As we went deeper and deeper into this desolate area, Jack kept asking me if I was sure I knew where we were going. I simply said, Yes, I am. Keep driving. Occasionally, we passed an old summer bungalow, half collapsed into a street that had been taken over by beach sand. It was too dark, now, to make out the deserted boardwalk just a few blocks away and the sea beyond, but even with the car windows closed, I could smell the salt tang in the air, or imagined I could. Deep water, seaweed, fish, sharks, the bones of whales. I could conjure up pictures for myself of what was out there, past what I could see.
Finally, we came to the right block. I told Jack to turn and we slowly drove along what remained of the blacktop, between the rows of thin, blackened trees that had grown up in this sandy soil. And then there it was: the squat brick building with its crumbling wedding cake fretwork, its missing doors and broken windows.
“Here?” Jack said. He sounded incredulous, but I couldn’t imagine what else he was expecting. I had told him the building was long abandoned, the neighborhood a ruin.
Out of habit, he was careful to parallel park at the edge of the blacktop, as if some municipal authority might still be concerned with the observance of local traffic rules. When he finally turned off the motor, I got out of the car, and my dog quickly followed me. He stood close by my side, his ears twitching as he looked up at what remained of the Sunlite Apartments.
“That’s right,” I said to him. “You remember, don’t you? You were here once before.”
Jack, walking up behind me, heard what I said and asked, “What are you talking about? Why would you have brought him here before?”
I was going to explain about my excursion to the beach last spring—in his car, as a matter of fact—when he had gone out to California, and about how Digitaria had run away from me and found his way to this same spot, but before I even started speaking, something distracted me.
“Look,” I said to Jack, pointing down the street, where I suddenly saw the blindingly bright headlights of a huge Suburban with blacked-out windows sweeping toward us. The vehicle pulled up behind Jack’s and the driver cut the motor. When the headlights finally dimmed, I noticed that there was another vehicle easing itself into line behind the Suburban. It was a blue van.
“Not good,” I whispered to Jack.
“Relax,” he replied. “It will be fine.” But I was not reassured.
We watched as the back door of the Suburban swung open and Raymond Gilmartin stepped out. As if he had come to keep a business appointment, he was wearing a dark suit and tie, just as he had been the last time I saw him. As he carefully smoothed out his clothes, another familiar figure exited the vehicle: Ravenette, dressed in some sort of faux hippie-chic dress that seemed to have been sewn together out of black scarves. They both, I thought, had the look about them of people harboring a deadly intent they did not want you to know about—not just yet.
I waited to see who would come out of the blue van, but no one did. It stayed tucked in its spot, behind the Suburban, with its lights off. It reminded me of the trucks parked in the alleyways in my neighborhood. The blue van looked like it was hiding.
“You’re late,” Raymond said, frowning. “We’ve been driving around, looking for a place to get coffee.”
“Miles,” Ravenette said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the blight around her as a personal affront. “We had to drive for miles.”
“Nice to see you, too,” I said to her.
We spent a moment glaring at each other and then I turned to Raymond. My intention was to be a bit more civil to him, but he didn’t give me the chance. He drank the dregs from a paper coffee cup and then tossed it on the ground.
“So now that we’re all here, let’s get on with this, shall we?” Raymond said. “I understand you have some sort of ritual you intend to carry out.”
He had addressed that last remark to me, in a tone so cold, so distant, that it made me feel pretty bad about him. Bad in a lot of ways, including the fact that he, too, apparently intended to behave like a jackass. It was disappointing. I wanted to think better of him but now, there seemed to be no reason to think much about him at all.
“There is no ritual,” I told him. “I’m just going to try something. Actually, I got the idea from Ravenette.”
She turned to Raymond and spit out a declaration of anger. “I told you that was what she would say.”
“Never mind,” Raymond replied.
Right after that, I thought I saw her make some sort of motion toward the blue van, but Raymond caught her arm and stopped her. This worried me and I wanted to make Jack aware of what she’d done, but he had already gone back to the car to get the repeater. When he returned in just a minute or so, he had removed the blanket, so it looked like he was carrying a big radio tuner—a squat black box bristling with wires and dials.
He put it in my arms and then stepped back, as if the thing might pose a danger to anyone around it. “Okay,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
It was dark now, fully nighttime. The rainy wind had blown itself out but inky clouds had placed themselves between us and the stars. The only illumination came from down the block. The one remaining streetlight in this whole area burned with a dim insistence as if sheer will, not electricity, was keeping it on.
Did I really have a plan? No. Just a feeling, just a guess about what to do. I walked across a path of rubble toward the wide, empty darkness where the front door of the Sunlite Apartments used to be, with my dog following me almost step for step. The building stood before me in two realities: the crumbling brick structure that I could see now, and the memory of what it had been in those summer days. I played on the wedding-cake balcony outside the rooms where the adults cooked dinner, dealt out a hand of cards and listened to one of Avi’s radios spin out the sentimental ballads that were popular in those years.
I put the repeater down in front of the doorway and waited. I waited for what seemed like a long time. Nothing happened. I was wondering if I was going to have to try to climb the rickety fire escape, when I suddenly heard Raymond’s voice coming from behind me.
“Well?” he said impatiently. “Is that it?”
I looked down at the dog, who was staring intently into the empty doorway. I was still thinking that something might happen when the dog suddenly turned around and began to growl. The sound ended in the kind of high-pitched yipping that I remembered from that last time we had been in the vicinity of a certain blue van.
And indeed, as I turned, I saw the side panels of the van slide open and two men emerge. They were young, trim, wearing jeans and hoodies. I tried to picture them in yellow goggles but quickly realized that it didn’t matter whether these were the men I had encountered before or not. They were generic people, Blue Awares, Raymond’s followers. They would do whatever he wanted them to do and I knew that whatever he wanted them to do right now was not going to be anything good.
Jack was standing near Raymond and Ravenette, but looking toward me. He didn’t see the two Awares until they walked right up to him. They had some sort of small, bulky objects in their hands; for a moment, I had the wild—though maybe not crazy—thought that they were holding guns. But no, that’s not what they were: I had watched enough episodes of cop shows on TV to recognize a Taser when I saw one in real life.
I watched as Jack finally realized what was happening. I was not totally surprised by his reaction. He laughed.
“Really?” he said to Raymond. “Who do you want to take prisoner? Me or the alien?”
“There is no alien,” Raymond said. “No radioman. Ravenette tried to tell Ms. Perzin that. You’re both in need of serious help. Counseling. We’re going to try to give it to you.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jack said. “You couldn’t kidnap a dog, so now you’re going to try to kidnap human beings?”