Rob walked along a shady park path with his girlfriend, Linda. Somewhere overhead, birds chirped and squawked at each other, and a blue sky stretched over the treetops. It was a sunny, but not muggy, day, and the shade was pleasantly cool.
Linda pressed herself close to Rob, and if he weren't so big, she probably would have carried him to a bench on the side of the sandy path.
"It's beautiful here," the girl said.
"Mhm," the boy agreed.
They came here often, especially in the summer—they'd been in the park almost every day since they'd met six years ago—and the place always left them speechless. She couldn't utter more than a few words of admiration, and he could do nothing but nod. This shaded, cool place encouraged silence, and it was good for them—to walk and say nothing. To listen and feel. Over pizza at the diner, they could talk with their mouths full, laugh, at the movies they'd nudge and whisper, and at his house they could stay up all night talking about anything. In the park, they took a break from all that. A break from conversation, from the crowded streets and enclosed spaces, from the hustle and bustle. They walked slowly, silently, savoring this place and each other in this place. A break from words and thoughts. Rob especially liked this place, especially on a day like today—and that was exactly what he needed right now: a walk in the park.
Two weeks ago, he returned from tour. He'd been touring the coast promoting his second album—because besides basking in the glowing reviews, he needed to get out there, show up, play, and sing. Four and a half stars from a music magazine critic wasn't the same as fans clapping, singing along, cheering, or waving lighters over their heads. Regardless, the last seven or eight months have been a bounty. First, he put together a few notebooks of lyrics, holed up in the studio with the guys from the band, and for the first two weeks, they rattled off a rough concept together, which they then hammered out, polished, and refined over the next month. Twenty songs came out of it, so good that the manager considered recording a few more and releasing them on two albums, but in the end, Rob and the others finally filtered out five that didn't quite fit together. The album contained fifteen songs, filling it almost to capacity. It was literally a few seconds shy of the full eighty minutes. After the job was done—after all the tracks, vocals, and mixes—the producer patted Rob and Tim, the drummer, on the back and took them all out for a beer, like friends. After the first listen, the record company nodded approvingly, then shook their hands like they were striking a deal. Two months later, the album was in stores, and Rob and the band—temporarily called the Rob Hobbs Four, but that stuck—took a West Coast tour. Between shows, they slept, and in their free time, Tim read reviews aloud to everyone, feigning a solemn tone. Rob would sit with his ears plugged and sing: lalalalala! He hadn't wanted to hear it since he'd read about their first album in one newspaper, saying they were a cheap knockoff of The Sevens, and in another that the album was a revelation and an absolute sensation. And although that magazine still insisted that Hobbs Four were rubbish, the rest of the trade press—mildly enthusiastic about their debut—didn't take their word for it this time. And Rob was feeling more and more confident on stage. At his first shows, he'd sung with his eyes closed. Now, sitting in a chair with a large guitar at his fingertips, he looked at the crowd, cocking a cheeky eyebrow.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the whole grinding grind slowed to a halt, and he could get out, go home, sleep, eat, drink, see his family, and cuddle with Linda. He needed a break from the heavy guitar, the hard chair, and the boys—because after two months with four guys, he craved nothing more than a few weeks in his woman's arms. His vocal cords needed a rest—perhaps not torn, but battered, as he had a gentle vocal manner, but he still managed to show off his talents here and there. Above all, he deserved a break from thinking—which largely revolved around writing lyrics.
The park didn't inspire him. It was beautiful, vast, magnificent, full of sounds—but it didn't inspire him to compose songs. And for that, Rob loved the park. He wasn't a workaholic, he didn't force his songs—but songs simply came to him, anywhere, anytime. His inspiration came from the rain, the wind. Thunderstorms, and people. Sometimes the words to a song would come to him on the bus—and he'd scribble them hastily on the back of a ticket before they slipped away. Once, he wrote an entire verse in the middle of a downpour from a broken cloud. Another time, he was walking through town in the middle of a thunderstorm and began humming a melody he'd made up on the spot, the lyrics to which he'd composed while spreading his soaked clothes on the radiator. Meanwhile, he walked through the park—and nothing. He couldn't hear any new melodies, no new ideas or words came to him. He loved music—but here and now, he felt happy with the momentary freedom. He was proud of his new album—and happy to have a break from it. Even though he knew he'd be writing something new in two weeks anyway. And that thought made him happy, too. He looked back fondly, savored the moment, and eagerly awaited what was to come. He was simply, in a complex and all-around way, a happy man.
Passing the tramp sitting on the bench, Rob thought he resembled the drunk from one of the songs. Samuel Jones, forty-two, though he looked older, had a home, a family, money; now he had nothing, and now he had drunken hiccups and hangovers...
The man, groggy or overcome with sleep, shuddered suddenly and looked up at them. He looked at Rob.
"It's all just a dream," he muttered.
Rob and Linda exchanged sour glances and moved on. Linda shook her head.
Hobbs glanced over his shoulder. He ruffled his brow.
***
"Linda, honey, turn that off," Rob insisted, though from the smile he wore as he said it, you could tell he didn't want to, or at least not that much.
"Shush, you don't know anything," she scolded him playfully.
They were listening to his own song. "A Tree Cut in Half." It was the third track on the album, and the guys had agreed with the record company that it would be the second single.
"I do." Rob stuck his tongue out at Linda. "I like that song too, but I've probably sung it seventy times in the last two months, so I like it a little less at the moment. Besides, I don't think I'll ever get used to listening to my own records. It's so strange... Hearing this music, and myself singing, while I'm lying here, without a guitar, without the guys, not even moving my lips. And I could never stand the way my voice sounds on recordings. I sound different in my head. Better. That's why I prefer playing live and singing. I think I sound better live, that people hear me the way I hear myself, and if not, it doesn't matter either, because at least I hear myself properly.
"You sound just right," Linda whispered in his ear, lying sideways on the bed beside him and snuggling into him. Then she leaned over him and pecked him on the lips. Her kiss smelled of garlic. On the table were three slices of unfinished, cold pizza and an open container of garlic sauce.
Rob put his arm around Linda. He thought that things were fine as they were—they couldn't get any better. It was... normal, ordinary. Just right. Rob was an ordinary guy—a slightly overweight twenty-eight-year-old with a slightly childish, sincere face and auburn hair that fell a little into his eyes. He hated suits. He loved worn jeans and flannel shirts, preferably something in shades of brown. He had an ordinary girlfriend, the same one for six years—long before the band had made any progress. And he wasn't about to let her go. She was the bulwark of normalcy in his life—something most precious, something that allowed him to live in harmony with himself; something that allowed him to create. Because he wrote songs about ordinary things, ordinary people, and simple truths—and he wouldn't be honest about it if he weren't a simple man himself. He had a nice apartment—not too small, but not too big either. He'd had the same car for several years. It ran well, served him well—so there was no reason to change it. He loved pizza more than anything else in the world, and he didn't care about his figure—though he was more portly than simply fat. He hated parties and champagne. He wasn't a star—because he didn't consider himself a star. He played with the guys here and there, and although they were well-known and well-liked in his small town and the surrounding area, and in the dozen or so places he visited along the West Coast, he provided a few people with a pleasant evening of music, he wasn't a true star. He was more of a voice on the radio than a face on television. MTV once played one of two inexpensive music videos—and that was it. Television needed beautiful, handsome, and extravagant—and Rob was neither. Just an ordinary, likeable guy. He didn't make much money from all that acting, and he didn't like to flaunt what he had. He was happy that he could go to the cinema with Linda to see any film he wanted, and he could afford any record he wanted. That was his little happiness.
Linda lifted her head and studied him for a moment. He was staring at the ceiling, but it was as if he were staring somewhere else. He wasn't smiling. She knew that expression. It was the same one he got during storms—when he stopped and seemed to switch off. As if he were somewhere else entirely. That's how Hobbs looked when he was thinking. When he was creating something in the privacy of his thoughts, drifting off into completely different realms. The wind could have whipped a newspaper in his face—and he wouldn't even notice. These moments irritated her a little. She loved what he created in these moods—but his outbursts sometimes made her want to strangle him. Because he wouldn't listen to what she was saying, or he'd freeze, not having touched the dinner she'd labored over for hours.
She climbed on top of him and kissed him on the lips—and he woke up, woke up like a sleeping prince.
"What are you thinking about again, honey?"
"Oh, nothing..." Rob sighed. He always said that when she caught him lost in thought. It meant he'd been touched by something, and an idea was forming around it. Maybe a new song. "I was just thinking about that drunk in the park today..."
"Oh, you're thinking about that again..." Linda shook her head. "About drunks, about homeless people, about stray dogs, about a single mother... You'd be better off writing a love song..."
Rob smiled indulgently and sighed. He couldn't. He wasn't insensitive. It would be hard to find a sweeter, warmer, more caring man. But he couldn't write about love, and he couldn't sing about it. He believed that what he felt for Linda belonged only to them. He had simple words for it, words he could whisper tenderly in her ear. He'd feel foolish if anyone were listening, but he couldn't imagine shouting about it at a concert, playing his guitar to a room full of strangers while she was hundreds of miles away. He couldn't sing about happiness. He believed that in that field, you either lapsed into pathos or cliché, and that nothing could be said that hadn't already been written and sung by someone who specialized in it. But Rob Hobbs was better at something entirely different. He spoke of sorrows, of wasted lives, of the poor, and of broken souls—and he did it well. It was convincing. He sang in a somber, deep voice, sometimes a little hoarse, sometimes a little wailing. He was, as he once jokingly called it in a conversation with Linda—apropos of explaining why he didn't write beautiful songs about happiness—a chronicler of misery. The fact that he was also a happy man didn't hinder him in his work.
"I mean, what did he say..." Rob mused.
"What did he say?" He muttered something, I didn't even understand.
"How did that go, so as not to lie... 'It's all just a dream...'"
"So what?" Linda raised her eyebrows. "Will there be a song out of it?
" "I don't know... But... it means something to me..."
"I know, honey... It's all so cool and metaphysical, and you might wonder, but consider that he's just some drunk. I know it's romantic, poetic in your twisted way, that a drunk says strange, philosophical things, but he's just a bum who's had too much to drink and is rambling...
" "But... that wasn't the tone of a drunk... Did you see how he looked at me?
" "I wasn't looking at him at all... A drunk is a drunk, it's good he didn't bother us, because with a drunk like that, you never know. And how did he look at you?
" "With a sort of... contempt..." Rob said. "As if he wanted to tell me: I know something you don't."
"Of course, and that's why he's a tramp, not a millionaire," Linda snorted and smiled. "My naive honey... But that's what I love about you, you know? You're romantic in your twisted way, even though you don't write love songs."
He smiled at her and embraced her as she lay on him as if on a giant mattress. But when he lifted his head to kiss her lips, she suddenly turned sharply to the left, prompting him to kiss her right cheek.
Linda glanced at her watch in horror.
"Oh my, what time is it already?" she moaned. "I have to go to bed!
" "Oh yes, it's starting to get nice, and you have to go to bed! And who's unromantic here?
" "Unfortunately, honey, the life of an ordinary person isn't as romantic as yours, my artist, and if I don't get to work on time tomorrow, I'm out of work, and when I get enough, I'll be fired, and then you can write a song about me," the girl stated. "Linda, twenty-six, had a house, had a job, and had an artist boyfriend. She lost it all, one by one, in reverse order," she declaimed, playfully imitating his gloomy tone.
"Write this down for me; it might come in handy someday," Rob said thoughtfully.
"You're awful!" she scolded him. She kissed him on the lips.
"You too!" the boy returned the compliment and a kiss. "What time is it anyway?"
Linda raised her head and looked at the digital clock on the bedside table.
"Seventy-eight forty-five bottles.
" "What
time?
" "Twenty-eight cactus," Linda explained calmly.
Rob looked, stunned, first at her, then at the clock face.
It showed only some meaningless curves, flickering with a greenish light.
Rob walked through the park. Alone. Linda was at work. She wasn't late, though she hadn't gone to bed immediately after their conversation.
Neither was Rob. And he should have been very happy about that. He should have been happy.
But he wasn't.
He didn't sleep a wink.
He walked along the park path, the wind ruffling his hair, revealing a white forehead puckered by a long wrinkle. The sun had disappeared behind the clouds. The day was bright, but pale. Not gloomy—just somehow… empty. Birdsong echoed strangely through the trees. A sluggish, blurred shadow trailed behind Hobbs. Rob walked forward with a determined, quick gait, his expression as scowling as the sky. Today he hadn't come to contemplate. He was chasing away the creative thoughts and melodies brewing in his head. He hadn't come here for inspiration. Besides, it came to him naturally—all it took was a gust of wind or a random word he overheard, and a song would be born. He just had to stand in the right place and tune in. But it wasn't for inspiration that he'd come to the park.
He wanted to find this tramp.
He wasn't sure if it was wise to look for him in the park. It was to be expected that a homeless person wouldn't be tied to one place. Samuel, the tramp from the song "The Informal King," had the sky as his ceiling and considered the entire world his own—while a homeless drunk could choose from dozens of park benches. Or perhaps he'd gone to sleep on the benches by the fountain near City Hall? Rob had no way to deal with the scumbag. He knew that if he found him, it would only be by chance. Persistence, not premonition, drove him forward.
He passed the bench where the homeless man had sat yesterday. It was empty. Of course. But he stopped beside it. Perhaps he sensed that if he waited, the tramp would circle back and return. Or perhaps he'd simply given up.
"What took you so long?" a familiar voice sounded behind him. "I thought you weren't coming."
It was the same, contemptuous, superior tone. A hoarse voice that nonverbally mocked him.
Rob turned away. A homeless man stood before him—a short, slightly stooped man with a crooked face—a wrinkled, bearded face twisted with an ironic smile. He was graying, though not quite yet. He had bushy black eyebrows. He wore a faded brown suit and dirty black leather shoes.
"Where did you come from...?" Rob asked, surprised. Walking along the park path, he hadn't noticed anyone, and standing at the bench, he hadn't heard footsteps behind him. It was as if the stray had sprung up out of nowhere.
"I was waiting for you," the man replied, ignoring the question. He approached Hobbs. He reeked of alcohol, but it didn't reek of alcohol. "I thought you'd be back sooner. But that's okay. So what did you want to ask?" he asked, giving him a mocking smile.
"What was that supposed to mean?" Rob asked. "What you said yesterday.
" "Remind me." Another sneer. The old man was clearly having a great time. He teased Rob and gloated in his superiority.
"It's all just a dream. You said so. What does that mean?
" "Exactly what I hear. What are you reading into that? A metaphor? I'm not a poet. I'm just telling it like it is."
"Bullshit!" Rob yelled. He rarely cursed, and it never slipped out around Linda. However, in the company of men, he sometimes let loose. Now he simply couldn't resist, and he didn't regret indulging.
"Ouch!" The tramp feigned horror, then laughed. He looked at the boy. "I see right through you. We both know how it is. You know I'm right. You sense it, but you don't want to believe it.
" "What, don't you want to believe it?" Hobbs assumed the same mocking pose.
"That it's all just a dream."
"What do you mean, everything?
" "Well, yes. Everything you see around you is just a dream. This whole park is your imagination. You're actually asleep somewhere out there, and what you're seeing now is only happening in your head. It's a conglomeration of your dreams, thoughts, images, sounds, and fantasies. Nothing more."
"But... everything is so real... You're real. Three-dimensional. I can see every wrinkle in your face. And, with all due respect, you stink completely real, so don't tell me this is a dream. Would a dream make me want to throw up?
" "It's your dream. Do whatever you want.
" "It's not a dream," Rob pressed.
"Yes? And the fact that Linda said it was... and I quote: Seventy-eight forty-five bottles, or, to put it another way, twenty-eight cactus... How do you explain that?"
"It was late. Either I was sleepy, or she was. I misunderstood, or she was babbling in her sleep. Or I dreamed it.
" "And then, after you two were snoozing for almost an hour, you were just dreaming too, huh?
" "How do you know?"
"Think about it, could I have known that in the real world? "
Hobbs snorted.
"You couldn't have seen from the second-story window." Not in the dark. And even if you somehow got into my apartment and hid somewhere, your stench would give you away.
"You're a sharp one! I like you, boy. I like you." The tramp grinned. "Well, you're a clever trickster. There's no way I could possibly know what I know.
" "There isn't.
" "But there's a simple explanation for that.
" "I'm listening.
" "That it's a dream.
" "I still don't see the connection.
" "I'm nothing more than a fragment of your dream. Just your imagination. Your thought. And your thought knows your other thoughts. Like your friends. That's why I know your memories. I know what you're doing, and I really like it." He smiled wryly again. "I like your music.
" "How could such a ragtag person know my music?
" "Maybe I was at a concert? Or maybe I have a Discman."
Rob snorted, and the tramp was pleased that the boy had caught the hint.
"Exactly. No way," he said. "But I don't have that kind of stuff in my pocket." I have a Rolex, for example.
- Stealing a Rolex can't be that hard, can it?
"But you have to admit, keeping it when I could have sold it and made a few pennies to put on my back is stupid...
" "Show it. I'd love to see it.
" "Wait, wait, where did I have it..."
The tramp began to rummage through his pockets. He muttered, irritated. He began shaking some crumpled papers from his pockets, searching deeper and deeper.
Only after a moment did Rob notice that hundred-dollar bills were falling to the ground. One by one, nervously yanked from his pocket—Benjamin Franklins. The tramp threw the money with increasing fury until a small carpet of bills formed around him.
"Where the hell is that?" the man muttered irritably, shaking more hundred-dollar bills from the pocket on the inside of the flap. "Oh, I have it."
When he went to show it to Hobbs, he saw him crouch down, examining a hundred-dollar bill he had picked up from the ground.
"Surprised?" he asked. "A tramp's throwing money out of every pocket? Why doesn't he buy better things, not to mention a house, a nice car, a fifty-inch TV, and all that other stuff?
" "Because no one would let a guy like you into a store?"
"Oh, my dear, they would, they would!" the tramp snorted. "If I started pouring that money on the floor, they'd lick my shoes shiny and inhale my stench, pretending it was violets. But don't you wonder where I got this money? Stolen? I'd have already used it. Fake? No, I assure you, it has a watermark and all the security features you'd expect. And you know why. Because you expect them. You'll look at the bill and see the watermark, because you know it's supposed to be there. But I'll show you a little trick. Take any bill."
Rob looked at him suspiciously, but crouched down slowly. The tramp nodded urgently.
"Okay..." he said. "Now read the series.
" "I68482353F.
" "Okay. Now hand me the bill and take the next one."
Hobbs bent down and picked up the hundred-dollar bill leaning against his shoe.
"What serial number?" the homeless man asked.
"C99764628A.
" "Okay. Now tell me what the serial number was on that bill.
" "What?
" "Come on! You just had it in your hand and you were reading it!
" "I68... I don't know... 2... 5... 3... 6... 7... 3... and I think it was F?
" "Now see what it was really like," the homeless man said, handing him the bill back.
Rob took it, unfolded it, and read it with amazement.
"I68253673F?
" "Isn't that the number you just gave me?"
"Yeah... Not bad, huh?"
"Oh, that's a button!" the tramp laughed. "That number is I68482353F. It's just that it slipped your mind. You memorized the first three digits and the last two. And you filled in the rest. But what you did fill in, you subconsciously tried to remember. You wanted to guess, and be sure that when you checked, you were reading the same thing you imagined. And your imagination made that possible. You read what you imagined from the bill, because this bill, like that number, was invented, or rather dreamed up, only by you. And the other one the same. Take another look at it. What's its serial number?"
Rob dropped the hundred-dollar bill, numbered I65245347F, and examined the other one.
"C99535984B?" he grimaced. "That wasn't that number... Definitely not...
" "Exactly. C99764628A.
" "What game are you playing?"
"I just want to enlighten you.
" "Who are you?
" "Samuel Jones, forty-two." He grinned again, baring his yellowed, rotten teeth. "It's all just a dream, Robert. That song is only in your head. You never recorded it. In fact, you can't even really play guitar. There's no Rob Hobbs Four. There's no second or first album. Oh, and you're not dating Linda. She doesn't exist either. You're just dreaming all this."
Rob pursed his lips. His insides boiled. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and punched the tramp in the jaw. He staggered and fell to the ground. The pain in his knuckles was very real.
"Fuck off!" roared Hobbs. "Fuck off, or I'll kick you so hard you'll—!"
"Okay..." muttered the supposed Samuel Jones. "Okay... I'm coming... But anyway, you know where to find me... And anyway... You'll find me..."
Rob just snorted and turned away. He started down the path back to the house. It was starting to rain.
After a few steps, he stopped and looked back.
There was no sign of the tramp.
Rob sat on the bed. He stared intently at the strings of the guitar in his lap. He placed the fingers of his left hand on the neck. With his right, he began to pluck the strings. Before he even touched them, he knew exactly what sound they would make. He stretched and plucked them, coaxing a melody from them—exactly the one he wanted. He played "The Unofficial King." He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, counting in his mind.
"Samuel Jones... forty-two, though he looks older..." he began in a low, raspy tone. - He had a home, a family, money, now he has nothing, and he has drunken hiccups and hangovers... Heaven is his ceiling and earth is his kingdom, although only he thinks so...
He cut the melody short with a sharp slap on the strings with the flat of his hand. The guitar groaned hollowly. Rob was angry with himself for choosing this particular song. Of all the gloomy songs he'd composed, this one. He hated it because he kept seeing that mocking smile, and even his hoarse, dark vocals couldn't drown out the mocking tone ringing in his ears. But no matter how he thought about the song now, no matter how furious he'd been when he'd just played it, it came out perfectly. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how to play, and his fingers moved smoothly across the strings, drawing out what he wanted. The right words came through his throat, and even the hoarseness was just right. He could play, and he could sing—even if a critic from a certain trade magazine suggested otherwise.
He put down the guitar and walked to the kitchen window, which overlooked the riverside path. He opened it, and fresh air and the rustle of trees filled the room. Rob leaned his hands on the windowsill and leaned out a little. He closed his eyes. The wind ruffled his hair, combing it left and right.
Hobbs grabbed a piece of paper from the sideboard—yesterday's shopping list (toast bread, butter, ham, strawberry jam, soap)—and a pen. He scribbled it out in the top corner of the piece of paper and began writing furiously, practically drilling through the page. He didn't lift the pen from the paper. He didn't stop for a moment. The words poured out of him, and he didn't stop until he finished.
I am a leaf
that thinks it
flies, that boasted
of being crowned
, but the wind snatched me up,
carries me away
, and yet my place is
among the sand on the earth.
After a moment's thought, he crossed out the word "sand" and wrote "dust" above it.
He knew how to write. And already a melody was forming in his head. Looking at the lyrics, he hummed softly under his breath, adjusting the rhythm.
He went to get his guitar, intoning quietly:
"Da-da-dam... No... Da-da-dam... Da-da da-da dam..."
He sat down on the bed. He gripped the fretboard with his left hand, but before he began to play, he glanced at the page again. He knew the lyrics by heart; they still sounded in his head—but he preferred to have them in mind. He glanced over the page again.
He stopped at the last line. He frowned.
It was clearly written: "Among the dust on the ground.
" However, he couldn't find the crossing out—the crossed-out word "sand"—and the word "dust" ran in line with the rest of the line.
He shook his head in disbelief, a tear forming in the corner of his eye
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