The Clown's Graveyard
Chapter Sixteen: The Great White Way

The Chrysler and the Empire State gleamed over a massive palisade of limestone and concrete, streams of traffic coursing from every crevice to be replenished by this bridge and the others to either side. The city swallowed my cab along with the rest and I joined the flow of humanity, the endless masses all working as one in the great experiment.

Integrated Consciousness had never been able to crack New York. It was too big, too hydra-headed. Anyone who couldn't reinvent themselves successfully in the greatest city the world had seen was beyond saving with anything as mundane as Integrated Consciousness. The five boroughs encompassed all possible worlds, none greater than the sum of their parts. New York withstood all, embraced all, rose ever higher. I wished I could stay here and disappear nameless into its history. Perhaps I would yet. If I was still in one piece.

Sam Romero opened his show with a puppet monologue. The felt alligator itself wasn't all that funny; a person delivering the same material would have been booed off the stage. But the critics loved it and so did the New Yorkers who filled the studio audience. I watched indifferently on the green room monitor, disguised as a member of Dr. Turezyn's entourage: black turtleneck, overgroomed goatee, brooding Teutonic expression. Next to me sat a Welsh guy who swallowed everyday objects and then gagged them back up for some reason. "Now that's what I call the Real Thing!" said Samsonite the Alligator to Sam, his pointed tongue flapping.

This was it. Lou, Roy, and Joe Bananas were at that moment positioned on a promontory in southern Utah, props in hand, standing by for the signal. In a matter of minutes Dr. Turezyn would deliver the bombshell that would rock Gotham to its core, and resound westward across the time zones later this evening. If tonight's gambit failed, the Fabulous Ontarians would be helplessly drowned in the rising gale of pre-Release hype. If it succeeded, Integrated Consciousness would be the last thing on anyone's mind.

Waiting in the wings, Dr. Turezyn burned with the conviction of the recent convert, the world aglow with meaning. Her truth was easy enough to surmise. Far from a simple organic by-product, human consciousness, she now saw, was part of a sentient sea flowing through every living thing in the universe, including the Fabulous Ontarians, who in bringing their consciousness into contact with our own, would join our two worlds together, and bring us both that much closer to a cosmic manifest destiny. From a position of professional skepticism Dr. Turezyn had swung one hundred and eighty degrees to embrace the most preposterous proposition on the word of a couple of con men and a chimp. And yet she hadn't lost her mind. You could tell just by looking at her that she was the same old Dr. Turezyn. It was the rest of the world that had changed.

The air conditioner in the green room rattled and made a funny smell. I'd eaten too many of the cookies, and the regurgitator was making disgusting noises as he loosened up his esophagus. So much waiting around on these shows—I picked at a hangnail, kicking myself for leaving my nail clippers back at the hotel. I hated not having my clippers with me.

"And so the waitress leans over from the top of the stepladder," drawled Samsonite the Alligator, "she leans way down from the pie shelf, giving her patrons a good look at her qualifications, and says to the third customer, 'Yours raisin too?'" Romero's audience chuckled expectantly. The toothy green glove milked it a moment longer. "Third customer says, 'it's sure twitchin'!'" He took a bow to hoots and catcalls. Finally the band struck up the show's theme and a bare-handed Sam Romero took his place behind the desk.

"My friends, we've got a great show for you tonight." The audience was more than ready to believe it. The place was packed with favorite T-shirts and defenselessly unironic smiles. "First up is our old friend Dr. Turezyn ... hey, Bobo, Dr. Turezyn is back!"

"Yeah, I saw that on the card," the bandleader replied from across the stage. Audience members elbowed each other in the ribs: it was going to be a good one, and they were there, live. They waved frantically at the camera as it panned their ranks.

Dr. Turezyn was a favorite guest. She made every appearance memorable. Once she used her mastery of the subconscious to enslave three volunteers with a whispered word to each. Another time she described how to concoct a drug more euphoric than Ecstasy with a few handy household ingredients. She'd been known to render world leaders speechless with existential conundrums they'd struggle to forget for weeks afterwards.

After a snappy intro from Sam, Dr. Turezyn walked across the stage and took her place in the padded armchair. "It's great to be here, Sam, I can't tell you how much," she said intensely. "I always love doing your show but tonight, Sam, is going to be a little different. And you—" she gestured at the audience, "the greatest audience in the whole world, tonight you are also the luckiest audience in the world. Because you get to be the first to know." With that, she rose, picked up the old-time radio microphone from Sam's desk, and, cradling it in two hands, walked slowly toward them.

Bobo the bandleader struck up a suspenseful bolero. The house lights dimmed and a spotlight followed Dr. Turezyn as she moved through the aisles, trailing a microphone cord that never seemed to run out of itself. "In the past," she began slowly in a deceptively light voice, "I've come to this show with petty trifles for your amusement. Parlor tricks and sleight-of-hand. Not this time. I don't exaggerate when I say the next sixty seconds will change your lives. Just as mine has been changed." You could have heard a pin drop in the cavernous studio.

"Since the days of the ancient Greeks, people have turned to science to understand the world we live in. Trained to look at one thing extremely closely, we scientists can give reasonably precise answers to reasonably specific questions. Put enough scientists together and you can understand just about everything. Everything on Earth, that is. When it comes to things that are out of this world, scientists can miss a few things. And it turns out we've missed a big one."

The camera cut to Sam Romero, a spit bubble between his slack lips, his eyes reflecting Dr. Turezyn's dramatically lit figure. The guy next to me in the green room coughed up a soup ladle he'd forgotten about. "My fellow Earthlings, we are not alone," Dr. Turezyn said.

"She's gone nuts," the makeup guy said to the crowded green room.

"No way," said the Welshman. "Dr. T, man? She's hardcore." People poured in from the hallway, asking what was going on. I slipped out and snuck down the hall to the studio.

Dr. Turezyn's patter was smooth and sincere. She invited Sam Romero and an audience member to the front of the house to examine a few things she'd brought with her. She handed them photographs mounted on masonite of the spacecraft in Twenty-nine Palms, which Sam Romero held up to the camera one by one. She brought out an abstract representation of an Earth animal fashioned from an otherworldly metal that the Fabulous Ontarians had brought as a token of goodwill. "You don't want to do something obvious, like a ray gun or an alien body," Lou had explained to Dr. Turezyn. "You make up a little story in your mind and then figure out what props it calls for. A classy gift like this makes the Fabulous Ontarians out to be wise and friendly at the same time." I don't know how Dr. Turezyn's story would have sounded coming out of a different mouth, but in her voice, backed up by her eyes, it was as convincing as snow on Christmas morning.

Dr. Turezyn explained that the Fabulous Ontarians themselves wouldn't make any in-person appearances prior to the Delivery of the Message, but that she had brought with her a fellow scientist who had been working intimately with the alien race to arrange their visit. With Sam's nodded assent she called Jerry to the set. He waved to the audience and joined Sam Romero and Dr. Turezyn on the sofa. A couple of drunk frat boys in back hooted. Dr. Turezyn introduced Jerry as Buzz Mitchell, a thirty-year NASA veteran with high-level National Security Administration clearance. "So Buzz," Sam said, "what's the latest from the Fabulous Ontarians?"

"Well, Sam, there's still only so much we can tell you. I am able to confirm that the Fabulous Ontarians will use telepathy to deliver their message throughout the nation simultaneously, although reception will be better nearer the landing site in Utah, and less strong in outlying regions of the nation, for example Bangor."

"Why Utah, Buzz?" Dr. Turezyn asked Jerry. "Why there?"

"I can't say," Jerry said, turning in his seat to face her. "They don't seem to be Mormon. Their message is relevant to every man, woman, and child that can hear my voice, as well as many pets. They've made this very clear to me, though without revealing the actual substance of the message. On that score I'm waiting like the rest of you."

"Waiting like the rest of us indeed," Sam Romero said, turning to the camera. "We'll be right back."

There's no reason for a talk show taped in the afternoon to take commercial-length breaks between segments but they do anyway. It's a strange moment. The host and the guest don't waste conversation; they just sit quietly and smoke 'em if they got 'em. The studio audience follows their lead, mutely listening to the music. Tonight the break was even stranger than usual. Everyone seemed to be frozen in their seats; scanning the house, I could detect no movement at all. Bobo the bandleader struck up the kind of funky groove that usually sent Sam Romero into a white-boy-boogie frenzy. Not this time—the host sat still as a statue, as did Dr. Turezyn and Jerry. Only the musicians moved. Spooked, I felt the urge to wave my arms or kick my feet, and found that I couldn't bring myself to do it. There was even a powerful stillness within the dense beats and organ riffs of the band, a bower of silence that grew to envelop the whole studio. They were still playing, Bobo keeping time with one hand and playing a keyboard with the other, Sham flailing on his kit, John Lee gliding up and down his fingerboard, but there was no sound. It was impossible to mark the passage of time, as it didn't seem to be passing at all.

A disembodied voice boomed overhead. "And five, four, three, two, and we're back."

"I can't wait to see that movie," Sam Romero said offhandedly to Jerry before acknowledging the camera. "Now, Dr. Turezyn, what you're telling us is a lot to take in. First you tell us that there's been an alien race accelerating the course of human history all these years. Then you tell us they're on their way here in person for a visit. I want to believe it, I think we all do, but I mean really, no offense, but ... am I right?" The audience clapped their agreement.

"Sam, I would have been offended if you hadn't expressed skepticism," Dr. Turezyn reassured him. "If you had humored me like a feverish child. But I'm in perfect health, I assure you. Hal?" She gestured at the control room window. A little man gave her a thumbs-up. The audience looked at their monitors. "This is a live feed from a location in the western United States. My associate Jonathan Frink is at the site. Jonathan?"

Lou came on the monitors, shielding his eyes from the sun. "Dr. Turezyn, Sam, my fellow Americans, I'm not far from the spot where a representative of the Fabulous Ontarians has agreed to meet me in just a few minutes." The camera followed him between rows of bizarre stone formations ten and twenty feet high glowing gold and red in the afternoon sun, casting crisp shadows on the canyon walls around them. Lou navigated the maze of sand-colored obelisks, climbing gradually until he came to a high cliff that overlooked the otherworldly shades and contours of Bryce Canyon. His hair ruffled in the breeze. "First of all I'd like to establish that this is live, unadulterated video you're watching." He raised a handheld TV to the camera. "This is the Reds-Marlins game being played right now, at this very moment. Oh for Christ's sake—hit the cut-off man ...." He snapped off the TV in disgust. "At any rate, to help the American people grasp the significance of this historic visit, one of the Fabulous Ontarians has agreed meet me here for a rare on-camera appearance. I tried to convince them to do your show, Sam, but I'm afraid I couldn't coax them to set foot in New York. They say it's too crazy there." The audience hooted and applauded. Lou paused a beat as if he could hear their reaction. "And speak of the devil, here comes the representative now."

The camera turned to a short figure in an ermine flight suit walking with a rolling gait up the path, a spherical metallic helmet on his head. When he reached Lou the two of them did an intricate handshake thing. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Obmuj, first secretary of the Council of the Fabulous Ontarians." The studio audience rose from their seats. Sam and Bobo crowded the monitor on the set.

Joe Bananas took off the helmet and bowed as Lou introduced him. "Obmuj here has chosen to appear in the form of a chimp for the duration of his visit so that people will focus on his words and not on his incredible natural appearance."

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea," Joe Bananas said, his Castilian accent mellifluous. "And to those of you in the live studio audience, good afternoon. May I first thank Sam Romero for volunteering his television program for our publicity campaign. Ah yes, so very, how do you say, human of him. But I am not here to amuse myself with drolleries. Sam Romero, will you help me in a brief demonstration of my telepathic abilities?"

"Of course, Omb ... Obmuj," Sam said.

"I want you to think of a number from one to twenty, and don't tell me what it is."

Sam concentrated. "Okay, I've got one."

Joe put his meaty thumb to his brow. I clenched my fingers and toes. This was it—either it worked or it didn't. "Is the number fourteen?" Joe asked.

"Fuck me in the—," Sam muttered before catching himself. "It absolutely is." He turned to the audience, turned to the camera, his mouth hanging open. I thought I heard Roy whooping out there in Utah, and Lou hushing him subtly. "Do another one," Sam insisted.

"All right," Joe said. "Bobo Lafragrante, your turn this time." The bandleader nodded at the monitor. "I'll assume you're nodding. Bobo, I want you to think of the flavor of ice cream you'd like to be eating right now." Bobo was still a moment, and then nodded and licked his lips. His red eyes glistened with hunger.

"Is it Coffee Heath Bar?"

Bobo was stunned and had to be helped back over to the bandstand. The audience undulated with murmurs and shouts. It looked like we'd won the day. Then a guy in the third row stepped to the aisle. "Hey Dr. Turezyn," he called out. "Is this one of your hypno mind-power tricks?"

"Hey, yeah," Bobo said. "Like that time you made me think I was a pig and I ate all that corn on the cob?"

"No, no, I assure you," Dr. Turezyn hastened, though she also blushed. The tone of the rhubarb began to shift from wonder to I-get-it. Of course they had her dead to rights. I winced, thinking of the humiliation she was about to endure, and I regretted getting her involved in the first place. As a catcall sounded in the audience, and then another, I felt reality begin shifting back into alignment.

"Another demonstration," Dr, Turezyn said urgently, holding out her hands. "Indisputable proof." She looked around frantically, then reached out and patted Sam Romero on the breast. "Sam, you told me once you had a cell phone that you never take calls on—not even from your agent. You only use it to call out. Is that still true?"

"Sure," Sam said, standing a half step upstage from her and making eye contact with the audience. He removed the phone from his pocket and opened it. "It doesn't even have a number. Why, you want to phone the Fabulous Ontarians?" The laugh made him more comfortable and he seemed about to start riffing.

"No, they'll call you," she said before he could continue. "They're surely monitoring this taping from the mother ship. With their sophisticated technology I'm sure they'll have no difficulty making your phone ring—which, unless you've misled me, it never has. Once again, Sam: there is no way for anyone on Earth to dial that phone."

"No, scout's honor. I don't even know what the ring on this baby would sound like. All right, Fabulous O's, the line is open and I'm taking callers on the topic of their choice." He help the microphone to the cell phone and cocked his ear, smirking uncertainly.

Bobo struck up soft game show music and a few people in the audience laughed awkwardly. Dr. Turezyn watched the phone expectantly, Jerry leaning over her to do likewise. The room held its breath, creating a vacuum that sucked one of the studio doors open.

The phone peeped, first just a blip, then a full chorus of "Sweet Georgia Brown." Sam dropped it like it was a snake, then fell to the floor to answer it. "Hah ... Hello? Romero here." He listened. "Ah ha. Ah ha. Hmm. Yes, certainly. Oh, a little foggy in the morning but it usually burns off by mid-afternoon. A windbreaker would probably be fine. Well, thanks so much for your call, your ... sir." He folded up the phone slowly and faced the audience from his knees, speechless.

Pandemonium.

Word of Dr. Turezyn's appearance spread quickly from studio audience members and production staffers to their friends and families, then to the news media, and then to government officials, law enforcement, cab drivers, clergy, joke writers, and political commentators. People had four hours to prepare for the broadcast of the Sam Romero Show, seven hours on the West Coast, instantly the most-anticipated TV event in history. They used their time well, speculating on every aspect of the current rumor and repeating what they'd heard elsewhere so that Dr. Turezyn's news mutated and speciated into millions of personalized versions of what the Fabulous Ontarians were all about. The message to be delivered by the Fabulous Ontarians pertained to the meaning of existence, the means to perfect happiness or eternal life, the secret to limitless personal wealth, the key to comprehending the idea of infinity. Obmuj the Fabulous Ontarian had as much as said so, and had established his alien credentials by causing the Earth to erupt in molten rock all around him with his psychic abilities out there in the desert somewhere.

By the time the show aired, Dr. Turezyn could have read the Spokane white pages and people would have heard exactly what they expected to hear and seen what they expected to see. Not all of them believed it, either before or after the show, but few were ready to dismiss it out of hand. Something was definitely happening, something big, a National Topic, like a high-profile murder or a new reality-based drama—bigger than that, even. People made plans to watch the show together. By the next morning, carpools and cubicle farms would be buzzing from coast to coast. And then ... Integrated What, now? Something Consciousness ... The Release would be buried on page seven of the Lifestyles section, next to the Antiques column.

There was nothing to do now but see how it played out. Dr. Turezyn and Jerry had pestered me to join them for a celebratory dinner in the Village but I'd begged off, citing the inadequacy of my disguise in light of the attention the two of them would attract. I'd thought I preferred to wait alone for the show to air but now found solitude oppressive. As the energy built toward eleven-thirty I felt an unbearable, physical suspense like a burning sneeze that won't come. How would the night's events unfold? What world would tomorrow bring? I paced the hotel room, the evening stretching interminably before me.

I slid open the window, admitting a gust of humid evening air and a cacophony of horns, sirens, screams, and explosions, and I gazed at the leviathan metropolis, at the jumble of blocks scattered to the horizon, hulking monuments in gray, black, crimson, and glass topped by jagged cliffs, creepers, and anacondas, classical pediments perched askew, rookeries of helicopters regurgitating motor scooters into the mouths of their young, aboriginal settlements, enormous caldrons of molten lead burbling in wait for their victims below. The windows that riddled their sides revealed a thousand and one scenes of depravity and deprivation, the usual seven sins and a few local innovations besides.

Staring into the darkness I was reminded of a fear I'd harbored in childhood. An older child had told me stories of people falling into the fourth dimension. They'd been in a house or somewhere, nowhere in particular, and they'd leaned against a wall and gone right through. Floating in the darkness, they could still see the room they'd fallen from, hear their friends' voices, even make their own voices heard, but they were powerless to propel themselves back out—nothing to push off against, nothing to grasp. And they were never seen again. There were many documented cases and I heard about every one. I went years without touching a single wall.

I leaned farther and farther out the window, wondering what it would be like to fly out over the city like the cat in the novel, wondering if I could do it. I didn't see why not. The tepid wind carried exhaust, perfume, garbage water, musk. I scanned the broad panorama from the conflagration of Times Square up the midtown canyon to the 59th Street traffic that bordered the unseen Central Park beyond. I wished Lou was there to toast our success. Even if it was just the beginning of a long campaign. Things were sure to get stranger still. The mime was right—anything was possible. For a moment I felt the arsonist's thrill as the wildfire spread, poised to step into the flames. Then something flashed in the corner of my eye and I flinched and lost my balance, and my feet left the floor as I sprawled across the sill, clutching at the curtains. "Talk about losing your grip," I said, brushing myself off with trembling hands. "A guy could kill himself." I laughed tightly.

It was sitting around in the hotel room that was making me crazy, all caged up like a lab rat waiting for the white coats. I ought to be out and about, taking the air, seeing the people, in the thick of things instead of cooling my heels on the edge of the bed, picking at my bleeding cuticles. I scanned the shadowy corners as I backed slowly to the door, then hurried to the elevator and jabbed the button for the lobby.

Outside was a mass of humanity, a harlequin fabric carpeting the streets and avenues beneath a neon acre of pulsing signs and symbols of lost meanings. It was as if every building in Midtown had emptied at once, flinging its occupants headlong into fancy, whether theirs or my own impossible to say. The whole city was out, everyone who had ever lived in New York and everyone who ever would, walking and shouting and running, robbing and frying and delivering and raping and pitching pennies. Dead Rabbits and Five Pointers chased laughing hot corn girls from one alley to the next. I pressed my way past long, lanky men with flatfooted shoes, hairy men in fezzes with their fingers to their lips, little match girls shivering in the snow, lecherous dwarves chasing torch singer types, a woman in a silver on a dappled white horse, all jabbering away in a dozen languages, or perhaps English after all. I moved through pockets of tearful laughter, desperate questioning, rage, beatitude, bliss, damnation. Honking horns filled the air, and gusts of steam from underground, and somewhere a stride bass sounded. A guy jumped out of an alley, touched something to his mouth, and a flame shot twenty feet over my head. A wolf in a sharkskin suit leaned against a lamppost chewing a toothpick with bared teeth, flipping a coin. The moon cleared the walls of the concrete chasm wearing the face of a cocaine-eyed silent starlet.

I made my way through the crowd, watching below for little people and legless veterans, dodging firecrackers and gravestones. Then a tug on the arm, someone grabbing me. "Hey buddy, you want to see something?"

It was a guy with crossed eyes who looked pretty tired of talking about it. He pulled me to the mouth of an alley. Scowling beneath his slouch hat, he gestured to a little TV tray on which rested a collection of shadowy objects. "I propose that we play a little game," he muttered. He moved his hands over the tray, touching a clever device here, an odd notion there, deftly assembling a facile metaphor then deconstructing it just as quickly. It appeared simple, almost inevitable. "What do I get if I win?" I asked him.

"Your heart's desire."

"What if I don't?"

He shrugged. "Maybe you never would have got it anyway."

Something moved in the darkness behind him. A lost soul came into the light. "You never know," the figure said. "This could be the best chance you'll ever have. If you don't take it, you'll never know what might have happened."

"Did you try?" I asked him. "Did you lose?"

He hung his head, then raised it again. "I'm still making up my mind," he said finally. The cross-eyed man swept a hand over the table. The lost soul contemplated the situation ruefully. I backed slowly out of the alley.

The press had become so thick that I could no longer advance. I was trapped in a tight rack of humanity. It couldn't possibly get any more crowded or louder. Desperate, I wedged my fingertips between the two men pressed back-to-back before me, one reading a racing form, the other talking on an old-style desk phone. My hand followed my fingers, then, after a great struggle, my forearm. Inch by inch I pressed my way through. I almost couldn't get my head between theirs and knocked off both their hats in the attempt. Finally I was past the midpoint and I squirted out the other side right into Central Park.

This was more like it. I rested with my hands on my knees and took a few rough breaths from the deep green air. The park was deserted amid pale pools of lamplight and the darkness resounded with crickets, cicadas, and frogs. The sweet smell of late summer grass clippings lured me deeper along the path, though my heart was pounding in my ears. I felt an odd mixture of peace and apprehension, as if all of my cares had been swept away and replaced by a single question mark looming before me.

The path traced the side of a lake to a broad moonlit plaza. At its edge was a fountain, a broad reflecting pool with a baroque seamonster coiled in its center. The spout had been turned off for the night. I sat on the edge of the basin. The masonry was cool under the palms of my hands and I reclined along its circumference and looked into the water's mirror-smooth surface. A wisp of vapor blew across the basin.

As I began at last to relax, I noticed something in the fountain, someone very small, an inch tall at the most, doing the breast stroke. I didn't have to see her face to recognize her. I'd seen the same sight in my mind's eye too many times to count. She was moving at a relaxed pace which, given her size, was very slow indeed. She seemed strong and comfortable in the water, no sign of fatigue, cramp, or seizure. I was tortured with the hope that she might make it across this time. She'd already covered a quarter of the distance, then a third. Already I knew she was going to make it.

Now she was halfway across, then more than halfway. Then the outermost ring of a ripple crossed her wake, lifting her gently as it passed. She swam on a few strokes, then held up and dog-paddled. Another ripple snaked past. She thrashed suddenly as if in recoil and then launched herself ahead, kicking furiously. I looked up and saw that the seamonster was no longer wrapped around the fountain, was nowhere to be seen. She pulled herself ahead. The ripples kept radiating out from the center of the fountain and I saw that they weren't ripples, but the spiral current of a forming whirlpool. She struggled, pulling herself perpendicular to the flow and up the ever steeper wall of water only to be swept around and around the basin, now further down with each rotation. I yearned to save her but I was struck numb, paralyzed, unable to reach out or to call. Around and around she went for what seemed like hours, until finally she was sucked down to oblivion.

Chapter Seventeen: All Good Things