Inside a Silver Box by Walter Mosley Page A

heard, moves beyond itself into places that cannot be connected by conceptualization.
    The line was now longer and older than the space that held it. It was in itself the basis for all movement, which, in turn, instigated life or …
    Lorraine perceived the great distance as if it were something solid and still. Her soul, if indeed, she thought, a soul existed, was moving at every point on the way of a vastness that was impossible. She was, for the first time ever for any being of her genetic register, beyond herself. Words, based as they were on human experience, could not begin to articulate the contradictions of her perceptions. This impossible knowledge made her smile.
    *   *   *
    “L ORE,” HER FATHER said from the door of her childhood bedroom. “It’s time to get up, sleepyhead. It’s time to go to school.”
    She heard these words and was instantly filled with rage; her father once again interfering with her dreams. He made her go to bed and get up and told her what classes to take and what kind of grades he expected; what kind of clothes to wear and who her friends should be.
    “Lore,” Mr. Fell said again, and in her mind Lorraine yelled, Fuck you!
    *   *   *
    “L ORE,” RONNIE WAS saying. He’d been shaking her shoulder for some time.
    The sun was at its apex.
    “How long?” she asked.
    “I been up for two hours,” Ronnie said, “and you been starin’ at that wall the whole time.”
    “This place is bigger,” she said, her mind still reeling itself back in from hatred and the Immensity.
    “Yeah. It’s like this place, this, this space is not here but somewhere else. We can get here because it remembers us. That’s why no one else can come in.”
    “We slept a long time,” she said.
    “Yeah, but I thought UTB-Claude said that time didn’t pass in his place.”
    “Only when he’s present.”
    “How you know that?”
    “How does anybody know anything?”
    “That’s deep.”
    “You smell like, like blood,” she said.
    “My own blood,” he agreed.
    “This is crazy,” Lorraine said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
    “I could understand why you say that now, but I didn’t used to.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I remember you joggin’ and then buyin’ your water and fruit. I saw you a whole bunch’a times before you got close enough for me to rob you. I hated you because you just did what you wanted and was happy about it. Every place I’d ever been was like a fight about to break out and here you was walkin’ on rose petals and smilin’.”
    Lorraine put a hand against Ronnie’s cheek and they both shivered.
    “You smell like blood,” she said again. “You need some new clothes.”
    “These ones don’t fit right since you dragged me on that yellah highway no way.”
    “I’ll go buy you some more.”
    “Okay.”
    But Loraine didn’t move. Neither did Ronnie. They squatted there, facing each other, wondering about concepts and ideas that neither one of them had words for.
    “Is he making us do these things?” she asked after many minutes. “Feel these things?”
    “You mean like we’re actors in a movie, only we forgot we was?”
    She nodded almost imperceptibly.
    “I don’t think so,” Ronnie said. “I think it’s like that do’ he keep that Laz thing behind.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He’s not supposed to make us do shit. Even though he’s bigger than anybody can think about he’s supposed to be like our equal and if he made us do stuff, then he’d have to get behind that do’ too.”
    “Say that again,” Lorraine commanded.
    Ronnie repeated what he’d said word for word.
    “But then why would we be here if he didn’t want that?” Lorraine asked, but she was wondering what it would be like if the Silver Box sentenced itself to exile.
    “Just like throwin’ some dice or puttin’ money on a number in the roulette wheel.”
    “Just chance?” Lorraine asked.
    “And a gamble.”
    They sat for an hour after that