A Fold in the Tent of the Sky (11 page)

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see your face in the palm of my hand

“What's his problem?”

“That's Peter Abbott. He doesn't usually look like that—hope he's all right.”

“What does he usually look like?”

Jane Franklin opened the door to the security area and let Pam go in ahead of her. “Like that—only not so you'd notice.”

There are times when you meet someone and the moment passes into oblivion; it gets filed away along with all the other random stuff. Then there are the moments, the pivotal moments, that end up like the pages in an old address book—
wrinkled and creased and folded and unfolded till they feel like soft fabric, the edges like the fur on the bridge of a cat's nose. Peter's vague memory of meeting Pamela Gilford for the first time was one such moment.

He'd been out in the hallway trying to shake off the attentions of a techie who was insisting he rest a while longer in the recliner. They were giving him real assignments now, remote viewing sessions aimed at specific information. This one had been the location of the black box of a downed 747 in the Aegean Sea—somewhere off the coast of Crete. The session had not gone well at all.

As Pamela Gilford came toward him—Ms. Franklin was giving her a tour of the lab—she raised her hand and stopped Jane in midsentence and waited for Peter to pass by—as if he were going to confront them with something, attack them. He remembered her face being a blur for a second, as if it were a TV report about some alleged felon whose identity they had to conceal. But he did have a memory of long, straight hair—this cowl of sixties hair that fell from a part down the middle of her head. Brown hair with coppery highlights. Of how pale she looked standing there next to Jane. And he believed he'd actually seen her eyes in there somewhere—he believed this; he had to believe this.

The blur he attributed to his state of mind, the fatigue of a remote viewing session that had gone wrong. They had realized by now that Peter worked best with what they called a PL, a “psychometric link,” that his sense of touch was what connected him with a target; and they'd presented him with a fragment of a fold-down tray from a passenger seat. He'd ended the session in a shuddering cold sweat, the jagged tray fragment clasped to his chest. He hadn't been able to locate
the flight recorder—wreckage, yes, and what must have once been passengers, remnants of passengers, but no black box. At one point he'd found himself being sucked away from the site on the sea floor down the life line of a dead crew member. Such visceral terror he never wanted to experience again.

Pamela Gilford. Fleshed out in his revisionist mind from a glimpse of this retro-waif giving him the evil eye in the hallway. Not much to go on. The eyes of course were saying something—as his must have been. Two transmitters jamming each other's signal—two receivers tuned into the same station: dead air and screaming feedback all at once. This too he had to believe.

What he remembered most of all from that first meeting was the forgetting, the unconscious setting aside of it. The blur of her face, as they passed in the hall, the long hair, the pale skin, the hand coming up—it was a document that had been filed away, the cabinet slammed shut. Pivotal moments were supposed to be more dramatic than this one had been; he was an actor, for God's sake.

The next time he saw her was a couple of days later in the common room. She was sitting by herself, eyes closed, listening to her Walkman. The earphones held back her hair so he could really get a good look at her this time—this is the memory of her he would associate with his first impression—the cheekbones, the soft mouth that never seemed to close all the way, a gentle overbite making her teeth show a bit. She was sitting in an easy chair with her feet under her, moving, swaying to the music. Arms folded, hands lost in the sleeves of her plaid shirt, and on the chair beside her, a paper plate with crumbs, a crumpled napkin.

She looked up at him for a second and smiled; a smile that
had more to do with how she felt about the music, he figured, and he left it at that, not wanting to cut in on whomever, or whatever was on the tape. One bare foot showing—long, skinny, two-dimensional, the toes all bone.

He crossed the room and went out onto the patio. He looked back in spite of himself, and there she was, staring right at him, her head still swaying to the music. She raised her hand and waved, a one-stroke sort of wave ending with the arm extended like a goodbye salute. Later that night he woke up in a funk thinking this was a kiss-off kind of gesture, a get-out-of-my-face kind of signal, but in the morning trying it in front of the mirror there seemed to be more hope in it; it seemed more open to interpretation.

“How'd you know I like cheese Danish?”

“I didn't. That's all they had left. You looked hungry.”

Pam was sitting by herself at one of the tables on the patio. Wearing sunglasses, a T-shirt, and cutoffs. “You're Peter, right?” He nodded. “Pam,” she said, unmoving. He nodded again, saying “Hi” for no apparent reason.

“Do you swim?” She was looking at the pool through her shaded eyes as if he owned it and she was puzzled that he wasn't always in it.

“No. Never learned. One of the gaps in my childhood. How about you?”

“I dabble, if you know what I mean. If you threw me in right now I wouldn't drown.” She huffed a contracted chuckle. “As long as you didn't keep me in there too long.”

She took a delicate bite of the Danish and he noticed her hands then, the ends of her fingers—childlike nubs, nails wider than they were long.

The next day she came up to him and said she was going shopping; she needed a swimsuit; if she was going to spend time in a place with a pool, she needed to get right into it, she said, “indulge in it” was how she put it. “Come with me, do you mind? To be honest, I'm just sort of using you; the shuttle's gone already, and I can't drive.” So after the afternoon sessions they took one of the cars and headed into town.
Use me,
he thought. And it surprised him, that he felt comfortable thinking it.

She checked out swimsuits, and at one point she made him try on a jacket. She was actually excited when he put it on. Proud of the way he looked in it, as if they were old friends, or old lovers; she touched him for the first time: the collar of the jacket, smoothing it down. This touch through layers of fabric more like a kiss, Peter thought.

They talked about Calliope, and joked about the same suit Eli Thornquist wore every day, whether he had ten of them lined up in his closet.

She never did find a swimsuit she liked, but he did buy the jacket. They discovered a Thai restaurant down by the waterfront that looked busy, which was always a good sign, Pam said—he didn't pick up on anything about the condition of the kitchen and he put it down to the barriers they had unconsciously set up around themselves. They were circling each other, keeping a safe distance.

It was dark when they got back and Peter walked her to the other side of the complex, where her apartment was. The sprinkler system was creating a thigh-high rainstorm outside her door and the noise was like the noise they had been fighting all their lives it seemed to Peter then, the intrusive cackle of other people's agendas. He wanted to say something but
he didn't—about how he had enjoyed himself. He wanted to touch her somehow, give her a hug, just grab her hand for a second, but he let that go too.

She thanked him and lingered on the doorstep, her hair swinging in the way of the key, her bag slipping into the crook of her arm. He said “Good night” over the hiss of the sprinkler system and she smiled and thanked him again and that was that.

The hole that opened up inside him somewhere as he walked away from her made his legs buckle for an instant. It scared him.
I don't need this. I
do
need this.
The kind of hole that eats up common sense and turns grown men into little boys again.

Mercury climbing, Icarus falling . . .

Ron Koch was wearing his loafers, which was a mistake because his feet hurt. The tops of them were raw from the sun—even after the milk bath Anita had given them. Milk and then this ointment she had brought with her from Pittsburgh. Aloe vera.

Barefoot would have been better but he couldn't bring himself to go anywhere barefoot. Not even in his own apartment would he go barefoot.

He opened the door to the lab and turned on the light. He felt like a burglar all of a sudden, being there after hours
with no one else around. Breaking into what, though? If it was such a big deal they would keep the place locked up.

He turned on the lamp next, the one they used with the ganzfeld goggles, and swung it over the recliner. He climbed into the chair thinking there would be nothing to it—this was going to be like flying solo, that's all. He kicked off his shoes; where they had cut into the inflamed skin he now felt fire. Itchy fire.

Ron remembered the first time he'd actually ridden a horse in a race, a pony, at a county fair when he was about eleven and still believed he could end up being a real jockey. It was like that, in a way—only there was no one around to witness it this time, which was good in this situation. A remote viewing session without a technician beside you to help you through the rough spots was verboten, supposedly. Jane and that heavyweight Blenheim would have a fit if they ever got wind of it.

He thought of Anita then, the smile on her face when he'd climbed into bed with her that first time, the way her arms went around him—like something a little child would do:
unconsciously
—and it washed all that away, his second thoughts about what he was doing. Breaking the rules. This would be for her as well as for him. He was going to change their lives.

He twisted around and punched the play button on the tape machine, then leaned back; he took three deep breaths and tried to put the bruised sting of his feet out of his mind. He started the slow climb down, telling himself to relax even before the voice on the tape did. Down into alpha, then beta.
Focus on the coordinates
—he'd looked them up, the exact date so there'd be no foul-ups—May 19, 1973, around two in
the morning. His Toronto apartment over a tailor's shop on Ossington Avenue, the night before the Preakness, the night of his dream: the one about the longshot. This time he was going to make sure the name stuck—he was going to help his hunch along with a little bit of theater.

In the wash of white noise and pink light Ron found the focus—the tiny pinprick of intrusion that pulled him out of himself but at the same time through to his very center.
Like threading a needle,
Jane had said.

And into the ether. It was like a ride on Secretariat through a driving wind, that's how he described it to Anita that first time, not that he had ever had the pleasure of riding a horse like Secretariat—like tumbling head over burning feet through a hurricane.
The coordinates; focus on the coordinates.

. . . into a room he'd forgotten was so small, the smell of himself, younger, careless with what he ate back then—lots of salt, spicy fried foods—before he had to look out for the cholesterol. The oscillating fan by the window blowing the early-summer heat further into the room. This place he lived in then seemed so dismal, the flip side of nostalgia. Furniture he'd forgotten he once owned, photographs on the fridge of people he didn't recognize. He could see it all—the glow of matter itself. Blenheim had told them over coffee one morning, how things would look different “on the other side.” Shit, “the other side”; he'd always thought that's what the New Age Ouija board crowd called Death. The Afterlife. The Other Side.

Back into the bedroom. He felt smeared on the walls of the place for an instant, unraveled. There in the bed snoring, himself as he was then, this chunk of meat taking up space, head under the covers—the poor slob didn't know how lucky he
was to be alive in 1973: a good car for four thousand bucks, no AIDS.

He was standing by the bed now, feeling his sore feet on the rough rug—the pain with him even here. Remote pain but pain just the same. He took a step toward the window and the fan turned on him. He could feel the breeze: warm and scented with city weeds, and roof tar; like the cold bite of winter wind he remembered from his out-of-body journey to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Do your dance, do your dance . . .
It was time to wake himself up.

“Paper Mile, remember that. Paper Mile! Wake up, Ronnie, baby, come on. Paper Mile!” His voice like drums in his ears, echoing, repeated down a folded, knotted tunnel, back through his own memory—the lump in the bed was still lying there, stillness personified—dead to the world. “Come on, Ronnie. Wake up and smell the roses; this could be it! The big score. Clean out your bank accounts, sell your Pinto! Tomorrow is your LUCKY DAY!”

Nothing. He reached out to the lump of himself under the covers; he wanted to slap himself awake; with this hand that was really a virtual hand, Jane had told him. His real hand was back in the lab.

He was touching the blanket before he could stop himself. His hand passed through the blanket, then the hair, the bone: he felt a shuddering jolt as if he were landing on top of his own chest. And a sucking searing pain worse than any sunburn ran up his arm and into his lungs.

Ron was falling but he was still on his feet. He felt a wedge of infinitely thin mirror guillotining him, down through the top of his head, between the eyes, the lobes of his cortex, the bridge of his nose—a precise division of himself, meticulously
fair-minded.
Me here; me there.
It felt like the twoness in the rhythm of the oscillating fan—this way, that; this way, that—two places, two times, at once: the impossibility of it falling down on him. Slicing.

The face of the guy in bed turned now, into the light of the urban glare washing from the window along with the tepid, preowned air. His
own
face, the old one he used to have: young, soft, unknowing; with a trackless forehead and lips that shaped an unsolved puzzlement.

Ron's young eyes opened with the tick of a minute turning. The little postage stamp number on the side table clock flipped: a “3” fell on a “2.” The memory of this instant echoed up through time and back again. The eyes opened on
nothing
—they reminded the older Ron of a kitten he once had; that first day its eyes had been like opaque marble puris.

And then the grimace, and the sound of young Ron's throat gagging, in an ungentle clutching at breath. While the ethereal Ron felt the tugging back (this way, that, oscillating faster, faster—his hand caught in the clutches of his own immature head) and forth, the future injecting the present, here; the present here, informing the present there—in the future. The unruly impracticality of it succumbing to a universe that will not abide a breach in the hull of what is, was, and ever shall be. The tugging, twisting . . . Ron Koch now neither here nor there. Somewhere in between.

The young Ron Koch waking with these words in his head: “Paper Mile, Paper Mile” beating in his ears with the pulse of the pain: a weight like a horse in high heels standing on his head. Ron Koch with the sour taste of slovenly Chinese food in his mouth, feeling the words for his outrage drain away into a hole that opened up inside of everything.

The older Ron Koch slid back into the ethereal wind, spiraling widdershins round the track. No Secretariat this time; just the tumbling ubiquity of dissolution.

There are two versions of this—oscillating like an Escher graphic; it is a paradox after all. That a man could visit himself like an injection of visionary vaccine into the muscle of his own past with knowledge, information—in defiance of
entropy's
ironclad formula—is impossible. One version demands that he fail in his attempt, that the course of events remain
unchanged
—and Ron Koch on the reclining chair in his favorite remote viewing lab struggles to return to his own past but falls asleep instead.

And of course the other version also demands that he fail in the attempt. That's the paradox of it.

His feet are burning, and he reaches for this pinprick of light, of hope—
if my feet hurt I must be alive. No one ever died of sore feet.