Three A.M. (15 page)

I vaguely remember reaching into my pocket and drawing out several pills. Caressing them in my hand. Holding them close to my face and then finally choking two or three down with the bit of saliva I could muster. Soon I was against a brick wall. Legs giving out. On the hard, cold ground. Fading and shivering and weeping. Entirely alone.

*   *   *

In the morning, I wandered through the vacant streets of the industrial northern quarter. My head ached from the pills and booze, my body from sleeping on the concrete. My mouth was dry, throat raw. I needed water. I needed to bathe and get some real rest.

I walked beside the long, windowless brick wall of an old factory. It may have stood there for a century, for all I knew. The doors I passed were all boarded shut—mismatched sheets of plywood and scraps of planks thrown hastily together. Didn’t have to be pretty, just had to keep people out, I guess. The fourth doorway I passed looked different, though. The wood was much the same, but as I leaned in to study it, I could tell that the door had been used more recently.

I gave the largest sheet of plywood a pull and stumbled a bit as the whole mess of wood pulled away from the door. It had been merely leaning there. I pushed it aside and tried to peer into the charcoal gray interior. I could see nothing. Shrugging to myself, I entered the factory.

It was much darker than even the pale light of the morning inside, and at first I was nearly blind. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that the air in this massive place swirled with mist, but it was lighter than out in the streets. I could faintly make out the steel bars and corrugated tin of the roof high above. Old faded windows ringed the upper walls.

I made my way deeper into the building, in awe of the sheer amount of open space before me. I had not seen so far above my head in years. My eyes grew ever more accustomed to the gloom, and I could see row after row of massive, decaying machinery on the immense floor.

Hundreds of pieces. Each easily fifteen feet high and the size of a city bus. Some sort of presses or molds, I guessed. Masses of wires, pneumatic tubes, and cracked paint enshrouded by cobwebs and creeping mist. Old tools, caked in dust, lay scattered about the floor along with scraps of rusting iron and other detritus.

I walked haltingly along a row of the hulking equipment, eyes passing from one great, crumbling machine to the next. Skeletons. That’s all they were now. Skeletons no longer needed to support the works of man, left to rust just as bones bleach beneath the sun. I was walking through a silent tomb. A tomb and a monument to a time that had passed.

So still was the air that the fog seemed to hang suspended above and around me. Each step I took unfroze a few tendrils of mist, and like a following spirit they trailed me as I walked, dancing around my legs and arms. I wondered how long had it been since another man had walked among these hulking shells. The door had been forced open and deliberately left to look as if it were sealed, but that could have been months or even years ago.

If I had found this place sooner, I surely would have come more often. It had the reverent mournfulness of a graveyard, the breathless awe of an ancient church. A latter-day cathedral. It got my mind off Lucid Jones. I walked from one end of the enormous building to the other—it must have been a quarter mile long. I would gladly have paced the aisles all day, but was in desperate need of water.

I made my way back to the open doorway. Fog was slowly rolling in, and I made a note to myself to reseal it behind me if I ever returned. The day was much brighter now. How long had I spent inside? Not that it mattered. I kept close to the wall as I approached the first intersection. Before turning south, I sought out and found an old, tarnished nameplate on the factory wall.
FOUNDRY ROAD
. Made sense.

When I reached more familiar streets, I decided to go to a little diner I hadn’t visited in many months. I pulled a few crumpled twenties from my pocket and transferred them to my jeans. Trying to catch my reflection in the glass of the restaurant’s window was pointless—I could see only my shadow in a sea of gray. Maybe that was for the best, assuming I looked anything like I felt.

I must have. The homely young waitress who approached my corner table kept her eyes averted from my damaged, haggard face and even seemed to be avoiding my smell. I recognized her and hoped she didn’t remember me.

“What do you want me to get you?” she asked quietly, an almost imperceptible pause between the words
want
and
me to get you.

“Soup. Please. Any kind of hot soup and a glass of water. Two glasses, actually.”

She turned and walked quickly away, and I looked around the place. It was as I’d left it. Ten, maybe twelve tables, though the room could have handled many more. Only one was occupied by two wizened old men who chattered to each other in hushed tones. One wore a faded suit and the other a heavy woolen jacket and a beige scarf, despite the fact that he was indoors and that it was still only early fall outside. As much as it was ever a season. Slightly colder or warmer was about all you got.

Most of the fluorescent bulbs were broken, and the diner was a patchwork of shadows and light. Everything was yellowed with age and disuse. But the air was warm and smelled of cooking. I suppose it was as comforting as it could be. The waitress returned with a piping hot bowl of vegetable soup and two tall glasses of water, pushing greasy ringlets of black hair behind her ears after setting everything down.

“It’s three dollars,” she mumbled, looking away and pushing her hands down into her apron. I handed her a twenty and she left.

The water was tepid but still wonderful. I never had any idea where water came from anymore. Always figured it was condensed fog but feared it was just treated and recirculated. It didn’t matter; I was desperately thirsty. I drank one glass without setting it down and then sipped at the other. The soup broth was thin, but it was laden with noodles, potatoes, and carrots, and I ate it hungrily, sloppily. By the time the girl approached with my change, I was finished, and I pointed at the bowl to ask for another. She returned to the kitchen.

When the soup arrived, along with a third glass of water I had not asked for but very much wanted, I waved her away with the change. She gave me a fleeting smile and nodded wordlessly, retreating to the farthest table, where she sat and pulled loose fibers from her socks. I ate more slowly, with more dignity, and then rose and left, not looking at the old men or at her again.

My belly full and thirst slaked, I needed to bathe and rest, ideally in that order. Semi-consciously, I was on the way home. I had to go back there sometime … one more time, at least. At least it meant a shower and a change of clothes. Then I figured I could rest on a bench. In some doorway. Back in my graveyard factory. Any port in a storm. Part of me knew it was foolish—maybe even suicidal—but the rest of me was growing resigned to fate, and my legs kept carrying me south.

*   *   *

Fear gripped me as I washed and scrubbed the dirt and stench off my body. I dressed quickly, threw on my jacket, and left. The whole visit home lasted maybe twenty minutes. Everything had seemed in order but didn’t feel that way. I thought I’d left my tape recorder and a pile of cassettes on the table, but they were stacked against one wall. And I couldn’t find my bottle of pills. As I crept down the stairs and out through my building’s doors, I clutched Heller’s cassette through the fabric of my jacket like some talisman. I held it in my hand for a while as I made my way, for no real reason, north again.

It was nearing twilight, and I was determined to finally confront Watley. I followed a meandering course back in the general direction of Heller’s apartment and the factory before turning sharply west and heading directly to the bar. Stupid, I knew. But I needed a bracer, anyway. Something to get my blood hot for what was sure to be unpleasant at best. I forced my mind to churn through all the mismatched facts I had. But all I kept repeating was: “This is it. This is it.” Over and over again.

“No! No, that won’t fucking help!” I chastised myself aloud, spitting the words out venomously. I scarcely realized I was actually speaking until I crossed a clear-blown street and caught the nervous eyes of the few people passing nearby. It didn’t faze me in the least. I went on talking to myself to drown out my subconscious and sucked violently at cigarettes.

By the time I reached Albergue’s street, I was near raving. How long ago had I left the bar, anyway? Was it even the same day? Stopping a block down from the bar, I realized that for perhaps the past ten minutes, I had been dragging at an unlit cigarette. Hand trembling, I tried to light it, but the filter was soaked with saliva and it wouldn’t pull smoke through. I dropped it and crushed the paper and tobacco into dust. Then I set my jaw and walked up the street to my trusty old tavern. I reached out for the door handle and pulled on it for the thousandth time. For the first time ever, it was locked.

*   *   *

I leaned against the bricks outside Albergue and lit a new smoke. I had come up with a pathetic plan: Since I was a man without a country, I could at least be the architect of my own exile.

I sucked greedily at the cigarette and started walking. The orbs smiled at me as I walked. Orange-eyed spectators of my decline. I was heading southeast. A bit delirious with abandon. I kept moving, my fear replaced by fatalism.

“Fuck it, then!” I suddenly cried out into the night. “Fucking do it! Come get me, Jones! Come get me, fuckers!” I stopped walking and stood there, panting, my blood beginning to boil. “I’m right here! I’m Thomas Vale and I’m here!” I screamed as loudly as I could, my voice cracking. I drew the little knife from my pocket and lurched onward toward my destination.

I crossed clear-blown Eighth Avenue and found it empty. Pausing in the middle of the street, I leaned back and let out a long, ugly howl. My throat was raw, but I lit a cigarette and lumbered off down another street, slapping my palm onto each glowing orb.

Before me, I heard glass shatter. I stopped dead, my heart pounding. My bloodlust faded and I was terrified again. Silence reigned. The cigarette dropped from my hand and I looked down as its little orange glow fizzled out on the damp pavement. Then I was walking again, quickly, the tiny knife raised before me.

I passed an orb post and lurched toward the next. A shadow flitted past me in the haze, and then in a loud explosion of glass, the orb shattered before me. I let out a deep, animalistic growl. From behind came another crash. I wheeled round to find nothing but gray. I could see no orbs. Another crash came from down the way, and I set off running toward it.

I never heard a single footfall other than my own, but from out of the gray, now and then, came the shattering of the orbs, and I stumbled through black gray mist, chasing ghosts with my blade.

My breathing ragged and my energy spent, I collapsed against a wall. The entire street’s orbs had been destroyed before me. I had neither seen nor heard a soul. As I sat there, coughing and moaning, I was confused and sickly overjoyed to find my mouth turned up into a smile. “Is that you, Jones? Is that you?” I called into the haze. “I’m right here! Vale is right here!”

Nothing.

Eventually, I got my breath back and rose. Fuck it all. This hadn’t affected my plan. I just needed to make a detour, now that I was sure I could never go home again. Navigating against the walls, I found my way back down the street past the dead orb posts and on toward Salk’s store. The three pills in my pocket weren’t going to get me through more than a single night.

*   *   *

Surprise and then a fleeting look of dismay played across Salk’s unsightly face as he looked up to see me standing before his glass window. I realized that it was barely a week since I had been here. I normally came monthly, if that. But here I was with my bruised eye and pale skin, out of drugs and asking for more. I thought to explain it to him, but his sad eyes made me feel very tired, very distant.

He looked down as he spoke to me through the grimy window. “Do you need more, Thomas?”

I nodded. He nodded back, very slowly. “It would be better if you came back later. Tomorrow or another day, even. It would be better if you weren’t here right now.”

“I can’t, Salk. I need them now.”
I can’t go home,
I continued silently to myself. He sighed and looked around at the sparse shelves lining his office, shuffling slowly around in the cramped room. Then he put one hand to his head, rubbing his temples with a thumb and forefinger. Still in this position, he said, eyes closed, “Out back then, Tom.”

I forced a smile and turned to walk out onto the street. The air was dark and thick. It would have been right about the time autumn began. It was cooler and the nights were growing longer. When raindrops fell through the fog all the way down to the streets, it would be winter. Spring came when it rained no more, and then very little changed—just the hours of darkness, really—until now: this invisible, barely tangible fall.

I stepped off the main street and into the gray alley that led back behind the pharmacy. My hand trailing along the brick wall, I came to the corner, turned and followed it until I found the back door. I waited. Salk was long in coming. I lit a cigarette, smoking slowly, my left hand in my pocket fiddling with my three pills.

Eventually the door opened and Salk stood there, his stooped shoulders and large, oval head framed by the soft yellow lights glowing within. I stepped closer to the doorway where he could see me. He smiled slightly and shook his head, as if dismissing a thought.

“I lost the rest, by the way. Not like I used them all.”

“That’s fine. Don’t worry about explaining yourself to me. I’m the last to judge.” He came out into the alley and shut the door behind him, careful to leave it an inch ajar. Salk dug into one pocket, looking up at me.

“What did you do before the fog, Tom?”

My cigarette hung limply in my lips. How to answer that question accurately? “I didn’t do much worth writing down. I was in the army for a bit. Before, that I guess I just kind of stumbled through my youth. Why?”