"You see it don't you?" Taylor asks. I shut the door and sit down in the chair by the desk.
"Yeah I see it."
The floor is no longer a liquid thing, but the movement in my spine is worse. Putting a hand to my face, I feel it, as well as hand and face, as things apart from myself, as if the sensation is being fed to me by radio wave.
"One night I woke up in a stranger's apartment," I say, and don't look to see if Taylor is listening. It doesn't matter. The words come on their own, indifferent to their audience. "But by the end of the night it was mine. Now I know it was mine, but at the time it felt like another man's apartment, and the clothes in it were another man's clothes. But they fit me. Everything fit. And when I went into the bathroom this line was on my face."
I point to it, running a finger from my forehead to cheek and feeling nothing, but the line is there whether I feel it or not. I know that now.
"I wasn't too worried about the line. It didn't matter. I went out and I forgot about it. By the time I got back to the apartment I'd forgotten everything. It was my place, and the clothes were mine. The line was gone, and the only thing that didn't fit anymore was meeting Kelly and being told she was Hazel."
"That's fucked up," says Taylor.
"Yes," I respond. "It's fucked up."
"But at least now you know what you need to do."
"What's that?" I ask him. He is sitting in his place at the foot of the bed. The fingers of his right hand are twitching.
"You have to find out why you've got a line on your face."
"It's the same line the outsiders have."
He shakes his head.
"No it isn't. Wrong colour. The outsiders' lines are blue or purple. Yours is yellow." He pauses, thinking. "You know who you should ask about this?"
"Who?" The question tastes strange in my mouth, as if I'm not really the one voicing it.
"Nathaniel Parker."
"The guy in the wheelchair?"
"He knows as much about powder as anyone. More than the people selling it."
"Then I'll ask him."
I watch as Taylor rises from the floor.
"I'll go with you," he tells me.
"Now?"
"Now is best."
"I'm still high."
He shrugs, and moves to the door and holds it open, waiting for me. I walk the short distance across the carpet. Taylor leads the way down the stairs, and I focus on his back, the line of his shoulders moving beneath his t-shirt. He grabs a jacket from a hook in the hallway. I busy myself with my boots. Outside, the man who'd been smoking on the porch is gone, but the sun has barely moved. I feel as though I've been upstairs for hours.
Taylor eases himself off the porch and onto the sidewalk, where he turns, staring at me from behind his glasses.
"Why are you so interested in this?" I think to ask him.
"Who wouldn't be?" he responds, and the answer makes sense, as far as it goes, but that can't be his only reason; there is something more, a hard edge to him now, and a decisiveness that he tries to bury under a thin veneer of detachment. It occurs to me that I don't know anything about him.
We get on the first bus going north and I watch the town through the window. The sun stains the building's faces a deep, nearly perfect orange, and the streets seem to be crowded with refugees and mental patients. Loose affiliations of children are milling in a wide tract of snow, absorbed in a game that looks more like a historical reenactment than play. At Norfolk we exit the bus and Taylor leads the way through an increasingly complicated series of turns. Eventually we wind up in an alley behind a row of houses. It's nearly identical to the alley I was in the other night, the one in which a woman was projected on a wall, but while I recognize many of the buildings, and even some of the graffiti, there is no sign of the projector; I realize that I'm sweating beneath my coat. Is this the same alley or not? The question has far more weight than it deserves, but I don't have the time to consider it; Taylor has already moved on, turning onto a broad street lined with more or less prosperous looking houses. Not much further is the bar.
He moves up the short flight of stairs and knocks on the wooden door. I wait beside him, doing my best to ignore the line of sweat between my shoulders. Across the street an old man with a hard, round gut is standing on his porch, smoking. He regards me with lazy hostility, and then nods once, slowly, before flicking the end of his cigarette onto the street.
Taylor is pounding on the door.
"Try opening it," I say, and do so myself, reaching around him to push down on the handle. The door swings open with a short creak.
"They never leave it unlocked," Taylor mutters, passing into the bar. The upper room is as empty as the last time I was here, each stool placed neatly before the counter. The untouched rows of alcohol and empty picture frames all have the slightly overblown quality of religious artifacts.
"Nathaniel?" Taylor calls, and my back stiffens at the sound of his voice. "Jared?"
No one answers. We take the unlit stairs to the basement and Taylor fumbles blindly for the light switch. A single bulb sputters and steadies in the middle of a black ceiling.
"Jared?" he says again, his voice oddly small. He walks across the bar to the largest picture frame, and opens the hidden door.
"Shit," he mutters.
The opposite room has been torn apart, the floor littered with broken glass and muddy puddles of water. A half-dozen of Nathaniel's glass cases lie shattered on the carpet, and all of the shelves have been looted. The computers are gone, their connecting wires hanging limply from the back of the mixing board.
"What the fuck happened?" I say.
Taylor stoops to examine one of the damaged tanks.
"There's a boot print in the dirt here," he says and looks at me, scratching absently at the skin beside his glasses. "Check the bar. The light switch is behind the counter."
"Yeah," I say, turning around. I'm halfway to the counter when a blur of motion stops me; a small shadow lands heavily on the floor, straightens, and bolts toward the stairs.
"There's someone here!" I hear myself yelling, and start after him; the man takes the stairs two at a time and is at the door by the time I reach the upper bar. Taylor's boots pound the floor behind me. The man hauls open the door and in the second it takes for him to do that I'm on him, slamming into his back. He loses his footing and we fall together into the ankle-deep slush in front of the bar. He struggles to get away, twisting his head around; his features are viscous and waxy, his narrow eyes and nose, and the small, white scar on his chin.
I work to pin him to the ground; he isn't a big man, but he struggles wildly and it isn't until I catch one of his wrists and shove it into the ground that he gives up. He gasps, and Taylor is beside us, pressing his knee into the man's forearm.
"Who are you?" Taylor says, his voice harshened by a crackle of digitized static.
"Who the fuck are you?" spits the man, jerking his arm away and wrenching halfway free. Taylor smacks him casually across the mouth with the back of his hand.
"My name is Taylor Wyatt," he says. His head tilts in my direction. "This is Isaac. What's your name?"
"Let me up," the man growls.
"Your name."
The man glares at Taylor, and then fixes his eyes on me.
"Name's R," he says, after a pause.
"R what?"
"Just R, motherfucker, now let me up. I'm not gonna run."
Taylor takes his leg from the man's arm and stands up, motioning for me to do the same. I get up slowly, offering my hand, but the man bats it away, cursing under his breath.
"What are you doing here R?" Taylor asks. The man glares at him, wiping slush from the back of his pants and his jacket.
"What the fuck are you assholes doin here, huh?" he says, sneering. I'm tempted to hit him myself.
"Well R, since you ask, I work at that bar. I'm a DJ, and Isaac is a friend of mine."
"Little early for a
DJ set isn't it?" R says.
"We're looking for someone," I tell him. "A man named Nathaniel Parker."
"Parker, huh?" R seems to consider that. "You and everyone else."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that's why I'm here. I was waitin for him ta show up."
"Why?"
"Cause I'm bein paid for it, why else?"
"Who's paying you?" Taylor presses him. Rather than answering, R reaches into his jacket for a pack of smokes and a lighter.
"You mind?" he asks. Taylor shrugs. R's hand is shaking slightly, whether with cold or shock, and it takes a long time for him to get the flame to catch.
"The Institute," he mutters at last.
"Come again?" says Taylor.
"I'm bein paid ta look out for that Parker guy by the Institute."
"What does the Institute want with Nathaniel?"
"How should I know?" R snaps. "Same reason they trashed the room in the back and took all that shit out a'the bar. It has somethin ta do with the powder. That's all those fuckin boys care about. That satisfy you? Can I go now?"
"Did you see Jared?" asks Taylor.
"Who?"
"The bartender. Tall guy, broad shoulders."
"Didn't see anyone. Just helped the agents load those cases a'frogs or bugs or whatever they were inta a van, and then I settled down ta wait. Good money for easy work."
"Yeah, I bet it is," says Taylor.
"We done here?" R asks, and Taylor waves him off. I watch as the man moves down the street, slouching with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Taylor turns to me.
"We have to find Nathaniel," he says.