Upside Down

by Jaym Gates

  “So, you don’t love your fiancé, Ang?” Quinn asked. The man’s face transformed, and Quinn got the expression of hope near enough to human-like to be convincing.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I know I don’t love you.”

  His face glitched as if he didn’t know what expression to try.

  “I can make you love me,” Quinn said.

  “No, you can’t.” She laughed. “You can make me come back to The Bunker. You can make me marry you, or do jumping jacks, or dance. But you can’t make me love you.” She put down the rifle. “I will never love you.”

  The man remained still for a long while, his face an absolute mask.

  “Look up,” he said.

  She did. The sun rose in the eastern vault of sky, brilliantly clear. Above, the cerulean blue was crisscrossed with hundreds of contrails in an intricate pattern.

  A buzzing sound came to her ears, and a swarm of drones filled the air around the man that held Quinn’s awareness — or part of it — and he spread his hands as if a priest at benediction and then pointed toward the sky.

  “Ang is up there,” he said, “And Quan, and Steven. And Laurie.” His face turned grim and Gael was frightened that particular expression came so easy to him.

  “Wait, Quinn, I’ll go with you-” she said and stepped forward.

  “If I can’t have your love,” he said, spreading his arms. “Then no one will.”

  Around the world, planes began falling from the heavens.

  Lazzrus

  Nisi Shawl

  The gun’s mouth gaped at him. Then it spoke. Leaden words.

  The boy had no choice but to listen.

  Only afterwards would there be a chance to answer.

  #

  The interview takes place in the subject’s tiny apartment.

  “Like the old song says, I only think of him on two occasions: day, and night. Lazzrus is —” The woman pauses and shifts, settling deeper into the sofa, seeking comfort and the right word. “— was? Hard for me to think of him being dead, despite I saw those wounds he got. But he — was — special.”

  Yes. The question is whether the subject knows exactly how special.

  Through the thin wall dividing the subject’s apartment from the neighbor’s Polly Wilson, CUNY advanced degree candidate in sociocultural anthropology, hears wild applause. She checks her wrist: Nineteen minutes have passed since the last burst. The end of one episode, then, and the start of another; the neighbor, whom she’d of course investigated before approaching the subject, keeps three quiz shows at a time queued up for her after-lunch viewing pleasure. Two more to go before she knocks on the subject’s door to take charge of the child napping in the subject’s bedroom.

  It’s imperative that Polly examine the child and obtain samples for Myra if she can. But she plugs along with the format as if all the time in the world remains before the subject lets the sitter in and leaves for work.

  “You saw his wounds? Where — in the station’s morgue?”

  “Yeah, they had me identify him. Couldn’t tell much from his face, it was so smashed up —” The subject compresses her lips, blinks hard, looks away, but continues speaking in almost the same voice. “I remembered that big scar on his left side, though — every time I asked him how he came by it, it was a different story.” A brief smile twists the subject’s mouth. “Woulda been some viral accounts of how he got his new ones if he — if they coulda healed over ...”

  Blood loss and shock would have prevented that in most cases Polly had studied. Even a couple of those she’d suspected of sharing the mutation. Some deaths had been irreversible.

  Her palm is only half full. She asks the subject for access to her copies of Lazzrus’s medical records, scanning them as she stores them and noting a tendency to skin cancers — unusual in a man so dark, but typical of the anomalies she’s been adding to their database.

  Another round of applause. Time to wind this up. She brings out a couple of close-ended queries into the last job Lazzrus held, how often he stayed the night, where he and the subject had met. As she’s about to launch into the hopefully casual-sounding line of inquiry meant to lead to a look at the kid, the front door pounds under a knocking fist. The neighbor, that would be — ten minutes too early.

  What’s wrong? Why the change in routine?

  In an effort to make meeting the kid seem an afterthought, Polly had gathered up her equipment during the last segment of the interview format. It was a low-risk gambit — her palm’s battery has enough charge for another hour of data, and if she can’t reach the cloud to back up till she uncoils her antenna again on the bus, that’ll be fine. Now, though, she’s being herded down the short hallway toward the apartment’s entrance. Which if she was on her way out anyhow would make sense, so she can’t complain.

  She’s going to miss her chance.

  “I — I have to — May I use your restroom?” she asks as the subject reaches for the old-fashioned chain at the entrance’s top.

  “Sure.” The subject nods her neatly shaven head. “Door on the left.” She’s already leaning toward the peep as Polly hurries back the way she came and further in, and deliberately opens the door on the right. Entering the dim, humid bedroom she shuts the door behind her as quickly and silently as she can.

  An off-brand luller covers the little sound she does make, tweedling a thin fragment of Schumann’s Kinderszenen. It hangs beside the child’s crib, shedding a flickering orange light like a feeble, misplaced strobe in the smelly warmth.

  Polly tips nearer. No telltale gleam of open eyes warns her away. The sample kit’s in her coat pocket. Again she wishes she could be more thorough, or collect from a verified sport. Lazzrus himself. So far those have eluded her.

  A snip of the kid’s crinkly hair, a swab of the drool seeping from its half-open mouth and she’s done. Back at the door to the hallway she pauses, unsure how she’ll explain staying this long in the wrong place. Raised voices penetrate the gloom — one of them a man’s? But the neighbor’s a deaconess at the corner church — a woman. This is someone else.

  The irritating luller drowns out the exact words being shouted. In order to eavesdrop Polly tries a tiny push and winces as the door swings wide into the hallway on too-smooth hinges. Best to brazen things out. She steps from the bedroom like the queen of sociocultural anthropologists. Neither the subject nor the man arguing with her pay Polly any attention.

  “‘Strella, I keep telling you I ain’t him! I ain’t!”

  “How come you look so much alike, then? And calling me that —”

  “I’m his brother —”

  “His twin that he ain’t never told me about? Come on.”

  It’s Lazzrus standing there. Same as the still Myra gave her — barring a scruffy beard he must have grown in an attempt to cover the facial scars he has now, after his latest encounter with security.

  “My name is Floyd. Floyd Dean Scofield.”

  He probably wouldn’t have the paperwork to prove that yet. “Mr. Scofield.” Polly walks forward confidently, acting the way she wishes she felt. “I’m sorry. I sent you a message I’d be late for our appointment, but it bounced. Thanks for following up.”

  “‘Scuse me Ms. — uhh —”

  “You can skip the titles and call me Polly. If you don’t mind me calling you by your first name.” Not-so-subtle emphasis on the word “first.”

  An uneasy grin emerges from the beard. “Yeah, that’ll work. You —”

  “Let’s sort out the details on the way to my office. Or would you rather take advantage of the lounge in the security station up the street?”

  He hears her threat to turn him in. “Naw, I’ll go with you.”

  Good.

  They walk the snaking, worn-carpeted corridors to the elevator and take it to the ground level in silence. Not till they’re outside, the vestibule door shut behind them, does he speak. “Look.” He holds up his hands, arms bent at the elbows, a gesture of surrender. �
��I got no beef with you.”

  “Nor I with you.” She spares a glance for passing traffic, bicycles and scooters surrounded by morning retail workers and volunteers rushing home. Then she looks back at his chopped-up and still-healing face. He’s tall. So is she. “What I’ve got is something to prove.” Her sister’s theory.

  “How is getting me locked up for resisting arrest gonna prove anything?”

  “Do you think I’d have any luck hauling you into a station against your will?” Collapsing her empty threat. It had served its purpose in getting them away from the subject, getting him to open up.

  “You could tell. Say what you seen.”

  “Do you think they’d believe me?” The grant writers she and Myra approached had laughed.

  “So then why you acting like it’s what you planning?”

  Polly shakes her head. Her long, straight hair spins out in a narrow circle, brushing the hem of her jacket. “I figured you wanted to leave anyway. The subject —”

  “She have a name.”

  “Estrella. I know. But it’s more professional to — just give me an interview and I’ll do anything I can to help you. Money, alibis, and you won’t have to stick to a cover story.” Surely that must be a strain.

  “Awright.” He starts down the stoop. Can it be so simple? He waits on the bottom step for her. Yes? She joins him before he can change his mind and they stride together to the bus stop. She wants to ask him stuff while they wait but she hasn’t brought the right format, and a couple of afternoon shifts appear. Then they’re on the bus, which is as full as you’d expect this time of day.

  At last they reach campus. Her cube is way up on the North Building’s eleventh floor, but at least it’s a corner, and the three cubes immediately surrounding it are empty, as they are most afternoons. Not perfect, but this is the most privacy she’s going to find.

  She empties her palm into the data grid and resets the format she used with Estrella—the subject. Then dumps that, too. Plugs in the one she’s been working on for exactly this occasion. Even though it’s only about 60% ready, questions trailing off near the end, reaching no conclusive finish.

  This takes a few minutes. Lazzrus prowls the cube, examining the stills stuck to its walls. When everything’s prepped he’s standing by the one of her and Myra holding hands on Brentwood Beach. “Wife?” he asks. The implied question being whether Polly has a “thing” — a habitual fondness — or call it a fetish — for blacks.

  “My sister.” Polly gives the briefest of her customary explanations for the difference in their coloring: “She’s a graft.” With a graft’s premature aging beginning now, in her mid-twenties, to set in. “Sit over here, please.” She unfolds a plastic-cushioned chair next to her desktop, reserving the rolling stool for herself. It’s a little higher.

  The top of the format goes smoothly: Lazzrus readily admits his identity, giving her his name and security number matter-of-factly, almost nonchalantly, as if they didn’t belong to a dead man. These first blanks are mainly to get him used to answering her; his lack of resistance bodes well for the rest of the interview. And the ease of getting a good set of samples at the end.

  “Age?”

  Lazzrus hesitates. A tiny hesitation, but noticeable because there’s been none before. “You promise you’ll believe me?” Polly maintains her professionalism. The format doesn’t call for her to answer. “61.”

  “Date of birth?” she shoots back quickly, trying to elicit an inconsistency.

  “April 13. 1974.”

  Math-wise that would work out.

  “Do you have any offspring?”

  Lazzrus looks down at his lap. The bearded cheeks plump up in a surreptitious smile. “Yeah. Fifty-six I know of.”

  He’s attractive, yes, but ... Polly stupidly repeats his answer. “Fifty-six?”

  “That I know of. You seen Scotty. He’s probably the latest; I haven’t exactly been free to check out my other women, if they pregnant or not.”

  She skips ahead to the branch of the format about relationships and intimacy. Lazzrus claims he’s been married ten times — some of those unions obviously extralegal because of their dates’ overlap. At least one kid in each marriage, and close to five times that in less formal couplings. Again, he seems to have been involved in more than one of those at any given point. And yet, mentally adding it all up as she listens and records the man’s answers, Polly can’t scrunch his sexual timeline down any shorter than twenty-five years. If he isn’t lying, even if he’d started out at twelve ... he’d still be far older than he looked.

  Which means, pending confirmation, that time is another wound which those like him can heal. Perfect.

  Some of his exes he’s divorced or broken up with. Eight died. The rest, according to Lazzrus, believe they’re widows. Even Estrella. Polly gets the names of the others to check.

  Everything’s out of order now. What next? A list of pseudonyms? Employment? Momentary silence reigns as she lets the format scroll back to the branch of questions dealing with friendship. It’s nearer, less trouble to adjust her perspective for.

  But according to Lazzrus he has no friends. No peers. No equals. Does this mean there’s no connection between him and the other anomalies Myra noticed?

  Scrolling again, Polly searches for the branch of the format on family of origin. The back of a richly dark hand obscures her palm’s screen. “Look.” It’s like a command. Gentler, though. She meets his eyes.

  “Let me try and help you like you’re tryna help me. Let me talk my own way and you fit it in your framework or whatever you call it nowadays later.”

  “Format,” Polly corrects him. In her skin, around the shield of the palm, Lazzrus’s light pressure generates a pleasurable flood of icy heat. Impossible. Touching him like this—she never does that sort of thing. She eases her hand to one side and that ends the disturbingly enjoyable contact.

  “If it’s useful ...”

  “Four main things I bet you wanna find out: Am I immortal? What led me to find it out? How I get that way? How I handle it?”

  She nods. “Basically.”

  “I’ll tell you every bit. In my own words. Then you help me — not the way you think, though.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  #

  I was born in Philly. Like I said, April 13, 1974. Big changes going on around me as I grew up, all around the country, all around the world. You don’t remember, and you wouldn’t remember even if you’d been alive then, ‘cause you wouldn’t have seen what I saw. If you saw it, you wouldn’t have believed it.

  End of the Vietnam war, black woman elected to Congress; in lotsa ways it was a good time. But there was lynching going on quiet like behind the scenes, no matter what they called it in the papers — or what they didn’t call it, since half the time they didn’t bother to mention anything to do with it. My mama and papa — yeah, he was living at home — and my aunts and uncles and Big Mama too all drummed it in to move slow and sound respectful whenever the police came around. And that’s what I usually did and still do.

  But May 13, 1985, a month after my eleventh birthday, they dropped a bomb on MOVE headquarters. I was playing outside with my friend Birdie that morning when the city told us evacuate. Well, they told me evacuate; Birdie ran inside before they could come on the sidewalk. Birdie Africa. Everyone in MOVE changed their last name to Africa. It was symbolic. Birdie lived with his mama in — No, I don’t remember. Mizz Africa was what I called her. You done interrupting?

  We were supposed to bring a toothbrush, pajamas, and clothes for the next day. I was climbing into Uncle Buck’s Plymouth, about to slam the door, when I realized my favorite lucky striped T-shirt was over at Birdie’s — never mind how, but I wiggled out of my seat without any grown-ups noticing and ran across the street, lifted the boards they’d nailed over the basement window and jumped down in. Mizz Africa — a different one from Birdie’s mama, but like I say, they all had the same last name — this
other Mizz Africa found me in the laundry and took me to the basement TV room where they were watching coverage of the attack begun that moment on their own house. Already too late to get me out safe, she said. Then she went off to make sandwiches or load guns or whatever it took to help fight back.

  TV had me hypnotized, and nobody chased me away, which was understandable, I guess. All the shots flying back and forth. Guess I understand how my family drove off without me, too, in all that rush and confusion, and you know they couldn’t come back when they realized I wasn’t with them.

  Me and Birdie wasn’t the only kids in that basement. But we were the only ones alive afterwards.

  The shooting went on all day. In the TV room was pretty safe till the bomb collapsed the house’s roof and set the whole rest of the place on fire. The Mizz Africa who had come down to take care of us decided the best thing to do was run for it. Probably she was right. She made it, and Birdie. The three others — I found this out later — stopped a few rounds of ammunition, same as I did.

  That was the first time I died. Ain’t no fun.

  I mean, it hurt like hell, and I had no idea I wasn’t gone for good. I lay there dead in the house’s back yard and everything must have been blazing away for maybe five or six hours. I had landed in a wading pool, and if I hadn’t, and if a piece of corrugated roofing hadn’t fallen on top, and if it hadn’t been factory new and shiny side up when it fell, well ... Gotta have something left of me to bring back alive. I figured that much then, and by now I know.

  When I realized I was breathing and that awful itch all over, even in my bones, meant something besides the devil’s torment, I pushed the metal off me and sat up in the damp puddle that was left of the wading pool. Dark as it was I had trouble convincing myself my eyes were open and no doubt they were damaged some, because at first what I could see was just a bunch of blurs. Then I made out a wall here and there with little patches of paint showing through the charred-on black, heaps of rubble. A few blocks off were some houselights shining, halos around them gradually fading away. I started being able to see better. Wasn’t much more to see, though, and it took till the sun was almost ready to come up for me to figure out what was going on.