by Proehl, Bob
Waylon pulled out a small metal tube that looked like the nitrous cartridges she used to steal from the cafeteria at Bishop so they could do whip-its.
“Rez,” said Waylon.
“You’re not actually calling it that,” Carrie said.
“Hong named it,” he said. “I wanted to call it TurboBoost.”
“Rez is not that bad,” said Carrie. She reached across the table, took the cool metal, and closed it in her hand. It stayed cold, drawing heat from her palm until it was painful to hold. “This gives them abilities?”
“Nothing dangerous,” Waylon said. “A glimmer of what they could have been, if.”
“If?”
“If they’d been like us and not like them,” Waylon said.
“You’ve seen it work?”
“I’ve felt the warm thermic glow off a homeless Damp in an alleyway,” he said, doing his shitty impression of Rutger Hauer from the end of Blade Runner. “I’ve seen a UIC undergrad who thought she was in a psych study float gleefully across a lab.”
“You did studies,” said Carrie. She put the cartridge back on the table. It left a red shadow of itself on her palm.
“This isn’t bathtub crank,” Waylon said. “I take drugs very seriously.”
“What’d you tell this undergrad after she went Tinkerbell for an hour?”
“ ‘You’ve inhaled a shitload of hallucinogenic drugs. Keep your ass hydrated the next three days. Here’s a hundred bucks.’ ”
He didn’t mention the early abreactions, test subjects in St. Elizabeth’s with flimsy and superfluous limbs that were reabsorbed into the body the morning afterward or patches of dragonlike scales that flaked away to reveal fresh pink skin beneath. He didn’t mention that the psych ward at Presence Saint Mary had seen cases in which people claimed to be besieged with voices, only for the symptoms to fade after a few hours. What he did mention was the retail price, the number of buyers already clamoring for it, and the low-double-digit percentage of gross she’d take home. He was recruiting Carrie for distribution, the invisible circuit along which the drug would travel.
The next day, she dressed for her temp job: white button-down blouse and beige pencil skirt. She kissed Miquel good-bye in the little kitchen of their apartment, hopped onto her bike, and rode to the end of North Avenue. She pulled over, called the temp agency, and asked them to take her off the call lists indefinitely. Then she put in her earbuds, clicked “play” on a Clash album, and went to pick up some drugs.
There wasn’t a moment she decided not to tell Miquel. She simply never did. She learned to make the job invisible. A collection of conversational blocks and feints did the trick. Paying their rent gave Carrie moral high ground if it ever came to an argument. More important, she loved Miquel. Loving him required her to protect him from the real world.
* * *
—
Every time she runs a pickup to Hong’s Auto Repair, she tries not to think of it as a meth lab. It’s on Laramie, down the street from a horse-racing track. The block is pawn shops and liquor stores and e-cigarette retailers. Hong’s has been there three generations, as Hong likes to remind her.
“My grandfather didn’t realize shops in America used first names, like Joe’s Body and Glass or Bob’s Muffler and Brakes,” he said. “He named the shop Hong’s Auto Repair after the family name, but everyone started calling him Hong like it was Steve. Same with my dad. Except dad would correct them every time. Next visit? Same thing. I go by Hong because no one’s going to bother to call me anything else.” Hong was the kind of guy who talked when he was nervous, and he was always nervous. “He’d kill me if he knew what I was doing with the place. He had a horror about drugs on account of certain stereotypes regarding Chinese people and opium or whatever. But he’s dead five years and I’m keeping the doors open, so suck on that, Dad.”
There’s no one in the front office when Carrie arrives. She shouts for Hong, and there’s a clang of metal before he steps out of the back, sweaty and grease-streaked.
“I forgot you were coming,” he says. “Come on back.”
The inside of the garage is lined with electrified chicken wire as a makeshift Faraday cage. When Carrie asked him what it was supposed to keep out, he winked knowingly at her.
“Waylon’s been trying to contact you through the Hive,” Carrie says.
“Yeah, I hear him,” says Hong, making a motion like putting on earmuffs. “I don’t go in there anymore. You ever see the black coral in there? On the ground?”
“Yeah, of course,” Carrie says. It was like Starbucks. She noticed when the first one showed up, but she stopped noticing when they were everywhere. Carrie knew there was a time it hadn’t been there, and she could remember how odd it was seeing it the first time, a patch of black flowers in the Bishop kids’ Hivelounge. Then it was everywhere, and she stopped noticing it, like a smell she’d gotten so used to that she’d be surprised if someone pointed it out.
“A guy I know, his cousin licked some of it,” Hong says. “Drove her totally batshit.” Hong makes a wild-eyed face and waves his hands in the air. He always has a guy he knows: a hookup for parts on an import or evidence Resonants are the result of millennium-old alien conspiracies to tamper with human DNA.
“I’ll stay away from the black coral,” she says.
“Stay out of the Hive altogether,” he says.
“You don’t answer your phone either,” says Carrie.
Hong looks at her like she’s said something blitheringly obvious. “Brain cancer,” he says. He roots in drawers of papers and work bins of loose auto parts before coming up with a kid’s backpack. “I tweaked the psilocybin levels a little,” he says. “It might take longer to come on. But it’s the stuff.”
“Thanks,” Carrie says. She hands him an envelope. Hong opens it and counts the bills in front of her.
“This isn’t paranoia,” he says. “It’s best practice.” Satisfied, he puts the envelope in a drawer. “You seen any white vans out there?”
“Florists?” Carrie asks.
Hong shakes his head. “Unmarked,” he says. “No plates. They snatch people up. People like us. A girl I know, her boyfriend got disappeared. Guys he works with say they saw a white van in the neighborhood.”
“Who’s driving?” Sometimes it’s fun to let Hong spin out his webs.
“Scientists, grabbing test subjects,” Hong says. “They’re working on a plague that will take us all out. They have labs up in Canada, working with a department in the Canadian government.”
Carrie smirks and puts in her earbuds, flooding her head with an early Prince album. “I’ll stay away from the white vans,” she shouts.
* * *
—
The apartment is rife with the smell of sautéed garlic. Everything Miquel knows how to cook starts with garlic simmering in olive oil. Carrie wishes he’d serve her plates of garlic cloves brown and shiny with oil, nothing else. She hears a sizzle, and the coppery tang of tomatoes joins the smell.
“Pasta?” she asks. She pulls out her earbuds and kisses him on the cheek.
“Pasta,” Miquel says.
“You should start the water.”
“I know,” he says. “I forgot.”
“Timing, babe,” Carrie says. A fat white bulb floats like an eyeball in the sea of diced tomatoes. She snatches it and pops it in her mouth.
“How was work?” he asks.
Carrie shrugs. “Same old,” she says. “You?”
“Remember Doug Shaw?” he says. “Worked in the office at Bishop.”
“Downer Doug,” says Carrie.
“Downer Doug,” Miquel says. “Shit, now I’m worried I’m going to call him that next session.”
“He’s in Chicago?”
“Lives up the block,” says Miquel.
“I guess the mom
ent of North Avenue’s cool has passed.”
“If our session today was any indication, he’ll be paying our grocery bills the next couple months.”
“He’s a basket case?” Carrie asks.
“I don’t like to use that term,” Miquel says. “Public Day messed him up bad. He’s got some stuff to work through.” He hefts a pot of water onto the back burner.
“Salt it,” Carrie says. Miquel throws a palmful of salt into the pot.
“I talked with Hayden,” Miquel says.
“They stop by?”
“Hive,” says Miquel.
“Is that what you do all day?” Carrie asks. “You hang around the Hive talking to your old flames?”
“Hayden was never a flame,” says Miquel, lighting the stove. “Anyway, what do you do all day?” He makes it sound like a joke, but there’s an edge in the question. There are so many holes in the story she’s fed him about her employment, such a gap between what an office temp ought to make and the cash she brings home daily. Part of her wants to get caught. Care enough to come find me, she thinks. If Miquel has suspicions, he keeps them to himself. “Are we going to their thing tonight?” he asks. “They really want us there.”
“It’s at Vibration,” says Carrie. “It’ll be crowded.”
“It’s cute you worry about me,” he says, kissing her on the forehead, his hands resting on her hips. “Go put a record on for us?”
Carrie goes to the living room and stares blankly at the shelves full of her records. Last week, Miquel asked how she could afford so many. Carrie claimed that most of them were her dad’s rather than admit the bulk of them were purchased with drug money. She smiles, imagining her dad listening to A Tribe Called Quest, the Pixies. She’s in the mood for something slow, but Hayden’s thing this evening looms. She finds Patti Smith’s Horses and hovers the needle over the platter. There is a tiny space, a silence where confession could fit. She wonders how their relationship would change if rather than starting the record, she went into the kitchen and told Miquel how they pay their rent. Every few days, she tells herself she intends to. She’s not lying but temporarily withholding, waiting for a moment. But moments are cheap and frequent between them. There are silences like this she could fill, moments she’s sure he knows but won’t call her on it. If she spoke, a spell could be broken and they would wake. But she’s not sure anymore who they’d be once they woke up. She can’t remember a version of herself that wasn’t made of secrets.
Carrie hears the pasta splash into the boiling water and sets the needle into the groove.
* * *
—
In the middle of the dance floor, two beer bottles orbit each other, six feet in the air. Beneath them, invisible, Carrie dances like a live wire, attached to the ground and flailing with current. Hayden grins at her from across the room. In the air above the crowd, two iridescent horses made of light collide. They shatter into a hundred smaller horses that rain down in a flurry of pink-purple hooves and swishing green tails. Isidra Gonzalez, hot shit on the new Chicago art scene, traces lemniscates of liquid silver in front of her, weaving them through the lights to the beat of some other song playing in her head at double the beats per minute. Jonathan dances with Miquel, the two of them flirting with queerness in a way that makes Bryce throw Carrie a raised eyebrow, which cracks her up. She can’t remember what she’s taken, and Waylon’s comping her drinks, erasing the need to keep count. Jonathan’s Paisley silk shirt is unbuttoned to his navel, the glow from his torso cast out on the crowd like a searchlight, searing bright paths across Miquel’s chest. There is so much goodness pouring off Miquel, such raw positive emotion, Carrie worries that she might come if he so much as touches her.
Hayden snatches one of Carrie’s beers out of midair.
“I fucking love this song,” they say.
“Bowie had to be one of us. He had to be,” Carrie screams above the music, her voice coming out of nowhere.
“All of them were,” says Hayden. “All the magic ones. We’ll adopt them as saints. Saint Bowie of Change and Saint Prince of Fucking. Saint Siouxsie and Saint Janet. We’ll beatify them.”
The way they say the word, bee-AT-if-I, makes Carrie crack up. Not saints, she thinks. A silver font arcs over the room, a mercury snake. You can see time reflected in it. Futures and pasts, possibles and fails. Saints have to be dead, Carrie thinks. We don’t need saints. We need heroes.
Miquel comes over, kisses her invisible cheek, and dances back into the crowd.
“He’s fucking gorgeous,” says Hayden, sounding hungry.
“I thought you and Jonathan were together,” Carrie says.
“Not exclusively,” Hayden says. “You should invite us over. All four of us.” Carrie watches Hayden, not sure if they’re serious. “Is that weird?” Hayden asks, looking worried. They stop dancing for a beat, pulling back into themselves. It’s easy to forget how shy Hayden can be. Carrie thinks of them as huge, a star, but they’re also the person who stayed in their dorm room perfecting their Am9 chord while everyone else got drunk at Darren and Lynette’s house on Long Island.
“It’s not weird,” says Carrie.
Hayden sighs with relief and starts dancing again. “I’m rolling, and I just want to fuck everybody,” they say. “And I love you. And Miquel is beautiful. Think about it.”
Hayden kisses Carrie on the corner of her mouth, where it could be passed off as a missed stab at her cheek or read as a real kiss. The song fades, trailing a beat too long before it crashes into another. Hayden wraps their arms around Carrie’s invisible waist, and when their skin touches, it is like being loved and loved and loved. Their bodies fall into rhythm, leading and following at the same time.
* * *
—
In the morning, Hayden wakes first and shakes Jonathan until he mumbles groggily and gets dressed. Miquel, half asleep in a tangle of blankets, offers to make coffee, but Hayden waves him back to sleep like a fairy in a story. They kiss Carrie in that same spot, the corner of her mouth, then stand over her, smiling sadly. Carrie’s asleep again before the door closes, all of it a thing in her dream.
When she wakes, she’s alone. She wrangles matted curls out of her eyes. She extricates herself from the sheets and surveys the new map of their bed. It’s threatening. Too full of chance and risk. The echo of last night’s drugs hits her. Euphoria becomes its hollow opposite; desire curdles into aversion. She strips the sheets and crams them into the hamper.
Miquel is in the kitchen in boxers, nursing a steaming cup. Carrie puts her arms around his waist, pressing her face to his bare chest, reasserting her claim on him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” says Carrie.
“Was last night okay with you?” he says. “It all moved fast.”
“It was good,” Carrie says, her eyes on the dish rack. “Did you like it?”
She feels him shrug. “I have trouble keeping track of what I want,” he says. Carrie understands him. Miquel can be like the moon, reflecting other people’s emotions so brightly that they seem like his own. Desire is an emotion. Wanting is no different from sadness or jealousy.
Maybe Hayden wanted him enough for both of them, she thinks. “I know we’re supposed to be hyperevolved and everything,” he continues. “But there’s that, and then also there’s us. So, are you okay?”
“It was good,” Carrie says again, a little more emphatic but no more sincere. “Maybe not here?” she adds. “Maybe in our space, in our room, it’s just us.”
Miquel kisses her on the top of her head and pulls her closer. He smells like sex that isn’t theirs, but she tries to put it away. She tries to send a message to him through her skin, although she spent enough years at Bishop pouring I love yous into the air between them to know it won’t be received.
I’m lying to you. Come find me out. Care enough to see me
.
Avi wakes up alone in the house on Jarvis Avenue, surprised by the hollow silence of it. He can feel where the sounds of his wife and daughter belong in the rooms below him, the cold echo where Kay should be lying in their bed. After his last conversation with Bishop, he refused to renew the lease and moved back in without telling Kay or Emmeline. He wonders what Kay would say if she knew.
Once he gets himself put together, Avi drives down to North Avenue, parking a few blocks over on Greenfield and hoofing from there. It’s autumn, and the air is crisp and dry. Avi’s favorite weather is what comes between the sweaty end of August and the onset of winter, when sidewalks become slick and unnavigable. There’s a coffee shop he likes. He gets there early and sets up by the window to watch the foot traffic. It’s like looking out on an alien planet. Young people float and zip along sidewalks. They lean against unused mailboxes and gesture at each other, fingers tracing bright orange lines in the air that fade like a flashbulb afterimage on the eye. The vogue this month is for animated fabric: jackets whose patterns shift and swirl, print pants whose neon Rubik’s cubes rotate and reconfigure. Travis and Diane Weinstein, a couple on the corner at North Hoyne makes them. Diane paints the cloth and brings it to life; Travis stitches it into clothing using the skill of five generations of Eastern European tailors. He’s also precognitive over short spans of time. Avi did an interview with them for the Reader. He kept answering one question ahead. The constant motion of their tiny shop was seizure-inducing.
What Avi loves most are the older folks. Many don’t live on the block or lived there before it became impossibly cool. They grew up hiding their lights. They’ve kept their secrets so long that they can’t bring themselves to strut. Memories of a time when showing off risked bodily harm are too near for them. They watch the kids, sometimes bitterly envious, sometimes smiling at how far things have come. Avi feels allied with them. They’re tourists here, too, visitors to this strange planet. They can observe but can’t breathe the air.