by Sean Ferrell
Gun lifted from my pocket, I handed it to him. As I did so, his eyes locked on something. At first I thought it was the gun, but as I drew my hand away, he reached out and grabbed my wrist. He pulled the sleeve back and turned my hand over, stared at the tattoo I’d gotten from Lily.
“Is there a problem?” I could see the same tattoo on his arm, just as I’d seen it on the Body, just as I imagined Seventy had it and Yellow and everyone in between.
Screwdriver’s eyes locked on mine. “He said you were tethered.”
“Who?”
“The old man.” I imagined he meant Seventy. “He said you and I were tethered.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Screwdriver turned his own wrist so that it was parallel to mine. We stood beside each other, arm resting against arm, each of us looking down at our tattoos.
Our parrots faced in opposite directions. If our hands were north, then my parrot flew west, his east.
Screwdriver, voice shaking, “He said you weren’t tethered to the Body, but you are. What does that mean?”
“You and I aren’t tethered.”
“What does that mean?”
I said nothing. He pulled back and stepped partway out of the stall. I could see his mind trying to realign around this new information. Long moments of listening to water drip in from leaks behind the sinks, the toilets, in the wall. “What has he been telling you?” I asked at last.
He watched dirt stains on the floor, Yellow’s blood drying on the tile, our face in the mirror. “Nothing. Nothing. It’s too late. I’ve got to stick to the plan.”
“I’ve learned that our planning doesn’t account for shit.”
He laughed and looked back at me. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“If you’re finding that things are moving off the track, you can make your own choices. You don’t have to listen to the old man. We can still change things.”
He continued to hold my gun in his hand, bounced its weight up and down, looked at his own tattoo. He shook his head, an internal debate I was losing. “No. No, there’s too much to be done for you to go around fucking everything up. This will still work out. You’re doing fine. And I’m sorry.”
“For?”
He swung his fist, gun handle out, in one smooth upward arc, struck me once on my right temple, and I was out.
I REMEMBER BEING in line behind the Pilaf Brothers. I remember seeing the way they suspiciously glanced at one another, how fixated they were on an Elder I couldn’t see from where I stood. I remember the plates on the floor and the ugly pattern of the rug, the worn spots where jute backing was black as soot, the sounds of chanting through the bathroom door. I remember thinking that when the one who would break his nose would leave the bathroom, he’d trip on those plates, and how simple it would be to fix it, and I remember thinking that not one Elder, not a single one, ever offered him any patience or thoughts or help, not because it was the right thing, and not because it followed a rule, but because doing so had been easier than facing the truth: that our brilliance was a failure. Our failure was in not trying. I remember hating every Elder and thinking, to hell with the rule.
I remember moving the plate aside, if only to spare myself that sliver of suffering.
I WOKE ON the bathroom floor, my head pressed against the cold porcelain of the toilet bowl. There was an oozing gash across my temple, and a dull throb rolled down my head and neck. Overhead, the lights rose and fell with my breath. After a minute I found arms and legs, sat up, then stood. The bathroom empty, Yellow’s blood dried under the sinks. I checked myself in the mirror. I was filthy, still damp, and now mottled with bathroom-floor grime. My pocket was heavy with familiarity. With a sinking feeling, I took the pistol out of my pocket and looked at it carefully. It was loaded with one bullet. Screwdriver’s commitment to follow the set path. I could follow that path, too, but in my own way.
I returned to the stall, emptied the bullets, and dropped them in the toilet. I flushed, but they just spun at the bottom of the bowl. Another flush and again they refused to go down. I took long strips of toilet paper and wadded them into balls and dropped them into the bowl, hoping some traction would force them down. Instead the toilet plugged and overflowed, rusty water spilling over onto the tiles. I stood above the toilet, watching the water rise, trying to think clearly. Then I closed and latched the stall door and lay down in the cold puddle to crawl out from underneath the door, sloshing water across the floor with my belly. When I stood, dripping, I realized that not only had I locked the bullets in the stall, I’d left the gun behind, too, on the toilet tank. I left it.
The few Elders in the mostly empty hall gave me looks but left me alone. Apparently, seeing Screwdriver beat up Yellow was enough to convince them to let me take my course.
The ballroom already echoed with preparations for the films. I wondered where all the Youngsters could be. The Inventor might have gotten hold of Seventy. I’d told him to hold him upstairs, so I’d look there. At the main stairs, I lost track of which floor I was on and climbed until I thought to stop and look around. The fifth floor perhaps, maybe the sixth. I ignored the rubble and entered the hallway, unsure of where to go or what to do. Excited chatter echoed in a room several doors away, like birds trapped under a blanket. As I walked down the hall, I caught the sound of a child crying, then a crash. A woman screamed a curse. Preteens and children erupted from the door ahead of me, poured into the hallway, knocked me backward, flowed around and over me. I worked to hold my ground. Some glanced at me over their shoulders, then followed the shrieks of the children to the stairwell at the end of the hall, disappeared into its darkness.
In the room they’d come running out of, I found the Inventor and a single wailing six-year-old. On the floor lay the Suit, unconscious, in a position that illustrated his—dare I say my—understanding of the evening’s events: arms locked in a near shrug. Lily knelt beside him. I wanted to reach out to take her hand, to pull her up like pulling a flower from the ground, take her from the hotel, away from the swirling torrent. I knew she wouldn’t come.
Across the room the child sobbed. His face curled out around his open mouth; snot and tears coursed over his face, dripped from his chin, wet the collar of his pale blue shirt. I started toward him, tried to imagine what his terror meant to the Inventor’s perceptions, how he must remember the moment. I wasn’t tethered to any of them and could remember nothing of the children’s time in the hotel, but the Inventor might. I wondered if he had already untethered himself from the children or if he’d been wiser than I was. I looked over to him, curious if he showed any concern or compassion toward his own youthful suffering, but I couldn’t see, too distracted by the gun he held.
“What the hell are you doing with that?”
The Inventor looked down at it and studied its weight. “I found it.”
“Bullshit.”
His eyes left the gun and glanced around the room. Even in the dark, I could see his skin flush. “Someone gave it to me?”
In this light, flushed as well with indignation and shame, gun bloody from the pistol-whipping he’d given the Suit’s temple, I thought of him as a guilty child. Couldn’t he have been more curious? I wondered. Had the world held so little for him? He was the one who began all this, who traveled where no one else might have been able to, ever, and yet he had nothing to show for it but an embarrassed face and a misused weapon. Whichever of me had given him the gun, I was to blame for this child’s corruption.
I reached into my own pocket and felt the emptiness there. “Which one gave it to you?” I didn’t ask “who” because I knew “who.”
The six-year-old gasped for air. The Suit shifted but remained unconscious.
From the door came the answer: “I did.” The Nose walked in, robes wrapped tight around him, and stood beside me, not wasting a glance at the bleeding Suit or Lily. “I gave it, but not to him. It’s been passed forward.”
My heart stopped. I felt the pulse of the timepiece
in my pocket, like a fluttering bird. “You pulled it from the trash?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The Nose shrugged. “I watched you go outside and hide it. It couldn’t have been for no good reason. I figured if it was worth you hiding, it was worth my taking.”
“And you gave it to—”
“Pimples.”
“Who?”
“Us at sixteen.” He smiled, unrepentant. “Told him to hang on to it, that it might be needed at some point. I told him where to find the raft, how to come here. Figured we’d need to outnumber the Elders. I think he’s the one who started going back further, bringing the children.” Six had finally stopped screaming. He pressed himself into the corner, happy to be ignored.
I opened a window, hung my head outside, and listened to the rain hit the building and the sidewalk below. “You brought the children here?”
The Inventor coughed before answering. A delaying habit I worked hard to avoid. “Not on purpose. The Elders are up to something. You said so yourself. But then I realized it wasn’t really the Elders. Not all of them.” He waved the gun toward the Suit. “It was him, mainly. I realized that instead of trying to figure out what the old man was up to, we’d better figure out what Suit was up to.”
“I told you to leave the woman out of this,” I said to the Inventor.
The Nose answered. “I realized that you weren’t telling me everything you knew. You’re with the Elders.”
“I’m not with anyone, you shit.”
“Prove it.”
The three of us stood at the points of a shadowy triangle, the Suit and Lily at the center. Six sat on the floor, arms wrapped around knees. I looked at the Inventor and then the Nose. His handsome robes now seemed only costume, as cheap and threadbare as my own.
“So after you pulled the gun from the trash, did you ever get bullets for it?”
Eyes bounced back and forth. Six took in everything. Tethers unraveled furiously.
I asked Six, “Did they give you a loaded gun?”
He shook his head.
I felt a thud in my chest. Until that moment I didn’t realize I’d held my breath.
The Nose said, “We’re younger than all of you. As long as none of you found out it wasn’t loaded, what’s the harm?”
Lily laughed at that, and we all looked at her. To me she said, “See? Selfish.”
I thought back to myself last year, when I was Suit, almost ready to pull the trigger on my younger, armed selves. I hadn’t done it. I wouldn’t do it. And if I could figure out this mess and get Lily out of the building, I would take the gun with me. Everything could reknit itself into whatever scarred shape it might need to take, and I wouldn’t return.
“Show me your gun,” I said. Nose and Inventor exchanged glances, and I raised my voice. “I don’t care who, but one of you give me the fucking gun.”
The Inventor stepped forward, palm up, gun presented like a gift. I took it and stepped to the window to see it in the streetlight. I touched the sides and worked the mechanism. It was rusted and sticky with old dirt and grease.
Turning the gun in the light, I imagined what I would have done with it at six, seven, eight, twelve. In between trips I would have taken it out, played with it, held it, pretended it protected me from hordes of who-knew-whats, of things unseen but known, of older men not yet nicknamed. Played with and dreamed of, broken and rusted from lack of care and misuse, it would never fire again.
I threw it back toward the Inventor. It hammered the floor and echoed in the hall.
“You children should get downstairs. They’ll be starting the movies soon.” No one moved.
I joined Lily where she crouched. Something in her eyes said she wouldn’t take my hand, so I didn’t offer. I leaned down, my face close to hers, and I breathed her in, just a little. Her hands stroked Suit’s blood-wet hair. I told myself I’d get over it. I suddenly felt my beard in a way I hadn’t before. I wasn’t that man on the floor. I exhaled a bit of Lily when I asked, “What will you tell him? Assuming you both survive.”
She gave a look that made me think of a sealed crypt. “Nothing.”
Her answer surprised me. “Why?”
“When people know things about you, it takes a part of you away. I’m tired of being picked apart.”
That was when I knew why she chose the man beside her, the one who was free of the time and knowledge that tied me to her, the one who hadn’t been marked with the bird flying in the wrong fucking direction. The fact that he knew nothing of her made him attractive; the fact that he held no preconceptions or beliefs about her made her choose him over me. He could still be pricked in the right way, bleed the way she wanted him to. I had facts. I had knowledge. I’d seen her surroundings, and I had lain in them with her. She felt burdened by my knowledge. She felt pressure to perform in an expected way; she felt trapped in a current of circumstances. But with the Suit, none of that existed. He was new. He might never know.
She understood the equation: Him plus her equaled me. She ignored me as a solution. She cared only for the problem. She knelt beside him, hands on his bleeding head, his hair between her fingers, and I groaned as I watched.
“Then don’t tell him shit. For his sake.” I suddenly saw both of them clearly, as if a switch turned on lights throughout the room. I said, “I mean ever. Don’t ever tell him a thing. Because the moment you do, you’ll start trying to kill him a little bit at a time.”
She refused to meet my eye. Her voice fell out in a whisper. I no longer knew or cared whether Nose and Inventor stood behind me, whether she was whispering to hide it from them or from some part of herself, but I heard every click of her tongue on her teeth when she said, “We both know I don’t have a lot of time left.”
I stood up and took an absurd inventory of my pockets. Empty. “Nothing has to play out the way we remember it,” I said finally. It was as close to a good-bye as I would ever have with the woman called Lily.
I DECIDED TO leave the hotel, alone. Nothing would matter once I left. If I simply disappeared and didn’t return, there would be no shooting. Lily would live.
I cut through the ballroom on my way to the back exit. It was dark and littered with chairs. On the wall played images from the accidental video, the steps to Lily’s apartment, the shadows cast by me and Screwdriver as he carried her home, her blood splattering on dusty steps. Despite the chilled air, I broke into a sweat. My head hurt more than it had moments earlier, pulse tapping behind my eyes. I wanted to look away, but that was hard, too.
Most of the Elders I passed watched the flashing wall, alert and attentive, hands on knees, fingers worrying along pant seams. One or two cried, tried to keep it quiet, failed, cried anyway. There was no consoling, no hands on backs, no kind words. They were too like me to find and offer consolation in any way except mutual suffering. I walked through the scattered selves, drew attention as I passed. It would have taken effort not to notice the suddenly steeled eyes that followed me. Had something changed from my last time through here, or would they pretend to sleep when the Suit passed?
Seventy sat near the projector, turned slightly away from me but aware of my approach. Had I really thought the Inventor could lure him upstairs? I’d unleashed my own problems yet again. I sat next to him. We stared at the wall for a few minutes. Above us the video played to the end and Seventy hit a button on the remote, the tape rewound, still playing, pulling everything backward at a slightly-too-fast pace. The gentle bounces of the camera became harsh shaking, a panic as the point of view was no longer that of the pursuer but the pursued.
I said, “How many times do you show it to them?”
“Oh, I lost count. It’s all they care about.”
On the wall the staggering figure holding the woman lurched backward down the stairs.
“I prefer the film this way,” Seventy, all nostalgic, whispered. “Easier to take, knowing that she’s gaining life as it goes on, rather than losing it.” He never ha
d quite the same expression as the other Elders. Understanding and secrets floated behind his eyes, words I knew he wouldn’t share. What event had changed the quality of him, I couldn’t imagine. I wondered exactly how tethered he was to the others that he alone could treat me well. No, not well. Respectfully.
“I’m leaving the hotel.”
“I know you’ll try.” Eyes on the wall, shuddered lights reflected back at me, my silhouette at the center, inside what would be my own pupils.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me?”
At last his face turned toward me. “No. I heard. Just not going to happen’s the problem. Others won’t let you.”
“The Youngsters—”
“Not Youngsters I’m talking about. You’ve got to be a bit more self-aware, pun intended. These fellas haven’t been too happy with you ever since you put on that suit.” His hand stayed on the remote, fingers on buttons, waited for the video’s start, waited to press the action forward again. But in that hand I saw muscles twitch. He tried, with effort, to force calm into his limbs. How much of that was just elderly tremors? I wondered. How much was what I feared, that he was no more in control of events than I was, that the Elders were as much a mob as the Youngsters? He forced a casual smile to his lips. “You’ve been under the gun yourself. Will be again if you try to leave. And I heard that your raft is missing.”
“I’ll just go find one of the Youngsters’ rafts.”
“That would mean leaving the hotel. And that’s not happening.”
For an instant I couldn’t help myself, looked up at the wall, saw only Screwdriver’s shadow, distorted by Lily’s hanging arm and hair. I looked away, saw dark eyes shine in my direction, the video playing in each one. Elders watched me watch them.
“You told me the Youngsters were the threat.”
“They were and are. But right now you’ve got to move forward with your mind on who you’ll be, not who you were.”
Seventy leaned back in his chair. He was done with talk. The rows of heads turned away from me to watch their film. I edged close to the wall and made for the hallway, aware that some of them must have watched me leave. I rushed to the front doors and looked through the glass to the street. Elders waited, hands in pockets, eyes locked through the dirty glass on mine. I gave an absurd wave, and they returned one, smiles on their faces too genuine.