The Keep

That's what death is, Danny thought: wanting to talk to someone and not being able to.

Howie's troubles were a favorite family topic, and behind the shaking heads and oh it's so sads you could hear the joy pushing right up through because doesn't every family like having one person who's fucked up so fantastically that everyone else feels like a model citizen next to him?

The seconds pass. I know what’s going on because it’s the same thing that always happens: give me something nice, something I love or want or need, and I’ll find a way to grind it into dust.

I smoked my first pipe with Seth. I knew the stuff was bad, but I was so tired of being the cop, begging and ragging at him, throwing Pampers in his face when he walked in the door. I wanted to be on the same side again. So I smoked with Seth one afternoon when the girls were napping, and oh my God, I can only think about this for a minute or every part of me will turn into a mouth wanting more: the sexiness of it, fucking Seth like wild for the first time in months, going on even when the girls started to whimper and bang on the door. Then looking out the window and seeing the world shake itself to life: the heavy trees, the sky. And I was back on top. We were going to make it, Seth and I. The voice in my head was back again, telling me stories, too many to write down or even tell one from another.

All that love, all that pain, all the stuff people feel – not just me and you, brother, but everyone, everyone who's ever walked this beautiful green planet – how can all that disappear when somebody dies? It can't disappear, it's too big. Too strong, too... permanent. So it moves to another frequency, where the human ear can't pick up.

People are bored. They're dead! Go to a shopping mall and check out the faces. I did this for years—I'd drive out to the malls on weekends and just sit there watching people, trying to figure it out. What's missing? What do they need? What's the next step? And then I got it: imagination. We've lost the ability to make things up. We've farmed out that job to the entertainment industry, and we sit around and drool on ourselves while they do it for us.

And Danny got it: she was playing herself. A character: He liked these types because they pretty much told you what reactions they wanted you to have, and they liked Danny because he went ahead and had them.

It made me alert, like someone had scrubbed mint all over my skin. I'd walk into that stinking, miserable prison and for the next three hours, a wise and beautiful woman would float out of the wreckage of my life, and her words and thoughts and tiniest movements were precious.

Being somewhere but not completely: that was home for Danny, and it sure as hell was easier to land than a decent apartment. All he needed was a cell phone, or I-access, or both at once, or even just a plan to leave wherever he was and go someplace else really really soon. Being in one place and thinking about another place could make him feel at home.

It's the voices of the dead, Davis says. He looks gentle, like the idea hurts him somehow. He says: All that love, all that pain, all the stuff people feel - not just me and you, brother, but every-one, everyone who's ever walked this beautiful green planet - how can all that disappear when somebody dies? It can't disappear, it's too big. Too strong, too ... permanent. So it moves to another frequency, where the human ear can't pick it up. And in all these thousands of years, no man has found the technology to tune in to that frequency except once in a while - you know, by mistake. Blips and blops here and there, but nothing steady, nothing regular.

There are no ghosts in this story, I say to Davis. Oh yeah? Then show me where the people are. I look up at him. What people? Davis waves the pages I've left on my tray so they flap in the air. These people, he says. I can see them, I can hear them, I know them, but they're not in this room. They're not on this block. They're not in this prison or this town or this country or even this same world as you and me. They're in some other place. […] They're ghosts, brother, he says. Not alive, not dead. An in-between thing. […] You could say that about any story there is, I tell him. Now you're singing my song, brother.

All you want is for the weeks and months and years to pass so your time inside can be over like a bad dream and you can get back to your real life, but the longer you're inside the more your old life is what starts to feel like the dream. And of course I want it back, but the problem is, when do you have the same dream twice?

money making money making money into a giant fucking tower of bullshit.

Coming home in the almost dark made him feel grown up--a taste of grown-up life. Looking back, that seemed like one of the best parts of being a kid.

Danny used to think of his heart as that strong place, but now he had a better word: the keep. His own keep, inside him, where his treasures would be hidden in case the castle was invaded.

My point is, screw the machines. Throw them away. Put some faith in that brain of yours. My brain can't make a phone call. Sure it can. You can talk to anyone you want.

Here we've been thinking we had nothing in common beyond where we happen to be, and all this time we've been doing the same thing: picking up ghosts.

Being only where you were was incomplete, but being not at all where you were (because you were getting upset by the conversation you were having on your cell phone) was flat-out hazardous. That's when you walked in front of cars.

It's the weird and terrible way of this place that a little thing, a hand on a head, can matter so much.

I save up those words and later on I open up the notebook where I'm keeping the journal Holly told us all to keep and I write them down one by one. And for some reason that puts me in a good mood, like money in the bank.

At first I thought he was having a stroke or a heart attack, but then I realized I was seeing pure misery, the kind people only show when they think they're by themselves.

We've lost the ability to make things up. We've farmed out that job to the entertainment industry, and we sit around and drool on ourselves while they do it for us.

People had to do something to shake things up or they would've keeled over from misery and boredom. So Christ came to dinner. Witches and goblins were hiding in corners. People looked at the sky and saw angels. And my idea--my, my...plan, my-- Mick: Mission. He didn't pause in his sanding. My mission is to bring some of that back. Let people be tourists of their own imaginations.

Was everyone nuts in medieval times? Doubtful. But their imaginations were more active. Their inner lives were rich and weird.

His eyes weren't closed like they used to be when he'd make Danny tell about an ice castle on Pluto where a band of pirates lived. But wanting to be told a story, entertained, however that looks on a person's face--Danny saw this now and remembered it. It filled him with relief.

Danny always paid attention to smells because they told the truth even when people were lying.

He didn't like kids, and parents of kids weren't high on his list, either. It didn't matter how cool you'd been--you had a kid and you were one more sucker spooning goop into an angry little mouth, a guy with pacifiers in his pockets and snot trails on his sleeves and a happy-goofy look Danny could only think was some kind of shock, like those people who sit around cracking jokes after their legs get blown off.

he needed to be young or nothing about him made any sense