Life on the Preservation, US Edition Read Online Free

thought.
    Sarah picked up. “Hello?”
    “It’s me.”
    Sleepy sounds. Then: “Ian? What time is it?”
    Like an echo with variations: What time is it? Or: Baby, what time is it?
    Deja Voodoo.
    “It’s early. Seven-ish.”
    “Is something wrong?”
    Or: What’s wrong? or What’s the matter, Ian?
    Like he’d had this conversation already, more than once, perhaps dozens of times. Or was about to have it only a few seconds ahead of the present moment, and the dialogue was still fluid. The words felt both remote and too close, almost as if he were talking to himself – or with some kind of souped-up Eliza program. Listening to Sarah’s responses, he wondered if a really sophisticated program might trick him into believing he was conversing with a human being.
    “Ian? Are you there?”
    Am I? he thought.
    The super-Eliza idea was beyond paranoid. Other echoes traveled up from a buried place: his mother raving; bloody Pollock art on the kitchen walls. And later: a lifeless manikin in the tub. He hadn’t actually seen her body, only heard his father, drunk, describe it. What was real? Ian was used to restraining these echoes and phantoms, and he did so now, bringing the force of his will down like a wall of steel.
    Empty air on the phone line. He could feel Sarah, or the program, waiting to speak echoes.
    Ian killed the connection.
    The real Sarah Darbro would call him back. But his cell didn’t ring. So she wasn’t real. Or it could mean that she knew he had been wanting to break up with her and had decided that this was his idiot method of doing it. What she couldn’t know, what he found impossible to explain, was that he was as desperate not to break up with her as he was to break up with her. Distance and intimacy was the irreconcilable equation of his life.
    He sipped his coffee, gazed out the window, and experimented with his elastic concentration. Wet Indian, dry Indian. Sun flared across the dirty window pane. Shadows occupied the room then instantly retreated. Ian began to lose himself.
    The phone rang. It wasn’t Sarah or Super Eliza.
    Ten minutes later Ian shambled into Espresso Vivace. The familiar aromas, the voices of a dozen overlapping conversations, the expected baristas (Cyndi of the Peter Pan hair and plaid shirt waved at him) – the world ordered itself around him. He bought a double cappuccino. All the tables – Formica-topped ‘kitchen’ tables and bent chrome chairs with vinyl seats – were occupied, so he sat at the wrap-around counter. Other people at the counter stared at their phones, thumb-stabbing virtual keyboards like they were trying to crack the secret code and release their souls from the little boxes. Ian watched Cyndi and the other baristas work and didn’t let his mind wander or, God forbid, go slack .
    After a while his best friend Zach came in and sat on the stool next to him “Man oh man,” Zach said.
    “Hey.”
    Zach was lanky and round-shouldered, with a shaved head that really didn’t improve his looks much, and a pair of square, black plastic-framed geek glasses that he was always punching back up the bridge of his nose. On any other day Ian would have been surprised or even amazed to see his friend at this hour of the morning. But this wasn’t any other day. Zach had called him.
    “Thanks for meeting me,” Zach said.
    “What’s happening?”
    “You’re not going to fucking believe me.”
    “I might.”
    “Seriously, you won’t.”
    “I won’t unless you tell me.”
    Zach looked around the room at the other customers, swiveling on his stool to make sure he didn’t miss anyone. Then he leaned into Ian.
    “Okay,” he said. “It’s like – ‘ they’re here ’.”
    “Who’s here?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “ Zach .”
    “Okay, okay. There’s this guy. I call him the Boogeyman. He’s like stalking me or something. And he doesn’t belong here. I mean I don’t even think he’s human. Except in some other way he does belong here, and