AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sure,” said Charlie. “But go ahead and say so I’ll know that you know, though.”
“Chaos theory, more or less, says that in any complex dynamic system, it’s impossible to predict behavior because even the tiniest variable can have a huge effect down the line, throw everything into chaos.”
“Right,” Charlie said. “But Audrey doesn’t think that chaos is necessarily bad. It sounds kind of bad to me.”
“That’s because you’re thinking of chaos as disorder, but they’re not the same thing. And she’s a Buddhist, and they’re all about just making sure you’re paying attention or something. Remember what she said about the universe seeking order, balance, and the wobbles when it can’t find it? Well, chaos is the condition between order and disorder, the transition between one system and another. So that’s what’s going on.”
“Well good,” Charlie said. “I should check on Sophie. I left her playing upstairs.”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Yes, it’s just that when I try to apply it . . . No. How do you know this stuff? Isn’t chaos theory math or something? I thought you went to culinary school.”
“That’s where I learned it. First day, right after you learn to wash your hands and sharpen a knife. You have to know chaos theory to make basic biscuits.”
“Really? For biscuits? I never gave my mom credit . . . Really?”
“No, not really, Asher. Did your brain stay tiny and reptilian when Audrey changed you into a real boy? I’m trying to tell you I don’t think we should reopen your store. I don’t
think you’re going to need it, because there’s a new system happening. I’m trying to tell you I don’t want to work in retail, for you or for Rivera. I have a thing now. I’m beyond working in retail.”
“The crisis line, I understand.”
“No, not the crisis line—yes, the crisis line, but there’s something else. Look, I’ve always had an empty place in my life that I’ve alternatively tried to fill with food and penises, but now I have something. Mike, the guy who used to be you, that guy you look like, he’s calling me. He’s calling me from the bridge—from beyond the grave. Just me, only me.”
“Wow,” Charlie said. “Like, now? Since—I mean—after he’s dead?”
“Yesterday,” Lily said. “From one of the hardwired lines on the Golden Gate.”
“Wow,” Charlie said.
“Yeah,” Lily said.
“How’s he doing?”
“Kind of hard to say. He sounds happy, but a little freaked out that he’ll be accused of boning a nun.”
“Hey, that’s consensual. And she’s not really a nun anymore.” He hung his head. “I miss her.”
“And it’s been how long since you’ve seen her?”
“Yesterday.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Asher. One day? M and I broke up months ago, and still when I think about him as I’m going to sleep, my heart sounds like someone falling down the stairs. One day?”
“But I just got her back, sort of.”
“One day? Mike told me the ghost on the bridge has been waiting for her lover for two hundred years. And there’s thousands of others, waiting. Who knows how long. Blow me, one day, Asher.”
“Wait, thousands?”
“What? Yeah. He said there are thousands of ghosts on the bridge.”
Charlie swiveled on his stool, looked at her head-on—up until then they’d been more or less talking at a Cinzano poster that had been left up from the pizza and jazz days. “Lily, when you looked at the Emperor’s ledger the other night, was Mike Sullivan’s name in it?”
“Yeah, he was one of the last. But I thought that was just because his soul wasn’t retrieved by one of you guys, like all the others.”
“Can you call him?”
