In the Heat of the Light

by Stephen Kearse

  The downtown skyline erupted into view from I-75/85 South. It wasn’t impressive. It had always annoyed Zed that you could only see it best from the highway, as if the city planners knew it would lose its power if you saw it while standing still—which it did, whenever Zed found herself on a rooftop. But Zed still felt a sense of pride well up within her. This was her city. Even as a kid from the burbs, she felt an umbilical link to it, nourished by its heat, its energy, its music, its traffic.

  “You should get over,” Kai suggested, her head jutting between the headrests. Zed knew how to get there, but Kai loved navigating. Zed acknowledged her with a nod and merged right, needling through the traffic streaming in from I-20. Moments later, she was on Freedom Parkway, crossing over Boulevard.

  “Who’s going to say it?” Apollo queried, turning to peer into the back seat. Kai and Sol shrugged, so Zed spoke up.

  “Boulevard,” she said, mimicking Theo’s nasally California properness, “What kind of street name is that? That’s like naming a street, ‘street’!” The car shook with laughter, the impression, as always, funnier than the joke. Zed hoped that Kai knew they were laughing with Theo, not at him.

  Moments after turning onto Ponce De Leon, they pulled into a giant parking lot. They were early, so they sat in the car, watching people stream in and out of cars, gilded in sweat. The car was growing hot, but nobody seemed eager to jump out. This was Ponce, after all. Not really their scene. Or their tax bracket.

  Theo pulled up grinning, windows nowhere in sight. Zed could feel everyone shudder when he rolled them up.

  Zed found herself hugging Theo and everyone else as they stood in the parking lot, hot, static air crinkling between them. It felt good to be reunited. Zed and Sol had changed clothes during the ride into the city, their skin now covered by tight-fitting Under Armour shirts and dark tights, but they were still glowing.

  Zed opened her trunk, removing the tattered blanket covering the box of paint cans. Everybody lined up, backpacks agape like catfish mouths, Zed unloading spray paint canisters and surgical masks. Apollo declined, his backpack zipped shut. Zed waved him away then stuffed some extra cans into her bag. He wasn’t getting out of it tonight, especially since he’d brought gloves.

  “So, where are we headed?” Theo asked Zed as they walked west on Ponce, collapsing into single file as they brushed shoulders with a homogenous mob of thirty-year-old white dudes who were desperately fighting to return to their twenties. They were all either bearded and bald or ponytailed and clean-shaven, sentient border disputes, Civil War reenactors forever loyal to the Confederacy of youth. Zed smiled as she heard the familiar yelp of a guy who’d rammed shoulders with Sol, expecting her to yield, because why shouldn’t she? She was walking where he planned on walking. Sol never yielded.

  “We’re headed to Edgewood,” Zed responded as the sidewalk cleared and Theo reappeared at her side. He nodded then fell back, leaving Zed alone to lead.

  “What is all this shit?” Sol bellowed from a few feet away, rattling a young black woman who was jogging toward them with her dog, the fattest Doberman Zed had ever seen. Its ears were so plump that they drooped down, too heavy to stay in place.

  “Ponce City Market,” Apollo answered, his voice directed behind him. Zed stopped, turning around to find Sol planted in front of a towering brick building, the crew surrounding her, staring upward. The building was old, but it had a tacky sheen of recent interest, like an old vinyl record that had been dusted off and labeled “old,” its age confirming its cool.

  Apollo continued. “It’s a redevelopment thing. Used to be a government building and was a warehouse before that. Now it’s all yuppified and shit,” he said coolly.

  “Why do you know this?” Theo asked.

  “I was looking at off-campus options for housing for junior year, and this was listed. Not my style or my budget, but apparently, it’s a big deal. Supposed to provide residents with everything they need. Clothing stores, farmers market, bars, restaurants, art. You could probably live there and never have to come out.”

  “That sounds great to me,” Theo said cheerfully.

  “Sounds like jail to me,” Sol said. Zed couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

  “This is a haven. No one builds their own jail,” Kai said, shooting Sol a smile.

  “Pablo Escobar did,” Apollo said, dryly. Zed rolled her eyes. Since the first bombing, Apollo had been oddly militant, delving headfirst into the biographies of lionized dissidents: Malcolm X, Pablo Escobar, Vladimir Lenin, Huey Newton, Assata Shakur. He was now overflowing with facts, mundane information that was uttered with bizarre reverence. It mattered, Apollo insisted.

  “It was still a fucking jail,” Sol retorted, walking away. Everyone laughed, even Apollo. They continued down Ponce, hitting a left on Glen Iris and heading south. Small talk came and went as the city bustled around them, cars screeching-stopping-going, people running, walking, biking. The heat was amplified by their harried pace. Rolling hills greeted them as they trekked past modest houses on the right and gleaming high-rises on the left. Zed resented the faux-rebellious wheatpastes featured on some of the houses, images of shadowy faces captioned with bland slogans: fight the power, green power, power to the people. If there was any paint remaining at the end of the night, she would be doing some throw-ups.

  “Why didn’t we park closer?” Kai asked, shimmying to the front of their procession where Zed was still leading.

  “I didn’t want our night to be too functional. We can be commuters when we’re thirty,” Zed said. Kai beamed, skipping a few steps ahead. Kai loved it when she was sassy. Zed liked it too, sometimes.

  Theo joined her, leaving Zed alone, flanked by Apollo and Sol, who were uncannily chatty. Zed continued along by herself, watching Kai and Theo interact. They looked peaceful, but something was off. Theo hadn’t complained about the heat a single time, and he’d been smiling since he stepped out of the car. Zed slowed her pace to allow Sol and Apollo to catch up.

  “What’s up with Theo?” she asked them, surprised to see that they were visibly annoyed by her interruption.

  “I think he’s happy to see us,” Apollo offered, shrugging.

  “I think he realized that pussies don’t get pussy,” Sol corrected him, also shrugging. A laugh rollicked Zed, catching her midstride, her legs nearly noodling beneath her.

  “If you really believe that,” Apollo said, unaffected by Sol’s joke, “Let’s invite him out tomorrow. At least this time around, he’ll know what we’re getting into.”

  “And he’ll know he isn’t in charge,” Sol added. Zed remained silent, unconvinced that Theo’s participation was even up for discussion. She trusted Theo, but Kai had shown her the text messages that had led to their breakup. For a month, he’d transformed all of their correspondence into a repository for his guilt. Their standard “good morning” text became a nightmare exchange, with Theo detailing his latest fiendish dream—often some bizarre mélange of Six Flags, cars, and columns of fire: a giant bonfire in the Six Flags parking lot, The Georgia Scorcher, a roller coaster, becoming a Transformer wreaking havoc in the city.

  Other times, Kai would text him, “What u doing?” and he’d say, “researching,” then send reams of links about the bombing, sometimes the same link over and over. The worst was when Kai would ask him to hang out. He’d insist that she drive, knowing she’d have to borrow her parents’ car, claiming that he couldn’t risk being caught in his car. The dude was shook.

  Glen Iris morphed into Randolph Street as they crossed over Freedom Parkway. Ten minutes later, Randolph terminated at Edgewood, their destination. Theo and Kai crossed the street, nearly disintegrating as a herd of bikers dispersed and reformed to get around them, one biker shouting about the obviousness of the newly painted bike lanes. They did have quite a gleam, Zed thought, wondering if there was a brand of spray paint that could reproduce that civic glow.<
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  After looking both ways, Zed, Apollo, and Sol joined Kai and Theo across the street, Zed reclaiming her position at the front of the pack as they headed west. Zed was glad to see that traffic was light. After a few blocks, they slinked into a gravel-strewn parking lot, the home of a mural of a giant smiling owl, beaming from the bricks of a peppy new building, an art gallery. Brown and yellow feathers adorned its meticulously drawn body, a concert of shadows, colors, curves, and edges. A lone streetlight illuminated the lot, which smelled of cheap beer and leaked coolant. Zed smiled back at the owl, arming herself with a rock, tossing it and shattering the light.

  She dropped her bag and removed her sketchbook and her copy of the city’s list of approved murals, verifying she was in the right place. This was the spot.

  “So, this is it,” Theo declared, a statement more than a question.

  “This is grade-A street art,” Sol said, sneering up at the giant owl. “The pride and joy of the great city of Atlanta, home of the street art revolution,” she continued.

  Everyone laughed except Apollo, who quickly responded. “I think it actually looks pretty all right. Owls are symbolically wise. This owl smiles. He doesn’t let knowledge bring him down,” he said.

  Zed wasn’t surprised.

  “Hmm,” someone said, probably Kai, declining to take the bait.

  “This is my outline,” Zed announced, flipping open her sketchbook and shining her cell phone light onto a drawing of Lorde Zed, her tag. The letters were three-dimensional, interlaced like fresh noodles, the illest tag Zed had ever drawn. It wasn’t quite wildstyle, but she was pleased. She’d redrawn it dozens of times, rubbing her thumb-sized eraser into a pathetic pink speck. This was the third time she’d be slashing another artist’s work, and it was sure to be her best work yet. She wanted the original artist to see this and remember her name forever. She was going to Sherman this motherfucker.

  “How in the shit are we going to tag a twenty-foot wall?” Apollo asked, glaring at Zed. His tone was pesky, but she was pleased that he’d said “we.” He was learning.

  “With this,” Zed said, coolly retrieving a rusted ladder that was stashed next to an oddly pristine dumpster. She was relieved that it was still there. A YouTube video from January had shown the artist, a quiet, spectacled young white woman, leaving the ladder on-site after a montage of her touching up the mural. At the time, Zed had wondered if that was a mic drop or an offer of generosity. Now the artist’s intentions were irrelevant. The ladder was an opportunity, her opportunity.

  “I think that dumpster would work better,” Sol suggested. “It’s probably more stable.”

  “Yeah,” Kai seconded. Zed nodded, returning the ladder to the side of the building. Apollo and Theo followed her, placing their shoulders onto the dumpster. Zed noticed that they left a space between them. It was probably for Sol, but she confidently filled the slot, jumping in. “On three,” she announced. They heaved in unison, the dumpster easily submitting. While Theo goofily flexed his arms to a disinterested Sol and beaming Kai, Apollo and Zed peeked inside. It was empty, not even harboring a smell.

  “Must be new,” Apollo shrugged. Zed didn’t have any other theories, but she was jealous. Even the trash cans were clean on this side of town. She wished she could say the same about the rat-harboring dumpster located behind her uncle’s apartment in East Point. The rats were so cozy in that dumpster, they didn’t even scatter when it opened. With their noses cocked upward and their beady eyes brimming with expectation, Zed always imagined them saying, “About damn time.” Her uncle agreed. He’d started calling taking out the trash “making a delivery.”

  Zed fetched her gloves, masks, and two white canisters from her backpack, tossing them onto the dumpster and then hoisting herself up. She paused to take in the view. There wasn’t much to see, but even when Zed was only slightly elevated, she felt a calming clarity, a sense of enhanced understanding that was only accessible from certain heights.

  Following the plan, Apollo and Kai scattered across the lot to stand guard, Theo following behind them. They didn’t exactly fit the profile of Edgewood street artists. Sol was the only who remained. She and Jerry had been the ones who’d introduced Zed to graffiti, so they always tended to oversee any complicated tags. Zed didn’t mind. Sol always had good advice. Or hilarious commentary.

  “I think you might need this,” Sol said, placing Zed’s sketchbook onto the dumpster. Zed smiled. Sol was never unreliable, in character or in deed.

  Snapping on her gloves, Zed moved quickly, sketchbook in her right hand and a canister in her left. A familiar sweat began to form on her fingers as she pressed down on the tip of the canister, the heat of the night and the moment magnified by the gloves’ tight fit. But Zed felt calm as the hiss of the canister and the shimmer of the paint gripped her, narrowing her focus. Slowly, the owl began to disintegrate before her eyes, feathers unraveling, its plumage dissolving in a spray of white mist. Zed’s hand moved steadily, patiently, her eyes darting back and forth between her sketchbook and the wall.

  The outline complete, she flipped up her surgical mask to catch her breath. The air was fuming, but she gulped it down, jumping off the dumpster.

  Sol nodded, clearly impressed. Zed stood beside her, examining the outline from a distance. This honestly could do without color, she considered, quickly rejecting that same thought. She had to see it through as envisioned; each line and shade and hue had to materialize onto that wall exactly as planned.

  “I’ve got a plan, Zed,” Sol said, “I’m not going to do college or the military. I need stability right now. It helps me stay calm, you know? I’m gonna try to get a real estate license, fix up houses. Nothing major, but it’s just for me, I think.” Zed almost patted her on the back, but remembering her paint-covered hand, left it floating behind her. Sol eyed her quizzically, adding, “Stability also means staying single, sorry.” They laughed. Zed was pleased to be her confidante. It was a first. She sensed something was being omitted, but declined to push it. Sol always pushed back.

  “That’s dope,” Zed said.

  “That’s all you have to say? Just gave you my goals and you’re looking at me like I’m a guidance counselor on a Friday afternoon.”

  Zed chuckled. “I just admire you. I’m about to go to college just because that’s what I’m supposed to do, but you’re actually thinking about all this shit.”

  “I’ve had plenty of time to think about things. And honestly, I didn’t even used to think about the future. Well, I did, but I didn’t think about it like I should have. I forgot how hard it is for people to change.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Now’s not the time.”

  Apollo, Kai, and Theo began to return to the dumpster, but Zed waved them back to their perches. Such awful timing. Sol was finally opening up.

  “You sure?” Zed asked.

  “Yeah, finish this shit up. It’s hot as hell out here.”

  Zed hopped back onto the dumpster, her backpack at her feet alongside the sketchbook. This time, a blueprint wasn’t needed. Streams of blues and purples and yellows flared from her fingertips, coats upon coats of colors. She strafed across the dumpster, barraging the wall with paint. After forty minutes, her arms were slack, her shoulders searing with thorough fatigue.

  Triumphant, Zed hopped off the dumpster a second time, summoning the last fragment of energy left in her body to push the dumpster back to its original position, alone. She joined Sol again, this time greeted by a wide belly slap. It stung, but it felt appropriate as Zed looked at the disfigured owl, its torso and lower face devoured by her tag, that beaming smile replaced with Lorde Zed, the stylized letters looking like demented braces. Apollo, Theo, and Kai returned again, bearing telling smiles. Zed’s arms were too tired to throw into the air, but she flung them anyway, their limp fall even more effective than she’d hoped. No one said anything, even Theo. A
month of detailed planning and research, and he was just getting invited along because Kai wanted him there, as if his absence in the past month had always solely been her decision and not a collective effort. “Sure,” Zed said, responding as if Kai had been asking a question. She turned to Theo.

  “This tag is amazing, Zed,” he offered, his body language confident and eager. She knew Theo wouldn’t let them down on purpose, but Zed could already feel the plan unwinding. She gripped the mural map in her pocket, withdrawing it and crinkling it in her fist. She walked to the dumpster and dropped it in, its pathetic plop drowned out by the screeching metal of the dumpster lid slamming shut.

  “What was that?” Apollo asked.

  “Nothing. Let’s go home. I just saw some cops pass,” Zed lied.

  Despite her vexation, the journey back to their parked cars was fun. As they traversed Freedom Parkway, Theo decided to showcase his knowledge of his friends’ favorite Atlanta songs. When he’d first arrived from California, he’d insisted on finding everyone’s individual song. Everyone had a song, he’d sworn, leaving no one out, even Zed, who didn’t even really listen to music. Queuing up a playlist on his phone, he streamed “Best Friend” for Sol, “Weeastpointin’” for Kai, “Bring Em Out” for Apollo, “Wrist” for himself, “Swing My Way” for Zed, and “Scotty” for Jerry. Everyone’s song had been played in full by the time they reached the parking lot, but after they’d deposited their bags into Zed’s trunks and hugged and dapped each other up, Theo lingered, looking at them expectantly.

  “What?” Sol snapped.

  Goofily, Theo pointed at the sky and started swaying. “Ki, ki, ki, ki,” he chanted while launching into the dance, his strained voice echoing throughout the parking lot, scaring a shopper emerging from a yoga studio who dashed to his car. The rest of the crew immediately chimed in, Zed taking the backing vocals, Kai taking the ad-libs, and Apollo and Sol joining Theo for the verses. Minutes later, they were leaning on their vehicles, rollicked by continual bursts of spontaneous laughter. Jerry would be proud, Zed thought, another laugh seizing her, the promise of the night finally fulfilled.