“I still—”
“No, I know,” she said. “I know. It sounds wrong to me, too—most of the time. Almost all of the time, really. I would never bet on it. If we did get brought back, which we probably wouldn’t, the DNA traces would almost definitely come from our fossilized remains. Enough of us are buried in stainless-steel caskets, conveniently located near one another in cemeteries and so on that…And plus, even if we did get brought back, we’d probably be captives. In zoos or whatever. Hard to call that a second chance at being. I know all of this. I’m only saying that’s one way to think of them.”
“To think of who, though?” I said.
“ ‘Who?’ ” she said. “What who? No who. The black marks. The old gum.”
“These stains on the sidewalk?”
“Isn’t that what we’re talking about? Isn’t that what you’re looking at?”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course.”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“I really didn’t know.”
“You must’ve thought I was crazy, going on like that,” she said.
“No,” I said. “No. I was just confused. Sorry about that. So…what’s the better way?”
“Now I’m confused.”
“What’s the better way of looking at the gumstains?” I said. “You said there were two.”
“That was the better way. The way I just described. The way I usually think about them, though…Well I think about how the gum came from mouths. Mouths with bleeding gums, with cuts inside, bits of food between teeth, ripped-up palates, probably bad breath. And that’s just where they came from, or where they might have come from—that’s just some unpleasant thoughts about their origins. And maybe that’s my problem, having those thoughts. But what they look like? What they actually look like, there on the sidewalk? black? slightly raised? misshapen? That’s how they look, isn’t it? Objectively, right? That’s not just me?”
“That’s how they look,” I said.
“Black and slightly raised and misshapen. You think about them, picture them in your mind, and they’re circles, but they’re not really circles. You see them right in front of you, you see their edges are ragged and…organic, right? They’re not circles. And you see how they’re clustered together like that? That’s not uncommon. They’re nearly always clustered up, you know? And your eyes are always making triangles out of them. Always trying to make right triangles out of them, or equilateral triangles, but they can’t. They always fail. Just…awkward triangles. That’s all you get. Uncomfortable triangles. Mine do that, at least. My eyes, I mean.”
“Mine too,” I said.
“They’re everywhere,” she said. “Everywhere you go. Clustered and black. Raised and misshapen. Pavement melanoma, right? That’s the way I think of them. Most of the time. That’s what goes through my head: pavement melanoma.”
“Still, that’s not what it is,” I said. “It’s just old gum.”
“I didn’t say that’s what it is. Of course it’s just old gum. It’s completely meaningless. Doesn’t stop me, when I see it, from thinking it, though. It doesn’t stop me from being disgusted.”
“What stops you?” I said.
“No idea,” she said. “It happens so rarely, and it lasts so little time, I just try to enjoy it. Not being disgusted. I’m enjoying it now, in fact. I don’t feel disgusted. Maybe that owes to your company, Clyde—ha! Just kidding. I know how that sounded. You don’t have to blush. I know I’m not…your type. I wouldn’t ever hit on you. You’re out of my league—”
“That’s—”
“No, please, you don’t have to. I wasn’t fishing. I know who I am. I know what I look like. Same goes for you. And it’s okay, really. It’s completely okay. It’s more than okay. I feel like a million bucks right now. My friend Belt I’m meeting here? We have this really great connection. Storybook, you know? A real fairy-tale connection, and I haven’t seen him in forever. Not since we were kids. I’m kinda dying of excitement. We have so much to talk about.”
“What happened to you?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Why haven’t you talked to him in so many years?”
“It’s a really long story, but, basically, I tried to find him and wasn’t able. He had to come looking for me, and the problem with that is that, when we were kids, his mother became ill, terminally ill, very suddenly, and when he told me about it, I accused him of lying, and I never apologized for it. I would have apologized. I wanted to apologize. But I never got the chance before he disappeared. So he didn’t know I was sorry. So he never came looking for me. At least that’s what I think.”
I said, “I’m sure he must have forgiven you by now.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I think he might have. He’s found me, after all.”
“I’m sure he has,” I said. “What made you think he was lying about his mom, anyway?”
“I’m not even sure I really did think he was lying. I might have just said it because…I’m…It’s hard to explain. It’s private, actually.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said.
“Nothing for you to be sorry about, Clyde. You know what, though, I better get back inside now, in case Belt was in the bathroom. Or maybe he came through the other entrance. Thanks for the smoke.”
She dropped the butt on the gumstains, said, “Excuse me,” and made her way past me.
I watched her through the window.
In front of the counter, she surveyed the restaurant, then sat in a booth. She reached inside her collar and came out with a cure that she set on the farther side of the table. She pointed at its head. The cure, with both hands, grasped the gloved tip of the pointed finger, tilted back on its heels, and pulled, and pulled. Lisette grimaced down at it, and, pantomiming alarm and exertion, leaned forward, then back, then forward again while, with her free hand, she wiped her brow, and clutched at her chest and her opposite shoulder, as though the cure might overpower her. After a minute, she turned toward the window and, seeing me staring, smiled or smirked, and I gave her a shallow nod, and I waved.
* In the (dubious) spirit, I suppose, of Triple-J’s “Living Isn’t Functioning,” I feel obliged to note (in-foot) that although the Panacea I was given by Burroughs was identically formulated to that now available to consumers worldwide, the tiny folded info pamphlets that one finds inside today’s market-ready bottles of Panacea employ a vocabulary slightly different from that employed by those pamphlets I found inside my sample packs, which were (i.e. my pamphlets and packs were) manufactured before Graham&Swords decided to market Panacea as a dietary supplement. The sample pack pamphlet’s “active ingredients,” for example, is, in the bottle pamphlet, “proactive ingredients”; the “recommended dosage” is “recommended intake”; “other drugs” just “drugs.”