Ursula Pflug - Seeds and Other Stories

“Get a grip, kid, you need it. Although I have to say it’s been a ball. If a very strange ball, doesn’t bounce like other balls, obeys physics from another dimension.”

“It’s not my fault, I didn’t know. I thought she was a groovy pick-up, just like you did.”

I figured him for a liar. And what was wrong with paying a groovy pick-up? Fan had a plane to catch, just like I did, only hers was next week and to Paris.

Still haven’t been to Paris.

“You wouldn’t have to pay if it was just you,” she whispered, lasciviously. Rudy glowered at her, overhearing. “We could make a lot of money. We could go anywhere, travel the world. I have great connections.”

“I’ll bet.” Watching her pack scarves. Would she wash them out in tonight’s hotel room? Where did she live, and with whom? Do women like Fan “live” anywhere? Do they have kitchens, or only restaurants? I’d buy her drinks and ask about her life but I knew I wouldn’t get to hear her stories unless I joined in them. You hear the best gossip only when you give people something to gossip about. I’d have to earn her trust, she wouldn’t give it away for free.

“Well, if you gotta go, go in style.” She gave me her black lace shirt to wear, a rubber miniskirt, and net stockings. They fit perfectly.

“I guess you’ll be wearing my jeans and T-shirt out,” I said, unzipping my suitcase to dig out clothes for her.

She took them and held them up against her long slim body, delighted. “They are a very nice jeans and T-shirt. They will remember you me always.”

“Cool,” I said and kissed her briefly on those soft soft lips. “Take care. Don’t get hurt. There’s some crazy people out there, some bad bad drugs.”

She smiled, so happy I stopped to think she might be endangering herself. “I am the craziest,” she said. “Is no one badder than me.” She laughed delightedly, including me in her big secret, the one she depended on to keep her safe from harm. I hoped it would, even if she was the devil.

“No doubt,” I said, glancing at Rudy before I left. He was asleep. Would they spend another few days together, Fan steadily emptying his wallet of traveller’s checks, or was it over between them too? Who knew, and more importantly, who really cared?

Katie drove me to the airport, shrugged when I told her Rudy had changed his flight, would be staying on with Fan. When we got to Tegel, I asked whether she’d supplied the Purple. Maybe there’d been a lot I’d missed. Maybe Fan and Katie had cooked it all up together, right from the beginning. She didn’t reply, not really, and who could blame her? Katie was way too slick to ever implicate herself; in that way she and Fan were of a type. Instead she asked, “What’s with the clothes?” Giving me the once over.

“I’ve been in Berlin,” I said. “What do you think?”

“Did you go to the other side?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?” Katie asked.

“Strange. But good to see it, I guess. To know what’s there.”

“But you wouldn’t want to live there, right?”

“No,” I said. “But then, that’s what everyone from this side says, don’t they?”

She nodded, smiling. “The new song. No one will ever forget it.”

OUTSIDE THE DOOR water continues to run. Wraparound workbenches, on every wall but this one, stacked to the ceiling with piles of doll faces. Piled one on top of the other, faces look out of faces like layers of masks. They still have their eyes; blue eyes with flecks of light in them.

Staring up.

I’ve never been here before.

There’s no one else in the room. I stay in bed, looking at the doll’s eyes. Sacrilege, those fake flecks of light. Like faking orgasm, only worse. Faking Life.

Who’d I come with? Why don’t I remember? Like other wickedly hungover mornings I know it’ll return to me. Machine-heads. Virtual sex junkies. They’ve discovered it’s pheromones that keep your memory sharpened. Kids get it from hugs and kisses. Why there’s so much more ADD now; people don’t get laid any more, and kids cuddle with virtual pets, not their parents or puppies. But I only did it once.

Water runs. My head hurts. Not only do I not remember how I got here, or where here is, I also don’t remember where I live, or what I do with myself from day to day. What do I remember?

Martin, my boyfriend. He’s not here with me now, although it comes to me that’s not unusual, for him. I told Martin about the machine-heads, and he said he’d run with them too. Once or twice, he said. Of course, he’s lied before.

I’m wearing my clothes, which gets rid of at least one uncomfortable possibility.

The sound of running water. Maybe Martin’s having a shower—a nice thought. If he was trying to duck out on me again he wouldn’t be spending so long in the bathroom.

Beside the bed on the floor there’s rumpled clothes. A soft old cherry-coloured corduroy shirt. Black jeans. Pointed shoes. Expensive once but beat-up looking now. No underwear and good cotton socks. Are those the kinds of thing Martin wears? What’s he look like? What do I look like? What’s my name? I look at the work benches, the stacks of doll-faces, glazed eyes staring ceiling-wards. As dumb as them, but a little more mobile, I get up out of bed.

The hall is empty, so empty, and the building is filled with silence. The water is still running; I open the door. A young woman is standing at the sink, painting her eyelids. Her blonde red curls are tied back in a ponytail; the red is dyed. Her mouth sticks out under jagged lipstick, soft like a little kid’s. She jumps, ever so slightly, keeps applying purple on purple as if I wasn’t there. At last her eyes meet mine in the mirror. Mine are brown; my hair’s brown too, short. I’m wearing black jeans and a grey hooded sweat-shirt, look about twenty-three. Am cute in a dishevelled gamine-like way.

But I knew all that, I just forgot.

She gives me a dark look, as though I’m not playing by the rules. I don’t know what the rules are, yet. I only just woke up, in a strange building with no coffee machine. “Is there a coffee machine around here somewhere?” I ask. “Like in the lounge or something?” She doesn’t look at me. She just paints and paints. “D’you have any Tylenol?” No answer. Her eyelids are getting very thick. “What are you going to be for Carnival?” I try, leaning back on the paper towel dispenser, watching her in the mirror. Funny I didn’t forget Carnival.

Bull’s eye! “Sleeping Beauty,” my girl says. “You?”

“I was thinking of being Darth Vader’s girlfriend. Kind of a spin-off, like Bride of Frankenstein .” Saying it, I know it’s true. Maybe if I talk enough, I’ll remember more. Seems to me it’s happened before.

“Han Solo had a girlfriend, not Darth Vader. Don’t you remember?”

“I thought Darth Vader had a girlfriend too, only they just left that part out.”

“Left it out of what?”

“ Star Wars was a story before it was a movie, too. You see, I have this theory that all the movies were stories first. And before that, just pictures written on an invisible wall somewhere, waiting for someone to take them down. Kind of a Plato’s cave thing. And now they’re pictures on a screen again, just like they were in the beginning. But a screen on this side, not the other side.”

She turns around at last. It’s always different seeing someone outside the mirror and not in it. Like seeing a different part of their personality. “You seem to know a lot more about stories than you do about television. That’s very unusual. I’m Louise,” she says. “What’s your name?”