One of Us (42 page)
She went to Ray Hammond's house the next day, but there was nobody there. Her mother had vanished, I hope to smaller and worse things. There was no rapprochement between Laura and Monica. This is one of life's truths: You can't always have said or done the right thing, can't always have been there for someone, or had them be there for you. There will always have been actions that didn't take place, emotions that weren't quite articulated—because past presents look different with the harsh light of retrospect shining up through them. Life isn't about perfection, but about doing what you can at the time. The way things were was the way they had to be. You have to trust your instincts and forget. The past will always point fingers. That's what it's for.
Laura moved in with Deck a week later. I think they were both kind of surprised, and I sure as hell was, but she kept dropping by and staying longer into the night, and then one evening she just didn't leave. Deck goes all shy when I ask him about it, which I take as a good sign. Of course his place is now full of cushions and shoes, and his bathroom is unrecognizable, but with that comes Laura, and he seems to approve of the overall deal.
One night Laura said this to me while Deck was at the bar: "If the angels were looking for a messenger, they could have done a lot worse than him."
Then she was very rude about the dress sense of the people at the next table, just to make up for it: But I know she meant it.
She's not entirely better. She still drinks more than she should, and there are many days when the clouds are heavy above her. Problems don't go away immediately, if at all: Imperfection and sadness are the high price you pay for being alive. There are times when life seems like a struggle where the only reward you get for hanging on is the chance to struggle some more. But it's a fine ride, and sometimes you get to see the sea.
THE ANGELS made contact again nearly two thousand years later. Complete fiasco all round. Humans had moved on, put their trust in some new words they'd invented. We weren't unsophisticated enough to believe in wings anymore, so we believed in spacecraft and flying saucers. Where once we'd entertained the idea of people having the spirit moving within them, now we believed in technology—and perceived the angels' touch as implants instead. Before the invisibles knew where they were, people were leaping up and down on television describing their ray guns and little buggy eyes and how they wanted to spawn with Earth women. The invisibles who'd played at being gods with the Greeks and the Romans probably regarded this situation with a wry smile, thanking their lucky stars they hadn't played around in an era with the concept of paternity suits.
The angels had never really wanted me. They wanted a route to Stratten, who'd kept managing to elude them. Stratten was one of those men whose souls are difficult to find, even for angels. He was so visible, he barely made a mark on the other side. Memory-tampering pushes us in the wrong direction, encourages us to distance ourselves from what is real and will remain. The more we dissociate from the living past all around us, the harder it will be for us to go back, just as a refusal to integrate with one's past is the most certain way of breaking one's mind.
Stratten had cornered the market in disturbing the past, and the angels wanted his business closed down.
They were also extremely pissed at the fact that he had helped cause the death of the man they'd been grooming as the next vessel for the Message. They'd decided it was time to try again, and Ray Hammond got the call. Ray had indeed been getting religion just before he died—but not in the usual sense. He'd been mainlining from the source, and in the last days had been confused and terribly afraid, not knowing if he was losing his mind.
God hadn't approved, but he'd let matters unfold, because that was his way. He was glad the plan hadn't succeeded, not least because he was still dealing with the fallout from the last time. He privately felt it should have been a woman's turn, and that the basic approach was flawed anyhow. Now that God lives among us, he's coming around to the way things are. The division between our realms gives the visibles somewhere to yearn toward, an invisible heart to where we live. Like love, it gives life weight.
There is only one other way truly to understand that other place, and that is to die. That's why, in that walk around the school many years ago, I saw my dead grandparents. They had become invisibles again. Form breaks down, our secrets dissolve, and we all become part of the carrier wave once more. Sometimes we feel their presence among us, these past people, like a breeze in the darkness: We call them ghosts. We impose upon them once again the shapes they have left behind, believing, as we seem to, that our bodies are where we live instead of merely where we die.
They can come back if they want to, after a while and in different shapes, but mainly they stay away. That's a choice that we will all get to make somewhere down the years. There are very few lines that cannot be crossed: The only question is when we take the step.
I finally spoke with my mother's parents, went and saw them on the Net. We talked for a long time together, and a couple of days later Mom called to say their address had gone dead.
There is a time for all of us to return to the invisible, but for me it is not yet.
I like it here.
THAT'S WHAT the man in the dark suit told me, anyway, but who knows how much of it was true. You never really know where you are with deities. They've got weird agendas. If I'd been Hindu, or Buddhist, or Hopi, maybe he'd have told it a little differently, changed a few of the names—but it would have been the same story.
Then he finished his Frappuccino, asked if I'd mind paying, and got up and left. I watched him until he became one of the crowd, joined the stream of busy individuals going their ways. Perhaps he will sit behind you in a diner some lunchtime, and you'll never know he's there; or you'll hear his footsteps around the corner one night, and not realize who passed by. Maybe you'll even look upon his face sometime: But it looks much like ours these days, and you'll never ask his name.
I decided not to go back to Griffith, though I did pick up my answering machine and cutlery. I rented a small house in Venice, not far from where Helena and I once lived. It's pleasant, and I have more than enough appliances now, though some of them still walk with a slight limp and the food processor has taken to wearing a sling. I hear them sometimes, in the wee hours, gathered in the kitchen, reliving their victory. I don't bother to lock the door at night. I figure anybody who tries robbing the place is going to find a more spirited defense than he's bargaining for.
I got our old stuff out of storage, and have it in crates in the living room. I'm not going to unpack it for the time being. I don't want to tempt my luck. I did sift through a couple of boxes, and I discovered something kind of odd. I found the ornamental box where the five pebbles should have been, and they were gone.
I choose to believe that two were for Deck and Laura, one for Travis, and the others were for Helena and me.
Which is why, though it's been three weeks, I expect to see Helena again. I asked around, discovered that she wasn't going out with the guy she'd said. My best guess is that her lie was for my benefit, a protection mechanism to make it easier for us to get reacquainted: that she even went to the trouble to fake a phone call to him. Didn't fool my mother, though I guess it worked on me.
I miss Helena now. Properly. Not with anger, or because I want to avenge or undo the past, but because I'd really like to see her again. I know she's out there somewhere, or perhaps inside, in a place where the air is verdigris. I think time doesn't mean much where she is, and she'll come back when she's good and ready. Sometimes I can even feel her, staying playfully just out of reach. Getting closer by the minute, building up speed to pull me free.
Tomorrow I'm going to pack a bag and get in the car and drive down the Baja. I'm going to check into Quitas Papagayo and collect enough driftwood for a fire, then I'll take a shower and walk into Ensenada. If I start early enough, I'll get there while the streets still teem with tourists buying rugs and bangles and pottery animals, and the sky over the harbor is still thick with birds squabbling for scraps of fish: early enough to wander for an hour in a hazy afternoon sun that fuses land and sea into one.
Maybe later, as the light begins to change and the crowds thin out, I'll start to feel something, to believe again in nights of shadows and distant shouting. And perhaps as I walk the streets toward Housson's, past the dark storefronts, I'll find the corner I've always looked for, and turn it, and she'll be there.
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