Getting Real

“That fuckin’ wall was there,” another sailor insisted.

“Where’s it at now?” the first swabbie asked. The second didn’t answer.

Shipmates helped Hillary into a life raft. She couldn’t have made it alone, not with only one good hand. They started the one-lung engine and headed east, toward the mainland. Maybe they’d get there. Maybe a Chinese patrol would pick them up before they could. Maybe they’d run into another brick wall. Hillary had no idea. She hardly cared. All she knew for sure was, they weren’t going to shell Catalina. Behind her, the Rumsfeld quietly sank.

* * * *

When Pablo came back to the real world in the jailhouse infirmary, two cops were glaring at him. They couldn’t have been anything else. Sure as hell, the one with hair asked, “Was it you or your buddy who smuggled in that shit?”

“I don’t got to talk to you, man.” Pablo had been jugged before. He knew the rules.

“We’ve got it on video,” the bald cop warned.

“Terrific. You got it on video. Then you don’t need to ask me no dumbass questions.”

“You come clean with us, maybe we don’t hang a sentence enhancement on you. Drugs in jail—could double your stretch.” That was the one with hair again. They were trying to whipsaw him.

They were trying hard. The bald guy added, “Drugs in jail in time of war. That’s a sentence enhancement, too. A big one.”

Was it? Pablo had never been in jail in time of war before. His bullshit detector went off just the same. “Getting Real—that ain’t no drug,” he said. “It’s ... different, like.”

“It’s illegal,” the cop with hair said implacably. “And it comes from China. You use that shit, it’s ... treason, like.” He did a wickedly good job of mimicking the way Pablo talked.

“Oh, yeah? How come you never busted nobody for treason before on account of he got Real?” Sure as hell, Pablo’s BS detector was pinging like crazy.

“You aren’t listening, baka boy—there’s a war on now,” the bald cop said. “Besides, you may as well come clean with us. Eckener’s already trying to pin everything on you.”

Eckener? Pablo needed a few seconds to realize that had to be the big dude with the mean eyes. He hadn’t had a name for him till now. “That lying fuck!” he burst out. Then his brains really kicked in. “Besides, if you got the video, you already know he’s a lying fuck.”

The cops looked at each other. They’d figured he was too dumb or too wasted to see that. But Pablo’s mama didn’t raise any dummies. And you weren’t wasted when you came back from getting Real. Disgusted, maybe, the way Pablo was now, but not wasted. His brains could work just fine.

Wearily, the cop with hair asked, “Why do you do it, Ramirez?”

“Why do I do what, man?” Pablo wouldn’t make things easy for him. That was more a matter of principle than anything else.

Even more wearily, the cop spelled it out in words of one syllable: “Why do you get Real?”

“Ever done it?” As long as Pablo answered one question with another, he wouldn’t spill anything that mattered—not that he had much to spill.

After the cops looked at each other again, they both shook their heads. “We’ve got real lives we like,” the bald one said. The one with hair nodded.

Pablo just laughed. “Like that’s got anything to do with anything. I like real life okay, too. But getting Real—it’s better.” Okay, he was talking to them. He was talking, period. What the hell, though? It wasn’t like they wouldn’t already have heard this shit plenty of times from other people.

“Better how?” asked the cop with hair.

“Just ... better, man. Realer.” Pablo laughed some more. “Yeah. It’s Realer than real, it’s more interesting than what happens just every day. I mean, I don’t hardly never kill no dragons strollin’ down Whittier Boulevard, you know? I don’t save no beautiful girls who screw me till I can’t stand up no more, neither. Do you?”

“Sure. Every day,” the cop answered, deadpan.

“Twice on Sundays,” his bald partner added.

Smart guys. He might’ve known they’d be smart guys. They were cops, weren’t they? But, now that Pablo’d started talking, he didn’t want to shut up. “And everything that happens when you’re Real—it’s Real, like. Ordinary times, you don’t notice half of what’s going on. What the ground feels like under your feet. What your clothes feel like against your skin. What the air smells like. What the air tastes like.”

“In L.A., you don’t want to know stuff like that,” the cop with hair said.

“Yeah, you do,” Pablo insisted. “When you eat, you taste food, too. And when you’re with a girl ... Wow!” He shivered at the ecstatic intensity of some of his memories. They felt more genuine than anything that had actually happened to him. And if a memory felt genuine, wasn’t it genuine? A memory wasn’t a thing; it was the calling back to life of a gone thing. He couldn’t find a way to put that into words. He did say, “When you’re ... here, man, it’s like you’re only half alive. The wrong half, too.”