TWO
As expected, Dr. Borgo is not at all down.
Grandpa Razor’s got it set up like this: A bedsheet’s laid out over most of the massive table at the center of his sleazy penthouse apartment and there is an IV-drip thing standing, waiting. There are syringes and there are little glass bottles labeled with things like FLUNITRAZEPAM and ZOLPIDEM.
Fact is: This place looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory.
Dr. Borgo is really not happy about any of it.
“None of this is kosher, Ade,” he says, picking up one of the little glass bottles and turning it over in the light. He shakes his head. “None of it.”
Getting Borgo to come here wasn’t easy.
I stopped by his office unannounced and kind of barged in on one of his sessions. He was sitting in his leather chair, legs crossed, looking very professional like a psychiatrist in a movie, and talking to a redheaded fat woman about how bad her marriage was. When I busted in, Borgo jumped up and waved a finger at me to leave. I said, “Sorry, Doc, but we need to talk now.”
He excused himself and pushed me into his other office, the little one just off his bigger one. First thing I told him was how I’d gone clean. I told him that I felt like I’d just woken up in a new body and I thanked him. And then I said, “But…”
He knew it was coming. Sighed hard.
I said, “I need your help something awful.”
Long story short, he cleared his afternoon and here we are. Still, he’s not at all psyched. And when he sees Grandpa Razor shuffling in like an old Sasquatch, he really makes it clear this in not a good idea. All raspy in my ear, Dr. Borgo’s like, “This is not the place to be doing something like this. This is totally unhygienic and unsafe.”
“Besides,” he says, “there is no evidence whatsoever this will work.”
Grandpa Razor overhears, moves his head side to side like a robot, and then says, “It might not work, you’re right. I’ve done this three times and there was one time where the lady didn’t wake up for a week. She got something out of it, but it wasn’t like I’d planned. Not really.”
Dr. Borgo gives me this look that suggests we leave immediately.
I tell Borgo to just relax a little. I tell him that, and this is just yet another reminder, I have never seen myself in a coma in the future, so the odds are that even if this doesn’t work it won’t have any serious, lasting effects. I say, “Everything I know points to nothing really bad happening here. Future looks hunky-dory, Doc.”
But Grandpa Razor clears his junky throat. He looks at me, tilts his head disapprovingly. He says, “Janice seems to think that what she and Katrina saw of your future, well, what you saw of your future, is getting not so good. Sure, no coma. But they said the future isn’t nearly as bright as you’re suggesting. I think we can both agree that being in a wheelchair, being a lifetime member of the neurotic club, has a few drawbacks.”
I want to smash this fat guy’s face, but hold back.
Instead, I say, “Tell me how this is going to work.”
Grandpa Razor takes a seat at the head of the table; the chair groans. “You are going to go sleepy and I will be right here, my hands”-and he wave them in the air-“at your temples. I will be eating, this…” He pulls a tin of what looks like canned fish from out of his left pant pocket. “This is something Icelandic, it’s specially prepared shark meat, and I’ll be enjoying it, chewing it very slowly, while you do your thing. Think of this as a human electrical grid. I will boost your abilities, allow you to interact directly with a future. Not sure whose or which one yet.”
“And Jimi’s dad?”
“He, being the psychic troublemaker he is, will, of course, be instantly attracted. You just hanging out in some quasi-liminal space and him just… Look, the details of the procedure don’t really matter, right? What matters is you getting in there and trying to figure out whatever it is you’re trying to figure out.”
“Changing the future.”
Grandpa laughs. Really, it’s more of a burp. He says, “Sure, of course.”
Then he pats at the table with a pudgy paw, says, “Hop on up.”
I do.
It’s now, of course, that Borgo gets really vocal. His hands up, head shaking, he says, nearly shouting, “This isn’t going to work. No. No. No. Not like this, Ade.” And then, turning to me, leaning down, getting close, he says, “Ade, these medications, this setup, it’s not going to get you where you want. I mean, you need a concussion. Just putting you into some drug-induced coma isn’t going to do it. That makes sense, right?”
Grandpa Razor laughs all hearty. “Oh, that won’t be a problem.”
He holds up a billy club. “I’m actually pretty good at this,” Razor says. “Just a quick flick of the wrist and we can knock you down plenty fast and, well, kind of gently.”
I lie down on the table and Dr. Borgo stands over me. He puts in the IV line. He loads up the meds, measuring the doses extra carefully. The needles go in, the needles come out. Almost immediately I feel drowsy. Doubt it works that instantly, but it might. And then Borgo backs up, anxious to the end, and Grandpa Razor appears hovering over me, his face a bearded blimp.
“’Night,” Grandpa says.
And then he whacks me in the temple with his billy club.
THREE
Again with the beach.
Back at Cherry Creek Reservoir.
Looking at the sand, it being night and the place desolate, I tell myself that I’ll never willingly come back here again. I tell myself that not even for a million dollars will I have my feet in this sand another time. Out loud, to the bugs and the lamps hovering over the tennis courts and the sickly lap of water, I say, “I’m thinking this place could really use a massive parking lot.”
And from behind me comes a response. “Wouldn’t help,” the voice says.
Per usual I’m not at all shocked to see Jimi’s dad in his Mexican wrestling mask. He’s standing behind me, hands in the pockets of his white suit pants, and his mask is gold. He says, “What happened here, it’s going to keep happening. Asphalt or not.”
Poppa Ministry’s close. If I slip off my shoe and throw it at him, at this distance, I’d probably get him right in the face. That’s good to know.
I say, “So lay it on me. What do you want?”
