<<< Back Table of Contents Next >>> 26 Sign of the Times Anton went to a pay phone and called Steve's aunt in Idaho. Tearfully, she told him what he had already guessed, that she hadn't heard from Steve in a long time. "He went looking for you over a month ago. I tried to talk him out of it. I said you'd be back in touch, that it would all blow over in time." "It wasn't what you think." "Well, whatever it was, he didn't stay and wait for an answer." "You didn't hear from him after that?" he prompted gently. "He called a few times in the first few days. He was in Portland, at a hotel there. He was feeling anxious because he couldn't find you. No one would talk to him, he said." "And then...?" "Then he stopped calling. I figured he found you, I guess." That would be when Steve had gone up in the mountains. "He did find me. But we got split up again." "Oh." "And he never came back after that?" "I'm sorry, Anton, he didn't. I was worried, but what could I do? You know how boys are, independent. You are yourself." "So I guess it's me looking for him now." "I guess so. I was really hoping he'd be with you." "He wouldn't have found me in any case. I've been out of the picture lately. I've got to get back to Portland and make myself visible." "Are you in some kind of trouble?" she asked then. "Things are kind of a mess right now. I've left too many loose ends hanging. I've got to get back to Portland and straighten things out." He was tempted to head directly to Iowa to consult with Timmins. It was the first time he'd felt the need for a second opinion. Still, he was eager to see what he could do in Portland against Reinhold. With the help of his supporters, he wanted to get back in the fight. Being Anton Dupree had to count for something. Even if it wasn't the triumphant homecoming he'd imagined, they weren't quite at the endgame yet. "Where are you, anyway, dear?" "Manhattan, Kansas." "My, that's pretty far. What are you doing all the way out there?" "Touring with the band." "Because, you know, Steve left some things here for you before he left. He said they were important to you. Are you coming through here? You can pick them up on your way through if you like." "I won't be able to visit you for a while, to be honest. Listen, Mrs. P., can you ship them to me? Are they already packed?" "Steve packed them himself. I haven't touched them." "I've got an address you can use, but you've got to promise not to give it to anyone except Steve. It's not my address in Portland, it's a friend of mine back home." He told her Timmins' address in Iowa. "Do you think you'll find Steve?" she asked a bit plaintively. "I'll look for him as soon I get to Portland. The important thing is to be out in the open where he can see me, don't you think?" "What about your house down in Twin Forks?" "There is no house in Twin Forks any more. The project I was doing there is finished. If he was in Idaho at all, he'd be with you." She knew there were things he wasn't telling her, but she didn't ask. Pressing him wouldn't change his mind. "When I find Steve, I'll remind him to call you," he assured her. "If you hear from him before I do, tell him to look for me around sundown at the Hi-Life Hotel." "You mean there really is such a place? I thought it was just a silly song." Anton had written a song called "Hi-Life Hotel" describing the bleary, absinthe-driven conversations he'd had there with magical singing heads and reptiles that played chess. "I'm sorry, Anton, I didn't mean 'silly,' I just—" He laughed gently. "That's all right, don't worry about it. Listen, I'd better go. I've got to catch the last bus out of town." • • • He thought again of heading to Idaho to ask for Steve in all of the places they'd been together, but all of Idaho was radioactive for him now. Any attempt to pick up Steve's trail there would surely bring a harsher penalty than three weeks of interrogation and solitary confinement. Reinhold didn't want him to find Steve, or learn what had happened. Steve had been taken away from him on purpose, as part of the punishment for his disobedience. He returned to Portland and the first few days floating around Zombieland, staying in back rooms with boys he knew. When people saw him, their main reaction was surprise that he would show his face again. "Anton's crashed and burned, so now he's back with us." No one talked to him about The Last Assassin. They knew he'd made an album, that it was supposed to be brilliant, and that it had not done well. Some were afraid he would be sensitive on the subject, while others knew enough to sense that there was danger there. The closest anyone came to touching on the real story was Sebastian. "We heard you were off being a rebel bandit." No one could tell him much about Steve. He had passed through some time ago, looking for Anton, but at the time there was nothing to tell him. He'd remained in town for a few days, and gone away disappointed. Apparently he'd stayed at the same hotel where Anton had once been, the Windsor. The Windsor had never captured Anton's fancy enough before now to inspire a return visit. He went there and showed the surly desk man a picture of Steve. The man recognized Anton, because he'd been staring at Anton's image outside his window for years. A few days before, word had come from the hotel owner to take it down, but he hadn't gotten to that yet. His eyes flicked between the rock star on the wall and the real person in front of him, who seemed burned out, defeated. "Yeah, he was here. Stayed in your old room, in fact. He was lookin' for you, if I got that right. Kinda had a thing for you, I guess. Hasn't been around for a while now." "Did he say where he was going next?" Anton asked anxiously. The man felt like needling Anton, as revenge for making him stare at his glamorous pose all that time. "It's not like he'd tell me his every move. We wasn't pals, you know. We wasn't, like, bosom buddies." He let out a slimy chuckle. "If he's lookin' for you, why not make it easy for him? Why not put on a show?" For a moment Anton thought this was a good idea, but Steve knew how to find him without a concert. He'd returned to Portland precisely to make it easier for Steve to find him. He went to Steve's old apartment in the hope of some sign that Steve had passed through. On the kitchen counter was the note Steve had left before heading to the mountains. "Call Rebecca." He'd already done that. He crumpled the note and put it in his pocket. Seeing the apartment reminded him of all they'd shared in the early days of their relationship, before he'd dragged Steve along on his dark adventure. He went outside to walk around, wandering several blocks towards the river. After a while he realized that he had stopped. He was staring at an aging Nissan with Idaho plates. The multiple tickets, smashed window and stolen battery told him that the car had been abandoned for a long time. His grief welled to the surface. He began to accept that he would never see Steve again. He reflected that it was Steve who had paid the steepest price for his folly. Evidently he killed all he touched. Every sweet and fragile thing turned to dust in his hands. He blamed his own heartless ego for this more than anything, but clearly Reinhold had a part in it too. He and Reinhold were well suited to each other, he thought bitterly. "Evil creature that I am," he'd told Steve on the night they met. "Don't call yourself an evil creature!" Steve had laughed. Who had been right? He noticed that he was in the same neighborhood where Trashtown had once been. Someone had told him that whole building had just been leveled to make way for a shopping complex. There would be a drive-through abortion clinic next to a Mrs. Martin's, a fast-growing muffin chain that offered free scripture and coffee to all comers. He walked there and sat down on a bench across the street for a smoke. As he was studying the ruins of his past life, a grizzled old-timer sat down next to him and asked him for a light. Whether the man was real or imaginary he couldn't tell. "There was a time when I, too, dreamed of an early fame, only it never materialized." The man paused to take a drag on his stinky cigarette, drawing his weatherbeaten knuckles over the bristles of his beard. "I figured that wherever I wanted to go, I'd be let in. I'd have the freedom to make friends with anyone I wanted. I'd look into the souls of celebrities, religious leaders and pop stars, and see they were corrupt. I'd hang out with street poets, transcending soldiers, those who were passionate with the voice of the masses. Is that how it's been for you?" Anton shifted uneasily. "It's been that way for me at times, sure. A true soul rebel is hard to find. I've known a few." "And the other times?" "The other times have been a real letdown, let me tell you. Most people know nothing about reality. Celebrities and their handlers are no exception. Only they have the ego and the resources to get heard. They think they have something to say, so they splash it all over. No matter how hard hitting I make my own message, it still gets lost in the drizzle of other messages I have no control over." He was surprised at himself for this self-justifying speech. Wasn't it too late for that? That evening he went to his studio. He took the city bus most of the way, and walked the remaining three blocks. As he approached the building, he was hailed by an old drunk who was a lot like the man he'd met earlier. It was as if the hobo clown from his room at the Windsor Hotel had come to life, and was stalking him now around Portland. "I saw a cop push a young girly-man out that window," the drunk said excitedly. That stopped Anton in his tracks. The man was pointing to the window of his studio. He wondered if the "young girly-man" was supposed to be Steve. If so, he could take it as one more indication that Steve was dead. On the other hand, perhaps the warning was meant for him. He turned on the drunk savagely. "Who are you, FBI? Or are you with the MetaDisney Coalition, that scheme I keep reading about that wants to turn the world into a virtual reality show? I hear they're putting paid actors on every streetcorner, ones who can switch from preacher to prostitute, panhandler to cop with near-robotic precision. Are you one of those?" He was convinced that at any given moment, at least a third of America was working for one of the rival factions of Covert Activities. Covert Activities might encompass weird religions, conspiracy plots inside or outside the government, even terrorist art movements such as filling the Grand Canyon with ten thousand dead buffalo. Not all of these factions worked for Reinhold, but they covered the same territory. In his case, Covert Activities included the lives of nearly everyone around him, from the guy who paraded naked in the window across the street to the woman who sold him herbal medicine. Everyone he knew had a cover story, a secret identity that was her real identity. The old drunk was simply a more direct intervention than usual from that world. The remains of his life in Idaho were sitting in the middle of the studio, boxed and tagged like evidence from a crime scene. He was sickened to think of Johnny Champion's agents being let in by Kliff, so they could leave this sign of his humiliation here. There was no message from Steve on his answering machine, or on any of the cassettes Kliff had set aside because they were full. "Please forgive the intrusion," Kliff had written. Kliff had obviously been looking after things, and a few small personal items were missing, a brooch, a figurine, a floppy hat. He couldn't find the painting he'd made of clouds and sky, the one he'd shown Becky. He hadn't touched it since a few days after Becky left, when he'd added the last desultory strokes. He'd left it on the easel, but Kliff had put it away somewhere. He put Steve's furniture and most of the things they'd bought in Idaho out on the loading dock, for scavengers to take. He kept the handmade quilt that Steve's aunt had given them when they moved to Twin Forks. He set up his recording equipment as it had been before, and settled uneasily into his old habits. Despite his best efforts, the studio didn't feel like his own any more. He felt like he was there only provisionally, that nothing really belonged to him. Icky returned to Portland and began playing regularly at Cosmos. That showed there was no collective punishment for those who had worked with him on The Last Assassin. One night he invited Icky and a few others to his studio to watch a tape of their Boise concert, which was the only time they'd played The Last Assassin in public. The image and sound quality were both poor, so it was impossible to make out the words. It all seemed raw and out of control. Laughing, Anton talked over the music, offering a laid-back cover story. "Yeah, they locked me up! Threw away the key and everything. I watched them do it, they dropped it in the toilet. My pals had to come in the middle of the night and saw off the bars." He took a drag on his cigarette, nodding. "Of course, it's possible I hallucinated the whole thing. But I know I played Boise, and I know I was in prison after that. A lawyer came and posted bail for five thousand dollars. I have no idea who gave him the money. I was supposed to go back and get sentenced, but I didn't show up. It's okay, I just can't set foot in Idaho, is all." He tried to rally the people around him against the Citadel, but they didn't want to hear about an invisible plot to destabilize the world. The only proof he could offer was the House of Mysticism, his own church. That gave people the idea that he was at war with himself, and they were right. Most of them thought his revolt was ego driven. After realizing that the Psychic Hygiene Movement wasn't a good fit for him, he'd rebelled against its sponsors and left the church. The prevailing attitude was that he shouldn't have made that mistake in the first place. Still, when the images of Harry Mellow came down off the House of Mysticism to be replaced by Marsha and Dan the Celestial Twins, sympathy began to swing a bit in Anton's favor. He'd come back to Portland thinking he would make one last stand against Reinhold, but he didn't have much fight left in him. He was unsure what to do next, so he waited to see what would happen. There was a lull, a momentary hesitation between two worlds. It was like a window that had received a shock, but hadn't yet shattered into pieces. His artist friends seemed to hold themselves at a certain distance, but they didn't disown him. He experienced a chill when he went out in public, but no open hostility. He still had his favorite seat at clubs. The people at Chaos Theory Records still picked up the phone when he called. The details of his life proceeded normally. After a while he began to think that he had escaped danger. Apparently Reinhold's power wasn't all that it seemed to be. Not everyone was brainwashed or controlled from behind the scenes. He used this period to work on his final album, Sign of the Times. The new album had the texture of a factory-made pudding, with a deceptively smooth surface like oversaturated pop. Despite its sugary coating, it was a bitter, self-lacerating album, in which he accused the entertainment industry of being fueled by drug money, and thereby guilty of murder. "Everyone in this room is guilty" was the refrain of one of its songs, which was a hit on the dance floor because of its intricate, driving beats. For all of one summer the line, "Guilty, guilty, guilty" was a slogan in urban bistros and beachfront cabanas. Despite offering him a flash of his former glory, Sign of the Times was seen by reviewers and fans alike as a mediocre effort, a classic piece of career padding. After the intense feelings generated by Destroyed Teen, there had been two years of silence and now, a throwaway album. People began to realize how sick they were of Anton. He typified the excesses so common in underground music at the time, religious fetishism, stunted emotionalism, narcotic self-pity. Those who'd heard the buzz about his "farewell to poetry" joked that he'd kept his promise. Sign of the Times was nothing but white noise, an existence filter. When big-name reviewers and small, self-produced 'zines used comments ranging from "grandiose posturing" to "pathetic drivel," he knew his career was on the ropes. On his way up he had liked to tell people, "It's not about me, it's about the music." Now that he was on his way down, it was about the music too. In the early days, his music had been a flaming arrow, a flashing sword. Now it was more of a gray mist. He had staked everything on his music and made it to the top of an increasingly stagnant profession, only to lose direction and fizzle out. He was being clouted from behind by the very people who owed everything to him. Slack roadies who left equipment unattended, sound men who wired things up wrong, bouncers who slept with chicks they let in for free, these were the ones who were turning on him now, badmouthing him to the press, calling him a "bully" and a "little dictator." What happened next was Jitterkid. Jitterkid came out of nowhere and was so fresh, so right for the moment, that suddenly no one paid much attention to Anton any more. Jitterkid was everything he was not, they filled the void. Where he was random, they were on target. Where he was scattered, they were all of a piece. They would never have put out an album like The Last Assassin, or Destroyed Teen. Their first album, Jitterkid: The Musical, announced them as consummate pros. Suddenly the public knew what it had been waiting for. When Anton had first come up, the field had been so barren that he'd simply walked up to the prize and taken it. No one had expected a champion to appear, and he'd been unchallenged. Now he had rivals! That was interesting. What was strange was that he'd cultivated the new rivals himself. Jitterkid was recording on his own label, Chaos Theory Records. That should have been good news for Anton, only it wasn't really his label any more. Jitterkid had made a power play within the company. They wanted to bring in their own team to run things. Joining with disgruntled staff, they had filed a lawsuit charging him with mismanagement and neglect. Vince and Blake had added their own charges, claiming that he'd squandered the profits from their past work together. A judge had agreed to study the case. Anton's mini-empire was put in escrow, to be run by a court-appointed manager. His new album was on the market, but there was no money for a tour. Whatever profits he saw would likely go to paying legal costs and damages. He understood now how Reinhold would destroy him, not in a single stroke but by a thousand cuts. Little by little he was being discredited, reduced in size. A rumor began to circulate that he was under criminal investigation. The matter was supposedly before a grand jury. Depending on who he talked to, the details were different, but the underlying premise was the same: his career was little more than a money-laundering front. Much of his real wealth had come from dealing in drugs, illegal weapons, and pornography. When word got around about this, the window shattered. People on the street started to turn away. The grocer asked him not to come back. His phone calls were no longer returned. He decided that the best thing to do would be to self-destruct. He wanted to lose himself, to travel. He wished he could fragment into two beings. One would vanish from the world completely, the other would stay behind and fight. Then he realized that he didn't have to fragment. He already had Timmins, his blurry surrogate, to carry on his mission. He laughed bitterly at his enemies. They could attack him, but they had the wrong target. "You can't touch me. I'm nothing without Timmins. There's nothing here." One night he lay stretched on his mattress, light from the nearest street lamp falling across his skin. He smoothed the hairs below his navel with one finger as sleep rose to cover him. A sudden engine roar came into being and racketed toward him, too fast. There was a long tire squeal, the inevitable crash and shatter. Already he was at the window. Below him, metal hissed and a body had been tossed into the street. He felt like he'd walked in on an erotic secret. In the sudden stillness, his body tingled and ached for death. He watched as they covered the corpse and took it away. "He was like me. Now his pain is over." He stayed at the window for a long time, watching where the wreckage had been. Despite living in a world where death was systematic, where one's individual death was simply a contribution to the general trend, Anton became obsessed with his own death. He wanted to escape from the confines of his flesh, because he felt that his flesh itself was demanding this of him. His keenest pleasures came through his senses, but he wanted to be free to experience the senses more fully than any one body would allow. It was as if he'd seen a sign when he was born that had warned him, "Taste of life's pleasures while there is time." He was ready to resume the physical union with God he had once known. He wanted to possess God's body, which was everywhere around him. He wanted to taste everything with his own flesh, falls from twenty-story buildings, having his limbs torn off by dogs, explosions in a crowded market. He wanted to be demolished, cast to the wind. From his rooftop, he could see a billboard advertising Hollywood's latest adventure thriller, Exquisite Corpse. "All for Nothing" went the tag line, and it was directed at him. Subtle clues in the styling of one of the actors made it clear that this was the Anton character, although Anton himself would have said the Anton ripoff. The movie Anton was a freak, a sexually twisted monomaniac with his fingers in every pie. Bizarrely costumed, as impetuous and willful as a child, he built an empire on slander and innuendo in the place of real talent, until he overreached and fell stupidly into a trap prepared by his own ego, with the help of federal agents. In the denouement, his empire in ruins and one step from being charged as a serial killer, he died romantically in his bedroom, naked, surrounded by mirrors, a flower in his hand, a single drop of blood at the corner of his mouth. • • • Mona had come to him in dreams before. She was a tall woman in a black dress and black stockings, with hairy legs. She represented chaos, nihilism, anarchy. She was Sabrina in another form. Anton sat at the table with a three-day beard. There was an open window behind him, a child's voice in the street. On the table were a bottle of dark red wine and a half-full glass, a two-way radio and an ancient microphone. Mona leaned on the counter holding her own glass. She tossed back her head and drank. "Warn the outer defenses," she said tonelessly. "Enemy forces are closing in. Contact may come at any time." Eying her belligerently, he reached for a cigarette and lit it. "They'll slow down now that they're close." "Don't you think our people should have time to prepare?" she spat out. He reached for the microphone. Without waiting for him to use it, she pressed a button next to her on the counter. A boy came in from the street. He put down the microphone and turned to the boy. "Could you take a message to Province Seven on your bicycle?" "I'd be honored, sir," the boy said nervously. He scribbled something on a piece of paper. "That's the spirit! Now go in peace." As the boy was leaving, he had an afterthought. "Can you read?" The boy had to answer from a long way back. There was a time lag as the words left his lips. "Yes...." "Then read the message. On it depends the fate of our entire civilization and everything we know." "I wouldn't know about that, sir. I'm just a message boy." As he was speaking, he was shot through by a bullet from behind. He collapsed on the floor, mouth open. Mona and Anton grabbed for their guns. Anton had to cross the room to get behind the counter where Mona was. As he was moving, a man in dark clothing came through the door. The man was tall and nearly filled the doorway. He took a shot at the man as he stepped into the room, then dived for the counter. The man fired a shot of his own and Anton was hit. • • • As a last service, Kliff came to the studio to tell him that he had to disappear. Kliff had been careful to avoid crossing paths with him since his return, so this was the first time they'd seen each other in months. Kliff stood at the door, looking bedraggled. Anton wanted to slam the door in his face, but the shock of seeing him there was enough to make him hesitate. "In a few hours, the police will be here." "A few hours? The police?" "I didn't find out until the plan got underway. They're going to make a circus out of it on live TV. A surprise raid, with SWAT teams and everything. They're making a big deal of it so everyone will despise you. After that, you'll disappear forever." "So what are the police doing in this story? You mean the real police, not Reinhold's supersecret special police?" "Aren't you going to invite me in?" Anton grudgingly made way for him to squeeze past. He went to the middle of the room and turned to face Anton. "This is the real world, you know. You have enemies here. Reinhold's invested a lot until now in keeping you safe. And recently, he stopped." Realizing this was nothing new to Anton, he spelled out the consequences. "You've committed crimes, lots of them. The evidence is out there. Illegal weapons, terrorist conspiracy, incitement to riot, narco-trafficking, money laundering, statutory rape. Need I go on?" "But I did all that with you guys!" Kliff smiled inscrutably. "Maybe. Maybe not." "Either that, or it didn't happen. It's invisible, all in my head." "Will you grow up?" "But those charges are bizarre! No one will believe them. I'm a musician, not a gangster. My life is in the open for all to see. I'll get myself some good lawyers, and it'll blow up in your face." "Look at it this way. For months now, ever since The Last Assassin, word's been going around that you've got something to hide. Something big, something nasty. People are just waiting to find out what it is. The press has turned against you. They never liked you much in the first place, but your career was moving so fast, they were forced to get on the train. Now that train is dead in its tracks. Everyone knows it, so don't expect them to stick around to defend you. In fact, they're ready to loot the train for all it's worth. As for lawyers, all I can say is, how will you pay them?" Anton looked at him uncomprehendingly. "The Last Assassin was an expensive failure. Your latest album just broke even. Destroyed Teen and the rest aren't selling that well either, these days. You're already fighting a lawsuit for control of your record label. You can't just loot the treasury like you have in the past. Where will the money come from to pay your lawyers?" "Everyone's piling on to wreck Anton." "That just about sums it up." "So who's feeding them the information? You said the evidence is out there. How did it get there, who gave it to them? What I'm wondering now is, who's working against me on the inside? Who's the snake in the grass?" "Oh, you mean me," Kliff laughed. Anton wanted to kill him. If he'd been holding a weapon, he would have used it then without thinking. On the other hand, Kliff often carried sharp objects on his person, and was obviously a better fighter. He turned away in disgust. "You kept asking me to trust you. Sometimes, I almost did." "It could have been different, you know. I wish it was." "Get out of here. Leave me alone." "So you're just going to wait until they come for you?" "It's none of your goddamn business, Kliff! Now get the fuck out!" "Believe it or not, I'm trying to help. Why else would I come here now?" "You call this help? You build me up, you tear me apart, then at the last minute you warn me, 'The police are coming. You have a few hours left.'" "It's not me that's destroying you. It's not even Reinhold. You've made your own choices all along. You're destroying yourself." Anton's mouth moved in futile protest. He remembered what the Colonel had told him after torturing Paco to death. "Who am I to judge a man's ambitions? I only realize them." He realized now that it was his own fault. For years he had taunted them, "Shoot me down." Who was he to blame them if they did? Kliff said quietly, "I helped them, I admit it. But it was going to happen anyway. In fact, my involvement bought you some time." Anton looked at him, unsure what to make of this. "And here I am at the crucial moment, spoiling their trap." Anton laughed. He moved forward to embrace Kliff. He felt rapturous and free. Kliff gave him a few last tips. "You need to get out of here at least an hour before sundown. You should change your appearance as much as possible. The best camouflage is to look like everyone else. There's a security perimeter around the building, they're watching who comes and goes. You can escape using the passages in the basement. You know that gym two blocks away?" "That yuppie place?" He wrinkled his nose. "That's what'll save you. Go down the long corridor, through the hole in the wall, then across the big storage room. The door in the back corner leads to another corridor. The stairs at the end bring you up inside the gym. Dress for a workout, so you can blend with the other clients." They stood awkwardly facing each other for a moment. Finally Kliff said, "I'll be leaving now. I don't want to take up any more of your time." Once Kliff had left him alone, he had a few hours in which to think and act. He was about to be taken into custody and paraded before the world as a pariah. After that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. On the other hand, it was possible that the threat was an empty one. It would be easier for Reinhold to make him run than to go the trouble of mobilizing the police. Should he call the Colonel's bluff? Clearly, it was futile. If the crash didn't come now, it would come any day. It didn't matter if Reinhold wanted him gone or not. There was no future left for him in Portland. He wished he had somewhere to run besides Iowa, because he didn't want to put Becky and Timmins in danger. But where else did he have friends who weren't part of his long history with Reinhold? He would have to return to his almost-forgotten hometown. He was under no illusions about this, however. Everyone in Portland knew where he was from, even if he'd been careful never to reveal the details. It would buy him time, but not much. Once he got there, he would have to move quickly to assemble the resources he needed to go into hiding for real. Was it possible for his fame to be withdrawn as if it had never happened, leaving him as nothing more than a fugitive, a hunted man? He was about to find out. He moved automatically and with precision, as he had on the day he first left home. He gave himself a buzzcut with an electric razor. He put on a baseball cap, sneakers and an old pair of jeans. Without his usual costume he was an ordinary kid from the Midwest. He tossed whatever he could carry into a duffelbag. He rolled up the quilt from Steve's aunt and tied it with a cord. Everything else that mattered to him, he took to a fire pit in the yard. He burned his favorite paintings, his tribal masks, his books on alchemy. He burned his rock star clothes. He didn't want to leave anything for them to pick over. After stirring the ashes, he made his escape through the tunnels beneath his studio. He worried that Kliff had set a trap for him, and some unpleasant surprise awaited him in the dark. Or he would find himself suddenly back at the Citadel, face to face with the Colonel's power. But nothing happened, and he emerged in a supply room of Rick's Body World. He walked outside like any other gym bunny, in T-shirt and jeans and carrying a canvas bag. He took a bus to the edge of town and began hitching. He got a ride from a refugee from the East Coast, who'd landed a job in Eureka as editor of the local newspaper. The man was fascinated by the "vagabond lifestyle," something he wished he had the courage to try himself. He offered Anton a place on his couch for the night. When they got to Eureka, they made a brief tour of the newsroom, then went to the man's house to eat fried chicken and watch TV. The next morning Anton caught a ride as far as Reno. From there he was hoping to follow the Interstate all the way home. The man who picked him up said he was going to St. Louis, which was close enough. He would get out in Kansas City and find a ride north. Once they got underway the man told him, "I'm a demonstration expert. Specialty dry cleaning. I've got a few stops to make between here and there. Clients. Potential clients." Anton imagined him carrying his bulky valises into dry cleaning establishments from Reno to St. Louis. He was along for the ride now, so he settled into a stream of nervous, shifty-eyed chatter. The guy wouldn't shut up, so he made himself numb. He perked up again when they got off the Interstate after about a hundred miles. "Gotta pick up supplies," the man said. They drove north for more than an hour, through a terrain with no signs of life. "How long will we be on this road?" Anton said finally. "Won't be long now. We'll catch the Interstate again at Ely." They continued along the interminable road. After a while, they came to a triangular intersection in brown hills. A gas station, convenience store and snack counter sat there. They stopped for gas and a soda. Anton paid for the fillup and asked which way they were going. When the man gestured north again toward Idaho, he said, "I'll get out here." "As you like, kid." The man got back in his car. His next ride was with a bunch of drunken Indians. They were packed against each other in the tiny car. He felt like he was in a clown circus, with him as the straight man, the stooge. Either that or it was a performance piece exposing racial stereotypes. The car swerved so recklessly that he asked to be let out after half an hour, in the middle of the desert. It took him until after dark to get to Ely. It was too late to continue, so he decided to sleep on a patch of empty ground next to the highway. He would wake up in the morning and catch the first ride out. He went into a nearby 7-Eleven for nachos and lemonade. The young clerk there had a sense of adventure. Hearing that Anton was hitching across country, he confessed that he felt trapped in his tiny town. He thought that drifters like Anton had all the luck. "Keep your illusions," Anton wanted to tell him. He went out to sleep on stony ground. The next day he bought a bus ticket for Cincinatti, giving a false destination on purpose. He felt worn down and sick, and spent most of the two-day journey in a fitful sleep. When he got off in Council Bluffs, he was back in familiar territory. He caught rides from there to Timmins' house, walking the last eight miles. He felt safe now in Timmins' protective zone, but he knew that Reinhold's spies were waiting. Surely they'd done a sweep of his hometown after his disappearance. No doubt they were still there, ready to sound the alarm if Anton showed himself. <<< Back Table of Contents Next >>>