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It’s dark outside when he hears it. The distant sound of a guitar. The tune is familiar - he’s sure he knows it well - but he can’t recall the name. With nothing better to do, he follows the sound through a maze of wood scaffolding that holds up some old roller-coaster, and is rather surprised to find himself there playing.
No, he realizes, it’s not really him. The man looking back at him nonchalantly has lighter eyes. Or maybe a younger face - no, it’s older. Something is different about it, at least. Like looking into a broken mirror.
“Who are you?” Lee asks the guitar-playing man.
“I’m you,” he replies with Lee’s voice, but it’s a little higher - or lower - or quieter, or something.
“Funny. Who are you really?”
“No one.”
“You’ve got to be someone.”
“I’m everyone.”
“Be fucking serious.”
The other Lee pauses for a moment. “I’m whoever you think I am,” he says.
“Nobody in this fucking place can just say what they mean, can they?” says Lee, leaning against a wooden post. “Always some bullshit like that. ‘Whoever you think I am.’ I think you’re an asshole.”
“They shot me at Gettysburg,” says the other man, as if it’s a perfectly natural reply. “Isn’t that funny? Sent me to Vietnam. Killed me in the protests and the race riots. In the factories. I choked on smoke. It never bothered me. Yesterday it was 1789 and tomorrow it’s going to be 2003. Isn’t that funny?”
Lee has nothing to say to that.
“You got shot right here. I feel it,” continues the man, gesturing to the spot on his abdomen where Lee has a bullet wound. “He got shot right here,” he says, touching the back of his skull in an unnerving sort of way. “I feel it too.”
“What’s the song you were just playing? I don’t remember the name.”
“Neither do I.”
“Play it again,” says Lee.
“Sure,” says the man, sliding his fingers to the right chords without looking. He hums the tune absent-mindedly for a moment. “I bet you remember a lot of things you don’t think you do,” he says as he keeps playing.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Electric chairs. Crowds of people in train stations. Potted palm trees. Bloody pillows. Airplane engines. Brass bands. That sort of thing.”
“What?”
“Or burning barns. Smoke that stings your eyes. Shouting. Lots of it. A cold night, and there’s shouting, and restless horses, and a gunshot.”
“And I pick up the book, and I burn it,” says Lee automatically. “I burn the pages.”
“That’s right.” The man goes back to plucking the strings of his banjo, which was a guitar earlier, Lee thinks.
There is a cold sweat creeping up the back of Lee’s neck. There are all kinds of strange memories intertwining with his. A night at the cafe with a girl in Minsk gets darker and smaller until it morphs into the crowded shuffle of a basement hall, the floorboards of which become a set of wooden gallows, with a flare of sunlight in his eyes, which when it clears, reveals a city park on a pleasant day.
“I used to be someone else,” he says abruptly.
“So did I,” says the other man.
“Does everyone else know you’re here?” says Lee, suddenly feeling that if he is caught speaking to this man he’ll be in trouble.
“Of course they do.”
“But they killed you, didn’t they.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“That’s right.”
“I should go,” says Lee, who does not want to be here anymore. Every time he looks into this mirror-self’s eyes, he sees things he doesn’t want to.
“You should,” says the man.
Lee turns and walks off, weaving through the wooden posts towards a distant light where he can faintly hear others talking. They will probably have been wondering where he is, which he likes very much. And just when he can’t hear the music anymore, he remembers what the song was called.