We Are Here

by Michael Marshall

  “Lizzie mentioned people called ‘Fingermen,’ and others I don’t remember,” Kristina said thoughtfully.

  “Fingermen has to be a name for the ones who steal stuff, right? They have some people who are good at remaining unnoticed, slipping into places, and taking things, and specialize at it. The money they get goes into food and clothes and burner phones and whatever else they need. That’s why Reinhart was taking an interest. He could have worried that you were a cop, or a competitor. If he’s got a lucrative arrangement with these people, he’s not going to want others muscling in. Could be that’s why he was threatening the priest, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe Jeffers is trying to lead them in a different direction. Stop being bad; walk toward the light. You said Lizzie didn’t look happy about the stealing. The guy in the white shirt I saw going into the church—he was with her and the priest in Union Square, right? And he’d taken the scared-looking guy to the church, presumably to introduce him to Jeffers, maybe to start the process of getting him out of the criminal life. When Reinhart turned up the guy bolted—perhaps because he knew Reinhart was going to be pissed at him being there.”

  “Maybe. But that’s a lot of maybes. And …” She shook her head.

  “What am I missing?”

  “I don’t know There’s something about these people. They didn’t seem like runaways or homeless people. They had more to them than that.”

  It seemed to me that one of the things they might have, in Kris’s eyes, was a life that didn’t involve living in a tiny apartment and serving beers underground, an existence that seemed edgier and desirably off the grid of mundanity. I shrugged. “It’s the best I’ve got.”

  “And I’m not saying it sucks. But then what’s the deal with Lizzie and Catherine?”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “Yes. She didn’t want to talk about it. I got the sense … I don’t know, that maybe Catherine did something to her, or something. Let her down.”

  I had another idea. “Maybe they case people’s houses too. Stalk normal citizens, map their schedules and routines and work out when would be a good time to stage a burglary.”

  “No way,” Kris said. “I don’t believe she’d be a party to something like that.”

  “Kris, you only just met her.”

  “Yeah, and tell me you don’t make character assessments just as fast. You pegged this Reinhart guy as a villain in two seconds flat.”

  “I trust your judgment. But people on the edge will countenance doing things that—”

  Kris shook her head firmly and wouldn’t talk about it anymore.

  When we got back to the apartment the message on the window was gone. That meant someone had been out on our roof again, and while Kris seemed to be becoming comfortable with our window turning into some kind of low-tech Facebook, I was not.

  As we lay in bed I asked Kristina if she’d at least talk to me before meeting with Lizzie or any of her friends again. She said she would. I wasn’t sure that I believed her, however, and I wasn’t sure I understood what this said about the way things stood between us.

  Chapter 35

  At two in the morning Maj rose from the floorboards where he’d been lying. Sometimes there were others here too, sometimes not. This night, he had lain alone. Sleep had never come easy, but he always made the effort. The Gathered used to say it was as important to them, and their minds, as to anyone else. So he tried. Recently he’d found it harder, however. And tonight, though he’d gone through the motions of returning to the upper floor of a boarded-up ex–digital goods store in Midtown (a recent casualty of online retail dominance; though the upstairs room was messy and pigeons had already made it in through a broken window to start spreading shit and feathers, the roof was in place and at least it wasn’t damp) it had not come at all.

  He’d suspected it might be that way after meeting with Lizzie earlier. She’d told him about her near encounter with Reinhart in SoHo. She’d done so even though she knew he’d disapprove of what she’d been doing—hanging out with a tourist from the other side. She was open about what she did and thought and had told the truth. What she’d done wasn’t what was bothering him, though he’d told her to be careful, both of Reinhart and her new acquaintance.

  What was bothering him was the increasing suspicion that … something was going on.

  None of the Angels worked for Reinhart. Several used to in the past, like Flaxon, but all had stopped after coming under Lizzie’s influence. So why had Reinhart been watching them tonight? And why had he turned up at the church? The two events so close together had to be connected. So far, the worldviews of Jeffers and Reinhart had coexisted without contact. Both men knew of each other and the competing pulls they represented, but there had been dead space between them.

  Last night Reinhart had crossed it.

  He was making it personal, and once he’d started down that road it seemed unlikely he’d retreat. It had not been lost on Maj that Reinhart’s parting comments had been delivered at him. Why? Golzen kept recycling his pitch that Maj should come and work for Reinhart—a transparent attempt to bind him into Golzen’s messianic nonsense about Perfect—but last night was the first time they’d been in the same room.

  So why had Reinhart spoken to him directly? As if he felt he had some kind of call on him?

  Maj didn’t know. He didn’t like not knowing.

  He slipped out of the building via the broken window, walked across the next roof, and then dropped down into a backstreet.

  Though he’d never been to the building on Orchard, it was easy to find. He’d heard tell of its general location, and had to walk the streets for only half an hour—keeping an eye out for surreptitious-looking friends, shadows slipping around street corners—before homing in on a walk-down with a black door at the bottom. A sketchy club, now empty for the night. The door was thick but lighter than it looked, and unlocked.

  Maj walked into the large, empty space. There was no one there but for a slight figure sitting slumped at the bar. With a start, Maj realized who it was.

  It was the teenager he’d last run into when he’d been walking with David, the girl in the gray hoodie who’d invited him to a party in the Meatpacking District. The change in twenty-four hours was disturbing. Gone was the it’s-all-good teen he’d gotten used to bumping into on the streets. Her face was pale now. She’d been crying, and her eyes were ringed with smudged black makeup.

  “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t say anything. She looked like a Missing Person poster, and when someone emerged from the shadows to the side of the bar, Maj put two and two together.

  “You asshole,” Maj said. “What did you do to her?”

  “Provided enlightenment,” Golzen said. “My business has always been to help people get where they’re going.”

  Maj turned to the girl. “What did he tell you?”

  She looked away. “What I am.”

  “What—friendly? Fun?”

  “No. What I really am.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “He said there was a man who could help me.”

  “He lied,” Maj said. “Reinhart will make you cheat and steal. Ask yourself what Lizzie would say about those things. You like Lizzie, right?”

  “She’s wonderful.”

  “Right. And she thinks Reinhart is scum.”

  “Hey, hey,” said a voice. Reinhart came striding toward him from a doorway at the end of the room. “Good to see you, Maj. Glad you made it to the nest at last.”

  “Leave Jeffers alone,” Maj said.

  Reinhart grimaced, looked sad, held his hands out, palms up. Playacting. “That’s why you’re here?”

  “He helps people. You don’t.”

  “Wrong, my friend. That is my whole point. That is why I’ve been trying to get Golzen to put us together for a talk. Which he’s apparently now done, for which I’m grateful.”

  “He’s a good dog, right?”

&
nbsp; “There’s a place in this world for people who do what they’re told, Maj. Good things come to them.”

  “Charity. Exactly the bullshit we’ve had enough of.”

  “I agree. I agree. No more handouts. I can help with that, Maj. I can help all of you. Time is running out for the old-school. You need to step up, come enjoy a new way to be. I can get you there.”

  Meanwhile the girl had slipped down off her stool and was approaching along a curved line, like a cat. She crept closer to Reinhart, looking up at his face.

  “Are you Reinhart?”

  He frowned at her. “Who are you?”

  “Are you going to like me?”

  “Get away from me, you freak,” Reinhart said, turning to Golzen. “Who the fuck is this?”

  “A Dozeno. Just turned her,” Golzen said with pride. “She’s wide open. Dumb as a sack of rocks, but we could get her eavesdropping PIN numbers or something, once she’s got her ditzy head around what she is.”

  The girl kept staring up at Reinhart’s face. “Are you going to be my friend?”

  He laughed. “Friend? If you were real, you’d be strapped facedown to a bed right now, getting broken in. As it is you’re good to me for only one thing and I will get into that later, but right now I’m busy, so fuck off.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Reinhart sent a backhand blow at the girl’s face. It went straight through her head, but she flinched and fell back. He looked at her thoughtfully.

  “Actually,” he said to Golzen, “there’s substance there. She might be able to do basic fingerwork, with training. Make a note.”

  The girl straightened slowly, hand against her face. “You know?” she said to Maj. “I think you’re right. He doesn’t seem like a very nice man.”

  “He’s not,” Maj said. “Go find Lizzie. Talk to her. She’ll help. I can help too.”

  “Maybe,” the girl said. “But the thing is … I don’t really know you either. Or Lizzie. Or anybody else.”

  She turned from him, from everyone, and wandered away into the darkness in the corner of the big, empty basement, crying once more. Reinhart watched her go, as if finding the sight interesting. Or amusing.

  Or … something.

  “You’re everything we don’t need,” Maj said to him. “Stay the hell out of our world.”

  He walked out and didn’t look back.

  And that, Golzen felt, was hopefully that. Reinhart turned to him, however.

  “I don’t see your buddies,” he said irritably. “I asked you to stick them to that guy. I think I said ‘like glue.’ I didn’t see any glue. I don’t see your guys. Were they outside, waiting? Tell me they’re outside.”

  Golzen shook his head. “It’s not hard to keep track of what Maj’s up to. I had another idea. I sent them after Maj’s friend.”

  “Sent them? Where?”

  “I don’t know. Wherever the guy lives. They followed him after you confronted Jeffers in the church last night. They’ll watch Maj’s friend and return and tell me if there’s any leverage we might be able to use on Maj, something from his friend’s life. Assuming you think it’s worth it, of course, after his attitude tonight.”

  “Good work,” Reinhart said thoughtfully. “I like what you’ve done there. Let me know.”

  He nodded, then wandered off into the shadows in the direction the girl had gone, dismissing Golzen as if he’d vanished, or had never been there at all.

  Just until we leave for Perfect, Golzen thought as he watched him go. Then you’ll have to find a new dog.

  In a way, he almost hoped it would be Maj.

  He had a feeling Maj might bite.

  Chapter 36

  The first thing Talia did when she got home, as always, was take a bath. When you’re living in a trailer of significant age and lackluster specifications this is not a quick or simple procedure, but it’s hot working behind a coffee machine, and she’d always been a girl who liked to be clean. She supposed there weren’t many people in town who thought of Talia Willocks as a girl these days. But she’d been one once. She still was. Mother fucking Teresa herself must have stopped to gawk at the clouds or check out a cute butt once in a while, even after she looked like she’d been exhumed.

  When she was done bathing—she never rushed that part, having always believed in marking out her day into sections, like chapters maybe—she wandered back into her home’s main area, clad in a pink terry-cloth bathrobe (she needed to replace it soon; it was starting to fray on the sleeves and okay, there was no one to see, but you had to keep on top of that stuff). Her living space was tidy. Keeping a place (or a life) in good order merely meant putting things where they were supposed to go, and if you lived in a trailer and didn’t pick up that habit then you were going to be wallowing in a pigsty real fast.

  The place gave her everything she needed. She had her sitting area, a pair of two-seater couches in an L shape, the second of which demarked the space from the kitchenette and the table where she ate and did administrative chores … and everything else. The real parts of her life. At present, approximately seven square feet of the horizontal surfaces—a portion of one of the couches, two patches of kitchen, a spot right in the middle of the table, and two apparently random positions on the floor—were home to the sides, paws, or posteriors of cats. Six were currently indoors, the others outside, who knows where, doing stuff, who knows what. A long time ago a man whom Talia had loved used to deliver a stock response to being asked whether he’d had enough pizza yet.

  “Is there any left?” he’d say.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, no, then,” he’d answer, baffled.

  Talia felt the same about cats. She knew people who believed nine was too many. For her the words “too many” didn’t compute with cats. Sure, you could be some batty old lady who let the place fill up with fur and uncleaned litter trays, but Talia was not that woman and wasn’t ever going to be.

  She wandered around, spending time with each of her friends. They craned their heads up into her hand, or rolled over, or sat focused on some interior thought. Once she’d said hello to each she felt like she was really home, and it was time to get on.

  She changed into stretch pants and sweatshirt and put the robe back on over it all, then fixed herself a little food. She didn’t eat much in the evening. She didn’t eat much at any time, despite her running gag about stealing the cakes at Roast Me. Either she was falling foul of hidden calories somewhere or her body wanted to be this shape, and she was done pretending she gave a shit. She fixed a vegetable stir-fry with some of the smoked tofu she’d become mildly addicted to, flicking the pan in the way she’d seen that guy do it on television (and that, after some practice, she could replicate without shunting half the contents over the stove). When it was cooked, she reached to the magnetized strip on the left where her cooking implements hung.

  Her fingers failed to find what they expected. Her spatula wasn’t there.

  She frowned, looked around—and spotted it on the magnetic strip on the other side. Well, that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. That was for the knives. Huh. How had that happened? Nobody else would have moved it. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had been in her home. A long time back it had been a popular destination for those in the county who enjoyed a beer and a smoke while one or more of them played Neil Young songs to varying degrees of recognizability on battered guitars. The younger (and much slimmer) version of Talia Willocks could lay a harmony line on top and, moreover, kept a dependable stock of cold beer in the fridge and made fine brownies too, albeit of the kind that had you staring at the stars and talking all kinds of happy crap by the time you’d finished your second.

  Those days were gone, and most of those people had drifted on or gone corporate—George Lofland was the only one she still passed the time of day with. The trailer parties had stopped the day Ed died. The heart had gone out of the town for a few months after the crash in which he was killed along with five ot
her well-liked locals. It was a simple accident, nobody’s fault, just one of those things, which somehow made it worse.

  The heart had never quite gone out of Talia’s life, though for a long time its beating had been quiet indeed, and there had been nights in the first months where she’d worried it might slow to nothing. Then one night, sitting in a chair by herself in front of the trailer and pretty deep in the bag, she’d happened to see a shooting star, cheap and easy though that might seem when the story’s told. She’d been seeing them all her life and it wasn’t any big deal, but that had the point.

  Not everything is somebody’s fault.

  Magic happens, and shit happens, and neither lasts forever. You have to let the instances burn themselves out, arcing over the time horizon, and then get the fuck back on your feet and reengage the fight.

  Ed’s dead.

  Get over it.

  The next day she’d woken up with a vicious hangover but had hauled herself into town and bought a big notebook. That had been the start. She’d written something—and usually a lot—every day since. At first just a diary (which she still kept up, in ordered ranks of identical notebooks on the shelf behind the TV), then the more creative journaling, and finally … the novel. Ta-da.

  She looked at the spatula hanging on the rail and decided she must have put it there herself.

  Hey, girl, still got some wild in you. You put the spatula on a different rail for once.

  Rock and fucking roll.

  She fished the food out of the pan and onto a plate and took it to the table. Four of the cats came and watched while she did this, but in a companionable way, as they knew there was nothing on the plate for cats. Talia chatted with them about her day while she ate, and why not? There was nobody to hear.

  Three hours later she sat back from the computer and blew strands of hair off her face. Writing always made her hot—though not that kind of hot, ha-ha. It just fired her up. She sympathized with David for the trouble he was having, but it never got her that way. Whether she was updating her diary or plowing into the sequel to The Quest of Alegoria (she knew she shouldn’t until she’d heard from David what he thought about the first, but the characters had started doing their song and dance in her head and she couldn’t stop herself from hooking up and seeing where they wanted to go next), words had always come easily. She was a relaxed kind of person, didn’t care much what people thought, and maybe that helped. David was a nice guy and she still hadn’t gotten over how touched she’d been by his offer to read her book (she got the sense that he thought fantasy was beneath him, and that was okay; a lot of people did), but he was kind of … uptight. Actually, that wasn’t the word.