MNEMOSYNE, Chapter 7
MNEMOSYNE
Chapter 7
Didn’t I want him here? Wasn’t I waiting for him? Why did I just stand up and shout that he’s not supposed to be here?
“But we had a plan, sir,” he responds, his grin widening, his eyes peering up at me, partly covered by dark eyelids.
“Why are you at my place of business?” I ask, attempting to calm myself.
“So this is yours,” he says, jumping up to match my standing position and my folded arms. “I knew it. You have that look.”
“What look?”
“You look like a man who runs things.”
“So you think I’m rich? Are you here to ask for money?”
His body convulses. The silent laughter again.
“People always think I want money,” he says. “It’s not about money, sir. It’s about the forgetting, remember? Not to mention your plan to meet here.”
“Our plan? We talked downtown for a few minutes, then you scampered off. What plan?”
“As you said yourself, we have things to discuss. Here.”
“What could we possibly have to discuss?”
"What don't we have to discuss?” he asks, laughing again. “That’d be an easier question to answer. I've contemplated a lot while I’ve waited for you."
"You've waited where?” I ask, not wanting to admit that I knew it, that I knew he was here, waiting for me. “Why would you wait for me?”
He suddenly dashes from the grass and onto a large rock nearer the middle of the meditation garden. Despite his frail body and his baggy suit, he managed to leap deftly onto the rock. He’s squatting with his arms hanging down and that grin on his face.
"Here. In the Therapy Wing. It was fairly easy to hide. I cleaned up, maybe that helped too. And I've learned one thing from my memories: how to hide!" He nearly falls off of the rock from his silent laughter. Then he stops abruptly and looks at me. "This is the Therapy Wing, right?"
Therapy wing? What is that? And how long has he been here? How did no one notice? Is he making all of this up or am I—
“Is this not the Therapy Wing?” he asks impatiently.
“What? No. This is the Yoga Center,” I say, unsure of why I’m explaining this to him.
“Yoga. Meditation. Therapy,” he says. “I see. But you told me therapy. The day of the storm, when we resolved to reconvene in a safe place after some investigation and contemplation. Oh, boy, that memory of yours! Oh well, I get it, and it doesn’t matter now. What did you find, that’s what matters, did you find anything?”
I feel a pang of guilt, as if I’m responsible for this. But that can’t be. I think back to that day in the rain. I lost myself, in a way similar to how I did just now while meditating. And, when I came to, he spoke as if I’d said something. If I actually did say something, what was it? Meet me at the Therapy Wing? Why would I have said that of all things? There’s no such place here.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. He sits fully on the rock and leans back on both hands, his feet dangling just a few inches from the ground. “We’re here, in private, I can show you now. It’s all I’ve found. So I hope you found something, too. You did, didn’t you? You must have. But let’s do mine first, okay? That makes sense, right? What do you think?”
I feel an urge to sit next to him on the rock, but I also feel an urge to grab him and remove him from the garden and the Yoga Center and the entire Facility. There’s some sense of him being dangerous that underlines my curiosity about him and the monolith. Or is it the connection between the two that’s dangerous? Maybe I need to leave it all alone.
Then why did I tell him to come here? I believe now that I did, I can almost remember it. I definitely remember expecting him here. So I must have told him to come… But I don’t think I told him to come here. I told him to meet me at a place like this one. A place that’s part of something bigger, a place from a different—
“You’re torn,” he says, with a concerned look, like he’s studying my face. “I get it, this is all a lot to take in. I get that, I’m right there with you. You see, sir, I was in prison. I served my sentence. But I don’t remember what the sentence was. I don’t remember why I was there. I don’t remember much of anything. Not my name. Not my home. Not—well, you get the idea. You do, right? You get it?”
I don’t know what to say. Do I get it? I have no idea, but I nod my head. I might as well hear him out.
“Right. So. I get that it’s a lot to take in. Especially with the forgetfulness and all. And I bet you have that sense of… something… What would you call it?”
“Nostalgia?”
“Great, right, you’re great at this. It’s an uncanny nostalgia, right? I don’t know when it started for you, but it started for me when I received a little invitation. And it grew when I got here, grew when I saw you, and it keeps growing and growing. I saw that thing, that nomo, and it grew. Not at first, no, but after. Close to it, things seemed to fade away. I ran, like I told you. Then the feeling really grew. It turned into something almost clear. It became a sense like…”
“Like you’re awakening from a dream?” I ask.
“Yes! Like awakening from a dream! Like I’m waking up and realizing that I’m no longer in a dream, not anymore, no, not now. Now I’m here, here in a vague, fuzzy, slowly brightening here. A here and now. And it all revolves around—you!”
He shouted that last word at me, but now his head is down, as if he’s watching the grass. I let him sit there and I try to accept what he’s saying. It’s hard to believe, but it feels right. He’s describing the exact same thing I’ve been experiencing ever since the day the light from the monolith hit me in the eyes. Even the part he shouted is true, the part about how it all revolves around me.
I hear myself asking in a desperate whisper, “Why me?”
“Exactly!” he shouts, looking back up at me. “You’re good at this, you reminded me right when I was about to forget. That’s the whole point of our secret meeting, right? Why you? Why me? Well, I know my part, in a way. I have something in my possession, sir, an item, here, in my pocket, that I’ve been meaning to show you. I would’ve shown it to you downtown, but the rain and the lady and the timing, well, it was just not the right moment, and I had to be sure you sent it and—“
“What is it, man? What do you think I sent you?”
“Yes,” he nods and gets off the rock, comes towards me, his posture compliant like a servant. He reaches into his jacket pocket, and he produces a piece of glossy paper. “I had the pleasure of receiving an invitation, sir. To this, to your—” He gestures grandly, his arm sweeping across his torso like a magician reveling in his performance—“To your Fit for Life Facility! This teal paper here, sir, in my hand right here, this very moment, is the invitation. I received this incredible piece of shiny paper not long before I was deemed fit for freedom. But that’s not of great importance, merely an aside. I looked into it, believe you me, and it seems to have been a coincidence. But a happy coincidence, undoubtedly. Serendipitous. Fortuitous. Released from jail with a fancy RSVP in hand! Then, as you know, events have unfolded as they’ve unfolded, I’ve waited, I’ve arrived, I’m here, before you now, répondu, s'il vous amuse! And!”
With a flourish, he reaches out to me with the paper.
I’m afraid to look at it. Even more afraid to grab it. I look. It actually is from Fit for Life. It is an invitation, one of many invitations, to the opening of the Yoga center. Regina mailed them. But she wouldn’t have mailed them to a prison. I snatch it from his hand, as if expressing that it doesn’t belong to him, he wasn’t supposed to get it, and he’s not supposed to be here.
“This wasn’t meant for you,” I say.
He leans back, his face serious for the first time.
“Of course it was, it even has a signature. Your signature.”
“It can’t have my signature.”
“Turn it around. It’s on the other side.”
I turn it over and I see it and I feel confident again. I feel on solid ground. There is a signature. But whoever’s hand signed it, signed the letters ‘N’ and an ‘H’.
“This isn’t my signature.”
“Impossible,” he says. He moves to my side, cranes his neck around me to look at the paper for himself. “That’s yours,” he says, pointing. “That has to be yours. That’s why I’m here. Because you wanted me here. That’s why I agreed to leave confinement. Because you wanted us to figure this out together.”
“I didn’t and I don’t. Those aren’t my initials. My name is Alex, remember? Alex Vance.”
He starts pacing around and rubbing the back of his neck, pausing sometimes to look at me or the invitation or some thought in the air around me. Then he’s pacing some more. I try to tell him it’s all right, that we can get him some help, that it’s all a misunderstanding. I wait for him to calm down. But, after a few more paces, he screams.
He screams an animal scream, his face distorted, and he lunges at me, his beady eyes intense, wide, and solid black. His pupils are huge. I don’t push him away or back up. For some reason, I’m utterly focused on his pupils. I don’t try to restrain him or anything, I simply stare at his pupils. He’s saying something, trying to get me to respond to something, but I keep looking at those black eyes…
Those pupils…
Bilaterally mydriatic. Minimally reactive to light. There will need to be some visualization of the fundi and a measurement of intraocular pressure. Possible etiology includes recent neurological—
He pushes me, and I’m back in the moment. I can make out his words now.
“Do you hear me, you crazy bastard?” he screams. “You sent that to me! You wanted me here! I left there, I could have stayed like the others, but I’m here! You told me to be here! Give me that, you can’t have that! Give it to me! Wake up and give it to me, you bastard!”
He’s impotently yanking on my hand. The useless piece of paper, I’d completely forgotten about it. Just some invitation Regina would never have sent. An invitation I didn’t send. I would have delegated that to Regina. I delegate so much to her. But there were those trees, another signature I think I didn’t make. So maybe I did send the invitation, did sign it, just like that order for the trees. Maybe he’s right, maybe he could have stayed, just like so many of the prisoners these days, he could have stayed. But I brought him here.
The prisoners want to stay—that’s what no one will discuss. The reason the prisoners want to stay. Then again, maybe it’s nothing, a small thing at most. It wasn’t enough to stop him from accepting an invitation from a stranger. But, still—who sent it? Was it me? It couldn’t have been me. Did it have my signature? Or is that something he made up? I can’t remember...
Wasn’t I holding it? I look down at my hand, as if it belongs to someone else. Oh. That hand does belong to someone else. To the bum. I pull my wrist from his fingers and look more closely at the glossy, teal paper and the signature. It’s not my name, not my initials, scrawled in that white ink. Something’s not right, something about this invitation or my sight of it is wrong...
It’s him. He’s not supposed to be here. He’s the problem. He shouldn’t have left, should have stayed like the other inmates. Protested. Now, instead, he’s protesting me, shouting in my face, flailing about, threatening me. When all I wanted was answers.
I grab him by his shoulders and hold him in place. I lean in close, my face directly in front of his, our noses almost touching, and tell him that I want answers.
“Let go of me!” he screams.
“Tell me what you know about the monolith.”
“The monolith?” he asks, his eyes searching all around me for an answer. “The crystalline formation? You know about that, not me. You know about it. You’re the one who told me about it. And you know it causes the forgetting.”
“What forgetting?” I scream, my throat on fire. “What do you know?”
“Nothing! Let go of me! I know nothing,” he’s bouncing from calm to panicked, back and forth, both his tone of voice and his body. “I only went once. You told me to. You know of that one. I only know of the other one. The one you know—it’s the one that’s not the one! That’s the one thing I know!”
“Stop talking in riddles, damn you!”
“Riddles, that’s funny coming from you. It’s funny, where you come from. You’re not from here, are you? Are you even from there? Is that either here or there? I don’t know anything, sir, nope, just let me go. Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go…”
“You know something,” I shout over his repeated request. “What are you hiding?”
“I don’t! I’m not!” He cries. “I swear I’m not! I don’t think I am, there is the forgetting to account for, the memory mistakes, the—sir, let me go! I only came here to help you! The invitation was supposed to help you!”
Something dawns on me.
“Did you sign it?” I ask. “Did you find that invitation outside and sign it yourself?”
“I’m not N. H. How could I sign it? No. You must be N. H. You’re hiding it. You! You’re the one hiding it. Your memory isn’t like mine. I bet you know the answers! I bet you know! Is that why you brought me here? Like the last time? A trick? Is it a trick like before? What have you done? What did you do? Just let me go!”
He’s gone limp in my hands. Now he’s rigid again, pulling his shoulders this way and that. He’s screaming, full blown screaming, his voice painful in my ears.
“Not again, not like this! I remember this! This is like that but here, not there! Here instead of there! This is—this is—” The crazed gyration of his head stops and his eyes look dead set on me and I swear his pupils shrink at the exact same moment. He’s perfectly still.
“This is your doing,” he says, his voice calm. “Like there, but here. It was the same. You didn’t want to help there. You don’t want to help here. You’ve done it many, many times, haven’t you? Yes. Many times.”
His calm is more unnerving than all of his previous screaming. Maybe I hurt him? I let him go and he slowly collapses like a puppet with cut strings. But he never stops looking at me. Even as he reaches to his side and scoops up the laminated paper and holds it up to me, the white initials glowing in the soft lights of the garden, even then, he’s looking me dead in the eye.
I try to avoid his gaze. My eyes focus on the invitation. I don’t want to look at that either. I don’t want to look at those initials, I don’t know those initials, I don’t, regardless of the handwriting, I couldn’t have—
“How many more times, Nathan?” he asks.
But I swear his mouth didn’t move just then. It must have, but I’m not sure. I can’t tell. I can’t remember. I stop staring at his mouth for answers and look at the paper, at the signature, and I think of how this is so much like that order for the bonsai trees. Accused of signing something, yet again.
I get closer. I swat the paper out of his hand, send it flying over there somewhere, but I still see it in my mind. Then I see countless bills, letters, orders, all of it as if it’s right here before me, as if it’s not the bum on the ground beneath me but my desk beneath me, in my office, in my Fit for Life Facility. Like my desk is right here, covered with papers, all signed at the bottom with my signature.
No.
It can’t be.
This isn’t right. The initials aren’t right. This fool isn’t right. No, not at all. And he needs to tell me the truth, he needs to tell me what he knows, he has to tell me—
“Fine! Grab me again!” he screams, the sound piercing my ears again and making me squint. “Sure, grab me! Does it help? Do you remember now? Do you know me now? Tell me who I am! Tell me! You tell me!”
I’m on my knees and he’s turning away from me, crawling away on the ground, and I see blood at the base of his skull. Did I do that? What is that? I can’t get a clear look at it. He won’t be still. And he’s saying the words ‘tell me’ over and over, he’s demanding that I tell him.
Tell me, he says—but was that his voice? Or is it my voice?
I’m pulling him back, he’s trying to get away, and now I’m hearing words from everywhere, multiple words, multiple voices. Now I hear my name. Alex. Whose voice is that, shouting Alex? It’s not him, this bum who won’t sit still and won’t leave. No, it’s not him, because he’s mockingly screaming “Nathan” over and over.
There’s someone else, someone far away, screaming something else.
I finally make out the sound—behind me and above me—the sound of loud female voices.
“Alex!” It’s Tiffany’s voice. Not smooth now. Shrill. “Let go of him!”
My hands are gripping his blazer and he’s crying on the ground beneath me. This looks bad. I jump to both feet and wipe my wet hands on my shirt as I back away, then realize the wetness is blood. Tiffany is at my side, her arm on my lower back, looking down at the man as he sobs. A woman in a leather jacket and t-shirt and jeans, with short hair and impatient eyes, is looking back and forth between me and the fallen man.
This must be Tiffany’s friend. The cop.
“What happened, Mr. Vance?” she asks. “Why were you on top of him like that?”
“I don’t know. He’s not supposed to be here. He needs to leave. He’s talking crazy and says I know him and says I’m someone named Nathan or something.”
“Did he attack you?” she’s leaning down towards him, and I can’t tell whom she’s asking. The bum is curled into a fetal position. “What’s this blood?” she asks.
“It came from the back of his head,” I say. “From before all of this.”
“That’s true, ma’am,” the bum says. “The man speaks the truth. This nick is from the entry-point. From him, in a way. Not from him, in a way.”
“Sir, did he hurt you?” she asks.
“No, ma’am,” he says. “The entry point is always the same, there, you see?”
On the back of his head is a loose bandage that must have covered up that little, bloody hole. The scuffle may have detached the bandage, but the wound wasn’t my fault. That’s a relief, particularly because the cop can tell the same thing. She’s soon assuring him that the ambulance will be here soon, that he just needs to stay calm.
But he’s already calm. He’s been calm. He was calm as he shouted the name Nathan. He’s been acting like this is all some sort of game or performance.
“I assume you are an officer of the law,” he says, getting up gingerly until the last second, then straightening himself with a hop.
“Yes, sir, I am, but you need to sit down. Tell me, what’s your name, sir? Can you tell me your name?”
He laughs silently, shaking all over.
“I assure you, miss, that I am fine. This was all my fault, really, all of it,” then he looks at me and I swear he winks as he says, “including my lack of a name.”
He straightens himself and reaches out his arms, his wrists touching, his fingers extended.
“Do with me as you will,” he says.
The cop stands there looking at him like she doesn’t know what to do. Then she shakes her head and tells me and Tiffany to go wait by the front doors of the Yoga Center. She puts one hand on the man’s shoulder, then helps him find a place to sit. He obeys, sitting upright and cross-armed. He’s staring at me and nodding, almost imperceptibly, as if he’s accepting something about me.
The cop stands next to him. She seems to be asking questions he won’t answer, but I can’t hear it clearly. It doesn’t take long for a pair of uniformed officers to arrive, quickly followed by the paramedics. I’m watching them tend to the back of the homeless man’s neck, when I hear them say something about a knife, self-inflicted—but Tiffany starts to say something. She’d been silent this whole time, just watching me.
She tells me that she had watch us for a little while, had seen me and the man talking, that she hadn’t recognized him at first because of his shaved face and the suit. But, when she thought it seemed to be getting heated, she called her friend Joan, the one who had helped with the records. It wasn’t an emergency, at least Tiffany hadn’t thought so, but she still wanted to make sure everything was safe. So Joan agreed to come check on things, arriving just in time to see that things were not exactly safe. Punctuating it all, she quietly says, “At least, not for the old man,” then takes in a quick breath as if it might take back the words.
“What do you mean by that?” I ask.
“Well,” she looks to the spot where he and I were found, then back to my face. “You were manhandling him, Alex.”
“He showed up here out of the blue. He came at me.”
“He doesn’t seem aggressive.”
“He came at me with a whole slue of accusations, Tiffany. He was unhinged.”
“Okay, Alex. Let’s just drop it for now.”
Before I can respond, Joan comes over to us.
“The officers are going to take him to the station,” she says. “He won’t say a word now. He doesn’t have an ID either. Actually, he only had one thing on him and I can’t say that it’s of much use. He’s the homeless man you told me about, right?”
“Yes,” I say, unintentionally talking over Tiffany. “The one from downtown. You were looking into him, right?”
She glances at Tiffany then says, “You could say that.”
“He said he was a convict, maybe it has something to do with the prison inmates. Did something go wrong with his release?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Mr. Vance.”
“Him? Or the inmates?”
“Neither.”
That can’t be possible. How could a cop not know about the prison situation? But I can’t get into that now, can’t even see how it relates. I had some thought about it a minute ago, something about a procedure—
“I think the important thing, Mr. Vance,” the cop says, “Is to put this behind you. Chalk it up as a random encounter gone awry.”
“But it obviously wasn’t just some random encounter. There’s something to all of this. It should be obvious now, shouldn’t it?”
“Nothing about this is very obvious, Mr. Vance. Except what I saw you doing.”
I think of arguing with her, think of listing off everything, even the fact that he’s hidden here all this time because I—
“I was simply restraining him,” I choose to say instead.
“That’s what he says as well. So I’m going to leave it at that.”
“At least he’s going to the station,” I say. “Maybe you can ask him what he knows about that building?”
“What building, Mr. Vance?”
The building, too? I try to stay calm.
“Tiffany must have told you,” I say. “That’s why we wanted to look at those records. Didn’t you help us get clearance for that?”
“I helped with that, sure,” she says. “And I vaguely remember something about a building, but what does that have to do with this?”
“He knows something about it,” I say, forcing my volume down. “There’s something going on. That’s why he’s here. You should at least ask him about it, right? See if he’s tied to it?”
“Mr. Vance, we may or may not even take him to the station. But if we do, it’ll be because of his demeanor, his lack of ID, possibly his vagrancy. But that’s a safety measure. For his safety. Other than that, I’m dropping it, so how bout you do the same? Drop it. Drop tonight, drop that building, drop the whole shebang.”
“Why would I drop it?”
“Because you just had an old man pinned to the ground, Mr. Vance, and you’re asking about some building as your followup.”
“It’s not like that. You make it sound like I just attacked him out of nowhere. There’s something going on here, officer. He knows something. You’ve got to do—”
“Look, Mr. Vance,” she says, arms folded. “I get that you think there’s some mystery to all of this, but that’s not my problem. That’s not my job. I did help, but I was helping for the sake of a friend. I’ll do that sometimes, help a friend even though I think I might regret it,” she looks at Tiffany, then scowls at me. “But I’m done now, Mr. Vance. I’m not looking into some building. I’m not asking questions about some building. Not to some bum, not to anyone. I’m done with it, regardless of wherever or whatever it is. I’m not a landscaper, not an architect, not a city historian, I’m a detective. You’re a businessman and I’m a detective and what we’re going to do now is get back to our actual vocations. Okay? Make it simple. Drop it.”
And just like that, she turns away from me. As if there’s no inexplicable tower. As if that bum doesn’t know something about it. As if the prison situation isn’t happening right under her nose. As if none of it is of any importance. None of it. As if I’m imagining it all. As if I’m—
“I’m not crazy,” I shout at her.
“Alex, don’t,” Tiffany says.
“Mr. Vance,” the cop turns around and shrugs slightly and says, “I don’t care. Drop it.”
“I won’t drop it, and you shouldn’t either, you should care,” I say, walking towards her. “That building appears out of nowhere, an insane man appears out of nowhere, accosts me, says it has to do with that building, and you, as an officer of the law, have a duty to care. How can you not care? How can you just stick your head in the sand? Are you a cop, or an ostrich? Well, what is it? What’s really going on? If you really cared about your friend, about Tiffany, you’d do something about all of this. What are you scared of?”
She takes a few steps in my direction and she’s in my face.
“Scared? The only thing I’m scared of, Vance, is that my friend works for you. No, Tiffany, I played nice. He’s way out of line. You hear me, Vance? I was being nice. But that wasn’t good enough for you. So let’s really hash it out.”
She looks at Tiffany, who’s covering her eyes, then looks back at me with an angry smirk.
“This is how it is, Vance,” she says, her restrained anger quieting and deepening her voice. “You’re going batshit. Totally. Fucking. Batshit. Everyone thinks it, even Tiffany thinks it. Don’t let her optimism fool you, Vance. She thinks it. And why? Because of some building? Oh, wow, there’s a weird building down the road. Are you dense, Vance? It’s a government monument. When are they not weird?” she laughs, pausing to look up, thinking of something, her voice relaxing slightly. “I think, deep down, you know that nothing is going on. You know that this shit is in your head, you know that no one built some damn building just to mess with you. But you can’t admit it because of that ego of yours. Ever since you came to this town, you’ve had that big ego of yours, and this is just more of the same. It’s just you making a big deal out of nothing so that you can feel important. That’s the real problem, Vance. Not some building. It’s you and your ego.”
“You’re wrong,” I spit out before I can wonder if she’s right. “That man knows something. There has to be some reason he came here. Why won’t you take it seriously?”
“Well, here’s one reason, Vance,” she says, laughing in my face before reaching into her back pocket. She pulls out and holds up the laminated piece of paper, the teal invitation. The bum must have given it to her. Suddenly, I feel an incredible urge to take it from her—but she simply hands it to me.
“Take that with you,” she says. “Add it to your collection of delusions if you want, but that’s why the bum was here, Vance. He’s not a stalker. He thinks he was invited. He has nothing else in life and he thought someone wanted him here. Judging by how much you talk about that damn building, it’s no wonder he thought of bringing that up, too. It’s as simple as that, Vance. You wanted some attention, and you got it. From some homeless guy. Aren’t you important?”
She walks away, to the front doors of the Yoga Center. She shouts over her shoulder for Tiffany to take me home and to be careful. As Tiffany comes close, I instinctively put the card in my pocket. I don’t want to get into it with her, just as I don’t want to confront her about her friend just now. It’s understandable that she didn’t want to discourage me by telling me how her friend really felt. I’m sure Tiffany didn’t want to think of her as so callous and irresponsible. Still, it would have helped to know that we were in this alone. But what’s done is done. I needed to start keeping more things to myself anyways.
Tiffany drives me home via a different route this time. I don’t know if she’s doing it on purpose, if she even remembers the monolith anymore, and I begin to feel a homesickness that has nothing to do with home. But I need to focus, I need to work out a plan for tomorrow morning. Part of me wants to discuss it with Tiffany, but most of me thinks it will be better to decide by myself.
Yes. First I have to decide.
I don’t see many other options, so it seems like an obvious decision. What other way do I have to weed out those who are working against me? Some of them are obvious, like the cop, I don’t need anyone like that cop. The rest, I think I have to test them. Tiffany may have learned her lesson from the cop’s outburst, but am I sure of that? Jasper was involved with those trees, but how much? Then there’s Regina, the toughest nut to crack. Regina and her obsession with my silence. And that has to be just the tip of the iceberg. My idea could bring out the whole iceberg, Tiffany, Jasper, Regina, and who knows who else. This new idea seems like the only option.
The car stops in front of my house. Tiffany says she’s sorry about her friend. About the whole night. Maybe meditating at home was a better idea, she says with a laugh. I nod, play agreeable, calm. She leans over to give me a hug goodbye. Which would be nice. But as I think of leaning towards her, there’s a strange pain in the back of my neck. My hand goes for the tiny spot of pain, but I stop myself and get out of the car. I tell Tiffany that I’ll see her in the morning then walk quickly into my home.
I sit on the couch and something poking my thigh distracts me from the pain in my neck. It’s the card. I pull it out, turn it over in my hands. Then I see the writing in white ink, the signature in the form of two letters, N and H. I see what I saw before I pinned the homeless man to the ground, and what I accepted when the cop held it out to me.
That signature proves I’m right. I have to go through with my new idea.
I have to, because I won’t stand for vagrants and police alike accosting me at my place of business. I won’t risk moles using my accomplishments against me. If I don’t know who to trust, if I don’t know who will really help, I won’t risk my business being compromised.
So I have to shut it down.
At least until I find out who is behind this. Someone close to me has to be behind this—and this card in my hand proves it. It’s a certainty now. This card is the key. This card, sent to and brought by the only person to acknowledge the crystalline monolith as the center of it all. A simple invitation turned monumental clue. No, turned monolithic clue—because of two letters, an N and an H, signed in my handwriting.
That proves it. Because, just like the signature that ordered the trees, there’s no way I signed an invitation sent to an inmate. It has to have been someone else. I’ll find out tomorrow. I’ll shut things down and get some answers.
For now, though… I should lie down. I’m exhausted. Meditation was harder than I thought.
Yeah, I’ll just rest my head right here, on the couch. These revelations are a real load off. I needed them, I really did. I feel relieved, or like I’m close to relief, like it’s the last stretch of a marathon…
It’s been so long since I’ve gone for a jog… And just as long since I’ve had some good sleep.
I just need to close my eyes…
But, then again, it’s also been so long since...
