K Breese - Future Imperfect

“Anything else?” Slow Bob growls.

“Yeah,” I say. “There’s another thing. A guy in a mask. He’s following me around in my visions. Past and future. It’s like he can-”

“Time travel?” Slow Bob asks.

“Yeah.”

Bob laughs. “Sure. But he can’t do that. Impossible. Nah, he’s just getting into your head. Into other people’s heads. Anything you’ve seen, it turns to memory instantly. Almost even before you’ve seen it. And then it gets filed away. He’s able to get into there, this guy. What you need to do is stop thinking so linearly.”

“But how can I figure out who he is? Why he’s there?”

Slow Bob says, “Dunno that. Why he’s there is easy. Most likely it’s a thrill thing. That’s the most common reason. Then again, could be he wants to tell you something. Could be he’s desperate. How do I know?”

“All right,” I say. “Last question. Do you think I can change what will happen?”

Slow Bob looks over to Belle. The look on his face, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. It’s the old is-this-guy-a-nut-job-or-what? look. Then he turns back to me and says, “Can you change the orbit of the moon? Rhetorical question. Grandpa Razor’s the best of us. He set down the rules for a reason. You don’t try and break them. Not for anything.”

“That’s what I thought,” I say, all dismissive. “But either I do or I don’t. Can’t have two futures, right?” I don’t give him time to answer. “Look, Slow Bob, I need to see Grandpa Razor.”

Belle shakes her head. She mouths, Not a good idea.

Slow Bob rolls his eyes. “Can’t,” he says.

“For sure I can,” I say. “I’m betting you could find anyone.”

“Again,” Belle says. “Probably not a good idea. He’s a last resort.”

“I’m sure he’s already expecting me,” I say to both of them.

Slow Bob says, “I’ve only ever met Grandpa Razor twice. Last time was years ago. I suspect he’s slowed down a bit, but for a long time he was the scariest thing around. Back in the early eighties, and this is just to give you an example of what kind of cat he is, people were talking about him eating someone. Said he’d had the best visions he’d ever seen. Ate some guy, an old junkie, over the course of five months. Ate every bit too. Started with the knuckles was how it went. Ended with the ears.”

“Bullshit,” Belle says.

“You don’t get out much, Bob. Besides, we’re not interested in boogie man stories,” I say. “Grandpa Razor’s been calling me, I know he’s just waiting for me to stop by. You tell me where he is and if I get eaten, no skin off your back. You warned me, right? For this thing to end, for me, I have to see him and I have to know what he knows.”

Slow Bob smiles slowly.

“He’s in the Esquire Hotel, penthouse. Good luck.”

“The best thing you ever did,” Belle says, “is quit.”

We’re in the foyer at the Esquire Hotel and already a handful of junkies have walked up to us to beg for change. This place, it’s the last place you want to be at night. During the day, from what I’ve heard, it’s even worse. The carpets were rust colored once and possibly plush, now they’re gray and they’ve got holes in them the size of sewer covers. In the corners, under the decaying furniture, up the stairs, are chewed-up sunflower seeds, cigarette butts, beer bottles, crack vials, condoms, and rafts of different colored hair. The lights flicker. Even the sun seems to flicker the way it comes through the thick shades. The graffiti of the hand, the divination symbol, it’s all over this place. In fact: I saw the hand sign spray-painted on two buildings on our way down here.

“How’s that?” I ask as we head to the elevators.

I’m ignoring the junkies. I’m ignoring the prostitutes. I’m pretending I’m somewhere else. Belle, oddly enough, does not seem uncomfortable.

Belle says, “I can see it in you. You’re changed. Used to be you had this air about you; people who were willing, who could read it, saw you as someone easy to take advantage of. You being knocked out, strung out, all the time, it was in your eyes. Have you ever seen someone with a concussion? A really serious concussion?”

“Only myself,” I say.

“You looked that way all the time, Ade. Now, not so much. Now you look new.”

We get to the elevator and the first thing we notice is the buttons are missing. Belle takes the initiative and pulls a bobby pin out and sticks it in the metal hole where the button used to be. There is a spark and we hear the elevator groan to life.

This place, it’s lurked just off the highway since before I was born. We’d come downtown, me and Mom, and walk the Platte in the summers and look over the highway where the Esquire was looming, an albino hawk. I heard stories about it the first time in middle school. Kids who wanted to talk tough told stories about decapitated heads found in the Dumpsters there. They whispered zout ghost lights on the eight floor. About the screaming woman who jumped from the roof thinking she was leaping into the sea.

When the elevator comes, the door jerks open. Inside, the reek of piss.

On the back wall is a faded framed poster from maybe 1982. It has a picture of the Esquire gleaming in sunlight. There are futuristic planes flying overhead. The poster reads: VISIT THE FUTURE OF LUXURY, TODAY!

We get inside and hit the button for the tenth floor.

“Going up!” A gutter punk jumps inside just before the doors close. He pushes the button that used to be labeled five. This guy has white-boy dreads and stinks of cloves and B.O. Looking at us, he scratches at something behind his right ear and looks like he goes to say something but doesn’t. He mouth opens and then he closes it, licks his chapped lips. He turns around.

“How many in Denver?” I ask Belle.

“Hard to say, there’s no census or anything.”

“The hand sign. That spray-painted thing.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m seeing it everywhere now.”

Belle nods. “You’re awake now, babe.”

“But I’m not using my abilities? I’m not knocking myself out?”

Belle says, “Kind of ironic, right?”

The elevator moves like it’s being operated by Slow Bob, crawling up floor by creaking floor. We don’t talk until the gutter punk gets out. He waves good-bye, his eyes all bugged out. Belle gives him a weak smile.

When the elevator gets moving again, Belle tells me that she has the feeling that something big will happen. She tells me that with me being clean and all, she can just feel the change buzzing in the air. She says, “How good you look, it makes me feel like I should totally get into swimming or running or something. You know, just clean house.”

“It does feel good,” I say. “But I miss, you know, knowing.”

“Even if nothing ever happens in terms of me evolving to the next level, it’s nice to not know what’s going on when you don’t know what’s going on. Does that make any sense? If it does work, well, how cool will that be?”

“You should quit, Belle. Clean house. You’re already brilliant.”

Belle bats her eyes, says, “You were never this sweet before. I’m not sure how I like it.”

We get to the tenth floor and the elevator doors screech open. The hallway outside is dark, it’s musty. There are greasy stains like shadows on the walls and only one door, a gold-plated one, at the end of the hall to the right.

Belle goes first, says, “What I’m trying to tell you is that I think if anyone can do what you’re trying to do, and I’ve never tried it, you can do it, Ade. Just feels right to me. What I’m telling you is that the Ade Patience of before couldn’t do this, wouldn’t do this. The new Ade, well, I think he can.”