Read Online Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem - Free Book Online Page B

came out, that’s all. It’s not like it wasn’t always there. Things got all broken up,
localized.
And there’s the dreamstuff, you know. The Man got into everybody’s head, so I guess everybody suddenly got a look at how severely neurotic The Man actually was. No big surprise to me though.”
    Chaos wondered if he was learning anything. “How long ago, would you say?”
    The guy squinted at the sky. “Now that’s a good question. I’d say I was on the Coast for a couple of weeks before I split. I don’t know, seven or eight months. Maybe a year, almost.”
    â€œA year?” Chaos blurted. “That’s impossible. I’ve been living—”
    â€œHey,
nothing’s
impossible.” The hippie seemed annoyed. “And I’ll tell you where you’ve been living: in somebody else’s dream. Probably still are, or will be again soon. So relax. You want to see the Strip?”
    Chaos turned to Melinda, who shrugged. “Uh, sure,” said Chaos. “You said you lived here with somebody else?”
    â€œThe McDonaldonians,” said the hippie, pronouncing it carefully. “That’s just my name for them, though. They’re a real trip. You want to meet them?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou hungry?”
    â€œYes,” said Chaos. It was an easy question, the first in a while.
    â€œThen let’s go.”
    They followed him to his truck. Up close Chaos saw that it followed the model of the little cars in the shed in the desert, and of the car in his dream: made of lightweight plastic and covered with solar panels.
    â€œYour truck,” said Chaos. “It’s the new kind.”
    â€œMy truck is my friend, man. We go everywhere together. Roll down the windows . . .”
    â€œWe didn’t have that kind where I came from,” said Chaos, not sure it was right. Right if he meant Hatfork, wrong if he included the distant memories stirred up by the dreams.
    â€œWell then you’re not from around here,” said the hippie. “Or from California either.” He seemed uncommonly pleased with himself for this conclusion, as though he’d solved a major problem.
    He climbed up on the driver’s side and opened the passenger door of the cab. “Put her up here, man, right between us.” He seemed incapable of addressing Melinda directly.
    They drove five or six miles down the empty highway before hitting the first signs of the Strip, the hippie talking all the way.
    The Strip began with dingy trailer parks and sprawling, concrete-block motels, all abandoned. Then came gas stations and gift shops and fast-food restaurants and auto dealerships and topless bars, all with their neon signs lit up and glowing in the sun, all completely vacant and still. The Strip went on for miles, mind-boggling in its repetitiveness. The hippie gestured at it, waving his hand. “Everything, man, everything. It’s all here.”
    â€œWhy is it all lit?” said Chaos.
    The hippie patted the dashboard. “Solar panels, man. It runs all by itself. Probably will until somebody shuts it down. Pretty far out if you think about it, the sun lighting up all this useless neon, the neon blinking its pathetic little light back at the sun all day, nobody here to see it but me. Ah, sunflower, weary of time. I thought about going around and shutting it all down, but who gives a shit? Not the sun, man, that’s for sure.”
    They pulled into the parking lot of a building made out of molded orange and yellow plastic. McDonald’s, Chaos remembered. Hatfork didn’t have one, but Little America did—abandoned, of course, and bared of its decorations. This one glowed gaily. Solar panels.
    The hippie parked and led them inside, saying again, “You’re gonna love these cats. They’re a trip.” The building was bright but quiet, apparently empty. For a moment Chaos wondered if