K Breese - Future Imperfect

“Like Gilberto?”

She doesn’t respond.

I apologize to her, but most of it is lost in the onrushing air.

Somewhere near Lakeside, Belle turns to me and says, “You wanting to change the future is sweet. I like that you’ve got that fight in you. But, if you really want to try this, really want to dig down into the heart of it, you’re going to have to let me take you some places you’re not going to want to go.”

“Like where?”

“You remember that time I took you over to my friend Colin’s place? You know, Colin with the one lazy eye? Wait, no, of course you don’t…”

And I don’t. I can’t recall anyone with a lazy eye.

“Well, let’s just say he and his buddies freaked you out.”

“I can deal with freaky. If it’ll help, I can deal with it.”

She asks me if I ever worry about getting my memory back.

“Why?”

“You probably don’t remember half the stuff you did last year. Doesn’t that make you kind of crazy? What if you got someone pregnant or you were shooting up dope? That sort of black-out thing, whatever it is that’s wrong, that would just make me so anxious I could barely stand it.”

Being clean, despite whatever this nearly uncontrollable anger thing is, I’m looking at Belle differently. Not in some sexual way, it’s more comfortable, lived-in.

Looking at Belle, I can only think of how much I want to be with Vauxhall.

On the Wadsworth exit ramp, Belle looks over at me, puts her hand on my thigh, squeezes, says, “This Vauxhall girl is totally not for you.”

“No?”

“You’re moving up, okay. Even though they acted all high and mighty, the Diviners are enthralled by you. This is a whole new world. You need someone who can understand that. Who speaks your language.”

“Like you?”

“Sure.”

“What’s all this drug stuff? You seem to be doing even more, uh, dabbling than usual.”

“Already I’ve had like two lucid experiences that Gilberto is convinced are the first stirrings, you know. The first suggestions of me developing powers.”

“You’re crazy, Belle.”

“Why’s it crazy to want to be special? To be amazing?”

“You’re already amazing how you are. You don’t need that Gilberto idiot giving you drugs to make you any more special. Besides, what I have, what they have, it’s a curse, not a gift. You’re going to end up-”

She cuts me off with a finger to my lips. Smiles.

Belle switches gears abruptly and tells me that lately she’s been trying to touch as many things as she can. She tells me she took E a few weeks back, not her first time, and she really just wanted to cling to that touching sensation thing. She says, “Do you ever think about how instant the sense of touch is? I mean the only time you really ever feel something that way is when you’re in direct contact with it. Scary how fleeting that is, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

She squeezes my thigh again.

“Sometimes touching is so beautiful. You want that feeling to last forever. You want to just wrap yourself in that feeling and always be in contact with it. Thing is, as soon as you move your hand away, it’s gone. As if it was never there.”

Belle takes her hand away.

“Do you even remember what my hand felt like there? The weight of it? The warmth?”

I shake my head. Shift into third.

Belle says, “Our brains just don’t store that info. It’s pretty much only the other senses. Visual mostly. Sometimes smells. Also sounds. But sounds can be so tweaked with memory.”

I ask Belle where she’s going with this.

“It’s all about what comes next, okay,” Belle says. “Nothing else really matters, does it? Moving on is real life. Possibilities. Excitement. And I want to kiss you again.”

“I knew that’s where you were going.”

“This Vauxhall girl,” Belle says, “she’s not your type.”

“How’s that?”

“She’s an actress. A fake.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Totally. The things I’ve heard about her, well, you’ve heard them too. It’s almost like she’s desperate. It makes me worry about you. You don’t want this girl to break your heart, do you? Take advantage?”

“Like you’re not?”

Belle snorts. “Okay. Funny. That’s not what I’m doing at all.”

Looking straight ahead, my eyes narrowed down to nothing, I say, “Belle, I love Vauxhall. Nothing, not a single thing, will change that.”

I turn off Wadsworth and take many turns onto many side streets before we wind up in a residential area where there are twigs for trees and the grass is yellow having only just been planted.

Belle says, “In Polynesia there’s this ritual where a young kid, a teenager, as part of his becoming a man, has to keep his hand on the first woman he sees. Has to keep it there for as long as possible. And then, when either the woman is just too sick of the guy standing there or the guy just gives up, he needs to go back to the village shaman and describe exactly how the woman’s skin felt. Describe it in detail. Later, after a few more rituals, he’s blindfolded and taken to a hut where there’s like five women. He’s supposed to touch just the shoulder of each of the women and tell the shaman which one was the one he has his hand on for two days or whatever. If he can do it, he’s passed the test. If not, he’s still a boy. Most teenage guys don’t pass. Takes them years.”

I say, “Interesting.”

Belle smiles and says, “It’s not true but it should be.”

She directs me to a sketchy neighborhood where the houses are all on top of the factories and the train tracks and the empty looking warehouses. It’s this no man’s land where the lawns have rotting cars on them and the streets are all dinged and dented like meteors fall here all the time. We pass one house after another. She directs me left and then right and then right again.

And that’s when I see it.

Right there, on the rusted-iron garage door of some gnarly looking concrete bunker building is the spray-painted hand symbol I saw on the door to the LoDo Diviners’ lair. Same symbol on Janice’s T-shirt. Right there. I hit the brakes and I hit them hard. Belle almost gets her front teeth lodged in the dash.

“What the hell, Ade?!” she shouts at me.

I just point over at the weird bunker building. At the hand.

“So?” Belle plays cool.

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Nice try. Who lives there?”

“What?”

“Who lives there?”

“I don’t know,” Belle says, shaking her head too hard.

“Well, we’re going to find out.”

What it’s called is breaking and entering.

I don’t knock on the door.

I don’t yell out hello when I walk in, Belle in tow.

What this is called is getting some answers the only way I can.

Good thing kicking down the front door actually works.

We walk into this place and the first thing I’m struck by is the fact that it’s like totally festooned with wires. So festooned we have to duck under cables and cords and wires like the place was a tech jungle.

There are so many computer monitors on that everything in the room flickers like it’s underwater. Fans whir. Something not a cricket beeps. Something not a bird chirps.

And there’s this dude sitting in the middle of this mess.

He’s in a reclining leather office chair surrounded by computers. On his lap, two laptops side by side. One for each skinny thigh. He’s gaunt, his head shaved clean, and he has his bare feet in a tray of what looks like dirt. There are empty cans of demolished energy drinks catching the green light under his chair.

Belle, in my ear, she whispers, “Slow Bob.”

And I see why they call him Slow Bob almost immediately.