Inside the house, on the dining-room table, I find a note. Something is written on it, letters I can’t assemble into words, but next to it are two Polaroids. Both pictures are of Julie, taken by Julie, with the camera extended at arm’s length and pointed at herself. In one of them, she is waving. The gesture looks limp, half-hearted. In the other one, she is holding that hand against her chest. Her face is stoic, but her eyes are damp.
Goodbye, R, the picture whispers to me. It’s that time now. It’s time to say it. Can you say it?
I hold the picture in front of me, staring at it. I rub my fingers on it, smearing its fresh emulsion into rainbow blurs. I consider taking it with me, but no. I’m not ready to make Julie a souvenir.
Say it, R. Just say it.
I set the picture back on the table, and leave the house. I don’t say it.
I begin walking back to the airport. I’m not sure what’s waiting for me. Full-death? Quite possibly. After the commotion I caused, the Boneys might simply dispose of me like infectious waste. But I’m alone again. My world is small, my options are few. I don’t know where else to go.
The journey of forty minutes by car will be a day-long trip on foot. As I walk, the wind seems to reverse direction, and yesterday’s thunderheads creep back onto the horizon for an encore. They spiral over me, slowly shrinking the circle of blue sky like an immense camera aperture. I walk fast and stiff, almost marching.
I walk off the freeway at the next exit and climb into a triangle of landscaping between the road and the off ramp. I crash through the brush and duck into the little cluster of trees, a mini-forest of ten or twelve cedars arranged in a pleasing pattern for overstressed commuter ghosts.
I curl into a ball at the base of one of these trees, achieving some degree of shelter under its scrawny branches, and close my eyes. As lightning flickers on the horizon like flashbulbs and thunder rumbles in my bones, I drift into darkness.
I am with Julie on the 747. I realise it’s a dream. A real dream, not just another rerun of Perry Kelvin’s syndicated life. This is coming purely from me. The clarity has improved since the blurry sludge of my brain’s first attempt back in the airport, but there’s still an awkward, shaky quality to everything, like amateur video to Perry’s slick feature films.
Julie and I sit cross-legged, facing each other, floating above the clouds on the plane’s bright white wing. The wind ruffles our hair, but no more than a leisurely ride in a convertible.
‘So you dream now?’ Julie says.
I smile nervously. ‘I guess I do.’
Julie doesn’t smile. Her eyes are cold. ‘Guess you had nothing to dream about till you got some girl problems. You’re like a grade-school kid trying to keep a diary.’
Now we’re on the ground, sitting on a sunny green suburban lawn. A morbidly obese couple barbecues human limbs in the background. I try to keep Julie in focus.
‘I’m changing,’ I tell her.
‘I don’t care,’ she replies. ‘I’m home now. I’m back in the real world, where you don’t exist. Summer camp is over.’
A winged Mercedes rumbles past in the distant sky and vanishes in a muffled sonic boom.
‘I’m gone,’ she says, staring me hard in the eyes. ‘It was fun, but it’s over now. This is how things go.’
I shake my head, avoiding her gaze. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘What did you think was going to happen?’
‘I don’t know. I was just hoping for something. A miracle.’
‘Miracles don’t exist. There is cause and effect, dreams and reality, Living and Dead. Your hope is absurd. Your romanticism, embarrassing.’
I look at her uneasily.
‘It’s time for you to grow up. Julie has gone back to her position, and you will go back to your position, and that is the way it is. Always has been. Always will be.’
She grins, and her teeth are jagged yellow fangs. She kisses me, gnawing through my lips, biting out my teeth, gnashing up towards my brain and screaming like a dying child. I gag on my hot red blood.
My eyes flash open and I stand up, pushing dripping branches out of my face. It’s still night. The rain is still pummelling the earth. I step out of the trees and climb up onto the overpass. I lean against the railing, looking out at the empty freeway and the dark horizon beyond it. One thought pounds in my head like a migraine of rage: You’re wrong. You fucking monsters are wrong. About everything.
