in the Big Easy
On a park bench in New Orleans, Charlie Pace smokes a cigarette. There is a Black fellow a few yards away, playing guitar and singing: Oh gimme freedom! Freedom for my people! Passers-by drop coins into the guitar case, getting a rewnewed chorus in reponse. The air smells weedy from the river and smoky from the barbecue joint at the other end of the road, and feels heavy with pre-rain. The sun has a strange pre-rain glare as well: it's there, somewhere behind the clouds, shining through them sulkily.
Charlie's thoughts are on none of these things.
When I shot Ethan, it was raining.
Except it wasn't. It was a day like this one, humid, hot, but there had been no rain. And Liam and Faith were there--
But that's impossible because Liam wasn't on the flight and Faith--
He rubs his right temple. Faith? How was Faith there? She came through the door. We all came through the door. My brother, my brother who lives in Sydney and comes from an ever-increasing point in my future, he came through the door.
Except Claire was there.
He remembers this, too. Claire, wet from the rain, furious with them for keeping secrets, and heavily pregnant.
He remembers the torrential rainfall. It always rains on the island as if the world is about to end. He remembers being left behind because --because why, exactly? Because it wasn't his fight? Motherfucker only tried to kill me--did kill me in some reality or another-- and there it goes spinning away again, the many threads that just keep separating and separating.
There are many worlds. A few of them appear to be his.
He knows for certain that he got on the plane. Said terrible things to Liam, picked up a groupie in the hotel bar--anything to get the taste of self-loathing out of his mouth--and in the morning they fought over her stash and she called him pathetic. And then he got on the plane and it crashed.
He knows that for certain.
And at some point he found a doorway where there should not have been a door. And he went through it.
And then. And then?
If he asked Hurley if he remembered a tall, dark-haired bloke who just hung around with Charlie, would Hurley know who he was talking about? If he said to Locke I didn't quit cold turkey, I had an angel and an Aes Sedai to help me would Locke know what he meant? If he held Aaron--Seth, his name is Seth, we named him Seth James Littleton-Pace and I call him Sethie and bug and turnip head--if he held Seth in his arms, would Seth squeal his dadadada squeal?
She's crying and she says Go get Aaron, bring him home, and he goes
Charlie leans over his knees as if he's going to faint or be sick. The musician down the street is singing If the sky we look upon should tumble and fall, or the mountain should crumble into the sea and his voice is rich and beautiful.
It was raining when I shot Ethan.
He remembers this. He remembers the anger and the hatred and the fury and the recoil of the gun that made his shoulder ache for a day or two and the way the heat of the gun made his palm sting. He remembers the grim satisfaction--Dead. Deserved it.--and then the horror of and I killed him.
And it was raining. And Sayid spoke to him later. You're not alone. Don't pretend to be.
Except it was clear, but humid, and Nick comforted him when they got back to the bar. It's never a good thing . . . but sometimes it is a necessary thing.
In one reality, he died. No help came--only Bartleby, too late, who brought him back to the bar to bury him.
In another, he lived. Jack and Kate came in time and Jack didn't give up and Kate wept when he started breathing again.
And since then? Has it only been splitting since then or did it start before? After all, Liam has been coming into the bar since Christmas but on the island it's still summer and always will be if he never goes through the front door again. Liam will always be from Charlie's future.
It started before the hanging. But the hanging made it worse. Made it . . . fray.
Charlie's hand is shaking as he draws on the cigarette.
There is another thought running beneath all of these. A dark sort of knowledge he wishes he didn't have: the knowledge that the young man beyond the singer will give him what will make all this go away, if only for a few hours. But a few hours is enough, isn't it? Always has been before. Beats thinkin'. Charlie knows the body language and the quick, tight, I got what you need smile. Just call him Dr. Feelgood, the young man in the hooded Tulane sweatshirt with watchful eyes. Probably not Vitamin H but just some weed, maybe something heavier, maybe a tab or a pill--blue and yellow purple pills, isn't that the song?--but anything, anything, to make him stop thinking It was raining when I shot Ethan.
Charlie smiles to himself and sucks on the cigarette--smiles so grimly that the man walking past veers a few feet away as if to keep out of his line of sight.
He won't, of course, because in this reality he's a father and responsible and loved and trusted. But he also knows, coldly, that if he asked Armand for money Armand would give it without asking why because they trust you, they all trust you, they never learned the first lesson which is Never Trust A Junkie, and if he chose to wander back to the park and the young man in the Tulane sweatshirt was still leaning against the building . . . well. He knows what would happen next.
The singer changes songs again. Not triumphant, this time. Not something to make his audience clap their hands and shout along. A song Charlie knows, has sung many times, has lived. I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. To focus on the pain, the only thing that's real.
Charlie raises his head, looks at the singer. The singer nods back--oh, he knows, he knows. He's lived it, too.
Charlie stands, walks to the singer, drops in all the bills that were in his pocket into the guitar case, and heads for the Mayhew townhouse.
It was raining when I shot Ethan.
The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting, try to kill it all away--but I remember everything.
And that's just the trouble, isn't it?
He remembers. He remembers everything.