Steve Erickson - These Dreams of You

“Do you know where he’s lecturing?”

“The university.”

“Yes,” says the official, with a greater sigh than before, “we have a number of universities in London. It’s a big city.”

“I know.” Viv says, “I don’t remember which one.”

“Where is your family staying?”

“In a hotel.” When the woman across the desk says nothing, Viv tries to effervesce after all, laughing wearily, “There are a lot of hotels, aren’t there? Like universities.”

“I don’t suppose you know which hotel.”

“I. . ” Where she sits, Viv sways a bit from the exhaustion. “Can I call him?”

After a moment the official says, “All right,” pointing to the telephone. “If it’s a number from back home then you need to dial zero one.” This confuses Viv, and in her fatigue she finds herself punching the wrong numbers. The other official from the train dials for her and hands her the phone.

It rings several times and her heart leaps when there’s an answer. “Zan!” she says, but no one says anything. “Zan, it’s me,” and then there’s a distant, abrupt expletive in a foreign language. “Zan,” she says again, “it’s Viv, where are you?” before the line goes dead. “That wasn’t him,” she says to the officials.

“I dialed correctly,” says the official who dialed the phone.

“It wasn’t him.” She thinks she’s going to cry again and says, “Can I make one more call? It’s local — I think it’s local. I’m pretty sure. I don’t have the number but maybe it’s listed.” A minute later she says on the phone, “James? Sorry to wake you so late. It’s Viv. I’m in London.”

An hour later, J. Willkie Brown shows up at St. Pancras and pays for Viv’s train ticket. “I don’t actually know,” he says in the taxi on the way to St. John’s Wood, “what hotel Alexander is at. . I mean,” he hesitates, “I had the bill taken care of through the university because, well, he’s seemed in some distress. Very worried about you, of course.”

“I’ve completely lost track of time,” says Viv.

“The school will have a record. We’ll find out first thing in the morning.”

It’s strange to see James again. Viv says, “Thanks for bailing me out. I tried calling Zan but. . ”

“He was leaving messages,” James says, “that were. . a bit frantic. Needed to talk urgently but never said what about, and we kept missing each other. The last was three, four days ago. . so I figured whatever it was got resolved. Had his hands full, of course, with the children, until the nanny showed up.”

In the back of the taxicab, London swirling by her, Viv nods, and it’s a minute or so before she thinks to herself, The nanny?

At James’ townhouse, Viv barely sleeps on the sofa he’s made into a bed for her. “No bag?” he says while fluffing cushions, and when she explains about the insane cab in Paris, he gives her one of his clean undershirts to wear; now in the dark she stumbles from the sofa to the window and stares out at the city, wondering where her husband and children are. Before the window, she closes her eyes as if trying to pick up a signal. She’s up early the next morning, and when James emerges from the back room fully dressed, he sees the look on her face. “School office opens in thirty minutes,” he assures her gently. “I’ll ring them in twenty.”

He says, “Looks like you had a restless night.”

“Yes,” she says.

“Tea?”

“Please.”

“How have you been? Aside from everything.”

“Great,” Viv answers somewhere in the upper register of hope, “aside from everything.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“That did sound,” he says, “rather like the usual upbeat Viv answer.” She watches him shuffle around the kitchen. “One of your more endearing qualities, I should add,” bending over with apparent difficulty to light the stove.

“Nothing,” she replies, “that winning the lottery wouldn’t solve.”

“Let’s try to arrange that then, shall we?”

“Zan suspects I coerced you into this lecture thing, or whatever it was.” She adds, “Not that you can be coerced.”

“By you?” says James. “Of course I can. You know that. You’re quite notorious in the art world these days, I hear.”

She folds her arms. “I guess. Not something I like talking about.”

“But you should feel vindicated,” he insists. “It’s accepted by virtually everyone that the bastard ripped you off.”

“I don’t want to be a chapter in someone else’s story.”

“We’re all chapters in someone else’s story. You should feel vindicated.”

When she asks, “What about you?” she has no idea it’s a real question until, curiously, he shrugs, “How’s that?” before rushing into the rest. “Work goes all right, I suppose — new piece about the impact of torture at Guantanamo on the Muslim. . well, never mind. Alexander and I got into a bit of a row about it.”

“Zan in a row?”

“Nothing explosive.”

“Why did you invite him?” she asks. “I mean the lecture, or. . whatever it—”

“Oh,” James throws open his arms.

“Oh?”

“When one’s timer has been set, your perspective becomes fixed, doesn’t it? To whatever moment it’s going off.”

“James?”

“From that moment, everything looks different.” He shrugs again, this time less curious than ominous. “I, uh. . have some health issues.”

“My God. Are you all right?”

“Not a matter of making amends, mind,” he continues, “there are no amends to be made, are there? With you or Alexander.” She watches him; he sips his tea, won’t look back at her. “Did you find the girl’s mother?”

“Complete dead-end,” she answers after a moment. She takes her purse from the table and opens it. “No one will tell me how she died, and in all likelihood she isn’t Sheba’s mother anyway.” She says, “I never should have gone.”

“But you had to go,” says James.

“Zan didn’t want me to.”

“But he understood. Ronnie Joe Somebody.”

“Not the same thing.” She finds the photo in her purse and gazes at it as she did on the train last night.

“A moral compulsion, though, wasn’t it? To take responsibility, even for the thing you’re not really responsible for. Another endearing Viv quality.”

“My moral compulsion got me a photograph”—she hands it to him—“of the wrong, dead woman.”

James does a double-take. Viv’s not sure she’s ever seen James do a double-take. “But this woman,” he says, “is very much alive,” which isn’t as true as he thinks.

Less than an hour later, in the back of another taxi on the way to Zan’s hotel, Viv says for the fourth or fifth time, “Are you sure?” and James answers, “Well, I suppose I can’t be absolutely positive, but let’s say I’m more sure about it than about most things.”

Viv says, “I always thought you were sure about everything.”

“Exactly.” He says, “What no one knows is who she is. All manner of confusion there. Alexander thought I arranged it, I thought he arranged it, and when he asked her, she said you arranged it.”

When they reach the hotel, the woman behind the front desk looks at Viv and asks to speak to James in private. “James,” Viv says a moment later, “what’s going on?”

Brow furrowed, James answers, “Alexander and your son checked out of the hotel four days ago.”

“Zan and Parker? What about Sheba?”