Chapter 2
Moira's Bed

 

"What is it, Nort? What's wrong?"

I must have slipped back in. When I came out again I was grabbing onto her pink nightgown in a childish panic.

I started to form the words to tell her about it. But then I thought, maybe she's not supposed to know.

"Just some kind of weird dream. It's going away now." I knew inside that it wasn't going away. I took in the stale smell of lavender from Moira's neck and tried to use it to mask the memory. But that was like wishing away the smell of death with a whore's perfume.

The stippled ceiling above Moira's bed looked lower than I remembered it. Daylight was filling the room slowly. Moira pressed me: "What do you mean, nothing? Look at you. You're covered in sweat. You've gotten me all wet, and my sheets too. Are you sick?"

"I guess I had a nightmare." I reached for the still-silent alarm on the bed-table beside me and shut it off.

"You guess you had a nightmare." She sat up abruptly, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke out in a blue huff. "Hon, when I have a nightmare I know it."

To call it anything else was crazy. And yet I knew there was more to it. I recalled it now in a flash, as a real event . . . my driving home from the office yesterday, for instance. When I ran the reality check of thinking back on that verifiable day at the office, however, and retracing my steps to the car, I went right into the dream-scene again, complete with rifle, bullet, note, and taunting voice.

All I could say to Moira was, "This one was different. It seemed so real." I was confused, and I wanted to leave the whole thing behind. How could a nightmare be real? I needed to get up and sort it out for myself. I leaned over and reached for the white T-shirt on the floor beside the bed.

Moira's curiosity got the better of her, and she changed her tack, laying a soft hand dreamlike on my elbow. "Nortie, you're still shaking. Why don't you tell me about it?"

I sat up and put the shirt on, nearly finding words to begin again. Moira leaned back against the curved, cushioned headboard, flicked ashes over the inverted tortoise shell on her bedside table, and waited for me to attempt the impossible.

It was still close by--waiting for me in the hush of a still-indistinct day.

I didn't want to believe that anything else mattered except getting up to go to work. But now here was this other job, at once urgent and familiar--the continuing chore of trying to making sense of my life. This was a 24/7 contract which was already tough enough. And in that moment of weakness at the sudden enormity of the task, I thought Moira might be able to help.

So I told her about it. It wasn't easy, since to retell is to relive. I finished with the confession, "I'm afraid to dream again."

All she could say was, "Boy oh boy."

"It's hard to explain, Moira. It just feels like there's more--a lot more." What I didn't say was, "I'm afraid when I dream again, I'll be putting myself in their hands."

So instead of saying, "Whose hands," Moira asked, "Whose voice do you think it was?" Her own voice was at once exasperated and condescending.

I shook my head. "I don't have a clue. Except the fake-sounding accents, which get me nowhere. I don't get it either, Moira. It just seems like they want me to . . . to--"

"You mean in the dream."

"Yeah, but--you're still not hearing me. It feels like it's not over." I began to get a sense, from Moira's lack of response to my reality, of how the beginning of one thing can be the end of another. But what the fuck? It didn't much matter, did it? Either end of the seesaw could move--the dream, the relationship--and either way, my situation was going to get worse, or it wasn't . . .

Moira turned away and lay up staring at the ceiling. Her long auburn hair lay splashed over the pillows. Her large, liquid blue eyes glistened with starpoints of light. She had an otherworldly kind of beauty, in that moment, and I almost wished to have married her, even as I felt her hardening against me.

I brought my hand away from the clammy fabric of her nightgown and wiped it on the sheet. "Hey, Moira, I'm sorry I told you about it. You're right. It was just a bad dream."

She blinked her eyes, looked at me blackly where the starlight had been, and turned away.

I looked over at the alarm clock. "Shit. I've got to get moving."

I got out of bed and dressed in high gear. Moira lay in state, as if mulling over her mummihood. This was Friday, her morning off, which meant I'd have to hustle up my own breakfast.

Despite my preoccupation with getting to work on time, the dream visions stayed with me through bathroom, closet and hall, on the windshield inside my forehead. I had the feeling that when I went down to the street and got in the car, I'd find that scope-rifle in the back seat--maybe assembled and ready to go, this time.

And if I found Myrtle whistling-clean, what then?

I'd be wondering when and where the bastards would turn up next.

* * *

Moira stood at the kitchen doorway in her bathrobe, arms folded as if to hold herself for comfort, watching me gulp toast and coffee. Her stringy brown hair hung uncombed around her jowls. Her fleshy nostrils quivered. With a half-dose of caffeine down, she was ready to have another go at it.

"I still don't get it," she said. "Let's give you the benefit of the doubt for a sec, and call your dream 'real.' What does that mean, to you or anybody? Do you really expect to see this note turn up again somewhere, with your instructions on it? Tell me. What would someone want you to do for them? Is it about your work, do you think? Or is the stress finally getting to you?"

I just let her go on. What would be the point--

"Okay, let's take a leap and imagine that it means you have an important task to do for somebody. The gun's just kinda this male thing, for effect. Gerald would have to be in there somewhere--"

"Moira, just give me a break, will you? I don't know! I just told you what happened, okay? I'm sorry I didn't read their goddamned note the first time. And there was no instruction manual with the gun and its pet bullet."

She answered with an eerie calm: "Maybe you'll find their note still on the vent window."

Strangely, her comment made me feel better. Even if it was just a game to her, a playing along. This tacit form of support shone a ray of perspective on an invisible adversary. Maybe I'd have an easier time with this dark riddle if I just "played along." If I actually assumed, for "just a sec" or two, that whatever had happened to me last night in sleep, or yesterday, was still happening as we spoke, and in some fractal version of fact, was real.

So I took up the thread--lifeline or spider-trail--she had handed me. And found myself swinging in the void. Quickly I looked out for a foothold and clambered back onto the solid land of mutual condescension. "Thanks for that thought, Moira, but somehow I don't think so. I'm afraid the note's gone by now. I'm sure I would have noticed it when I got home. It probably blew away at some point when I was driving down the street."

They say burnt toast is good after poison.

The whole thing was preposterous: I'd simply had a normal day at work, driven home, eaten supper with Moira, gone to bed . . .

Moira kept me in the game. "But you said you drove around the block once, first. Maybe it's still somewhere around there."

"Right," I said with my last swallow of coffee. "I'll cruise the block again before going up to the office."

I neglected to kiss her good-bye. Ah, well--it wasn't the first time.

Of course the note was gone from the side window. The back seat, as well, was empty. Was I surprised?

During the twenty minute drive through the morning streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, NAmerica, Earth, October 2009, I couldn't resist stopping to inspect a few stray bits of paper I passed along the way (including part of a Herald-Examiner which lent credence to my supposed coordinates in reliable space-time), but found no "mission note." Was I in the clear, then? Naturally I couldn't have expected to find a dream-note on a real street; yet Moira's indulgence in my fantasy, however mocking, had nudged me to a cautious suspension of judgment.

Either way, I thought, I can't tell Gerald about this.

* * *

Gerald Scanlon was hacker-in-chief at the microcorp I worked for. We were situated in a newly remodeled office suite occupying the second floor of a former warehouse, a block away from the bustle of Haliburton Boulevard and the West Side Mall. Approaching the building, one sees a venerable yet humble "6," in faded black, marking through the ages an otherwise plain, gray-painted and weather-stripped door, giving access to a locked inner door and quick turn right to a flight of stairs. One admires the refinished banister leading the way up to a dark walnut finish on the official portal to our hard-copy site, the second-floor door sporting also new and classy gilt lettering showing "Scanlon & Hart" on its lightly textured glass panel.

It was curious how Gerald had kept the old company name even after Kenneth Hart's departure. Why not "Scanlon and Associates"? Too much of the lawyers-and-accountants feel? Whatever the motivation, the old name had a certain ring; and we were of the more creative ilk, we tech-consultants, we cyber-crème.

Proceeding to the inner spaces as through the directories on a new operating system, the sexy tour guide presents in husky virtual seduction our new pastel-salmon reception counter, waves with a casual hand toward a couple of redecorated back offices and conference-cum-coffee room, and, alas, with heavy-lashed eyes lowered, almost bashful . . . beckons us to my work-area which somehow was left adrift by the rogue architects (Jeevers and Associates) under the putative direction of Mr. Scanlon. "My office" was a mere space with three walls.

A dentist used to operate here: you could still see the circles on the original hardwood floor near my desk, where the big swivel chairs had been mounted. Reflooring would have been a nice touch, and in the hands of other management may have been considered essential; but in this case it wound up in the "overbudget" column of Giselda's books. Giselda, the office secretary missing from the Scanlon and Hart travel brochure we have just perused, is late as usual because, she will claim, she forgot to let the dog out and had to go back.

Gerald was visible through the open door of his office, talking on the phone: his short, dense peach hair receded halfway to baldness, his ropy forearms folded over a white, short-sleeved silk shirt. Gerald was always talking on the phone--a throwback to the days before e-mail took over the communications division of homo sapiens.

I had an uneasy feeling that it had been days since I'd been here.

But I had a ready strategy against such an anxiety: just check my logon file. The screen looked at me as I approached, its cartoon one-eye half-lidded in "Ready" mode. I sat down, and the eyelid sprang open.

Don't be alarmed. It was programmed to do this.

The eye seemed to smile, to welcome me into my--into its--workspace. I could leave the mingled smells of old and new varnishes, stale and fresh coffee behind, and dive into cool, sterile waters . . .

I logged on and called up my last entries. Date column: October 22--yesterday. Time logged off, 4:25. Everything shipshape, according to the computer. Its low, hushed hum purred, lulling me into normalcy. But on this day, I slipped right past normal into a vague yet sudden panic.

I didn't so much remember my dream, then, as re-experience it in some more vital, almost cellular, manner. If such an effect is obscure I can only further describe it by saying that I started shaking, rapidly yet lightly, all over.

Lance Harrison sauntered by, coffee mug steaming. "Hiya, Nort. You on the wagon today, or what?"

I willed myself into control enough to speak, but avoided looking at him directly. "Hairy. How's it." I didn't care to banter with him further, to probe his meaning--had he noticed my shakes or simply the absence of my first cup of joe? Instead I just grunted, pretending a preoccupation with getting my work files warmed up..

"Harry," or "Hairy," as I more affectionately called him, was a New York kind of guy, who normally would have brandished bravado and hard-edged humor in order to expose whatever was hiding under my skin. But something in my manner put him off this time, because he raised a quick thumb and disappeared with a curt "Later," down the corridor to his own properly four-walled office.

I took a deep breath. My position in this company was marginal enough, without my coming out as some kind of an alien-abductee.

The glass pane rattled in the door as Giselda came in, sighing and talking to herself loudly enough for her office-mates to hear her excuse of the day, which we have heard before.

"Good morning, Giselda," I called out. That's what she needed to stop herself nattering and to settle down to work, every day. Today, I needed it.

"Ahhhhhh. Is it a good morning? Hello Nortie."

For a moment, I thought she said "Gordie." It was Sheila, my other fantasy mistress--and Moira's younger sister--who called me Gordie.

I had a direct line of sight past the partition to Giselda's chair at her desk behind the reception counter, and with a brief glance I saw her flashing her big sparkling, made-up green eyes for me. She knew I was in a relatively stable relationship with Moira. I knew Giselda was single and, at thirty-six, feeling like she was losing time. True, I felt some affection for her. But in my personal life right now, there was just no room for her--either the real or the fantasy version.

As with Harry I turned my attention quickly to the computer screen, cultivating a neutral silence between us as I arranged my current files and went to work. Along with the office renovations had come a slick new computer system, the 510-E Series Synphase. Gerald, Harry, Giselda and I each ran a workstation linked to operate in tandem. Giselda didn't use a tenth of her share of the combined computing power, as she handled standard secretarial duties with relatively undemanding system calls: accounting, correspondence, file management. But the rest of us were now able to breeze through once-formidable tasks; since with the four units linked together as quartenary system modules, we had the speed and memory capacity of a virtual mainframe.

I took pride in this job--mixed with frustration at not advancing appreciably in salary or position. We crunched data for aircraft designers; projected future trends for government agencies and academic research groups. For a variety of corporate clients, we supplied custom software to handle bid-analysis, account mergers, and insurabililty factoring. In short, we occupied a node in a vast and intricate network of industry, bureaucracy and information management. Within walking distance of Scanlon and Hart's were half a dozen similar outfits, all filling different niches in the network. While my personal aspirations to upward mobility had stalled, I took consolation in playing a useful part in some larger, if vaguer, social enterprise.

The morning routine put me back into a more normal, if still vaguely haunted--frame of mind. Yeah, I considered, nightmares do feel real; that's just what they're supposed to do. Otherwise we're not scared enough to pay attention to what they're trying to tell us. Psych 101. As cited in the literature. Delusionary projections and so forth. The well of the unconscious. The spiraling links . . .

I let it all dance away on streaming VRUSIC, datastring variables and an interlude of cupcakes--courtesy of Giselda--for coffee-break. That institution, with variable participation from any or all of us Scanlon-and-Hartlings, depending on the degree of our absorption in the day's work, took place in the central office room adjoining the lobby. The necessaries included an old-fashioned percolator we all hated, an assortment of castoff cups and mugs, and a possible box of treats if one of us happened to have come in by way of Haliburton's HotSpot or Shorty's either before work, or during the first shift. On this occasion Gerald was missing, his voice still droning on the phone from the office further down the hall; and Harry, with the dark good looks of his Italian mother and a cocky self-assurance that said "New York on the road," was putting the usual fake moves on Giselda. He didn't say much to me. I was polite if not forthcoming. Had he taken note to leave me some distance, or had he forgotten my earlier funk? It didn't matter, really. I took it all in--cupcakes, coffee and meaningless flirtation, with simple gratitude that I was just one of the human gang, again--back at the home brain.

Full of cupcake, caffeine and renewed self-confidence, I cranked up the VRUSIC controls and donned the vir-leather headgear for the stretch run to lunch. Gerald's Vivaldi and Ravel . . . Harry's salsa and jazz. Red lights and maracas Saturday night in the cantina; green ocean swells. Simco space-station coefficients, the Jennings account. Blue lights at midnight in the desert camp. Playing with fire . . . why? Because I wanted to find out.

* * *

Before lunch Gerald came to me with an armful of hardcopy, a four-inch multilayered sandwich of printout and colored manila: "Can you package this up and run it over to Leonard's?" Pouting with his lip in just such a way that you kind of felt sorry for him, and your doing his errand would fix up his day, or his life.

"Sure, but why not the dataline?" Or why not Giselda?

"Too sensitive. I can't trust this one to the binaries, with all the bit-lifting going on. With Siltech Genex on the other end, heads would roll. How would yours feel, bowling down Haliburton Boulevard?"

I was a bowler and I didn't like the rumbling his image induced in my skull. "Sorry I asked. You want a sandwich from Shorty's?"

"Yeah, how 'bout roast beef. Some of their coffee, too. I know it's the same brand as ours, but somehow it tastes better brought in."

"I know what you mean. Okay, no problemo."

Actually I resented having to do this officeboy work, the little extra stuff like the packaging, on top of the lunch delivery. I saw part of a Defense Department logo on a page easing out of the stack of papers. This was a new twist, I thought; usually we worked a few layers back from the "D-boys." Was Gerald showing off? At least he trusted me. And right--I didn't really care to snoop. I tucked the papers back together and packaged them up. Just doing my job, what was asked. On this day of days, it seemed important.

I checked by Giselda's desk for her lunch order. Usually she asked first. This time I could preempt her with my own offer to pick up something. She smiled sweetly, her combination of flaming red hair and green eyes giving pleasure to my offer. No trouble, I told her; I was going anyway.

The finishing touches were being applied to a billboard a block away, advertising an island paradise: sparkling waves, suntanned flesh, obligatory palms. I started to daydream. I had some vacation credit. December would be a good time to take off. Moira might not go along with such a frivolous plan; but I could spring for one ticket. Who knows what it might lead to? Then the street sign, Haliburton, hit me with its associations of sandwiches, donuts and coffee, and I realized I liked this cold, gray place, this pedestrian routine. This was home.

"Hey bud, kinda chilly this mornin, ain't it?"

A bum on the corner sidled up to me like an old friend.

It was cold, I told him.

"Yeah, well, 'specially with no meals in a couple days. Say, you wouldn't--"

The light changed. My new friend with the red rheumy eyes started across the street with me. Going in the restaurant with him, I considered, might be embarrassing, his shiny wingtip shoes notwithstanding.

"Here you go." I was in the habit then of carrying a lot of change. It gave me a sense of security, a confidence that I would be prepared for any eventuality. Walking with its weight swinging against my thigh made me feel in some small way like a successful man--as some feel with the power of fully loaded keyrings. The downside of a pocketful of change was that it left me vulnerable to panhandlers. I fished out a small fistfull and gave it to the guy, experiencing the gratification of small power in return. Meanwhile I was careful to hold onto my briefcase with the other hand. The bum cupped his hands double to catch the coins. Some spilled along the crosswalk and he scrambled for them as they rolled away. Traffic started moving again. I kept a brisk pace, glancing over my shoulder to see him cursing the traffic, cursing me for my generosity.

* * *

The strange thing was, by the time I got back to the office with the carton of coffee and sandwiches, I had no memory beyond the bum: no memory of Leonard Martinson's DataBoost agency, nor Shorty's Cook Nook, nor the walk. I searched back and found nothing: as when waking from a dream you know you had, you cannot recall a single glimpse of it. I felt as if I'd been sleepwalking, and figured that I must have found my way back to the office by sheer habit. Briefcase empty, lunch in a box: mission accomplished--or so it seemed.

I deposited the food and drink quickly in the empty conference room and retired to my computer, feigning work as I tore into a sandwich and tried to recover my lost senses.

I almost wanted an outlandish theory to believe in now--that I had been abducted by aliens, say, and that I had traveled with them on an unimaginably long journey. Following this fancy of an otherworldly force, however, came an intuition that to reach such interstellar distances, I had to look no farther than my own brain: that raw and wrinkled thing inside, pulsing uncontrollably.

Body, brain, mind: were they different, separable? My body felt prickly, as if from a thousand probes; my mind strangely cleansed, or scoured. What else might these conceivable--therefore possible--kidnappers have done to me? If they return, what will they want of me then? And with what purposes would they use me, to experiment, to illustrate their point, the points, the million points of light oh my God--

"What's the matter, Norton, the old lady didn't make brekky for you this morning?"

I looked up sheepishly at Harrison and took another bite of sandwich. "S'matter of fact, she didn't." I didn't like where my thoughts ran back to, like water down a drain. "Hey, this meat loaf and chili sauce is excellent, y'ever try that?"

Giselda came up and tittered at his side. "Crumbs on the keyboard--" Quoting Gerald.

Crumbs or no crumbs, I was beginning to feel like a candidate for somebody's zoo, on this or some other planet. Back to the tribe I ran: dutifully getting up to join them in the lunchroom. I even managed to pass this minor hurdle of a group feeding ritual with no real consequence: with Giselda, oblivious of her BLT, going on about her dog Chipper's urinary habits, and Harrison waxing prophetic about the Eagles. Gerald was once again preoccupied on the phone, so the role of sympathetic listener fell to me. My hunger, and their desire to talk, saved me from saying anything stupid.

"Gotta get back at it," I said finally, making the first exit from the room. Walking back into my work area, I was drawn by some unidentifiable, almost parental concern to the window looking down on the parking lot, where I'd parked Myrtle this morning and where she'd remained during my outing for lunch. No reason, really, except now it was afternoon, and yesterday afternoon . . .

She stood green and innocent on the pocked asphalt, in a swirl of blowing leaves.

* * *

At afternoon coffee break, Harrison came by again. "How you doin', today, chum?"

Chum? He never called me chum.

Harry looked a little worried now, and I figured I'd have to tell him something. Maybe I was coming down with the flu.

"Uh, good, Hairy. A little slow on this new data looper from Western. They're using their own protocols, it seems, more and more. But they don't tell you until you're halfway into the routines."

"Yeah, well. That's progress. One step forward, two steps back. Anyhow, Nort, I was just wondering. You look a little washed out today. Heavy date last night?"

Harrison's slick black hair shone under the overhead fluourescents, and his teeth gleamed in a broad smile as we saddled up and rode into male-bond mode.

"Moira's a little on the heavy side," I told him, "but I wouldn't exactly call her a date. Not after four years."

"I call that as good as married." He chuckled and started to walk away. "Coming for coffee?"

Waltzing down the hall beside me, Harrison proceeded to expound on his theory of relationships. "The way I see it, a week's about max with one woman. After that, it's like, haven't I seen this face before? This breakfast? This whatever? Know what I mean? You just can't sit still and watch the action pass you by; you gotta go for it, taste it, try it all. Cause before you know it, you're forty, or whatever. Dead meat." He paused for my reaction, and when all he got was a smirk, added, "No offense intended." He grinned at me as if it were just a joke.

"Hey man," I said with bruised pride, "I did my share of one-week stands--twenty five years ago." I wished it were true. There were a couple of misadventures; I wished there were more. It never occurred to me in those days that satisfaction with a woman might come from long-term intimacy. Instead I chased the illusion of better sex, trading these rare lovers-of-the-week for a chance to grab the ever-more tantalizing--and increasingly elusive--rings whirling by in the merry-go-round. Now I had a chance to build a stable relationship with Moira; and there were enough challenges to cope with from her side, with her attempts at "keeping the relationship fresh." Frankie Porterfield, Chas the stockbroker. These were the ones I knew about. Was I all played out? Maybe the opportunity in recent years hadn't knocked loudly enough.

We reached the coffee machine. I poured for Harry.

"Look at Gerald and Connie, for instance." Harry glanced quickly around to see that Gerald was out of earshot. "De old folks at home. What does he do for fun, play golf once a year? Does he have any friends? Naw, man, that kind of married life is old hat. Hey, Nort, look at it this way. You're not really married--not yet. So that's a good start. You're still a free man. You have ultimate freedom. And you still got a half-decent mug on you, when you remember to shave."

This remark caused me to run a double-check with my hand across a stubbly, fat-rounded chin. He was right, at least about the razor. As for the mug--my blue eyes and bulbous nose qualified me for Moira's league, and I figured I should be happy to take what I got; especially considering that I got it when I was already four years past Harry's magic number. So I wasn't a fitness freak: I got off instead on bowling, especially the automatic resets. But I liked long walks; and though I ate your standard poison diet, my paunch was par for my age, and my health was, let's say, lucky.

The pep talk wasn't over. "You got to get off your butt, bro, or the world'll pass you by." He slugged back half his coffee, still too hot for me.

His attitude pissed me off.

"'Ultimate freedom'--where'd you pick that one up? Some airhead French writer?"

"You kidding? I don't know, prob'ly some ad. Toothpaste, deodorant, tampons. What's the diff? No, now I remember. It was for that new SuperVR place downtown--'the Spiral Links,' they call it. Have you heard about it?"

"No." My own leisure life these days was pretty tame: in front of the BigScreen with Moira; home at my own place alone with a book; the odd night out with friends for dinner, bowling, or cards. But most nights, it was the BigScreen. Why put yourself out, when it's all available in the comfort of your living room?

"It's set up kind of like a golf course, with eighteen different experiences as options. You can play just one, or as many as you like. One of the options, actually, is a round of golf."

"But not actually."

He gave me a wise little smile. "Hey, like I said, what's the diff? You just gotta get into it."

"Virtual golf, eh? Sounds kind of ordinary to me. What is it, for seniors?"

"Naw, man--"

Gerald came in just then with a cup of coffee and patted Harry affectionately on the shoulder. "What's this about golf?"

Harry told him, "Oh, I was just telling Norton about the Spiral Links." Then he resumed his pitch to me: "The trips you can go on, it's amazing. I been to 'em in New York; there's one a block away from where I grew up. Not just sports. They got sex, adventure, horror, sci-fi, anything. You just decide what you want, and it happens. Way beyond what we get with the fuckin mickey-mouse ears here." He was referring to the $600 set of SEE phones ("Sensory Enhanced Earphones") on the shelf by my workstation, designed to boost the bandwidth of the VRUSIC virtual music files. Harry was way ahead of us. "I'm talkin' total immersion. It shakes up your routines, lemme tell ya. Anyway . . ."

To me the VR craze just seemed like a glorified BigScreen. Cartoons and video games in three dimensions, with a few whiffs of scent thrown in. Harrison always had some new thing to get excited about: the next major sport, a cybertoy, another "trial relationship." Mr. Action. Only twenty-eight, already Gerald's wunderkind. He was a good guy, but there was a generation between us. No, I could handle my own affairs, thank you very much.

Harrison prattled on, and I indulged him with half my attention.

As he spoke I felt a growing discomfort with the whole subject: a gut response deeper than my usual dismissal of VR as just another wave of techno-toys. Today's session on the SEE phones was unremarkable, but now instead of thinking of them as trivial or silly, I was filled a kind of dread. And I realized with more consciousness than before, that I hadn't bothered to use them more than two or three times, until today.

Gerald came on the scene and brought me out of my psychic quicksand by shifting the conversation back to golf, his game of choice. Sand traps, at least, were dry and safe places for mature boys to play.

* * *

At the end of the day, I got in my car, spun a little more gravel than usual on the turn into Haliburton, and drove home to Moira. I'd have to tell her that Myrtle purred, that Harry was his usual braggadocio self (omitting the details), and that Giselda minded her own business. Oh, and I delivered a package to Leonard Martinson. The signs were everywhere. Eat at Shorty's.

Moira's was no palace. But I couldn't complain: she shared it with me: a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a dingy brownstone in a quiet neighborhood, with three steps leading up to a glassed-in front with locking door, and obsolete mailboxes in the lobby. From the lobby a short flight of stairs led down to one apartment, and another stairway gave access to two apartments on a first floor up. These neighbors of ours were obscure: an old black lady down below who lived alone; a couple of middle-aged, somewhat retarded brothers named Drudge, a male bus driver and two kids part-time, tenish. We kept to ourselves, Moira and I, in our larger suite above, and by all appearances, the others did likewise.

The extra room was supposed to be for Moira's work, which meant her independent career. It was set up with a drawing table, light table, file bins . . . but I never saw her work there while I was around. She always went "to the fucking office."

We sat down to soysteak, broccoli cubes, pre-fried potatoes. All from the microwave, of course. Moira the graphic artist didn't work on Friday mornings and Moira the cook didn't work at all unless she felt "inspired," a rare occurrence. That was fine; we both accepted the fact that neither of us had the time to spare nor the proper inclination for home-style cooking.

"The steak's a little dry," I said. "No reflection on you."

"Here's the soy sauce," she answered flatly, passing me the bottle.

I avoided her eyes. I didn't want to be the one to bring it up. A stream of inky liquid made a brave splash upon the lifeless slab on my plate.

Moira took up a forkful of would-be meat and looked at me expectantly, waving the fork idly in the air. "No note, I suppose." Apparently she was going to wait for confirmation before committing to the next mouthful.

"Note . . . ? Oh, yeah, that silly note. Ha. Well, I did look for it this morning."

"Really. I wonder what could have happened to it."

"All right, Moira, let's just drop it, shall we?" I decided the bland potatoes needed saucing up too. "Tell me, how was your day?"

She eyed me cautiously, took fork into mouth and then proceeded to tell of the catastrophe of the cracked water cooler at her office. Doris clipped it with her sharp gold handbag. Something hard in there. A gun? was the serious joke then. Doris was mum.

When it was my turn, I ran into trouble when I came to the Martinson file and so I faked it, telling her how nice it was to be out strolling at midday.

"Yeah? What city were you in? It was miserable out when I went to work. It took half an hour for my fingers to thaw out enough to pick up a pencil."

"Well, you know, just to have a break from the computer, and the office politics."

Moira still looked dubious, so I threw up a diversion with a rehash of the upcoming merger.

It was a painful business, protracted through past and future. Our outfit was respected, and had a solid clientele. But now the small fry were being swallowed up, one by one, by the big conglomerates from New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo. So much for the "decentralist" promise of the cybernetic revolution. Scanlon and Hart had been approached the previous month. It wasn't as if we had a real choice. Gerald's old partner, Kenneth Hart, on behalf of his current corporation, Siltech Genex, was offering to buy us out--or take our contracts out from under us if we refused.

Gerald brought it to an in-house meeting, wanted to know our feelings. Something inside me was against the deal. But would saying so leave me out when it happened anyway? I said I'd go along with "whatever made the most sense for the company, in the long-term"--trying to show my loyalty. To set up a counter-argument I went so far as to mention a point that Moira had brought up (being careful to credit the idea as hers, via an article she'd read to me from Time): the trend for success in computer services seemed to be away from the mom-and-pop scale. I was going to oppose this current wisdom with my own thinking--leaving aside for a moment the issue of the recent renovations--but Gerald cut me off. When everyone else came out against going big, I tried once more to come across as more definitive with my own feeling of agreement, for proceeding cautiously. But then Harry took my words and rode with them in order to parade his own flag. And finally I just plain wasn't sure anymore, and kept my peace. Did it matter, really? I knew I could be out of a job either way, the industry was so volatile. I'd sensed ever since Lance Harrison was hired six months after me, that he was being groomed to absorb my job description within his own more ample talents. It was a matter of time. In recent weeks, office opinion had shifted in favor of the merger--Harry's flag still visible in front.

In summary of my latest stance, I said to Moira, "I still think it's the wrong move for the company, but I'm willing to go with the punches."

She nodded, mouthing the soggy broccoli, wanting to hear more.

I reasoned like a hedgemaster. "At least with a big firm, I might be given the ball once in a while, and a little daylight to run with it."

Her pained expression told me to ditch the sports analogies.

"Well, you know how it is," I explained. I'm getting paid the same salary I started with three years ago. Harry's already passed me as number two man, and now Gerald's talking buyout to the same gang I worked for before. I can see how if I'm lucky and do everything I'm told, I might get some security, at least, for the rest of my working days."

"I don't quite follow you, Mister Norton. Could you state for the viewing audience once more, where you stand on this compelling issue?"

Moira the anchorwoman held the cayenne shaker to my mouth. The fumes caused me to sneeze, and then I said forget it and started to leave the table.

Moira re-anchored the shaker in its cherrywood dual-shaker-holder which I'd given her last Christmas and said, too late for this conversation, "If it's not too late." The other side was still empty.

Still I found myself saying, before leaving the kitchen, "What do you mean by that?"

"I've had a long day," she said and sidled past me to the Big Screen room, her floppy house slippers mocking me with their departure.

"Oh God, Moira." I padded after her in my own brown slippers.

"God yourself." She didn't look back.

"Now what is it?"

She turned the corner and pretended she was out of earshot. She'd got the jump on me for channel selection again. Oh well, it wasn't like the Phillies were in the World Series this year.

Maybe it wasn't the dream. Maybe it was just typical. I reversed direction, went back to the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher wishing I could feel like whistling. Would I ever feel that sort of lightness again?

We didn't speak any more as I finally calmed down enough to go in and sit beside her on the couch. She was already into a show. I brooded on the bitterness of our relationship, and on the rut my career was in. In either case, I was just putting in time.

Moira smoked and watched, as if I weren't even there. Maybe I wasn't.

* * *

I was sitting at my workstation enjoying the slick new Synphase computer that had just been installed, crunching the facts and figures for Congreve Aviation so they could look good for their upcoming contract bid, 2.5 billion Pentagon bucks for a hot new baby called the AirStar . . . thinking, Norton, what's it all for?

Moira had kicked me out after an argument about her sister Sheila, whom I'd not so much as touched. I responded by confiding in Harry, "At least Sheila has a sense of humor, allows me to lighten up once in a while. Maybe I should just go for it, with her, since Moira's bitching about it already, anyway." But of course I didn't have the guts to follow through.

I watched the figures fly by on the shiny new monitor screen, my own brain idling. I knew I could continue to get by here--provided new management didn't mind my previous defection from their own prideful ranks. The defense work didn't bother me any more: I was insulated from morality by habit. Just like at home, where there was the BigScreen between me and the ugly events the news reported; a stained and leaded window I could hide behind as long as I wanted.

The Synphase workstation came with a custom monitor with an intriguing screensaver: a realistic animated eye, heavy lidded as on a statue of Buddha if you idled too long or went away, or bright and piercing at your close approach, just before giving way to the brains inside. The Synphase and its peripheral software were a Siltech Genex production, wouldn't you know: so we were already in. In my most defensive moments I had the uneasy sense that the monitor's eye could actually see me, or even read my thoughts: as through a one-way mirror into my brain. But that's what comes of knowing the Siltech Genex way.

The hardware was all very nice, so to speak; but where was my way? If I looked for myself below the surface, into my past, could I discern clues of a lost direction, a latent opportunity I might revive before it was too late?

In college I'd gone for the easiest courses, geogs and business, then was rewarded with a year-long career pushing a button in a Newark car wash. So I went back to school in computer sciences at the community college level, performed well enough to go into the job market feeling choosy, and turned down some fat jobs in defense industries because of some temporary scruples. I wound up languishing in credit unions and college administration offices for five years instead, before finally landing a real job with a big company--S.G., we call it, for affection--handling everything they gave me, no questions asked. By then I'd learned not to ask.

Coincidentally, Kenneth Hart came to Siltech Genex while I still worked there. But I never met him. It's not like this mom and pop shop of Gerald's, out there in the real comcorp world.

When I got together with Moira--a relationship built on the dubious promise gleaned from a singles' sex workshop in Woodlawn--she convinced me I'd have better job security with a small outfit. So I jumped to Scanlon and Hart, at a time when Gerald was back down to a one-man show, plus Giselda. Kenneth Hart, so the story went, had lured his own replacement out of Gerald's hands and over to the SG side. I was replacing a guy who'd filled in for a legend. Did I say Moira and I forgot whatever we might have learned in that suburban love-camp?

Hart was already famous in the industry by then, characterized as having "inventive brilliance" in fields as diverse as VR and biotechnology. I guess that's why Gerald couldn't divest himself of the name. I kidded myself (and Moira) that I was taking his place--until this hotter-shot named Lance Harrison came along soon after.

All that was history. And I was thinking, new computer, great. But, look a little (as I recalled telling Moira in a still-earlier argument) deeper: "You pushed me into this nickel-and-dime outfit. You said it was the wave of the future. You told me I'd be head of the firm someday. Now where am I? Right where I started." She was unsympathetic, denying that she'd badgered me into trading down.

Maybe this was mid-life crisis--whatever that was. The absence of adventure or fame? I could qualify on a hundred counts. Or maybe, merely an absence of crisis-though that was nothing new for me. I never got busted for speeding, or loud parties, as a teenager. Always did my school assignments, and later paid my parking tickets, on time. Maybe I just kept forgetting to look in the obvious place for a fix--a decent vacation. The most exciting place I'd ever been to was the Delaware shore, a couple of summers ago with Moira, her sister, and their parents.

Who the hell knew? A shrink would probably say I was suffering from the insecurity of being passed back and forth between my parents after they split up, at the impressionable age of ten. As on and on I continue with my daydreaming, the virtual eyelid goes sad and heavy on me. Stolid . . . reproachful.

What about all the fun I should have been having with my new 510-E Series wife-replacer? It was only two-thirty--not time for coffee break yet.

And so the following solution occurred to me: a little strain of gypsy music, to transport the weary soul.

I know Gerald likes all this old-fashioned stuff, I consider: like . . . let's key up the menu and see . . . ah, right, Bolero: that's the VRUSIC selection he was telling me about. Pre-installed courtesy of Ken Hart himself, who knew Gerald's tastes to a tee. I put on the calf-soft SEE headset and gently lean back, letting it happen.

The violins begin, and the distant drums. I can feel the hot dry breeze against my cheek, can see dusty bulls grazing under a bronze sun. Wild! I sway to the slow, building pulse. Is this me, am I there? Eyes open to half-lids, no, the office. But yes, back in. It certainly seems so. Amazing. Where was I? Just then, a couple of notes ago . . . let it go, Norton. This is what these things are for. That's why they were installed. Small breaks from eye-work are beneficial, Gerald once said. Swaying, in the dust. The music swelling. All right then. It works if you let it, I see. This really is me, or another me. A carriage takes us, no, just one me, through stone city gates, to an arena humming with the roar of a crowd. Inside the stadium, I'm definitely smelling dung and dust and faintly, roses, I'm surrounded by a holiday profusion of colorful dress and flashing jewelry; now, intoxicating scent of roses in the air. I look down: and calmly accept that I am dressed in the gilded brocade of a bullfighter, standing alone by a low wooden gate half-open onto the beaten earth of the arena floor. The music builds, races ahead now. My heart pounds as I realize my time has come: my first time in the ring.

A woman's rich voice calls out to me: "Toreador!" I turn and see a dark-haired, proud-mouthed beauty smiling defiantly: a mole high on her left cheek, a small gap between her front teeth. I'm struck by the desire to fly into that gap before it vanishes upward with the toss of her head. In the same motion she flings out a handful of prickle-stemmed roses which land with a dry splash at my feet. I bow, slightly, hesitating to pick them up. Unsure of the protocol, I think I'd better not. The crowd is hushed, expectant, and I realize I'm overdue to march ahead into the ring, in time to the stately music.

A door opens across the arena, and there the snorting beast emerges, twitching his tail and pawing the dirt. His red-rimmed eyes are sad but steady, fixed upon me with the force of tragedy. He brings his massive pair of horns up and then rolls them at me casually, impishly, before beginning a slow, but steady, circling trot in my direction. I realize that I am without cape, without sword.

I switch the music off.

Icy sweat trickles down the skin under my armpits.

Christ, Gerald, I thought this stuff's supposed to be relaxing!

"Lost in space, soldier?" It was Giselda's velvet voice that brought me out of my reverie. "Just a line I use for Kenny when he gets too absorbed in the BigScreen. He likes those old nineties space operas, or whatever you call them."

Kenny was her seven-year-old, the offspring of Kenneth Hart.

* * *

Thinking about Giselda brought me out of my telescoping trance, back to the couch in front of the BigScreen with Moira. But there was nothing there to get involved in: Moira absorbed in the Screen, the Screen dedicated to some inane comic mystery set in the all-too-near future. So I was back, but back it was to wondering how I might upgrade this legacy program, call it norton.joe 1.0, before mid-life workarounds gave way to system lockup, silent crash, game over. Maybe Harry had the right idea. Maybe there was some organic chemistry to be factored in, between Giselda and me.

It would take going out together for a beta-test, on one of Moira's bowling nights. That would be a Saturday or Wednesday. Moira was in two leagues; I just bowled for fun. We no longer bowled together; the competition thing between us was just too much of an issue for her. Or was it that she preferred to play with her own friends?

Maybe Giselda was a viable alternative, and maybe not. But I couldn't really swallow Harrison's enthusiasm for the VR-dating idea. So, maybe just a friendly drink, or intimate dinner sometime.

Moira, suddenly bored with the BigScreen, got up without a word and went to the bedroom. Had she read my mind?

As it happened, I needed to sleep too. When I crawled into bed shortly after her, Moira, eyes closed but with the shallow breathing of the still-awake, lay as distant as a blue star beside me. Thinking about her, and Giselda, and Sheila, I forgot my other problems. And so, when sleep did finally come, I dreamed again.

I'm walking across Haliburton Boulevard, briefcase in hand. Looking both ways for traffic, I come to a stop in mid-stride. There's a soft but powerful blue light shining down from above. I stare up at it, blinded, transfixed, apprehensive in the pit of my stomach. Then I feel my elbows and biceps gripped from behind. I turn to see the alien eyes: green highlights deep inside huge black pupils, eyes covering half the face. I don't look long. A shiver runs through me: more than a shiver. My spine courses with a tingling energy, almost overwhelmingly powerful. It's a little painful, but most of all frightening. What are they doing to me? I'm whisked upward, and in a flash find myself hovering outside a vast, humming hull graced with rows of twinkling blue lights, running lights. Beautiful, but for the awful sense of what might lie in store for me inside.

A door opens; I glide through it without volition. A reception committee stands waiting: more trans-humans gesturing to one another with thin long limbs which are strangely flexible, rubbery, perhaps boneless. I see that there's no way to escape; but as the tingling in my spine subsides, my fear begins to calm.

Like a boy at a science fair, I become fascinated by the bank of glittering controls, the window of winking stars. We'll be travelling, I'm given to understand, incomprehensibly far--and for how many eons I don't want to guess. The committee continues to regard me with their battery of giant insect eyes. Then a small party of taller figures enters the room. Again without words I am told to give my trust to these stern, silent (indeed, mouthless) inquisitors, who proceed to hold me down, and with supple fingers begin to insert a series of long, thin wires into my skull, penetrating the inner recesses of my brain.

It doesn't hurt, surprisingly, though I tremble again with unknowing dread. After I'm stuck with about a dozen of the things, the wires begin singing, and I feel my thoughts, memories, threads of knowledge streaming out through them . . . draining.

Now the whole experience takes on a different tenor: it feels somehow liberating. And I'm grateful to these beings. I want to go with them, to where they come from or where they go next. Out there, so far . . .

In an instant the scene changes. I find myself in a flight cabin of ordinary looking, human passengers, reading newspapers, sipping cocktails, chatting. A faint trail of music issues from the headset resting on my leg. Then engines groan and whine in what feels like a smoothly jolting deceleration, and I see, through the small porthole at my shoulder, a smoking red landscape looming under a fiery sky.

I try to stand up, but the seat harness is strapped tight around me. I see no way to undo it. I begin to panic. A prim blonde stewardess in a tight blue suit and matching bellhop's cap comes to chide me, saying, "Please, sir, remain in your seat until we touch down. It'll only be a few more minutes."

With a thud we hit ground, amid a cloud of red dust. The engines whir down to silence. The other passengers begin collecting carry-ons and filing out of the cabin through a rear door. I fumble with my harness, still unable to locate a release mechanism, yet unwilling to embarrass myself by asking that prune-eyed stewardess for assistance. She slips away in the collective exodus. Two more identical stewardesses chatter gaily to one another as they follow the last of the passengers out the exit door.

"Hey!" I finally call out to them. "Can you help me with this thing?"

The twins-in-blue throw me a last pitying look before closing the cabin door behind them.

A light flickers at the main control console under a broad window in front of the cabin. For the first time I realize--or has it changed?--this is no airplane of the cigar age: but rather a disk-shaped airship. The dust has settled and I look with astonishment to see, coming from the distance, moving objects, live objects, creatures gigantic and menacing as dinosaurs. Heavy-legged, fat-bodied. Moving toward the ship slowly, deliberately, singly and in groups, packs of them advancing. Each creature, on closer view, is many-headed: each head writhing with long, tentacle-like necks: each neck supporting another, smaller head; and each of these heads sprouting more necks, more heads. The whole ship begins to shudder, from the impact of their monstrous legs on the ground outside. Unable to bear looking at them any longer, I twist my face away. It's time to get out! I thrash in my harness--to no effect.

With desperation I attempt to reason with myself. To find the party responsible for what is happening, and to say, "This has all been very entertaining for a while, but now--" Or failing that, simply to scream.

Then the ships lights blink out, all but one flashing red light on the console. The fiery dusk has quickly deepened into darkness; sounds of the creatures have passed by and gone mute. My harness straps fall loosely from me, as if of their own accord. I stand up, slack-jawed, and shamble forward, drawn to that mesmerizing red light on the console. Why doesn't the devilish thing leave leave me in peace? Lurching against the console, I slam my palm down against it.

* * *

Saturday--in theory. Moira stirred, then was up out of bed, dressing. She had a list of things to go out and do today; which, I vaguely remembered, included an afternoon appointment at the hairdresser's, where Sheila worked as a manicurist. I lay in bed feigning sleep until she left the bedroom.

A simple act, you might say. But not in my case. Caught between an unsavory darkness, and going through the waking nightmare of another dream-sharing session with Moira, I chose an uneasy limbo until the front door clicked shut behind her.

Then I got up and dressed, but all was not sweetness and light in day-land. I wove about the apartment with a certain haunted preoccupation, on the hunt for a dark-espresso dose of factoid reality.

I settled in front of a days-old newspaper which I tried to read over the Shreddies. The passing events of the world had little relevance to me any more: this planet and its petty fixations seemed so miniscule in the larger picture. Distracted from the flimsy newsprint, I felt I was being carried along on a wave--no, a rising tide--of compulsion towards a greater reality: into a fuller, more expansive dimension than I had previously known existed. At the same time I was not joyful, or bounteous in my heart. There was too much dread, too much of the taste of black ooze in my mouth. And I don't mean the coffee.

Maybe there was something real going on, something actual to these experiences of mine. I thought these words as if Moira were there, held them in my mind and ear and tried them out, in Safe mode. I'd heard about alien abduction. Countless real people told consistent stories under hypnosis. They came back with puncture marks on their skin, scars in their nostrils, unexplained absences.

If it happened to one and not both partners, marriages tended to break apart.

The Shreddies tasted like papier-maché. I reached for my coffee and tipped the mug onto the table, soaking the Herald-Examiner's Sports section.

So much for the conventional version of reality.

I swabbed up the mess with the wadded paper and tossed it to the sink. Two fucking points.

I sat down again by my unfinished bowl of pulpy milk, unable to eat or move. There were more sections of the paper on the floor, still unread. What next? More field study in that kind of dreamland? No thanks.

I had scanned reports of ordinary events happening to well-known people. Travels abroad; investments; meetings and reshufflings. Coming back to my own situation, I had to ask, why me? If there are aliens out there looking for a fall guy, why choose Joseph F. Norton?

I was nothing if not ordinary. I made a virtue out of it. I was a functionary in a cybernetic society. Not, certainly, an emissary for the human race. I had no special ambitions, no secret calling that I was aware of. No shady connections in my dossier; no past lives calling to me from jewel-encrusted crypts. I got up in the morning, ate my breakfast and went to work. Did my job well: whether programming the computer or delivering messages by hand, debugging new software or trying to iron out faults in the commercial packages we sometimes used. It simply made no sense to target me. I felt like lashing out: but there was no one to hit.

And it wasn't just me, now, either. The whole relationship with Moira, which over time had started to feel almost workable in the long term, now seemed shaky to the point of collapse. Looking at it from the outside, you might say that I didn't have a whole lot invested, there; but it had always seemed better than nothing. It was what you might call a major-league relationship, if you were inclined also to say that the cellar-dwelling Phillies played major league baseball. True, we had never really considered marriage. It was day to day. Or year to year, as it happened. Commitment was taboo; Moira called it "the C-word." But our arrangement suited her, and it suited me. At least, that's what we always told each other, and told ourselves.

The bottom line on that whole deal was, I still had my own place if I needed it. And I sensed I might be needing it again soon.

* * *

Before the business of the merger came up, we had talked about things--about us. We were lounging together, on another Saturday morning, in Moira's bed. Still unclothed, after long sweet lovemaking; and sitting up, with my arms draped around her from behind, I had the audacity to open the topic, though I should have known it was a venture into treacherous waters.

"Do you think we might do better to move out of here and buy a little house of our own?"

She stiffened in my arms, bristling like a scrub-brush. "You mean, like marrieds?"

"Well, you could make that comparison, but we wouldn't have to think of ourselves like that."

She kneeled and moved away from me, reaching for her cigarettes. "It would be practically the same."

"We could have a contract drawn up to define our separate shares of the property, if you wanted." I heard myself sound like a lawyer, and knew then the idea was dead.

"What's wrong with this place?" Her place.

"The rent money's going into thin air."

"You mean the landlord's pocket." She blew a long cloud of smoke out into the room.

"Same thing." I tried not to breathe for a moment. I hated this habit of Moira's. But I put up with it as a small favor to her. Nobody was perfect. We had to live with each other's failings.

Sitting back side by side now, her bare hip shifted against mine.

I needed her, maybe more than she needed me. It was hard to guess what the secret formula was, for this idea I had of domestic happiness. Were other couples we knew any better suited to one another? The Thompsons, who were married, argued good-naturedly all the time. Jeff Jaeger and his partner Rhonda were not married, openly had other affairs, and seemed to do fine year after year. I didn't know the answer; but the idea of shared house-ownership seemed like a good foundation.

"Besides," Moira said, "where would the money come from, for a mortgage?"

"I could get another job, a better one."

"Oh you could, could you? Look at what happened last time you tried to change jobs."

She was referring not to the move from Siltech Genex, which she'd championed, but an abortive attempt only a year later, to step up from my generic programmer's position at Scanlon and Hart's. Also her idea. There were a dozen options, and when it came down to it, I had a hard time choosing among them. Eventually I whittled them down to two: the air traffic control tower and the city administrative offices. I applied and was turned down at both. By that time, the other openings were filled. I lost heart and decided I was doing fine where I was. "You should have applied to all of them, and then decided," Moira told me then, with her impeccable armchair wisdom.

"But what if more than one employer wanted me?"

"Simple," was her view. "Choose one, and say no to the rest." Now she fixed a calculated gaze on me, smoking sullenly. She would never let me live down that "missed opportunity."

"So what?" I countered. "I haven't really needed the extra money, yet. But I have the feeling I may be at a kind of threshold with Scanlon and Hart. I think I'm ready to jump up the ladder."

"What ladder? There's just Gerald, hon, and he's not giving you squat."

"Yeah, but--" I knew what was coming next.

"Nort, I thought we'd been through all this. Nothing's changed except that another year has gone by, and you're that much older. Gerald Scanlon isn't going anywhere, and so neither are you. He might play the patriarch role with that 'wifey' of his wrapped around his little finger, but from what I can tell, he runs a lax ship. And lax ships sink in today's business climate, as any rag off the newstand will tell you. Gerald's a softie, and so are you."

I sneezed on Moira's smoke.

She twisted it deeper. "Now if we were talking about Harry's chances, that's a different story. He's fast-lane material; anybody can see it."

"Yeah, I know. Well, it so happens Harry's been getting some feelers lately from other companies. He's happy to stay with Gerald for now, but with a good word he could help me get an interview with someone."

"Like with who?"

"One of the supplier firms. Or there's a software designer, whom I know pretty well."

"So you don't think you'd have to relocate?" (I thought she asked this with some disappointment.)

"No, I don't think so. There are plenty of good outfits in the area. But like I say, I'm not sure what I'd do with more money. Without a house to put it into, or kids, what's the point? I'm not into all the toys they try to sell you. Maybe a vacation somewhere, though. How does that sound?"

"It might be a while in a new job, hon, before you'd be able to take a vacation."

"That's okay. What do you think?"

"I thought you were interested in buying a new house. Now it's a vacation."

"But you said you weren't interested in a house."

"Me? I never said that."

* * *

Just thinking about our squabbling was depressing. I tossed my bowl with a clatter into the sink, wandered into the living room, and plunked myself down in front of the empty gray BigScreen. Something was definitely missing in this Saturday of a life. That much was clear, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. My job was reasonable. My relationship with Moira, despite the periodic or even chronic bickering and nagging, was still afloat. My health was okay. What more does a guy need? I had a few casual friends, with whom I went bowling once in a while, played the odd game of poker. And yes, I also flirted rather innocently with Giselda at the office, or with Moira's sister Sheila when she came over to visit. Nothing too dangerous, though; nothing too exciting.

The barren BigScreen glared at me. I glared back, projecting my own soap opera onto it--sour aspirations, more knotted memories.

I'd seen a film at a theatre once with Moira about stone-age people, living in caves. Their lives had plenty of danger and excitement; but I was struck by how, apart from the adventures, their lives were actually similar to my own. You just wouldn't think so, I said to her before she shushed me. Here we were, at the pinnacle of civilization, in twenty-first century NAmerica, on the verge of completely mastering nature, poised at the threshhold of cosmic knowledge . . . sitting there in the darkness gazing at a flickering screen which showed a hairy family in the dark gazing at the flickering flames of a hearth fire. What was the bloody point of it all? Why had we bothered with this whole long technological and cultural trip? Had we really got anywhere at all? I continued reflecting on these questions all the way home, that night. When I tried to talk to Moira about it again in the car, she muttered about the grimy, sordid lives of the cave people. "Let's go somewhere for a drink," she said when we were almost home. We had liqueurs at an eighties lounge that was too loud for talking. We danced a bit; Moira's hands were all over me. "Home now," she whispered. Back at the apartment, she dragged me to her bed. I wasn't into it, still mulling over the film and the questions it had raised about my life, our life, the drift of civilization.

That mad her mad. "Why are you here, then?"

"You mean, on earth?"

She shook her head in exasperation. "I mean, here, in my apartment. In my bed."

I should have taken the cue then. I was a stranger to her. It was no use arguing that night, and I slept on the couch. I took her final query into sleep with me that night, brooding on its larger dimensions: why was I here, indeed? Which job I happened to hold at the moment was a meaningless detail, a red herring, a non-issue. What was my purpose in living? Not that I was suicidal, not at all. I wanted to live; I just wanted a good reason for it.

The real trouble was, now I found myself living with some weird indications that someone or something seemed to have plenty of reasons of their own, earmarked for the person I was used to thinking of as me. I had nothing but hope that that something was just a long-frustrated part of my own psyche.

* * *

Saturday in the dumps: I needed to change something--and I needed the agent of change, for a change, to be my own recognizable self. I went for a walk around the neighborhood to clear my head.

What was I worried about? Dreams are supposed to be weird. Where would we be without them? Christ, look at the BigScreen. It's nothing but a collective dream machine. Indeed, circling the block, I came home to a comforting diet of sports, nineties reruns, and forty-odd minutes of fast channel-surf.

I needed more: someone I could talk to, straight up.

I thought of calling Edgar, a bowling buddy. But he was a lawyer, and would not appreciate my delving into "unsubstantiated claims" of extraterrestrial-orchestrated dreams. Then there was the poker crowd, whose company I'd missed in the Friday evening kafuffle with Moira. What a waste--and I'd let it slip by without even a thought. Just as well: they were another bunch of hard-nosed guys, into basketball and the stock market, not wild-eyed fugitives from dreamsville.

I could just try to forget about my "problems," maybe call up Harry and go out to a bar . . . escape into an evening of girl-watching, guy-talk and trivia. Would it work? Who was Joe Norton, to anybody else, when you got right down to it? Someone to bowl with; another guy with loose change in his pocket. No, it was time to go deeper; and I had to do that alone.

I was sitting eating potato chips in front of the Screen when Moira returned from the hairdresser's, changed her clothes, and departed again for her bowling league at Pixie's Lanes, where she would sup from chicken-in-a-box. All this with little more than a "Bye, see ya later" tossed my way . . . a non-rose to a non-bull.

Twenty minutes into the next show, just as I started wondering what the microwave might sacrifice to my minor stomach gods, there was a knock on the door.

Sheila's big blonde head appeared, long curls bobbing. "Anyone home?"

My pulse did a couple of stutter-steps. "Yeah, just me. Come on in. Moira's gone bowling."

Sheila was already in. "I know. She was at the shop today. Are you hungry, Gordie?"

("Why do you call me Gordie?" I had asked her the first time. She'd just smiled and said, "You look like a Gordie, hon. More like a Gordie than a Nortie.")

She came in carrying a giant pizza box. Like Moira she was a large woman, who carried herself with a certain boldness. She wore a red and white abstract pantsuit, with a lightweight olive, flower-print coat swirling around her like a robe.

The pizza box went on the coffee table and Sheila sat on the couch beside me. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I? Your plans for the evening?"

My pulse counter did some quick double-clutching going into the straightaway.

"No. Not at all. In fact, it's perfect timing. Just what I needed. I'm starving."

Sheila gave me a confident, almost triumphant look. Her big blue eyes were wide, alive, eager. I was almost overwhelmed by her.

I overheard a little voice, BigSis's presence, scolding: "Just because you're my sister, doesn't give you carte blanche."

Sheila opened the pizza box.

"Hey, look at that," I said. "A fifteen-incher. This is really nice of you, Sheila. Can I give you something for--"

"Ahh." She waved me off. "I got paid today. Hey, we even get napkins. But look, they're already soggy."

"I'll get some more from the kitchen."

"No you won't. Just sit; I'm treating tonight."

Not like Moira at all.

I remember marveling then, how sometimes fate has a way of bringing the right things at the right time.

---

© Nowick Gray, 2000 / 2007

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