Secret Lives (6 page)

Through his tears, however, with the electric jolt of another kind of joy, his vision cleared and he noticed others like him standing silent in the park—invisible, omniscient, part of the world, lost in the sensation of no one seeing them in their magnificent camouflage.

JENNIFER SEAUX

Jennifer Seaux is an orchid grower and a retired ad executive. For a long time, those in surveillance who read her private journal on a regular basis thought her secret life was hearing the voices of her orchids. According to these journal entries, the voices manifested as a burbling murmur, an aristocratic mumble, a slight drunken slur while she misted them. “I like the idea of the orchids having voices. I like the idea of hearing them,” she wrote. But, later, when the voices became distinct and clear, she realized they weren’t the voices of the plants at all: they were the voices of the employees she worked with, or the voices of actors who performed in radio and television advertisements. It made her wonder if she’d really retired after all. It made the tenor of her journal entries change, the frequency of her entries more intermittent. Soon, it became clear to those in surveillance that Seaux was writing a book. But what kind of book? A subversive book? A book that ought to be suppressed? Or something harmless? As day followed day, the cover of Seaux’s journal began to gather dust. Instead, she spent hours at the computer, typing madly. About the voices of flowers. About the voices of advertising executives. About people she imagined might be watching her. About something fresh and green struggling to reach the air through deep, fertile soil. Soon, those in surveillance lost their interest. Seaux was writing a novel. They had no interest in novels. In time, they dismantled the hidden camera and audio feeds. They stopped taking photographs of the outside of her home. They moved on to the next case. You could say that Seaux had written them out of her life . . . As for Seaux’s novel, you may wonder what happened to it. Without surveillance we cannot be sure of anything, but you may be reading part of it right now.

JEFF GORDON

Jeff Gordon is a ceramic artist who enjoys gardening and telling people where to go when they ask if he realizes he shares a name with a famous NASCAR driver. “I am a gardener, not a motor vehicle enthusiast,” he tells them, “so this information elicits no emotional response from me whatsoever except for a weary scorn regarding your lack of originality.” Although, under the duress of tough questioning, perhaps after a drink or two, Gordon might admit that the gardening has gotten out of control. And perhaps the ceramics, too. “The thing is,” he might say, if given the chance to unload his secret burden, “people don’t realize the imperfect status of their gardens, their houses. They have no sense of the improvements that could be made.”

At first, Gordon helped jump-start these improvements in his own neighborhood. At three in the morning, dressed all in black and slathered in an insect repellent an incompetent friend told him was loathed by dogs, he began to sneak out of his home armed with a potted plant and/or some ceramic marvel—an owl, a small fountain, a replica of the Taj Mahal constructed meticulously from a mold fashioned over several months. Thus equipped, Gordon would plant his plants in the yards of lawn-retarded neighbors and add his ceramic gift to some part of the outside of their home.

However, the panic of sudden alarms, lights, and enthusiastic dogs in love with his repellent scent, and a pulse suddenly at a dangerous level, persuaded him to at least go farther afield. (“My neighbors would never appreciate it anyway,” he often mutters.)

So now he roams to more fertile fields, having bought a van to help convey the instruments of his secret life. Every Sunday morning, some sleep-droopy husband or wife pads out in ridiculous slippers to collect the newspaper, only to notice a new cascading trellis of bougainvillea—or, even more likely, a huge, man-sized ceramic owl, plunked down by the front door, to draw attention from the, to Gordon’s expert eye, ridiculous rattan rocking chairs that some “aesthetically challenged moron” had placed there previously.

Gordon, as may be obvious by now, is much more than a garden-variety ceramics and plant enthusiast. He may fairly be called “obsessed.”

DAVE DRISCOLL

Dave Driscoll enjoys shooting guns. For many years he dreamed of meeting Philip K. Dick and Sam Peckinpah on the same night. Despite serving as a professor of humanities, he long understood the impossibility of this, both parties being dead. However, since the summer of 2005, he has spent no little time and effort on the most practical next best thing: building a time machine. He knew (and still knows) that in 1973 Dick and Peckinpah met in a Berkeley, California, bar for about half an hour. If he could only focus on that particular moment, he would be able to make his dream a reality.

Experimenting with several psychotropic and psychedelic drugs, varying the electrical currents passed through his extremities, carefully watching the documentary
Le Jete
more than one hundred times, and using stolen equipment from the labs of friends in harder sciences than the humanities, Driscoll finally managed to create precisely the right conditions in the right combination on October 29, 2006. Before strapping himself onto the time travel table, Driscoll—as he always did before a “PDKSP Attempt,” as he called them in his journal, to avoid discovery—strapped two holsters with handguns to his sides and held onto an old shotgun he’d picked up in a thrift shop. “You never can tell what you might meet,” he once wrote in his journal. “Old flames. Old enemies. Other people traveling into the past.”

Driscoll materialized in the bar at its farthest end—ahead of him, the bar itself, the stools, the bartender, the open door, a rectangle of light against the gloom, and framed by it: Philip K. Dick, sitting back on his stool, and Sam Peckinpah hunched over in deep monologue, both nursing whiskeys.

Peckinpah had his back to Driscoll, but Driscoll still recognized that distinctive back from the many old photographs he had examined late at night as part of his research.

Dick, meanwhile, was staring right at Driscoll, mouth wide, a look of horror on his face. Driscoll realized Dick had just seen him appear out of thin air.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Driscoll said, aiming his shotgun at the floor. “I’m not from the government. I’ve nothing to do with your wife or any ex-wives. I just—I’m just a big fan of you both.”

Dick was still making his amazed face, managing to say to Peckinpah, “He’s got a gun. He appeared out of nowhere. It’s just like I said. Just like I said.”

In slow motion—or so it seemed to Driscoll—Peckinpah turned, saw Driscoll, took in the weapons at his side, the shotgun pointed down, and drew his own gun, a Colt .45, and fired. Driscoll jumped to the side and the shot missed.

“No, no—don’t fire. I’m a friend!” Driscoll shouted as the bartender ran out the door, followed by as many customers as thought they could make it. Dick and Peckinpah stayed put.

“He’s a fucking demon or a devil or a wizard or something,” Dick ranted.

Peckinpah said nothing but fired again, right over Driscoll’s head, where he lay protected by an overturned table.

“Don’t shoot!” Driscoll cried out. “I’m from your future. I just wanted to meet you guys.”

“Shoot him, Sam,” Dick shouted. “He’s a government assassin—from the future!”

Peckinpah fired twice more, striking the wood of the table and sending up chips.

Driscoll returned fire for his own protection, but aimed high. The smell of gunpowder and smoke got in his nostrils. His heart was beating fast. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. Not at all.

Peckinpah, who had remained silent the whole time, fired a fifth time, an inch from Driscoll’s head.

Mercifully, the drugs began to fade and the electrical currents pulsating through Driscoll’s extremities turned off, and he slowly began to return to his own time. As he left, he saw one last time the horrified look on Philip K. Dick’s face.
What a paranoid bastard
, Driscoll thought.

When he came to on his time travel table, he realized he never wanted to see Peckinpah or Dick again.

RICK AND PEGGY

Rick works as a commercial credit officer at a bank and has an obsession with H.P. Lovecraft. This might be why he refers to the bank’s managers as “The Old Ones” and believes that at night they creep into the vault and shed their human disguises,
shuggothing
and
writhing about
, bathing in the money that carries the secret Masonic Old Ones symbol on it. In his secret life, unknown even to his good friend Peggy, Rick is a 24-7 Lovecraft apologist. In a secret bungalow outside of the city, Rick keeps sophisticated tracking equipment so that he can monitor the media day and night. Whenever he comes across a negative reference to Lovecraft, he fires off a missive via snail or e-mail, using one of his many aliases. He considers this his holy duty. For example, when in the summer of 2004 the writer Jeff VanderMeer scoffed at the hideous effectiveness of the giant penguins in Lovecraft’s
In the Mountains of Madness
for a
Locus Online
article, Rick immediately sent a letter to the editor under the name “Gerald Rebarb” that stated in part, “Clearly VanderMeer has never set foot in the Mountains of Madness.” It is a little-known fact that ninety percent of all letters and emails to the editor concerning Lovecraft originate with Rick.

Meanwhile, his friend Peggy ostensibly works as a stylist, making drab products look beautiful for advertisements. In truth, her main job is protecting Rick from the Old Ones that work at the bank. As the great-great-great granddaughter of Dexter Ward, and privy to all of the secrets of the Mad Arab, Peggy has considerable experience in this area. Using as her latest cover the search for a new house, Peggy spends a lot of time saving Rick’s ass from various plots by the Old Ones. For it is Rick’s fate to be an unknowing nexus, or portal, into the Old Ones’ universe, which is the real reason he obsesses over Lovecraft. He cannot escape his fate yet has no inkling of it. He
certainly
doesn’t understand Peggy’s worries about his belly button. “Keep it clean of lint,” she repeatedly tells him. “Make sure your pants or shirt covers it at all times,” she says. “Who knows what might come out of it?!” Rick’s fairly sure nothing is coming out of it, but Peggy knows better. One day, an entire universe might devour our own.

Sometimes Peggy is even behind the bank building, battling the green tentacular strength of the Old Ones, while oblivious Rick works in the front, attending to clients. Naturally, this takes a lot of energy and physical prowess on Peggy’s part, so it’s only understandable that she might from time to time get irritated. When Rick asks how her house search is going, Peggy says between gritted teeth, “It’s going fine.”

It’d be going much better
, she thinks,
if the Old Ones didn’t gravitate toward you like bears to honey pots. It’d be going much better if you weren’t such a
portal!

Still, she’s his friend for the long haul, and it could be worse.
At least he’s not writing missives day and night in support of Lovecraft or something nuts like that
, she thinks. Unlike the crackpots Rick’s always pointing out to her in the letters-to-the-editor columns of various respected periodicals.

GAYLE DEVEREAUX

Gayle Devereaux lived most of her life in Washington state, but moved to Atlanta, Georgia, a few years ago. She likes to swim in Florida springs and has a son in college named Rob; sometimes, she thinks the two facts are related. Gayle renovated the old house she now lives in, and sometimes her family comes to visit her there. (As does Dan, her talented yet humble boyfriend.) Among her many talents are cooking and an appreciation of good beer. But these particular talents do not constitute her secret life. No, her secret life involves another talent entirely. She’s had this talent for many years, but only recently became reacquainted with it. As a child, she first discovered her secret proclivity, but it long ago became enmeshed in the wash and warp of early memories, as distant as her first encounter with a bumblebee, her first lick of ice cream, her first ferris wheel ride. (Alone, sitting cross-legged in the sun on warm grass, next to a large, long rock eaten through by lichen. The green smell of grass and distant flowers. The feel of the tickly ground. And then the sly scuttle onto the stone: a small brown lizard or gecko, head bobbing, throat pink and throbbing. A trickling giggle from Gayle at the sight, a subconscious thought—a wisp of a thought, lighter than cotton candy—and her secret talent manifested, the lizard become as skillful as any Catskills song-and-dance man.)

Recently, Gayle’s secret life manifested itself again. Sitting alone outside on her deck in the backyard, contented as she sipped a bottle of beer, a thin line of green—thin as a papercut—sped across the edge of her vision. Turning, she caught a glimpse of a tiny reptilian tail, a clever, narrow eye, claws light as sharpened pencil points gripping wood. And suddenly, Gayle remembered the first lizard, buried in her past, and what had happened on that long-ago afternoon.

As she remembered it, the lizard on the edge of her deck rose onto its hindlegs and began to sway, foot forward, foot back, foot to the left, foot to the right. And slowly, by the ones and the twos and then the dozens, a torrent of lizards scuttled up to her deck and began to dance and gyrate and even do a little soft shoe, while she watched with a sense of astonishment, but also fear, because she had no idea how she had conjured up this vision, or how to unconjure it. Bright eyes staring up at her. The almost-silent scrape and patter of lizard foot and lizard tail. The faint sounds of delight issuing from their throats. Was she drunk? Were they? And why just lizards? She had no answer to any of these questions. People rarely understand the
whys
of their secret lives. Sometimes your secret life is just thrust upon you, without explanation.