Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

“Oh, yeah?” Fale shouted back triumphantly. “Then who come she knows what’s going on?”

Jeffrey tossed his head back. His rage suddenly melted into supercilious good humor.

“Here’s my theory on that,” he said in a patronizing tone. “While I was institutionalized, my brain was studied exhaustively in the guise of mental health. I was interrogated, X-rayed, examined thoroughly. Then, everything about me was entered into a computer where they created a model of my mind .”

The others watched, mesmerized, as Jeffrey preened and gestured grandly. “ Then ,” he continued, “using the computer model, they generated every thought I could possibly have in the next, say, ten years, which they then filtered through a probability matrix to determine everything I was going to do in that period.”

He paused, beaming condescendingly at his audience. “So, you see, she knew I was going to lead the Army of the Twelve Monkeys in the pages of history before it ever even occurred to me. She knows everything I’m ever going to do before I know it myself. How about that?”

He smiled smugly at the flabbergasted Fale, then fastidiously bent to pick up a stray flyer. “Now I have to get going,” he ended lightly. “Do my part. You guys check all this stuff out and load up the van. Make sure you get everything,” he called back in a singsong voice as he paraded to the back door. “I’m outta here.”

Fale and Teddy and Bee stared after him, watching the door slam closed. When Jeffrey’s footsteps finally died away, Fale turned to the others, his eyes wide.

“He’s seriously crazy. You know that.”

“Oh, duh,” said Bee. She gave Fale a disgusted look, then followed Jeffrey through the back room.

Several blocks away, Kathryn Railly and James Cole crouched in a heap of garbage, their heads covered with the remains of a cardboard box. Behind them loomed a once-lovely art nouveau building, its ornate façade now slashed with graffiti and shattered windows. At the base of the building spread a squalid cardboard shantytown, men and women and children huddled beneath bits of broken plywood, or warming themselves by a small bonfire.

“Shh!” Kathryn whispered as Cole moved slightly beneath their protection, sending a shower of crumbled safety glass onto their heads. A few yards away, Detective Dalva’s unmarked Ford crawled slowly down the desolate alley. Behind its windshield she could clearly see Dalva’s eyes, carefully scrutinizing each rusted garbage can, every suspicious face peering at him from their pathetic hovels. After an interminable time, the car passed from view, disappearing into the next burnt-out city block. Gasping, Kathryn scrambled from the refuse, ignoring the glares of the shantytown residents.

“James! Come on—”

Shaking his head in confusion, Cole crawled out after her. He brushed sawdust from his hair, then said, “I don’t understand what we’re doing Kathryn.”

Kathryn looked around uneasily. “We’re avoiding the police until I can — talk to you.”

Cole’s eyes lit up. “You mean, treat me? Cure me?”

Almost immediately, the hope drained from him. He stared back down the way they’d come and said in a lower voice, “Kathryn — those words on the wall back there — I’ve seen them before. I — I dreamed them. When I was sick.”

Kathryn stopped and stared t him. “I — I know,” she said at last. She shivered, pulling her jacket closed and for the first time noticing James’ thin cotton shirt and faded trousers. Her tone grew soft. “James — you must be freezing. Here—”

She looked around, her eyes falling on a rundown skid row hotel across the street. Broken plastic letters spelled out: THE GLOBE: ROOMS WEEKLY, DAILY.

“Come on,” she said, taking James by the hand and leading him to the door.

Inside, an ancient hotel clerk with tremulous hands and a vulture’s glassy stare eyed them suspiciously from behind a cracked Formica counter.

“Thirty-five bucks an hour,” he wheezed.

Kathryn looked at him in disbelief. “An hour? ”

The clerk scowled. “You want quarter hours, go someplace else.”

Just then, a dazed-looking woman teetered down the stairs, resplendent in a beaded wig, platform shoes, and rubber dress. James watched her curiously, but Kathryn quickly turned away and began counting out bills.

“Here’s twenty, twenty-five, twenty-seven.” She held up the last dollar bill and gazed coldly at the clerk. “For one hour. Deal?”

The clerk squinted warily at the money, finally scooped it and turned to get a key.

“One hour, honey-babe.” He looked Kathryn up and down, taking in her soiled clothes, the bits of paper and sawdust still clinging to her hair. He grimaced. “Number forty-four. Fourth floor. Up the stairs, enda the hall. Elevator’s busted.”

As Kathryn grabbed the key and turned, Cole leaned across the Formica counter and hissed, “She’s not ‘honey-babe.’ She’s a doctor . She’s my psychiatrist. You got that?” Cole pounded the counter, then followed Kathryn upstairs.

“Whatever gets it up for you, Jack,” the clerk muttered when Cole was safely out of earshot. He waited until the tow disappeared upstairs. Then, making faces and mumbling to himself, he picked up a battered phone and dialed a number.

“Tommy? This is Charlie over at the Globe. Listen, you know if Wallace has a new girl? Sort of a rookie type? A little weird — does fantasy acts…”

The four flights of stairs were narrow and foul-smelling, strewn with empty malt liquor bottles and cigarette butts. In the fourth floor hallway, two tired-looking women in their underwear shared a cigarette and fifth of something pink. When Kathryn reached Room 44 she jabbed the key into the lock, felt the particleboard door shudder as she twisted the key. After a moment it sprang open, and they went inside.

The room looked no better or worse than its neighbors: dingy gray walls with a filigree of silverfish and crushed cockroaches, lumpy double bed, an ashtray that had not been emptied. Water trickled disconsolately from the bathroom tap, and the toilet ran. Cole walked over to the bed and sat down, exhausted. He closed his eyes and started to lean back onto the threadbare pillow, but Kathryn immediately began pacing back and forth, stopping every now and then to regard him with a sort of breathless wonder, as though still amazed to see him there.

“Okay, James — the last time I saw you, you were standing there looking at the moon, you were eating leaves — then what?”

Cole blinked, rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. “I thought — I thought I was in prison again.”

Kathryn halted, regarding him through slitted eyes. “Just like that? You were in prison?”

Cole’s brow furrowed. “No, not really.” He looked as though he were in pain. “It’s — it’s in my mind. Like you said.”

Kathryn shook her head furiously and began pacing again. “No! You disappeared! One minute you were there, the next minute you were gone. Did you run through the woods?”

“I don’t know. I — I don’t remember.”

Kathryn walked to the far wall and stared out a grimy window to the alley below. “The boy in the well.” She turned, her pale eyes practically incandescent. “How did you know that was just a hoax?”

Cole frowned. “It was? I didn’t — know .”

“James, you said he was hiding in the barn.” Kathryn’s voice rose in exasperation.

Cole bit his lip, frowned and stared intently at the ceiling. “I think I saw a TV show like that when I was a kid. Where a boy—”

“It wasn’t a TV show! It was real!”