The Blue Light Project

by Timothy Taylor

  He shook his head, a sharp movement, as if to startle himself awake. “Ahh,” he said. “That was strange.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Honest, I am.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what happened back there. You want to tell me?”

  He did, actually. He wanted to tell her a lot of things. But for now he told her about the Easter Valley Railway Tunnel and his running routine, about a mysterious hidden painting and the inspiration it had provided.

  “I always knew there was a person out there somewhere who had done that piece,” Rabbit said. “I just didn’t necessarily want to meet them.”

  “Why not?” Eve asked.

  It was a harder question to answer, to even think about. Because he didn’t want to meet his inspiration. He didn’t want to risk having someone in his life he might then look to for approval. “Or worse,” Rabbit said. “Someone I’d end up resenting. Beyer and Jabez, they’re ruined. They used to have ideas. Now they have nothing but their rivalry.”

  They’d made the bridge and were stopped in a long line of cars leading up to a checkpoint. An officer with a flashlight was coming down the row of cars, shining the light into each. No traffic moving.

  “You think you might feel rivalry towards Ali?” Eve asked.

  He turned to look at her when she said that. Mineral-green eyes, dark lashes. And having asked the question, she suddenly knew what she wanted him to feel. She wanted Rabbit to feel that he could be better than Ali, truer than Ali. She wanted Rabbit to feel that he could replace Ali.

  Rabbit was still looking at her steadily. “I think we’re past rivalry,” he said.

  And Eve again felt the surge, like a river current, like the tug of acceleration. Forward rushing. Anticipation and excitement. These delicious feelings, so recently renewed.

  The officer had arrived at the truck. And when Eve buzzed down the window, he recognized her and said: “Evey, what’s up? Can’t let you across in the vehicle.”

  “Can we go on foot?” she asked him.

  “Bit of a mess up there, to tell you the truth. We have power out on the Slopes, down near the river too. Where you going tonight?”

  “West Stretch. I have to get home.”

  The cop told them where to park the truck in a service station. Then he let Eve pull out of the line of cars, turn around and head back down the bridge. When she’d parked and locked up, Rabbit and Eve returned to the barricade and the same police officer walked them through. There were others there—private security, police, militia. Some of them greeted Eve, but their minds were on other things. Nobody spoke more than necessary, all the radios alive with incoming news. Updates from the troubled fronts of the city, while the river water surged in the darkness, far below.

  When they were through, Rabbit could see where the bridge sloped off into River Park, and how beyond that the Slopes were patched with light. Uneven black squares along the hillside. At the top, somewhere over the crest, the plaza. And there were many flashing lights on the ground and in the sky. The low cloud flickered with them, pulsing in dark red tones.

  “Want to run?” Rabbit said.

  They were both in light clothes, so they ran together, gliding into an easy pace. Rabbit admiring her natural flow, efficient movements. She didn’t over-swing the arms or over-stride. She picked up the cadence and he ran right with her. Through the light rain, the night wind picking up. Down through River Park. Something rising in the air. Crowds at the big intersection at the bottom of the Slopes made Rabbit imagine the places of gathering all over the city. People finding their way to these spots, to these local corners. Sensing some common threat.

  They reached Rabbit’s apartment in about twenty minutes. He showed her the place to climb the brick, fingers to the ironwork, then a long step across the rung of the ladder. She swung across like she’d done it dozens of times before, no hesitation, no second thoughts, following Rabbit up six flights as the distance to the pavement opened below. Up to the final platform. Smoke in the air. Sirens. The whole tangle of it spreading as they climbed. No television required to sense things just at the moment of combustion. Past tension, past waiting. Whatever had been about to happen was now happening, violence unfolding in the rotored air.

  He climbed through the window and she followed. They entered the narrow room where he lived, empty but for a battered futon and a cable spool worktable, the far wall stacked with Rabbit’s boxed macaroni and kimchi ramen. The train yards glowed mercury orange and the light came in. Ali may still have been present in both of their minds, but he was now there differently than before. Rabbit didn’t want or need to know more about the man who’d been the third corner of a triangle that closed to bring him and Eve together. That man, so pivotal, was a fiction to Rabbit now. A character they’d both fleshed into the invisible scheme.

  And much better that way. Rabbit had this thought as Eve lay back in the chair, breathing deeply, something resolving in her too. Better to know at the moment a thing is finished, that the inspiration you thought you had did not truly exist. That no part of the thing you were making was caused by someone else. That what had come to mind was, indeed, entirely new. Entirely your own.

  Eve lay back in bands of orange light, cut by angular shadows. What sounded like gunshots at the ridgeline, cold spikes of sound. But far, far away. And when he sat next to her, she took his hand and pressed his palm against her cheek. He did the same with hers. She reached up and he laced his fingers through hers and put her hand to the side of his face, her index finger resting near the corner of his eye, her thumb just to the final crease of his lips. He said her name. And she said his. And they both felt their names enter at the fingertips, then move down their arms and into the rest of them.

  What did it add up to in those moments before midnight? Rabbit could inventory and catalog and wonder later without coming to a definite answer. Only that everything had changed. Jabez and Beyer, even Alto, were fading from view. And Rabbit knew that when he put his arm around her to bring her close, his lips on hers, that he was, right in that very instant, both disappearing into her and disappearing from view. Holding her, he was already gone, already heading north to his house in the woods, to his small field, to the things that would grow there. And afterwards, when Eve was asleep, he pulled himself out from under the sheets and sat naked on the edge of the futon next to her, his hand gentle on the curve of her hip, and looked out over the yards, already calculating time. When he’d leave, when he’d be in the tunnel, wet cloth pressed to his face. When he’d pass Alto that final time. He owed no further tribute. But if there was to be a final observance of an old ritual, Rabbit wanted it to be in the earliest hours of the morning, when a new day was rising in the east. A new day that Eve had made possible.

  Rabbit put clothes in his pack and cinched it tight to his chest, listening to the sounds of the city. Something happening up top of the hill now, the distant sound of a crowd raising its voice. Flickers of light up against the lowered cloud. He imagined the clash of great forces. He would leave the room the way he’d come, sliding out to the platform, pulling the window closed.

  But not before leaving two gifts for her. For Eve alone.

  The first, a map. Rabbit extracted this from his knapsack. He pulled it free of the various plastic bags with their wires and components. It was grimed with use, creased to the point of fraying. But he lay it gently on her clothes, crumpled on the floor next to the bed where they’d fallen.

  Second: a fresh drawing for her to see on waking. A long composition on the blank wall of the apartment. Wide black strokes of felt pen. It cost him his damage deposit to leave her with a final crucial thought in lines and loops, arrows pointing north, directions and words. A diorama, a marked route, and an invitation.

  You’ll find it where you last saw it.

  Rabbit knew she’d recognize the words.

  SATURDAY TO FIRST LIGHT

  OCTOBER 26

  LOFTIN

  E
VENTS PATTERNED AROUND ONE ANOTHER in spirals, in coils. Beginnings reached out for endings. On this point, everyone in the plaza would have agreed.

  Loftin was swimming in his story. He had mapped the crowd, its factions, splinters and blocs. What looked like chaos, he now knew, retained in fact an inner order. He wrote that in his notebook (his third one; there were two full of notes and a blank remaining in the side pockets of his cargo pants). There is a fine but hidden order in this chaos. And that order is an ordering of all chaos.

  Loftin stood on a park bench on the street that flanked the east end of the plaza. It was midnight and he’d been talking to people up and down the square for the past couple of hours. Doing so, Loftin had concluded that there were actually four distinct types of people in the crowd. They arranged themselves, in his mind, on a chart with two dimensions. The first was the personal tendency to either confront or conciliate in resolving the crisis. The second was the impulse, in advocating any given position, to invoke the authority of either the rational self or a source of wisdom beyond. Hawks and doves. Materialists and mystics. The combination resulted in four distinct orientations, and Loftin had already named them: Hippies and the Black Bloc on the material side, the Call and the Crusaders on the side of mystery.

  And there they all were, plain enough to see once you’d cracked the code. The Hippie kids over on the south stairs singing “Give Peace a Chance” and strumming guitars, appealing to the peace that was believed to lie organically within. The photogenic Black Bloc who’d taken over the planters and the fountains to the east, raising their fists, their Celebranoia and Remember Genoa banners, agitating for a revolution in the here and now while collecting stones and fragments of pavement in garbage cans. The stoic members of the Call held the central area around the band riser where they were gathered in circles with their heads bowed, holding candles, or standing by themselves with their hands raised to heaven, entreating a benevolent father somewhere overhead. And behind Loftin, milling in the street, the sullen and volatile Crusaders, for whom the force of the supernatural was justice, and justice now.

  Everybody talked. Loftin’s interview guide was the simplest he’d ever used. Two questions. Who is the hostage taker, do you think? And: Why are you here? The answers were pressing hard against the inside of the ribs, they burst out of people. Loftin’s notes reflected that:

  #5 Thin girl, college. (22 yrs.) Tree planting, northern Alberta. Heard perp = psychiatrically deranged, needs our help. Here for the cause of peace.

  #12 Man 60+. Cousin died Madrid 04. Bible says stand up for yourself. Perp = Islamic terrorist. Here for justice. “This country has had enough.”

  #16 Younger man, tie/cord jacket. Paralegal local firm. “So much suffering.” Saw the Call online. Perp = obsessed celeb stalker. Here to show God’s love.

  #24 Woman mid-30s. Arrested G20 Toronto. Non-profit work. “Military-entertainment complex” runs country. Perp = inside job.

  Nobody said they were there to confront or disagree with any other group. But every person had a hard reason why they couldn’t leave. And everybody was disturbed by the same rumors, about one new one per hour. Special military units were going in, or they had already gone in. Shots had been fired inside the theater. Or the worst rumor: executions had begun. Children were already dying. These kinds of thoughts agitated people, and Loftin observed much arguing and jostling. All the more surprising, he thought, given this factional venting, that the authorities would have been so careless about uniting people under a single complaint aimed not at the hostage taker but at the authorities themselves.

  But that, in the end, is exactly what they did when they decided to bring in riot police to clear the plaza.

  Loftin watched from his perch on the park bench, and was astonished. He could sense the unrest and hear the shouted arguments. He’d seen the odd rival banner torn down, even a few fights, scraps, pulled shirts. But there was no riot going on. Loftin felt the injustice. Yes, the police had tried persuading people to leave. He’d shown his own press card often enough to have accumulated a crust of resentment.

  “You can’t do this,” he said to a young police officer who, having looked at Loftin’s card, had ordered him back to a newly established media green zone. “Are you declaring martial law? I’m entitled to be here.”

  The cop shook his head and walked away. And when Loftin turned back to face the plaza, he could see the riot police forming a long single rank, just past the main body of Black Bloc protesters.

  So this was how it was going to be. And instantly, things were alive in Loftin’s peripheral vision. People pulling out garbage cans loaded up with bits of pavement and stones. Objects going hand to hand. Loftin thought: This is crazy.

  He climbed off the bench and pushed his way forward to crouch behind a planter. What was the term the experts used? Instigating incident. The thing that pushed people over the edge. Here it came as a second rank of riot police jogged out of the side alley and squared up behind the first. People actually cheered. Loftin did too, he let out an ironic laugh to join the generalizing sound. Many, many voices now.

  Loftin called out: “Oh for heaven’s sake. Leave us alone.”

  The police were advancing, beating their plastic shields with their black batons while a voice spoke through a bullhorn from the rear. Please leave. There will be no second chances. And here it came. The first stones, bits of brick, pavement. A piece flashed directly over Loftin’s head in the darkness. He turned and another one came, very close. He saw it approaching, tumbling end over end. He ducked. Whoosh. It was a thrill. Loftin’s heart was racing.

  People sang nearby. Loftin heard old church hymns and John Lennon blended. A choral weave behind the action, advancing riot police, special squads now deploying to the rear. Loftin recognized the snub-nosed rifles used to fire rubber bullets. While in the crowd all around him, he felt the shift. The factions fusing, a larger organism being born. And that organism now seethed and rocked, it washed from one side of the plaza to the other, it let its head fall into its hands. It wept for all it didn’t know.

  The police lines met the crowd right at the seam where the Black Bloc and the Call intersected. The Black Bloc launched their missiles. The police swung their clubs. The Call went to their knees. Hands to heaven. But that, in the end, did not save them.

  Crack. Loftin heard it. A brutal sound. A cop stepped forward and did what he’d been taught to do. Slam the shield into the man’s face. Knock him down. Apply baton to side of head. It sounded like a big stick of celery being snapped in two.

  Crack. Blood pooling. The crowd surging. Loftin was again calling out words. He was feeling real anger now. There was simply no call for that kind of violence. And he noted a momentary lapse in police resolve too, as people rushed in to surround the fallen man. As the hail of stones began again.

  The tear gas arrived. Loftin watched the arcs of smoke overhead, the cans hitting the pavement, spitting and spinning. Then his nose and eyes locked and streamed mucus. He doubled over and held his breath. Shapes danced in, faces swathed in towels or gas masks. Ski goggles. Foam padding wrapped to the shoulders and the arms, cinched in place with duct tape. The gas canisters were picked up and sent sailing back over the heads of the cops. Angels, Loftin thought. Guardian Black Bloc angels. Then someone threw a bottle corked with a burning rag and the pavement burned, Plexiglas shields winking orange and black.

  Loftin’s legs were cramping. He went onto his knees. He watched a man standing in the front ranks of the Black Bloc, gesturing at the police. Black leather jacket, black mask. And then a cop stepped forward, shouldering a snub-nosed rifle, and dropped the man with a rubber bullet to the side of his head from only twenty feet away. Whomp. The man spasmed grotesquely, then crashed straight down to the pavement. Leg quiver. Then nothing.

  Loftin was gasping, his brain unspooling. What the devil. That was. He didn’t. He is dead. That man is dead. Heaven help us.

  And then the strangest thing. Loftin couldn’
t believe what he was seeing. A second man stepped out of the Black Bloc lines and approached the police directly. He was also dressed in black, with a black mask over a dark beard. But he was now waving his arms and gesturing that the police should stop. It was either incredible bravado or incredible stupidity. And Loftin winced involuntarily, waiting for what would happen to the man. But nothing did. The police actually stopped. The batons dropped. The rank of men took several shuffling steps back.

  It was a miracle, Loftin thought. The bearded man was Mahatma Gandhi. He was Nelson Mandela. The crowd cheered as he crouched beside the man who’d been hit by the rubber bullet, taking his pulse and talking into a cell phone. Loftin squinted, processing these details. Then it came to him in a rush as the man clicked shut the phone and his hand went into the side pocket of his jacket, shaping around something there. Loftin guessed 9 mm. Personalized grip. Oh dear, he thought. The man was some kind of professional.

  And that thought came to Loftin the instant before a helicopter thundered up over the building opposite and came rotoring in on the plaza. Pasting back the trees. Cycloning garbage. Sending people running all over. The man who’d been shot was lifted aboard. The bearded man followed and the chopper vaulted skywards and wheeled away.

  Loftin was still on his knees behind the planter, but the miracle was now sour.

  The riot police withdrew to a side street. And all the old rumors were now replaced by a single new one. The men evacuated in the chopper were police, or Special Forces, or intelligence. Something bad had been loose in the plaza, seeded through the crowd. And the crowd’s mood now dangerously darkened. Loftin’s own mood darkened. And in the hours following midnight, he listened to the sound of breaking glass and watched fires being started in the planters and the dead fountains. At three in the morning, he called his wife, very unusual for him. Mid-morning London time. “Just to say I love you,” he told her. “Everything is fine, sure.” He said it again, “I love you.” And she said the words back to him: “I love you too.”