Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (54 page)

And suddenly I jumped as the alarm clock started buzzing. It was the first time I’d ever stayed up for the entire night. I put the book away, got dressed for school, and hurried home after school so that I could finish it.

I must have read it six or seven more times that year. I got to the point where I could almost recite parts of it word-for-word. I was in love with those exotic faraway places, and maybe a little bit in love with the author, too. I even wrote her a fan letter addressed to “Miss Priscilla Wallace, Somewhere,” but of course it came back.

Then, in the fall, I discovered Robert A. Heinlein and Louis L’Amour, and a friend saw
Travels with My Cats
and teased me about its fancy cover and the fact that it was written by a woman, so I put it on a shelf and over the years I forgot about it.

I never saw all those wonderful, mysterious places she wrote about. I never did a lot of things. I never made a name for myself. I never got rich and famous. I never married.

By the time I was forty, I was finally ready to admit that nothing unusual or exciting was ever likely to happen to me. I’d written half of a novel that I was never going to finish or sell, and I’d spent twenty years looking fruitlessly for someone I could love. (That was Step One; Step Two—finding someone who could love me—would probably have been even more difficult, but I never got around to it.)

I was tired of the city, and of rubbing shoulders with people who had latched onto the happiness and success that had somehow eluded me. I was Midwestern born and bred, and eventually I moved to Wisconsin’s North Woods, where the most exotic cities were small towns like Manitowoc and Minnaqua and Wausau—a far cry from Macau and Marrakech and the other glittering capitals of Priscilla Wallace’s book.

I worked as a copy editor for one of the local weekly newspapers—the kind where getting the restaurant and real estate ads right was more important than spelling the names in the news stories correctly. It wasn’t the most challenging job in the world, but it was pleasant enough, and I wasn’t looking for any challenges. Youthful dreams of triumph had gone the way of youthful dreams of love and passion; at this late date, I’d settled for tranquility.

I rented a small house out on a little nameless lake, some fifteen miles out of town. It wasn’t without its share of charm: it had an old-fashioned veranda, with a porch swing that was almost as old as the house. A pier for the boat I didn’t own jutted out into the lake, and there was even a water trough for the original owner’s horses. There was no air-conditioning, but I didn’t really need it—and in the winter I’d sit by the fire, reading the latest paperback thriller.

It was on a late summer’s night, with just a bit of a Wisconsin chill in the air, as I sat next to the empty fireplace, reading about a rip-roaring gun-blazing car chase through Berlin or Prague or some other city I’ll never see, that I found myself wondering if this was my future : a lonely old man, spending his evenings reading pop fiction by a fireplace, maybe with a blanket over his legs, his only companion a tabby cat. . . .

And for some reason—probably the notion of the tabby—I remembered
Travels with My Cats
. I’d never owned a cat, but
she
had; there had been two of them, and they’d gone everywhere with her.

I hadn’t thought of the book for years. I didn’t even know if I still had it. But for some reason, I felt an urge to pick it up and look through it.

I went to the spare room, where I kept all the stuff I hadn’t unpacked yet. There were maybe two dozen boxes of books. I opened the first of them, then the next. I rummaged through Bradburys and Asimovs and Chandlers and Hammetts, dug deep beneath Ludlums and Amblers and a pair of ancient Zane Grays—and suddenly there it was, as elegant as ever. My one and only Limited Numbered Edition.

So, for the first time in perhaps thirty years, I opened the book and began reading it. And found myself just as captivated as I had been the first time. It was every bit as wonderful as I remembered. And, as I had done three decades ago, I lost all track of the time and finished it just as the sun was rising.

I didn’t get much work done that morning. All I could do was think about those exquisite descriptions and insights into worlds that no longer existed—and then I began wondering if Priscilla Wallace herself still existed. She’d probably be a very old lady, but maybe I could update that old fan letter and finally send it.

I stopped by the local library at lunchtime, determined to pick up everything else she had written. There was nothing on the shelves or in their card file. (They were a friendly old-fashioned rural library; computerizing their stock was still decades away.)

I went back to the office and had my computer run a search on her. There were thirty-seven distinct and different Priscilla Wallaces. One was an actress in low-budget movies. One taught at Georgetown University. One was a diplomat stationed in Bratislava. One was a wildly successful breeder of show poodles. One was the youthful mother of a set of sextuplets in South Carolina. One was an inker for a Sunday comic strip.

And then, just when I was sure the computer wouldn’t be able to find her, the following came up on my screen:

“Wallace, Priscilla, b. 1892, d. 1926. Author of one book:
Travels with My Cats
.”

1926. So much for fan letters, then or now; she’d died decades before I’d been born. Even so, I felt a sudden sense of loss, and of resentment—resentment that someone like that had died so young, and that all her unlived years had been taken by people who would never see the beauty that she found everywhere she went.

People like me.

There was also a photo. It looked like a reproduction of an old sepia-toned tintype, and it showed a slender, auburn-haired young woman with large dark eyes that seemed somehow sad to me. Or maybe the sadness was my own, because I knew she would die at thirty-four and all that passion for life would die with her. I printed up a hard copy, put it in my desk drawer, and took it home with me at the end of the day. I don’t know why. There were only two sentences on it. Somehow a life—any life—deserved more than that. Especially one that could reach out from the grave and touch me and make me feel, at least while I was reading her book, that maybe the world wasn’t quite as dull and ordinary as it seemed to me.

That night, after I heated up a frozen dinner, I sat down by the fireplace and picked up
Travels with My Cats
again, just thumbing through it to read my favorite passages here and there. There was the one about the stately procession of elephants against the backdrop of snow-capped Kilimanjaro, and another about the overpowering perfume of the flowers as she walked through the gardens of Versailles on a May morning. And then, toward the end, there was what had become my favorite of all:

“There is so much yet to see, so much still to do, that on days like this I wish I could live forever. I take comfort in the heartfelt belief that long after I am gone, I will be alive again for as long as someone picks up a copy of this book and reads it.”

It
was
a comforting belief, certainly more immortality than I ever aspired to. I’d made no mark, left no sign by which anyone would know I’d ever been here. Twenty years after my death, maybe thirty at most, no one would ever know that I’d even existed, that a man named Ethan Owens—my name; you’ve never encountered it before, and you doubtless never will again—lived and worked and died here, that he tried to get through each day without doing anyone any harm, and that was the sum total of his accomplishments.

Not like her. Or maybe very much like her. She was no politician, no warrior queen. There were no monuments to her. She wrote a forgotten little travel book and died before she could write another. She’d been gone for more than three-quarters of a century. Who remembered Priscilla Wallace?

I poured myself a beer and began reading again. Somehow, the more she described each exotic city and primal jungle, the less exotic and primal they felt, the more they seemed like an extension of home. As often as I read it, I couldn’t figure out how she managed to do that.

I was distracted by a clattering on the veranda.
Damned raccoons are getting bolder every night,
I thought—but then I heard a very distinct
meow
. My nearest neighbor was a mile away, and that seemed a long way for a cat to wander, but I figured the least I could do was go out and look, and if it had a collar and a tag I’d call its owner. And if not, I’d shoo it away before it got into the wrong end of a disagreement with the local raccoons.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the veranda. Sure enough, there was a cat there, a small white one with a couple of tan markings on its head and body. I reached down to pick it up, and it backed away a couple of steps.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said gently.

“He knows that,” said a feminine voice. “He’s just shy.”

I turned—and there she was, sitting on my porch swing. She made a gesture, and the cat walked across the veranda and jumped up onto her lap.

I’d seen that face earlier in the day, staring at me in sepia tones. I’d studied it for hours, until I knew its every contour.

It was
her
.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” she said as I kept gaping at her. “And quiet. Even the birds are asleep.” She paused. “Only the cicadas are awake, serenading us with their symphonies.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just watched her and waited for her to vanish.

“You look pale,” she noted after a moment.

“You look real,” I finally managed to croak.

“Of course I do,” she replied with a smile. “I
am
real.”

“You’re Miss Priscilla Wallace, and I’ve spent so much time thinking about you that I’ve begun hallucinating.”

“Do I look like an hallucination?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one before, so I don’t know what they look like—except that obviously they look like you.” I paused. “They could look a lot worse. You have a beautiful face.”

She laughed at that. The cat jumped, startled, and she began stroking it gently. “I do believe you’re trying to make me blush,” she said.

“
Can
you blush?” I asked, and then of course wished I hadn’t.

“Of course I can,” she replied, “though I had my doubts after I got back from Tahiti. The things they
do
there!” Then, “You were reading
Travels with My Cats,
weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was. It’s been one of my most cherished possessions since I was a child.”

“Was it a gift?” she asked.

“No, I bought it myself.”

“That’s very gratifying.”

“It’s very gratifying to finally meet the author who’s given me so much pleasure,” I said, feeling like an awkward kid all over again.

She looked puzzled, as if she was about to ask a question. Then she changed her mind and smiled again. It was a lovely smile, as I had known it would be.

“This is very pretty property,” she said. “Is it yours all the way up to the lake?”

“Yes.”

“Does anyone else live here?”

“Just me.”

“You like your privacy,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“Not especially,” I answered. “That’s just the way things worked out. People don’t seem to like me very much.”

Now why the hell did I tell you that?
I thought.
I’ve never even admitted it to myself
.

“You seem like a very nice person,” she said. “I find it difficult to believe that people don’t like you.”

“Maybe I overstated the case,” I admitted. “Mostly they don’t notice me.” I shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to unburden myself on you.”

“You’re all alone. You have to unburden yourself to
someone,
” she replied. “I think you just need a little more self-confidence.”

“Perhaps.”

She stared at me for a long moment. “You keep looking like you’re expecting something terrible to happen.”

“I’m expecting you to disappear.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

“Yes,” I said promptly. “It would be.”

“Then why don’t you simply accept that I’m here? If you’re wrong, you’ll know it soon enough.”

I nodded. “Yeah, you’re Priscilla Wallace, all right. That’s exactly the kind of answer she’d give.”

“You know who
I
am. Perhaps you’ll tell me who
you
are?”

“My name is Ethan Owens.”

“Ethan,” she repeated. “That’s a nice name.”

“You think so?”

“I wouldn’t say so if I didn’t.” She paused. “Shall I call you Ethan, or Mr. Owens?”

“Ethan, by all means. I feel like I’ve known you all my life.” I felt another embarrassing admission coming on. “I even wrote you a fan letter when I was a kid, but it came back.”

“I would have liked that,” she said. “I never once got a fan letter. Not from anyone.”

“I’m sure hundreds of people wanted to write. Maybe they couldn’t find your address either.”

“Maybe,” she said dubiously.

“In fact, just today I was thinking about sending it again.”

“Whatever you wanted to say, you can tell me in person.” The cat jumped back down onto the veranda. “You look very uncomfortable perched on the railing like that, Ethan. Why don’t you come and sit beside me?”

“I’d like that very much,” I said, standing up. Then I thought it over. “No, I’d better not.”

“I’m thirty-two years old,” she said in amused tones. “I don’t need a chaperone.”

“Not with me, you don’t,” I assured her. “Besides, I don’t think we have them anymore.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The truth?” I said. “If I sit next to you, at some point my hip will press against yours, or perhaps I’ll inadvertently touch your hand. And . . .”

“And what?”

“And I don’t want to find out that you’re not really here.”