The Ignored

much, had had my hopes up too high, but I was disappointed. The magic simply wasn’t there. I guess I’d thought that once I came to Thompson everything would be perfect, everything would fall into place — but it hadn’t happened. I was surrounded by a city of people exactly like myself, and I felt as alone and out of it as I always had.

My condo was nice, I had to admit. Ralph had set me up in a furnished two-bedroom split-level in a community called The Lakes, and I was next to a winding man-made waterway bordered by a fifteen-foot greenbelt. I had no complaints there. But somehow having so much room completely to myself seemed awkward, strange, and a little unsettling after spending so much time living in such close proximity to the other terrorists.

The other terrorists.

As I’d feared, as I’d known, we saw very little of each other after that first week. I invited James and Don and Jim and Mary to see my condo, and I went over to visit their new homes, but, intentionally or unintentionally, we were placed far away from each other, at opposite ends of the city, and none of us found jobs in the same area.

I had the feeling that this was planned, that it was done on purpose, but I could think of no reason why that would be the case. We were here among our own people. Why would we be purposely separated? It didn’t make any sense.

After all that time with the terrorists, I was probably just paranoid.

Whatever the reason, though, it was inconvenient for us to see each other.

And we started spending more time with our new coworkers and less time with each other.

I heard, third-hand, that Philipe and the others had arrived a few days after we ourselves had and, like us, had settled into the Thompson lifestyle, but I saw none of them and did not make any effort to look them up.

The Thompson lifestyle was different. As Ralph had said, everything was free. As far as I could tell, no money ever exchanged hands within the city. I saw no coins or dollar bills. If I wanted something, I simply walked into a store and took it. A shelf inventory was later taken, I suppose, and the results forwarded to the corporation.

Taking things from shelves was not new to me, but being seen was. I was used to walking through stores unnoticed, and it took me a while to get reacquainted with the fact that people could see me. I felt self-conscious in the midst of so much visibility, and it was several weeks before I felt at ease in public.

In addition to movies, videotapes, and cable TV, there was a museum in Thompson, filled with the most mundane art imaginable. There were also pop concerts each Friday in the convention center. And community theater productions of The Fantastiks and Annie.

I loved it all.

Everyone did.

But something was wrong. I was provided with everything I needed, surrounded by all the things that should have made me happy. Yet something was missing. I knew what that something was, but I didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to think about it.

There was a rumor in Thompson that there was a real town somewhere in Iowa, a city founded by Ignored people for Ignored people, and I told myself that if I could find that place I would be happy.

I told myself that.

And every so often I could almost make myself believe it.

Three

It was the first Sunday in June. June 5, to be exact. During the past month, I’d invited James over for a barbecue and he’d canceled, and he’d invited me to meet him for drinks one Friday and I’d canceled, so I figured it was my turn again, and I went to Von’s to pick up some steaks. I thought I’d ask again if James wanted to come over for grill and grog. If not, I planned to ask Susan, this girl from the office who seemed to be showing a little interest in me.

I was pushing my cart through the supermarket, heading toward the meat counter at the rear of the store. I’d just dropped three boxes of Rice-A-Roni into the basket and I turned the corner at the end of the aisle.

And there she was.

Jane.

My first reaction was to hide, to duck quickly back down my aisle, pulling the cart with me, like a hermit crab retreating into its shell. My heart was pounding crazily, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I was thrown totally off balance. I had imagined variations of this scenario hundreds of times in my dreams, in my fantasies, and I should have known what to do, how to react, but the sight was such a shock that I was at a complete loss, and I stood there, at the head of the aisle, holding too tightly to my shopping cart, staring. I’d thought I’d forgotten the way she looked, the specifics of her face. I’d thought time and memory had blurred her into the generic. But I had not forgotten, not deep down, not where it counts, and it was painful to look upon her. That face, those eyes, those lips, they brought back a rush of memory. All the time we’d spent together returned in a flood of sensory overload. The good times, the bad times, everything.

She was wearing tight new jeans and a T-shirt, her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she looked achingly beautiful to me. I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was wearing the same ratty clothes I’d worn while washing the car this morning. She started to turn her head in my direction, and without thinking I backed behind a display stack of Tide boxes. My heart was thumping, my hands shaking. I was afraid. Afraid she still didn’t want to see me, afraid she would hate me, afraid she would be indifferent.

Afraid she was changed.

That was the big fear, that she was not the same Jane I had known. It had been nearly three years since we’d last seen each other, and a lifetime of experience had occurred during that period. We were different people than we had been, both of us, and maybe we weren’t compatible anymore.

Maybe she had met someone else.

That was the other big fear, the one I didn’t want to acknowledge.

I peeked around the boxes, inched my cart forward. Part of me wanted to run away and leave her to memory, convinced that meeting again would only shatter my long-held illusions. Nothing could possibly ever be as it was before.

But part of me wanted to talk to her, touch her, be with her again.

I watched her sort through packages of chicken breasts. I hadn’t thought I’d remembered her this clearly, but I had. I remembered everything about her: the way she blinked her eyes, the way she picked up meat, the way she pursed her lips. It was all there, in my mind and in the flesh, and at that moment I realized how much I truly loved her.

As if responding to some signal or vibration, she suddenly looked up, looked in my direction.

And saw me.

We both stood there dumbly, staring at each other, unmoving. I watched her put the package of chicken breasts she’d been holding into her cart. Her hands were shaking as badly as mine were. She licked her lips, hesitantly opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it.

“Hi,” she finally said.

That voice. I hadn’t heard it in three years, but I remembered it perfectly and it was like music to me. There was a lump in my throat. My eyes were suddenly moist, and I wiped them with my fingers so the moisture wouldn’t turn to tears.

“Hi,” I said.

And then I was crying, and she was crying, and she was holding me, hugging me, kissing my wet cheeks.

“I missed you so much,” she said through her sobs. “I missed you so much.”

I held her tightly. “I missed you, too.”

After several moments, I pulled back, grasped her by the shoulders, and for the first time looked at her closely. She truly was prettier than ever. Whatever she had gone through during the past few years, whatever had