The Mysteries (31 page)

My heart soared. I remembered Jenny saying, “Dell's hiring.”

“I hope I'm not going to regret this,” Maddy said with a doubtful look.

“You won't, unless you hate me. Because I want the best for her, and I'm going to get her back. I'm going to be a part of her life forever.”

When she smiled, Maddy looked younger, prettier, more like her little sister. “Invite me to your wedding?”

I gave her a warm smile back. The irritation caused by her assumption that Jenny was just like her was such a small, swift wave, I could pretend I didn't feel it. “You bet.”

I headed for the door.

“Are you going already? You didn't even drink your coffee.”

“I've got a long drive ahead of me,” I said. “I'll come back with Jenny, next time.”

It took about an hour and a half to drive to Austin. The zip code identified the post office, which was in a neighborhood near the university, an area of mature trees and old houses, some of them recently expensively remodeled by upwardly mobile yuppie owners, others shabby and run-down, overflowing with impoverished students.

I arrived at midday and parked in the small lot and settled down to watch the customers come and go. All I had to do was wait, and she would come. But all too soon, my bladder forced me to go in search of a toilet. Before returning I paid a visit to a convenience store and bought a selection of snacks and drinks, including an extralarge ice tea in a lidded cup. When I finished the drink, I'd use the cup to relieve myself; that way, I wouldn't risk missing Jenny.

It was hot, and I was soon very uncomfortable, sweating like a pig and bored out of my mind. There was nothing to do but eat and drink, and that would only hasten the dread moment when I had to use the empty cup. I didn't mind peeing into a cup; it was more the idea of sharing the car with my own urine that discouraged me. I put the radio on for a little while, but I didn't want to run down the car's battery. Although I had a couple of books in my bag, if I read, I couldn't keep watch. All I could do was think—daydream, really—and of course all my thoughts were about Jenny. I tried to plan what I was going to say to her. I wanted to fantasize about the wonderful future we were going to have together, starting by driving down to Mexico, but I was too hung up on the mystery of her disappearance. Until I knew why she left me, I couldn't know what would make her return.

And the longer I thought about it, sweating away in the car beneath the blazing Texas sun, the more I realized how little I knew, not only about Jenny, but about myself.

What did
I
want? I thought I was ready to change my life, but how? Did I really want Jenny at any cost? What price was she asking?

A brilliant gleam, sunlight on glass, seared my eyes. Squinting against the painful light, I peered around, and there it was, the one other car I knew as well as my own. My chest got tight. Oh, Jenny. I could just make out her shadowed profile through the tinted glass, the big sunglasses covering almost half her face. I watched as she pulled into an empty space near the door, almost the full length of the parking lot away from me, and I opened the door and got out.

My legs felt numb from the knees down, so I stood where I was, half-leaning on the open door, and stared across the parking lot as Jenny got out, paused to lock her door, then marched up the short ramp to the heavy glass doors.

An odd little phrase went through my head. It seemed like a quotation, but I couldn't place it:
That is Jenny, but she is not herself
.

Her black hair was scraped back into a ponytail, but a few tendrils had been allowed to escape to float artfully about her face. Not her everyday hairstyle, but one I'd seen before. I also recognized the sunglasses, the red sandals, the silver bangles on her wrist, and the dark pink Mexican dress. It was one of those long smocks with embroidery across the yoke and around the hem, and I had seen it on her often enough, but today it seemed to fit her differently. As she turned away from the car the dress clung briefly to her body, and I saw that her figure had changed. Her breasts were fuller, and her belly noticeably higher and rounder.

My heart seemed to plunge down a deep shaft toward the center of the earth, leaving my chest empty. I fell back in the car and sat there, panting and staring at nothing like the slack-jawed idiot I was.

Once upon a time, Jenny and I made love every day of the month. We couldn't share a bed without having sex. I'd always known exactly where she was in her cycle, as aware of everything about her physical being as if she'd been an extension of me. Gradually that changed. We made love now mostly on the weekends, if at all. I had no difficulty in remembering the last time we'd made love, because it had been immediately following the big argument that started at the model home in Apache Springs, but I had no idea when she'd had her last period.

How long had she been pregnant?

Why hadn't I noticed before?

I tried to remember what clothes she'd worn recently, or the last time I'd seen her naked, even the last time I'd really
looked
at her, drinking in the familiar sight of her as if she was as necessary and desired as cool water on a hot day. Instead, I recalled how busy we'd been at work in the last few weeks, working overtime. I remembered mornings when we'd been more like roommates than lovers, scarcely speaking before rushing off to work in our separate cars, and those Saturday nights when I sat up nursing a beer and watching old movies on cable, long after she'd gone to bed without me.

Why hadn't she
made
me look? Why hadn't she told me?

I was still sitting, half-slumped over the steering wheel, in a state of shock, when she came out of the post office. As she got into her car I snapped to, straightened up, and started the engine. What I had seen changed everything, and I had no idea what I was going to say, but I couldn't let her get away.

I let another car get between us before I followed her down the road, because I didn't want Jenny to see me before I was ready.

Shock was turning to anger.

How could she do it? Even if (best-case scenario) it had been an accident, and she'd only recently realized she was pregnant, why hadn't she told me instead of running away?

I followed her onto Forty-fifth Street, but let her go when she turned again onto a quiet cross street. I drove down to the next possible turning, meaning to circle the block, only to discover that the next street was a dead end. I took my time about going back.

There was her car, parked on a gravel driveway beside a white clapboard single-story house. It hadn't been yuppified, but was obviously old and still comfortably shabby. The gutters needed work, and the screen door had a rip in it. There were a couple of pecan trees in the front yard, and the short grass was withered and yellowing in the summer heat.

I parked across the street and one house over and sat and looked at the house where Jenny had gone to ground. I wondered if she had rented it, or was staying with friends I didn't know. As I watched, a squirrel raced across the shadowed grass and straight up the trunk of one of the pecans. I saw it crouch on a branch, quivering, and I felt as twitchy as the little animal.

I didn't want to walk up the gravel path to knock on the door. I didn't want to hear what she didn't want to tell me, what she had run away rather than confess. But I knew I had to do it. I had come so far to learn the truth, how could I drive away without it now?

I don't know how long I sat there, hardly moving, not thinking, doing little more than breathe. Time passed, unmarked by me, and eventually another car—new and foreign—turned onto the quiet street, drove up to the house, pulled in, and parked.

A tall, fair-haired man wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tie hopped out. He leaned back into the body of the car and emerged with a pizza and a bottle of wine. He took these goods with him up to the house, whistling as he went. He didn't knock. He opened the door and went in.

I didn't stick around after that.

Once back in Dallas, I packed up all Jenny's things and called her friend Deborah to take them away.

I never heard from her again.

26. Peri

“And that's it?”

“Yeah.”

“You never found out why she left you?”

I snorted. “I could guess.”

“I can't believe you didn't talk to her—confront her, demand to know the truth. How could you just leave her like that?”

“Hey, wait a minute—she left me.”

“To make you pay attention. She wanted you to prove you loved her by tracking her down, isn't that what you thought?”

“It's what I wanted to think.”

“What if that was
your
baby?”

“She should have told me.”

“Should, but maybe she thought she didn't have to. Maybe she thought you knew, and you weren't happy. You didn't want to be a father, you didn't want to be tied down with responsibilities. Maybe, when you didn't come after her, she thought you'd made your feelings plain, and she was too proud to beg, ever think of that?”

Of course I'd thought of it. There were times I'd even come close to believing it and hating myself for what I'd done, but by then it was too late. And at that moment I had something much more immediate on my mind.

“Where's Hugh?”

“Isn't he just over there?”

I stood up, peering into the darkness. I held my breath as I strained to hear the small sounds of someone moving, but there was nothing. I didn't expect to find him; somehow, I sensed he was no longer with us.

I was excited, and frightened, and also mad at myself. To think that while I'd been wallowing in a failure from my past, I could have missed the very moment when someone disappeared—before my very eyes, if I'd only been looking!

Then, as I peered into the darkness, I saw something moving, a light. I took a step forward, uncertain if my eyes were playing tricks on me. But there it was again, no doubt about it: something that glowed, no bigger than a firefly, and dipped and bobbed along just a couple of feet above the ground.

Fixing my eyes on the little light, I moved cautiously toward it, sliding my feet forward, anxious that I shouldn't trip over anything or make too much noise.

As I got closer, I saw that the light was a tiny, glowing, sparkling globe, about the size of a grape, and that it was carried by a little man who was barely two feet high. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. To make certain, I raised my torch, switched it on, and shined the beam directly at him. As the light hit him, the little man peered up at me, his face screwed up evilly, and hurled the burning globe right into my face.

Instinctively, my eyes shut and my hands flew up to protect them. I dropped my torch and stumbled. I felt myself falling, and threw my arms out to break my fall. But I didn't hit the ground. Instead, I seemed to be falling off a cliff, or down a very deep, wide hole.

A moment later I opened my eyes. They felt sore and dry, and I couldn't see anything. Had I gone blind? In desperate terror, I flailed out with arms and legs and, although I felt nothing but the rushing air all around, my efforts began to slow my fall. I discovered that, by flapping and kicking with all my might, I could affect how I fell. I could change direction, moving myself a little to the left or right, and not only could I slow my fall, I could reverse it. Although it took a huge effort, eventually I felt myself beginning to rise. Panting and gasping, I kept up the struggle although, in the dark as I was, I had no idea where I was going or when I could rest and be safe.

Then, off to my left, I glimpsed a faint light. I concentrated on moving in that direction. The pale glimmer became a soft, steady glow, and I was aware of curving rock walls all around me, and knew I was in a tunnel.

But even though I could see the ceiling and walls, I still couldn't see my own arms and legs. Calmed a little by being able to see again, I wondered how I was moving. I wasn't walking, crawling, or swimming—did that mean I could fly?

I stopped struggling, stopped working the arms and legs I could not see, but my steady forward movement did not stop; if anything, it became faster. Some sort of powerful, invisible, intangible force had me in its grip and carried me along, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Faster and faster I flew, until I shot out of the tunnel into a big, subterranean hall, softly lit by an unknown source and empty except for a single human figure: Hugh.

No sooner had I recognized him than my wish to go closer was granted. I went zooming in. As I drew nearer, Hugh bulked larger, becoming huge, a positive giant. Hovering in the air just below his right eye I realized that he was his normal size and I was the tiny one, no bigger than a fly. In fact, I
was
a fly.

Now I knew I must be dreaming.

In the past, whenever I'd become aware that I dreamed, I woke up. This time, however, the dream went on. I tried to wake myself, imagining Hugh calling for help while I lay snoring on the hillside. I blinked hard and fast. “Wake up!” I shouted, without making a sound.

Hugh waved a hand beside his right cheek, and the gust of air knocked me halfway across the hall.

End over end I tumbled, and flapped wildly until I stabilized. As I spun around in the air, determined to keep my eye on Hugh, I saw that he was no longer alone. He was surrounded by a crowd of women, forty or fifty of them, all giants like him, and all absolutely identical.

Now I understood. This was Hugh's test. He had to pick out the real Peri from a host of imitations, and maybe I was there to help him. Although I'd never met her before, there might be some small, identifying mark, some tiny discrepancy that would be apparent from my fly's-eye view.

As Hugh began to inspect them, one by one, I swooped in for a closer view at the other end.

The first girl I saw immediately was not a girl at all but some sort of animatronic dummy. Very lifelike at first glance, her eyes shining, lips slightly parted, even her chest rising and falling in the normal rhythms of breath. But as soon as I landed on her skin, I knew it wasn't real. It was the wrong texture, without warmth, and it had no smell or salty, meaty taste.

To taste the skin I rested on was instinctive behavior; it was also embarrassing for someone who believed himself more man than fly. I moved on quickly to the next girl, and found another dummy. The same with the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth . . . oh, this was easy!

I continued my tour of inspection, but spared a glance at Hugh, surprised to see how slowly and seriously he took his task. Wasn't it obvious to him? Even without sniffing or licking the life-sized dolls, couldn't he see there was something wrong? Were his human senses really so dull? By then, I was pretty sure that all of these robots were exactly the same, but I visited each one in turn, expecting to be proved wrong.

And then I'd counted fifty artificial Peris, and there were no more.

Even from a distance I sensed Hugh as a warm-blooded, hot-breathed, living, stinking human creature, the only one in the whole cave. The illusion of a crowd of living women was a trick. They were convincing only to the eye. And they were all absolutely identical; not one was mortal. Whatever had become of Peri, she was certainly not among this crowd. None of them showed any awareness of me, not even when I buzzed past their eyes or crawled into the caves of their ears. Occasionally, when I looked at Hugh, I saw him frowning, twitching, even batting at the air around his head, and I wondered briefly if in some weird way he was feeling what
they
should have felt. Then I saw that there was another fly, besides me, in the cave. Was it Laura? Or just an ordinary fly, drawn to Hugh as the only warm-blooded creature around?

Didn't that give him a clue?

No, it seemed he was still convinced that at least one of these images was really alive.

It was up to me. I flew back to Hugh, desperate to get his attention. I had to tell him what he obviously didn't know, that Mider was trying to trick him. Yet as soon as I came close enough to his head to make him aware of me, his only response was to swat. I glimpsed the other fly, which was managing to avoid his clumsy blows, dancing in and out of his reach with elegant skill. I wondered again if this was Laura or a real fly, but had no time to find out because I had to make Hugh understand.

I shouted into his gigantic ear: “Hugh, it's me, Ian! Listen to me!” and, in my desperation I grew careless. This time when he swung at me the side of his hand just clipped my wing, and I was sent tumbling and spinning to the ground. I lay there winded, feeling groggy and sick, as the long, slow seconds crawled past. And when at last I recovered and stood on six feet before I rose from the ground, the situation had changed.

Most of the artificial women had disappeared. Only one remained, locked in a passionate clinch with Hugh. It could have been a happy ending, maybe he had managed to find the real Peri after all—but although I was too far away now to be certain, I didn't believe it. Even his famous Second Sight hadn't helped Hugh this time—I wondered why. Maybe it worked only on his own ground, or maybe, as with ordinary vision, it could be fooled.

As I was speculating on this, flying toward the lovers to get a closer look, I suddenly sensed danger. I spun around in midair, on guard, and found an enormous, terrifying male face staring at me. I saw the hairs in the huge nostrils quiver, then a great, hot wind struck me, lifted me, and sent me flying, utterly helpless, away down a long, dark tunnel.

I emerged into bright sunshine, finding myself hanging in midair above a man and a woman lying asleep and fully clothed on the ground. The man was lying on his back, his mouth hanging open as he breathed slowly in and out.

The wind that had supported me for so long now died, and I fell, dropping into that great, gaping cave of a mouth just as he sucked in more air. I fell into a warm, wet darkness.