Above the Ether

by Eric Barnes

  By day, though, the teenagers spread throughout the business district, some playing music for coins at busy street corners, others begging for food outside of packed restaurants, others just seeming to wander from alley to street or park.

  A year ago, most rode the subways all day. Avoiding the heat. But then the city turned off the subway air conditioning. Budget cuts. And so now the homeless kids move across the surface of this city, finding shade in hidden doorways. Finding shade under massive overpasses. Finding shade in the shadows of ancient churches, under the overgrown trees and shrubs in city parks given over to illegal but allowed activities.

  At night, though, they line up again. Along Third Avenue. On blankets or on sleeping bags. Some of them have only cardboard. Others have dogs, tan or black; the dogs lie quietly on the sidewalk, watching people approach. Many of the kids shoot heroin; others smoke pot. The line goes on for blocks and blocks.

  All of the teenagers seem to be just fourteen. Maybe fifteen. Kids, really. Sleeping close to one another. Safety and community.

  In this city, most all of them are white. In other cities, most all of them will be brown.

  She grinds numbers in her mind, transaction on top of transaction, equations that circle in upon themselves as she closes her eyes, money multiplied, money spawned, more money than she ever considered making. More than she would want to spend. More money than she could ever possibly need.

  “Tell me,” she whispers, “about the first time you had sex.”

  She’s moving forward as she says this, then back. On top of him. He’s inside her. But that’s not enough.

  She needs to hear his story.

  “I was sixteen,” he says, quietly, because she’s asked him to be very quiet. “She was older. She told me what to do.”

  She lifts off of him. Presses on his body with her hands, moving him. Repositioning.

  The light of this city at night is bright on the ceiling and walls of this otherwise dim hotel room. Numbers still turn in her mind. Multiplying. Connecting.

  She has him in her mouth now.

  “She undressed me,” he says.

  She lifts her mouth. “What were you wearing?”

  “T-shirt,” he says, breathing between each phrase. Quietly, though. She likes that he can easily be so quiet. “And jeans.”

  “Buttons,” she asks, lifting her head just slightly, “or a zipper?”

  “Buttons,” he whispers.

  “In a bed?” she asks. “Or in a car?”

  “In a bed,” he whispers, pausing as she starts again. “My mother’s bed. She took off my jeans. My shirt. Slid my underwear down.”

  “Were you hard yet?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  “Were you loud?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  “Did you come fast?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he whispers.

  She feels his hands touch her head. She lifts her own hands from his thighs, wraps her fingers around his wrists. She slowly presses his arms against the mattress. Lifts her own head to look at him.

  “Don’t do that,” she says.

  And then she starts on him again.

  In the cold cities, the homeless set up camps under bridges, or in the empty spaces between an overpass and an exit ramp, or on abandoned strips of asphalt, property owned by people or companies or trusts who’ve long since disappeared, whose connection to this place exists only in files stored deep in the basement of city hall.

  The homeless build shelters to protect themselves from the cold. Tarps and cardboard boxes and stray pieces of unused plywood and pieces of corrugated metal from what were once backyard sheds. There are tiny worlds there, in the homeless camps. Leaders and followers and people with jobs to keep these communities alive. It’s not all bad.

  But it’s a horror.

  Both things can be true.

  Some she’s seen before. The ones she enjoys. The ones who can be quiet. Who only talk when necessary. Who can answer her questions in a way that she finds satisfying.

  It’s all about what is satisfying.

  “Did you come in her mouth?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Did you come quickly?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Did she swallow it?” she asks. “Or let it run from her mouth?

  He’s taking short breaths now. Quiet. Even shorter. “She let it run.”

  This goes on most nights.

  She hates, more than anything, the television. It is loud and it is bright and the changes in volume and color happen much too quickly. She likes the quiet of her office. She likes the quiet of her apartment, after work, where she eats alone, before walking down the street to the hotel.

  In the morning, she bets on oil. She bets on natural gas. She bets against a basket of new heart drugs after reading research that makes it obvious the drug will be only marginally effective. She bets on diabetes. She bets on joint replacements. She bets on gambling. She bets on gun sales, mood disorders, certain foods. She bets on water.

  Her three analysts sit in chairs near her as she stands at her computer. All have the ability to speak quietly and quickly and only say things that should be spoken aloud.

  She nods some, listening. The analysts lay out options.

  She nods again. Listening.

  On the screen, she folds in companies.

  “Draw down everything from fund seven,” she says. “Everything from fund nineteen.”

  They nod.

  “Put it all into the Gulf,” she says. “Oil. Gas. Nothing else.”

  The analysts all nod. One types, although silently, on a thin and silver laptop.

  “Nothing else is worth betting on in the Gulf,” she says. “Except the oil. Gas. That will all come back.”

  They nod.

  “However,” she says, and all three of them look up at her, “try to find a way to bet against any other type of recovery.”

  She turns in their direction. Looking now at the large, framed print behind them. A city aglow at night.

  It’s rare that she looks toward her analysts. She’s only just realized this.

  “Find every bet you can,” she says, turning away again, reaching her hand toward her window, feeling the heat once more beginning to emanate through the glass, “find every possible bet against the recovery of whole towns and cities and populations of ruined and displaced people.”

  That so many of the homeless are mentally ill, ill by birth or by experience, is not a part of the discussion. Not for the people in the homeless camps. Not for the politicians who’ve chosen to leave them in their places.

  That so many of the homeless are war wounded, limbs missing, faces deformed, or wounds to their guts or to their minds, all that is rarely part of the discussion either.

  Person after person who live in the camps or sleep in the streets, so many doing drugs or giving over their bodies for cash or drugs or the simple right to fall asleep. Desperate, awful circumstances made normal by how common a scene they form.

  In cities everywhere, the cafés and restaurants pay doormen to work the sidewalks: big men, some women, all burly and cold and hard, their role is to keep the homeless from pressing their faces against the windows.

  “I would lie in bed,” he whispers, “and all it took was to touch the pillow or a blanket or the mattress.”

  He’s behind her, pushing. Not too fast. She likes this one. He learns quickly.

  “So then I would start to rub,” he says. “With my hand. On my underpants.”

  She is flat against the mattress. Her head turned slightly, cheek resting on her forearm. Legs spread just enough. Feeling him move forward then back. Again and again. Listening.

  “I didn’t want to touch it with my bare hand, though,” he says quietly. “So I would only rub against things. Press against a pillow. Against the mattress.”

  She breathes, deeply, eyes closed. Numbers spinning lightly in the very b
ack of her mind. His hands don’t touch her. They only press into the mattress near her arms.

  “What else did you use?” she asks.

  When she talks, she talks quietly. Over her shoulder. Whisper.

  He hesitates, then says, “A stuffed alligator. That I won at the fair.”

  She breathes. “What else?”

  It’s a moment before he answers. “My cousin lived with us,” he says, whispering now, even as he still pushes. “And I started stealing her panties. Pressing them against myself.”

  The numbers are evaporating. She can breathe deep. Listening. “Did you put them on?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “And her bras?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Did you put her dresses on?” she asks.

  He is breathing hard now, although quietly. And he’s still moving slowly. Restraining. She likes that.

  Restraint.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Did you look at yourself in the mirror?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “What color were the panties?” she asks.

  “Pink,” he whispers, “with tiny flowers. And the bra matched. And the dress,” he whispers, voice breaking between each word—he wants very much to push harder and push faster, but he doesn’t, he just whispers—“the dress was pink. But sheer. See-through.”

  Her mind is blank. She sees only him. In his cousin’s room, panties and bra and dress, looking at himself in her full-length mirror.

  “How did you feel?” she asks.

  He breathes and rocks and pushes steadily into her. He whispers, “I felt pretty.”

  She turns her face, now pressing her chin against her arm. Rocking slightly forward with his motion. She says, “You can come now.”

  He is breathless, pressing, the same motion, restraining, pushing, as the air and motion and all of him is emptying, emptied.

  Exactly as she wants.

  And her mind, for now, stays blank.

  Men and women push grocery carts, scavenging the city. They pull empty drink cans from the bins put out in front of homes and businesses, then crush the cans, pressing them down to their smallest form. Dropping them into black plastic bags tied to their loudly broken silver grocery carts. The bags steadily bloom outward throughout the day, a slow-motion expansion as each person finds more cans in the trash bags behind restaurants and in the overflowing and abandoned trash bins that dot the corners of downtown.

  So many who are homeless.

  Drink cans are the best find. They make many dollars every day.

  She bets against grocery stores and utilities and local banks and insurance companies. She bets against city finances and bond issues and home mortgages and auto dealers.

  She bets against them not just in the Gulf. But elsewhere. Wherever there might be a chance of trouble.

  The heat, outside her window, she can touch it. Feel it grow.

  Her office has a glass wall on the inside that looks out at the people trading. A hundred of them, at terminals and small desks. She worked among them for a time. Less than a year. She soon made the company and herself a sum her bosses could not quite comprehend. They asked her many questions. Checked into all her trades. Ran audits and launched inquiries.

  All was clean.

  Then her bosses offered her a team of twenty people. They offered her a bullpen on a floor only she and her team would occupy. They offered her dinners with rich investors and lunch meetings where she could lecture rooms of traders on what they were doing wrong.

  She listened through all these offers. Nodding. “I want three analysts of my choosing,” she said finally. “And an office with soundproof walls.”

  Sometimes during the day, she’ll take a few minutes to watch through the glass wall of her office as the people on the trading floor move their lips.

  “Tell me about the first time,” she says now, in a hotel room.

  The girl hesitates to answer. She’s half dressed. Bra on, skirt. The woman has only just begun to undress her.

  “A boy,” she says. “My boyfriend. In his car.”

  The woman walks around her. Behind her. “How old were you?”

  “Seventeen,” she says.

  “You’re lying,” the woman says, hands touching the girl’s back, grazing the black bra straps, sliding her hands down to the girl’s skirt. Unzipping.

  “Yes,” the girl says.

  “Tell me,” the woman whispers. She pulls lightly on the skirt. Lets it fall.

  “Someone else,” the girl says. “Older.”

  The woman is standing behind her, hands moving slowly down the girl’s sides, across her belly.

  The girl says quietly, “He was always nice to me.”

  “Of course,” the woman says. “Of course.”

  “He was like family,” the girl says, whispering.

  “How old?” the woman asks.

  In a moment, the girl says, “I was fifteen.”

  The woman unclips the girl’s bra, slides the straps from her shoulders, lets it fall to the floor, touching the girl’s nipples now, then sliding one hand down her belly again.

  “I finally went to his house at night,” the girl says. “Snuck out my window. He lived nearby.”

  The woman runs her fingers along the top edge of the girl’s panties. Slowly. Back and forth. “And what happened?”

  “He finally asked if he could hug me.”

  “Of course, he did,” the woman says.

  The girl is crying quietly.

  “What did you wear?” the woman asks, hand in the girl’s panties now, fingers touching. Wet.

  “Sunday dress. Yellow.”

  “And underneath?”

  “A lacy bra,” she says. “He’d given it to me. And satin panties. He gave those too.”

  “And you got into his bed,” the woman whispers. Her face is near the girl’s eyes. Wet.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Was he gentle?” the woman asks, fingers gliding slowly.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Did it hurt?” the woman asks.

  “Yes,” she says.

  The woman kisses the girl’s neck lightly. Then kisses it again. Her hand is still in her panties. Working slowly. Steadily.

  “And you went back,” the woman says.

  “Yes,” the girl says.

  “Again and again,” the woman says.

  “Yes,” she says, crying harder now, breathing deeply.

  “Of course you did.”

  The girl rocks forward, back. Just barely.

  “And he came inside you,” the woman says.

  “Yes,” the girl says, breathing harder, crying harder.

  “Every time,” the woman says. “Inside you. That’s all he ever wanted.”

  She is nodding. Breathing harder.

  “To come inside you. Again and again and again.”

  The emergency rooms hire security guards to rid them of their problems with the homeless. The scabies-ridden and the flu-infected and the panicked who fear their chest pains are a heart attack.

  They are sent away. Driven off. There’s no place for them in these hospitals.

  Very few are welcome here. Only those who are nearly dead. Or are well-insured. Only the women giving birth. Or the people whose hearts have, after much abuse, finally stopped their beating.

  She hates the television. In all and every form. She hates movies, and she hates websites that have video or ads in motion or anything but the written word. She only reads. Newspapers and magazines, and she reads books about string theory and biogeography and black holes and the role of famine and coal and salt in the development of civilization.

  In print or on a screen.

  As long as the screen is clean of anything but the simple typescript of written words.

  She reads all this over dinner, at her apartment. Cooking for herself. Snapper with olive oil and red peppers, sautéed in a sauce with wine. Basmati rice cooke
d with sea salt and fresh pine nuts. Yellow squash grilled lightly with pepper and asiago. She cooks this for herself. Eating and reading, and it takes an hour or two before she’ll send a message to a maid who’ll enter the apartment to clean up what she’s cooked.

  But before she’s interrupted by the person who cleans and after she’s spent her time in the motion of cooking herself dinner, that’s when she can be alone in the silence of her apartment atop this building. Views of the city and the port on the bay, lit up to a kind of daylight, the containers colored red and orange and yellow and green, in motion, transported, from ship to crane to truck or train, and beyond the port, she can see the airplanes taking off, jets ascending or descending; she likes it when they land, nearing the ground, ready to alight on the crowded outskirts of this overgrown and searing city.

  She stares sometimes, out the window. For thirty minutes at a time.

  Old women position themselves on the most populated street corners. They bring their own dirty paper cups. They pull their shawls up over their heads, motioning for their young offspring to sit down on plastic buckets or old tires or cardboard boxes spread on the ground. Everyone puts a hand out. Asking for change.

  Help me. You must help.

  Later in the day, the old women and their children will be picked up. By a husband or an uncle or a brother driving a dented, worn-out van. Their scam works eight to five.

  And afterward, they return to their shacks underneath the bridge.

  She is vulnerable. That’s part of it.

  She wonders what he’s thinking. What he’s feeling. What he might want or think of her.

  And in his mind, he thinks the same about her. It’s no different.

  She is vulnerable.

  It’s an opening. To finally be himself.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Stranger

  The animals, in some places, congregate in wild and enormous packs.

  The water, in some places, has become entirely undrinkable. Or so scarce nothing can live.

  The trees and shrubs and flowers in so many places have begun to suddenly turn brown, fading as they die.