I'm hungover and wearing yesterday's clothes, so I probably look a little worse for wear. But she's not even looking at me, like she can't see me at all.
“Hello?” I say to her.
Now her eyes shift toward me, almost imperceptibly, and she answers.
“Hi!” she says. “What may I get for you?”
In any normal situation I would be surprised by her sudden recognition of me, but by now it's not out of bounds at all.
“May I use one of your computers?”
“They're free with a purchase.”
“Okay. Um, how about a water and one of those chocolate things there?”
“The Chocolate Decadent Mystery?”
“Yeah, that's great.”
She rings me up and I dig some cash out of my pants.
“Thanks, Mr. Phillips! Hope to see you again soon.”
I hurry over to the computers and sit down on one of the barstools. The chocolate thing smells miraculous and reminds me how ravenous I am. I tear into it, eat too quickly, and pretty soon I can't breathe. I wash it down with water, finishing it in two last bites. Drink more water and reach for the mouse.
My original intention was to log into Facebook and send Sophia a message, since that's the way we most often communicate, but I completely forgot about the chat window in Gmail. When someone is signed in, a little green light pops up, sort of like a traffic light. Sofia is online pretty often, so maybe she will be now. In fact, considering the way this story is going, I would be stunned if she weren't available.
I log in, and her green light blinks on. Of course it does!
I click on her name and type:
Are you there?
A period of time passes. I look around the room as I wait. Everyone seems to be occupied by their own conversations, and none appears to notice me. But they could be faking it.
You want to know something? Paranoia is exhausting. When you are the central figure in the universe, every social encounter seems to take on extra meaning. You have to always pay attention, and it's tiresome.
Sophia P: Thomas?
She really is there. Thank goodness.
Me: Sophia, I need your help.
Sophia P: Where have you been Thomas? Why haven't you called me back? I called you like ten times. I emailed you. I thought you bailed on me.
Me: I'm in trouble. I haven't been ignoring you. I lost my phone.
Sophia P: You couldn't just send me a message and let me know?
Me: Sophia, listen to me. I lost my job. Gloria left. Someone is following me. I haven't slept since Monday. I couldn't get in touch with you until now.
Sophia P: Thomas, what on earth?
Me: I'm on my way to California. I'll be there soon. I was hoping I could come by and see you. I need help. I need to rest. Is there any way I could come by?
Sophia P: You're coming here? Where are you?
I don't want to tell her the truth because she'll assume I'm six or seven hours away, but I can't bring myself to lie to her, either.
Me: I'm in Flagstaff.
Sophia P: You're pretty far away, then.
Me: I'm making really good time. I'll be there pretty quickly.
She doesn't respond for a while, and I'm afraid she's going to turn me down. I mean, this isn't exactly a normal request. Moving a relationship from Facebook to real life is hard enough as it is, but under duress she might very well turn me down.
Sophia P: What do you mean someone is following you?
Me: It's hard to explain. I'd rather tell you in person.
Sophia P: That isn't very reassuring. This isn't very typical behavior for you, Thomas. How do I even know it's you?
Me: I know you broke your back when you were thirteen, and that you almost died from a staph infection. I know your brother is adopted. I
Sophia P: Okay.
Me: Okay, you'll see me?
Sophia P: Thomasâ¦there's something I have to tell you.
And here it is again, that bloom of paranoia. Is Sophia also compromised? How could they have found her? My fingers shake as I type. Somewhere behind me a phone rings.
Me: What?
Sophia P: I don't actually live in L.A.
Of all the things I might have guessed she would say, this is not one of them.
Me: What?
Sophia P: I've been trying to figure out how to tell you. I never expected us to become such good friends. The more we talked the harder it became to tell you the truth. I didn't want to lose you, Thomas.
Me: Why did you lie about where you lived?
Sophia P: I didn't just lie about that. My profiles on MySpace and Facebook are fake. I made them up as sort of a social experiment, and when you and I first started talking I should have told you. But I didn't know, Thomas. I didn't know you would become special to me, and then I could never bring myself to tell you the truth.
What am I supposed to do with this? She's been lying to me? Since I've known her? You've got to be kidding me.
Me: You were the last person I thought I could trust. Now I have no one.
Sophia P: You can trust me. I promise. I'm the same person you've become friends with. All the same jokes and things we've shared, that's all real. I'm just not a struggling actress living in L.A.
Me: Who are you then?
Sophia P: I actually live in Berkeley. I teach screenwriting here. That's why I was in those MySpace forums in the first place. That's how we even met.
Berkeley, California? The home of Philip K. Dick? Are you kidding me?
Me: Are you even a woman?
Sophia P: Of course I am, Thomas! I know it seems absurd and totally dishonest but I promise you I have a good explanation. I am so sorry. Just come here and I will explain it to you.
Clearly, I am supposed to meet Sophia in Berkeley. Everything has led to this. But I can't say that to her, at least not yet.
Me: I don't know if I can trust you. I'm in a lot of trouble and I was hoping to come by and see you and finally be able to get some rest. I am about to collapse.
Sophia P: What kind of trouble?
Me: It's hard to explain. I'm being followed by people whoâ¦look, I can't convey this in a couple of lines of text.
Sophia doesn't respond right away. I sit there and stare at the screen. When you're waiting on someone to respond on chat, you never know if it's because she got up for coffee or went to the bathroom or took a phone call. Maybe she doesn't like what you just said and isn't sure how to respond. Maybe she
does
like it but isn't sure how to respond. The point is you never really know.
Sophia P: Ok, fine. We both have secrets now. I'll give you my address, but from where you are it's going to take a while.
She keys in her address, and when it appears, I copy and paste it into Google Maps. I plot a route between Flagstaff and her address in Berkeley, and it returns a distance of 758 miles for an estimated drive time of 11 hours and 19 minutes. It's a pretty simple route, and I spend a moment or two committing it to memory. I-40 to Barstow, Barstow to Bakersfield, I-5, I-580. Once I make it into Oakland I may have trouble finding my way to her street, but if so I can always stop and ask someone.
Me: Ok. I'm going to leave here now. I'll see you in a bit.
Sophia P: Google says it will take you more than 11 hours.
Me: It won't take that long.
Sophia P: Don't drive too fast, Thomas. I can't help if you don't show up in one piece.
Me: I gotta run now. I'll be there sooner than you think. Please don't leave, okay? I need someone to talk to, even if that someone isn't who she said she was.
Sophia P: I won't let you down Thomas, I promise.
I close all my windows and reach for another drink of my water, but the bottle is dry. I'm about to head toward the counter and buy another one when I realize the coffee shop is completely silent. In fact the only thing I hear is the industrial steam sound of a coffee maker. My heart grows cold again, like a dead person is squeezing the life out of it.
When I turn around, everyone is looking at me. Every person in the coffee shop.
A couple of college coeds sitting behind their laptops. A woman in a blue pinstripe business suit. Two twentyish guys in ski caps and sweatshirts.
Every one of them.
How can they possibly know? Who is following me? No one has come into the coffee shop since I got here. Or did I miss it? Is my pursuer here right now, looking back at me?
I stand up slowly. The door is on my right. I walk toward it, not taking my eyes off the coffee drinkers. They don't take their eyes off me, either.
When I reach the door, the girl who waited on me calls out, “Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Phillips. We'll see you soon!”
I push the door open and hurry to my car. My eyes dart from vehicle to vehicle in the parking lot, looking for someone watching me. An elderly couple walks toward the CVS Pharmacy. Some guy bursts out of a convenience store on my right. He's clutching his head and lurches toward a silver Nissan Maxima. In the distance I hear the urgent call of a siren. Everything around me seems significant, and I feel gravity pushing on me from all sides, the weight of everything.
FORTY-TWO
I
yank open my car door, jump in, slam the door closed, and speed out of the parking lot. The highway is just a block or two away and soon I'm headed west again. In the rearview mirror I notice a brown sedan behind me, so I speed up a little, and the brown sedan falls back. Going this fast, around eighty-five, I pass a few cars and eventually another sedan appears behind me, this time a green one. A Ford of some kind.
In the beginning I wondered if any of this was real, if maybe I was hallucinating it all, but I rejected the idea. Hallucinations or not, unless I planned on checking myself into a mental hospital, what else could I do besides react to my environment as if it were real?
But that feels like a long time ago, before the implausibility began to mount. When I consider where I am now, not just geographically but emotionally, what this has all come to, I begin to doubt myself again.
And what is the point of anything if it turns out my memories are only backstory? If Gloria isn't real, if my love for her isn't real, what do I have? What does any of us have?
Now another road sign. It welcomes me to California only ten minutes after I left Flagstaff. Completely unreal. Absurd. My car cannot travel 500 miles an hour, and even if it could, why don't I feel like I'm going fast? It's like the world has drastically shrunk, or at least the spaces between landmarks have. Everything is the same size, but there is vastly less space.
The road is completely empty again. The sun occupies the same place in the sky as before. Ahead, I see another sign. This one is large and odd-shaped, instead of being rectangular the way road signs usually are. From a distance the sign seems to be green, but upon closer inspection it is swimming with colors, little squares of red and yellow and pink and blue mixed in with monolithic blocks of forest green. The letters on the sign are drawn in some kind of crazy font, swollen fat at their tops, shrunk to almost nothing on the bottom.
The sign says: Barstow: Up ahead. I look into the rearview mirror and see a red convertible approaching quickly. It changes lanes to pass, and slows down as it pulls alongside me.
I look over and see two dudes sitting in the front seats. The passenger is dark-skinned and kind of heavyâswarthy, reallyâwhile the driver is gaunt, almost skeletal. He's wearing some kind of soft-brimmed hat and big sunglasses. When he sees me looking at him, he pulls off his sunglasses in dramatic, exaggerated fashion and bares his teeth at me. His eyes are bloodshot, wild. The irises are nearly eclipsed by his pupils. I am unable to wrench my eyes away, and watch as he takes a swig of alcohol from what looks like a bottle of tequila.
The driver opens his mouth and leers at me.
“Buy the ticket, Thomas!” he yells in a pitchy, scratchy voice. “Take the ride!”
Then the convertible speeds away, its Chevrolet emblem glowing gold on its tail, too large in relation to the rest of car. A moment later Barstow is behind me.
Headed northwest now. Tehachapi, Bakersfield, Interstate 5. In the distance I see a train, or think I do, except it appears to be a miniature train, like something you would ride in an amusement park. The train is piloted by two young boys, and there may or may not be dogs chasing it, or what appear to be dogs, but when I rub my eyes to get a better look, it's just all gone.
Ahead, a highway interchange looms. A big green sign suggests I either continue on the 5 to Stockton and Sacramento or take 580 toward Tracy and San Francisco. But when I actually reach the interchange, I realize the decision has already been made for me. There are no lanes for I-5. There is another green sign, and the beginnings of an exit, but then the asphalt simply ends, as if it never existed, and instead of a highway I see empty desert stretching toward the horizon.
If my car were a truck, some rugged four-wheel-drive thing, if I veered off the road and drove in the direction of Stockton and Sacramento, would I eventually reach these cities? I don't think I would. I'm not sure they even exist. Clearly the only reason the roads I'm driving on are paved is because I'm expected to take them. Whether I decided this or it was decided for me is up for debate, but apparently my destination is a foregone conclusion.
And you want to know something else? This isn't the first time I've been here.
If you asked me yesterday if I had ever been to California, I would have said no without hesitation. Which maybe is odd for a man who wants to write screenplays for a living, but it's true nonetheless. Or so I've always believed. Being here now I realize I've seen this freeway before, and I don't mean in the fleeting déjà vu sense. I know for sure I've driven through this flat, grassy plain and seen those green hills to the west, have perhaps seen them many times. This is how I know so easily where I'm going without having to follow directions.