Paul and I considered the Central Park Drum something special between the two of us (maybe because we had to fight so hard the first time to get my parents to let me go). When the second Thursday in June approached and Paul just talked about Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, I really felt like he just wanted to get rid of me. So it relieved me when he called to make a date to meet him and Lisa at Founder’s Circle on 59th Street before the start of the ceremony.
The thing is, I never made it. My mom drove me to the train station and I waited there, holding my little travelling enactment bag so I could join in with the collective part of the ceremony. And I waited. I waited ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, with all the commuters muttering about last straws, and robber baron prices, and the other drum followers checking their watches and saying blessings, until finally a garbled loudspeaker voice told us the train was cancelled. Fire on the tracks. Next train in two hours. Maybe. I called my mom and she offered to drive me into the city. I thanked her about twenty times, calling her “a true hero of the revolution”. She laughed and said she’d be right there.
Forty minutes later, she pulled into the train station. Roadblocks all up and down the highway, she said. Industrial action by the State Police who didn’t like the state budget crunch taking away their paid personal enactment days. So finally we set out, and in five minutes we had a flat tyre. No problem, I assured my mother, I’d done tyre changing in preparation-for-driving class. With Mom worrying about me getting my good enactment dress dirty I did the tyre a little more slowly than I would have liked, but then it was finished. Off again. Mom said she’d get the tyre fixed after she dropped me off.
We got onto the highway. Clunk, clunk—another flat tyre. So that was it for my trip to meet Lisa Blackwell. By the time the AAA towed us to a gas station and did a purification ceremony on the car, I knew Paul and Lisa would be lost among the hundred thousand.
That night, when I called Paul, he sounded relieved. He denied it when I told him, but I was sure I was right.
He began to look different. His weight went up and down. Sometimes he’d look as skinny as the star of a hunger enactment. Other times he looked all puffed up, like he’d eaten nothing but doughnuts for a month. I even asked him if he was bulimic. He claimed his weight hadn’t changed in two years. One time he came to my house for dinner and I got the strangest feeling, like he was fading away, like I could almost see the wall right through him.
His behaviour changed too. Nothing really wild. But he talked a lot. Paul always used to keep silent, especially at family parties. Now he made himself the centre of attention, telling jokes, spouting political theories, giving advice on the economy. And he bragged. Paul never bragged about himself, but now he was telling us all about his two promotions in two months, his special commendation from the CEO, even how much he spent for a new suit. I wanted to scream at him. Or kick him.
My folks didn’t notice anything. They just said wasn’t it great Paul was coming out of his shell? Wasn’t it wonderful he was doing so well? And in such a short time. And didn’t Lisa sound sweet?
How could we have been so damn stupid? He even told us how Lisa—wonderful sweet Lisa—had received a vision of Paul going all the way to the top. As if she’d done a “selfless offering” and the Powers had granted her a psychic vision. Damn. If only we’d gotten the fog out of our heads maybe we could have intervened.
But it was up to Paul to recognize that something was wrong. He started getting strange dreams. There were lots of lights, he told me later, glowing on the sides of buildings, swooping down out of the skies, flaring up in front of his face. And when he’d put his hands up or made a noise he’d hear laughter. Except he wouldn’t see anybody. Other dreams, instead of lights he’d see holes. Holes in walls, in the street, in stores and lobbies of buildings. And nobody would see them but him. In the dream Paul would point out the holes to people. “Watch out,” he’d say to an old woman, “you’re going to step in that hole.” But instead of looking, they’d just shove him out of the way. Sometimes holes would appear in people’s bodies. In the dream he’d go over to examine them, sometimes even reach inside their bodies and find nothing but garbage. He’d call people over to help, but they’d all just laugh. A few times, Paul told me later, he woke up from these dreams feverish or even vomiting.
I asked Paul if he ever took the dreams to NORA, the computer for the National Oneiric Registration Agency. No, he said, once he woke up, he’d just wanted to forget about them. I asked him if he’d done enactments to cleanse his dream spirit. No, he told me, and looked surprised. He’d never thought about it.
Even awake, he started acting funny. If he didn’t see Lisa he just stayed home and did nothing, not even watch TV. He stopped seeing his friends, he stopped seeing me. He started getting scared at really odd moments. He’d see a bus pulling up to a kerb and suddenly panic as the door opened. As if a wild dog or something would come leaping out at him.
But what really worried him finally was Lisa herself. She never tired. At first, he liked that. “She can go on and on,” he said to me once, before it started to scare him. When he was with her he never got tired, either. They could make love four or five times, he told me, something he said he could never do with anyone else. “It’s almost like inflight refuelling,” he said. Of course, he was bragging again. And yet—I don’t think he realized this—he became all sad after he said it. We were drinking tea and I remember he stared into the cup like an old-fashioned Speaker looking for a message in the leaves.
Finally, he would fall asleep and dream his strange dreams. He always figured Lisa was asleep too, until one night he woke up in the middle of the night and she was just lying there, wide awake, staring at the ceiling, and smiling. When she turned and reached for him he jumped back. He had to go pee, he told her. She laughed. In the bathroom, he said, he thought his heart would punch right through his chest. He didn’t know why, he said, he just felt so scared. But then she called him and suddenly he found himself excited. You know, aroused. He told me it was like his “thing” had gotten a life of its own and was running away with him.
After that, Paul tried to pull back from her, see her less, stay home, go out with friends. Nothing worked. I don’t mean he lost control, like some sort of drug fiend, or found himself calling her and hating himself for doing it. No, I mean he couldn’t stay away. He literally couldn’t. He would sit down, alone, in front of the TV with a rental movie on the VCR. He’d even put on pyjamas and get into bed. And then suddenly he’d find himself ringing her bell, with only the slightest memory of getting dressed, leaving the house with the TV still running, and getting a cab to 79th Street where Lisa lived. Or else he’d go to a bar with some friends, tell jokes and drink for half an hour, then excuse himself as if he was going to the men’s room, and instead just leave and go uptown to Lisa’s.