Tuesday, November 19 1963, 01:25 pm
This time, I spent a dreamless night under the beams of Wayne Wilson's beetle-ridden house. With all accesses still sealed off, nothing has moved since my last visit three years ago: even the ouija board is still there, under the dust, the planchette lying right where my hand left it. Suddenly, nothing of what we've lived seems to have existed. Again, it's as if I'm picking up my life in the sixties exactly where it began.
There's one difference though: I'm not going to conjure up the old gardener, this time. All night long, and all through the morning that I spent thinking, I could sense he was here. Somewhere in the room, watching me, his spectral energy respectful and distant, no doubt worried about me. I think he's understood, this time, that I don't want him to go and fetch Klaus. And maybe I've been talking to myself a few times over the past hours, just so he'd hear my misadventures.
I feel he's very different from last time, through energy. More serene. Caring. Grateful. We won't be talking - this time - but I know that over the last few months he's been watching the flowers from the seeds in his satchel, opening one after the other. Right now, somewhere in the flowerbeds of Kitty's Mansion, they're blooming among the marigolds, in the autumn sunshine. I shudder, this morning, at Five's words, at the idea that a nuclear explosion is about to sweep them away. Those flowers, and all the people who live in this time, in spite of all its flaws.
I've made a resolution, as I woke up from yet another short nap: I'm going to get my stuff from the room above the workshop, at the Glen Oaks store. Today, Lloyd isn't there, and - after all - I don't need a key. I'll be breaking into a place that used to be my home, which is a first, but I don't feel any remorse about doing it. I don't have a lot of clothes, or really any personal belongings. But what little I do have, I want to keep with me.
And there's one last thing I have to do, over there, if I can.
I'm tired when I teleport outside, and my eyes hurt from crying too much yesterday. The sun is shining brightly as I set off towards Avon Street, in the midday atmosphere. More or less consciously and without being proud of it, I turn myself invisible to cross the street in front of the movie theater. I don't want to risk bumping into Allison, Luther, Diego or Viktor, if Five truly brings them all together today. Klaus even less, if they've finally managed to get him to come. Without Mark noticing, I pass his flat cardboards. I'm sorry about the way I treated him yesterday. And I promise myself I'll find a way to make it up to him.
Around the corner of the newsagent's, I make myself visible again as I turn into Glen Oaks street, struggling to convince myself that I'm not going to work. My stomach knots as I pass all those familiar places. Mason's plumbing supplies, the window renovator, the sullen florist across the street, the Katzes's hardware store. Merelec is closed, Lloyd is not there indeed. Through the window, I can see the television sets that imploded yesterday. And on the worktop, the coffee mug I'll never drink from again. I look left and right to make sure I'm not being watched.
*Crack!*
A blink, and I'm upstairs, my eyes reopening on the room where I've slept for months. Silence pierces me like never before. That of the closed balcony door, where I won't be having lunch with David anymore, of the little radio I won't ever turn on again. I glance at my glass of water on the bedside table, my jersey on the chair, the bag of cold tamales - untouched - on the table by the sofa. Everything in the room hurts. I close my eyes, taking a breath.
Machinically, I open the large bag I bought on the market in Delhi, from which I take out a Destiny's Children pamphlet that had been left inside. Printed in black and white, written and drawn by Jill. I stuff my things into the bag, without taking the time to fold them. My out-of-date Led-Zeppelin t-shirt, my few savings, my toothbrush, the jacaranda wood comb I'd brought back from Rio. For a moment, I twirl between my fingers the starfish we had painted and made into a necklace, all together on the beach in Baja. It saddens me to realize that a few minutes is enough to pack my whole life into a single bag. But I don't want to let that get me down.
One last gesture, and I take from the desk the copy of 'Stranger in a Strange Land' that I had to return to David. A book that made me reflect a lot, and I think he did too. I sling my bag over my shoulder, holding the book close to me. I leave the Baja starfish on the table next to the tamales, running my fingers over it one last time. Then I take a final look at the phone, which won't ring. My eyes are filled with a sense of resolution. Yes, I feel the strength to carry on, today unlike yesterday, even though I know I may have to crash in a seedy motel for a while.
I get attached to places almost as much as people, and I feel something close to what I experienced standing in the rubble of Hargreeves Mansion after it collapsed. A twinge in my sternum, as if I'd lost someone again.
"Goodbye, Glen Oaks," I whisper.
And *Crack! * I teleport back outside - right in front of the door as if I'd just walked through it - narrowly missing colliding... with a young silhouette walking with his head a little bowed. Coming from Avon Street.
"Holy shit, David."
"Oh, Rin."
For a brief moment, we both try to regain our balance, and he grabs my big bag to keep me from falling. By the look on his face, over my packed belongings, I know he's figured out what's going on. The walls are thin, between numbers 767 and 769: last night, Brian must have spent a good while ranting, and he surely expressed how happy he was that things between Lloyd and me were 'finally over'. Yes, David understood that. I don't know why, but I think he's suddenly grown up. Matured, more exactly. He has a kind of determination that's a bit like mine, as if his life - just like mine - were about to change.
"Come," he says, pulling me by the arm.
I know he had a lunchtime obligation, that he certainly hasn't had time to have a meal yet. And yet, he's going to spend what little time he has left before his afternoon shift to talk to me? With a glance in the direction of the hardware store where Brian must be sipping his coffee, he drags me to the narrow alley alongside Merelec, the one that leads to the neighborhood gardens beyond the brick and tin walls. There, shielded from the view of his uncle or anyone else, he tilts his head to try and catch my eyes.
"Are you leaving for real?"
I shudder at his question, because it brings another one to me, one that scares me even more. And I ask him in return:
"What about you?"
We both remain silent, needing no further confirmation than this one. I don't know what he was implying yesterday when he said he had a medical clearance certificate to get, I tried to keep it out of my mind. But I'm afraid I've figured it out, too. And that - just like Five - Klaus might have only accelerated what he was trying to prevent. He had told it to me: David wasn't supposed to enlist until Friday.
"I'm leaving next week", he murmurs, "the documents are signed".
It's at least a week earlier.
It doesn't matter that he's still gripping me: my legs are no longer capable of supporting my weight. I let my bag fall at the junction of the wall and the sidewalk onto the rough gravel of the alley, and I sit on it, pulling him sitting down there beside me. I don't know what to say to him. I just feel empty and helpless again. And I don't even think I have any tears left to cry.
"I've never been very good, Dave... at dealing with things coming to an end. And everything... seems to stubbornly end, all the time."
Sometimes even before they happen. My heart speaks in spite of me, even if I won't reveal to him what is lurking in the shadows of space-time. My eyes are on the rough bricks of the wall facing us, and my hand is on his arm. I realize that - in spite of myself - I've just used the diminutive by which Klaus always calls him, while I've only ever called him 'David'. He shakes his head, slowly.
"It doesn't have to be the end," he says, although his heart is heavy. And adding this, he simply pulverizes mine: "Maybe there will just be different things to live for, now."
My chest tightens at this word. I won't tell him about the 'precedent' of his death, in a timeline that is already no longer this one. I won't tell him about the nuclear apocalypse that may happen before he even ships off to anywhere. I don't even know which military corps he's finally enlisted in. But I do want to know one thing, one that saddens me most of all:
"It was Brian who made you enlist," I say very low, but he shrugs, even though his blue eyes are now red and wet.
"Don't tell me your life has been all about choices."
I remain silent as he murmurs:
"The most important thing is probably to make the most of the time we have".
And we may have even less than we all thought. I blink. I still don't know how he got this ability, but I admire him: if Klaus has the power to stand up to darkness, Dave - for his part - is able to shed light into them against all odds. And no matter what happens in that bend in space-time: the Klaus he may never know, he has in fact already saved.
"I'm going to live my life, far away from here, Rin," he tells me, and I understand.
He sees it as an opportunity to fly away, even if it's not exactly the one he would have wanted. And suddenly, I'm convinced of something else: - he - wouldn't have changed for anything in the world the ten months he spent with Klaus, and the outcome wouldn't have mattered. He would have longed for the sleepless nights at the camp, spent simply smoking; the days of leave and the overheated bars of Saigon; the chaotic road to Bangkok in search of the ink for Sak Yant's tattoos. He would literally have given his life to go through this hell of mud and blood with him, to give him the strength to keep at bay his demons. And for mere hours spent in the water tower shed at the camp in Ap Bia.
Although I don't know what paradox has arisen from our actions, I'm no longer sure that Klaus and I did the right thing. Klaus had said he was feeling 'the ache for what would never happen', when he lost him the first time. Today, it's likely that what they experienced has been erased from Dave's possibilities. And what I feel now, on the contrary, is 'the ache for what finally never was'.
But Dave - in front of me - doesn't know anything about it. He brings me back here, and now. And he smiles at me through his red eyes.
"So it's really over between you and Lloyd?"
I stare at him, with far more sadness than his simple question entails.
"In my experience, it's rare for stories like this to end the way you'd like them to."
"Is it because your friend came back to town?"
That's right. I had told him. And I take a long breath, immediately deciding not to tell him that Klaus is that peaceneak he punched over Stadler's scrambled eggs. My fingers tighten on the book I was supposed to give back to him, which I still hold between my fingers.
"Lloyd... could not stand it".
Dave probably won't understand why my breathing is quickening. And it is because it seizes me to be talking to him about Klaus, which we have never done that way. I realize where I stand: there - somewhere between the two of them - when they both seem to be inexorably drifting apart in the timeline, without even really knowing each other. But in this time, and even though he's seventeen, Dave is the closest thing I have to a friend.
"He couldn't stand not being the only one".
And Dave smiled quietly.
"You've finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land'," he says, pointing to the book, and I blink, as if he's just woken me from my torpor, as he adds, "You know what Heinlein says."
My eyebrows furrow as he picks up his book again and whispers:
"I don't know much about it myself, but - he - says that 'Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own'".
I remain motionless. This book disturbed me a lot, far beyond Heilein's virtuoso science-fiction. For the way it describes relationships between people, immensely ahead of its time. Dave's right. Lloyd wasn't ready to accept that my happiness could also depend on Klaus's. The whole of '63 isn't ready yet. But I thank Heinlein, just as I thank Dave. It's to people like them that we owe the whole fragile acceptance of 2019 society that has enabled us to get this far.
Finally, it seems I still had tears left to cry. Less heavy than yesterday's, fewer but deeper. And when he notices them, he just hugs me for a moment against his not-boyish anymore chest, which is as strong as Klaus's is not.
"You don't know much about it, but you'll be great," I tell him as I can, while he stands up again, my bag having been fairly crushed under his weight.
"I'm going to miss our lunches, Rin," he tells me as he takes another step toward the street.
I sniff and look up at him, backlighted against the clear November sky. He smiles at me one last time, tucks the book under his arm. And still unaware that I've slipped the Destiny's Children pamphlet into it - the one with the ridiculously resembling portrait of Klaus in blessing posture just above the Mansion's address - he disappears as I say:
"I'm going to miss you too".
As the hardware store bell tinkles, invisible to my eyes, in the nearby street, I stand for a moment in a daze, still struggling to realize just how much of an impact this kid will have had on my life too. A point I'd never have imagined a few years ago: when the only thing I'd known of him was a trail of blood and tears on a bathtub that has now disappeared into the rubble of our lives.
But I don't have time to think, nor do I really have time to dry my cheeks. In the corner of my eye, a long black car has just pulled up in front of Merelec. An interminable Mercedes 600, whose driver seems to be lingering on the store front, looking for something or someone. Certainly not a television set in need of repair. I frown, I stand up, I make myself look decent. Three steps and I'm back on the sidewalk, slinging my bag over my shoulder.
"Looking for something, sir?"
The man looks like a luxury chauffeur, one of those who work for celebrities. He's elderly, lean, with a knife-edge face and thick dark glasses under his uniform cap. He stops the car, cuts the engine, opens the door and silently steps out, like an eerie apparition.
I'm speechless, even more so than after the way Dave has just moved me. I watch him approach me, look at the Merelec sign again, then he soberly takes something out of the inside pocket of his black jacket, holding it out to me with his long, gnarled fingers. A velvety, rather large, cream-colored envelope.
"What's this?"
I frown, but he doesn't answer. I don't have time to ask my question a second time before he gets back in the driver's seat, closes the door and sets off again. I blink, puzzled, then I unseal the envelope.
There, at the very top of what looks like a formal invitation, is a terribly familiar shape printed in black ink. Thin and stark.
That of an umbrella.
Notes:
It seems that Dave has changed everything about the way I myself perceived Klaus' actions towards him in season 2. Even though I understand why he acted the way he did. I should have called this chapter "the ache for what was initially happening, but in the end won't because we fucking changed everything", but it was too long.
I'll never cease to be amazed at how things have intertwined about Rin and Dave, in this season. And I'm sad, in a way, that this arc is (for this season, anyway) coming to an end.
We leave him here, wherever he goes from here. The series only tells us that he has finally joined the Marines rather than the Sky Soldiers, which is already huge. Like Rin, I'm going to miss him. But it looks like she's just been invited... to a 'light dinner'.
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