Above the Ether

by Eric Barnes

  Not that there are any other private jets here. But this is an essential part of the game. Build private entrances for the wealthy in order to exceed their expectations.

  The boy, though, is somewhere above her in this airport. She flew him here on a regular jet. An element of secrecy. But he had a seat in first class. He had never flown before. Now he’s a flying god.

  The boy has his own room. In the hotel where they all will stay.

  He texts her that he’s landed. She texts back. Good.

  She’s never before given one of them her actual number.

  She and her analysts flew in and she could see the abandoned city from the airplane window. Miles of it. Gray streets, gray buildings, leafless trees leaning to the side. She wonders which of it had come first, the gray across every surface of this place, or the rain and clouds that cover it?

  She walks. A big SUV awaits them at the end of the dim tunnel. Black, of course. Tinted windows.

  She’d prefer to avoid the silly pretense.

  Why highlight that she has more money than millions of people in just the surrounding area? She has more money than all but a few people in her company. She has more money than all but a few thousand—maybe it’s ten thousand, maybe it’s a hundred thousand—people in the world.

  Isn’t this just happenstance? Some inexplicable mix of genetics, luck, and timing?

  She looks down at her phone. Wonders when the boy will text her back.

  A thought she’s not ever had.

  She follows the three analysts to the SUV. A man in a black suit opens the door. A small headphone, on a curled wire, hangs from his left ear. Beneath his jacket, she sees his gun.

  This makes her smile some. Who, anywhere, would want to do anything to her?

  She climbs into the vehicle.

  Bags are piled into the back.

  The SUV has been modified, made to be a sort of limousine. She and her three analysts sit facing one another.

  She doesn’t prefer this to be so. But she’ll manage.

  The boy has still not texted her. It makes her feel frustration. Of a kind she has not felt before.

  “What do we see first?” she asks her analysts.

  One of the analysts, a woman, dark hair and very smart, probably the smartest of the three, says, “We have a helicopter tour scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  The woman presses back against the leather seat. Seat belt in place. That the four of them have buckled up inside this massive vehicle seems to her somehow comical. Even though she doesn’t know how to make a joke of it, she’s sure that everything about this SUV is silly.

  “That’s fine,” she says in a moment. “But, at some point, I’d also like to drive through the city. Not just fly above it.”

  The female analyst nods. “Of course.”

  They are silent. The SUV has started driving. They are facing one another. Something that, in four years, they’ve never quite done before.

  The woman’s mind runs through comments she could say out loud. But she doesn’t say them. None of them seem quite right.

  She closes her eyes.

  She’d rather be cooking dinner for herself tonight. In her own apartment.

  But she’ll be eating dinner at the hotel with her analysts. Another chance to face one another.

  Only later will she go to the hotel room. A very nice room. Like the rooms she picks in her own city.

  But she has clothes there for him. Bras. And panties. And a dress. They wait for him. And for her.

  She looks forward to the evening.

  But now she opens her eyes. Looks at the two analysts across from her.

  They stare.

  The analyst beside her stares at her too.

  It strikes her suddenly what she should say. “If there’s no money to be made here,” she says, “that’s fine. We’ll have visited this place. Seen something that we’ve never seen.” She pauses. She glances out her window: they’re descending an on-ramp, accelerating as they enter a walled and sunken highway, rain spraying across the outside of the windows. “And then we’ll go back to the office. And find another way to multiply our money.”

  Empty schools, with equations still handwritten across chalkboards at the front of the class. Homework assignments listed with their due dates. The portraits of past presidents line the plaster walls.

  One day, students were taught to read. The next day, no one came to open the school’s front doors.

  They sit in the small, dark bar in the lobby of the hotel. She drinks. He does not. This bothers her very much. Acting more mature. Like he’s more in control. Implying somehow that she’s the problem.

  The private detective is running late.

  On the walls are photos of the city across the highway. Before it was abandoned by its residents. Black and white, printed five or six feet across, it’s a city of streetcars and big theaters and brightly lit streetlights shining down on broad avenues filled with people.

  She takes another drink.

  Her husband orders water.

  She wants to scream at him.

  How can this private detective be so late?

  He arrives twenty minutes later. Apologizing, he gets a drink, they sit down in low chairs around an even lower table. He begins to tell the story. The story of their youngest son.

  Prostitution, drug addiction, moving from city to city. He has pictures on his computer. Photos of their son entering a drug dealer’s house, random cars under an overpass. Photos of him placed in offering on websites for women and men.

  Her husband begins to cry. She just watches the faces move across the screen. Distant shots. Of a person vaguely familiar to her and her husband both.

  None of this is real.

  She orders another drink.

  The detective keeps on talking. Monotone. He must do this often. He seems practiced. Experienced. Numb.

  “Your son stays not far from here,” he says.

  Her husband looks from the detective to his wife. “We can’t just walk up to his front door,” he says. “Barge in, then what?”

  The detective shakes his head. “He doesn’t have a front door. He only has a back door.”

  The wife lets her head turn slightly to the side. Staring at the detective. Finding her gin. Why could that possibly matter? To anyone at the table.

  The detective continues. “What I recommend,” he says flatly, “is that you arrange for treatment. A place that will accept him. Give consideration to your insurance, his specific needs. Then there is a service you can hire. Transport. It’s a type of service.”

  They know full well of transport. Their oldest son, twice, they had to hire a transport service to get him from their home to a distant treatment center. Three people. Very big. Very strong. Seizing him. Wrestling their son to the ground. While the parents and the youngest son watched from the hallway of their home.

  She looks at her husband. Sees the face of her dead son.

  “What’s the address?” the wife asks.

  The detective has it written down. He pulls a paper from a folder. Sets it on the table.

  “Will he be there now?” the wife asks.

  She’s done transport. Watched it twice. In her home.

  Not again.

  The detective nods. “It’s still early,” he says to the mother and father. Sipping from his drink. “He hasn’t yet gotten his drugs. And he hasn’t yet gone to work.”

  Two men and a woman drive in a pickup truck across the North End. Toward a neighborhood. They now park. Get out. Go into the house. Join others who strip copper tubing from inside the gypsum-covered walls, copper wires from inside ceilings, copper pipes from the water heater and the furnace and the appliances.

  Other people do the same. Fifty of them. Stripping raw materials from these homes. Dropping all of it in massive piles. Near the street. Leaving all of it for the buyers who will come soon. Seeking the scavenged remnants of a neighborhood left behind.

  The near silence of how
they work is hypnotic or haunting, or maybe it’s only calm.

  He sits in the waiting room of the hospital. His older brother sits nearby. They don’t talk. They’ve talked earlier. Now, they’re just waiting for their mother to die.

  They both stare down at their phones. He does so only as a motion with which to occupy himself. He’s trying not to cry. Not in front of the nurses. Not in front of his older brother.

  “Hey,” his brother says, nodding toward their mother’s room.

  Two nurses are leaving her room. The brothers stand, then return to their mother.

  She raises her hands as they enter. Smiles wide. But weakly. Too weak to speak. They stand, on each side of her. Each of them holds one of her hands.

  She does not want the TV on. The room is small, quiet except for the hiss of oxygen fed to a tube running underneath her nose.

  She closes her eyes. To sleep. Smiling. Holding her boys’ strong hands.

  You are all I’ve ever loved.

  Air-raid sirens sound off throughout the North End, on a schedule no one can decipher. A civil defense system meant to survive a nuclear attack, its decades-old computer still triggers the sirens. The wailing screams from church steeples and the roof of an old hotel and from tall and vacant office buildings in the long-failed business district.

  Even a few minutes later, the rising then falling sirens still echo emptily across the city.

  She starts each day at 4:00 a.m., getting her son’s things ready for school.

  She puts food into his lunch box. Sets it next to his small backpack that he leaves, every night, next to the front door to their small house.

  She goes into his room while he still sleeps. Makes sure his clothes are out. And they are. Every night, before he goes to bed, her boy always does that too.

  She watches for a moment as he sleeps. Blanket tucked between his hands. Tiger pressed against his cheek.

  She watches. A moment more.

  He has to walk to school alone. But, she thinks, the bus stop is only half a mile away.

  Then she leaves, in a moment letting herself out the front door of their small home.

  CHAPTER 17

  Crossing

  It takes a moment. Sometimes a few minutes.

  For others, it takes an hour. Even more.

  But eventually you will realize that the city isn’t just abandoned.

  Actually, everything in the city, all the trees and grass and flowers once planted around buildings and homes and stores, all of it has somehow died.

  His kids ride the carousel with him. He has always preferred a ride like this. The rides that flip upside down or whirl about at high speed all make him motion sick. The rides with height scare him badly.

  Tonight, his kids agree. They have no interest in the small roller coaster or the catapult cages shooting passengers up into the air. Even when he pointed to the teacup ride his daughter said quietly, “Not tonight.”

  Mostly, the three of them have only walked around this small carnival near his parents’ house. Alternately overwhelmed and relieved by the noise. They walk. Not talking. Only looking at the games and cotton candy machine and the other people jumping into and out of the rides.

  He and the kids arrived here yesterday. For a stay of what duration he doesn’t yet know.

  Insurance claims. Government filings. Bank accounts. Health insurance. Will they stay here or go someplace else? He’ll need a job. They’ll need a house. The kids will need to be in school.

  He needs to tell the kids that their mother died.

  The young man who runs the carousel stands on a platform in the center of the circling ride. He’s a kid really, staring up. The father glances at him, then watches for a moment. The kid is still staring straight up. For a full minute. The father sees him intermittently, as the ride keeps circling round. The kid’s face is bruised near his eye, and the father notices one hand is red and cut and wrapped in a small and awkward frame. A homemade splint.

  There’s a realization in a carnival or at a fair that you’ve put yourselves, your children, everything, into the hands of someone who hates what they do. Who is barely paying attention. Who is not in any real sense trained for the job they have.

  His daughter rises and falls on the unicorn. His son does the same on a tiger.

  He thinks of the friends of his who must have died back home. Coworkers. His neighbors. He lived there ten years.

  How many people did I meet in those ten years? How many of them are dead?

  The ride circles. The father stands, hand on a pole. Steadying himself.

  His apartment building may even still be standing. All the things he owns could be fine. The toys and clothes of his children. Furniture he’ll want some day, need when he figures out where they can live. Memories embedded in a painting on a wall. A lamp even. Certain clothes.

  Or maybe it was washed away.

  Who knows? How to find out? What exactly should I be doing?

  His son, on the tiger, reaches out to his father. Holds his hand. No reason. His son’s not afraid. Doesn’t want down. He’s not sad. He’s not smiling.

  He just wants to hold his father’s hand.

  A few hundred people scavenge abandoned homes and buildings. Day after day. They sell what they strip and tear and wrench from these structures to men and women in white panel vans who park along the street.

  Faces pale with gypsum dust, arms bloodied from scraping them against broken timbers and rusted vents, necks scarred from cuts inflicted over months and years of work.

  Often they go hours without anyone speaking aloud.

  She wants the boy between her legs. In his bra and panties. She rolls over. Pulls him onto her. Wants him close. Touching her. Kissing her. She wants him now and she’ll want him later, pushing into her, in his slow way, such a beautiful boy.

  “Please come. Please now.”

  She showers in the morning. In her own room. Where she brought him. Now she dresses. It’s quiet. Top floor. Suite. They said this was the quietest room in the hotel. That is all she asked for. Quiet. Which brought her to this sprawling room overlooking the new end of the city.

  From the other side of the suite, though, there’s a window where she can see the vast neighborhoods of the abandoned city. They call it the North End. She stares out at a broad, sculpted avenue that leads from neighborhoods to downtown. Buildings rise there, in a cluster.

  How can a city die?

  The boy sleeps in her bed. She watches him. How he breathes.

  Downstairs, she eats breakfast alone in the hotel restaurant.

  Across from her, a man cries. Quietly. Into his hands.

  He sits alone. Table like hers, at a window; they’ve inadvertently ended up facing each other across their separate tables.

  He can’t stop crying.

  She drinks her cappuccino. Eats two poached eggs. A piece of bacon. One piece of toast. She drinks another cappuccino.

  And still he silently cries.

  She reads a paper book. About the history of oil. The rise of petro states worldwide.

  Periodically, she looks up.

  He still can’t stop himself. He holds his face in his reddened hands.

  After a time, a woman sits down with him. Wife. Blocking the man from view.

  The wife doesn’t talk at first. At least not to her husband. She orders breakfast. Coffee.

  Soon, though, she’s talking. A voice that’s only air.

  Only venom.

  The woman looks up from her book about oil. The deals made to establish whole countries.

  The man leans his head back. Staring up at the ceiling. His wife breathes venom. Words the woman cannot hear.

  The woman stares at the back of the wife’s still head.

  She knows that sound. She doesn’t even need to make out the words.

  It’s her father’s voice. Her father’s sound. Her father, before school, after, that is the voice her father had. Breathing fire at her day after day.

>   The man crying reminds the woman of her mother. She’s realized this. Not that she ever saw her mother cry. But her mother sat, silently, absorbing the fire spewed at her every day. Never once doing anything to stop it.

  She wishes, the woman does, finishing the last of her cappuccino, signing her bill, checking the page she’s on in the book about oil, she wishes her mother had once stood. Told her husband to stop. Done something. Something to stop or halt or even barely diminish the assaults her father continually launched.

  But she didn’t.

  The woman stands. Gathers her things.

  While the wife breathes fire.

  The man still cries. Even though there are no tears now. He doesn’t hold his face. Actually, he’s only looking at his wife. Still. Face blank.

  But clearly, inside, he cries and cries and cries.

  The water tastes like water once imagined. Cold and bright and with a feeling, not a taste, but a feeling that you could drink this water your entire life.

  It runs from the taps this way. Everywhere in the North End. The water tastes like something you haven’t otherwise ever found.

  The doctor looks at his wife. They’ve walked into the hospital. A city hospital. In the South End.

  Maybe they have a job for him.

  Not as a doctor. He has no license in this country. It will take a year or more to get approved for that. But he knows his way around a hospital.

  The clerk looks over his application. Human Resources. “Don’t you want a job as a doctor?” she asks him.

  He sits across from her in a small cubicle. His wife waits outside in the hall.

  “That’s not yet possible,” he says.

  The clerk nods. “That’s a shame,” she says. “We need doctors. Always we need doctors.”

  The doctor nods too. Smiles slightly. “So what do you have?”

  She looks at her computer screen. Scrolling. In a moment, she says, “Orderly?” She repeats the word, turning toward him. “Orderly.”