Maybe No.7 is a little like this room.
Back in good old No.7, I put my shopping on the table and
looked around. Everything looked exactly as I had left it. Toni hadn’t been in
here doing research, or she was a lot slicker than I thought she was.
I had reason to be antsy.
I thought about home. Levi, David and Laura. For their sake, better that I had vanished without a trace. I could imagine the writeups. The futile searches. The confusion of it all. 43 year old wife and mother inexplicably gone.
I wished I knew why Toni had looked frightened when I came through the door. The trouble with this kind of escapade, as if I knew, is that it leads to overthinking every little thing, and even paranoia. I probably just surprised the sleepy girl…but what was she looking at on her phone? Maybe reports from up north?
I made a mental note to change my appearance.
I thought about my phone, offline for real.
Until a week ago, I had been working in that great huge building in my home town, where aircraft are built and finished and flown away to go to work. I was a low level facilitator. I pushed paper and did some secretarial stuff for a supervisor. Ellis Roberts. That’s the guy. Maybe he really didn’t know any better.
Here, where I sat, I needed two very basic things. A source of income that didn’t appear anywhere officially. Pretty sure Maria would pay me cash under the table. It’s a way of life. And, I needed obscurity and shelter. I needed time also, to make contact with who or what I had no idea, but I thought my old boss, who got me into this mess did know. I could only pray that I wasn't running on fumes of delusion.
A lot of walking was required to do my job. I ran things around, sneaker net style. I’m the girl who got things signed. Some people at the plant with further to go rode bicycles. Really. The place is that big!
Back to Ellis. One day he told me I could cut through a certain locked hangar because he had a key I could use. I think he might have been showing off. Nevertheless, I used his key, looking for a shortcut.
When I saw the interior of this locked hangar, I realized that my life had changed forever, if anyone who mattered realized I had seen what they had in there. The rest of the story is that I took a hundred photos. Maybe I thought they would be some kind of leverage.
I took the long way around to get back to Ellis and give him back his key. He looked more than a little wild when I got there. He jumped up and closed his office door and turned to face me. My boss looked terrified. His amiable round face was pink and contorted.
“Jenae, I just ruined your life. They have you on security,” he said. “I don’t know what they’ll do to you. I don’t know what they’ll do to me. You can’t wait even a minute. If you really want to live, just leave. Vanish completely, God, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t do any good does it,” he was near tears. He said one strange word, as I turned to go. “Luminous.”
No one was home the last time I saw the place. It was midday. I took 5000.00 out of our cash stash leaving 4000.00 approximately. He would understand that something had happened and wouldn’t tell a soul. Under the remaining cash in the safe behind the bedroom dresser, I left a sticky note saying, “if I can, I will come back.”
Right before I left I looked up Luminous. There was a town called that in western Texas. What else did I have to go on?
I packed the two bags, made sure that my phone with its appalling load of photos was incommunicado in its Faraday bag, and I walked to the Greyhound station with tears in my eyes. But they were invisible tears because a persistent chilly rain was falling. I bought my ticket with twenties.
Though I had the photos and my own memory, the contents of that locked building seemed like an illusion. Impossible mechanisms sheltered there, materializations of the visions and obsessions of mankind since recorded words began. I had stood there with mouth open in the dim light, looking at these things before I started recording.
So, here I was in limbo, in No.7, expecting to go to work for Maria tomorrow.
I showered. Lots of hot water was nice. Got into my jammies. Drank some water, ate some chips and the chocolate bar.
I switched on the TV, laughed and switched it back off. How do people manage to watch that stuff? I wondered what signal was available in Luminous, but didn’t explore the subject.
Since there wasn’t much to do and I wasn’t quite ready to try to sleep here in this strange place, I decided to just take a look outside. I turned down the light and stepped out. The sky was like nothing I had ever seen before. It burned, displaying a billion suns in unthinkable depth. I gasped and burst into tears. At home the clouds would be covering it all.
As I leaned there, in relative darkness, I began to hear slow hoofbeats. I waited, watching. I saw a man on horseback riding down Minor Ave, toward the upper end of town. He looked, in the dark, much like Flores from Lorenzo’s café.
I had reason to be antsy.
I thought about home. Levi, David and Laura. For their sake, better that I had vanished without a trace. I could imagine the writeups. The futile searches. The confusion of it all. 43 year old wife and mother inexplicably gone.
I wished I knew why Toni had looked frightened when I came through the door. The trouble with this kind of escapade, as if I knew, is that it leads to overthinking every little thing, and even paranoia. I probably just surprised the sleepy girl…but what was she looking at on her phone? Maybe reports from up north?
I made a mental note to change my appearance.
I thought about my phone, offline for real.
Until a week ago, I had been working in that great huge building in my home town, where aircraft are built and finished and flown away to go to work. I was a low level facilitator. I pushed paper and did some secretarial stuff for a supervisor. Ellis Roberts. That’s the guy. Maybe he really didn’t know any better.
Here, where I sat, I needed two very basic things. A source of income that didn’t appear anywhere officially. Pretty sure Maria would pay me cash under the table. It’s a way of life. And, I needed obscurity and shelter. I needed time also, to make contact with who or what I had no idea, but I thought my old boss, who got me into this mess did know. I could only pray that I wasn't running on fumes of delusion.
A lot of walking was required to do my job. I ran things around, sneaker net style. I’m the girl who got things signed. Some people at the plant with further to go rode bicycles. Really. The place is that big!
Back to Ellis. One day he told me I could cut through a certain locked hangar because he had a key I could use. I think he might have been showing off. Nevertheless, I used his key, looking for a shortcut.
When I saw the interior of this locked hangar, I realized that my life had changed forever, if anyone who mattered realized I had seen what they had in there. The rest of the story is that I took a hundred photos. Maybe I thought they would be some kind of leverage.
I took the long way around to get back to Ellis and give him back his key. He looked more than a little wild when I got there. He jumped up and closed his office door and turned to face me. My boss looked terrified. His amiable round face was pink and contorted.
“Jenae, I just ruined your life. They have you on security,” he said. “I don’t know what they’ll do to you. I don’t know what they’ll do to me. You can’t wait even a minute. If you really want to live, just leave. Vanish completely, God, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t do any good does it,” he was near tears. He said one strange word, as I turned to go. “Luminous.”
No one was home the last time I saw the place. It was midday. I took 5000.00 out of our cash stash leaving 4000.00 approximately. He would understand that something had happened and wouldn’t tell a soul. Under the remaining cash in the safe behind the bedroom dresser, I left a sticky note saying, “if I can, I will come back.”
Right before I left I looked up Luminous. There was a town called that in western Texas. What else did I have to go on?
I packed the two bags, made sure that my phone with its appalling load of photos was incommunicado in its Faraday bag, and I walked to the Greyhound station with tears in my eyes. But they were invisible tears because a persistent chilly rain was falling. I bought my ticket with twenties.
Though I had the photos and my own memory, the contents of that locked building seemed like an illusion. Impossible mechanisms sheltered there, materializations of the visions and obsessions of mankind since recorded words began. I had stood there with mouth open in the dim light, looking at these things before I started recording.
So, here I was in limbo, in No.7, expecting to go to work for Maria tomorrow.
I showered. Lots of hot water was nice. Got into my jammies. Drank some water, ate some chips and the chocolate bar.
I switched on the TV, laughed and switched it back off. How do people manage to watch that stuff? I wondered what signal was available in Luminous, but didn’t explore the subject.
Since there wasn’t much to do and I wasn’t quite ready to try to sleep here in this strange place, I decided to just take a look outside. I turned down the light and stepped out. The sky was like nothing I had ever seen before. It burned, displaying a billion suns in unthinkable depth. I gasped and burst into tears. At home the clouds would be covering it all.
As I leaned there, in relative darkness, I began to hear slow hoofbeats. I waited, watching. I saw a man on horseback riding down Minor Ave, toward the upper end of town. He looked, in the dark, much like Flores from Lorenzo’s café.
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