The Incrementalists (8 page)

Here’s the thing: Anything in the Garden can be found by locating it along three of four axis lines. Ray calls them X, Y, Z and alpha. Most of the rest of us call them by more useful names: Who, Where, When and Why. Any three will do, in theory. In practice, that means knowing who seeded it, where the person who seeded it was, and when it was seeded, leaving Why undefined.

One axis must always be undefined, like a sort of psychic Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and that one is always Why. Why?

Because Why skips around a lot, and we pretty much ignore it. I mean, who knows why something happened? We either impose meaning on an event, or just shrug our shoulders. Why was the Civil War fought? To break the power of the Southern slaveholders so Eastern manufacturers could prosper? To preserve the Union? To defend the Southern homeland against invaders? To free slaves? To create a strong central government? Because a lot of pretty girls batted their eyelashes and convinced a lot of boys to go be heroes? To make a lot of national parks? When you get to a Why you don’t have an objective answer, so the Why, what Ray calls the alpha axis, floats around and you locate a memory using the other three.

In practice, if you’re Ray, you interpret these as numbers along the various axes and you simply concentrate on the place those numbers identify. For most of us, they’re locations, and we follow paths in the imaginary world we’ve created to interpret the Garden until the object appears. When I seed a memory, perhaps it’s a marble bust of Cicero on a pedestal in my atrium; but when Jimmy wants to graze it, he’ll climb stairs to the turret of a medieval castle and find a bottle of wine sitting on a table, which he’ll drink; to Irina it’s an actual garden, and maybe she’ll see a bright red rose which she’ll sniff, whereas perhaps Matt sees a multicolored stone in a rock garden and he’ll study its colors. It’s all the same memory, but how we reach it depends on us. And, however you say it, the memory is found by locating the Who, the Where, and the When, leaving the Why undefined and variable.

Once a memory has been seeded, except for stubs, it’s there forever. You can change the shape so it’s less obtrusive or your memory would get so cluttered you couldn’t find anything, but you can’t get rid of it, and you can’t move it without a deliberate act of will.

With me so far?

Next to where the bust of Juno had been was a ripe, red pomegranate. I knew that pomegranate; it contained Celeste’s penultimate memory, in which she reported on a just-completed piece of insignificant meddlework and spoke of going to see the “grandbratties.”

Between the pomegranate and the hole was nothing.

Celeste’s last memory was gone.

I stood there looking at where her last memory should have been, appearing to me as a
kithara,
and I knew what had happened. You can’t get rid of a memory once it’s been seeded. And there’s only one way it can move.

Who, Where, When and Why.

If the Why becomes known, one of the others becomes undefined.

I returned to the real world, turned off my cell phone, opened my laptop, and addressed an email to the group.

Ren

Phil was sleeping in his chair, the computer on his lap still open, mirroring his mouth in silent duet. For almost a day, I’d been certain Celeste was trying to assert her personality over mine, to swallow me up, or kill me, but it’d turned out to be Phil who was gunning for me. I considered hating him, but I went to the bathroom instead.

I turned the shower on and studied his shelf of tiny toiletries, letting the anger climb up my legs. I wanted my own goddamn shampoo. My hair is thin, and “rich conditioning formula” and “extra moisturizing” and “volumizing” all translate to limp and droopy on me. I wanted my shampoo and my spiky gel and my makeup and my fucking phone charger. I slammed the shower dial off, ran my fingers through my sad hair and crept back past Phil, still pinned to his chair like a butterfly.

I got my shoes and found his car keys, and went back to look at him again, a little embarrassed I wasn’t handling this better. Still, if he knew me so well, he should have known that running away isn’t out of my idiom. Broken mantel clocks stay broken, after all, no matter how much you didn’t mean to drop them, and your rage at that injustice does nothing for your terror of the holy hell you know you’re going to catch.

It wasn’t a long-term plan, but a room in a hotel that wasn’t The Palms under a name that wasn’t Renee Mathers felt closer to the back of Nana’s closet than anything else and would give me time to think. But not without my own damn shampoo.

I watched Phil a minute to make sure he was breathing. We both had reasons we’d rather not confess for why we had needed to pick up a clock and shake it. He’d risked maybe more than I had to bring Celeste back. He’d risked me, and yeah, I was still angry about it. But not so angry that I didn’t want to know why. Was it possible his reason and my most secret one were the same? Did he just want her love? I closed his laptop and brought a cotton blanket in from the bed to cover him. I touched one finger to his wild eyebrow, and it twitched. I brought my lips to the naked space between it and his hair, and kissed him, lightly, on the temple. But I didn’t leave a note.

Then again, neither had Celeste.

Phil

There are things about spending too much time in the Garden. One is that the real world takes a bit to adjust to, what with the sensory impressions being less vivid and not as compelling. Another is that it can be frustrating when the world doesn’t behave the way you want it to, and you can’t just make things appear, or change their shape, or move miles with a single step; you have to watch yourself, or you’ll be spending all of your time grinding your teeth, scowling at strangers, and imagining satisfying but nonproductive meddlework. Still another is that you eat too much and sleep too much.

It took a few minutes after I woke up to realize that Ren had bolted, and another few to realize she’d done so in my car. I made coffee and ate a bagel. Then I drank coffee and ate another bagel, this one toasted; I put cream cheese on it.

It was five in the afternoon, and I’d slept about twenty hours in the last day and a half. Not so good. I took a shower, standing under it for a lot longer than you’re supposed to when you live in the desert. I had some more coffee when I got out, after which I took a deep breath and checked the forums.

It was what I’d expected: panic in the ranks. People who hadn’t said a word in ten years were suddenly chiming in, scared and disoriented. The most useful post was from Ray. He said he’d done a graze on a few random memories, and so far as he could tell, the Garden was intact. He pointed out that this had happened a few times before, and we’d dealt with it; he’d be pulling in those memories to figure out the next step. Meantime, he doubted panic would be all that helpful and suggested that perhaps Salt could meet in person after we knew more.

However much Ray and I have irritated each other—and we’ve done so a lot—at times like this there is no comfort like having a scientific mind at work on the problem.

I poured another cup of coffee, then turned on my cell phone and checked my voice mail. I had fourteen messages, which was fewer than I’d been afraid of. I listened to them all. One was from the dentist’s office reminding me that I was due for a checkup. Twelve were from members of the group, either panicking or telling me I shouldn’t. The last was from Irina, and it just said, “Call me.”

I was deciding whether to do so when she walked through the door. She stared at me and said, “I didn’t think you were home.”

“I assumed that when you barged in.”

“Nice bathrobe. Where’s your car?”

“Ren has it.”

“Where is Ren?”

“Either back in Phoenix, or in a hotel room in town under an assumed name.”

“She bolted?”

I nodded.

“Any more coffee?”

I nodded again.

Irina helped herself, sat down on the stool next to me, and said, “You should have seen this coming.”

“Good to see you, too, Irina. How’s the sugar spoon?”

“Don’t be glib. We have a problem here.”

“Weren’t you seeing someone last year? How did that work out?”

“Stop it, Phil. We need to decide what to do.”

“I love your hair this way.”

“Cartophilus!”

I put my coffee cup down. “What the fuck do you want from me, Iri?”

“Christ Jesus, Phil. Ren’s walking around with the brand-new memories of a suicide, and she bolted. You don’t think we need to find her?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s doing what she needs to do. And I’m not going to get in her way. I owe her that much at least.”

“I do not,” said Irina carefully, “give a good goddamn what you owe her. I’m worried about what it is she thinks she needs to do. Have you any clue what that might be?”

“Nope,” I said, and drank more coffee.

“So you’re just going to sit here?”

“Actually,” I said, “I was thinking about playing some poker.”

Irina used several expressions I hadn’t heard in years, not all of them in English. I waited it out. When she’d run down, I said, “You don’t think Ren can take care of herself?”

“Right now? With all this going on? I don’t think any of us can take care of ourselves. This is not the time to let a new Second go off on her own.”

I shrugged. “I think it’s exactly the time. Let her settle, let her deal with some of—”

“Have you spoken with Ramon?”

“No. Why?”

“Do you know what it means that we can’t find Celeste’s last memory?”

“In general, it means—”

“Specifically. The ramifications. For Ren and for all of us.”

“Not entirely,” I said. “So?”

“So what is happening in Ren’s head, Phil?”

“I imagine it’s the usual integration—”

“No. It’s not usual when you’ve just gotten the memories of a suicide. Eleanor and Gaston aside, we don’t do that often. And to have Celeste’s last memory go missing in the Garden—what’s it doing to her?”

I exhaled. “Okay. Point. I’ll call her.”

She nodded. I pushed Ren’s number and it went right to voice mail. I should have stopped to figure out what sort of message to leave, but I never think of that. I said, “It’s Phil. Celeste’s last memory has gone missing in the Garden. We’re a bit worried about what her memories will be doing to your head. I understand your desire to have some time to think this through, but I’d appreciate a call, just for reassurance.”

I disconnected. “Satisfied?”

“Not remotely. But it’s a start.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Give her twelve hours. If we don’t hear from her, we find her.”

“All right,” I said. “But I’m sure she’s fine.”

Ren

I left the valet tag for Phil at the hostess stand of the 24/7 Café at The Palms. She understood completely. So easy to leave with your boyfriend’s ticket in your bag by mistake. If he came by, she’d be sure to explain for me. I crept like a spy down the hall to my own room, rifled through it for the essentials, and left again without letting the door make a noise and without turning on the lights. If Irina was listening at our shared door, she wouldn’t have heard a thing. The doorman just nodded when I asked for “the hotel with the roller coaster” and told the cabbie to drive me to New York, New York, Las Vegas without a hint of irony. I guess he’s had stranger instructions.

In an authentic New York touch, the guy behind the front desk was cute enough to be an out-of-work actor. I gave him an extra fifteen bucks for a room with a carefully enunciated “beautiful city view,” and didn’t ask which city. I told him my husband would be arriving soon with our bags, and he acted like he believed me. Someone should cast that guy.

Although all I wanted was to get to my room, close the curtains, and give some serious thought to my ridiculous situation, I was too hungry to concentrate on anything else. But the groutless cobblestones and indoor sidewalk seating were more compressed and wrong in time and locale than I could handle. I walked into the hotel shop and picked up a Twix and Mountain Dew, but I put them back; calm costs more than courage, and you can’t buy a can of perspective anywhere.

“Welcome to Nine Fine Irishmen. Will you be dining alone this evening?” Phil owed me more than Liam, but Liam was buying.

I nodded and the hostess led me upstairs, deposited me with a menu, a wine list and the information that the bartender, Elise, would take care of me. I knew she couldn’t, but I said, “Thanks,” and climbed onto a barstool.

“What can I get you?” Elise was almost my height, but slimmer. Younger too, with sweet, black bangs that almost covered her darkly lined eyebrows.

“I’m starving and exhausted,” I told her. “I want whatever you can bring me quickly that isn’t deep fried or made out of lettuce.”

“Salmon all right?”

“Perfect.”

“You got it,” she said, and disappeared around the side of the bar. I’d never been particularly attracted to women before, but there was something in her shoulders and back that felt important, an urgency in her hands, even just pouring my water, and something in the set of her jaw that added a new twist of nervous excitement to my strange stew of exhaustion and anxiety.

Elise pushed the water across the muted wood bar to me. “Want anything else to drink?” she asked.

“I’d take a glass of wine, if you’ll have one with me,” I said.

“I don’t do chicks.”

“Neither do I.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, and I couldn’t help noticing what it did for her figure, but I also knew that wasn’t the point. Everything about her—her purple-white skin and the cherry bomb lipstick that didn’t match it, her small, natural breasts and the bra doing unnatural things to them—every detail of her was brilliant and real, held in a hyperfocus that extended just past her body, but no farther.

“You just looked like you could use one was all,” I explained.

We can see when people’s lives are at a pivot; Phil had told me: shoulders, hands and jaw. He hadn’t said it was so exciting.

“Hey, Elise!” A tiny blonde waitress stood on tiptoe at the server’s end of the bar. “Can I get a little dish of cherries for this kid at table nine?”