The City of Dreams -- Part 24

[Once again, I'm playing fast and loose with section numbers here. This really should be Part 23b, but since we're already one section beyond where we should be, this should really truly be Part 22b. Along with that crazy, late-night weight-loss lady, I beg you, stop the insanity!

[We're really almost at the end in my head. Total, the story is at 51,400 words so far. From my expansive and nonexistent experience with the publishing industry, it seems like the book ought to be a bit longer, but we'll see what happens. We have a few more sections to go, and I'll try to borrow my credo from Fat Tony: more tangents!]


Somehow I wandered back into the barn, over to the chairs, and sat down next to Mr. Punctilious.
He looked sympathetic. "I tried, Perry," he said.
"Yeah."
"She broke up with you?"
"Not exactly. Not really. Mostly, yeah. Yes. I think so."
Mr. Punctilious laughed quietly, but kept his forehead creased in sympathy. It was nice of him to keep that up, though I probably deserved to be laughed at full on without any sympathy.
"Teenagers are always in such a hurry," he said. "I certainly was. Everything has to be figured out right away, solved immediately, bought now. 'Tomorrow' is a foreign concept, so how can we grownups ever expect you to understand something as archaic as 'next month' or even 'next year?' The teenage years are the age of immediacy."
I looked at him. "Was that supposed to make sense?" I asked.
"I suppose not," he said. "I tried to tell her not to rush. No need to rush into love, and no need to rush out of it. I don't think she listened."
"Doesn't seem like it," I said. I stared at the empty stage. "Is there some way to fix it?"
"Depends on what the problem is, exactly," said Mr. Punctilious. "What do you think went wrong?"
I lifted my eyebrows and took a deep breath. "I guess I did it to myself."
"Did what, exactly?"
"I shut down around her. Closed up."
"Just during the day?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I hate myself." There. I'd said it. I didn't know when it had started, but at some point I'd decided I was about as useful as one of those stupid vending machines: everything I had to offer anyone else was expired, out of date, worthless. "I mean, really, what do I do? Nothing. I don't try hard at anything. My friends put up with my crappy attitude, but they shouldn't have to. My sisters keep trying to get me to join a club or something, but I don't. I don't play an instrument, I don't draw, or act, and I sing, but I'm not that great at it. I just do it. I read a lot, I watch TV, I sleep, I do homework. That's it. I'm a lump."
Mr. Punctilious was smiling at me.
"What?" I asked.
"That sounded like you'd rehearsed it."
"I...guess I have. I've thought it a lot, when I'm awake."
"So," he said, sitting back in his chair, "you hate yourself. And, as a result, you don't think anyone else could like you?"
I blinked. "It sounds stupid when YOU say it."
Mr. Punctilious chuckled. "Well, let's leave out what Brie thinks about you for now. You tell me you hate yourself. What are you going to do about it?"
I stared at him.
"Do about it," I said. It wasn't a new idea. I'd wanted to change before, but whenever I was awake, it seemed too hard. When your whole life feels like sludge, it doesn't seem to matter if the sludge is a little greener or a little browner. Either way, sludge is sludge, and nothing I did seemed to change the color much anyway.
But in the City--even as messed up as I felt right then--I still felt good. I felt like I could DO things. I felt like, just possibly, I could change.
"I don't know," I said. "What SHOULD I do about it?"
"You don't have any kind of plan?"
"None. Nothing I do makes me feel better."
"What have you tried?"
I wrinkled my nose. "Homework, TV, reading, and school."
"Interesting," said Mr. Punctilious. "Doing the same things makes you feel the same way."
"Yeah, I get it," I said, "but what do I do that's different? What will work?"
"I have no idea what will work," he said, leaning forward, "but I do know what you should do."
"You're not making sense again," I said.
"Let me put it this way," said Mr. Punctilious. "Have you ever been to the edge of the City?"
I rubbed at my eyes. "Yeah, once. Why?"
"You saw the river?"
"Yeah. It was crazy."
"And you saw what was on the other side?"
I nodded. "Nothing. It was empty."
"I went there once," he said.
My eyes jerked up to his. I remembered the feeling I'd had looking out there, like I'd dissolve if I took the risk, break down into the emptiness that was all around us. "Into the nothing?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Why?"
Mr. Punctilious shrugged. "I'd just figured out that I wasn't waking up again, and I admit, I was...discouraged. Interesting word, that. 'Dis' and 'courage.' My courage had left me, or I had let it go. You can't have courage when you've nothing left. Courage is only real when you have everything to lose." He leaned back and rested his hands on his round stomach. "But that's neither here nor there. I wasn't sure I wanted to go on if I couldn't wake again. I believe, when we leave this life, we go on to a better place--better even than this wonderful city--and if I couldn't be home, I wanted to be there. So I stepped into the river, waded across, and took what I thought would be my last step, out into the darkness."
He was looking at me, but he wasn't seeing me anymore. He was seeing the emptiness again. I knew it, because I could still see that nothing, remember it. I looked away, uncomfortable with his stare.
And he wasn't going on. I glanced back at him, and he was looking at me--really looking at me--but he still wasn't talking. Ah. I got it. He wanted me to ask. Sure, I could do that.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I found a barn on wheels," he said.
I looked around at his barn, at the theater filling one end, and all the odds and ends and whatsits and people tumbling around at the other. It was a wooden box filled to the brim with life.
"I get the feeling there's a moral to this story," I said.
"Of course there is," said Mr. Punctilious. "Step out into the dark, Perry. See what you find."