The Third Personality: A Novel (19)

HOLLYWOOD, Florida - "So. What's the problem? You get yourself a credit card, you buy something you don't need - it don't matter what - and then you pay it off," said the young boss, explaining Consumer Credit Theory to his chubby employee, Tom. "Then you've proved you're worth a risk, and they'll give you credit - bingo. It's as simple as that."

"But it's just not right," Tom answered dully, shaking his head. "Since when does some private business - a credit card company - decide who does or doesn't deserve a bank loan? When did that start? Credit cards aren't even about anything; there's no service being provided - just these new companies, and now I guess the banks that've joined forces with them, forcing everyday people to pay something. To pay interest to them, for nothing."

"Hey, more power to �em," nodded the boss, with admiration.

"Anyway," Tom distantly continued, "I'm good for the loan - and the bank knows it. Once I go back to school and get my masters, I inherit the money my parents left me in their will."\

"Well, that's all well and good - but you're not back in grad school yet, are you, Tom?" said the boss. "No, you're here, working for me, vacuuming up dirt and dragging out wet carpets for a carpet cleaning company - and you make decent money, sure, but, hey - nothing great… But, now, say - if you owned your own company…"

"I'm not a businessman - and I'm never going to be one!" Tom snapped, almost bitterly. (…What was going on in America?! He thought with a frown. How could this sort of thing happen..?)

"Why should I have to be..?" he groaned. "Last year at this time I could've just walked in, asked for the loan and gotten it. But the bank then changed its policy. Why? Who decided having to be an entrepreneur was important all of a sudden? It affects a person's ability to survive. Not everyone's a businessman, or wants to be … There's more to life than just making money!"

"Not in real life," said the boss impatiently. "Look, Tom, if you ever want to get ahead, you've got to play the game. Some people win and some people lose - it's the law of the jungle and that's just the way life is. You need to grow up. Me, I'm going to keep on cleaning carpets until I'm 40 - I've already planned this whole thing out - then I'll have my nut, my money in the bank - and I can retire. Then I can do what I want, finally."

"So you don't really care very much about carpet cleaning?" Tom asked, a little surprised. "And, if you don't - why do it?"

The young man laughed. "Are you fucking kidding..? I don't give a shit about any of this..! Who does? But there's money in it, so I do it - and why not? Anyone who says they're not in the work for the money is a lair, or a fool. Again - grow up."

"What about your customers, then?" Tom asked.

"What about them? groaned the boss. "I provide them with a service, and they pay me for it - which is why you try to do it right, and why you put up with some of their shit… I scratch their backs - they scratch mine … Listen. Where do you expect to be five years from now..? Or, say, ten years from now?"

"I have no idea," Tom said with a shrug. "I haven't thought about it."

"Exactly," said the boss. "And that's why you're going to wake up one of these days and find yourself nowhere. If you want to get ahead, you've got to start making the coin now - period."

Then he glanced across the office, where a large breasted secretary was presently photocopying some paperwork.

"You see Dee Dee over there?" the boss then asked, with a waving motion. "…If you want to get some titties like those in your mouth one of these days - don't tell me you don't - you've got to make the bread … It may not be fair, but, hey, she's not going to put out for losers … No bread. No titties. Without money, you're shit … End of sermon."

Tom glanced over at the secretary, whose back was to them.

He said nothing.

It was Thursday afternoon, and so it was also payday. With his weekly payroll check folded in his shirt pocket, Tom stepped out of the closing downtown company office and onto the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard, a few blocks west of "the circle" and the southbound intersection of U.S. 1.

He decided to take a short walk before stopping by the bank drive-through to cash his check. He was troubled.

The designers of east-west-running Hollywood Boulevard had placed a series of one-way traffic circles every couple of miles between State Road 7 to the west and the Intracoastal Waterway to the east. The one downtown, where Tom was now walking, was called "Hollywood Circle," a small park with a half-shell for concerts, lots of grass and benches, and sidewalks leading into and out of the sidewalk-boundaried "circle." It was a popular spot for all kinds of lost souls - who the Hollywood Police Department, on a mandate from the city, would periodically usher along on their way to "elsewhere."

Politically-speaking, the so-called "hoboes" did very little for the park's would-be ambience. But it was a peaceful setting, hoboes or not, and that's where Tom decided he'd go to sit for a while before returning to his car and heading home.

"Home" was his late parents' house, some 10 miles north and five west of downtown Hollywood along the artificial, short inlets of residential, finger-like Lauderdale Isles. The inlets fed into the New River, which in turn fed into Port Everglades eight miles east of there - and beyond that, into the Atlantic.

His dad's boat was still moored out back at the house, too, on the small dock he'd built adjacent to the short seawall, which bordered all of the homes on either side of their inlet. Lauderdale Isles was a succession of single-street peninsulas separated by the sea-walled inlets.

Growing up, Tom always imagined that this western suburb of Fort Lauderdale was probably the epitome of The American Dream.

It was Paradise.

His parents certainly thought so when they moved there.

But now they were gone.

Three-years-ago-gone - and in his unrelenting misery, Tom believed he was maybe - finally - starting to lose it.

In their will (which Tom was sure they never expected to have read - Donald and Sadie Mendelson were not given easily to pessimism over their early demise), his parents stipulated that Tom, as their only child and sole beneficiary, would qualify for their sizeable Connecticut Blue Cross life insurance policy immediately - but he'd not be able to gain access to their joint savings and checking accounts until Tom came away with a graduate degree from someplace. His parents were convinced attaining such a degree, no matter what the field Tom might choose, would assure their son's future and his safe passage through life.

Tom did graduate from Florida Atlantic University with a B.A. in philosophy prior to entering the Navy. He was a good student as an undergraduate, although hardly an impassioned one.

But his degree, he quickly discovered, was all but useless.

While in the Navy, Tom watched the landscape of America change, and he found that he no longer related to his peers - at least those who'd gone on to universities (out-of-state, a lot of them). They'd smoked pot, dropped acid and stormed their student unions in protest over one thing or another. But even though not everyone he'd known growing up behaved this way (maybe only half of them, in fact), it was pretty clear those who had were somehow changing the face of the future - one that was beginning to make Tom feel very uncomfortable. Maybe even edgy.

Behind all of their expressed idealism (which to Tom always seemed forced), there was an ever-increasing emphasis on material goods, making money, and on a kind of "better-than-the-Joneses" competitive consumption - which completely contradicted the premises behind the back-to-nature-and-God hippy movement.

Fact was - Tom's collegiate peers, he felt, were hypocrites and he had no desire to follow in their vacuous footsteps.

This obstinacy, coupled with a bitterness over his parents' sudden deaths, remained unresolved issues he vaguely understood, but he just couldn't get past them somehow. In fact, the way he'd taken to dealing with it all lately was a habit he'd picked up in Guantanamo Bay - which was stopping by a lounge, drinking shooters and single beer chasers … and getting shitfaced.

The country was going down the toilet - Tom was sure of it. He just didn't have any idea why (he'd long-since forgotten all of the visions and dreams he'd had, or at least forced them out of his mind); and he didn't want any part of The American Collapse.

What he didn't realize then was that, out of all of the people he'd ever known, he was the only one at that point in time who believed such a terrible thing about the future of his country.

Tom found a park bench and sat down, resting his arms on the hard wooden back rest.

The sky was beginning to grow quickly overcast. South Florida weather was mercurial at best. Rain was heading in.

Tom sighed.

On top of everything else … - he hated his job, he hated being fat, he hated living alone, he hated the direction America was headed, he hated the banks for turning down his loan, he hated credit cards, he probably hated himself - … and on top of all of that …

Tom was horny. He never should have begun ogling Dee Dee.

He sighed again.

* * * * *

Evening was already beginning to settle in at Durty Nellie's indoor-outdoor lounge on the Intracoastal Waterway north of downtown Fort Lauderdale - where Tom had settled in hours ago, already staring into another beer and, what, his sixth shot of scotch?

None of the girls would look his way all this time, either; at least not in an admiring way. Even the two waitresses he had barely noticed him. But, then, why should they?

Tom was a blimp. El dirigi-bleh. (And one of his testicles was slightly smaller than the other. So even if he got lucky …)

He hated the prospect of being seen naked - regardless.

What was he doing here? What could he hope to accomplish?

Tom was unlovable.

Tom was worm sweat.

He belched.

By the time Barry Manilow began singing a popular recording over the outdoor lounge's sound system, Tom's tear ducts were already welling up.

No matter. When the song started, he sang right along.

Only it was in a creaky voice, maybe an octave or so lower.

"…This one's for you, where-ev-er you are…"

Then Tom broke off his singing, and began crying. His sobs were pitiful and wrenching - as if he'd held them in his entire life.

"What the piss is that guy doing over there?" the bartender asked of Tom's latest waitress.

She casually looked over, as she stacked beers on her tray.

"Looks to me like he's crying," she surmised.

"Well, get him to stop - or tell him he's going to have to leave," the bartender said.

A 50-foot cabin cruiser, meanwhile, puttered by along on the Intracoastal that bordered Durty Nellie's.

The clouds overhead remained ugly, even as the night settled in. But they never could quite bring themselves to sprinkle.

The waitress took her good ol' time making her way back over to Tom's table. (She'd decided that telling people to leave the bar wasn't her job - it killed tips. "…So the guy was a little unhappy - so," she'd commented to a sympathetic coworker. "So fucking what? Welcome to Fort Liquordale … What fucking else is new..?") Tom, meanwhile, remained awash in self-pity, with his head now cradled by his folded arms on the table and his sporadic sobs periodically annoying nearby customers - at least those who'd opted to notice. Most, however, didn't, or they pretended not to.

"Hey, there - sweet stuff," the waitress began, reaching to nudge Tom's heaving shoulder. "Hey, fella, listen up …"

"It's okay," came a female voice from behind her.

The waitress turned and saw a young woman standing there, knowingly motioning toward Tom. "It's okay. He's kind of had a hard day, you know? He's with me."

"Yeh, well," the waitress nodded, "management says he's either got to stop, or he's got to leave … Sorry."

"I understand," said the young woman, who smiled. "I do."

Tom slowly looked up as the gist of the conversation began to settle in and register in the back of his soggy brain. Who was this girl, stepping in on his behalf..?

As he raised his head he felt the sky rotate. He was dizzy.

"Hitting some kind of an emotional bottom, are we?" she inquired in a strangely good-natured manner. Whoever she was, she looked to be in her mid-to-late 20s, maybe Tom's age.

(...What did "hitting bottom" mean..?)

"My name's Hunt," she said. "Tawker Hunt. May I join you?"

She was cute, too, Tom decided.

He forced back another belch. "I'd … like that, miss…"

"Hunt," Tawker repeated.

As she settled into the seat adjacent to Tom's, a self-consciously handsome (and inebriated) older man, maybe in his late 30s, swaggered by their table. He then leaned over to say something in Tawker's ear.

"I been checkin' you out," the man whispered leeringly. "Don't spend your time with this weepy loser. Leave with me."

Tawker stiffened, and icily folded her hands beneath her chin. She then stared straight ahead, as if attempting to melt with her eyes some unseen something on the adjacent property.

"Consume excrement and expire," she whispered back in a soft, airy bile. (Tawker adored some of this era's word images! - even when she unknowingly fumbled voicing the precise, correct phrases, which didn't happen all that often.)

The man blinked. He stood back up and, then, as if amused, fired his verbal cannon: "Whoa, babe - ex-cu-se me for living!"

Tawker looked up at him contemptuously. It was time to slip into profound-speak. "I can't do that," she said. "You're a profanity, even a cliché of a self-absorbed, viciously inconsiderate, predatory male during America's historic worst … You have zero to offer anyone. Your personal future is bleak, likely even hopeless … You've wasted this incarnation.

"Now. Shall I ask management to toss you outside on your disease-breeding penis?"

The man rocked slightly for a moment, yet did not speak.

"Cunt," he then muttered angrily. But he turned, and left.

Then, just like in the movies, some nearby patrons began to lightly applaud.

By this time, Tawker had Tom's full attention - what there was of it that remained within his control.

"I heard you say your name, but … Who are you?" he asked.

"A friend," Tawker smiled, reaching over to briefly touch one of Tom's anxiously sweaty hands. "We need to talk: quietly."

"I'm … listening," Tom then said, barely able to conceal his surprise - or his excitement.

"…and you're going to become a significant spokesperson for several conspicuous causes," said Tawker. "In my time, you are a celebrity of considerable note, even though you had, well - technically - been dead for a long time by then."

"'Technically..?' You know how I die, too?" Tom gasped.

Tom had been listening attentively throughout her discourse, and barely noticed that Durty Nellie's patrons were gradually moving along. Closing time couldn't be that far away.

In the two hours or so that Tawker Hunt had spoken to him in the lounge, encouraging him to interject thoughts or questions whenever he felt the need, Tom became as transfixed by the girl herself as by her preposterous story. Throughout, he was looking for some indication that he was serving as the butt of someone's practical joke - but instead he found much of what she had to say, at the very least, intriguing. Even feasible.

For starters - she knew things about him and his family, and about his growing up in Fort Lauderdale no one else could have possibly known - things he'd never told anyone …

"I'm only repeating things you've probably long since written about yourself in journals, and in your autobiography," she shrugged.

"I write an autobiography? Who'd want to read that?"

"Lots of people. They are especially taken by your seeming reincarnational pedigree, which, as you surely know by now, goes all the way back to the days of the Bible…"

"Wait right there," Tom said. "What are you talking about."

Tawker paused. She then looked both surprised, and ashamed. "Oops … In your writings, you said you'd had visions and dreams dating all the way back to your childhood."

"Yeh, I have. So what? They don't mean much to me now. I don't even remember them all."

"Then it isn't my place to provide you with this missing information," she said distantly. "I've been monitoring your progress for years - years in your time, months, or even just weeks, in mine - waiting for that chronological moment when I might best enter your life …

"I'm so sorry. I don't usually make this kind of mistake."

"'Enter my life'..," Tom began. "But - why..?"

"For a lot of reasons," she said, still looking considerably shaken. Then she laughed nervously, which caught Tom off-guard.

"Thank goodness you're drunk!" she giggled.

"So, one of the reasons you're here is to help me..? How?" Tom asked, a short time later.

"I can help guide you through a time when the survival of your personal freedoms, as a citizen of the U.S., is threatened, for one thing," Tawker said casually, even absently.

Then she went on to describe a "probable future" filled with cynicism, hopelessness, violence, greed, a gradual bleeding-away of integrity in society's founding institutions …

And so on.

"I can imagine some of these things you describe actually happening, maybe - but I can't believe it would ever get that bad," Tom said. "Not in America."

"You say that now," Tawker laughed, shaking her head. "It can, and does - in more than 90 percent of the parallel time streams … In fact, it doesn't get much more probable than that …

"Look: you're not perfect - you need only look around you now, at this stage of your life, to recognize the truth in that," she added. "You didn't get it right all of the time. Trust me.

"But for all of your simple, common human failings, you've been driven in this life - your words - to meaningfully address the problems you encounter at their deepest levels. It's not so much that you're more able than other people to take this on - it's that you'd become genuinely, deeply committed and willing to sacrifice whatever it took to - another expression - …get the job done … I know you, Thomas. I've followed you for years, in your time. At one point, historians actually saw you as a kind of George Washington - who told the truth, even after he - you - were ruled safe at the plate in an otherwise meaningless childhood baseball game … Remember that? You talked the umpire into reversing his call. Well, I saw that game that day - and the idea that you were driven to argue against the ruling solely by some irrevocable, internal need to always tell the truth … Well, that's just plain wishful thinking. I watched you argue with that umpire. I was there."

"That was you sitting in the stands?!" Tom gushed.

"You were a cute kid. You'd finally unloaded some of that unhealthy obesity," Tawker nodded. "But - another George Washington and the Cherry Tree? - no. Nevertheless, you must know the George Washington tale was mostly spin control, too."

Tom didn't - whatever "spin control" meant. But he was certain she just accused him of once being cute. He wasn't aware, however, that he was now blushing.

Tawker noticed, but pretended she didn't - and continued her commentary without missing a beat.

What time is it? Tom wondered. Surely it's getting late …

"How is it you can locate me at some point in history so easily?" he then asked.

"You time travel mostly by harnessing your emotions," Tawker explained. "In your material framework, I know that sounds strange. But the mechanics are not mathematical; logic isn't at play. In a manner of speaking, time travel into the past is a voyage of love."

She paused.

"I was born and raised to do just the work I'm doing," Tawker continued, "with you, and with a few others, too. But mostly I'm here, back in these times, for you - and to be here with you."

Tom blushed once again.

"I'm afraid I might not be able to remember all this," Tom said, suspecting that the alcohol had apparently taken its toll.

He was feeling fairly sober but he was exhausted and sleepy.

"Actually, you won't - not tomorrow, and not the next day - I'm afraid I'll have to see to that," Tawker said unhappily. "But you will remember all of this one day - when it's appropriate for you to. For the time being, though, it will just seem as if you suffered a memory blackout from drinking too much … And you won't remember me very clearly, if at all. Not for a while yet."

"You can do that?" Tom said in amazement. "I didn't mean I expected to forget about all of this … You can make me forget?"

"I have no choice," Tawker shrugged.

"But I don't want that to happen," Tom said. "I want to see you … I'd like … to see you again…"

Tawker smiled. She placed her hand gently on Tom's temple and gazed into his eyes. "We'll meet again soon," she said.

Tom felt a calm slip in - and ripple throughout his body.

"But for now, my beloved," she whispered, "close your eyes."

Tom let out an audible sigh.

In his deepening contentment, he did as he was instructed.

When he opened his eyes, Tom felt resilient and refreshed.

And, without giving it a second thought - he was all alone.

"We're closing up now, buddy," a busboy said to Tom. "Time to go home. You really zoned-out there for a while … I guess your girlfriend left already. Either way, though…"

"I understand," Tom said, nodding, and he got up to leave. He then headed out toward the parking area and into the humid late night. His car was sitting alone in the parking lot.

But Tom didn't understand. Not exactly.

What "girlfriend" was the damned kid talking about?

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