Tales From the Gas Station 2 Read online

  “There are people in this town who still think Jerry’s a killer. Was that part of your cover-up too? Were you the ones who started that rumor?”

  “Please. Why would we want to make people think another murder occured? No, no, no. We’re the good guys. We keep the peace. We maintain the status quo. That was probably the Collector’s idea.”

  “Who’s the Collector?”

  He shrugged. “If you figure it out, please let us know. That guy’s been slaughtering our operatives wholesale.”

  “I literally cannot keep up with any more moving pieces.”

  He shook his head. “Tony was right about you. You’re way too dumb to be a threat.”

  “Thanks. Also, fuck you.”

  “Tell you what. Sign the statement, keep your mouth shut, and we’ll find a clever way to let everyone know that Jerry didn’t kill Vanessa. What do you say? Do we have a deal?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I answered the front door to see Jerry standing there in a tuxedo t-shirt and jeans.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “Are you?” I replied, gesturing at his choice of informal wear.

  “What?” he said. “She would appreciate this.”

  I wasn’t in a mood to argue. I didn’t even want to go in the first place, but Jerry had insisted.

  I was wearing the only black suit I owned—the one I picked out months prior in anticipation of another upcoming funeral. I didn’t want to put it on. Even the sight of it brought back a nagging reminder that my own big day wasn’t that far off. But if we were going to pay our respects, we might as well play the part.

  The home’s previous owners had left a couple closets full of clothing before their abrupt departure. I went searching around in one until I found an old suit jacket for Jerry to wear over his shirt, and then we set off for the church.

  So far, he hadn’t given me any reason to regret my decision to loan him my car. As long as I was in the passenger seat, he obeyed all the laws and speed limits, but still... I had to wonder where those muddy hoofprints in the back seat came from.

  When we got to the church, the parking lot was already packed. Jerry shamelessly cruised to the front with the car windows rolled down and Louis Armstrong blaring through the speakers, double parked in both of the handicap spots, and killed the engine before taking out a flask and offering me a swig.

  After I politely declined, he downed enough for the both of us, then we went on inside. I tried to ignore all the annoying stares while simultaneously searching the crowd for familiar faces. Brother Riley was sitting on a pew close to the back. When we made eye contact, he waved us over and pretended he’d saved a couple seats for us. It felt good being in the presence of another friend. I knew full well that there were a lot of people in that church who would have preferred it if Jerry and I had stayed far away (I was one of them.)

  He convinced me that we owed it to Vanessa to show up and support our fellow gas station orphan, so here we were, dressed up and going through the motions in a way that she likely would have made fun of us for. She was never one for formalities, and everything about this ritual rang hollow. But at least we had this. Closure was not in high supply in this town.

  The official story was not the sort of thing I would have come up with. If you ask me, they could have been a lot less bleak about it, but I’m sure a pleasant death would have been too attention-grabbing, so instead they went with tragic and innocuous.

  Vanessa got tired of the small-town life and made an impulsive teenager decision. She packed a bag, didn’t tell anyone she was leaving, and went to explore what the world had to offer. She walked and hitchhiked until she was just far enough away from town as to not throw off our death statistics, then she found a public hiking trail where she must have slipped and fallen off a stone ledge. She broke her legs and died from weather-related exposure. A week later, some hikers happened across her body.

  The worst part of this clever cover-up was that I had to go along with it. I couldn’t say a word to O’Brien or Jerry or even Doctor V, and especially not to that guy from out of town who was calling himself Vanessa’s uncle. This was a secret I had to keep, and if I dared step out of line or tell anyone what I really knew, Mr. Normal assured me that my friends would be the ones who paid for it.

  The Baptist preacher began his generic sermon in front of the urn while the slideshow of pictures from Vanessa’s phone played on a projector screen behind him. I didn’t bother listening to what he was saying. The words weren’t for me, anyway. They were for the crying friends and loved ones, her old classmates on the front row, the ultra-religious church-goers who never missed a funeral. They knew how to grieve. They had it down to a science. But I wasn’t wired right for any of this pomp or circumstance. I just felt uncomfortable. And sad. And, frankly, a little bored.

  “Hey bro, stay here. I’m going to the bathroom real quick.” I looked over to see Jerry already squeezing past the folks on the other end of the pew.

  Brother Riley leaned over and whispered, “That boy doesn’t look like he’s coping real good.”

  I nodded and whispered back, “I don’t think he knows how.”

  He pulled a piece of cellophane-wrapped candy from his pocket and offered it to me, which I graciously accepted before going back to zoning out.

  The preacher wrapped up the sermon and announced, “Now, Vanessa’s closest friends have prepared a few words in her honor.” He gestured to a young woman on the front row with glasses and blonde hair. She stood and took a step forward, but then Jerry came out of nowhere and took the microphone from the preacher’s hand.

  There was a roar of murmurs from the audience as Jerry gave the bewildered preacher a kiss on both cheeks. He said into the microphone, “Thanks, Padre. I’ll take it from here.” Then he took the empty spot at the podium, put on a pair of reading glasses that I had never seen before, took another swig from the flask, and shuffled through some note cards.

  Brother Riley leaned over, “Is he supposed to be up there?”

  Oh God. Please don’t let him start with any of that Mathmetism crap.

  Jerry cleared his throat and stared down the blonde girl until she took her seat, then he started, “Friends, family, enemies, frenemies, ladies...” He winked at someone in the audience. “...Gentlemen...” He winked again. “All y’all, I’ve got a few words to say. This isn’t going to take up a bunch of your time, but it’s important that you hear it anyway. In the field of multidimensional geometry, there is a numerical concept known as Graham’s number.”

  Crap!

  Someone on the other side of the church stood up and yelled, “You’re not supposed to be up there!”

  Jerry pulled off his glasses and fired back, “Shut up Frank! Before I tell everybody what really happened to those Kmart mannequins!”

  The man—Frank—sheepishly took a seat and didn’t say another word.

  “As I was saying,” Jerry continued sans glasses, “Graham’s number is a fixed integer used as a representation of the upper limit of dimensions necessary for hypercubes to maintain certain properties. Graham’s number is also incomprehensibly large. Simply put, it’s so big a visual representation of it couldn’t possibly exist within a finite universe. If you were to write out the entire number in base ten notation, you wouldn’t be able to fit it onto all of the sheets of paper on the planet. In fact, if you were able to write it out so tiny that each digit only occupied the space within a planck volume—the smallest possible unit of measurement of space—then the totality of the observable universe would not be large enough to contain all of its digits. The concept of infinity is easy, but Graham’s number is a lot more difficult to wrap your head around. Yet it has actual function. It’s used in mathematical proofs. It’s a label encompassing an idea that no human could ever properly conceive of in its magnitude. And so, we represent it with a very simple symbol.”

  At this point, the slideshow ended and an image of an italicized G took the place of Vaness
a’s photos. It was white against a black background. He must have bribed whoever was in charge of the slideshow or hacked into the computer remotely. Neither option would have surprised me.

  I looked over at Brother Riley, who seemed enthralled by Jerry’s rambling. He nodded along and murmured, “That’s deep, man.”

  Jerry was speaking quickly now. “It is literally impossible to imagine the size of Graham’s number in practical terms. The number of nanoseconds that have passed since the big bang, the number of molecules necessary to fill up the entire universe, the number of baby spiders I can fit inside a regular piñata, add all of these together and it’s still not even close to matching the scale of Graham’s number.”

  Brother Riley asked, “What was that about piñatas?”

  “And yet, here it is,” Jerry continued. “We can talk about it. The number is condensed into a single-syllable word. And it’s not even the largest number we can throw around. How about G plus one? Or G times two? Or G to the power of G? The great thing about language is that it can capture abstractions otherwise beyond the limits of understanding. We live in a world with truths our feeble brains aren’t meant to comprehend, but we are able to interact with them by compartmentalizing their identity into a simple letter.”

  The preacher walked over and nervously reached for the microphone. Jerry slapped his hand away and continued, unfettered.

  “There are, of course, other words more commonplace than G. Words that represent far more complex notions. When we lose somebody, we struggle to make sense of the void they leave behind. It’s hard to grapple with the loss of someone you care about, but we have to find a way to make sense of it, so we all say that we miss Van. We think about what she means to us, and it’s too much for our brains to visualize, so we say we love Van. These are just words, but we can look at the proof and see the mechanism working, even if we don’t understand how.”

  Oh, I thought. He actually pivoted into a decent message.

  “And now, I’m going to give you another word: ‘Death.’”

  ...aaand there it is.

  The preacher reached for the microphone a little more aggressively. Once Jerry smacked him in the face, he gave up and walked away.

  I’m going to spare you the details. Suffice to say, Jerry proceeded to embark on a long tangent about how death is a ‘human construct,’ and as a concept, it failed under rigorous testing. He then attempted to prove mathematically that death does not really exist, using advanced numerical arguments that may as well have been Greek for all this audience knew. He paused every so often to take a flask pull, and by the time he was done, it was empty.

  “...and so,” he concluded at long last, “if death isn’t real, it is with absolute certainty that I can declare that our friend Vanessa is not really dead. Which begs the question: who—or what—is really in the urn?”

  Jerry walked up to the decorative receptacle of Vanessa’s ashes and grabbed it into his arms. The combined sound of dozens of people gasping and whispering all at once turned into a low, incoherent buzzing like thousands of bees taking flight. One of the men in the front row stood up and hollered, “You need to calm down!”

  Jerry shot back, “Don’t tell me which direction to calm! This isn’t really Van’s body! You people have been lied to! Fruit Loops are all the same flavor! The only difference is the color! That’s not relevant, but it needed to be said and I don’t often get an audience like this! Van is alive and you’re all letting yourselves believe the lie because it’s easier than knowing the truth!”

  Brother Riley whispered, “Hey, isn’t that your cop friend?”

  I looked where he was pointing and felt both relieved and worried in equal measures to see O’Brien walking down the center aisle towards Jerry. She stepped onto the stage, walked over to him, and said a few words into his ear. I’ll never know what it was she said, but evidently, it was enough to make Jerry reconsider his decisions.

  He walked the urn back to its table, looked out at the audience and said into the microphone, “I guess it’s time I wrap this up. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, and a pox on all you haters out there. Jerry out!” With a smile, he extended the microphone sideways and let go.

  O’Brien caught it in the air and pulled Jerry offstage by the ear. She walked the microphone over to the preacher and looked around the room until she and I made eye contact.

  “I think I have to go now,” I whispered to Brother Riley. “It looks like my ride is about to leave.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Doctor V’s office felt warmer than usual. I took my regular spot and pulled out my newest book to kill the time. This one was a horror novel about a giant alligator that terrorizes the same family for twenty years (at first, I caught myself wondering why the family doesn’t just move away from the swamps, but then I realized how hypocritical that was). I had just started reading when the door opened and an unfamiliar woman entered the room.

  She was slightly older than Doctor V, with light brown hair, a pearl necklace, and a white pant suit. She was volleyball-player tall and thin enough to be on the cover of a health magazine. I expected her to realize her mistake, apologize for barging into the wrong room, and leave me to my book until Doctor V sauntered in fifteen minutes later.

  But she didn’t leave. She walked over to me with that confident walk that models and politicians have down pat. She extended her arm like she was about to execute me with an invisible gun and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Townsend. My name is Doctor Weaver.”

  In time, I realized that she was waiting for me to shake her hand. I did so, finding her grip to be unsurprisingly (but intimidatingly) strong.

  All I could think to say was, “Hi.”

  She made things even stranger, taking a seat in the doctor’s chair on the opposite side of the desk.

  “I’m so pleased to finally meet you in person. I’ve been briefed on the particulars of your case. It almost feels like I know you already. Do you mind if I call you ‘Jack’?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said, looking at the open door to the hallway. “Who are you exactly?”

  A random patient who wandered into the room?

  “Like I said, my name is Doctor Weaver. I’ve been asked to come in and assist with your case. Doctor Vicedomini is unable to be here today due to health concerns.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.” That sounds like a no. “I’d much rather talk about Jack. Since your last visit, you underwent a very serious life-altering surgery. Would you like to discuss this?”

  I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that this was all a big joke. Doctor V was fond of mind games. He liked to test me and see how I reacted, but if this was another ruse, he was taking it a little too far.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Doctor V really isn’t here?”

  “I’m afraid Henry will be unavailable for the foreseeable future. I’ve taken most of his work load, and I must say, none of his patients are nearly as interesting as Jack Townsend.”

  She opened the drawer on the desk and pulled out a pencil and a notepad attached to a clipboard. She held them close to her face and scribbled something onto the top sheet.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Are we really not going to close the door?”

  Doctor Weaver looked at the open door, then at me.

  “Are you worried that a stranger will hear you say something out of context and form the wrong idea about you? Or are you concerned that somebody might be spying on you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How interesting.”

  “It creeps me out to have a private psychiatric evaluation with a wide-open door, okay?”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would it make you more comfortable if I closed it?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Interesting.”

  She scribbled something onto the notepad, put it face down on the desk, then went and close
d the door. She made a point to loudly click the lock into place before returning to her seat.

  “Now,” she started, “I understand that you get uncomfortable with certain topics.”

  “That’s true about everyone. Isn’t it?”

  She picked up her notepad to scribble something else down.

  “I also understand that you believe you have fatal familial insomnia. Can you explain that to me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Her only answer was a blank stare.

  Two can play that game, I thought, staring right back until she cracked.

  “Would you like me to repeat the question?”

  “Are you asking me to educate you on the symptoms of my disease? Or are you implying that I do not have insomnia?”

  “I’m not implying anything. I can state that the record for the longest anyone in history has gone without sleep is eleven days. I want to know what your understanding of your condition is. I would like to make sure you know why you’re really here.”

  Is it possible that I really do sleep and don’t realize it? No. Of course not. That wouldn’t make any sense at all. I went through this same mental exercise after Tony tried to convince me I wasn’t really sick.

  I regularly work for days at a time. My bed at home has been covered in old books for over a year. I have alarms on my phone to remind me to eat breakfast and change clothes and put in prescription eye drops because my eyes stay open fifty percent longer than the average person’s. Of course I can’t fall asleep! She’s messing with my head. Testing my reactions.

  “I see. You want to know if I’m so far gone that you can convince me that I’m not really an insomniac? Right? Don’t worry. I’m still firmly tethered to reality. That world record thing is pointless anyway. Guinness retired it years ago because it was dangerous, and in fact—”

  “Jack, what you’re doing right now is called meta-gaming. You’re trying to deduce the purpose behind my questions instead of answering them honestly. Please believe me when I say it’s deconstructive in the purest sense of the word.”