Trigger Finger (20 page)

Kate laughed
behind me.

But in here
, that laugh said,
He is wide awake
.

Bobby slapped me
on the back and pointed at my beer glass.

“Chug that so that
I can pour you another.
 
Then let’s go in
there and help these ladies finish decorating the tree so that we can go
downstairs, watch a movie and get drunk.
 
Can you stop thinking long enough to do all that?”

I sighed.

“Yes,” I lied,
bringing the glass to my lips.
 
I drank
now not out of thirst but from the need to drown the counterpoint to everything
Bobby had just said; reality
did
matter.
 
Because if you didn’t confront it, if you
ignored it, you couldn’t see it.
 
And
when it bore down on you again, it would find you on your back.

Right now, my
reality was busy in its dark room.
 
Conjuring.
 
Creating.

Making
.

I finished the
beer and spoke another lie.

“I can.”
   

29.

Christmas went
well.
 
Nobody broke into my house, nobody
accosted me in any parking lots and nobody called me on the telephone to call
me a sniveling little bitch and swear that they’d show me, oh yes they would.
 
I ate and drank like any normal man and
during this time, I experienced no nightmares.
 
I woke up feeling refreshed—if not one hundred percent at ease, at least
relaxed enough to confront the things that I felt certain Fate held in store
for me.

December can be a
slow time for divorce lawyers—existing clients go on vacation and new ones wait
until after New Year’s—and so in the days after Christmas I found myself with
space in my schedule to go visit my GAL client, Brandon Cross, again.
 
I got him out of his room, where his
slackjawed roommate stared mindlessly at Dr. Oz, and led him into the
lounge.
 
We sat across from each other
and Brandon
told me what he’d eaten for lunch.
 
Chicken a la king, he said.
 
A
biscuit and green beans on the side.
 
Chocolate milk for a drink.
 
Not
bad.

“Been sleeping
okay?”
 
I asked him.

Shake of the head.

“Why not?”

“Been sliding.”

I frowned, not
understanding at first.
 
Then I
remembered.

“You’ve been going
back and forth.
 
Between this world and
the other one.
 
Where you’re a Navy
fighter pilot.”

He smiled and nodded.

“I see,” I
said.
 
I looked away from him.
 
On one of the motivational posters on the
wall, a great wave towered above a very tiny surfer.
 
Don’t
let your fears get in the way of your dreams
, said the caption.

“So you’ve been
waking up from your nightmare.
 
From time
to time.”

“Yes.”

On another wall,
an explorer climbed a snow-covered glacier beneath the word DETERMINATION in
big block letters.

His caption:
Believe in yourself and you can accomplish
anything.

“I’m curious about
something,” I said.
 
“Can you tell me why
you’re here?
 
If you’re a fighter pilot,
why is it that you have nightmares about being a retarded boy in a care home in
Burlington?
 
I mean, why not have nightmares about…I don’t
know…your jet disappearing and you falling into the ocean, where you get chewed
up by sharks?”

Brandon smiled the kind of smile you see on
people when they understand something and you don’t.
 
An appreciation of the knowledge
gradient.
 
A wistful desire to return to
a time when they, like you, lived in the dark.
 
I never expected such expression from Brandon, whose paperwork said he had an IQ of
below 65.

“Not real bad
dream,” he said.
 
“I mean something
else.
 
I mean it…”

“Figuratively?”

“Yes.”

Wow, I
thought.
 
A GAL client that understood
the concept of figurative speech.
 
A
nineteen-year-old boy who couldn’t read and couldn’t pronounce the “r” sound
but who had no problem slinging around a metaphor.

“So Brandon…
this
Brandon, the one you are now—he’s
real.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But there’s
another Brandon,
and he’s real, too.
 
He’s a fighter
pilot.
 
For the Navy.
 
Like Maverick in
Top Gun
.”

“Uh-huh.”

Now I smiled at
him.
 
He smiled back.

“I used to want to
be
Maverick,” I said.
 
“When I was a kid and that movie came
out.
 
I thought: I want to fly fighter
planes when I grow up, that’s just what I want to do.
 
Forget this doctor, lawyer, businessman
garbage, give me an airplane and a sky to fly it in.”

His smile
grew.
 
I’d touched a nerve.

“I used to
fantasize about it,” I said.
  
True—I
actually had fantasized about being the Tom Cruise character from
Top Gun
.
 
“Flying, being up there in the clouds.
 
A multi-million dollar fighter jet strapped to my back, loaded with
enough firepower to destroy a small navy.
 
Two miles above the world.
 
And
everything in it.”

His head bobbed.
 
“In the sky,” he said.

“Yeah,” I
replied.
 
“In the sky.”

I swallowed.

Reality is overrated,
Bobby echoed in my
head.
 
Don’t pick at the edges.

“But the thing
about flying is,” I went on, “you have to land your plane at some point.
 
You can fly around all you want, but the
world is still down there.
 
You know what
I’m saying?”

His smile
faltered.
 
He did know what I was saying.

“There’s something
down there on the ground, at sea level, and it’s called truth.
 
It doesn’t go away.
 
No matter how high you fly, no matter how
fast
you fly—it’s still down there.
 
Waiting for you.
 
And it might feel good up there in that plane
of yours.
 
But as long as you stay up
there, all you’re really doing is running from it.”

Now the smile fell
away completely.

“I have a truth of
my own,” I said.
 
I wasn’t smiling,
either.
 
“I don’t know what it is, and so
it’s scary.
 
I’ve been attacked by six
different men in the past year, and none of them seem to have an identity.
 
I’d like to stop asking questions, chalk it
up to coincidence and go on about my merry way, but that’s not a good thing for
me to do, you know?”

He blinked at
me.
 
My words sailed over his head and
splattered all over the motivational poster on the other wall.

“Because the truth
is the truth.
 
In my case, I think
someone is after me.
 
And he’s going to
continue coming after me whether I recognize his existence or not—and so I ask
questions when I see things that don’t make sense.
 
I investigate, I
dig
, I search for that truth so that I can protect myself from it.”

Blink.
 
Blink.

“You’re hiding
from something, Brandon.
 
You can pretend you’re somebody else, but
you’re not.”

Blink.
 
Blink.

“You’re not a
fighter pilot.
 
You’re an abused kid with
cognitive deficiencies.
 
Think about it,
man; if this is just a nightmare, why are you spending so much time in it?”

He blinked some
more.
 
He opened his mouth, and for a
moment, nothing came out.
 
He closed it,
looked up at the ceiling and then said, “I’m in the hospital.”

“In a manner of
speaking, yes you are, but…”

He shook his head
rapidly.
  
“No.
 
There
.
 
In the hospital
there
.”

“In your…other
world?”

“In reality.”
 
Weeawity.

Now came my turn
to blink in complete lack of understanding.
 
Despite his cognitive deficiencies, Brandon must have recognized this, because he
continued without prompt.
 
“Tailhook
broke.
 
Plane went off the flight
deck.
 
I got saved.
 
In the hospital now.”

“So you’re more or
less knocked out right now.
 
And this is
all a bad dream going on in your head.”

He nodded.

“And I’m a figment
of your imagination.
 
I don’t actually
exist, because you’re dreaming me.
 
I
didn’t eat breakfast this morning and I didn’t burn my tongue on my coffee on
the way to work.
 
I, like everything else
you’re seeing right now, am malarkey.”

He shrugged.
 
Yes,
said the gesture.
 
You are indeed malarkey.

“And at some point
you’re going to wake up more or less for good, and you’re going to be out of
here but I will remain.
 
Because I’m part
of your nightmare.”

A single nod of
the head.
 
Exactly.

“Brandon?”

“Uh-huh?”

I leaned forward.

“
That
is not true.
 
You’re making all this up.”

Suddenly, his
narrow face lit up with the brightest of smiles.
 
“I can prove it!”

“Can you, now.”

Bobbing head.
 
“Uh-huh.
 
Been going home here and there.
 
Mostly at night.
 
Kenny knows.”

“Who’s
Kenny?”
 
I asked.

“He’s Kenny.”

I thought for a
moment, and the image of the hopelessly retarded young man who shared a room
with Brandon
popped into my head.
 
“Your roommate?”

An enthusiastic
nod.

“Kenny knows I
go!
 
Come on!”

He stood and
motioned for me to follow him.
 
I picked
up my briefcase—I had nothing particularly valuable in there, but the inmates
of Magnolia Plantation would have probably loved to get their hands on some
pens and paper—and trailed him to his room, where he marched over to the
television and cut it off.
 
His roommate
continued to stare through him.

“Kenny,” he said,
grabbing the man’s tiny head and tilting it up to force eye contact.
 
“Tell Kevin I go away.
 
At night.”

Kenny turned his
head to look at me, his face a round collection of features smashed together in
a very small space.
 
Although his age was
impossible to determine, I pegged him at about forty.
 
If Brandon’s
mental retardation qualified as moderate, this guy’s hit severe.

Kenny opened his
mouth, revealing an oversized tongue.
 
At
first, I wondered if maybe he couldn’t talk, but then he said, “Him go away at
night.”

“Tell him I
disappear.”
 
Dissapeew.

“Him disappear.”

Brandon smiled, satisfied that he had just
nailed his case with the direct examination of this particular witness.
 
He turned the TV back on and stepped out of
the way.
 
Kenny’s eyes locked back on Dr.
Oz and remained there.

“See?”
 
Said Brandon.
 
“He knows!”

For my
cross-examination, I stood up and walked over to Kenny’s bed.
 
I moved Brandon
out of the way, turned off the TV, and bent my knees to face Kenny eye-to-eye.

“Kenny,” I asked,
“Tell Brandon that cows can fly.”

“Cows can fly.”

I turned the TV
back on and returned to the chair beside Brandon’s
bed.
 
“I wouldn’t count on what this guy
says if I were you,” I said.
 
“He’s not
exactly the world’s most reliable witness.”

Lips pursed, Brandon groaned in
frustration just like Allie groaned when Abby copped an attitude about her math
homework and pretended she didn’t understand it.
 
He came over and sat on the edge of his bed,
head held in both hands.
 
He groaned
again.
 
“Sucks,” he said.
 
“Being retarded sucks.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can’t talk
right.
 
Can’t…”
 
He straightened his spine and looked up at
the ceiling as if asking God to give him the right word.

“
Explain
,” he said at last.

I laced my hands
across my stomach.

“This my
nightmare,” he said.
 
“Not real.”

“That’s
interesting, Brandon,
because it’s my reality and I feel very, very real right now.
 
I believe if you really examine this
logically, you’re going to see a fundamental impossibility…”

“You real,” Brandon said, stabbing at
me with his right index finger.
 
“Nightmare for you, too.”

I closed my mouth
and took a
ki
breath through my nose.

“I help you,” he
said.
 
“Help you get out.”

“Okay, enlighten
me.
 
Tell me how to get out of this
nightmare.”

“Picture where you
want be,” he said, tapping his oblong skull.
 
“And go there.”

“That’s it?”
 
I asked.
 
“I just imagine it and I can punch out of here?”

He smiled, nodding
excitedly.
 
“Believe in the impossible
and your world becomes limitless!”

I looked over his
shoulder.
 
There, above the television,
hung another of the same motivational posters I saw in the lounge.
 
The photo centered on the black background
showed what appeared to be a man in a helmet and rock climbing gear scaling the
face of a cliff.
 
He had no legs.
 
I squinted at the caption.