Life on the Preservation, US Edition Read Online Free Page B

cap. Standing in line on the other side of the wrap-around counter, he glanced at Ian and Zach but his gaze didn’t linger. He ordered something and paid for it. Presently the cashier handed him a to-go cup and a scone, and he left.
    “See?” Zach said.
    “See what?”
    “He acted so fucking normal.”
    “He was normal. Though not for this neighborhood.”
    “Didn’t you get the vibe?”
    “No.”
    “Come on.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice anything weird about him.”
    “No, I mean: come on . Let’s follow him.” Zach stood up.
    Ian remained on his stool. “Following people is crazy.”
    “So what?”
    Ian gestured to Cyndi. She came over. “What’s up with you two?” she said.
    “Did you see that guy with the Mariners cap a minute ago?”
    “Sure.”
    “What’d you think of him?”
    “A harmless dork. He bought a lemon scone.”
    “See?” Ian said to Zach.
    Zach was on his feet. “Can we please go before we lose him?”
    “Okay, okay.”
    They followed the Boogeyman to Broadway, hanging back a discreet distance. Ian, nocturnal as a bat, found the early morning ambience disorienting. Capitol Hill, and Broadway in particular, was ground zero for the city’s GLBT sub-culture. In this neighborhood of gay couples, severe haircuts, aggressive piercings and chains, leather, transgender experiments, fashionable and unfashionable tats, runaway kids and junkies, the Boogeyman’s yuppie-lite presentation should have stood out like a crust of Wonder Bread in a bowl of jambalaya. Instead, he almost fit in with the crazy early-bird types on their way to work – Zach’s Boogeyman with his scone and coffee and bland, touristy gawking.
    “What the fuck is that? ” Zach said, pointing at WHO CARES spray-painted on the side of Dick’s Drive-In. “I thought you quit.”
    Ian stared at the graffiti, as surprised by it as was Zach. He groped at a vague memory of Saturday night, dropping his can and walking away. But Saturday night hadn’t even happened yet. “I don’t know. Maybe some toy trying to rip off my old style.”
    “Are you bullshitting me?”
    Ian didn’t want to discuss it. His half-assed memory of creating this half-assed piece was almost as disturbing as the Eliza conversation and the slack mind thing.
    “It’s not mine,” Ian said.
    The Boogeyman boarded a city bus. “Come on,” Zach said, “my car’s only a couple of blocks from here.”
    Zach’s ride was a new VW Beetle, bottle fly green. Ian’s feet disappeared in a swamp of game boxes, Taco Bell wrappers, empty pop cans, notebooks, gaming manuals, and comics. They caught up with the bus as it turned down the hill toward midtown.
    “Do you think he jumped off while we were going for my car?”
    “How should I know?” Ian slumped against the passenger door and wished he hadn’t gotten out of bed. And all at once he realized he couldn’t remember getting out of bed. He concentrated, but it was dead space, the time right before he found himself making coffee.
    “I think I see him,” Zach said. “Is that him, about halfway back on the right side of the bus?”
    Ian just shook his head. “I repeat: following people is crazy.”
    “So’s thinking your girlfriend is a computer program named Eliza.”
    “I think I changed my mind about that.”
    Zach looked at him then back at the bus, which was lumbering steadily from block to block on its way down Pine Street.
    “Explain.”
    “It’s simple. The Sarah situation has been stressing me out for a long time. And then today was like the culmination of all that stress. Besides, I always get crap sleep. That’s probably why the hallucinations came on. Like your brain can totally hallucinate reality. I mean every drug imaginable is produced naturally in the thalamus or somewhere. Shit, my sister thought she could talk to the dead. And my mom, you know. I probably inherited the crazy gene.”
    “That’s tortured, man. Besides, you don’t even know what a thalamus