Life on the Preservation, US Edition (24 page)

K
YLIE COULDN’T ALLOW
herself to trust the guy in the hoodie. She was alone here and she had to trust
herself
. Not anybody else. Not this Ian guy who acted so weird. What if he was another disguised alien? Or a fake person? He had to be one or the other, not a real live man. Even as she walked away from him, though, she experienced the pain of separation. Because what if he
wasn’t
a fake person or an alien? What if he was real – the only other real person under the Dome with her?

Yeah, what if.

She glanced back but kept walking. Maybe she just wanted him to be real because she couldn’t bear to be alone in this place. But wanting him to be real didn’t make it true. It wasn’t like a fake person couldn’t fake being nice and ask her if she was all right. She walked faster, losing herself in the crowd. Then all at once she didn’t want to be lost. She stopped, and people jostled her, going around. Kylie’s stomach actually hurt. She bent over a little, fighting back useless tears.

She looked up, then, and saw one of the disguised alien tourists.

At least she thought it was one, this guy in a bright yellow shirt walking straight at her, his right hand slightly cupped against his hip – concealing his laser-joy-buzzer. Kylie braced herself to run.

Except it wasn’t a laser-joy-buzzer. It was just a cell phone, and the yellow shirt guy brought it up and started texting. Absorbed, he stepped around Kylie without looking at her.

More tears came. Kylie bit down on her tongue, to give herself something else to think about. Only she bit too hard. Tasting blood, she pushed through the people-who-weren’t people, just wanting to get away from them and be alone.

Mixed in the traffic noise a very cranky-sounding engine approached. She looked around. It was the hoodie guy! Ian. He was wearing one of those Nazi-looking half-helmets and driving a gorgeous old motorcycle, like none Kylie had ever before seen. It rode low to the road and had big flaring fenders and a leather fringe around the seat.

Kylie started waving. He saw her and ran the bike over to her, jumping the front wheel over the curb. “I’m alone,” she shouted above the blat and roar of the engine. “And I don’t have any money.”

“Get on.”

She did. But when he jerked the bike around, her locator fell out of her pocket. “Shit!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I dropped my – something.”

He shifted into neutral and now the engine sounded like a dryer with a penny clicking and sliding in the drum. Walking the heavy motorcycle back, Ian misjudged what he was doing, and rolled the rear tire over Kylie’s locator. She heard the case crack, a sharp snapping sound.

“Damn it,” he said. “I’m an idiot.”

“No you’re not. It already wasn’t working.”

She tried to pick the locator up but her arm wouldn’t reach that low while she was straddling the bike. Ian stretched down and grabbed it for her.

“Thanks.”

“You want some coffee?”

She wanted lots of stuff, coffee not being first on the list. But she said, “Yeah.”

Ian cranked the throttle. The beautiful low-slung bike stuttered and roared unevenly then leapt forward, the frame vibrating between Kylie’s legs. She held on as he wove them skillfully through traffic. She had the most wonderful feeling that she was exactly where she needed to be. It just came over her. The
rightness
of it. She rested her head against Ian’s back. He was real. She didn’t know how, but he was.

I
AN PARKED IN
front of Dregs, which was kind of the anti-Starbucks, a few blocks from his apartment. The girl, Kylie, was still holding onto him. He removed his helmet and looked over his shoulder at the top of her raggedy head. “This is where we’re going,” he said.

“’K.”

“You wanna go in?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll have to let go of me first,” he said, not really wanting her to let go.

She slipped her arms from around his waist and they went into the coffee shop. Incomprehensible rap/metal fusion pounded from box speakers bracketed to the ceiling. Violent slashes of color, paintings by some local artist, hung like open wounds on the walls. The tables were roughly the size of poker chips.

“God, this is the best coffee ever,” Kylie said after slurping the top foam off a heavily sugared double latte. “My mom had this jar of crystals? She let me have like one cup a week.”

“Vulgar’s Instant,” Ian said. “That ain’t coffee. What was your Mom, a Mormon or something?”

“Huh?”

“Like it’s against the rules to drink more than one cup of crappy coffee a week, is what I mean.”

“She’s Catholic. We had to ration the coffee.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Can I see that thing I broke?”

Kylie handed him the giant TV-remote-looking thing. It was surprisingly heavy. Two things about it were particularly interesting: the letters EMF on the front and the Property Of US Navy sticker on the back.

“I don’t think it was working anyway,” she said.

“I’m good at fixing stuff like this.”

Kylie laughed. “You don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t have to know.”

“Can I have another coffee? And a muffin? I’m really hungry.”

“Ah, sure,” Ian handed her a five dollar bill and she practically ran to the counter. He sucked on his double shot until she returned. There was barely room for two cups on the poker-chip pedestal table.

“So, this is like some kind of electromagnetic field detector, right?” he said, holding up the device.

“Yeah, that’s what this guy Wolcott said. But it’s supposed to be like a locator.”

“What’s it locate?”

“A generator, I think. A power source. Some machine.”

“Some machine.”

“Yeah.” Suddenly Kylie leaned across the table and kissed Ian on the mouth. She had a little brownish white foam on her lips. He tasted the foam, and Kylie’s darting tongue, and a copper tinge of
blood
. His cock sprang instantly to life. Kylie sat back quickly and picked up her mug.

“I wish you didn’t do that,” she said.

“
Me?
”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

“Ready for what?”

She ducked her head down and slurped her espresso, her eyes rolled up to watch him. Ian shifted uncomfortably on his chair. His pants were suddenly too tight. And, of course, the chair was intentionally uncomfortable to begin with. Then there were the girl’s possessive eyes.

“Where I come from,” Kylie said, “all the men are impotent.”

“Yeah? Where do you come from, the east side?”

“Eastside of Hell.”

“Sounds like it.”

“What time is it?” Kylie asked, with more urgency than the question might ordinarily warrant.

Ian consulted his phone. “Noonish.”

“Let’s do something else now.”

“Like what?”

Kylie smiled. Ten minutes later they were standing on the steps outside Ian’s apartment building, Ian thinking,
I am way out of my fucking mind
, while he fumbled with his keys. Behind him, Zach said:

“Hey, man.”

Ian turned away from the door and stepped forward. “Hey.”

“I need to talk to you,” Zach said.

“Um. I’m kind of busy right now.”

“I see that. Who is she?”

Kylie had retreated under the arch that formed an alcove around the building’s entry door. There used to be a light in there but it had burned out and maintenance had never bothered to replace the bulb. Even in daylight the little alcove was thick with shadows. The amateur tags some punk kid had thrown up seemed to absorb what light there was.

“She’s a girl I met.”

“What are you talking about, a girl you met? You never meet anybody.”

“I’m Kylie.” She stepped out of the alcove, slipped her arm through Ian’s, and stared a challenge at Zach.

Zach appraised her with such obvious suspicion that it pissed Ian off.

“Dude,” Zach said, “we have to talk.”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“A lot.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“We need to talk
now
.” Zach didn’t look good. Well, Zach never looked ‘good’, exactly. But at the moment he appeared particularly haggard and... stretched? “It’s important.”

Ian slipped his arm out of Kylie’s and said to her, “Gimme just a minute.”

Kylie didn’t say anything, and Ian felt their bond slip off the one-way track it had been riding, which
really
pissed him off. He walked with Zach halfway down the block.

“Who’s
she?
” Zach said.

“Kylie. What’s wrong with you?”

“What about Sarah? You were gone so long I was sure you’d tried for Pullman again.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Don’t you remember
anything?
The Boogeyman, the time loop, me killing myself, any of that?”

“Killing yourself. Not funny,” Ian said. “Not funny at all.”

“Look–”

“I’ll call you.”

Something went out of Zach, and he slumped on his feet.

“Yeah,” he said. “Whatever. I’ll see you on the next round.”

Kylie looked pensive and unhappy. The mood had collapsed; the big chemistry experiment had lost its reactionary force. “Who was that?”

“My best friend.”

“You seemed mad at him.”

“Yeah, well.”

“But you talked to him anyway, like he mattered.”

“Sure I did. He’s my
friend
. I can be mad at him and still care about him.”

Kylie thought about that, then said, “Will you take me someplace?”

“Where?”

“My grandparents’ house. They live on Queen Anne Hill. Here’s a picture. The address is on the back.”

“What for?”

“Will you take me?”

“Yeah, okay.”

I
T WAS A
big yellow frame house on a road lined with live oaks. Kylie recognized it immediately. She tapped Ian’s shoulder and pointed, but he was already tucking the Indian into the curb. The motor quit before he could shut it off. Kylie dismounted and took the picture out of her pocket. She held it up. The house matched the photo perfectly, except there was no one standing on the porch.

“Haven’t you ever been here?” Ian said.

“When I was little.” Impulsively, she kissed him again; that feeling, buzzing chemical electricity, the
rightness
of it – was still there. They were the real people, the only ones. She had been thinking, if you could even call it thinking, that she might be able to stay here under the Dome with Ian. If they destroyed the Dome, which was what she had been thinking before, neither one of them would survive long out in the poisoned world. But even with Ian, she didn’t think she could tolerate living in a world of phony people. Seeing Ian with his friend made her wonder if everyone else really
was
a fake. Maybe it was just some of them. Or maybe it was like when you were a kid and had a stuffed toy you loved. The bear became real because you wanted it to be real, because you
loved
it. Would life under the Dome with one real person be okay if she could trick herself into loving some of the fake people into life? For now she put aside the idea that her already-poisoned body would eventually became sick, whether she was under the Dome or not. Maybe Wolcott hadn’t known what he was talking about. Maybe.

Even though her mom was estranged from Kylie’s grandparents on her father’s side and never took her to see them since she was little, Kylie still thought she would be able to tell if they were real or not. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to find out whether she could
believe
they were real and be happy about it.

“Come with me?” she said to Ian.

“Yeah.”

He swung off the bike.

Kylie said, “Only don’t say anything weird, okay?”

“You’re the one who’s always saying weird stuff.”

They crossed the lawn. A big flame-colored oak leaf detached from an overhanging limb and see-sawed down in front of Kylie. She caught it, experiencing a little thrill of delight, and stuffed the leaf carefully in her pocket. The leaf wasn’t real, but it was easy to believe in it.

There was a brass knocker on the front door. Kylie used her knuckles. Ian hung back a little. She liked knowing he was there.

The door opened.

“Yes?”

A woman in her early sixties with vivid lavender eyes, her face pressed with comfortable laugh lines. Like the house, she was a picture come to life. And a memory. Kylie’s father’s face lurked behind the sags and wrinkles of age.

“Hi,” Kylie said.

“Can I help you?” the live photograph said. She glanced at Ian.

“No,” Kylie said. “I mean, I wanted to ask you something.”

The waiting expression on her face so familiar (her father watching her patiently while she built something out of colored blocks of wood). Kylie said, “I just wanted to know, are you having a good day, I mean a really good day?”

The woman turned her head a fraction of an inch, lips pursed uncertainly, ready to believe this was a harmless question from a harmless person.

“It’s like a survey,” Kylie said. “For school?”

A man of about the same age as the woman, wearing a baggy wool sweater and glasses came to the door. Kylie had to hold back her tears again, because he was like an aging duplicate of her dad. Until this moment she hadn’t really remembered what her father looked like. She had recognized the waiting expression on the woman’s face, but that was different. Suddenly the father she hadn’t seen since she was five years old was standing before her. A fake person in a fake house in a phony city, making her cry real tears (if she would only let them out, which she wouldn’t). Except he wasn’t a fake person. He was her stuffed bear, and she could no more help believing in him than a little kid could help believing in Winnie the Pooh.

“What’s all this?” said the stuffed bear that looked like her father.

“A happiness survey,” Kylie’s grandmother said, and laughed.

“Happiness survey, huh?” He casually put his arm around his wife and pulled her gently against him. He looked directly at Ian, but not in a challenging or unfriendly way.