The Ignored (48 page)

How did it know my name?

“Bob!”

“What?” I called back.

“Join us!”

I was not scared, although I knew I should have been. That dark shape in
the forest should have terrified the hell out of me. But the voice was warm and
comforting, and something about the fact that this had finally happened, that
the waiting was over, made me feel relieved.

“Come!” the voice called. “We’re waiting for you!”

Before me, the window and wall dissolved. As though in a dream, as
though hypnotized, I walked through what had been the wall and felt different
breezes blowing my hair, different air in my lungs. Even the temperature felt
not the same. It was not hotter or colder, it was just… different.

I was in another world.

I was filled with a strange sense of well-being, a lethargic sort of
contentment that persisted despite legitimate warnings and concerns that were
being brought up intellectually by my mind.

I moved forward.

“No!”

Jane’s voice, shrill and desperate, filled with a hopeless, helpless,
agonized despair, cut through the warm fuzziness of my feelings, and I snapped
my head around to look at her. For a brief fraction of a second, I was standing
in the front yard of our house and she was screaming at me through the window,
then I was again in the field and she was yelling at me from a wall less room
that looked like it had been plunked down in Oz by a tornado from Kansas.

“Bob!” that other voice called. It was no longer so warm and comforting.
In fact, it seemed nearly as threatening as its origin, that huge black shape in
the trees, and I tried to walk back toward Jane, toward our bedroom, but my feet
would not move in that direction.

“Bob!” Jane screamed.

The scene flickered again. I saw the yard, the house.

“Jane!” I called.

“I see you!” she cried. “I notice you! I love you!”

I don’t know what made her yell that, what made her think of that, what
led her to believe that those words would do any good, but they elicited a deep
rumble of rage from the shape in the trees, and I was suddenly able to move
again. I turned and ran toward her, and that other world, that strange world,
began to recede, fading slowly from sight until it was entirely gone. I ended up
naked, outside, on the grass, pressing my hands and face against the bedroom
window as, on the other side of the glass, Jane did the same. I did not know
what had just happened or how, but I knew that she had pulled me back from the
brink. She had saved me.

I ran around to the kitchen door and waited until Jane unlocked it, and
then we were in each others’ arms.

“I heard you yell something and then I saw you outside and you were… fading!” Jane sobbed. “You were disappearing!”

“Shhh,” I said, holding her. “It’s all right.”

And it was. There was no gold sky, no orange grass, no purple trees.
There was only our house and Thompson and the Arizona night sky. If this were a
movie, it would have been her love for me that brought me back, that saved me
from disappearing into that other world, but somehow I knew that that was not
what had done it. It was a part of it, but only a part. It was also the fact
that she saw me. That she did not ignore me.

And that she said those words. In that order.

“I see you—I notice you—I love you.”

Magic.

“I love you,” she said again.

We’re not Ignored to those who love us.

I clutched her tightly. “I love you, too,” I said. “And I see you. And I
notice you. And I will never stop noticing you. Never.”

I went out the next day and I was invisible. Completely invisible. No
one saw me, no one heard me. I was not just ignored. I did not exist.

I’d thought it was over. I’d thought I could go back to work, that my
condition had reversed itself, that everything would be back to normal, but as I
got out of the car and walked up the steps of city hall, I noticed that no one
looked at me. I went inside, walked past the mayor’s secretary, and she did not
see me. I stood in the doorway of Ralph’s office. He looked right through me.

“Ralph!” I said.

No response.

I considered playing with him, fucking with his mind, picking up objects
and moving them around the room. But what was the point? I turned around, left.
I realized for the first time that even if I had been able to do so, I would not
have wanted to go back to work.

I no longer wanted to be here.

I no longer wanted to live in Thompson.

I got into my car, drove back home.

I thought about what I was, about who I was, about what I wanted as I
drove. Test-marketing products? Being a human guinea pig? Was there any meaning
in that? Was that a legitimate reason for existence? Perhaps. As Ralph had told
me once, “Someone’s gotta do it.”

But that someone was not me.

Maybe living and working in Thompson did give some of the Ignored a
sense of purpose. Maybe products did get made because they went over well in
Thompson, and maybe people were then hired to make those products, creating
jobs, and maybe the people who bought those products were made happy by them,
and maybe part of the responsibility for that did go to the Ignored of Thompson.

But that wasn’t enough for me.

Thompson was Automated Interface all over again. I was a nobody here. I
was nothing.

And I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be something.

I pulled up in front of the house, and I sat there for a moment. I
watched Jane through the front window, watched her vacuum the living room.

It had all turned to shit. All of it. Everything. The road I had taken
had come to a dead end. The Terrorists for the Common Man had disintegrated in
an orgy of blood, and in a city of my own people I had turned into what I had
tried to escape.

What could I do next? Where was I to go?

What about Jane?

I sat there for a few moments more, then I went inside and told Jane
everything. I had her call her friends.

None of them could hear her.

We went downtown, walked through the mall. No one saw us. Either of us.
We were invisible. Jane had pulled me back, but I had pulled her forward, and
now both of us were trapped in this no-man’s-land, ignored by the Ignored.

Jane grew quieter and quieter as it became increasingly obvious what had
happened.

“I don’t see any of those weird things,” she told me in Nordstrom.

“Neither do I,” I said. “Anymore. I think that part of it’s over.”

“So we’re just stuck here. This way.”

I nodded.

She dropped her purse and ripped open her blouse.

“What are you doing?” I said.

She unfastened her bra, kicked off her shoes, unzipped and pulled down
her pants.

“Knock it off!” I was starting to get scared.

“Why? No one can see me.”

She pulled down her panties.

“Jane!”

She ran up to an older couple, took the man’s right hand and put it on
her breasts. “Feel my tits!”

The old man looked shocked, pulled away, but though he obviously could
feel her, he could not see her, he could not hear her.

“Jane!”

“Eat me! Eat my hot pussy!”

She stood naked in the center of the store, screaming obscenities, but
no one looked at her, no one paid any attention at all, and I took a bathrobe
from the lingerie department and put it around her shoulders and led her out of
the mall and back to the car.

I drove her home.

Jane spent the next two days in bed. I was worried at first that she
would not snap out of it. I had not expected her to react this way, and it
scared me.

But on the third morning she awoke before I did, and by the time I got
up she was already making breakfast.

“Temporary insanity,” she said sheepishly as I walked into the kitchen.

I sat down at the table, poured myself a glass of orange juice,
pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. “Is that what happened
when you first found out you were Ignored?”

“No. Just this time. Delayed stress syndrome, I suppose. I guess I
stored it all up.”

“But you’re okay now?”

“I’m okay.”

I looked at her. “So what are we going to do?”

“What do you want to do?”

I realized that there was nothing tying us down, nothing holding us
here. We had no responsibilities or obligations anywhere. We were free to do
anything we chose. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

She walked over to the table, frying pan in hand, and slid two eggs onto
my plate. “I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “That’s for sure.”

“I don’t either.” I looked at her. “Do you have any idea where you would
like to go?”

She smiled shyly. “The beach?”

I nodded, grinned. “The beach it is.”

I called Philipe that afternoon while Jane was packing. I wasn’t sure if
he was still here or if he had passed over to the other side. I wasn’t sure if
he would be able to hear me or see me. But he was here, and he could hear me,
and he promised to come over immediately. I gave him directions to our house.

He arrived in fifteen minutes, looking even more pale and washed-out
than he had the last time, if that was possible. But I could still see him, and
Jane could see him, and despite all that had happened, I felt warm and good as I
finally introduced my friend and my wife to each other.

Philipe spent the night with us.

During dinner, I explained exactly what had happened, exactly what I had
seen, exactly what Jane had done.

He nodded. “So you think it’s recognition by others that keeps us
anchored here, huh?”

“It’s possible.”

“Then why am I still here?”

“Because I know you.” I took a deep breath. “Because I see you. I notice
you. I love you.”

He grinned. “Worth a try, huh?”

“Can’t hurt.”

“What about when you’re gone?”

I was silent.

He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not bucking for an invitation.”

“It’s not that—” I hastened to explain.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

As a matter of fact, I had been thinking of asking him to accompany us.
But I’d wanted to talk it over with Jane first.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Jane asked. I met her eyes, nodded my
thanks.

He shook his head. “This is where I belong. These are my people.”

“But—”

“No buts. I think I have enough faith and belief in myself to fight off
any onslaught. No one’s going to tell me I don’t exist.”

I smiled, nodded, but I was worried.

In the morning, Philipe helped me pack the car. Jane finished cleaning
the house. She did not want to leave a mess for the next tenants.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring your furniture?” I asked her. “We
could always get a U-Haul truck.”

She shook her head. “No.”

Then we were ready to go.

Jane got into the car, buckled her seat belt. I turned to Philipe.
Despite our differences, despite our disagreements, despite everything that had
happened, I felt sad to be saying good-bye. We had been through a lot together,
good and bad, and those experiences had created a bond between us that could
never be broken. I looked at him, and his once-sharp eyes that were now not so
sharp were wet at the edges.

“Come with us,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’m not fading anymore. I’m coming back. In a few
weeks I’ll be stronger than ever. Don’t worry about me.”

I looked into his eyes, and I knew he knew that it was not true. An
understanding passed between us.

“So where’re you going to go?” he asked. “Back to Palm Springs? You
might be able to recruit some new terrorists.”

“That isn’t me,” I said. I gestured around me, at Thompson. “And this
isn’t me, either. I don’t know what
is
me. That’s what I need to find
out. But you stay here. You start up the terrorists again. You fight the fights
for our people. You keep the faith.”

“I will,” he said, and his voice was soft. “Take care.”

I wanted to cry, and a tear did escape down my cheek before I could wipe
it off. I looked at Philipe, and on impulse I gave him a quick hug. “
You
take
care,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I got into the car.

“Good-bye,” he said to Jane. “I haven’t spent much time with you, but I
feel like I know you anyway. Bob did nothing but talk about you the whole time
we were traveling together. He loves you very much.”

She smiled. “I know.”

They shook hands.

I started the car, backed out of the driveway. I looked toward Philipe.
He waved, smiled.

I waved back.

“Good-bye,” I said.

He ran after us as we pulled away, and he jogged behind us as we pulled
onto the road out of the city. He stood there, in the middle of the street,
waving, as we left Thompson.

I honked back at him.

And we continued east until Philipe was lost to sight and Thompson was
only a tiny irregular speck in the distance.

We lived in motels while we locked for a home.

There was no property available in Laguna Beach, no uninhabited houses
for sale, so we moved up the coast to Corona del Mar.

I suggested that, since we were invisible, we should just pick the house
we liked and live there. We shouldn’t worry about finding a place all to
ourselves. There was no reason we couldn’t find some big house and co-exist with
the owners. We’d be like ghosts. It would be fun.

So we lived for a time with a rich couple, in a too-large mansion on a
bluff overlooking the ocean. We took the guest room and the guest bathroom; we
used the kitchen when the owners were gone or asleep.

But it was unsettling to live that close and that intimately with
others, to be privy to their privacies. I felt uncomfortable seeing people when
they thought they were alone, watching them scratch themselves and mutter to
themselves and let their true feelings show on their faces, and we moved up the
coast, to Pacific Palisades, finally finding a white elephant belonging to a
has-been entertainer no longer able to keep up with the payments. It had been on
the market for the past two years.