Bentley Little - The Ignored

She shook her head slowly.

“There. Outside.” I pointed through the window. “Do you see that tree? The one with the purple leaves?”

Again she shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I don’t.”

Did she think I was crazy?

“Come here.” I led her into the front yard, stopped at the base of the tree. “You don’t see anything there?”

“No.”

I took her hand, pulled her through the tree. “Still nothing?”

She shook her head.

I took a deep breath. “I’m fading away,” I said.

I told her everything. About the clown, the police, Steve, Ralph, the people at work who no longer saw me. About the trees and bushes and streams I’d seen on my way to the store today. She was silent when I was through, and I saw tears in her eyes.

“I’m not going crazy,” I told her.

“I don’t think you are.”

“Then why —?”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

I put my arms around her and held her tightly, and she cried into my shoulder. My own eyes were overflowing. Oh, God. Was I going to be separated from her again? Was I destined to be parted from her once more?

I pulled back from her, tilted her chin up until she was looking in my eyes. “Do you still see me?” I asked.

“Yes.” Her nose was running, and she wiped it with the back of her hand.

“Am I… different at all? Do you think about me less often? Do you forget I live here?”

She shook her head, began to cry again.

I hugged her. That was something. But it was only a temporary respite, I knew. She loved me. I was important to her. No wonder I would linger longer in her consciousness. But eventually, inevitably, I would fade from her sight, too. I would move in and out of focus. Maybe one day I’d be home and she wouldn’t know it. I’d be sitting on the couch and she’d pass right by me, calling my name, and I’d answer and she wouldn’t hear me.

I’d kill myself if that happened.

She grasped my hand firmly. “We’ll find someone,” she said. “A doctor. Someone who’ll be able to reverse it.”

I turned on her. “How?” I demanded. “Don’t you think if there was a way to do that it would’ve been done already? You think everyone likes living here? You think they all wouldn’t want to be normal if they could, if there was a way to do it? Christ!”

“Don’t yell at me. I just thought — ”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t think.”

“I didn’t mean they could actually reverse the process, but I thought they could slow it, stop it from progressing. I thought — ” She burst into tears and ran away from me, across the grass, into the house.

I followed her, caught up to her in the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” I said, holding her, kissing the top of her head. “I don’t know what got into me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get mad at you.”

She hugged me back. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

We stood like that for a long time, not moving, saying nothing, just holding tightly to each other as if that embrace could keep me anchored so I wouldn’t fade away.

I called James that night. I wanted to talk to him, wanted to tell him what was happening. The more people I brought into this, the more people who knew, the more heads we had working on the problem, the more likely it was that something could be done about it.

He answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“James!” I said. “It’s me!”

“Hello?”

“James?”

“Who’s there?”

He couldn’t hear me.

“James!”

“Hello?” He was becoming annoyed. “Who is this?”

I hung up the phone.

I had not seen Philipe since the day of his departure for the White House assault, had not heard a word about him since his return. But I wanted to talk to him. I needed to talk to him. If anybody could understand what had happened to me, if anybody could do something about it, it was Philipe. He might be psychotic, but he was also the most competent, ambitious, and farsighted person I knew, and though I had a lot of reservations about contacting him again, I had to do it.

I just hoped he could see me.

I tracked him down through city hall’s computer. I found him living in a small one-bedroom apartment in the run-down west side of town. Here, amidst the less well tended residences of the city, the attempts to individualize houses, duplexes, and apartments were not as visible, not as obvious, and the entire area seemed especially nondescript. It took three passes for me to even find his apartment building.

Once I did locate where he lived, I parked on the street and sat for a few moments in my car, trying to gather up enough courage to knock on the door. Jane had wanted to come, but I’d vetoed that idea, telling her that Philipe and I had not parted on the best of terms and that it was probably better if I went alone. Now I wished that she had come with me. Or at least that I’d called Philipe ahead of time to let him know that I wanted to see him.

I got out of the car, walked up to apartment 176. I knew if I waited any longer, I would probably talk myself out of doing it, so I just forced myself to go up to his door and ring the bell.

My heart was pounding as the door opened, my mouth suddenly drained of saliva. I took an involuntary step backward.

And there stood Philipe.

My fear disappeared, replaced by a strange, heartrending sense of loss. The Philipe who stood in the doorway before me was not the Philipe I had known, not the boundlessly forward-looking man who had recruited me into the terrorists, not the take-charge leader who had led us through our adventures, not the crazed delusional psycho of the sandstorm night, not even the defeated would-be hero who had returned from Washington, D.C. The Philipe who stood before me was a pathetically average man. No more, no less. The seeker and searcher who had once seemed so bold and charismatic now looked gray and nondescript. The brightness was gone from his eyes, the spark that had once animated his features apparently extinguished. He looked exhausted, and much older than he had the last time I’d seen him. He was a nobody here in Thompson, and I could see how that weighed on him.

I tried not to let the shock show on my face. “Hey, Philipe,” I said. “Long time no see.”

“David,” he said tiredly. “My real name’s David. I just called myself Philipe.”

My name is not David! It’s Philipe!

“Oh.” I nodded, as if agreeing with him, but there was nothing for me to agree with. We looked at each other, studied each other. He saw me, I realized. He noticed me. I was not ignored by him. But that was small consolation. I wished I had not come.

He remained in the doorway, not inviting me in. “What do you want?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

I didn’t want to just jump right in, but I didn’t know what to say to him. I cleared my throat nervously. “I got married. Remember me telling you about Jane? I found her here. She’s Ignored, too.”

“So?”

I looked at him, took a deep breath. “Something’s happening,” I said. “Something’s gone wrong. I need your help.”

His eyes held mine for a moment, and it was as if he was searching within me to see if I was telling the truth, as though he was somehow testing me. I must have passed the test, because he nodded slowly. He moved away from the door, back into the apartment. “Come on in,” he said. “We’ll talk.”

The inside of his apartment had the same stultifying old-lady look his house had had, and it felt a little creepy to walk into the small living room and sit down on the tan flowered couch underneath the cheap oil painting of a mountain lake.

“You want anything to drink?” he asked.