by Geoff Ryman
There was a spate of burglaries, and the Association could not afford the insurance.
“If you lived in a better area,” she was told, “the premiums would be less.”
“Rich people pay less insurance?” She was appalled.
“For goods of the same value, yes,” said the salesman. “They’re less likely to be burgled.”
Billie remembered sleeping rough. She knew how it felt. There were homeless people nearby, sleeping under railway bridges. She paid them to keep watch on the Association by day, by forsaken night.
“You’re just bribing them to stop thieving,” said the woman who had stolen Billie’s key. Then the homeless caught a burglar, just a kid. Relations between the two communities improved.
“Not bad,” Billie boasted to Eamon, but he was less interested in the Association now. He and the other Billie walked around and around the Temple, the cherry trees, the monks, the gravel gardens. The little boy always waited for them while the same tourists took snapshots. The weather never changed, and the sound of doves fluttering upward in a flock was always the same.
“You really aren’t alive, are you?” Billie said to them both.
“No,” said Eamon, not surprised anymore that she found it difficult to accept. “Would Heaven be much different from this?”
Billie had made Eamon, her Eamon, happy. What was there for her? The concert, just the concert. Perhaps something would happen at the concert, and then she would be free. She would see the real Eamon Strafe, and either she would be disappointed, and that would end it, or he would be as wonderful as she sometimes imagined. That, also, would be answer enough.
It was a beautiful September, but life was gray from waiting, as she sat in her kitchen/dinette, hands under her armpits. Joey was a shadow to her. She ate when Joey ate—otherwise she might have forgotten to eat altogether. She planned what she would wear to the show, as if it would make any difference to Eamon.
She decided in the end to dress to avoid being mugged—a gray jumpsuit with a small, dripped coffee stain on the thigh. After all, who was she going to see to impress? She would have to come home on the trains at night. A taxi was beyond question. She put a big kitchen knife in her purse. The poison paper had finally been sealed in an envelope to prevent her winding fingers destroying it all together. The envelope was now in her purse, and she hugged her purse to herself with both arms.
Walking to the bus stop, sitting in the tube train, Billie coasted on automatic pilot, pulse racing, unable to think. The train passed the ruined civic spaces, the endless rows of back gardens and shrubbery.
A thousand people got off the train with her. It was like a pilgrimage. Billie looked at the faces. These were her people—the baffled and slightly blank faces, the librarians, typesetters, TV researchers, media secretaries, workers in bookshops, amateur potters—the fans of Eamon Strafe. It made her feel curiously elated to be with them again, as if they were all young, hanging out in Piccadilly, staying late till the clubs opened, and slipping off just as the clubs got going, to make the last train. Was Tora here? She should have rung Tora. Her mind, agitated, was stuck in a groove from one of Eamon’s songs. Slaves, slaves, slaves to the rhythm, it sang, over and over.
All of them together flooded up the steps. Just inside the shell of the stadium was a concourse crammed like a street market, hawkers bellowing about hot dogs or fresh squeezed orange juice. The parent company of her health food shop had shown up with bean sprout sandwiches. In comradeship, Billie bounced up to them. “I work for Billing’s Natural as well,” she told them.
“Oh God, not you too. If I have a daughter, I’ll tell her, never work in a health shop.”
They commiserated and then, for something to do, some way to finish the conversation, Billie bought a slice of health food carob cake. She walked around the perimeter, trying to find gate M. When she found her seat, her good mood evaporated.
She had been ripped off. Of course she had been ripped off, the whole point was to rip her off. At a time when the bank manager was stopping her checks, she had paid thirty pounds for a supposedly good seat, and here she was—miles back and behind a pillar. There was a great slope of seating, and a further slope of temporary bleachers, and beyond that a flat plain of benches and finally, about the same size as her thumb, the stage. Billie was smiling.
Yes, yes, she thought, almost gleefully, they have to do this to us, to make us understand just how small we are. Yes, yes, yes, when we finally venture out of our little shells. She turned around and looked up at the banks of people behind her. Winkles, she thought, we’re just little winkles prized out with pins. It was beginning to be fearsomely hot inside the Arena.
A family fought its way in to sit next to her, bearing thermos flasks of coffee and lemonade and unwrapping an entire, cooked chicken. The husband had a scraggly gray beard, and the wife seemed almost deliberately colorless. Their child, of indeterminate gender, was quiet and still, what is called well behaved.
“Good seats aren’t they?” said Billie, bouncy with anger. “Really worth thirty quid.”
“Oh, not too bad, actually,” said the man.
“We’re awfully lucky to get them,” said the wife. “I really thought we wouldn’t, and I couldn’t bear to miss this.”
The child was sucking the empty yellow cup from the thermos flask. Are you free? Billie wondered. Did you get away?
“Do you like Eamon, too?” Billie asked the child.
“Yeah,” said the child, a boy, without enthusiasm, looking at his cup and not her.
“The whole family,” said the father. “We’re Eamon-mad. We’ve got everything he’s done, haven’t we, Pat? We bought two copies of some of the disks. One each!”
So many of us, Billie thought. A woman in front of them had turned and was looking back at them. Billie recognized her forlorn expression. It was her own.
The little boy was finally given some lemonade.
Should I have brought Joey? I didn’t even think to ask him. He must think that means I didn’t want him to come. I didn’t want him to come.
Do I love my son? It was a terrible question to ask. But there were worse questions, like, does my son love me? How could he? She found herself wondering if it were at all possible that her son could love her. I’ve put him into a little compartment, like the dishes. He’ll grow up, he’ll go away, he won’t come back. My life is leaking away.
Because of Eamon Strafe.
A string quartet suddenly struck the spare metallic opening of “A Fish Dinner in Memison.”
There was a kind of sigh, and a shushing, and a beehive flurry as people found their seats. The string quartet was live, on a separate stage, half a stadium away from where Eamon would appear. The speakers, behind a blue wall, were the size of small buildings and were swathed in black.
There were two huge blank screens either side of the main stage, and they came live in the same way her monitor at home did, loading the image from the top down.
And there he was smiling at all of them, Eamon Strafe.
There was a kind of roar, the lights dropped, the image on the screen walked off it, and then, on the stage, there he was, stepping into the light, instantly recognizable from half a mile away, tiny, blinding white, and Billie rose to her feet and the audience rose to its feet, in a deathly silence.
No cheers, no sound at all, silent wonder. It was him, it was Eamon.
The way Eamon walked was lonely. The walk said: there are very few people like me. Becoming me has been a long fight, and there was no one to help. A walk could say that.
Billie couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t focus, he was a blur, lost in the glare of the lights. His clothes, his shoes were all a haze of light. Except on the screens. There he was, Eamon, rumpled, smiling, lopsided as always, and utterly familiar.
Without introduction, he began to sing.
Billie heard herself scream. It was a real scream, a relief of agony. She was the only one—you do not scream at an Eamo
n Strafe concert. You listen. You weep. She pushed the palm of her hand into her mouth, and forced herself to sit, and she bit down, and pain shot through her hand. She pulled her hand back, and looked at it.
The bite was deep and bloody, just under the thumb of her right hand.
Oh Billie, you stupid cow, what have you done now?
It was bleeding profusely, down her wrist, over the jumpsuit. The blood crept richly across the glossy white paper of her program book, beside a picture of Eamon.
She held up her hand and whispered to the family. “Do you have a handkerchief?”
They were extremely discomfited. They understood from the scream and its sequel that her sickness was seriously worse than their own. With the care that extends any noise and makes it worse, the wife sought in her bag for a Kleenex. The bag rattled, the plastic pack rustled. Overhead the waves of noise bashed into each other from two directions, source and echo. The music was made nonsense, the beat disrupted, the words lost. Billie pushed the Kleenex against the wound.
“Take the pack,” whispered the wife.
Billie closed her eyes and found that the image of Eamon Strafe had been burned into her retina. There was a clear purple silhouette of him in her eyes with a glowing core of yellow. There was a silhouette of the bite in the nerves of her thumb.
She opened her eyes again, saw Eamon on a screen. That was all she was going to see. It was just like being at home. Eamon was not going to be ordinary or wonderful or different in any way from what he had always been. She felt like Alice, shrinking. One song finished, another began. What else did she expect? Fireworks? The music was vaguely familiar. It took a while for it to turn into “Democracy of Greed,” the third single, from when he was young and strong, and people still thought he was going to be the last pop star. It got as high as number nine, and then began to slide down the charts, taking Eamon with it.
It wasn’t Eamon’s singing that she heard. It was the people around her, humming, a sound like bees, holding the music together. You’re not performing, Eamon. We are.
Democracy, democracy,
Democracy of Greed
for those who have ability
from those who have the need
Her Eamon had been right. Her Eamon was as real as anything she was going to get from this. My hand is bleeding, she thought, and my seat is a rip-off. This isn’t good enough, it isn’t enough at all.
At first she only wanted to leave, escape her anger, go home. “Excuse me,” she said to the college students to her right. She stood up, and walked in front of them. “Excuse me, excuse me.” She stepped on people’s feet, they tutted. Couldn’t they see she was trying to get out? “Excuse me,” like in those clubs when she was young, it was all she ever said to anyone. “Excuse me.”
She pushed her way past them with the force of her whole life. She bled over them deliberately. It’s a sign, she told them in her mind. It’s what’s happening to all of you. She broke free into an aisle, and thumped down the steps, only to be intercepted by a guard. Hush Hush said a badge on his shoulder.
“I’ve cut myself. Is there a first aid kit?” she asked him.
Oh God. “Basic Blue” was starting up. At least she would be spared that.
The guard was fat, older than he should be, and he nervously jingled keys in his pocket. He walked with her to gate M, made sure she exited, and told her to ask at the trailer by Gate A. She walked back along the marketplace. The girls at Billing’s Natural were wiping the countertop, and talking, oblivious to the music drifting about them. By gate A, there was a white trailer. Inside it there was a tiny seating area for the guards. Face down on a table there was a magazine called Four Wheel Drive Vehicles. A sign on the wall said, SHOWERS. Another guard sat at a desk, and inside it was a blue box with bandages.
“How did you manage that?” the guard asked, cutting gauze.
“Slipped and fell,” she said.
His eyes were heavy with meaning as he looked back into hers. “Don’t understand this hysteria stuff,” he said. He paused, then seemed to think better of saying anything further.
“Neither do I,” whispered Billie. “Neither do I.”
I’m going to get what I came for, she thought.
She stood by Gate A and looked at the defenses. The stage was in layers like a ziggurat, each step 10, 15 feet high. That was to keep them all away, and the wall as well, painted a sweet powder blue, cutting off all the backstage area, and in front of that, rows of waist-high barriers. Up and down the aisles, guards patrolled.
What are you frightened of, Eamon? Why don’t you want us near you? You’ve taken enough from us. Beside her were bleachers, and she could see their innards above wood panels, a glimpse of shadowed scaffolding.
A guard came out from beyond the last row of defenses, walking beside the wall. He stopped in front of what Billie saw was a door in the wall. Billie walked forward, in front of the bleachers, to see him better. There was a black circle on the wall, and her eyes hauled it closer to her, and she saw the guard’s hand dabbling over its surface—four strokes, five strokes—and a door in the wall opened.
Billie knew then how she was going to get to Eamon.
As she ran up the steps of the bleachers she could feel them shake slightly under foot, boards supported on temporary scaffolding. The seats were made of planks, meeting at right angles, sealing off the innards. But the steps consisted of a top board only. Underneath each step, there was a gap of about eight inches.
Billie had not been eating much lately. In truth, Billie was half-starved.
She glanced about her, people in darkness, light catching on teeth or spectacles or jewelry, or hair clips, or eyes, the rest of the face lost in darkness. All looking at the light below, watching it pirouette. No guards. Billie sat down on the steps, as if not finding her seat. She crouched low, looked one more time, and then she lay down flat on the step. She rolled onto her tummy, and felt the boards press clothes, flesh, the bones of her hip, her elbow. The bones were so close to the surface. She shifted sideways, and headfirst, pulled herself under the step. The boards were rough, slivers entered her thighs. The scaffolding and steps began to shake. Was someone coming up after her? Below was an eight foot drop to concrete, not too far; Billie grabbed hold of a cross support and pulled.
She swung out, her feet like lead weights, and she had to hold, even though the bite on her hand was torn wider. Her shins struck another pole, and she hissed and clenched and kicked, and found footing.
Gingerly, she slid her feet down a smooth diagonally supporting pole until she could stand on a right angle support. She wavered in place, nearly falling, and then sat down, and reached with her feet for the next, treacherously angled pole down. She did that once more, and was within jumping distance. Then she saw the flashlight beam.
It skittered like Tinker Bell in Peter Pan, under the steps, along the supports. You’ll have to jump now, Billie. And without shaking the scaffolding.
She dropped down and her good hand struck a pole and went numb, and she landed in a heap. The floor was gray, her jumpsuit was gray, and she pulled her arms over her neck and face and went still. She saw the skittering light dance toward her, and pass over her and up into the network of poles.
Billie was now as invisible as a message down a telephone line.
She scampered, shaking with nerves, ducking down under poles, in nearly complete darkness. Only when she passed under an aisle did the gaps in the boards admit light, in slats overhead. There were slashes of light, where rough boards failed to fit. And all the time, that voice came ghostly, filtering, as if singing in Japanese.
Billie came to the end of the bleachers and found them sealed with a barrier of wood panels bolted to supports that looked like something from a Mechano set. Overhead, at the top of the bleachers was the area that was not closed off.
Billie started to climb again, to the very apex of the bleachers, in the back. Billie looked out from it, as if from a gable window.
&
nbsp; Eamon was talking, telling a story.
“…so I was in the square, looking for the master. I figured I was the only Westerner there and that he would see me…”
He was blinding bright here as well, and Billie saw why. He was lit, fiercely, from underneath. He must be standing over spotlights. The pyramid must be full of machinery.
The blue wall reached from the bleachers all the way to the gray first step of the pyramid and stuck to it like a wet lipstick kiss. Below her was a ten foot drop, and the silver fencing, and to the right, in the concrete, was a door. Someone could come through it at any moment. She herself could have come through it.
Her way was blocked by a crucifix of scaffolding. She sat backwards on it, lifted her feet, swung them around and out. No time to think, Billie, no need to look.
Her feet hung in space and she took all her weight on her hands, locking her elbows. She had thought she could lower herself further down from there, hang down with hands above her head. She did not know how to shift to that position without jarring; she doubted that she had the strength. She began to feel the tickle of fear in her belly, the fear that comes when you’re stuck on a rock face or can’t climb down from a tree. She didn’t have time for that.
“The master, you see, thought I ought to come to him.”
Here I come, Eamon. Billie pushed herself clear of the wall and let go.
Something seemed to clutch her insides, and with increasing force haul them upward. Something struck her head, something rang—a security fence—she fell slightly sideways, landing on calf, thigh, buttock, shoulder. She rolled, ending up with feet over her head.
Get up, Billie, get up, get up. She rocked herself to her feet. Her shoulder ached, her back would be dusty; she patted the back of her head for blood. There was blood. Or was that only from her hand? She began to walk, using arched fingers to comb her hair, brush it back over the wound, and she tried to rid her face of the squiffy, drunken look she knew she had around the eyes.