The Atmospherians

by Alex McElroy

  The men were hosing the trough when we reached the tree line. Peter stopped me. “I know you don’t like it here, but we’re all grateful you’re here. You listen to us.”

  “Dyson listens to you,” I said.

  “He doesn’t hear us. Not like you do. You’re the reason this works.” He looked at his feet. “What I mean is you’re loved.”

  “Are you flirting with me?” I asked. Though it was obvious.

  “Only if that’s okay.”

  Such frustrating caution. I leaned in to Peter; he did not lean away. His lips were soft and inviting and tasted of raspberry cough drops. It was a brief kiss but a thrilling one. I was starved for romance, for touch. When I backed away, Peter shuddered.

  “Wowza,” he said, without any irony.

  “Meet me tonight at The Crucible,” I said through a smile. I hooked my index finger around his. “Once everyone’s sleeping.”

  He squeezed my hand in response.

  * * *

  That night, Peter and I made out on a tree stump in the woods—he was too nervous to do anything else. The next night he went down on me in the barn, and the night after that we fucked in The Crucible, where the mirrored walls suctioned the bare skin of our buttocks and backs. I was on my period, but this didn’t faze him, as it did most of the men I’d been with, nor did it shock him into pity as we cleaned up. He was an attentive, confident lover who rarely came. The pressure made him tense up. The few times he came, I had to cover his mouth, with both hands or my mouth, because he let out bullish grunts that would’ve awoken everything in the forest.

  What was Peter to me? A lover? A distraction from my surroundings? A way to react against Dyson’s increasing secrecy? He was all of these things to me, which is to say he was nothing to me, because he was never merely and entirely Peter. I wasn’t interested in Peter but in how I made myself feel when we were together: powerful, sexy, admired, independent. I could say more about Peter—I want to say more about Peter—but I can’t. It hurts too much to talk about him.

  twenty-two

  SOMETIMES, AS PETER and I fucked, my mind flashed to him on his knees weeding the old woman’s garden, bundling lettuce and kale as she shouted in terror. The line between his actions and those of the horders who heaved bricks was thinner than I liked to admit. What made him capable of the former made him capable of the latter, and capable of violence I didn’t intend to imagine. The same thing that had driven him into the horde—his loneliness, his upbringing, his gender—would summon him back (men were three times as likely to horde if they’d been in a horde, according to the CDC).

  I feared the existence of a threatening Peter lurking within him. Even he couldn’t detect that part of himself. Someday, that Peter would wrap an arm around my Peter’s neck and drag his obedient body into a horde. During sex, I tried to distract myself with his body. I tugged his waxy hair, I bit his neck, I dug my nails into his shoulders, his ass, pulled him closer to me, deeper inside me, an act of spellcasting that might silence that Peter inside, the one who wished to relapse.

  twenty-three

  DURING THE EVENING lectures, I paced along the northern shore of the pond inside the sliver of cell service where Cassandra and I had spoken. She hadn’t called since our fight. But every night I returned to the shore hoping to find a message from her. Every night she didn’t reach out carved a fresh mark on my heart. After an hour of pacing, my hope would harden to anger. I’d grip my phone in both hands, shaking it like I might squeeze out a call if I clenched hard enough.

  Normally, this resulted in emails from Roger Handswerth. Your talent and experience would be crucial in making DAM one of the world’s greatest technological achievements, he might write (without explaining what he meant by talent and experience). We know you’ll fall in love with the lifestyle and the professional opportunities that only DAM can provide. The idea of accepting a position—even just visiting—based on Cassandra’s pitying recommendation curdled my stomach. But ignoring his pitches became harder and harder as Cassandra’s and Blake’s popularity continued to rise. Her online talk show received an afternoon slot on NBC, and Blake’s album The You I Knew hit number four on the charts. The Atmosphere, meanwhile, was losing its hold on the public’s imagination. Rumors were spreading that Martha Stewart had started her own castration camp, either inspired by mine or the inspiration for mine, and as she was a larger celebrity figure, all the attention once devoted to us had tilted over to her. This hurt Dyson more than he liked to admit. “I’m just glad your name’s out of the news,” he’d tell me when I asked him how he felt about these developments. “We could use this time to regroup and reassert ourselves, to remind ourselves of our core mission: helping the men.” The men were hardly any better than when they had arrived, and we were both paranoid over their waning interest in daily activities. The Atmosphere teetered on the brink of imploding. Despite Dyson’s faith in attention, no one had stepped up to invest in our cause. According to Roger, DAM gained an average of two dozen investors a day.

  One evening, during my pacing time at the pond, Roger’s number showed on my screen. I let the call drift into voicemail and listened immediately to the message: Sasha: Roger Handswerth again. It’s June fourteenth, nearly a month since my last call. How’s this weekend for a campus visit? We’ll send a car to you—we know where you are. We’d love to bring you to campus to talk compensation. Please call me at your earliest convenience. This is, I regret, a time-sensitive offer.

  After a few more listens, I deleted the voicemail and sprinted back to the cabin, worried I’d stayed out too long. The lights were on when I returned. Barney was not on the doorstep yowling to go back inside. I took a few elongated breaths. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I muttered, preparing to explain myself to Dyson. I hid my phone in my pocket—for all he knew, it was still at the foot of a tree—and opened the door.

  “Hello, Stacy.” Art Flemings was sprawled over the couch, his boots crossed on the armrest. Mud flaked the floor underneath them. Barney, that traitor, lay in his lap oozing a lathery purr.

  I stepped into the kitchen and washed my trembling hands at the sink, feigning indifference. “It’s illegal to break into houses,” I said.

  “The rules are different when you’re an officer of the law.”

  “You’re a firefighter.”

  “Let’s not waste time on semantics.”

  Dyson flung open the door. “Where’s my itty-bitty kitty?” He squatted and Barney ran to his hands. He scooped the cat up, took in the scene. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “I’m the one interrupting,” said Art. “I let myself in while Stacy was out.”

  Dyson gave me a where were you? look. Barney leaped free of his arms. He smiled at Art. “Well, tell us the good news,” he said. “For what do we owe the invasion?”

  “You’re so sensitive with your boundaries.” Art walked to the sink and filled a glass of water, remained at my side as he glugged it down. “I’m afraid there’s no good news. None from me. I’m here on official Johnsonburg business. Dyson. Stacy. I’m shutting you down.”

  “Shutting what down?” asked Dyson.

  “Don’t think for a second I like what I’m doing. Look at my hands.” He straightened his arms in front of his chest. “You can’t see the binds, but I assure you they’re tied. Tight as my granddaddy’s anus.”

  I coughed in disgust.

  “With all that’s happening across the country Johnsonburg can’t let unlicensed men congregate without supervision and permits.”

  “I assure you our men are supervised,” Dyson said.

  “But are they vetted? Have they been tested? These hordes aren’t just rescuing kittens anymore, okay. No more carrying grammies to doctor appointments. They’re throwing axes at taxis and stuffing firecrackers through mail slots. One of ’em drove a truck through the front of a pharmacy, I heard. Just think of all the repairs. Across the country, over six hundred million dollars in damages—and that’s only t
his month. Every four hours a new one’s bubbling up. Did you hear about the one down in Arkansas? Seven men scrubbed a pedestrian bridge—real good deed, I bet you’re thinking—until they curled over the railing, straight to their deaths. Three men in a Walmart turned handguns on themselves. Don’t think it’s some problem for the other side of the country. Last week—not even ten miles away, over in Willoughby—a horde formed in a hardware store and you know what they did? In a store stocked with hammers and saws and nail guns and chisels? It buckles me even to think about it. The horror of it.”

  I gripped the counter so tightly my nails dug into the wood. “No need to tell us,” I said.

  He said, “I’ll tell you what happened. These seven men pluck crowbars off the shelves and march into Home Renovations, where the families are shopping, the mothers and kids and effeminate dads, the ones who can’t protect themselves and their families, and these men step right up to the wall of paint cans, slapping crowbars into their palms—and they pry off every one of those lids and start slopping paint over all the moms and kids and effeminate dads. Red paint.”

  “Just paint?” I asked, disappointed.

  “Terrible, right? Imagine that for a minute. You’re some little kid there with your mama begging her to buy you a pop or a candy bar, something they keep at the register, when all of a sudden your face is totally lacquered, sticky and dripping, and when you claw the paint out of your eyes you see seven spittle-faced lunks pouring a full can of paint on your mama. Red. Paint,” he repeated. “The lunks start lumbering toward you to get you again and you run for your life, slipping over the paint on the floor, splatting onto your stomach. You’re terrified. The men dump another can on your mama. Even if you escape, even if nobody’s hurt, you’re haunted for the rest of your life and it wasn’t even that bad. You’re lucky you didn’t get one of those bad hordes. One of the hordes that strangles puppies or topples trees in your yard. Imagine that. Those spittle-faced lunks sawing the maple your granddaddy planted.”

  “Tell us what you need from us,” I said.

  “I need you to tell me how many men you have in this camp—what is it you call yourselves again?”

  “We don’t have a name,” Dyson said.

  “Because I’ve been hearing that a castration cult is somewhere around here.”

  “Twelve men,” I said. “We have twelve men total.”

  “Including you?” Art asked Dyson.

  “Thirteen,” he said.

  “Just over the limit,” he said.

  “You’re harassing us,” I said. “You broke into our house.”

  “Your cat let me in.”

  “Don’t you need a warrant?” asked Dyson.

  “In a state of emergency all I need is a list of your men. It’s the law now: Any collection of men numbering higher than twelve must be vetted for P.H.I.: Prior Hording Involvement. This isn’t me trying to piss on your party. As of today, it’s federal law. Passed in emergency session.”

  Dyson and I nodded along like Of course, I remember.

  Art said, “This isn’t just about you. We’re checking all collections of men: basketball teams and football teams and barbecue joints and any number of dens and god knows how many boards of directors and the legislatures in over thirty-two American states—not just the ones run by Republicans, mind you. No one is above the law. Not with the crisis we’re facing. I’ll need to run your men through our database to check the P.H.I. status of the men in your club.”

  I blanched at the thought of giving up Peter—not so much Peter, but the release our sex had been bringing me. “What if we do?” I asked.

  “Then I do what the law does. I take ’em away. For your safety. And the safety of the fine people of Johnsonburg—none of whom are happy about y’all being so close to town.”

  “That’s all you need?” Dyson asked. “A list of names and you leave us alone?”

  “That or a bribe.” He winked.

  “Aren’t you a cop?” I asked.

  “Fire department.”

  Dyson lowered the kitchen table from the wall. He sat down and started to write.

  “First and last,” Art said. “And middle if you got ’em.”

  “No need,” I said. I slid the legal pad away from Dyson. “No need to go through the trouble of searching your database, Art. It must be time-consuming and expensive.”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “It’s okay, Sasha,” said Dyson. “All our men are clean.”

  “We have a man who’s been in a horde,” I said. “I’ll give you his name.”

  “What man?” Dyson asked.

  “What man?” Art asked.

  “Leon Cranch,” I said.

  For weeks, Dyson had criticized Leon for his reckless effort and drive and for saying Hoo-rah after every sentence he finished. Leon tried very hard, but he hadn’t finished above eleventh in a single one of our rankings. He purposefully coughed as others were trying to speak. He was expendable to me—a sacrifice worth protecting Peter. Dyson chewed his cheek, deciding whether Leon was expendable to him. I grew hot with shame watching him make up his mind. He might not have liked Leon, but he wouldn’t toss him aside. He didn’t give up on people—if he did, The Atmosphere wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t be here.

  Art pulled a notebook out of his pocket. “How do you spell it?” he asked me.

  I gave my feet a long look.

  Dyson said: “Leon is spelled how you’d expect it. And that’s Cranch with a C.”

  “He admitted it during our therapy session,” I said, rejuvenated by Dyson’s collusion. “He was in a gruesome horde a few months ago. One of those violent ones.”

  “What did they do?” Art asked.

  “Please don’t make her repeat it,” said Dyson.

  “My apologies,” Art said. He jotted down Leon’s name in a notebook he kept in his breast pocket. “I’ll still have to run it through the database.”

  “You can do that or you can trust us,” I said.

  “The law’s a precise science,” he said.

  “It’s also a timely science,” said Dyson. “And if the hordes are as dangerous as you say it’s best we get Leon out of here quickly. Tonight.”

  “We don’t want him infecting the others,” I said. “That’s how it happens, right? One man turning makes the other men turn. And relapse rates, for horders, it’s something like—”

  “Eighty-seven percent,” Art said. “We need to fix it before there’s no fixing it.” He unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and stepped outside to call for backup.

  After weeks of drifting apart, I’d forgotten the fun of scheming with Dyson. We were children again, back on the bus lying to the driver. “This is so perfect,” I said.

  “Who are you hiding?” Dyson asked.

  “Come on. You’ve hated Leon since he got here.”

  “Because he’s easy to hate,” he said. “That doesn’t mean he was in a horde.”

  “Art wanted a name, we gave him a name. Art gets to be a hero.” I deepened my voice, scare-quoted: “‘To protect the fine people of Johnsonburg.’ And we’re off the hook. We cut down to twelve—the safe number—and free ourselves of the worst man in the camp.”

  “Art said you weren’t here when he got here.”

  “Art says so many things.”

  “Where were you?”

  “So this is what we’re doing? We’re enjoying ourselves a minute ago and now you’re interrogating me. Like I’m a criminal. Like I’m breaking curfew. Fine, Dyson: I went for a walk to get fresh air and alone time. Barney’s a monster when you’re not here.”

  “The last few nights I woke up and you were gone. Midnight. One AM. Are you meeting one of the men? Maybe Leon? Maybe something bad happened between you.”

  “Maybe I don’t like listening to you make yourself sick, Dyson. Maybe it hurts me to hear you because I don’t know how to make you stop.” It was one of those rare, invincible lies: the lie so entangled with truth it
may as well have been true. No, I didn’t leave to escape the sound of him purging—but the sound did hurt me; I didn’t know how to convince him to stop.

  Dyson flopped onto the couch, hands in his hair. “If something happened between you two you can tell me,” he said, genuine care in his voice.

  “Something happened between us,” I said, so monotone he’d have to know I was lying.

  “Thank you,” he said. He needed a reason to send Leon away.

  Art popped his head into the cabin. “The boys will be here in an hour.”

  * * *

  Randy and Peter pounded on the door in the dead of the night. “Leon!” they shouted. “They dragged Leon away!”

  Dyson and I stood in the doorway. “This couldn’t wait until morning?” I asked. Randy’s presence disturbed me. Only Peter knew the path to our cabin. He’d eaten here as a reward for placing first in the rankings—a privilege he should’ve known better than to share.

  “Who took Leon?” Dyson asked.

  “I guess it was the police,” Randy said. “Though only some were police. Maybe fire department? They said they were both. They said Leon was in a man horde.”

  “How did Leon respond?” Dyson asked.

  “It’s not the type of thing someone repeats,” said Randy. “Not in front of a lady.”

  “We’re past that,” I said.

  “He told the police he was innocent,” Peter said.

  “And that he’d stick their dicks in wood chippers,” Randy added. “And feed their chippered dicks to their children.”

  I cringed. “We get it,” I said.

  “And what’s left he’ll feed to their mothers.”

  “Just tell us where Leon is now,” said Dyson.

  “They hit him a lot,” Peter muttered. His voice was creaky with hurt. When the light from inside hit his face I flinched seeing the pallor over his cheeks.