Dream Guy (16 page)

“What am I doing here now, Joe?”

He explained about Smokey, about the police, about his mother. Nell did not begin to look any more sympathetic, but she did appear less affronted. She sighed as Joe trailed off.

“You have no idea how this dreaming thing works, do you?”

“No.”

“Can you control whether you dream or not?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t dream this past weekend.”

“Did you draw anything?”

Joe thought about it. He’d fiddled about with his Life at the Knightleys strip for Dad, but other than that and the painting of Smokey on Sunday evening, he had not drawn anything.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that you dream when you draw?”

“But I didn’t draw the Sardinia dream—or the nightclub dream when Smokey and I went out in the limo. And I’ve never drawn you.” Although even as Joe said that, he knew that what he wanted most at this very minute was to draw Nell and keep her with him forever. Having her near was the only good thing that had come out of this whole business.

“Did you find the Turkish scholar guy?”

“I did. He said he hadn’t heard anything like it before, but he would see what he could do to help.”

They stopped talking. The carpet was hovering above a manicured lawn which undulated away on all sides as far as Joe could see. Above was a cerulean sky. That was all. There was no other relief to the scenery, just mown grass as though the carpet had become a raft on an emerald-green sea.

“This is actually quite restful,” said Nell after a long while. Then she returned to her book. Joe agreed with her, although he didn’t say so out loud. He reached out to see what she was reading. She held it away from him and said, “You just have to ask, you know.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s by Freud. It’s about wish fulfillment. Do you know what your wishes are, Joe?”

“I have no wishes.” Which was a lie.

Nell didn’t say, ‘Oh, yeah,’ out loud but her expression was perfectly readable. It occurred to Joe that he really didn’t know what he would do with a wish. He’d wished for a car without thinking twice about the consequences, and now he was lumbered with a huge yellow monster he wouldn’t be able to drive for the next eleven years.

He looked again at Nell, watching as her eyes ran over the print before her, noting the fine bones of her hand and wrist as she turned the pages, the elegant length of her limbs and the delicate elongated fingers with neat, trimmed fingernails. Her hands were those of a woman, not a child. She wore no rings, no earrings, no jewelry at all. He still did not know what he wished for. She put down the book.

“Where are we?”

“Here.” Joe looked round again at the emptiness. “Wherever this is.”

“What about our physical bodies? Smokey’s physically in the hospital, but he’s also in the picture, isn’t he? So where are our bodies?”

“In our rooms at home, I guess.”

“Does that mean we’re in a sort of coma? This is weird.”

Joe lay back and closed his eyes. To Nell’s alarm, the carpet began to move.

“Hey, what are you doing now, Joe?”

“Wait and see.”

The carpet rose about a meter above the ground and as it moved, the sky darkened to indigo, the stars like pinpricks in its fabric. Nell put out a hand, as though she could scoop up the color and hold it. It grew colder and colder as they rushed through the dusky air, and the stars were soon quenched by the streetlights of the town below. The carpet began its descent and Nell started to recognize landmarks from the town, from their zone, from her street, from her house. Then they were hovering outside her window.

“Look inside. Is your body there?” Joe did not open his eyes at first, but then he squinted to see what was going on.

The carpet hovered at the window. Nell put her hands on the ledge and peered in through a chink in the curtains. “I think I can see my legs. Now let’s go to your house. We can see through the Velux into your room, unless you’ve drawn the blind.”

They skimmed over the rooftops, avoiding aerials and chimneys, disconcerting one cat out on the prowl and rousing several dogs into a frenzy of unnerved barks. Somebody threw open a window and called out into the unheeding night, “Shut that bloody dog up, or I’ll do it for you.” The dog was summoned inside, which only slightly muffled its bemused baying.

Then they were fluttering over the Knightleys’ house, the carpet shimmying a little as Joe kept it steady, allowing Nell to look in.

“You’re there. You’re lying on your rug. Your ordinary rug, not this one.”

Joe steered the carpet away from the window and back toward the light of the great meadowlands where they had first found themselves. The carpet was silent as a glider. They could hear only a faint whisper of air as they traveled faster and faster toward the sunlight.

Joe opened his eyes and sat up. The carpet landed on the grass, which was lush and soft.

“So we’re there, but we’re here. What happens if someone comes in and wakes us up? I suppose the whole thing disperses if it’s you and if it’s me, they think I’m unconscious and freak out.”

The idea clearly did not appeal to Nell. “I think we should go and visit Smokey in hospital tomorrow, check up on him. And if he looks really out of it, I think you’re going to have to get him out of that picture.”

“What if I got all the teachers into a picture? Then they’d all be sick and they’d have to close the school for a while. You can’t have kids in school if half the teachers are absent.”

“What picture could you get them into? But you’d have to draw them all. It would take you forever. You’d have to do, what, fifty portraits?”

“Probably more, just to be on the safe side, and I don’t know half of the staff. There are all those people in the sixth form section who never come near us.” Joe started thinking about pictures into which he could dump the teachers—crowd scenes, maybe from some of the French Revolution paintings that he’d looked up for his history project or perhaps one of those crazy medieval paintings that Crosbie loved so much with roses growing out of people’s bottoms. It was a great distraction from facing up to what Nell had said. Joe didn’t want to see Smokey. He remembered his other problem.

“What was Meeky doing today?”

“Don’t know. I never see him around. He was horrible at primary school, and I don’t suppose he’s improved any. We’re not in any of the same classes.”

“Bet he’s tried to muscle in on Smokey’s operation. I just hope Smokey hasn’t blabbed about where he got the stuff.”

“What’s he going to say? ‘I got this really great gear from a lightning trip I took to Sardinia courtesy of my good friend Joe, who will dream you to your ideal holiday destination, with or without narcotic substances.’ Get a grip, Joe. Your secret is safe.”

“I’ll have to bring Liesel tomorrow. It’s my turn to pick her up, and no one will be at home to look after her. Ben’s off at work on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“That’s fine. I can keep an eye on her while you go to see Smokey.”

* * * *

So the next afternoon, much against Liesel’s will, Joe and Nell levered her into the thirty-nine bus that went past the Royal Hospital, and they bribed her with a teen comic and a bag of Maltesers to sit still in the waiting room. Nell took out her books and Joe reluctantly edged down the corridor, surprised at how empty and quiet the place was. Given all the bulletins on the news about overcrowding and bed shortages, the place was spookily silent. He could see one nurse at a reception desk. He went up and asked where he could find Silas Murphy. She had warm brown eyes and a Ghanaian accent. She pointed him across the passageway to another door, and he went in.

Joe hadn’t known what to expect. He’d had a vague idea that it would be like an ER and that there’d be machines bleeping and buzzing everywhere. But it was just Smokey, lying there, his mum holding his hand, her eyes sunken and her shoulders rounded. Smokey looked smaller than in everyday life. His crinkly hair had been shaved off and there was one electronic sensor on the side of his head just above his ear and another on his neck, both stark and white against his café au lait skin. His eyes were closed tightly, the dark eyelashes furled like scimitars, his usually mobile mouth quiet and closed, his chest rising and falling steadily. When Mrs. Murphy turned around to see who had come in, Joe noticed the silvery tracks of tears on her cheeks, as fragile as a snail’s trail. He swallowed.

“How is he, Mrs. Murphy?”

“No change. It’s good of you to come, Joe, especially when he’s in such trouble.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Murphy.”

“So am I, Joe, so am I.” Her shoulders convulsed and she raised her hands to cover her face. He could only just make out her words. “Where did we go wrong? Where?”

“You didn’t. It wasn’t you.”

But Mrs. Murphy didn’t hear him. Joe stood there, feeling so out of place it ached, and knowing he had to return home to get Smokey out of the picture immediately. But he couldn’t leave just yet. He had to spend a bit of time with Smokey, otherwise it would look really odd.

Just then, a man’s voice came through the door.

“Mrs. Murphy? We’ve got the latest test results here. Do you want to step outside and we can discuss them?”

Joe looked up at the doctor. He was wearing a pale-blue open-necked shirt and navy chinos under his white coat. His eyes were puffy and ringed with dark circles, but Joe still recognized the man from his dreams. The thief from the nightclub. The man standing on the decking by the swimming pool in Sardinia. The doctor blanked him, but Joe knew he’d registered his presence.

“Would you mind sitting with Silas while I talk to Dr. Dolon, Joe?”

“Of course not. However long it takes.”

The two adults left the four-bed ward for the main corridor, just within Joe’s sightline. Dr. Dolon lifted a clipboard thick with paper. He showed the first page to Mrs. Murphy then flicked through the rest of the pages.

Joe leaned forward. He felt uncomfortable about taking Smokey by the hand, but he felt equally lemon-like just sitting there gazing at the body of his friend. He couldn’t imagine talking to him. The idea made Joe squirm. There was a noise at the door. Nell was there.

“The day nurse is keeping an eye on Liesel. She said if I wanted to visit, this would be a good time.” She looked over at Smokey. Her jaw clenched, her lips thinned and she crossed her arms. “Poor guy.”

“You don’t like him.”

“I don’t. And I laughed when I saw him racing around that painting. But this is awful. How are you going to get him out?”

“Repaint the picture without the statue in it. That’s the way it worked last time. I drew him in and he was trapped there.”

Nell waited until Mrs. Murphy came back. She and Joe stood up, and she caught a glimpse of Dr. Dolon. It looked to Joe like she didn’t recognize him at all. As she exchanged platitudes with Mrs. Murphy, Dr. Dolon turned and met Joe’s eyes full on. He smiled. It wasn’t a proper smile, more like a threat. His eyes did not crease up and he seemed to be keeping himself leashed, a lean feline simply waiting for its moment. He slipped one hand into a pocket.

Dolon sounded professional and kind. Silas should show some signs of improvement in a day or two, but in the meantime, he had to be kept under observation. If they came back later in the week—say Friday—they ought to be able to see him up and about. But no one would be discharging him for quite a few weeks. He’d have to go into the psychiatric wing once he’d come out of this coma, then there’d be months of therapy. After that, the police were talking about prosecution and a term in some sort of juvenile detention center. Mrs. Murphy drew a tissue out of her bag and wiped her eyes before they could brim over. Then she blew her nose, straightened and dismissed the two kids.

“There’s no need for you to hang about here, dears. It was very good of you to come, but Silas is out of it for the moment. If you like, I can call as soon as he surfaces.”

“Yes, please, if you would,” said Nell. Joe shook hands with Mrs. Murphy. Then he had to walk past Dolon and the doctor’s steady, suspicious gaze. Joe could feel the doctor’s eyes following him down the corridor. Once they had turned the corner into the waiting area, he turned to Nell and whispered where he’d met the man before.

“Just wait until we’ve got to your house. Then you can talk about it.”

Liesel was sitting flicking through the dog-eared pages of a celebrity magazine, muttering “split up, together, split up, split up, split up, together, rumored to be splitting, split up, split up, split up.”

She looked up. “They’ve got like forty couples in this magazine and only about five of them are still together. Do you think there’s a curse if you appear in it?”

“That’s not a new idea, Liesel.”

Liesel dumped the magazine and put on her coat and bag without a murmur. Joe shook his head in disbelief. He’d have been given a nonstop earache if he’d tried the same move with his sister, but Nell made it seem totally natural to shepherd her out of the hospital.

“How’s Smokey?”

“Out cold,” replied Joe, “but they say he should be okay in a couple of days.”

“His sisters are really worried. They keep acting as if he’s going to die or something. Is he going to die?”

“No. He is not going to die. He is going to be fine. He’ll be back plaguing Carmel and Louise in a week, if not sooner.” Joe didn’t say so, but he did think that Smokey’s sisters were little madams who’d be milking this episode for all the sympathy they could get, since they scarcely got the time of day from most people under normal circumstances.

Their bus came and Liesel decided to embarrass the other two by interrogating Nell at full volume about whether she was dating Joe and if she fancied him, and how Nell ought to know that he was a real minger, even if girls did fancy him. The rest of the bus failed to stifle their chuckles and stared mercilessly at the two teenagers. As they walked from the bus stop to the Knightleys’ house, Nell said to Joe, “Perhaps I should go on the bus with Liesel more often. It’s one way of convincing little old ladies that I’m not going to happy-slap them.” Then she looked down at Liesel. “So which girls fancy him then, Liesel?”