Mandolin Dream - Chapter VII.ii
[Anthony] London, One year ago
Terry repeated the question. "Are you sure?"
I nodded, but held up a hand. "I need to use the loo first." I stood up and walked to the back of the pub. The wooden panels leading to the restrooms revolved noisily and reminded me of an old west saloon. I took my time. Thinking back to the last time I took a piss. I couldn't remember. Once I was all zipped up again, I turned and saw myself in the mirror above the sink. I looked like proper shit. A small voice in the back of my mind, whispered "at least you're not dead." Van was gone, but I could feel him about. Not in a new-agey-whiffly-wobbly kind of way, but in a concrete crushing-weight-of-the-world kind of way.
After washing my hands, I threw some cold water onto my head and face, most of it slid off my thinning hair and got stuck in my greying beard. I spent a few minutes trying to dry myself, and used way too many brown paper hand towels.
I was about to push the panels to get back into the pub, when I heard Hobson's voice. I raised my eyes and saw Terry look briefly my way. He said to Hobson, "He's gone, went upstairs, I think."
"I know what you were about to do, and you can't. You won't. We've been working on this for a long time and we're almost there. You know it had to go this way. It was the only way to fulfill the contract."
"This can't be just about squeezing another book out of this world. It seems like there were better ways to go about it." Terry said.
"There may have been, but in the end, Van's death was unavoidable." Hobson said.
"Why? Seems like you could've done something about it. You've done more in lesser circumstances."
"True, but not in this case. For some reason his death is one of those anchors in the world. It can't be changed. I've gone through the files and found that no matter what's done or not done, Van dies. It's actually pretty fucking weird. This kind of consistency is usually reserved for important historical figures and people of consequence. I'll tell you something else. From what I learned, in every world, every single one, someone tries to save him, and it just accelerates the shut down. So be happy that I didn't try. You might not be around, none of this would still be here if I did."
Terry looked over Hobson's shoulder right at me and said to Hobson. "Is all of this data available through the Terminal upstairs?"
"You know it is. Why? Thinking of doing some reading? You've never been interested in accessing it before. If I remember correctly, you said it was 'not natural.' You trying to change your luddite ways?"
"Nah. I just think it might be worthwhile if I read up on this a little, given the mistake I was about to make. Probably time, I took the work a little more seriously. I'd like to help Anthony, be there for him, but don't want to go causing any problems, for you."
Hobson looked up at Terry. I couldn't see his face but I could tell that he was trying to assess what Terry had just said.
"Hmmm. That's mighty professional of you all of a sudden." He said. "I have to get going. Stuff to take care of. Don't tell him anything. He's on the right path."
The moment Hobson left, I came through the door. Terry looked at me, put his finger to his lips and waved me out of the bar. He pointed up. He wanted me to go to the flat and find this Terminal thing that he and Hobson had talked about. There was no computer of any kind up there. We'd been there often enough and that was something that I would have noticed.
I looked through the flat, focussing on odder locations, in all of the random nooks and crannies of the place, in the sofa, the kitchen cabinets. Hell, I even opened up the back of the toilet. I had no idea what I was looking for. I went into Van' room. The smell of maple-vanilla pipe tobacco permeated the room, still. We used this flat once or twice a year, but he smoked enough in here to have permanently changed the air. It always bothered me. I inhaled deeply and sat on the unmade bed. There were books, CDs and sheet music strewn about. I was hesitant to move any of it. There was a cork board by the small desk opposite the bed. Van had tacked a bunch of different things to it. It looked like a moodboard to his life. There was a lapel pin from the Prisoner, a picture of the dog he'd grown up with, a rewritable CD with "crap" written on it in wide black marker. It hung from a pin stuck out of the board. I spun it a little. There were notes here and there, important sentences and sayings, from books and music, even a couple from us, born out of substance-fuelled evenings. There were a bunch of pictures as well, most overlapped with each other and everything else up there. They fought to be seen, to stick out. There was that composite picture of us in front of the pub. Our first visit here so many years ago. He'd done a great job stitching them together. There was another black and white image of us at a small cafe in Paris. We were so young. That was when we'd first met June. She had taken that picture.
He was my brother, and he was no more. The pain came quick and threatened to overwhelm me. This wasn't the time. I worried a little that it would never be time. I curled up on the bed and cried until I fell asleep.
"Anthony. Wake up. Anthony" Terry stood over me. He shook my arm gently. "You need to get going. Hobson will be back soon. You need to get gone." Now that I was awake, he didn't feel the need for a gentle touch. He lifted me out of Van's bed and dropped me on my feet.
"Terry? I—"
"Take this." He handed me an old canvas bag. "I've packed everything you'll need." When I didn't move, he pushed it into my chest, forcing my arms closed around it. "I can't know where you're going, or what you plan on doing." He put a couple of fingers in his jeans, and hooked out a set of keys. "Take the car. You'll need to stay off the radar, and it's your best bet.
"What do you—"
"The car is downstairs by the door." When I didn't move, he got behind me and pushed me out the door, down the stairs and into the car. "Off with ya."
