“Very, very happy,” she says. “What’s funny is that for the longest time I thought I was so strong. Powerful the way people in control are. Me and these guys, I don’t know what I really believed I was doing for them, but I felt like I was wanted. Like I was needed. Really needed. But, it wasn’t power at all. It wasn’t strength. I can see it now. Feel it now. You and me, for the first time in my life, this is real. And it feels so beautiful.”
“I know. It does. It really does. Look, there are a few more things I need to do. But I can stop this, Vaux. I can make it so I don’t kill Jimi, so the future doesn’t happen. I’ll come to you soon.”
I think she blows me a kiss, but it’s hard to hear, might just be static.
Just as I’m hanging up, Belle calls on the other line.
“Can you come pick me up? I’m not cool to drive.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Pretty please.” And she even blows a kiss.
EIGHT
I make my way back over to Paris and find Belle sitting in the parking structure just outside the door to the Diviners’ danceteria.
She’s sitting cross-legged, smoking a cigarette, and blinking furiously.
I pull up, open the door, she hops in. Asks me to drop her off at a friend’s place in Arvada.
I say, “And you can’t drive because…?”
“It’s not obvious?”
It is. She’s super messed up.
Being with Belle in my car again is oddly comforting.
Only, she’s not the Belle I dated. Not anymore. Now she’s part of some psychic underground. This girl, the drunk, the stoner, she’s like me.
I’ve got all the windows down, the wind’s rushing in, and Belle’s hair’s swirling around like a messy halo.
We’ve been talking about what just happened. Mostly I’ve been trying to get to what the Diviners want. I ask, “If they don’t think I can change what I’ve already seen, then why would they want to meet with me? Have the Metal Sisters dig in my head?”
“To help you, of course.”
“But they can’t help me. They told me they can’t help me.”
“Well, they probably can’t,” Belle says. “But they’ll throw you a few bones, send you in the right direction because they see something special in you. They think you’re going to make them a ton of money.”
I screw up my face. “That’s just stupid.”
“Seeing the future the way you do, Ade, that’s a gift. Seeing the future so clean, so clearly, maybe you can see lottery ticket numbers. Maybe who wins the Super Bowl next year.”
“But I can’t control what I see, Belle. Why didn’t you tell them that?”
“And ruin all the fun? Whole time we were together, I knew you were kind of disgusted by me. I thought about explaining it, but you wouldn’t have listened. You were just too into your own thing to care. Me, I just liked you enough to hang around and I hoped you actually might be someone. Like really someone.”
“Like Gilberto?”
She doesn’t respond.
I apologize to her, but most of it is lost in the onrushing air.
Somewhere near Lakeside, Belle turns to me and says, “You wanting to change the future is sweet. I like that you’ve got that fight in you. But, if you really want to try this, really want to dig down into the heart of it, you’re going to have to let me take you some places you’re not going to want to go.”
“Like where?”
“You remember that time I took you over to my friend Colin’s place? You know, Colin with the one lazy eye? Wait, no, of course you don’t…”
And I don’t. I can’t recall anyone with a lazy eye.
“Well, let’s just say he and his buddies freaked you out.”
“I can deal with freaky. If it’ll help, I can deal with it.”
She asks me if I ever worry about getting my memory back.
“Why?”
“You probably don’t remember half the stuff you did last year. Doesn’t that make you kind of crazy? What if you got someone pregnant or you were shooting up dope? That sort of black-out thing, whatever it is that’s wrong, that would just make me so anxious I could barely stand it.”
Being clean, despite whatever this nearly uncontrollable anger thing is, I’m looking at Belle differently. Not in some sexual way, it’s more comfortable, lived-in.
Looking at Belle, I can only think of how much I want to be with Vauxhall.
On the Wadsworth exit ramp, Belle looks over at me, puts her hand on my thigh, squeezes, says, “This Vauxhall girl is totally not for you.”
“No?”
“You’re moving up, okay. Even though they acted all high and mighty, the Diviners are enthralled by you. This is a whole new world. You need someone who can understand that. Who speaks your language.”
“Like you?”
“Sure.”
“What’s all this drug stuff? You seem to be doing even more, uh, dabbling than usual.”
“Already I’ve had like two lucid experiences that Gilberto is convinced are the first stirrings, you know. The first suggestions of me developing powers.”
“You’re crazy, Belle.”
“Why’s it crazy to want to be special? To be amazing?”
“You’re already amazing how you are. You don’t need that Gilberto idiot giving you drugs to make you any more special. Besides, what I have, what they have, it’s a curse, not a gift. You’re going to end up-”
She cuts me off with a finger to my lips. Smiles.
Belle switches gears abruptly and tells me that lately she’s been trying to touch as many things as she can. She tells me she took E a few weeks back, not her first time, and she really just wanted to cling to that touching sensation thing. She says, “Do you ever think about how instant the sense of touch is? I mean the only time you really ever feel something that way is when you’re in direct contact with it. Scary how fleeting that is, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
She squeezes my thigh again.
“Sometimes touching is so beautiful. You want that feeling to last forever. You want to just wrap yourself in that feeling and always be in contact with it. Thing is, as soon as you move your hand away, it’s gone. As if it was never there.”
Belle takes her hand away.
“Do you even remember what my hand felt like there? The weight of it? The warmth?”
I shake my head. Shift into third.
Belle says, “Our brains just don’t store that info. It’s pretty much only the other senses. Visual mostly. Sometimes smells. Also sounds. But sounds can be so tweaked with memory.”
I ask Belle where she’s going with this.
“It’s all about what comes next, okay,” Belle says. “Nothing else really matters, does it? Moving on is real life. Possibilities. Excitement. And I want to kiss you again.”
“I knew that’s where you were going.”
“This Vauxhall girl,” Belle says, “she’s not your type.”
“How’s that?”
“She’s an actress. A fake.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Totally. The things I’ve heard about her, well, you’ve heard them too. It’s almost like she’s desperate. It
