We're both sitting outside on a wrought iron bench, overlooking the grounds at Avera.  It's still only mid-afternoon, but already a hint of fog is drifting in off the coast, and the air has grown cooler.  I wish I had thought to bring a jacket, but of course he doesn't notice.  Doesn't care.

"So how long have I been in there?  Like that?"

"The accident was just under a year ago.  They transferred you over about six months back."

He frowns.  "They?"

"Your parents," I explain.  "You didn't have any kind of will, or directive.  They've been left calling the shots."

His hand sweeps out, taking it all in.  The swath of lawn, the moss rock boulders, the exquisitely trimmed Japanese maples.  "There's no way they could afford this."

"But DoQuest can.  Seems they're covering whatever the insurance doesn't handle.  Plus they've set up this trust people can donate to, people there at work, or whatever.  You've even got this special Facebook page."

He makes a sound, not quite laughter.  "Great."

"At least there won't be any bills waiting when you get out."

"And will I?  Get out?"

It's the question I've been dreading.  The same one I've been asking myself.    "I haven't talked to any doctors, any of the people in charge.  Medical confidentiality and all that.  The impression I get is that nobody knows.  That each case, each person is different.  You could wake up tomorrow.  Ask for a bowl of Froot Loops."

Or you could just lie there, lost to the world, until you finally die.

As we watch, a small service vehicle, one of those green John Deere electrics, pulls into the nearest lot.  The driver and the man riding shotgun, both dark-skinned and wearing identical grey coveralls, climb out, grab a pair of rakes, and do their best to look busy, gathering up invisible leaves that aren't really there.  A gentle lilt of Spanish washes up the hill.

"Look, I'm sorry," I hear myself say.

"Sorry?"

"For all this.  For the way I acted.  I know I was an asshole sometimes.  A lot of times.  But I thought you were just something I made up.  I never figured you were real."

"Don't worry about it."  He lifts his left hand, pokes at it with his right index finger, and then smiles, as if amused by the way it all works, how you'd swear it was flesh finding flesh.  "So do you think all of them, all those people in there with me, do they all have someone like you?  Someone they visit?  Or are you and me just freaks, some weird anomaly?"

"I guess we could go back and ask."

Now we're both smiling, in spite of ourselves.  Like they say, it beats the alternative.

And then, as I watch, his face grows more somber.  "It's going to take me a while to wrap my head around all this.  To figure out where I stand.  Or not stand is more like it."  He pauses a second, proud of his little joke.  "But anyway, in the meantime, I might have a few favors to ask."

I wait for him to go on.

"I'm hoping that maybe you'll let me keep visiting."  He quickly raises his hand, ready to fend off some protest I haven't even made.  "No, not like before.  I promise I'll only show up when you want me there.  When I'm invited.  Because the thing is, you're all I have left.  You're my eyes, my ears.  My way back into the world.  Without this, this whatever it is we share, I'm just a body rotting away in there."

I know I should look up, meet his gaze, but instead just keep staring at the ground.  "Yes.  Of course.  Of course you can visit.  Whenever you want."

"Thanks.  That means a lot."  He pauses.  Takes a deep breath, then releases it in a sigh.  "And then there's Claire."

"Claire," I repeat back to him, keeping my own voice flat.  Neutral.

"I'm sure she's ... what's that phrase? ... 'moved on'?  Probably hooked up with Scott, or that UPS driver who was always hitting on her.  But the thing is, she never knew I was coming back to be with her.  To give it another shot.  And maybe even now, even after all this time, that might mean something to her.  And if so, maybe you could tell her.  On my behalf, so to speak."  When I finally glance up, see his expression, I have to look away again.  "Unless, you know, you think that would be opening up old wounds or something."

"Let me think on it," I tell him.

"Sure.  Take your time.  It's not like I'm going anywhere."

By now the two men have finished their charade, with both rakes stashed back in the truck.  The older of the two, convinced he's the boss, examines the mulched bed, picks up a last errant leaf, and then climbs behind the wheel, where he waits until his partner joins him.  Then, with a soft crunch of tires over gravel, they're gone, leaving us alone once more.

"And there is one more thing."

I nod back at him.

"There's a chance, maybe a good one, that once I think things through, give it all time to sink in, I might decide that's it.  Time to pull the plug.  But obviously I can't.  I'd need someone to do it for me."

By now I'm no longer nodding.

"Look," he insists, his voice almost shrill, "I'm just trying to be realistic.  My mom could never let herself do it, and my dad, he'll just roll right over, go along with whatever she wants.  So that leaves you.  I don't know how you'd work it with the law and all that, but I'm not worried.  You'd find a way."

He takes his hand, the same hand that was so real, so solid just a few moments ago, and reaches out for mine.  But instead of a touch, all I feel is a tingle.  A shadow on my skin.  

Feeling that shadow, I can't help but think.  Think about all the seedlings I've culled, the weeds I've yanked, the plants I've torn out of the ground.  The fallen bird that needed a little help in the end.  The squirrel by the side of the road.  And those awful times, each one etched in my soul, when I've taken my friend, my faithful companion, on that last trip to the vet's, and held her in my arms, and listened to her purr, and watched as the man in the clean white smock filled his hypodermic.  Finding death, finding your own, all that does is kill you.  But being death, being its accomplice, can make you want to die.

"I don't know," I finally say.  "I don't know if I could.  And I probably won't until, unless, you ask."

"Then lets hope I never do."

And with those words, his hand is gone.  The bench beside me empty.  All that remains is the cool afternoon, the dappled sunlight, and a slight, residual tingle on the skin of my own hand.  For a moment I just sit there, staring at the black wrought iron, the weathered slats of wood, and then I finally stand up.

One of us still has a long drive home.

One of us doesn't.

One second I am in a car, hurtling through space, sailing down an embankment.

And the next I am in my bed, staring at the ceiling, and a particularly nasty cobweb hanging in one corner.

Usually when you wake up from one of those dreams, one of those this-is-it, we're-all-gonna-die numbers, you experience a lingering moment of panic.  You've just checked in with the reaper.  Glimpsed a preview of that day, years distant if you're lucky, when it won't be a dream, just a cold, hard fact.  And yet as I lay there, tucked beneath the covers, I felt calm instead.  Almost serene.  After all these months of questions and confusions, of false leads, dead ends and go-nowhere theories, I finally had an answer.

I knew what was going on.

And knowing, the rest was easy.

I've always been leery of our brave, new world.  A world where we're all connected.  But still, when it's time to track down some obscure song lyric, or find a replacement pilot light assembly for a fifteen-year-old greenhouse heater, I have to admit there are advantages to living in the future.  It turns out that the Great State of Utah Highway Safety Administration has a highly detailed, unfailingly accurate data base of all major traffic incidents, infractions and collisions, available to the general public at the click of a mouse.  Do mice click?  I thought they squeaked.  Turns out Nevada has a similar site, just as thorough, just as user-friendly.

By checking the transplant calendar, I could figure out which day it was last spring, that fateful day when the person I called Simon first wandered into my life.  April 19th, in case you're interested.  And then, just to be safe, I went back another six months, because I'm no expert in metaphysics, and maybe these things take a while to set up, what with the paperwork and all.  Which left me, in the end, with just over a year of records to dig through.  And to make matters even simpler, I could eliminate most entries, the DUI's, the speeding tickets, the minor fender benders.  Because I was going for the big grand prize.  Capital F, for fatality.

Say the word ghost, and what do you think?  Some kid on Halloween night, in an old sheet, with two holes cut out for his eyes.  Or maybe it's a squeak on the stair, a chill in the room, or that mysterious blob of ectoplasm.  The point is, our heads are so full of prejudices, preconceptions, that when the real thing comes along, bites us on the hand, we can't even recognize it.  Of course he was a ghost.  How could he be anything else?  Which also meant, of course, that I wasn't, hadn't been, crazy.  Just sensitive.  Aware.  Exactly the kind of tuned-in, turned-on human being any dead person would be happy to hang out with.

So I finally had it all figured out.  Or did I?  After checking the on-line records, going back a full year for both states, I discovered there'd been no fatal, single-vehicle accidents involving a Charles, a Chuck or even - just to be a safe - a Simon.  Not unless my thirty-something techie was actually an eighty-one-year-old resident of Salt Lake.  So he wasn't dead.  But my grand theory was.  Either it was back to square one, back to me being crazy, or something else had happened.

Something else.

A something else that kept me busy for the best part of a month.  A something else that kept me on-line, on the phone, on tenterhooks.  A something else that convinced me to lie, cheat, fabricate and connive, to do whatever it takes, and which finally led me here, to this day, this place, this moment in time.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I'm here to see Charles.  Charles Ames."

She smiles.  Nods.  Hands me a very nice, very glossy pamphlet with a picture on the cover, a young child holding a red balloon.  Visiting Your Loved Ones.

"He should be in the Atrium right now."  She sees my confusion, goes on to explain.  "We like to make sure they get lots of daylight.  Just take the main hall, and follow the blue arrows."

I thank her.  Find the hall.  Follow the arrows. 

This place is called Avera.  Which sounds like a pain reliever, and which, in a way, it is.  It is not a hospital or a hospice, an assisted living or a skilled nursing facility, or any of those safe, bland, disingenuous terms we use for the places we get sent to before we die.  It is located on the outskirts of Redwood City, on a big, quiet, beautifully landscaped lot that actually includes quite a few redwoods scattered around the premises.

Visits here are arranged by appointment, so I've made my call in advance.  And I have the feeling, after talking to the receptionist, that there used to be quite a few of us dropping by.  People from work mostly, plus a contingent of hardcore fans, offering up prayers to Z'aajnor, the god of all true gamers.  Still, I had no trouble booking a slot.  It has been almost a year after all, and hope tends to have a short shelf life. 

The hallway is carpeted.  The walls a gentle off-white.  And instead of an intercom, or monitors beeping away in the background, all I can hear is some kind of nondescript instrumental music wafting through the air.  It does not, in short, feel like a place for sick people.  In fact, it doesn't feel like any place at all.  More like a moment, suspended in time.  That moment between when we draw a breath in, and when we slowly release it again.  The moment when we choose to either live, or to die.

The atrium, when I find it, is huge.  Light floods down from several skylights, and one whole wall is nothing but glass, a series of interconnected windows that face out towards the carefully sculpted grounds.  But it's not the room you notice, it's the people.  Ten or twelve of them, each one stretched out in some kind of reclining bed, and covered with matching baby blue blankets.  The beds, which are wheeled, have all been lined up to face the windows, perfectly parallel, equally spaced, with almost military precision.  Seeing them there, it's a statement.  An insistence.  They're not just lying there, passive, inert.  They're watching.  Watching the world go by.

And yet their eyes are closed.

Some of them look old and fragile.  Some seem almost healthy, young.  There's the same mix of gender, race and skin tone, that carefully random blend, you'd see in an ad for Coke, or car insurance.  Moving closer, I want to study each face, read the story behind those drawn lids, but somehow it feels wrong.  Intrusive.  There's nobody else there in the room, or at least nobody standing, and for a moment I feel as though I'm the one who's got something wrong, the one who's sick, aberrant.  It would be easy, so easy right then, to just turn around, go home, pretend this place doesn't exist.

And then I see him.  Half-way down.  Right next to a bald, elderly man, his gaunt skull speckled with liver spots.  Maybe it's just that, the contrast, the disparity in age and appearance, but his neighbor looks so young.  So untouched.  He's always been pale, but his skin seems now to almost glow with a soft, bluish light.  And there's something about his face.  When you look at a person, you can pretend all you're seeing is an assemblage of parts, a nose, a mouth, two eyes.  But really what you're seeing is what animates those parts, the thoughts, the emotions.  The self.  You see it, know it, but somehow forget the fact.  Until the moment it's no longer there.

I take a few steps.  Bring myself closer.  I am the anxious parent, stealing into the nursery, afraid to wake the baby.  But this baby won't wake.  Not soon.  Maybe not ever.

Staring at him, I feel angry, pissed off.  At myself.  At the world.  At the lottery we call life.  I'd taken my bite of the apple, and missed a few nights sleep.  But the one he'd tasted had been tainted.  Poisoned.  Sleep was all he had left.  

"So that's me."

I almost jump out of my skin. 

Then turn to find him right next to me, staring down at his own blank face.

We're driving down a deserted stretch of Highway 50, a piss-stop southwest of Salt Lake, in the empty hours between midnight and dawn.

There is no quieter place, no greater solitude, than being alone in a car, plunging through the night.  The hum of the motor is the wash of your blood, pulsing with each heartbeat.  The glow of the dash, each dial, each light, is your own body checking in, the tingle of nerve, the murmur of the senses.  The occasional flicker of oncoming lights, the intermittent presence of other drivers, only seems to emphasize how alone you are.  The diminishment, the negation of self that occurs while gazing at a star-filled sky.

The man behind the wheel makes a sound.  A sigh, or perhaps a yawn.  It's a small sound, a human sound, and I doubt he even notices.  But I notice.  The invisible presence that rides alongside, watching the road, feeling his thoughts wash over me.  Does he sense me here?  Know that I can read those thoughts, those emotions?  Apparently not.  Like every driver on the road, he too has his blind spot.

But me, I can see it all.  Feel it all.  The pain, the confusion, of their first real fight, almost a week ago.  Weathering her anger, feeling his own, that sick rush of joy as they took turns lashing out, slicing into each other, tearing apart the fragile little apparatus of trust they'd spent months cobbling together.  Doors slamming.  Her leaving.  Him leaving too.  Calling into work, jumping into the car a half-hour later, no clothes, no destination, just go.  Old Black Flag pumping out the speakers, needle spiking red, almost hoping some CHP would pull him over, toss him in jail, punish yourself, punish the bitch, it was all one and the same.

Then the gradual slide off adrenalin hill.  The formulation of a plan.  He'd owed Mitch a visit since his move up to Mormonville.  And antclear was still holed up somewhere outside Salt Lake.  Kill two birds with your one stone.  Maybe kill yourself in the process. 

The man behind the wheel makes a sound.  A sigh, or perhaps a laugh.

Because that's the thing about anger.  You just can't keep it up.  By the time he'd hit Ely, that righteous ire was gone, leached out by all those empty draws and tilting telephone poles.  And the stuff that was left?  Guilt, resentment, doubt.  Like the monkey's ass in last night's bottle, you couldn't get high off that.  So instead you wind up replaying the words, reliving those last few hours.  And like it or not, are left with an unavoidable conclusion.  She'd been right all along.  You are a flaming asshole.

Not that Mitch would cop to the fact.  They were old work buds, level C clearance, and candor had never been part of the service clause.  But antclear was a different bird.  Sensing his mood, she'd cracked open the Cuervo, and they'd started trading shots.  By the time the bottle was empty, it was all laid out like one of her Tarot readings.  His mother, his father, their fucked-up lives, and the fucked-up child they'd raised.  Of course he'd managed to screw up the one good thing he'd stumbled across in life.  What else did he expect.

The man behind the wheel makes a sound.  A sigh, definitely a sigh.

Right before they'd that bottle was dead, she'd pulled out a photograph.  Antclear, much younger, snuggled up to some guy, torn sweatshirt and Neal Cassady grin.  That's Walt, she said, her voice slightly slurred.  My one, my only, my never.  Then she set the photo down.  Stared him straight in the eye.  Once, just once, I'd like to see someone I know, someone I love, get it right.  Just to prove it can happen.

So now the road spools backwards.  Going home, not going away.  As near as he could figure, there were only three possible permutations.  Live your life with the wrong person, don't live your life with the right one, or go ahead, try the impossible, try to actually make things work.

This time it's a yawn.  No doubt about it.  With it I can feel how tired he is, how low the batteries have run.  The long drive up, Mitch and his herb, antclear and her Cuervo, and now another eleven hours behind the wheel.  He could've taken another day, or at least a few more hours of detox, but no, he was desperate, as desperate to get back as he had been to leave in the first place.

I wish I could spell him.  Take the helm while he nods off in the back.  But I am a ghost, a specter.  When he yawns again, I lean over, scream at the top of my lungs into his right ear.  He doesn't even blink.  

As long as the road keeps throwing out curves, it gives him some kind of focus.  But soon we hit a long, straight stretch, and I feel the stupor set in.  His lids start to waver.  His head starts to slump.  There is a moment when the car begins to drift, to cross over into the next lane, and then there's a quick burst of what sounds like machine gun fire as tires connect with bott's dots.  He snaps back awake.  Jerks the wheels back into line.

And me, I just sit there.  Watching.  Waiting.  I figure the way his heart just spiked, the shock of this near mishap, will keep him going for a while.  And then what?  There are two or three hours until daybreak, two or three more hours of pitch black sky and tunnel vision, the hypnotic pulse of the broken white line, lulling the brain to sleep.  And that's when I finally get it.  His brain.  My brain.  They're linked somehow.  Maybe he can't see me, hear me, but that doesn't mean I can't reach out to him on some level.

When you want to go to sleep, you count sheep.  So if you want to stay awake, do you go with wolves instead?  I try them, just to see.  I try biplanes locked in a dogfight, a chorus line of Rockettes kicking their heels, some guy with a goatee playing hepped-up bongos, then throw in a whole Cuban conjunto just for good measure.  I try every nerve-wracking, anxiety-provoking, stay-awake thought I've ever been tortured with, the ones that visit at three am, and take your soul at gunpoint, and when you finally check the clock, hours later, it's to discover that it's only 3:01.

For a while it seems to work.  His eyes stay open.  The car stays under control.  But the mind is a tricky thing.  Try forcing it do any one thing, think happy thoughts, think wide-awake thoughts, and it wants to do the exact opposite.  And it's not just my mind that's the problem.  Back home, back in the so-called real world, my body is sound asleep, dreaming all this.  So really I've got two foes, two palookas working me over.  The strung-out, sleep-deprived, hung-over guy sitting next to me, and the guy who's tucked away all nice and cozy in bed, reminding me how tired he is, how much he loves his zzz's.

Two against one.  Just the thought of it makes me sleepy.

Then I'm back in the car, back on the road, and my eyes are barely open.  Or wait.  It's not a road, not a strip of asphalt racing by at seventy-five miles an hour, it's a picture of a road, a film we're both watching.  And it's not a car, it's a room, a safe, warm room where we get to kick back, him and me, and watch the movie play out.  Or if we get tired, if we doze off for a while, hey, it's no big deal, we'll just hit rewind, finish it off some other night.  Maybe even watch it with Claire.

Claire.  

The black ribbon, the white line, all of it fades.  We're staring instead at her face, the face that chased him onto this road, the face that's calling him home.  The face that will stare back at him someday from within an old photo.  Will she be standing right next to him, studying that same photo, smiling at how young they look, how alive?  Or will he be alone?  Contemplating a memory.  Remembering that road, the road he didn't take.

The road.  Our eyes snap open at the very same instant.  Watch as the line starts to veer away, only it's not the line, it's the car.  The car that's leaving the ribbon behind.  That's seeing if it can fly.  And it can.  Fly. 

There's a wonderful, glorious moment.  We're airborne.  We're free.  And only one tiny, nagging thought still tethers us to the earth.

What happens when we land?

How long can you make an apple last?  Quite a while, it turns out, if you really put your mind to it.

So it's what, Tuesday?  Sure, why not, it's Tuesday.  Unless you'd rather have it be Wednesday.  Either way it's been a while, over a week and counting, since the fateful day I finally decided to take that ridiculously round and thoroughly green apple, slice it up into little pieces, and shove one of those pieces into my mouth, only to discover that it was no ordinary apple, which of course I'd already suspected, no this particular apple was ... magic. 

I could probably find a safer word.  A word less susceptible to skepticism, or outright ridicule.  How does psychotropic work for you?  Is mind-fucking a bit too crude?  Maybe we need a whole new word for a substance which, once ingested, gives you dreams that aren't really dreams, more like memories, but not your memories, memories of an imaginary person you've somehow made up, only now you're beginning to think he's not exactly imaginary after all, which is starting to make you feel like maybe you are.

And if someone really is imagining me right now, all I can say is, could you please try making things a little less complicated?

Not that I've got any complaints about the dreams themselves, or the memories, or whatever it is they are.  No, that part has been fantastic.  The one great constant, the endless rub of human consciousness, is that we can never, ever get inside somebody else's head.  You can love them, hate them, know every square inch of their bodies, but you can never really understand what it's like to survey the world from inside their skull.  Is their red your red?  Their orgasm your orgasm?  And what is art, literature, music, all that inane scrawling and scratching and sawing away except an eternal, eternally vain attempt to negate the fact, to bridge the gap, to try to express to somebody else hey, this is what's going on in here.  This is who I am.

Only now I've discovered there might be a way.  Relatively quick.  Guaranteed painless.  All you've got to do is go crazy.  Lose your mind, and maybe, just maybe, find somebody else's in return.

The first time out - our trip to antclear, that single, solitary apple, dangling from her tree - was almost a loss.  I didn't know where I was, what was happening, what to look for.  And then came round two, that wild night in the restaurant, which left me scratching my head for days.  Maybe it was seeing Simon.  Maybe it was seeing the other Claire, the one I seem to keep on seeing, every time I close my eyes.  During both dreams, I'd been a passenger, not a participant.  Just along for the ride.  Which is, I suppose, something that both dreams and memories have in common.  They have their own agendas.  They go where they're wont to go.  As much as they're a part of us, they never do what we want, what we expect.

Still, that doesn't mean we're without options.  Years back I read about something they called - I think - active dreaming.  The concept was to take charge of your dreams or, more often, your nightmares.  Is the bogeyman waiting for you each night?  No problem.  Just reach down into that nasty dream, assert your conscious will, and tell the bugger to kindly fuck off.  I figured maybe I could tap into some of that same mojo.  Even if they weren't my dreams per se, I could be an active, not a passive, observer.  Keep my eyes open.  Try to glean whatever message or meaning they might be willing to impart.

And it seems I was on to something.  As if each dream, each slice of the apple, had its own little lesson to pass on, if only I were able to discern it.  Third time out it was one of those crazy, stressed-out work dreams, where there's some huge deadline that's always getting pushed up, and people scurrying around like ants, and me floating above it all, watching the cool, unflappable Simon slowly come unwound.  Then the next night brought this weird, impressionistic collage, where words were mere sounds, people no more than a pair of eyes, a waft of scent, a touch.  The dreamer at six months.  And then, just to keep me guessing, came the most bizzaro of them all, this convoluted shaggy-dog where everyone was a character out of Peanuts, and I couldn't figure out who was who, until Peppermint Patty came along and started calling Charlie Brown 'Chuck', and suddenly he was Chuck, Simon, only a 2-D, cartoon version with squiggles for eyebrows, two dots for eyes.

But no matter how much each dream varied, no matter how crazy things got, I began to detect continuities, connections, the underlying reality their creator had drawn upon to fashion each one.  To know the dreamer, and not just the dream.

So where to begin.  How's this?  His name really is Chuck.  It'd been a nod, apparently, to his father's brother Charles, who decided to repay that honor by insisting on calling his nephew Chuck instead.  A name that stuck, even though its owner, its victim, turned out to be about as un-Chuck a person as could be.  As for the Simon thing, that's where it gets really baroque.  In one of my dreams, a nine- or ten-year-old Chuck is playing in his yard, conversing back and forth with an invisible, imaginary friend of his, another quiet, standoffish boy who goes by the name of - you guessed it - Simon.

I don't have much to go on, but I think they spent a lot of time together, those two.  That Chuck had to make up somebody to be close to, because that somebody had never been around.  Even in dreams, his father was a shadow, an absence, the thing that was always leaving, or about to get home, but never really there.  And his mother, while physically close at hand, had that same, distant, MIA vibe about her.  Sure they loved him.  Gave him everything a spoiled, middle-class kid could want.  But their real gift was something they'd passed on, some quirk in the genes, a fluke of evolution, whatever it was that culled one particular animal from out of the pack, and set him out on his own, a  restless wanderer, traversing the snow.  Nowdays they'd pin a name on it, call it a syndrome, or employ some ominous-sounding acronym, then send you home with the latest round of meds.  But for Chuck there were no explanations, no cures.  So instead he'd made his own adaptations.  Learned to weather the storm.

Watching it play out, seeing his life in moments, snapshots, was liking watching one of those Up films.  Give me the child and I'll give you the man.  Only it wasn't some external force, a parent or teacher, that was shaping him.  It was a young boy creating himself.  He used his mind, his imagination, to charm the grown-ups, win praise, wheedle out of punishment.  And if any bullies came skulking around, he grew silent, invisible.  Beneath their notice or contempt.  There was something sly and mercurial in his manner, and I remember in one dream seeing it for the very first time, that hint of a smirk, as if he was in on some joke that would always be just out of their, out of everyone's, grasp.

When the hormones hit, things started to change.  Girls entered the equation.  They were drawn like moths to his sepulchral flame, his pale, gaunt frame, his solitude.  Naturally enough he wanted to reciprocate.  To find affection, or at least cop a feel.  But whenever he tried, something happened.  Like opening your mouth to speak and finding there were no words, no voice, within you.  Thanks to his parents, he'd never learned the vocabulary of sharing, of being with somebody else.  Still, for some of the girls it was catnip, a challenge they couldn't resist, and willingly they'd play the waves, battering away at his ramparts.  But the walls were too strong.  Eventually they just gave up and left. 

Till finally Claire came along.

By then he'd made his accommodations.  Learned to get by on microwave friendships, casual hook-up's, relationships where little was given, even less asked.  A father's gift for numbers, a mother's artistic bent, and a timely explosion in IT had conspired to create for him a perfect little niche.  He was the game master.  The digital dreamer.  Fabricating new worlds, and the rules to go with them, for all those other lost, solitary souls out there, and getting paid quite well in the process.  Not that the money mattered so much.  It was more about the acceptance, the adulation.  Or maybe just simple math.  All those people out there who loved what you did, well they had to be worth a lot more than having one person loved who you were.

Maybe that's what let it happen.  The fact that he was already convinced he had everything he needed.  When a new temp stopped by one day, all jangly earrings and lemon verbena, he actually looked up.  Smiled.  Saw a face that made the women he'd been seeing lately, every one of them CG, pale by comparison.  She was smart.  Funny.  Didn't give a shit about all these over-aged boys, their toys, their games, the big, bright digital con that was helping pay her rent.  And then there was that final hook.  The name she shared with his aunt.  Like maybe she was a second chance, another fork in the road, a reprise of the one he'd been too young, too scared, to even consider taking the first time around.

And how do I know all this?  Me, the dreamer, the voyeur, the guy who's just along for the ride?  Because I've seen her through his eyes.  Fallen in love with her through his eyes.  Seven nights of dreaming, all those countless jumbled memories, and no matter how real, how vivid each one had been, the moment she appeared I knew.  We both knew.

This was it.

Being with them, seeing them together, was the final bit of proof I needed.  He was real.  His life, his memories, were real.  But all that left were a thousand more questions.  What was he doing banging around in my head?  Were my life, my memories, banging around in his?  And if so, why?  Were we soul mates somehow, connected at birth, unwitting partners in some weird psychic bond?  Or was it all just some random crossed circuit, a glitch in the system, like one of those feint, ghost radio signals that haunts your car radio, Mexican dj's and old Everly Brothers.  Questions, questions, a thousand questions, and only one dream left.  Only one more slice of the apple.

So come with me now.  Walk into the kitchen, turn on the light, open the refrigerator door.  Find the tiny round Tupperware container, the one with the bright orange lid.  Peel back that lid to find it there, looking a little lonely, a little worse for the wear, and by now more of a dull beige than a golden yellow, in spite of all that lemon juice it's been soaking in.  Whatever you do, try not thinking about how crazy this is.  How crazy you are.  Try thinking instead about all the questions you've got, all the answers you need, and how pissed off you're going to be if they're not waiting inside that little hunk of fruit.

That little hunk of fruit you just ate.

"Looks like we're talking a half-hour wait."

Which means, of course, an hour. An hour of waiting in the over-packed, over-amped bar, nursing a Campari, hoping that Sarah will actually show, knowing she most likely won't.

"Unless you're OK with family style.  I've still got a seat open in the main room."

What the hey.  I'm here.  I'm hungry.  And stuffing my face with a comped meal sounds better than a bowl of ramen back home.

I nod.  She grabs a menu.  Then it's follow the leader, swerving to avoid the bar-droid with the tray of tall green iced whatevers, the bus boy who trolls in her wake, stacking empties, wiping tops, the waitress who is pulling doubles to pay off a DUI her boyfriend still doesn't know about, and a clot of incredibly thin, incredibly blonde women who are managing to stand dead center in everyone's way, either laughing hysterically or sobbing uncontrollably, take your pick.  Still, no one seems to care or notice, because the salsa is blasting in here as well, and the sound of fork finding plate, plate meeting table is matched only by the roar of each and every diner talking a little bit louder, no, not talking, shouting, screaming to be heard, to the person at their table, to the person on their cell, to the person hovering just two feet away, asking if they'd like to take the rest of that on home.

Just north of the blondes are two large tables, each a full twelve-top, both of them packed, except for a single open spot at the very head of the nearest one.  The server stops.  Nods towards the open chair.  I can feel a half-dozen conversations suddenly cease, then watch as heads pivot, eyes narrow.  No one really wants to look, but they have to.  Because each of them is terrified by what they see, knowing that perhaps one day it could be them, not me.  The Thing That Eats Alone.

I keep my own eyes locked on the server.  Find my chair by braile alone.  Then, once seated, I pretend to study the menu, which is one of those obscene, oversized tomes big enough for a duck blind.  After a few seconds the chatter level starts to creep back up.  The Thing risks a quick reconnoiter.

To my left sits a woman.  One look at her face, her smile, and I know I would give anything to have her looking, smiling, back at me.  Her attentions, however, are meant for someone else, a someone who sits across from her, next to me.  I turn my gaze, already hating whoever that person might be.

Even if it is Simon.

Or more like a version of Simon.  The man sitting there is younger than the one I know, his hair longer, his chin sporting one of those hip little soul patches everyone was affecting a while back.  But it's not the flourishes, the details, that really stand out.  It's the essence.  Whenever he'd visit, Simon always had this tentative quality about him.  Like snowfall caught on a slender branch, or a dandelion riding the breeze.  He was ephemeral, fleeting, an accident waiting to happen, or un-happen.  But whoever, whatever this person is, he feels solid, substantial, real.

"Don't bother.  It's just a waste of time."

It's the woman talking.  I move my eyes from Simon, turn instead towards her.

"The menu,"  she explains, nodding at mine.  "We're riding steerage.  They bring us whatever they want to bring us, and we'd damn well better like it."

Her accent is faint but unmistakable.  Yorkshire hills.  A spoonful of sugar.  If I was in love before, I am now officially besotted.

"It's their way of punishing us," Simon adds.  "For showing up without reservations."  His voice is deeper, more forceful than the one I've grown used to.  Then again, he is shouting over all that din.

As I watch, he extends his hand.  "I'm Chuck."

Chuck?

The woman smiles.  "Claire."

Claire?

Now they're both staring at me.  Without even thinking, I open my mouth.  "Simon."

"Simon.  What a lovely name."  She reaches out and pats my hand.  "I had a puppy once called Simon.  A terrier.  Fiercest thing in the world when it came to a pair of socks."

I want to be that pair of socks.  I want her to be Simon.  I can almost feel those tiny teeth, nuzzling, gnawing, ripping away at me, when the real Simon, or Chuck, or whoever he is pipes up again.

"So how'd you hear about this place?"

It takes me a second to clear my head.  "I've been selling them produce ever since they opened.  June, July?  Matt, their chef, kept saying I had to drop in.  Taste their vision, or view their taste, or something."

"You sell produce?'' She makes the 'prod' rhyme with God.  "What, you mean you're a farmer?"

I nod once, knowing what's coming.

"Oh my gosh.  That's wonderful."

At which point I would normally launch into my woe-is-me, anything-but-wonderful, plight-of-the-farmer tirade.  This will include a brief summation of agricultural developments in twentieth-century America, a cogent analysis of current market trends, a point-by-point comparison of Big Ag, Industrial Organic and truly sustainable, small-scale farming, and a few good digs for the greedy, self-serving hypocrites who grow pot, sorry, "herbal medicine".  

Only I can't.  Seeing her face, her enthusiasm, I want her to believe that what I do is wonderful.  That I myself am wonderful.

"Well, yeah," I admit, "it does have it's advantages.  Like getting a free meal from time to time."

I risk a quick peek at Simon.  Or is it Chuck?  Either way, I detect a change in his face, a glimmer of discontent.  They were having what looked like a nice one-on-one.  And now it's been crashed, hijacked.  By me.

I offer him a conciliatory smile.  "And what about you?" I ask.  "What puts bread on your table?"

"I play games."

There's something there, almost an arrogance, that surprises me.  No, not my Simon.  Not by a long shot.

For her part, Claire doesn't even seem to notice.  "You've heard of DoQuest?  Chuck's one of their brains.  He's designed all sorts of virtual worlds for their online gaming.  You know.  Imaginary creatures, imaginary worlds."

"Imaginary people too?"

"Haven't you noticed?  All people are imaginary."

I wait for him to continue.

"Alright, so say our bodies are real.  And maybe you could argue the things they feel are real, too - hunger, anger, lust.  But everything else is a construct.  Our personalities, our memories, they're acts of the imagination, our own mainly, but we're also constantly being imagined by other people.  The people we know."  He glances across the table.  "The people we love."

The comment, the moment, are theirs, not mine, and I immediately look away, wishing I were invisible, intangible.  Imaginary.  And then, almost against my will, I can feel my eyes lowering, turning, following his, to the woman whom he clearly loves, and whom, if he's lucky, loves him, imagines him, in return.

Only it's not her.  Not the one with the auburn hair, and the grey-green eyes, and amethyst earrings.  Not the one who was sitting there.  No, this woman is older, taller, with blondish hair, and darker eyes, and I know I've seen her somewhere before, somewhere long ago, and the salsa music seems to fade, and I'm hearing another song, still lots of splashy brass, but there's a woman singing, and a chorus behind her, and a refrain going over and over.  Downtown.  Downtown.

And then the song stops.  The salsa returns.  I realize there is yet another woman standing there, midway between Simon and me.  Our waitress.

She smiles.  It is the smile of an infinite, unknowable, and not entirely benign universe, enjoying a joke.  A joke that seems to be on me.

"So can I get you guys anything to drink?"      

It's a clear, bright SoCal day, sometime in July.  School is out for the summer.  The three of us - my mom, my dad and me - are all piled in the Chevy, on our way north to visit Aunt Claire.

For the longest time, I thought it was just one word.  Antclear.  I never asked what that word meant, or how it had become our own secret code for the tall woman with the long braids who seemed to live in a different house every time we saw her.  And then someone, probably a kid at school, sat me down and explained the whole thing about aunts and uncles, and how your parents got to have brothers and sisters too, which didn't really mean much to me at the time, since I didn't have either one.  Only later, the more I thought about,  the more it did start to mean something, and I knew I felt a little bit jealous, maybe even angry, that my Mom and Dad got to have a sister even though I never did.

I guess I must have talked to my Mom about it, because sometimes she'd bring up the story about how she had to explain to me how Claire wasn't both their sisters, only hers, which then left me feeling sorry for two people, my Dad and me, instead of just one.  Not that Aunt Claire was some magic prize.  Whenever we went to see her, Dad seemed mostly bored.  And my Mom got different somehow.  Looking back, I know now she was anxious, but that wasn't a word I would've known, or used, back then.  Still I could tell something was up, the way her voice got sharper, and how her cigarettes didn't last nearly as long, and the way she'd keep fussing over me, straightening my hair, or picking the lint off my shirt.  With all that, who needs to know the word?

So we're all in the car, the big black Chevy, which means I must be at least eight, because that's how old I was when my Dad bought it, and not quite eleven, because that's when my Mom quit smoking, and I can see her now, up front in the passenger seat, puffing away on a Kent.  Scenery flashes by - the flat, green fields lined with crops, eventually giving way to hills, trees, a sparkle of water out near the horizon.  Every few minutes I'll steal a glimpse, then it's back to the stack of comics I've brought along.  On the other side of the big bench seat it's mostly silence, my Dad clutching the wheel, my Mom staring through the glass, and it's just like with the Justice League, one half stuck on Earth One, the other half on Earth Two, and the only thing that will eventually bring them together is a battle with Kanjar Ro. 

Or, more likely, each other.

And then it must be a day or two later, and we've finally stopped driving, we're parked instead, and we're climbing out of the Chevy, my legs all stiff and my Mom's hair kind of flattened from where she was resting it against the window.  It's almost dark, and the air is cool, and it smells different somehow, different from home, and the streets are narrow, and the sidewalk all buckled, and there are trees everywhere, on the streets, in the yards, like a picture in a jigsaw puzzle.  We have to go through a narrow gate, my Dad has trouble with the latch, and then we're in the front yard and the tall woman with the braids is coming down the steps, only the braids are gone, she's got shorter hair, and I'm thinking of a picture I saw of Petula Clarke, who I like almost as much as the Beatles.

The house is tiny, from the outside at least, but as soon as we're inside it seems to explode, or expand, and there's stuff everywhere, scarves dangling from a rack on the door, and real paintings on every wall, and a big old couch with a really fat cat sleeping in one corner, and a fake elephant with wings hanging from the ceiling, and a fish tank with no fish in it, but a hand instead, like from a mannequin in a store window.  There's a funny smell in the air, which my Mom later explains is called incense, and some kind of music coming from somewhere, not the kind I like with singing, but the kind where the instruments sound all upset and crazy, and then a dog starts barking, and the cat wakes up, and my Dad is trying to find a place to set down our luggage, and my Mom is hugging the woman, and I'm starting to think that it's not just Earth One and Earth Two anymore, but a whole new place, Earth Three.

And yes, that's it, that's it exactly.  Earth Three.  And now instead of a memory of one time, one visit, it's like I'm watching a movie go by real fast, or looking at one of those flip books, and I'm seeing all the times I visited that third place over the years.  Some were up at that same tiny bungalow in Olympia.  A few more at an apartment in San Pedro, where you could hear the seagulls, and it always smelled like anchovies and diesel.  Sometimes Earth Three even visited us, and I had to sleep in my Mom's project room next to the sewing machine and all those rolls of unused canvas.  And it was like with each time, each visit, I got one more clue, one more piece of the puzzle that was this place, this woman, antclear.

At first what I noticed was all the things she didn't have.  A man for one thing.  I wasn't quite sure why grown-up girls always had to be around grown-up guys, but I knew that they did, and knew that for some reason antclear had decided to break the rules.  And kids.  She should've had kids too, like Mom and Dad had me.  Plus there was never one place, one place she called home.  Not even a car like our Chevy.  She talked once about having to borrow a car from a friend of hers, and I remember how shocked I was, but excited too, because I never knew you could borrow a car and maybe, someday, I could borrow the Chevy from my dad.

Then, as I got older, the pieces fell into place even faster, but in this weird, mixed-up way, and I realized that what I'd thought was one thing was really another, that I'd somehow mistaken sky for ground, gift for burden.  Sure, there were a lot of things Aunt Claire didn't have.  And then there were all the things she did.  Like that time she disappeared for almost a year, and it turned out she'd been living in Morocco.  Or the way all those pictures on the wall had been painted by her, or were presents from other artists, some of them almost famous.  For the longest time I didn't know what a name-dropper was, or how people could pretend that they didn't want you to notice something, when in fact they really did.  All I knew was how other people reacted, how my Dad always found an excuse to leave the room, or how my Mom got that look on her face, staring into space, her eyes seeing nothing at all.

Sometimes, when we'd visit, my aunt would pull out a deck of Tarot cards, and for me it was like they were all superheoes, each figure with its own special power, special fate.  But what she was really showing me was them.  Aunt Claire was the rider on horseback, her banner unfurled, heading out to the meet the world, while a second woman, who could only be my mother, stayed behind to tend hearth, home, child.  And there was a third card lying on the table, a man, my father, witness to the drama that played out between but powerless to act.  Or maybe that was me, that silent figure, stuck there in the middle.  I loved my mother, understood in some child's way all that she'd sacrificed to bring me into this world, to make me whole.  But it was antclear I was drawn to, her wild spirit, her power to be whatever, whoever, she wanted.  I knew someday I'd face that choice.  To draw my card.  To be one or the other.

It's the very next day on that very same visit, our visit to Aunt Claire.  I am alone.  I've traded, it seems, all the intrigue and innuendo of the adult world for the relative calm of the back yard.  It's a space that mirrors the house itself, and the woman who calls it home.  Vines run rampant over arbor and fence.  Flowers fight it out for attention.  It's chaos, it's magic, it's everything our neatly managed yard back home is not, and for a while I wander around in a daze, trying to take it all in.  And then I see it.  A small, rather plain tree tucked in the very back, unremarkable in every way except for the one remarkable thing hanging from one of its branches.  A thing that is round, and green, and shiny.  A thing that I thought existed only in lunchboxes, or supermarkets.  A thing that is somehow, miraculously, growing out of the tree itself.

And with that, I wake up.

It takes me a moment to realize that this is, in fact, what I'm doing.  Waking up.  Which means that I must have been asleep.  Asleep, it seems, on my couch.  The couch, I start to remember, where I lay down that afternoon.  The same Sunday afternoon that saw me pick up an apple, and cut it into pieces, and then pop one of those pieces into my mouth.

Unwilling, or unable, to get up, I stare out towards the glass slider, see that there's still a bit of late afternoon light hitting the crepe myrtle, and realize that if I was asleep, it couldn't have been for long.  Just long enough to relive half my life.  Or half of someone's life.

A while back Simon asked me a question, one those impossible, imponderable questions that seem to be his stock in trade.  How can you tell if you're remembering or imagining?  How do you know the difference?  And because I was feeling impatient at the time, and maybe a little put out, I gave him the stock answer, the one grown-ups have been doling out to kids since god knows when.  "You just know."  Still, it wasn't a lie.  Somehow you do just know.

The same way I do just know two things right now, as I lie here on my couch, watching the day fade to darkness.  One is that whatever just happened, it wasn't imagined, wasn't a dream.  There really was a little white bungalow.  There really was an Aunt Claire.  They were as real, as uncontestable, as Petula Clarke, or the Justice League, or any of the other minor bits of window dressing that had served as part of the tale.  And the second thing I know is that if it was, in fact, a memory, then it clearly wasn't mine.  Because I never had an Aunt Claire, who never lived in that bungalow, who wasn't visited by someone who couldn't have been me.

Which leads, in turn, to a question.

Whose memory was it?

It's been a full week - seven nights, seven days - and all the people I've seen have been real.

Not that I'm complaining.  Not exactly.  The truth is, Simon could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.  Imagine a person who could just drop in anytime, anywhere, with no warning, no invitation, no reason for being there, except to distract you, or make some inane comment, or ask one of those crazy, circle-jerk questions that only a five-year-old can ask, and not even a zen master can answer.  And the way he would just sit there, existing, or not-existing, and knowing he never had to worry about paying bills or cooking dinner of any of the day-to-day hassles that plague actual, flesh and blood creatures like you and me.  Needless to say, it got old.  Sometimes listening to him prattling on - so blithe, so carefree - you just wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up.  To please, please, go away.

And then, just like that, he does.

Have you ever had that thing happen, when there's a sound way off in the distance, a car alarm or a leaf-blower, a sound that you're not really hearing until the moment it stops, and then you notice it, not because of its presence, but because of its absence.  The breath you skip.  The stair that isn't there.  The thing that you've taken for granted, that's become a part of your day, until suddenly it's not, and every time you take a step, you're stepping over that hole, that void, and telling yourself not to look down.

Or the way after a good friend has visited for a long weekend, you'll be cleaning up, putting things back in order, and you'll find some personal item, some remnant, he or she has left behind.  A pair of socks.  A toothbrush.  And of course it's only an accident, but of course it's something more.  It's your friend, lingering on like a memory.  Appointing some small yet tangible proxy to maintain a presence in your life.

A week gone by - seven nights, seven days - and each one of those days I've stopped, and paused, and taken a good long look at Simon's parting gift.  The small green orb in the off-white bowl.  The apple of his - or is it my - eye.  Apple trees are notoriously promiscuous, they cross-pollinate like mad, and so this apple, like every apple you or I have ever eaten, is the product of a grafted tree.  Which is, perhaps, what Simon and I are, or were.  Me, with my feet on the ground, my roots anchored deep in this place we call the real world.  And Simon, with his head in the clouds, his limbs stretching out to the sun, part of me and yet not part.  If so, then this apple is our offspring.  Our child.  A little bit of both of us, made real.

Or as real as anything gets in this life of mine.

Now if I were to concede that this life isn't real, that it was instead a dream, or a fairy tale, I would immediately know what to do.  Take a bite of the apple.  And in doing so, become somehow transformed.  Perhaps I'd gain knowledge of good and evil, loose what little innocence I have left.  Or fall into a deathly slumber, only to be awakened one day by the kiss of a handsome prince.  Either one sounds bearable, if not exactly desirable.  And if nothing at all happens, then we're back to square one - all this is real, whatever that means, and I can get back to the business of living.

Which is why I am standing here, in my small, cluttered excuse for a kitchen at 4:47 on a Sunday afternoon, staring at that same, and by now quite familiar, Granny Smith.  Or I don't know, maybe it's a Pippin.

Even after seven days, it seems no worse for the wear, and I'm glad that Simon or The Powers That Be decided to settle on an apple, and not some fruit that gets all tetchy and perishable, like a banana.  Still, something's wrong.  Even though it looks fine, and I figure I'm finally ready to do the obvious thing, the only thing, to just go for it and take a big, honking bite, I find myself hesitating instead.  Because suddenly it's not an apple anymore, it's a Hershey bar, and I'm seven or eight years old, and I'm counting each square, and doing the math, and realizing if I only eat one square, instead of the whole thing, it's like I'm getting ten separate little candy bars, ten and not just one.

So now I'm sitting back watching my seven or eight year old self go to the drawer, and open it up, and take out a small paring knife - careful, sharp! - and then reach over and snatch the apple out of the bowl.  And being the clever little lad I am, I know all about fractions, and proportions, and all that grown-up stuff, and so first I cut the apple clean down the middle, that's two, and then cut each of the halves into quarters, that's four, and then, now here's the tricky part, carefully slice each quarter into a perfect little half, which makes for eight, which isn't quite as good as ten, but a whole lot better than one.

And then, just like that, it's me again, a strung-out, middle-aged man, staring at eight slices of apple on a wooden cutting board.

The slices are surprisingly uniform.  Not bad for a wee tyke.  Still, he didn't quite get around to cutting out the core and seeds, so now it's time for one decidedly larger hand to pick up the knife, while another grabs the first slice of apple.  Only somehow, after that, neither hand wants to do much of anything.  Which is strange.  I mean everyone knows you don't eat the seeds.  They're bad.  They've got poison in them, arsenic or something, or maybe it's that they sprout down there, and start to grow, and all of a sudden you've got an apple tree growing out of your stomach.

But in spite of all this, which I've known since before I was seven or eight, since before I could even count that high, I take the slice, stick it in my mouth, and begin to chomp away.

Wow.  It's just the way Simon described it, that incredible mix of tart and sweet, ying and yang, and even the seeds are a revelation, the way they fight back, determined to hold their ground, until the inevitable moment when they are crushed to pieces by the power of all those molars brought to bear.  Wow.  Forget about Hershey bars.  Forget about waigu beef, and shaved truffles, and Doritos Extreme Ranch.  This tiny slice of apple is the most amazing thing I've ever eaten.  And the best part is, I've got seven more just like it, just waiting to devoured whenever, wherever I see fit.

Or at least that's what I thinking at the time.

But I'm wrong.

Because the best - or maybe just the strangest - is what happens next.