American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,171

brief, glorious minute of touch, genuine touch. They do not dare more. They have not even spoken to one another, not honestly: to do so would be to risk the punishment that awaits anyone who breaks one of the rules in Wink. And everyone, especially natives like Helena and Margaret, is bound to them; and while no one knows what the punishment for breaking the rules is, everyone knows they don’t want to find out.

After their minute is done, they release one another. It is like coming down off a thundering, blinding high, like trying to regain your legs after a moment of paralyzing sexual ecstasy: they must return to this muddy world they briefly circled above, like albatrosses dancing on the breeze, and soil themselves for one more month, one more agonizing month.

They smooth down their skirts and return to their homes. Margaret sits down on the couch beside Dale, who is watching Bye Bye Birdie for the fortieth time. But as Margaret watches Dick Van Dyke dance around, begging Janet Leigh to put on a happy face, something within her starts to crumple.

She begins to weep again. She is not sure why. She got her moment, didn’t she? Shouldn’t that be enough?

Dale coughs and asks if she thought to buy bourbon this week, and did she buy that expensive stuff again, because he really can’t taste the difference between the expensive stuff and the normal stuff, so she bought the normal stuff, right? Didn’t she? Didn’t she?

Margaret says, “Yes.” And she stands and goes to the pantry to fetch it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“So… they want to be people?” Mona asks.

“That is their wish,” says Parson. “Some are more successful than others. They have turned their prison into a paradise, though a misguided one. They kept the people here, and said to them, We can provide a wholesome life here, if only you agree to live it, and to live it on our terms. And the people here, to my surprise, agreed.”

“They did?” says Mona. “They’re here by choice?”

“Yes,” says Parson. “You must understand, Mona, that my brothers and sisters came here and fell in love with a dream. Your dream. A dream of your country, your people. A quiet, small life… I do not know if the dream was ever real or not, but it is yours. I believe it appeals to your people just as much as it does mine.”

“Everyone gets their four-bedroom house, their shiny car, a place of their own,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “The grass is green even though it should not even grow. Everyone here is happy.”

“Until recently,” says Parson. “Until Weringer.”

“He was one of you?” asks Mona.

“He was the leader of this place,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “In a way. Much of Wink was his idea. He was the one who suggested we take the names of the vessels we inhabited, and live their lives as if they’d never died. It was amusing, for a while.”

“It was never amusing,” says Parson. “It was foolish. To pretend to be something you are not will always end poorly.”

“There we disagree,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I do not consider it to be as grave as you. It is a triviality, a diversion.”

“And yet here we are,” says Parson. “With members of our family dead. When we were told they could never die at all.”

The subject of family brings one question bobbing to the top of Mona’s mind. “So… what does any of this have to do with my mother?” she asks.

“What?” asks Parson.

“My mother. How is she involved with this at all?”

“She isn’t,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Like I told you, I don’t think she was ever here, or if she was, she wasn’t involved.”

“She was,” says Mona. “I’m sure of it.”

Despite Mrs. Benjamin’s otherworldly origins, she has obviously picked up a few human affectations, for at this she scoffs quite noisily.

“She was here,” says Mona, “when Coburn was first operating. And before she left, she did something to that fucking mirror up on the mesa. She changed something in it. Something to bring you all here, I think.”

Parson scratches his chin. Mrs. Benjamin starts sneaking glances at him, gauging his confusion to see when she can be honest about her own.

“We were never told of such a thing,” says Parson. “I have not ever heard of any previous contact with this place at all.”

“Why would she do that?” asks Mrs. Benjamin.

“I think the mirror did something to her too,” says Mona. “The records said she would just stare into it