Free The Poison Sky by John Shannon Page B

revelation or a vision or a demand for money. These guys weren’t the first to figure out what extra oxygen in the blood does to you.”
    “It damn well works.” She handed him a small card that said The Rising Course of Human Evolution Study Center, Ojai. “I’m sublime, okay. I’m the cat’s pajamas. I graduated or whatever it was. That’s where I’m supposed to go one day. Something about a ladder.”
    “Good work.” He chuckled. “But I had the ladder. By the way, what was in Room 101?”
    “I don’t know you well enough.”
    The old couple got their check and the woman glared at him as they walked past.
    “It was just child pornography,” Jack Liffey said to her.

6
    THE PASSIONATE LIFE
    N ORMALLY HE WOULD HAVE SLEPT RIGHT THROUGH THE phone, but Loco took the ringing as an excuse to hurl his muscular body against the bedroom door, and Jack Liffey woke up quick—a perfectly ordinary dream about not being able to find his parked car in a confusing city suddenly invaded by men with big guns and red marine haircuts. As long as he’d jangled himself awake, he went out to the living room and picked up the phone just as the machine kicked in.
    “Jack Liffey can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number …”
    “Shit. Hold it.” Loco got between his legs, trying to trip him up, as he fumbled the plug out of the wall. One day he’d make a fortune designing an answering machine that did what people wanted it to do.
    “Okay.”
    “Jack, this is Faye.” She sounded distraught and he glanced at the digital clock on his VCR. It said 3:25. It was a moment before those numbers made sense to him: A.M. “Milo’s in the hospital. Some sort of industrial accident while he was doing his rounds at the plant. I’m sorry to ask, but could you come out here?”
    Why me? he thought. But she was his only paying client. “Where’s here?”
    “I’ll be at St. Agnes. He’s on a respirator in the ER.”
    He left dry food for Loco and grabbed some coffee at a twenty-four-hour gas station. It was still warm and breezy. He couldn’t remember another time he’d been on the road at four A.M. and it was astonishing how many cars there were, going to work, or going home, or just going, one cheerless moon face per vehicle.
    On the way to the freeway he saw a big square bed of ivy in front of a mini-mall where a group of bleary-looking kids were bump-grinding Hula Hoops frantically to a couple of boom boxes. It looked like a scene from Laugh-in. When he got closer a skinny girl looked up with a smirk, as if inviting him to share in the joke. He grinned back and gave them a little Groucho multiple elevation of the eyebrows and toasted them with the Styrofoam coffee cup before driving off. It was a city that didn’t always offer a reason, and that was okay if you weren’t feeling pressured.
    The freeway was very fast and polite, full of people who were used to the hour and to one another like a secret fraternity, the Lodge of Night Drivers. He felt a peculiar kind of woozy ease settle onto him as he drove over the pass, as if he’d been out of sync with things for a long time and now he was dropping into the groove. It was a dope kind of feeling, probably something to do with dream deprivation.
    The main hospital building was tall and modern and nondescript and could have been anything. A lit red sign pointed toward the emergency driveway, where two heavyset women in white coats were hauling a folding gurney out of an ambulance.
    A signboard by the main door nearby announced a lecture series by Raju Iyer: IDENTITY TODAY: ELEVEN WAYS OF BEING YOURSELF. Jack Liffey smiled as he walked past: he’d always figured the one was enough.
    Faye was sitting on a long bench in a hallway outside the ER. She’d been crying, but there was something else in her manner that he couldn’t quite work out. Her eyes were puffy and he found being a little out of kilter suited her. She tried so hard to be tough and solid