I had no idea what I was going to say. I never thought of myself as a particularly shy person—reserved, maybe. But I disliked confrontation. And that was what it felt like when I was around Ida. One big confrontation. I tried not to let her confound me, but I constantly failed. Things would be easier if I could put everyone into a box, the way Saligia did. That woman had a category for everyone and everything. For instance, everyone who worked for the Network was not human. Sometimes she called them aliens. Sometimes, insects. The particulars weren’t important. They were stuffed in the box labeled: Not Human. That seemed to make it easy for her to sneer at them and avoid all contact.

That was why I was doing this on my own, without her to back me up.

I had never visited any of the floors in La Vida tower between the lobby and those three upper levels which were reserved for the TV show.

The elevator opened on the fifth floor, where I’d heard Ida had a suite of rooms provided by the Network.

It had been agreed that Saligia would tell Sy about August, and I would tell Ida.

Not much of a plan, I realized. Hell, I didn’t even know which was her room number. The central hallway in front of me led in each direction, past a series of numbered doors. I chose a direction at random, my steps muffled by the deep carpet. As I wandered the fifth floor, I considered randomly knocking on doors. It wasn’t so late that I’d be waking people. But then, I wasn’t certain if anyone other than Ida was on the entire floor. Maybe I should head upstairs and find someone who knew which room was hers.

Then I found it.

Room 517.

On the door beneath the brass medallion with the number was a small metal frame with a printed card: Ida Mayfield.

I knocked.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by who opened the door.

“Rose.”

“Michael?”

“I’m taking the last meeting of the evening,” he said. “Ida wants my help landing a big sponsor.”

I raised a brow.

“Oh, Rose, please,” Michael said with a smile. “Grow up. Besides, I wouldn’t be trying to keep a secret from someone with a 1200 on the Fitzroy Scale.”

“Who is it at this hour?” Ida shouted from behind him.

Michael opened the door wide. I entered.

I followed Michael into a spacious room with huge windows overlooking the nighttime lights of the city. Ida sat on the sofa with her shoes off drinking a glass of milk.

“Rose? What a surprise.” Ida patted the cushion beside her. “Have a seat.”

I did.

“We don’t talk, do we?” Ida shifted a bit to look at me, ignoring Michael who sat in an adjacent chair.

“I guess not.” I shrugged. “You know, one on one.”

I looked at Ida, reminding myself to smile. Ida didn’t seem so much to be looking at my face, but at some point beyond. There was a sort of insect-like stillness about her gaze. She was waiting. I decided to give it a couple of beats. I saw Sy do that sort of thing all the time. Allow enough uncomfortable silence until the other person rushes nervously to fill it. I immediately realized that the trick would never work on Ida. Michael, however, was different.

“Well,” he said, making a move to dispel the dead air. “I’d hardly call this a one on one, I mean, I’m here.” He gave a weak laugh.

One of the things I had begun to notice during my training as a Reader was that, even without Saligia’s assistance, I could get emotional scraps and fuzzy impressions from other people. Nothing sharp or defined. Certainly no repeat, yet, of that moment with August. But those casual flashes were more clear than intuition. However, I wasn’t getting anything off Ida. From her there was nothing. It all came from Michael. Suspicion. Jealousy. And, as he had said, secrets.

“It’s August,” I said.

“Yes.” Ida nodded. “He’s a problem, isn’t he. We don’t want contestants so, well, lucid. And with him, it’s more every day. God damn that Saligia!” Ida turned her attention to Michael. “And, Michael. You have some culpability in this as well.”

“Me?”

“As an associate producer, and a senior one at that, you have some say in matters of the show. Right?”

“Well, I guess. I mean, of course I do.”

“Get Saligia on board with this. We must have August in one of the hot seats and off the show this week. I don’t care whether it be Door Number One or Two. He’s a disruption. And I know that stuff about choosing the contestants at random is pure bullshit. It’s done at Saligia’s whim and caprice.”

“He killed Hal.” There. I said it.

“He, who?” Ida looked back at me. “And, what? Who did what?”

“August murdered Hal.”

“Now let’s not dive into a conspiracy,” Ida said with a laugh. “Sure, Hal is AWOL, but I understand your director has a history of enjoying his drink. When he sleeps it off, he’ll come slinking back.”

“The scream,” I said, interrupting. “Susan’s scream. She stumbled on Hal’s body in the pod.”

Ida furrowed her brow as she recalled the events of the evening.

“And the stench,” I said, looking at Michael. “You smelled it. That odor of decomposition.”

“Oh, no,” Michael said, stiffening. “I’m going to be sick.”

“Look,” I said. “I was there, in Susan’s mind. I saw what she saw. And what she saw was Hal on the ground at her feet. With his neck bent backward.”

Ida looked at Michael.

“Is this true, Michael.”

“Um, well.” Michael smiled, looked from me to Ida. “Sometimes I lose the connection. So, I don’t know.”

“Ask Saligia,” I said. “She saw it too. And she told me that, for a flash, she was able to read August. I mean, he was right there. Front row. Saligia flashed on his memory of when he strangled Hal.”

“Weeeeell,” Ida stretched out the word. “These things happen.” She took a sip of milk.

“They do?” I looked over at Michael. “They do?”

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“Well, the jumper,” he said, scrunching up his face. I knew he wasn’t really sure what Ida meant.

“That poor creature,” Ida said shaking her head. “They’re all so confused and disoriented when they come to us.”

“But he’s a menace!” I said.

“Oh, we’ll put an extra detail on that one,” Ida said. “See to it,” she added to Michael.

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” Michael pulled a notebook from his back pocket and made some scribbles.

I couldn’t believe it!

A man had been murdered! And we knew who did it!

“Wouldn’t it be better to hand him over to the authorities?”

“My dear, unless you haven’t noticed, around here there isn’t any authority higher than the Network.” Ida smiled. Just like an insect would—I bet. She lifted her shoulders an inch or two as if to say it was nothing of great importance.

“Can’t we rush him?” I looked around for some support. Michael was looking at the floor. “Tie him up. Cram him in one of the exit pods. Someone else’s problem.”

“Hardly protocol.”

“Maybe if we told him the truth,” I said. “Crazy, huh? If he’s done this out of fear, why not tell him what’s on the other side of the doors?”

Michael fidgeted.

“There is a way in which we do things around here, Rose,” Ida said firmly.

“I see. And telling the truth isn’t it. Right?”

“Look here, I know you are Sy’s pet at the moment, but make no mistake, Rose, the Network comes first. I’m certain that one day Sy will make some grand heroic gesture—the ratings will be astronomical, I have no doubt—and following in the aftermath, he’ll implode and crawl away in defeat, his career finally over. But the Network will still be here. It’s not going anywhere.” Ida held her glass aloft. “You want answers? They’ll come bit by bit. But your allegiance needs to be with the Network. Michael understands that.”

She finished her milk in a single gulp and banged the glass down on the coffee table.

I knew a cue when I got one. I stood and looked for a moment at Michael. He held up his hands but didn’t stand. I nodded to them both and left.

###

I was curious if Saligia had any more luck with Sy explaining the danger posed by August than I had with Ida. But, frankly, I’d had my fill of Serpientes y Escaleras for the night. Besides, I didn’t feel safe in the building, especially at night when there were so fewer people.

But I wasn’t in the mood to go home.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of La Vida Tower for a moment, then I began walking toward Olmec Street Coffee.

Maybe Charles would be there working.

I was halfway down the block, when I saw Fran walking out of the coffee shop. I immediately ducked into a darkened doorway. This couldn’t continue. My avoiding Fran was adding too much guilt to my life. I needed to talk to him. But not tonight. I remained in the shadows until he disappeared around the corner.

When I walked into Olmec Street Coffee, I thought the place was empty. That happened often in the post-Changes world. With no real crime, people often forgot to lock up their businesses. But the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee hung heavy, and I had seen Fran holding a to-go cup as he walked out the door. Smooth jazz oozed from the speakers overhead. Regina Belle, I think.

Then I saw Charles, lounging in a comfortable slump in a shadowy corner. I sat down in a cozy chair and was just able to read the title of the book he held before he noticed me and put it down. It was called People from the Other World by someone named Henry Olcott.

“Rose,” he said softly with a smile. I almost expected him to say: “I’ve been expecting you.” But instead he asked if I wanted anything to drink.

I hadn’t given it much thought, but I immediately knew I wanted some hot chocolate.

It took him only a few minutes to return with a cup for me and one for him. They both were piled high with whipped cream that he had dusted with chocolate powder.

It was delicious.

“That was quite a show tonight,” Charles said. “High drama.”

“I thought you didn’t watch TV?”

“Not until I learned I knew one of the stars!” He laughed. “I almost forgot there was a television set in this place.”

I decided to steer the conversation in another direction.

“I see that we have a friend in common,” I said. “Fran.”

“Who?”

“Francis, the man who just left.”

“Oh, yes. He’s in all the time for herbal tea. I never asked him his name.”

“It’s just that, well, the other day when you mentioned a group of people who want to know what the Changes are all about, I thought you meant….”

But that was as far as I went. If he didn’t know about Fran’s All Seeing Eye Society, he probably didn’t need to. It seemed that Charles had his own group.

“The group I belong to,” he said with quiet deliberation, pausing a moment to spoon some whipped cream into his mouth, “is a rather closed community, I guess you could say.”

I patiently waited. I knew he wanted to talk to me, so it was just a matter of time before he opened up. If not tonight, some other day.

Were they scientists? People who might have real answers, unlike Fran’s crowd of…well, I can only base my opinion of Fran’s associates by what he himself had told me over the years—but they seemed no closer to any answers than when he started his organization.

“Are you familiar with the Grand Esoteric Order of Futonians?” Charles asked.

“I am not,” I answered. I would have remembered that.

“That’s good. I mean, that you don’t know. That indicates we’re succeeding at keeping our secret society secret.”

“Futonian? I don’t think I know that word.” I was, at that point, mostly being polite. The other word, Esoteric, had immediately made me sorry I even began this conversation.

“I’m speaking of one of the marvels that came with the Changes. The most marvelous of all those marvels.”

I nodded, encouraging him to continue. I shouldn’t, really, be so quick to judge. Maybe he did have something of interest to share.

“You’re familiar with the the courthouse?”

“Here?” I asked. “The one downtown?”

“Yes. The Bexar County Courthouse.”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“If you take the stairs to the basement,” he continued, “there, adjacent to the offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles, you will find this marvel. It floats, defying gravity, forty-two inches above the polished granite floor. A futon.”

I shook my head and held up a finger.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I thought you just said a futon.”

“I did.”

“Futon? You mean, like a mattress?”

“I can never get over it,” Charles said with a sigh. “How so few people know about it. I guess the Changes brought so many surprises. But, you must come and stand before it. I guarantee, it will transform you.”

“Okay.” I was wondering if maybe this futon spoke to people. Told them all about the Changes. I mean, I have seen my fair share of impossible things, certainly back when the Changes were in full swing. My cousin had a Barbie doll that told dirty limericks for a full two weeks before her mother flushed it down the toilet.

I asked Charles what he and his group leaned from the futon.

He explained when it first arrived, how people came to the courthouse basement and look at it with wonderment. How every three days it would vanish, only to return sixteen minutes later. People began to place offerings on the futon. When it returned, the offerings were gone.

“Some have speculated that it was actually a different futon returning each time. But once the Changes ended, the futon remained. Floating. Unchanging. A mystery.”

That was it?

“So, you people don’t have any answers?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“About the Changes.”

“Oh, no. All we have are questions. Speculations. The Answer will only be given to whoever is sitting on the Holy Futon when it returns to its place of origin.”

“What is that? Some sort of prophecy?”

“Just an educated guess.”

I wasn’t sure about the educated part.

“So,” Charles continued, with the blissful smile of a true believer, “we take it in turns. A rotating schedule. Everyone in our group spends two hours floating up there atop the holy futon. One thing is certain, it will not vanish unoccupied.”

“But how can you be certain that it will vanish?”

He looked at me with pitiable patience.

“Rose! It’s a matter of faith.”

“And you?” I asked. “Do you have you a speculation? What might await you if you’re lounging on that mattress when it disappears?”

“I do. Infinite sleep, more peaceful than one could ever imagine.”

I was beginning to suspect that Charles and his friends belonged to some sort of death cult. Maybe I should introduce them to August.

I looked down at my half-finished hot chocolate. It no longer held any appeal.

“What is it that each of us has in common?” Charles had finished his chocolate. He learned forward in his chair with his hands on his knees, not really looking at me. “No matter when in history we were born or what part of the world?” I knew he wasn’t expecting an answer, so I let him continue. “Rest. A desire for rest. The rejuvenation of slumber. We toil, all day, every day. Unlike animals, we humans, with our intellect and our sense of time, must plan and execute, and plan again. The wheel of industry. Is there no end to this drudgery?”

I was about to ask how many customers per day came in for coffee and tea? Whatever drudgery that entailed, he seemed to find ample time to read big fat books about people from other worlds. But I let him drone on.

Charles and his Futonians were nothing new to me.

That was one of the more embarrassing things that the Changes had left us with. Whenever I manage to encounter people who even bothered to acknowledge that the Changes were pure mind-melting madness, they almost always skewered far into the realm of religious mania. Like those friends of Sy on the far side of the Great Expanse.

I had so wanted to find in Charles a seeker of truth. A critical thinker. An intellectual rebel. Someone who wanted this whole crazy world broken apart so that he could analyze the pieces.

Someone like Sy.

But no.

After Charles finished extolling the merits of his peaceful kingdom of slumber, or whatever he was trying to explain, I politely told him he’d given me a lot to think about, and that I’d be sure to return.

And I got out of there and headed home.