive about that.”
“So you do know about this.”
“I know about the Blue Awareness,” Jack said. “Over the years, I’ve had some people on the show who left the Awareness, and they’ve talked about the various levels you have to reach in order to find out about the different principles that guide their beliefs. As I understand it, you have to be pretty high up to be introduced to the Wild Blue Yonder. Ravenette must be . . . what? Fourth Level? Third? Did she tell you?”
“Second,” I said grudgingly, annoyed with myself for ratcheting down my emotions to a state where I felt reasonable enough to answer this question.
“Huh. That’s pretty impressive. None of the people I interviewed had actually risen high enough in the group to know a whole lot about the Wild Blue Yonder, but I’ve . . . well, I’ve found other people to ask. And of course, you can find all sorts of information about it on the Internet—on sites devoted to debunking the Awareness. But most of the information seems to be wrong.” Then, unexpectedly, he started to chuckle. “Boy, Ravenette must have been really pissed off when you told her that you had a Blue Box. Nobody is supposed to have access to one of those things except trained Awareness scanners or very high-level Awares.”
“I told her it was a toy. She reacted like I’d said something sacrilegious.”