The Wave Read Online Free PDF

coming right over.” Nella hung up on me.
    Nella wasn’t even quite my girlfriend, but she was running to my side to protect me. Shelly had never done anything like that. She never worried about my safety or well-being. I was her boyfriend, then her husband, but at our ten-year high school reunion, she met her man—Thomas Willens.
    We’d been friends in high school, Tommy and I. He was an amiable sort, never frowning or worried, like me. I remember he used to say to me, “Aw, come on, Flynn, what could be so bad?”
    I went to my computer and signed on to my ISP. I looked up cemeteries in Southern California inside of news items. I wondered if there had been strange activities reported from other southland graveyards. There was nothing of interest. The usual desecration stuff. But no movement to take on the identities of the dead.
     
    Hi, Errol.
     
    The words popped up on my screen. The sender was Shellyshell11.
    I didn’t answer.
     
    I saw that you were online and I thought I’d see how you were doing. I’m at our place in Chelsea. It’s really hot in New York.
     
    Our place
was what I focused on. Shelly and Thomas making a home for themselves.
    “Look at me!”
    I turned from the screen to see that GT had wrapped himself into three blue bath towels. One for his waist, one for his shoulders and one for his head. He was grinning and strutting in the ensemble.
    “I made my clothes, Airy. I dressed myself with just this fabric I found.”
    “You need pants and a shirt to go outside.”
    “Why?”
    “Because people don’t count towels as clothes on the street.”
    He pouted and sat on one of my kitchen chairs.
    I had separated the garage space into different areas. The center was my living room, marked off by a table, two chairs, and a couch. In the four corners I had my bedroom, kitchen, office, and bathroom. The bathroom was the only space around which I had erected plasterboard walls.
    “I like it,” GT complained.
    “Me too, man. But if you go outside like that, they’ll arrest you.”
    “Arrest,” he repeated, playing with the word, moving it around. “Rest. Cell. Restrict. Like death. Death.”
    “Where were you born, GT?”
    “ ’lanta.”
    “Is that where your mother is?” I remembered that my father had made a few business trips to Georgia when I was a boy. Maybe that was when he would visit his second family.
    “She’s in the graveyard I rose from.”
    “Not my grandmother,” I said. “
Your
mother.”
    “I am Arthur Porter, Errol. I’m your father. At least I was. Now I’m your father and part of the Wave.”
    “What’s the Wave?”
    “Move-ment,” he said, making the circular motion with his hands again. “Motion.”
    “It’s a movement? Like a cult?”
    “It is the whole world. Living planet. The one and the many.” He closed his eyes, and ecstasy crossed his face. “Every beat and count remembered and passed on.”
    “Are you’re a member of this group?” I asked, trying to get past the spiritual hocus-pocus.
    “Yes,” he said, smiling brightly, his eyes still closed.
    “Do you have a title?”
    “I am a memory of the ancestors of the numberless. I am rec . . . reco . . . recollection. Recollection, yes.”
    The knock on the door didn’t faze GT. I left him smiling at the deep elation brought out by his gibberish.
    Nella was at the door, wearing a yellow sundress with a wide-brimmed red straw hat. There was a cloth bag slung across her shoulder, and on her feet she wore blue wooden shoes. My heart skipped at the thought that such a wild and beautiful woman could be my lover.
    “Where is it?” she asked.
    “He’s on the couch. Don’t scare him, okay?”
    She moved past me, clacking her wooden heels on the concrete floor. She walked right up to GT, who was still in his blind reverie. He opened his eyes when her shadow fell across his face. His smile was beatific.
    “What are you?” she asked him.
    “A memory.”
    “A memory of what?”
    “Of who I was.