"You really want to know?"
"I asked, didn't I?"
She began with the easy stuff. Grillo, and the Reef, and how she'd traveled the states in the last five years, discovering in the progress that things were damn weird out there.
"Like how?" Phoebe said.
"This is going to sound crazy."
"I don't care," said Phoebe. "I want to know."
"I think maybe we're coming to the end of being what we are. We're going to take an evolutionary jump. And that mak es this a dangerous and wonderful time." "Why dangerous?"
"Because there are things that don't want us to take the jump. Things that'd prefer us to stay just the way we are, wandering around blindly, afraid of our own shadows, afraid of being dead and afraid of being too much alive. they want to keep us that way. But then there's people everywhere saying: I'm not going to be blind. I'm not going to be afraid. I can see invisible roads. I can hear angel's voices. I know who I was before I was born and I know what I want to be when I'm dead."
"You've met people like this?"
"Oh yes."
"That's wonderful," said Phoebe. "I don't know if I lieve any of those things, but it's still wonderful." She got to her feet and went to the refrigerator, talking on as she surveyed the contents. "What about the things that want to stop us?" she said. "I don't think I believe in the Devil, so maybe you're right about that, but if not the Devil then who are these people?"
"That's another conversation," Tesia said.
"Want to talk while we eat?" Phoebe said. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"
"Getting that way."
"There's nothing worth having in there," she said, closing the fridge.
"We'll have to go out. You want pizza? Chicken?"
"I don't care. Anywhere but that fucking diner."
"You mean Bosley's place?"
:'What an asshole."
'The hamburgers are good." "I had the fish." they walked rather than taking the car, and while they walked Phoebe told Tesla how she'd come to gain a lover and lose a husband. The more she told, the more Testa warmed to her. She was a curious mingling of small-town pretensions (she plainly thought herself better than most of her fellow Evervillians) and charming self-deprecation (especially on the subject of her weight); funny at times (she was wittily indiscreet about the medical problems of those who, upon seeing her on the sidewalk, played the Pharisee) and at other times (speaking about Joe, and how she'd almost given up believing she could be loved that way) sweetly touching.
"You've got no idea where he's gone, then?" Tesia said. "No." Phoebe surveyed the thronged street ahead of them. "He can't hide in a crowd, that's for sure. When he comes back he'll have to be really careful."
"You're sure he'll come back?"
"Sure I'm sure. He promised." She cast Tesla a sideways glance. "You think I sound stupid."
"No, just trusting."
"We've all got to trust somebody, right?"
"Do we?"
"If you could feel what I feel," Phoebe said, "you wouldn't ask that question."
"All I know is, you're alone in the end. Always."
"Who's talking about the end?" Phoebe said.
Tesla stepped out of the stream of people into the street, taking Phoebe with her. "Listen to me," she said, "something terrible's going to happen here. I don't know exactly what and I don't know exactly when, but trust me: This place is finished."
Phoebe said nothing at first. She simply looked up and down the busy street. Then, after a moment to consider, she said, "It can't happen fast enough as far as I'm concerned."
"You mean that?"
"Just 'cause I live here doesn't mean I like it," Phoebe replied. "I'm not saying I believe you, I'm just saying if it happens you won't hear any complaints from me."
She's quite a piece of work, Raul said when they found a table at the pizza parlor, and Phoebe had gone off to relieve herself.
"I wondered where you'd got to."
I was just enjoying the girl-talk, Raul said. She's one angry lady.
"She's no lady," Tesla said, "that's what I like about her. Pity about her boyfriend."
You think he's gone for good, right?
"Don't you?"
Probably. Why are you wasting time with her? I mean she's very entertaining, but we came here to find Fletcher.
"I can't go back to Toothaker's house alone, " Tesla replied. "I just can't. Soon as I smelled that smell-"
Maybe it was just a backed-up sewer.
"And maybe it was Lix," Tesla said. "And whoever raised them's already killed Fletcher."
But we have to get in to find out.
"Right."
And you think this woman's going to lend some moral support?
"If it's not her who's it going to be? I can't wait till Lucien comes crawling back." I knew we'd get to him"I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying: I need help, and she's the only help available." Suppose she comes to some serious harm? "I don't want to think about that." You have to. "What are you, Jiminy Cricket? I'll be honest with her. I'll tell her what we're up against@' So then you're not responsible, is that it? Tesla, she's just an ordinary woman. "So was I," Tesla reminded him. Whatever you were, Tesla, I don't think you were ever ordinary.
"Thank you." My pleasure. "She's coming back. I'm going to tell her, Raul. I have to." It'll end in lears"Doesn't it always?"
It was a hell of a conversation to have over a pepperoni pizza, but Phoebe's appetite wasn't visibly curbed by anything that Tesia had to say. She listened without comment as Tesla went through her experiences in the Loop, detail by terrible detail, stopping every now and then to say: I know this sounds ridiculous or You probably think this is crazy until Phoebe told her not to bother, because yes, it was crazy, but she didn't care. Tesla took her at her word, and continued the account without further interruption, until she got to the matter of the Lix. Here she stopped.
"What's the problem?" Phoebe wanted to know.
"I'll leave this bit to later."
"Why?"
"It's disgusting, is why. And we're eating."
"If you can bear to tell it, it won't bother me. I've worked in a doctor's office for eight years, remember? I've seen everything."
"You never saw anything like a Lix," Tesla said, and went on to describe them and their conception, dropping her volume even lower than it had been. Phoebe was unfazed.
"And you think it was one of these Lix things you saw in Erwin's house?"
"I think it's possible, yes."
"This guy Fletcher made them?" "I doubt it."
"Then what?"
"Somebody who meant Fletcher harm. Somebody who, came after him, and found him there and-2' She threw up her hands. "The fact is, I don't know. And the only way I'll find out-"
"Is by going in there."
"Right."
"Seems to me," Phoebe said, "if the Lix are real-I'm not saying they are, I'm saying if they are-and if they're made of what you say they're made of, they shouldn't be that hard to kill."
"Some they grow six, seven feet long," Tesla said.
"Huh. And you've actually seen these things?"
"Oh, I've seen them." She turned her gaze out through the window, in part so as not to look at the congealing pizza on her plate, in part so that Phoebe couldn't see the fear in her eyes. "they got into my apartment in L.A.-"
"What did they do: Come up through the toilet?"
Tesla didn't reply.
You're going to have to tell her, Raul murmured in her head.
"Well?" Phoebe said.
Tell her about Kissoon.
"She'll freak," Tesia thought.
She's doing pretty well so far.
Tesla glanced back at Phoebe, who was finishing off her pizza while she waited for a reply.
"Once I've started with Kissoon, where do I stop?" she said to Raul.
You should have thought of that before you mentioned the Lix. It's all part of the same story. Silence from Tesia. Isn't it? he prodded.
"I guess so."
So tell her. Tell her about Kissoon. Tell her about the Loop. Tell her about the ShoaL Tell her about Quiddity if she hasn't got up and left.
"Did you know your lips move when you're thinking?" Phoebe said.
"they do?" "Just a little."
"Well-I was debating something."
"What?"
"Whether I could tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but@'
"And have you decided?" Tell her.
"Yes. I've decided," Tesia leaned forward, pushing her plate aside. "In answer to your question," she said, "no, the Lix didn't come up from the toilet. they came from a loop in time-"
This was the tale she'd never told. Not in its entirety. She'd given Grillo and D'Amour the bare outlines, of course, but she'd never been able to bring herself to fill in the details. they were too painful, too ugly. But she told it now, to this woman she barely knew, and once she'd begun it wasn't so difficult, not with the clatter of plates and the chatter of patrons all around them; a wall of normality to keep the past from catching hold of her heart.
"There was a man called Kissoon," she began, "and I think if we had to make a list of the worst people to have graced the planet he'd probably be somewhere near the top. He was a-what was he?-a shaman, he called himself, but that doesn't really get to it. He had power, a lot of power. He could play with time, he could get in and out of people's heads, he could make Lix-"
"So he was the one."
"It's an old trick, apparently. Sorcerers have been doing it for centuries. And when I say sorcerers I'm not talking about rabbits and hats, I'm talking about people who could change the world-who have changed the world, sometimes-in ways we'll never completely understand."
"Are they all men?" Phoebe wanted to know.
"Most of them."
"Hmm.11
"So Kissoon was one of a group of these people, they were called the Shoal, and they were dedicated to keeping the rest of us from ever knowing about@' She paused here a moment. "Go on," said Phoebe. "I'm listening."
"About a place called Quiddity."
"Quiddity?"
"That's right. It's a sea, where we go sometimes in dreams."
"And why aren't we supposed to know about it?" Phoebe asked. "If we go there in dreams, what's the big secret?" Tesla chewed on this a moment.
"You know, I don't know? I always assumed-what did I assume?-l guess I assumed that the Shoal were the wise ones, and if they lived and died keeping this secret it was because the secret needed to be kept. But now that you mention it, I don't really know why."
"But they're all dead now anyway."
"All dead. Kissoon murdered them." "Why?"
"So that he could eventually have control over the greatest power in the world. A power called the Art."
"And what's that?"
"I don't think anyone really knows."
"Not even this guy Kissoon?"
Tesla pondered this a moment. "No," she said eventually, "not even Kissoon."
"So he committed these murders to get something when he didn't even know what the something was?" she said, her incredulity perfectly plain.
"Oh, he did more than murder. He hid the bodies in the past-"
"Oh come on."
"I swear. He'd killed some of the most important people in the world. More important than the pope or the president. He had to hide the bodies where they'd never be found. He chose a place called Trinity."
"What's that?"
"The when's more important than the where," Tesla said. "Trinity's where the first A-bomb was detonated. Sixteenth of June, nineteen forty-five. in New Mexico."
"And you're telling me that's where he took the people
'd murdered."
"That's where he took 'em. Except-"
"What?"
"Once he was there, he made a mistake-a little mistakeand he got himself trapped."
"Trapped in the past?"
"Right. With the bomb ticking away. So-he made a loop of time, that went round and round on itself, always keeping that moment at bay." Phoebe smiled and shook her head. "What?" said Tesla.
"I don't whether you're crazy or what, but if you made all this up, you should be selling it. I mean, you could make a movie for TV-"
"It's not a movie. It's the truth. I know, because I was there three times. Three times, in and out of Kissoon's Loop."
"So you actually met this guy?" Phoebe said.
"Oh sure, I met him," Tesla replied.
"And-?"
"What was he like?" Phoebe nodded; Tesla shrugged. "Hard to find the words," she said.
"Try." "I've spent five years trying not to think of him. But he's there all the time. Every day something-something dirty, something cruel, maybe just the smell of my own shit-reminds me of him. He wasn't much to look at, you know? He was this runt of a guy, old and dried up. But he could turn you inside out with a look. See inside your head. See inside your guts. Work you, fuck you." She rubbed her palms together, to warm them, but they wouldn't be warmed.
"What happened to him?" "He couldn't hold the moment." Phoebe looked vacant. "What?" "The little loop of time that kept the bomb from being detonated," Tesla explained, "he couldn't hold it."
"So the bomb went off?" "The bomb went off and he went with it."
"You were there?"
"Not right there, or I would have gone up with him. But I was the last out, I'm sure of that." She settled back in her chair. "That's it. Or as much of it as I can tell you right now."
"It's quite a story."
"And you don't believe a word of it."
"Some bits I almost believe. Some bits just sound ridiculous to me. And some bits-some bits I don't want to believe. they frighten me too much."
"So you won't be coming with me to Erwin's house?"
"I didn't say that," Phoebe replied.
Tesla smiled, and dug into the pocket of her leather I jacket.
"What are you looking for?"
"Some cash," she said. "If you're willing to dare Lix with me, the least I can do is pay for the pizza."
TEN
As the streets started to empty, Erwin began to regret his contretemps with Dolan. Though his feet ached, and he felt weary to his imagined marrow, he knew without putting it to the test that phantoms didn't sleep. He would be awake through the hours of darkness, while the living citizens of Everville, safe behind locked doors and bolted windows, took a trip to dreamland. He wandered down the middle of Main Street like a lonely drunk, wishing he could find the woman he'd whispered to outside Kitty's Diner. She at least had heard him, if only remotely whereas nobody else with a heart beating in their chest., even glanced his way, however loud he shouted. There'd been something special about that woman, he decided. Perhaps she'd been psychic.