The Ignored

“It’s a suburb of Phoenix. It’s near Glendale, just west of Phoenix.”

“Can you draw a map or something?”

“It’s not on a real map, and I couldn’t draw one to save my life. Besides, I don’t think the road to it has a name. But don’t worry, you’ll find it.”

James walked into the mini-mart, followed by Jim and Mary.

“Is there a ladies’ room here?” Mary asked.

Dan pointed toward the rear of the store. “Through that door by the fountain.”

Mary stared. “You heard me!”

The clerk laughed. “We’re all Ignored on this bus.”

“There’s a city,” I said. “A city of the Ignored. He’s from there. It’s called Thompson, and it’s just outside of Phoenix.”

The others were silent.

“Still want to go home, or do you want to try for it?”

“Let’s go back,” James said. “Tell the others.”

“Yeah,” Mary said. “Philipe should know about this.”

I considered it for a moment, then nodded reluctantly. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll tell them. But I’m still going on my own. Once we tell them, I’m out of there. I’m serious. I’m not a terrorist anymore.”

“We’re with you,” James said.

“This is going in my book,” Dan said. “This is good stuff.” He had opened his binder and was busily scribbling notes.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Mary said, walking toward the rear of the mini-mart.

“Get Don,” I told James. “He might as well hear this, too.”

“This is great,” Dan said, grinning. “This is great.”

Philipe was back to his normal self by the time we returned to the house, as charming and charismatic and persuasive as ever, but I stuck to my guns, and after we’d spelled everything out and given directions on how to get to the Arco station, we were off.

I turned toward Joe before we left. “You still staying?” I asked.

He nodded. “Thompson might be your city, but Desert Palms is my city. This is my home.”

“Are you going to carry on the work we started?”

He smiled, nodded. “Ego trip over. I’m working for The Cause.”

I clapped a hand on his back. “You’re a good man, Joe. I knew it the first time I saw your photo in that newspaper. Whatever happens from here on out, I’m glad we met you. I’m glad I knew you. And I’ll never forget you.”

“Shit. I’m not dying. I’m just staying.”

I smiled. “I know.”

It was after midnight by this time, and I was too tired to drive, so I turned the wheel over to Jim. Mary promised to keep him awake, and I moved into the back of the van with the others.

I had never gone to see my parents’ graves.

I had not thought about that before, and it occurred to me for the first time as we were traveling on the highway past Indio, heading toward the Arizona border. After all the trouble I’d gone through to find out where my mom and dad were buried, I had not even made the effort to go the cemetery and see where they were interred.

Now it was too late.

I felt bad about that, or part of me did, but I reasoned that even if there was an afterlife, the spirits of my parents had probably forgotten all about me and had not even noticed that I’d never gone to visit their graves.

We would probably be as ignored by the dead as we were by the living.

Would we be ignored by God?

That was a question, and I almost brought it up, almost said it aloud, but Philipe was not here, and he was the only one who would have given it any serious thought, so I said nothing.

I glanced out the back window of the van. How would we find Thompson once we got to Phoenix? If the city was not on any map, if it really was as invisible to the world at large as we ourselves were, how could we hope to find it? Sympathetic vibrations?

I half wished that we had waited for Philipe and the others.

I stared out at the dark desert. Thompson was a suburb of Phoenix, that much we knew. But was it on one of the main roads, was it off one of the highways on a small dirt road? If the same streets that cut through Phoenix passed through this city, how could people not notice it? Surely ordinary drivers stopped there for gas or cold drinks or cigarettes. Surely cars sometimes broke down within the city limits. If there were streets in the city, money had to be provided for their maintenance by the federal and state governments. The real world could not completely bypass an entire city, no matter who its residents were.

Now I was getting off on tangents, bringing in things that did not really have anything to do with anything.

I closed my eyes, intending to rest them for a few moments.

I was awakened at dawn.

“We’re there,” James said.

PART THREE Nowhere Land

One

We were parked on the side of an otherwise deserted two-lane road. Behind us were warehouses and railroad tracks, vacant lots filled with cacti and growing weeds and the detritus of old construction crews. Before us, shimmering in the clear sunlight of dawn, looking like the Emerald City to our tired desperate eyes, was Thompson.

I blinked, pulled apart my sticking eyelashes. “Are you sure that’s it?” I asked. “Are you sure that’s Thompson?” I knew the answer, but I had to ask anyway.

James nodded. “Check it out.” He pointed out the side window of the van at a green sign I had not noticed before.

THOMPSON, the sign said. 5 MILES.

“We’re home,” Mary said, and there was awe in her voice.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s move out.”

Jim put the car into gear, and we drove toward the shining vision before us.

I would have expected us to be wildly excited, enthusiastically talking nonstop, but instead we were quiet as we drove down the deserted road. It was like we were in the last act of a movie, when the heroes, having accomplished their goal, are heading home and will soon part to go their separate ways. The feeling in the van was like that. There was an air of sadness and melancholy, and though none of us knew why, we were all rather subdued. We should have been happy to finally find the city, but I suppose we all realized, at least subconsciously, that this meant that our current lifestyle was coming to an end, and that depressed us.

I stared through the front windshield as we drew closer. I was glad to finally find a society in which I would fit, in which I would belong. And I would not miss a lot of the morally questionable things we’d done with the terrorists. But I would miss the closeness, the camaraderie. For despite what we would say to each other, despite what we would promise ourselves and want to believe, that closeness would not be maintained. We would drift apart. It was inevitable. The intensity of our life would be dissipated as we were assimilated into the day-to-day life