Spirits in the Wires by Charles De Lint Page B

kind of dirty.
    I should take a shower, he thought. But first …
    He picked up his phone and dialed the number that Aaran had left him. He got an answering machine on the first ring. It was going on three A.M. He supposed not everybody was up at this time of the morning.
    â€œI don’t know how long it’ll last,” he said into the receiver, “but the site’s down for now. They’ll be able to get it back up again, but it’ll probably be a few days.” He paused, then added, “So we’re square now, right?”
    He looked across the room, the receiver still at his ear, but he had nothing else to say, so he hung up.
    He took his shower and went to bed, but lay in the dark, staring at what he could see of the ceiling above his bed for a long time. He found he could still hear the breeze of the Wordwood’s site. When he closed his eyes, the forest was there, as though the streaming video was playing across his eyelids.

    Neither left him as the rest of the week went slowly by.
    He had the breeze in his ears. It was like what you heard after a loud concert—a faint, steady ringing. Because he was always focused on it, it seemed louder than it really was, a constant soundtrack to the routine of his life. Sometimes it was just static.
    The forest lived on the inside of his eyelids like a video tattoo. He caught glimpses of it every time he blinked. When he closed his eyes for longer periods of time, the breeze in his ears grew louder and he felt swept away someplace. Then he’d start, look around, check his watch. He’d lost a minute or two. By the end of the week, sometimes the pieces of lost time stretched into half an hour.
    He didn’t see Aaran again until two days after the Wordwood went down. Walking down a hallway in the offices of
The Daily Journal,
he came around the corner, and there was Aaran. Jackson hadn’t been avoiding the paper’s book editor, but also hadn’t gone out of his way to contact him again after he’d left the phone message the other night.
    â€œJackson,” Aaran said, smiling. “My man. I got your message. Excellent job. Fast service and the sucker’s still down.”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œYou don’t look too happy about this.”
    â€œI don’t see anything to feel happy about.”
    Aaran shrugged. “Yeah, well, that’s because you don’t have the personal stake in it like I do. Man, I can’t wait to see one of Madding’s crew. Drop a little hint. Let them know who they’re screwing around with.”
    Don’t, Jackson wanted to say. But what was the point? Sensitivity and discretion weren’t exactly among Aaran’s personality traits.
    â€œAnd we’re good now?” he asked instead. “You know. About the bank… ?”
    â€œWhat bank?” Aaran said. He gave Jackson a light punch on the shoulder. “Gotta run. Editorial meeting.”
    Jackson nodded. “Sure.”
    He closed his eyes for a moment as Aaran turned away. The forest reared up on the backs of his eyelids, something still watching him from within the foliage. When he opened his eyes again, Aaran was long gone and he stood alone in the hallway.

    He kept checking the Wordwood site through the rest of the week, but it remained down.
    On the night that Saskia and Christiana met at the Beanery Café, Jackson was in his apartment. After heating up a frozen burrito in the microwave, he sat down in the living room to eat it while he watched some TV. He never noticed when he’d dropped off, but when he snapped back into himself, he realized that he’d lost four hours this time.
    Four hours.
    The half-eaten burrito was sitting cold on a plate on the coffee table. He picked up his can of soda and had a drink. The soda was warm and flat. He looked around the clutter of his living room. There seemed to be a space between himself and everything familiar. The TV caught his