Shadow Traffic (23 page)

“You don't think having hell take over my apartment is unjust enough?”

“Tell me what happened
before
that.”

“You think my behavior caused it to happen?”

“Of course not. That's what the other world wants you to think. You've left that world now and you're taking your first steps in the new one, but you still need to face what happened to you before. For instance, in your work, did you do want you wanted to?”

“Does anyone?”

“Did you achieve what you deserved?”

“I was a painter once. I had some talent, I thought, but I didn't know the politics, didn't know how to succeed.”

“The art division can help you there. What about in your love life?”

“I didn't know how to treat women.”

“Nobody in the other world does.”

“I ruined every chance I had.”

“Your life isn't over there either. The marriage division will find you a partner, I know that firsthand.”

He looked at her longingly.

“Do you have any children?” she said.

“No. I was the child I tried to take care of,” he said, remembering himself as a seven-year-old then, alone in his bathtub.

“It isn't too late for children either. The Founder will soon have some exciting news about getting children into our lives, or into the lives of those people who want them.”

“OK. All of that sounds great, but none of it's gonna happen as long as I'm literally living in hell, right?” he said, more angrily than he wanted. He felt the veins might even be sticking out near his forehead, veins his hair was no longer there to cover.

“You're not in hell anymore,” she said, looking at him calmly.

“How can you know that? Is that what happened to the other woman you helped?”

She nodded. “She was given justice, and hell can't survive in a just environment.”

“So can you really help me?”

“What would you like me to do?”

“No, it wouldn't be right. It could …”

“Do you want me to go to your apartment and face down your hell? Is that it? I'm not afraid to. Is that what you want?” she said.

It was almost preternaturally easy to get a taxi, as if the two of them were never really in the restaurant at all.

Mason sat with a kind of rigid attention, as if he were a soldier assigned to guard himself, while Julia kept assuring him about their trip to his apartment. But when they got out of the cab he started muttering, “I shouldn't be doing this. It's a sin, don't you see? It's a sin.”

“The only sin was your enduring the injustice in your life and now you've finally done something about that.”

“No, no, I've sinned against others, always putting myself first and now I'm doing it again.”

“Hush, Mason,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth as they approached the door to his building. “I've done this before even though I shouldn't be doing it now. I mean I'm breaking the rules a bit 'cause it's work outside my division, but I think they'll understand. Is this your building?”

“Yes, I'm on the ground floor.” Then he told her to turn back even as she was turning the key in the lock. “I was often disappointed to find out the world was real,” he said, “that things stayed in their place after we left them.”

“Why? What does that mean?”

“Because that made my failures real, too.”

“Don't talk that way. Is this your door?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Don't worry. I have my cell phone with me if anything's wrong.”

Your phone won't work here, he thought.

“Give me your key. I'll open it.”

He handed the keys to her thinking he'd just given her the key to hell.

And then they entered his apartment as easily as if entering a smooth pool of water. Immediately he could feel the heat and smell the bitterness in the air, which seemed to have grown still
stronger. She turned on the kitchen light and gasped, then tried to muffle it, hand to her mouth. They each took a step forward and stopped. The air was coiling like water stirred by wind, and though it was invisible, there was an unmistakable sense of movement around them.

“Oh my god,” she whispered. She looked like she'd been electrocuted, eyes rolled back in their sockets for a second like Little Orphan Annie's. Then they both looked at the door behind them, which was shut.

“I'm sorry,” he said, but she wasn't listening, had instead begun talking out loud more to herself than to him.

“This is worse than what I saw before, this is worse. I shouldn't have come here, I wasn't supposed to and now I've ruined myself at the society, now I'll never get married.”

“Why? What?”

“I broke my pledge, don't you see? I'll have to confess it.”

“What should I do?” he said. “What can I do?”

“Go to a hotel. Don't come back here, it's too late.”

He decided not to tell her about the Holiday Inn where he was already staying.

Then she started dialing her cell phone. “Archie, is that you?” she said. “Can you come here right away? I'm in trouble. I have an injustice to confess. I'm so ashamed and scared. Please come here as soon as you can. I'm with member Mason.”

A moment later she asked him for his exact address, so she could give it to Archie.

“He's coming. Archie's coming to save us. I wouldn't touch anything if I were you—it's probably all infected.”

“No, I won't,” he said.

“Archie said to inhale as little as possible and not to move until he knocks.”

He nodded, wondering if he would throw up from the air and everything else that was making him sick. Then they waited without moving, like statues.

“When is he coming?” he finally asked, feeling like a child, and wondering if he'd just spoken in a child's voice.

“He's just a few minutes away. Be strong,” she said, but he could hear her crying softly, like a muted violin, then wondered with a shudder if it was really hell that created that image in his mind.

The knocking came in triplicate, reverberating like drumbeats. The two of them came unfrozen and ran to the door, which opened quite easily despite his fears that it wouldn't.

In the hallway she fell into Archie's arms, sobbing. He held her while staring bullets at him.

“I've committed an injustice, please forgive me. I only meant to help him.”

“We'll discuss it,” Archie said tersely.

“Please don't tell the Founder, please.”

“You know I'll have to.”

“But he'll expel me, he'll …”

“We'll discuss it later,” he said firmly, separating himself from her so he could look her in the face. Then he turned his gaze on Mason.

“You,” he said, pointing a finger at him. “In the name of the Founder, I hereby expel you from the Global Justice Society forever.”

Then, grabbing her hand, they walked briskly, almost running to the front door, which roared like thunder as it shut behind them.

He stood still, staring at the outside door after it shut behind them. Or rather, he stood in place but was shaking as if the hell winds of his apartment were still blowing through him. He realized he was stunned by the suddenness of their disappearance even more than by hell's sudden invasion of his home. It's as if the door murdered Julia, just as a different door brought her into my life, he thought. Was hell just a variation or subset of time? Then he began shaking more, and his teeth also started chattering, as if determined to play their part in the sickening symphony his body was playing in spite of his efforts to stop it.

“This is the end of reality,” he thought, as he ran toward the door. Yet it opened as if only too eager to let him escape into the streets. “Taxi,” he started yelling, “taxi,” already yearning for his hotel.

He was sitting in the bathtub with only the hotel's bed-table light on. It was like dusk. He felt he'd been in the tub a long time but really he didn't know how much time had passed. Tomorrow he would look for a new apartment and buy a new computer, too. Some new clothes also, he supposed. Certainly he wouldn't miss his old place. Without a woman in it all that time it had already been like hell long before hell took it over.

He shut his eyes. He didn't want to think but it was hard to stop. He saw an image of Julia's face, which quickly disappeared, then an image of his father, which stayed. It was just a picture of his father's face smiling at him when he was a child. Hell hadn't destroyed that, at least. Yes, that was a kind of justice, he thought. That and this good hotel bath water.

The jeans were a disaster—a failure on every level. Not sexy enough, not classy enough, too preppy, like something from a different era. What was she thinking to even consider them for the interview? Her mind had been off lately, she knew that, as if it were taking delight in sabotaging her with one trap after another. Even this morning, just after Eric left, she found herself thinking about the farm in Chester Springs, jumping from the tractor that she used to climb every day as a little girl and landing in the hay below, then laughing after she landed when she looked around her—suddenly surrounded by a yellow world.

And then, no sooner remembered, than the guilt for remembering it. It was a Pennsylvania memory, and Eric didn't want her to remember Pennsylvania. He'd bristled when she'd first told him about it—pretended he didn't but really did—which was so often his way. She was supposed to be from the South just like him, the self-styled “cowboy director,” was supposed to be from Arizona though he really grew up in New Jersey. It would hurt both of them if that came out, not just her, but both of them, he'd said, staring hard at her when he first told her, as if he were her father catching his little girl in a lie. It was
like acting, Eric said. Once you accepted the part you had to live it completely. If you started remembering things that didn't match up with the part, the next thing you knew you'd be talking about them and then you'd betray the character and lose the role. She had nodded and agreed. Who was she to disagree with Eric West, the great director, when he talked about acting? But what she wondered was, if you weren't allowed to remember yourself, who were you? Maybe that was why she wanted a baby so much, to have something she could remember that would be real.

She was doing it again—giving in to the bad thoughts that these days were always just a second away. She opened her closet in search of the right jeans and felt like she was entering a forest. It was obscene to have a closet this big, the way people were living all around the world. But even the most socially activist stars lived like royalty, every single one of them from Angelina on down. Who was she, to think that if she ever became one and had her own money that she'd live any differently? It was just another self-sabotaging fantasy, she supposed.

She began thinking about her conversation with Jaime two nights ago at Lillian's party. He was obviously an intelligent guy, kind of attractive, too, in a non-Hollywood way. Of course she assumed it was Eric he wanted to interview. Why wouldn't she assume that? When they met people, journalists or otherwise, they stared at her breasts for a few seconds, then turned toward Eric and quickly told him how much they loved his movies and proceeded to ignore her for the rest of the night, treating her more like a poster than a person.