Scout, masterfile.com
As Charlie and I took turns driving along the winding hills out of Idaho, I couldn’t help fixating upon what I was returning to. I had many issues to resolve. My head seemed clear for now but how long was that going to last when Claire once again rang the doorbell. I had fears but also one sign to encourage me. It happened just a week before we left our mountain retreat as I was gutting some trout we’d caught for dinner with a Bowie knife. It slipped and I cut my hand, not deep, but enough to bleed for several minutes. The next morning I was surprised to see the cut still there, partially unhealed. “The chips must be losing potency” was all I could think. But to me, this was the happiest news in the world. That very morning I tried to remember the text of the first two books of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and I couldn’t, only parts, and my stupidity delighted me.
“This might be the only time in the history of the human race” I thought to myself, “where ignorance is a blessing.” But then I recollected the poem of Thomas Gray: ‘Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise’. So I was held in a sort of painful limbo as to what would happen next. Heavy drinking down the coast, while staying in cheap motels, soothed my mind, and I decided I was going to continue this habit when I got home.
On the fourth day, we arrived back at our beloved Berkeley. I dropped Charlie off at his shop, not all that happy at being home, and drove to my house and found it locked up, just the way I’d left it. Lucille was delighted at my return. She told me Claire had been by many times and was very upset that no one knew my whereabouts.
My solitary life resumed, and I was happy and comfortable in my private existence. I had the whole house to myself again, just as if it was three years ago before all the drastic changes began. But that lasted only two weeks when I had a most unexpected visit one afternoon. I was in the kitchen cleaning up after lunch when the back screen door flew open, and Scout stepped in.
“You remember me, don’t you, Roland?” she said in a distinctly more mature voice.
“Why of course Scout. But look how you’ve changed!”
She had indeed changed, being a foot taller and no longer the little girl, but in her looks and composure bearing all the hints and traces of a young woman.
Mary followed, and another woman after her, about ten years younger. Her name was ‘Monique’. She had dark, short hair like Mary, petite, no taller than Scout, but what stood out the most was that she had a small dark spot above her lip, right at the tip of it, a beauty mark, which no one who had eaten a wafer could possibly have.
Past the greetings and introductions, the story came out at the kitchen table. Mary and Jane had been feted in France like heroines. It all went swimmingly for months, but as Mary described it, her relationship with Jane went sour.
“Too many infidelities” she said. “I’m not an innocent. It was on both sides. But our fame brought us into the houses of so many people. Then she tried to deceive me and I saw it, and that was the beginning of the end. Monique is my partner now and she’s promised me not to take a wafer for another ten years, so there are no mind games. I love her and she loves me, naturally. Roland, could we stay here a short while until we find a place? We flew out of Paris in a hurry, after a final huff with Jane, and I told Monique you might give us refuge here as you did once before.”
Scout was all the while sitting next to me beaming beautiful smiles.
“Of course” I replied. “But I don’t want history to repeat itself. I’ll be blunt. I just got my head together this summer and I think I’m chip-free, but I’m not sure. Do you still manipulate other people’s thoughts?”
“No Roland I can’t. I guess you haven’t heard. We’re still keeping it quiet, the first of us, but the chips start to decay and fail after about three years, most of them, and you can’t take another wafer to restore yourself. You heard what happened to Samantha, didn’t you?”
“No, I’ve been up North, camping, go on.”
“When she felt her powers fading six months ago, she took another wafer, but then suffered a terrible reaction. There’s a compatibility problem with the old chips and the new. She was in a psychiatric ward for a month, heavily sedated, and could barely speak. The last I heard she was back at home with Jaime, but her recovery is slow. There were other cases too, and no one can figure out the problem. Claire came to us in Paris shortly after this happened and told us not to make the same mistake. But I wouldn’t even think of taking another after all the complicated battles I’ve been through with Jane. And I know you’ve been through some hard times too. Claire told me. But I knew already. I felt very bad about this whole affair Roland. In the early days, we didn’t know what we were doing. We couldn’t see the outcomes. We were toying with all our new powers. It was impossible to resist. Maybe we should go.”
At this point she stood up as if she was about to leave. I stood up also and took her hand.
“If you’ll agree to one little test then I can trust you. And if you pass, you can stay, on condition that you tell me everything that’s happened in detail since we parted, because you know I was put in the dark for most of it.”
“Yes, I know that. Claire even taught us how to do it. Give me your test” she said.
Still holding her hand, I took her to the sink and with a sharp knife made a one-inch cut, not deep, in the palm of her hand right under her thumb. She winced at the sight but said nothing as I held her hand under cold water and then bandaged it up. But then curiosity got the better of her as we sat down again.
“What’s this all about?”
“When the chips are gone your body doesn’t heal overnight. I cut my hand a month ago and it took five days to disappear. If you still have a mark there in the morning, I can trust you.”
“I truly hope I pass your test, with all my heart, and I’ll tell you everything I know, all the tricks that Claire taught us in the beginning and exactly what we did with them. You of all people deserve to know.”
“Yes I do” I said, deeply embarrassed at the image of myself these last few years.
To ease this somewhat awkward situation we passed the rest of the afternoon and evening next door with the Abbotts and Lucille, where Scout’s new maturity was the admiration of all. Her many tales of adventures in Paris were the entertainment of the table. We retired back to my house early. While Mary was giving Monique a tour of the place, I asked Scout the critical question.
“Scout, you told us tonight of the friends you made at school, your girlfriends, and how you shared your thoughts in classes taking tests. Can you still do that?”
“Yes sometimes, but not as well as I used to. My mother is right; she’s not lying. What we have is slowly going away. My friends who got their chips recently are way better than me now.”
“Do me this favor” I said, “lean your head near mine and tell me if you can read any of my thoughts, just like you used to.”
I sat down on the kitchen chair, and she walked up behind me. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. I began thinking about Jack and his dog and the lake in Idaho.
“No Roland, there’s nothing there. It’s all dark. I don’t see anything.”
“Good” I said, turning to her. “I used to love to share with you when you were a child. But that’s all past. Do you still remember what we read together?”
“Yes I do, or most of it, how could I forget, and I’ve read a lot more since then, all the books you wanted me to read. I know eight languages fluently, and everything in school is so easy it’s boring for me. I missed you so much, and for a long time I even hated Claire, for always changing your mind, leading you around and taking you away. She didn’t know it, but I could see her doing it.”
“All that’s over” I said, taking her hand, “and I’m so glad to see and talk to you again. Don’t hate Claire anymore. It will be better now. Is your mother planning on staying in Berkeley?”
“My mom’s a mess right now. I take care of her more than she does me. She doesn’t know what she wants. We had to get out of Paris. You wouldn’t believe the fights they had, even in public places. It was so embarrassing for me, in front of all my friends. I like Monique. She’s good for her. She always calms her down.”
Mary and her partner rejoined us and we called it a day, heading to our respective bedrooms. The next morning in the kitchen all four of us watched as I carefully peeled off the gauze bandage from Mary’s hand. The wound was still there, red and sore. I even touched it and she winced again. I was so relieved and happy I gave her a hug, and then Scout and even Monique. What it meant to me was that I could trust again in a female friend.
As we had our breakfast and coffee, our talk drifted to plans. Mary wanted to settle down in this area and live with Monique, and start some kind of business, putting Scout in a school for gifted students and as soon as possible into the university here, one of the finest in the world. We ran through a list of possible trades and decided that what Mary and Monique wanted most was to own and run a small coffee and pastry shop near campus. Scout would mature in the most intellectual milieu, the three of them running the shop together, serving students and professors with a taste for the best in espressos and pastries, which both Mary and Monique claimed they could create.
I thought this was an excellent plan. The matter was settled. They would stay here with me until a venue could be found, possibly some old Victorian house on one of the avenues, where they could live upstairs and turn the bottom half into their business, or perhaps two places, a shop and a house nearby. I knew they needed their own life and that their stay with me was only temporary. It felt good to have a plan, especially one that would bring Scout back into my life, for whom I still had all the feelings of an adoptive father. We spent the rest of the day driving around the campus environs scoping out the possibilities.
