everything would be back to normal, but as I got out of the car and walked up the steps of city hall, I noticed that no one looked at me. I went inside, walked past the mayor’s secretary, and she did not see me. I stood in the doorway of Ralph’s office. He looked right through me.
“Ralph!” I said.
No response.
I considered playing with him, fucking with his mind, picking up objects and moving them around the room. But what was the point? I turned around, left. I realized for the first time that even if I had been able to do so, I would not have wanted to go back to work.
I no longer wanted to be here.
I no longer wanted to live in Thompson.
I got into my car, drove back home.
I thought about what I was, about who I was, about what I wanted as I drove. Test-marketing products? Being a human guinea pig? Was there any meaning in that? Was that a legitimate reason for existence? Perhaps. As Ralph had told me once, “Someone’s gotta do it.”
But that someone was not me.
Maybe living and working in Thompson did give some of the Ignored a sense of purpose. Maybe products did get made because they went over well in Thompson, and maybe people were then hired to make those products, creating jobs, and maybe the people who bought those products were made happy by them, and maybe part of the responsibility for that did go to the Ignored of Thompson.
But that wasn’t enough for me.
Thompson was Automated Interface all over again. I was a nobody here. I was nothing.
And I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be something.
I pulled up in front of the house, and I sat there for a moment. I watched Jane through the front window, watched her vacuum the living room.
It had all turned to shit. All of it. Everything. The road I had taken had come to a dead end. The Terrorists for the Common Man had disintegrated in an orgy of blood, and in a city of my own people I had turned into what I had tried to escape.
What could I do next? Where was I to go?
What about Jane?
I sat there for a few moments more, then I went inside and told Jane everything. I had her call her friends.
None of them could hear her.
We went downtown, walked through the mall. No one saw us. Either of us. We were invisible. Jane had pulled me back, but I had pulled her forward, and now both of us were trapped in this no-man’s-land, ignored by the Ignored.
Jane grew quieter and quieter as it became increasingly obvious what had happened.
“I don’t see any of those weird things,” she told me in Nordstrom.
“Neither do I,” I said. “Anymore. I think that part of it’s over.”
“So we’re just stuck here. This way.”
I nodded.
She dropped her purse and ripped open her blouse.
“What are you doing?” I said.
She unfastened her bra, kicked off her shoes, unzipped and pulled down her pants.
“Knock it off!” I was starting to get scared.
“Why? No one can see me.”
She pulled down her panties.
“Jane!”
She ran up to an older couple, took the man’s right hand and put it on her breasts. “Feel my tits!”
The old man looked shocked, pulled away, but though he obviously could feel her, he could not see her, he could not hear her.
“Jane!”
“Eat me! Eat my hot pussy!”
She stood naked in the center of the store, screaming obscenities, but no one looked at her, no one paid any attention at all, and I took a bathrobe from the lingerie department and put it around her shoulders and led her out of the mall and back to the car.
I drove her home.
Sixteen
Jane spent the next two days in bed. I was worried at first that she would not snap out of it. I had not expected her to react this way, and it scared me.
But on the third morning she awoke before I did, and by the time I got up she was already making breakfast.
“Temporary insanity,” she said sheepishly as I walked into the kitchen.
I sat down at the table, poured myself a glass of orange juice, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. “Is that what happened when you first found out you were Ignored?”
“No. Just this time. Delayed stress syndrome, I suppose. I guess I stored it all up.”
“But you’re okay now?”
“I’m okay.”
I looked at her. “So what are we going to do?”
“What do you want to do?”
I realized that there was nothing tying us down, nothing holding us here. We had no responsibilities or obligations anywhere. We were free to do anything we chose. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
She walked over to the table, frying pan in hand, and slid two eggs onto my plate. “I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “That’s for sure.”
“I don’t either.” I looked at her. “Do you have any idea where you would like to go?”
She smiled shyly. “The beach?”
I nodded, grinned. “The beach it is.”
I called Philipe that afternoon while Jane was packing. I wasn’t sure if he was still here or if he had passed over to the other side. I wasn’t sure if he would be able to hear me or see me. But he was here, and he could hear me, and he promised to come over immediately. I gave him directions to our house.
He arrived in fifteen minutes, looking even more pale and washed-out than he had the last time, if that was possible. But I could still see him, and Jane could see him, and despite all that had happened, I felt warm and good as I finally introduced my friend and my wife to each other.
Philipe spent the night with us.
During dinner, I explained exactly what had happened, exactly what I had seen, exactly what Jane had done.
He nodded. “So you think it’s recognition by others that keeps us anchored here, huh?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then why am I still here?”
“Because I know you.” I took a deep breath. “Because I see you. I notice you. I love you.”
He grinned. “Worth a try, huh?”
“Can’t hurt.”
“What about when you’re gone?”
I was silent.
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not bucking for an invitation.”
