Your eyes, reflecting twilight
Celeste was in the back seat, leaning towards Cooper in a way that made Philip throw a look in the rear-view mirror. Despite what Philip might think, it wasn’t out of any affection. She was a professional. She just couldn’t stand being close to the window right now. At any moment, she expected to hear the loud crunching thump of a round striking the glass, and this car wasn’t even armored.
Though it seemed like it had been hours since she had scampered over Cooper into the back seat as the PKM rounds ripped through the windshield, the fear lingered behind her ears like an infection.
As she had been balled up on the floorboard with Cooper, for some reason, on top of her, she had felt the vibration of the machine gun fire through the car-frame and heard the rounds cracking right above her head as they shredded the seat. If she had been able to move she would have thrown the door open and run out right there. Maybe it was the shame that kept the fear around.
The new car smell of the swap sedan seemed to float over a scent of gunpowder and sweat. Philip had kept his rifle in his lap as they drove away from the lot but had since broken it down and put the parts in a shoulder bag Celeste had handed him from the backseat. Just doing that had taken a lot of effort, and she looked out the windshield as he took it so he wouldn’t see the exhaustion in her eyes. They already thought she was so God damned pampered.
The car stopped in a lot behind some craft brewery where a white hail-damaged hatchback was parked alone. Sirens rang out faintly from all around and the police helicopters chugged without pause somewhere overhead.
“Good Luck,” Philip said as he got out, and Celeste wondered which one of them needed it the most.
As he beeped the locks with his phone, the sound had such a comforting nostalgic tone, reminding her of getting into her car after work or at the end of a shopping trip, that she felt a sudden urge to run after him and take the car for herself.
“Sit up here, Ash,” Michael said, and brought her Spirit out of her Self’s nostalgia. She gave Cooper a loving glance as she stepped out, but he looked at her like he had come home and found her rifling through his shit, then laid down on the full length of the backseat before she had the door closed.
As she opened the passenger side door, she sensed rifles aiming at her from hidden places all down the street, and a shiver rolled over her bare skin. She looked back just in case, and smiled. They were in the middle of a disused industrial zone gentrified into café workspaces, yoga studios, and resale shops. She pictured a gunman taking aim from behind the Tesla supercharger or the gravel-bedded yuccas. What a way to go.
As she got in Michael was giving her the old “I am concerned about you, my little fragile siren,” look. She adjusted her fake glasses and knit cap in the mirror and spoke without looking at him.
“Don’t look at me like that Boss, I’m fine. Could use a drink but—”
“Boss?” Cooper said from his seat. Celeste froze.
“You’re in good hands, Cooper,” Michael said, as at ease as ever. “Just relax and stay down,” He pulled smoothly into the street.
“This is starting to feel like a fucking arrest,” Cooper said. Celeste looked back at him.
“I’m joking,” he said. “Can we get some music?”
Celeste thumbed the radio knob and Semi Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind floated through the speakers. Celeste sighed, and Michael started humming. A few seconds later, Cooper was laughing hysterically. Celeste took out her phone, switched her low-profile earbuds for the full-size models disguised as air pods and queued up ocean sounds, expecting Michael or EP to give her shit about tactical awareness. They didn’t, which somehow frustrated her even more.
Sometime before the final chorus, Cooper drifted off, and saw himself being taken by masked men and driven down the highway. One opened the door and dangled him out over rushing concrete the same texture and motion as a high-speed sander.
“Where is the fucking coin?!” The horizon flew by, inverted, skyscrapers and overpasses floating over a sea of sky.
He tried to tell them they had the wrong Cooper, that he was really the other one, but his voice wouldn’t work. He knew, somehow, with that dream knowledge, that if he could just find the Cooper they were after, they would let him, the real Cooper, go.
Something exploded, like an RPG had hit the car and vaporized his attackers, and he was left to float outwards like a leftover birthday balloon. He knew suddenly that if he could only get the world right side up again, he could go back to his real Life. But his struggle to right himself was wasted. He could only flail around and try uselessly to swim in the air as the ground drifted further away. The horizon went askew, halfway between vertical and horizontal, then stopped.
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He reached in his pockets for the coin, ready to give it to anyone if they could save him from drifting into the sky forever, alone. But all he found was his phone.
An idea, salvation. He called his mom. She could drive down the highway and Jared could throw a cable or something up and catch him.
“Hello?”
Her voice brought it all back. The Real Cooper. Not a thief, not a drug addict, at least not a meth addict, but still…
He watched porn and did weed in various forms constantly. He had lived with his mom and stepdad for two years now, after college, and was no closer to any kind of real employment beyond a shitty part-time retail job he skipped constantly and the occasional delivery driver work. He owed every friend he had money, at least the ones he hadn’t paid back with dispensary weed he had gotten from his aunt, who was convinced he needed it to not become another online extremist.
So, in a way, he was a thief in that world too, stealing from himself every second of the day, robbing his life of minutes, hours, days, and leaving in their empty spaces something that he hoped might have the same weight as a life, maybe trick the scales, but he knew would dissolve under any kind of scrutiny.
So, he floated, turned, faced the sun, which he knew would burn him to—
The car came to a stop and Celeste nudged his knee. The strange dreams dissolved, the other him not even remembered, and he tried not to laugh at the only fragment he could catch, a phone call to his mom that had actually been answered.
He glanced out the window.
The sky had turned an evening orange and the sun was hiding playfully just behind the trees, setting random surfaces alight in flashing patches of gold.
It was a small house on a big lot, the way they used to build them. Someone had added a big sheet metal awning to the driveway, but the rest of it remained un-modernized. He knew without looking there was an alley out back that ran down the center of the block. He’d grown up on a street like this, walked the back alleys till the furrows were worn from his feet as much as any tires, and used them as escape routes, in and out.
Somehow, even in all the haze of unreality, caught in the choppy tessellation and non-personhood of the Hardworlds, he was sure of this. The memories of the Real shone bright and proud like a high sudden sun, brought back from the dark murk of the dreams by this sudden wave of nostalgia. Looking back, from ten years into adulthood, it seemed his childhood had been one long golden evening.
The other him, the half-recovered meth addict, the full-blown thief, whose childhood had been nearly as golden but broken off much sooner, stood aside, trying to get a look at this other, more put-together him, and quickly found the creases in the façade, the shared warp, and scoffed.
Celeste placed a hand on his back and the big guy led the way, unlocking the door and holding it open for the two of them like they were all about to catch up over dinner. Inside, the house was furnished like an Airbnb that catered to bachelors who’d seen Scarface too many times.
“Have a seat. I’ll get you some drinks,” the big guy in the grey overcoat said.
Cooper sat down on the black leather couch and wondered for about the fifth time since the shootout if the guy had a learning disability or something. Singing along goofily to ‘90s radio rock on the ride over, eating fucking gummy worms like he didn’t just drive through gunfire, and now trotting off to the kitchen like his mom had a PB&J waiting for him or some shit.
Cooper stared at the wood panel cabinets through the doorway and imagined him coming back to the living room with big cartoonish ice cream floats in both hands; soda glasses, hot rod cherries, red and white spiral straws.
Celeste leaned against him on the couch and he reflexively reached in his pocket for his phone. The absence of it spooked him for a second, and he remembered the other guy with the widow's peak had thrown it out the window on the ride to the parking lot.
“That’s ok bitch. You can stop pretending to be my girlfriend now. I’m ready to talk turkey if the jolly grey giant can get me the fuck out of here.”
She stayed right where she was and batted her big black eyes at him and smiled.
“Maybe I fell in love with you in the car. You were so brave throwing yourself over me like that.”
Cooper thought about throwing himself over her again, but not in any way that would get him commended for his bravery. She squeezed his arm and leaned her soft cheek on his shoulder. He didn’t know what her game was, if she really expected the flirting to have any effect other than getting him horny and stupid, but she gave off the distinct aura of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and had everything under control. Another Cooper, now done glaring at the rest of him, screamed out for her in a way that made him bat away memories like flies coming to bring him into the next stage of decomposition.
“Scotch and Soda.”
The big guy came back with two highballs the same color as the sky outside and set them down on the coffee table. No straws. Lemon wedge garnish. Bubbly as hell. Cooper took a drink and his opinion of the big guy skyrocketed.
“So, Cooper. I want the coin. I’m sure there’s something you want. How can we help each other?”
“I want to get the fuck out of here.”
“Out of where?” The Big guy studied him.
“Out of this Hardworld!” Cooper hissed.
“I can arrange—”
“And I don’t want to drop out into a sifter or get locked up in fucking Nightmare forever.”
Michael smiled. “They wouldn’t keep you there forever. It’s not like a room you can just close. Someone has to keep your cell together while you’re in there.”
Cooper thought about the black box. How they had screamed, and the fear the guy had tried to hide under all his arrogance. There had been no one around working that thing. He didn’t buy that old adage about the Otherworld being “ultimately harmless.” Not anymore.
“So just a short stint then, huh? Something I could do standing on my head.”
Michael’s smile was smoothed by pity. “It wouldn’t feel short.” Cooper's stomach turned and he tried to smother it with more scotch and soda. It worked. He got the idea that the big guy had somehow made it magic and his mind played with the thought obsessively.
“I give up the coin and you keep me out of Nightmare. That the deal?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you do that?”
“By leaving you here.”
Cooper hadn’t expected that and looked at the words from every angle trying to find the catch. It was like a chess move from a section of the board he had been neglecting. He was about to clarify what “here” meant, when Michael cut his eyes to the kitchen and Celeste stood up straight like they had both heard some invisible whistle.