Grandpa laughs. He says, “Let me have a look-see.”
Runs his hands through his hair and then grabs another chunk of gooey cheese. It comes curling out between his fingers. This he shoves into his mouth. Most of it dripping into his beard. He chews slowly. Looks like he’s sweeping the stuff around in his cheeks. Savoring its taste. And then he closes his eyes and his eyeballs move around under the thin veil of skin. His mouth hangs open and his body jerks but just for a second. As if he fell asleep and then caught himself. He swallows hard and then speaks like he’s channeling something dead. His voice comes out the way a voice comes out of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Grandpa says, “You kill him. In the sand, his feet kicking. Drowned. The look on your face is cold, smug satisfaction.”
“When?”
“Days. Week at the most. But there’s more, Ade. Other visions. Your future, it’s getting bleak, isn’t it? It’s growing darker and more unstable. You trying to change it, you trying to affect the things you’ve seen, has upset the whole balance. Keep it up and you won’t even have a future, my friend.”
“Ah, Grandpa, interesting you should mention the future. Didn’t you read Jimi’s?”
This obese man, he smiles hard. He says, “I see you’re already getting how complicated this all is. I’ve got to tell you that this thing, like most things really, is very puzzling. Not puzzling confusing but puzzling like a puzzle. You can’t think you’ve got it all figured out if you’ve only gotten your hands on a few pieces.”
“Janice says all this is Jimi. That he’s-”
Grandpa shakes his head. The way he moves makes it that much easier for me to believe we evolved from monkeys. “Janice says so many things.”
“But there can’t be two futures, Gramps. Everything I see happens. Everything.”
“Me too.”
“No.”
“I’ve been at this a long, long time, Ade. That’s why I wrote down the Rules. Codified them, so to speak. You’ve seen a future where you kill Jimi. Jimi’s, well, I’ve seen a future for Jimi where he lives just fine. Also, and Janice did mention this to me, you’ve seen yourself being, I guess, harassed by Jimi later. Much later. How can that be?”
“Exactly.”
Razor says, “Someone’s lying. That or you don’t actually see what you think you do. Kind of confusing, right? I think you’d be better off getting a few more pieces for that puzzle.”
“How ’bout I ask Jimi’s dad? The masked wrestler.”
Grandpa Razor’s eyes get heavy, his face falls back. He says, “If this were a movie, right now would be the big dramatic pause. The soundtrack would go silent, maybe there would be a big heartbeat sound, thud, thud, thud, all measured like that, and I would tell you something life-altering. It’s the climax. Sure, everything rising to this one revelatory moment. But, alas, this is an anticlimax, Ade.”
I want to punch this sad old man in the face.
He notices. Smiles. Says, “I agree that Jimi’s dad’s a big, big piece of the puzzle. You come here and let me show you. I can bust it wide open for you, explain it all, but you need to understand that information can be a treacherous thing. What I tell you, you can’t unlearn. What I show you, you can’t unsee. Sound good?”
And I say, without hesitation, “How?”
“You knock yourself out. Knock yourself out really, really good. And don’t focus. Let the future come to you. Find Poppa Ministry in it and confront him. Come back here in two days, bring your shrink, and I’ll guide you.”
ELEVEN
Belle and I drive in silence.
At least until we hit Colorado Boulevard.
“This is the kind of thing I was hinting at earlier,” Belle says. “You have just graduated to the next level, Ade. So how’s it feel?”
“I never really imagined there would be some sort of community. Always knew, Borgo always told me, that there were others, it’s just that I never thought so many would be here. Around me, ignoring me.”
“They weren’t ignoring you, Ade.”
“No? That’s what it feels like. What’s the point, anyway?”
“Point of what?”
“Of this underground deal. Of hiding like mice in the walls. And them blindly following what that fat animal back there says. Honestly, if you all got spines and stood up to Grandpa and his rules I’d bet you could do almost anything.”
Belle looks upset. She pops another cigarette into her mouth and searches around in her purse for a lighter. She does this haughtily. I reach in, find the lighter for her, flick it to life. She leans into the flame and I watch the flicker of it in her eyes. She is very pretty right now.
Taking a long drag and then releasing it, Belle says, “What this is really about is how you’re not accepting who you are. I can’t tell if it’s that you think you’re better than the rest of us or you just don’t want to take your place. Right? You just don’t want to take responsibility.”
“Probably more the former.”
She looks at me, makes a face. “Why is that, Ade? How could you possibly be better than the rest of us, Mister No Memory?”
I look away, out over the factories making clouds for Globeville, and say, “It’s the hiding thing. At first I thought it was cool. You know, when we talked to Gilberto and Lynne and that other chick it was like being in a secret club. It was being allowed to pull back the curtain and being welcomed into a special place. That part, the belonging part, felt good for a little bit. But then, after the rest of them, the further down the rabbit hole we went, I just started seeing them all for what they really are.”
“And what is that?”
“Like everyone else. Cowards, losers, children-”
Belle coughs loudly, it’s her choking on smoke, and gives me this disgusted look. “How can you say that? We’re trying to help you. We’re offering you insight for the first time in your life. These people care about you. I care about you.”
I say, “Yeah, you do. I know you do. But this whole thing, it’s just a charade. Sure, the Metal Sisters can poke around in people’s heads and Slow Bob can look at a map and get some vibes from it, maybe have a quick glance into the past, and Grandpa Razor, well, maybe he can kind of do what I can do, but at the end of the day, they’re hiding because they’re as scared of the future as anyone else. They have powers, you know, like superheroes, but really they can’t actually do anything. They choose not to do anything. You take away all the razzle-dazzle and it’s nothing but flair like at any chain restaurant.”
“And you, you think what you do is so much better? I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation. You want to know the real reason we didn’t even let you in? The real reason why you didn’t know about us until now?”
I shrug.
This just pisses Belle off even more. She says, almost shouting now, “We wouldn’t let you in because I told them not to trust you. I told them that you were gifted but so damaged, so beyond hope of repair, that it would just be better to pretend you didn’t exist. Only it was harder to do than I thought. I felt sorry for you. I still do. Ade, you need to think beyond yourself for a few minutes and think about the opportunities out there. For you, mostly.”
“Maybe the old me, the messed-up me, wasn’t ready for all this, and it’s probably true that I was beyond repair for a while, but not now, not anymore. But the only opportunity that I see here is the one to show all of you that you’re wrong. Enough with the navel gazing, you’re like a bunch of prima donnas who don’t like getting their hands dirty.”
To Belle I say, teeth grinding like a dog’s, “I will deny the past, Belle. I will change the future. And it will end the way I say it ends.”
