Part 3

He began pawing through twenty-six years' worth of mementos, which were crammed into a space that could barely hold enough office supplies from one small conspiracy. But enough holes for an orange tabby to hide. He waited for any kind of movement, and something eventually flickered in the corner of his eye. He turned to see Cecil pull his head back into the bathroom.

The man's sublingual cursing increased audibly as he tromped into the bathroom and found find no trace of the cat in the bathtub, behind the toilet, in the sink, or under the sink. Nowhere. He cursed audibly and stormed out to see Cecil scamper off the couch and into the kitchen. He flew toward him, but he'd already gone again. The man let loose an expletive at the top of his lungs that woke the downstairs neighbor who was napping in front of a hockey game. And with manic grin born of angst and momentary abandon, he struck out the last line and its corresponding box on the 12F. His pen capped with a momentary sense of triumph, the man disappeared.

Cecil poked his head out of the bedroom closet and into the empty apartment. The man was gone. He snorted with satisfaction and hopped onto the bed to continue his nap. Before laying down, he turned three times.

Coincidentally, the phone began to ring.

13. Perfection "Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim." -- Graham Greene

After waiting for nearly a minute, Justin slammed the phone onto the receiver, muttering something about nine hundred damn miles and not having the decency to be home when someone was calling. He had to call. Something was wrong. He didn't go in for that malarkey about being in touch with the universe or having sympathetic vibrations reach him from a different plane, but, damn it, if there was something wrong, you did something about it. And he knew something was wrong. But would have been sent to the loony bin by one of those interns before he could explain it all to another human being properly.

He didn't give a damn (as those who ventured near him would often discover) about what everyone else perceived as reality. He saw what he saw. If no one else saw it, that was up to them. Sure, he couldn't verify it, but did that mean he was crazy? Not if he was right (which Justin had already concluded), which meant that he was seeing relationships and consequences that everyone else had just learned to ignore or couldn't see in the first place or would never see. Sometimes he saw it, sometime he just felt it. It was there, like an invisible web, telling Justin enough to either stay away or to get involved. And when he got involved, sometimes the people in the thick of it just couldn't understand what Justin was getting at! Of course, after the dam had broke, after the cows got loose, after the snake bit the dog, then everyone forgot all about old Justin and concentrated on what was practically too late to fix, unless he had been lucky enough to a have solution ready beforehand. All too often, he wasn't that lucky. But now, he felt that too. Luck. Invisible, intangible, and someone somewhere was going to feel the heat of it if he ever found out who was planning to harm his only (semi-sane) relative. But Julia wasn't home, so he couldn't warn her that he had had (as she would describe it) a vague impression of imminent danger that only sad, smelly, old Uncle Justin could perceive.

Put that way, perhaps it was best that no one had answered. Justin scratched his scalp and decided to have a beer. He harrumphed quietly, then turned around.

To his shock (but only mild surprise), there was a balding man with a clipboard standing in his corner taking notes. J.J felt paralyzed for a moment, until his anger regained the upper hand, and he reached down, opened the third drawer under the phone, and pulled out a loaded revolver.

The Lab Coat Man, weary, almost to the last of his forms (a pink 2D with carbons) wished he had could have arranged to appear in a sauna somewhere in darkest Finland, but resolutely kept noting all he was able until he realized somewhere between checkmarks that Justin Nelson was pointing a gun right between his eyes. At first, he wanted to flip to a red 1A. Somewhere on a 1A there was a box relevant to imminent personal danger. But then, he understood in the microseconds he had left that Justin's finger was pulling the trigger, which was pulling back the hammer, which would imminently fire the bullet in a more or less straight line directly into his tired, balding skull.

He had expected his life to flash before his eyes, but all he could remember (and in fact see, superimposed over the image of Justin's gun) was a Dali that he could not be sure he had ever seen or had even been painted. Perhaps, in those last days of his own early life, studying art history and believing he too was capable of producing something famous, immortal, perfect, he had envisioned such a painting, an abstract only now completed, detailing a life of frustration and mediocrity that wound its way, eventually, down to this last moment of nothing.

It was so beautiful, so tragic, that he held the clipboard over his face as Justin fired once, piercing the thin wood with a single, perfect hole.

14. Criswell Speaks "One is always considered mad when one discovers something that others cannot grasp." -- Bela Lugosi, "Bride of the Monster"

Julia and Rhonda ran inside the theater at exactly 7:10 pm. Still giggling, they bought two tickets from a weary looking man wearing a jacket and a "Manager" tag. When they hit the concession stand to relieve their munchies, they found a sign that said: "Closed".

"Aww!" Rhonda whined. "I was getting really hungry too!"

"It's too bad I can't hop back there and get us some popcorn. I worked at a theater for two summers when I was in high school."

"I beg your pardon?" the Manager inquired, somehow looking five years younger. "Do you mean that?"

"Oh yes!" exclaimed Julia. "I was Assistant Manager for a month as well!"

"Would you like a job? Part-time?" he asked, regaining another three.

Both woman screamed and hugged each other. Wiping a tear from her eye, Julia said: "Sure!"

A smile suddenly broadened upon the Manager's now young and chipper face. Tom had been showing signs of being less than happy with this job. Perhaps he was ready to move on. Maybe he needed a push. Anyway, he had called in sick for the evening, and despite the run of good luck with the second-run bad movies, the Manager did want something left over for a vacation this year.

Julia was about to ask a few questions from her new employer, but a voice like a drunken oracle began to blare from inside the theater. Julia found herself entranced by the grammatically awkward oratory:

"Greetings my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friends, future events such as these, will effect you in the future."

Julia winced, (and the Manager silently cursed Neoldner for threading "Plan 9" instead of the intended Bride of the Monster.)

"You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable; that is why you are here."

"You got the job!" Rhonda suddenly whooped in her friend's ear. But it seemed more like a distraction than an exclamation of happiness. Julia looked at Rhonda and the Manager. Her imagination? or was there something in the space between them, around the building, wrapping tight around the theater doors, something that was just plain... wrong? For the first time in years, she desperately felt the need to talk to her Uncle Justin.

Julia took a step back from Rhonda. Her friend's face suddenly fell, and she reached out to her as if to let her know everything was all right. She had the job. The Manager's eyebrow arched, perhaps a second thought as to his quick hire. She had to sit down.

"I need to sit down," her voice echoed her thought.

"We've got the tickets, don't we?" Rhonda replied, taking Julia by the arm and leading her into the theater.

15. Chance Happens "Good luck needs no explanation." -- Shirley Temple Black

"So I says to this guy I says -- "

The TV in the bar was on, and the man at Tom's side was letting his mouth run loose as he sucked back on his third beer in Popeye's none-too-copyrighted Pub. Jeez, he thought, I finally meet the one, the one, and she's going out with Kurt. With Kurt! How does he do it? I couldn't get a date to save my life (except with Rhonda), and Kurt can't seem to shake them off! Alona's, what, his third this year?

The rest of the bar was watching a rerun of "The Simpsons" and trying to imitate Barney the drunk. One fell off his chair in a drunken stupor, which gained the applause of his comrades. After he lay on the floor for a minute, they realized it hadn't been an imitation, and they picked him up. They ordered him a coffee and Kaluhua in the most obnoxious trio of 'Moe the Bartender' voices ever heard east of the Mississippi. Some of the bar laughed at this but most just groaned. Tom still wasn't listening.

If only... Tom thought. If only she had come in to see "Bride of the Monster" and gotten bored, and come out to the concession stand to get a drink, and began to talk about something -- it wouldn't have mattered what -- and stayed all the way through that entire string of rotten films!

The guy at Tom's side suddenly realized no one was listening to him and stumbled off to the bathroom. He nearly bumped into a man with a strange brown mustache who took the seat to Tom's right. He plopped his clipboard onto the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender gave him a frosted mug of flat Treaty Beer and went back to the television. Tom, again, didn't notice.

That is, until the sight of the man's reflection in the mirror behind the bar caught his attention. He seemed familiar, but he couldn't be sure. He was sure he would have remembered that mustache. The man was looking around for someone, peering into the far corners of the ill-lit room. As he did so, Tom noticed the clipboard. The cover sheet, a form labeled 3G, read: Complaints, Problems, Irregularities:

1) Find out who's been using Green paper. No green paper allowed. If it's Neoldner, give him restroom duty. If it's You Know Who, make him fill out all the forms in the proper color. 2) Leave message that Kurt is in Chicago for the weekend; also find and destroy his letter to Alona.

Tom read the note three times before believing it. Without realizing what he was doing, he raised his mug, causing what was left to dribble on his head. Then he brought it down, and the mug broke from the handle and bounced on the floor after smashing into the exact center of the man's bald spot, who crumpled soundlessly to the floor. As the bar hooted and laughed at the cartoon antics on the tube, Tom grabbed the clipboard, tucked it inside the man's trousers, and dragged him by his feet out of the bar.

16. The Decision "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." -- Carl Sagan

Justin watched the clipboard plummet to the floor, followed by a multi-colored stream of papers, detached from the clip, fluttering like autumn leaves. The wall was marked by a bullet hole, the floor littered with paper, but the man had disappeared. Justin stood over what would have been the corpse. He looked at the floor from one angle, then another, and finally shrugged and scratched his scalp again. This was strange...

A lot of strange things had happened to him, even since he could remember. That dog he had. It was odd moments like this that he remembered how much he missed him.

Had him for thirty years. Never seemed to grow old. He never told anyone about it -- made the excuse that he just preferred the same type of black lab when the old one got taken to live at his parents' farm. It was something of a relief when Roosevelt (the dog, named after Theodore rather than Franklin Delano) got killed. It was getting hard to keep up the pretense, especially after the local vets started to compare notes. But just when it seemed like half the town was talking about the Dog That Wouldn't Die, Justin woke up and found Roosevelt laying by his feet, even though he had left him out in the back yard and shut the bedroom door. Roosevelt was lying as content as he'd ever been, but dead. A coincidence, to say the least.

But if that had been the end, Justin wouldn't have thought of him so much. It was years after his dog's death that he saw him again, standing in the front yard, ready to chase a ball if it ever got thrown again. Justin had gone to the window, certain that his eyes were playing tricks on him, then more certain that they weren't. Roosevelt just stood there, waiting.

After Justin had summoned the courage to go outside, Roosevelt had led him the half-mile west to the new elementary school, up to the east-facing double-doors that opened into the kindergarten. Inside, the darkness seemed not merely a lack of light but more of something alive, spreading outward from the room and into the playground, toward Justin. He felt fixed to the spot, unable to do anything but shake, as Roosevelt let out a long, slow howl beside him.

He could not remember how he got home. He was sitting in his easy-chair, looking outside at the darkness. No Roosevelt. No vision, nothing. But his shoes were on, the soles stuck with wet grass. Justin had trouble getting a few hours' sleep that night.

The next morning, he was sure the whole thing had been a dream. Sleepwalking, probably. He comforted himself with this conclusion as he drove by the elementary school on his way to work. He slowed as a kickball bounced lazily into the road. An older child with an orange crossing-guard sash carefully crossed the street to get it. Justin turned toward the school. A number of children were playing outside. Then he saw Roosevelt again. Standing in the middle of some children. The smallest children. The kindergarten class, Justin supposed. Then Roosevelt was gone. The ball had been retrieved, and a car behind him honked, but Justin couldn't drive on. Instead, he parked his truck by the curb and walked to kindergarten the doors. Inside, Mrs. Nolla was straightening a few chairs when he entered.

When she turned and saw him, she gasped and put her hand to her chest.

"I..." she stammered, "I wasn't expecting... to see... you... there."

Justin apologized and muttered something about stopping by. They had met a few times during the last round of school board meetings when the latest draconian cuts had been proposed. She was a few years from retiring and had a remarkable teaching record -- Justin still came across her old students in his class who remembered her fondly.

He asked her if anything was wrong, which surprised her again, but she said no. He offered to help with some last minute cleaning, but she declined, visibly becoming more nervous. Instead of explaining anything, which he thought (knew) would make things worse, he decided to invite Mrs. Nolla and her husband to a non-existent faculty dinner on Saturday. She thanked him, and he left, wondering how quickly he could throw together a faculty dinner on Saturday if they decided to RSVP.

The dinner never happened, because while Justin sat in his third period Physics course, Mr. Nolla entered his wife's class and shot her dead in front of her twenty-six students. When he shot himself a few moments later, he had the decency to do it outside.

Justin tried to live with the guilt, but it kept growing inside him like a child, or like cancer. He sought ought a psychologist, who kept harranging that it wasn't his fault, a fact Justin knew in his head. But his heart didn't agree, and soon the pain inside him was so bad he had trouble keeping his food down. He kept noticing how his colleagues would look at him and whisper... or how their conversations would stop when he entered the room. Finally, he resigned, sold everything, and moved to Arizona. Sometimes he would call his sister; usually, he talked to his niece, Julia.

The friends he left behind had heard that he had visited Mrs. Nolla the morning of the shooting. A few even hinted that Justin had believed that something would happen, but not what or when. Mr. Nolla hadn't left a note - perhaps there had been an affair? But despite varying theories, the general consensus was that Justin had left due to his guilt -- unable to save Mrs. Nolla's life.

They were wrong. Somehow, the life of Mrs. Nolla had seemed, and still seemed, out of his hands. Not his responsibility that morning. Instead, he had failed those twenty-six small, shattered lives. That was what had haunted him and turned his insides out. And as he shut himself away, he told himself that he was dealing with the problem head on.

For years, he had been left alone. The few who had tried to invade his privacy found out quickly that entrance into his life was by invitation only. Trespassers were sometimes shot at, but never actually shot -- until today. If you can call a body that disappears "shot".

Justin lightly turned over the clipboard with his foot. He picked it up and raised it to eye level to be sure his eyes weren't fooling him -- they weren't. Not a drop of blood anywhere.

He turned on a light and tried to make out what he could (given that the pages were no longer in order and had a bullet hole running through them). He found a white page, marked 3G, that read: Complaints, Problems, Irregularities:

1) I don't know who's been photocopying form 3G lately, but they have been doing so on white paper. Keep in mind that the color code system is there for your benefit, and all forms marked 'G' are meant for goldenrod. You'll find it tucked away under the photocopier (under the coral).

2) After taking notes on Justin and his recent activities, call Julia and leave a message. Tell her that Justin is ill and hospitalized but that all is well. Maybe a kidney infection (?).

Justin reread the note, stunned. Some kind of conspiracy. A big one, maybe. He had been right about the danger (but then, he had known that, although it didn't hurt his faith in his own sanity to get confirmation). His hand came to rest on some gray sheets that contained a series of mathematical formulas. He gave them the once over and almost put them down before he realized what they were. As quickly as he could, he gathered all six gray papers together, put them in order, and read slowly them through. When he was finished, he was so surprised that when he stopped to scratch his scalp he -- literally -- disappeared.

17. In Charge "Everyone rises to the level of their incompetence." -- Traditional

"And he shot me!" the Lab Coat Man shouted (again), flinging himself into a swivel office chair. He put his hands to his forehead and massaged the red spot right between and just above his eyes that would eventually scar, forever to mark the spot where the bullet struck an instant before he had vanished and reappeared back in the basement.

"Right between the eyes!" he bleated.

"No, right between and just above," Neoldner corrected. "You've gone over this fifty times now..."

"Shut up!" the Lab Coat Man bellowed. "He shot me! If he had fired just a millisecond sooner..."

"You'd be dead," Neoldner noted. "So what are you going to do about Forrester?"

Prof. Sigger, huddled quietly in the corner, added: "Well, I for one am very glad that you escaped with only --"

"Shut up, both of you! I have to think!"

There was yet another crisis. Not only had he been shot (almost), two unauthorized persons had possession of clipboards. Of the two, Nelson was the most likely to make sense of them, but there was no reason to be relaxed about the other. The problem was, no one had a spare. How was he supposed to look up the relevant procedure if he had lost his (damn) clipboard?!

Well, he was in charge now, at least until the Director showed up. Not Forrester, not the clipboard. And he needed some help. There was only one choice he could make. He walked out of the office and to the cell. Kurt was scratching his arm in the garish light cast from the lone bulb.

"I'm afraid we're running out of time. You know what will happen if we cannot conclude matters by a satisfactory hour."

Kurt continued to scratch.

"Does your arm bother you?"

"No."

It wasn't the answer that shocked the Lab Coat Man, but the fact that he had replied at all. "Good! I mean... too bad! Good that you answered one my questions, but too bad that -- wait, what made you finally answer one of my questions?"

Kurt pondered this for a moment. "I don't know. I just got bored."

The Lab Coat Man reached for his pen in order to mark an 'X' on his clipboard, stopped, and sighed.

18. One Too Many "A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise.... Because that is how life is -- full of surprises." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer

Julia never lost that feeling of uneasiness, so she and Rhonda had left before the screening of "Bride". As Rhonda drove them past the usual road signs and over predictable bumps, Julia became aware of the magnitude of what had happened. She had lost her job and gotten a new one all in one night; she had felt something that she had always assumed was a figment of her uncle's imagination -- possibly the first symptom of a mental illness; she had sat through one of the worst films she had ever witnessed without finding an excuse to leave. Everything that she had ever assumed about this dreary town, small in both size and its collective capacity to imagine, about her life, and just about everything else now seemed strange and unfamiliar. On top of this, Rhonda, after shifting into third gear, was running a hand up her thigh.

"Uh, I'm, uh... I'm straight," said Julia.

Rhonda muttered something and shifted into fourth, charging through the intersection of Central and Oak just as the light changed to red.

When Julia finally unlocked her apartment door, she found Cecil and two messages on the machine waiting for her. Cecil purred and rubbed her shins with his head. She picked him up and pressed play on her answering machine.

Message number one: "Hello, this is Dr. Bernstein calling for Julia Nelson. Your uncle Justin became dehydrated today and will be at St. Joseph's for a while. We'll call you as further developments arise at..."

Uncle Justin in the hospital! I'll have to call the Manager and let him know she needed tomorrow off, she thought. Would he buy that? Oh great, I'm going to lose two jobs in two days!

Before she could rewind, message number two began: "Hon, this is Justin!" Julia gasped and dropped Cecil, who landed perfectly and returned to rubbing her shins. "Don't believe any messages you get about me unless they're from me! I shot a fella who got into my house... well, sort of shot him. I did and I didn't. He was there one minute and then Poof! Anyway, there's no body here, so there's no need to call the cops, but he left behind a clipboard that said he was going to call you and leave a message about me! I don't know what the hell this is all about, but it's not right! Say hello to that cat for me." The message ended, and Cecil, not contented with the action he was getting at foot level, jumped up to the counter just as Julia began dialing her uncle to find out just what the hell was going on.

19. The Meeting "He that communicates his secret to another makes himself that other's slave." -- Baltasar Gracian

Supervising Manager Denny was stocking shelves when the Lab Coat Man approached him.

"Denny?"

"How'd you get in here?"

"Back door."