The Bewildered

by Peter Rock

  “I still don’t get it,” Leon said.

  “Just the way they’ll feel.”

  “So?” he said.

  Natalie stood up, taller than him. The rain beaded up on her light brown hair, which folded thickly on her shoulders. It looked real, if somewhat crooked on her head. She touched Leon’s arm and they began to walk, shoulder to shoulder, down the railroad tracks, on the wet and greasy wooden ties.

  “Don’t be impatient with me,” she said.

  “I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Don’t be.”

  “That’s not how it is, I can’t just not be.”

  “Just walk here with me. Lean against me.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know what I’ve been doing.”

  “Like you forget?” Natalie said, “Or you just lose time, skip over it?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s normal. It happens to everyone.”

  “Not in the same way,” he said.

  Trucks slid across the Morrison Bridge, ahead, their headlights dim. The sun was about to rise.

  “What about the wire?” he said. “I miss it. Can we go?”

  “No one calls,” she said. “The locks are all changed. That’s all over, I think, and I can’t keep track—there’s other places, I know. Switching stations—one pole I found where the arrestor’s broken, where I can feel the surges humming three blocks away. Let’s go there. Or another place; I know some things, what you need.”

  Leon looked down at his damp shoes, stretching to reach the next railroad tie with each step. He looked up and saw Kayla, standing in an alleyway; thirty feet away, in the rain, holding her skateboard. Her face pointed at him, with no expression. Slowly, he raised his hand, and waved, but Kayla did not wave back. Instead, she turned, set down her board, and pushed off, away.

  “Now what,” Natalie was saying, “were we talking about?”

  “I know a place to go,” Leon said. “I could take you places with wires—”

  “That’s it,” she said. “You lose time, you skip over it, you forget. I almost forgot that we were talking about forgetting. And forgetting—that happens to everyone. That’s not the problem; we just have to let ourselves forget. We can’t stay in the same place doing the same thing over and over and over again, reminding ourselves, keeping track.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Leon said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “You can’t worry about forgetting,” she said. “It’s a matter of blending in, and attractive clothing. Listen to me. We’ll move forward.”

  “What?” he said. “My parents.”

  “What about them?”

  “They took me to the hospital. Two days, two nights. Looking at pictures, doing puzzles. They put me in machines and looked at my skeleton, and my heart, and my brain—”

  “And?”

  “And all they want is to ask me questions—”

  “Oh,” Natalie said, “that’s exactly how it is, once questions start you’re only looking backward. You’re right—we’re the same, that way, we can’t like questions. You have to get away from them; you can’t let them slow you, make you doubt.”

  Cars honked at each other on the distant bridges; pale wet headlights slid along.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “That’s not how it is, I just can’t not be.”

  “I know some things,” she said. “What you need.”

  “And they don’t even know if there’s anything different about me—they’re going to test me more, I think, keep me in the hospital for a really long time.”

  “It’s that no one calls,” she said. “That makes me anxious. All the locks have been changed. My keys don’t fit.”

  “I just don’t know the answers,” he said. “And the thing is, I don’t feel bad.”

  “Of course you don’t,” she said. “Only different. And they’ll never understand, but they’ll try to slow you down. They’ll come with question after question.”

  Natalie stopped walking, and so did Leon. She untwisted a piece of copper wire from around her neck and put it around his. Tight, it pressed a line in the skin of his throat.

  22.

  THE FISH IN THE TANK swam yellow and black, gold and white, with scales like armor. Koi. Some were as long as Chris’s leg. Kayla reached out, her fingers breaking the water’s surface—fish slid closer, believing it was feeding time—and the Asian woman behind the store’s counter suddenly hissed:

  “Boys! Step back, you two. No touching.”

  “I’m a girl,” Kayla said.

  The woman didn’t answer. She returned to sorting receipts, and Chris and Kayla talked softly, watching the fish, not looking at each other.

  “His parents called mine again,” Chris said. “I haven’t even seen him for a week.”

  “I saw him a couple mornings ago, at the skatepark. But what we’re going to do today is for Leon, to help him, so we can understand what’s going on.”

  “And what are we going to do?”

  “You’ll see.” Kayla looked over at the woman again, raising her voice. “How much for the big ones?”

  “Too much for you. They’re twenty years old.”

  “So?”

  “More than a thousand,” the woman said.

  “The little ones will live longer,” Kayla said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not too many get that big.”

  Outside, it was growing dark. Kayla looked back at Chris, then pointed to the white face of a clock on the wall.

  The air outside wasn’t any fresher; there was no wind at all. Across the street stood the store they were watching, shanghai shanghai, the gold words painted directly on the window. Kayla led Chris across to it; they stood two doors down, waiting. Nearby, the tall red gate spanned the street, covered in gold symbols even Kayla couldn’t read. The gate rested on marble, and on gold lions, their bodies big as cars, kneeling there with pathetic expressions on their faces. Homeless people leaned against the lions, panhandlers drifted up from the Rescue Mission and the soup kitchens. Chris and Kayla paid no attention; they watched Shanghai Shanghai.

  And then fingers grasped the bottom of the OPEN sign in the window, spun it to CLOSED. The man emerged all at once, his bald black head glinting before he put on a hat with a gold band, a turned up brim. He walked past them, and his gaze was high above them, looking beyond where anyone else could see. As he walked away in his pleated suit, copper bracelets flashed at his wrists, faintly clattered together. The people on the sidewalk parted as he approached them, giving him plenty of room. He turned the corner and was gone.

  “He won’t be back,” Kayla said.

  “What?”

  “I watched him last night and the one before.” She looked up and down the street. “We could pick the lock, but someone would see. Come on. Follow me.”

  They gave no one spare change as they walked, searching. They tried two wrong alleys before they found the right one. The green dumpster had been moved, which made it all more difficult to recognize, and the cover was on the manhole, slowing them. Kayla pried it open using the skate tool in her pocket, but it still took ten minutes, with both she and Chris sweating, anxiously checking the street behind them. When the cover slid away, they both stepped back, as if something or someone was awaiting them, ready to emerge from below. Cool, damp air rose.

  Kayla turned and went down first, her shaved head disappearing, and Chris followed.

  Together in the tunnel, the round circle of light slipping away, above and behind them, they held hands, and still bumped into each other. They could hear each other’s breathing. They whispered.

  “Did you hear someone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shadows.”

  “I know.”

  They passed makeshift, underground storerooms, huge cans of peanut oil and bags of rice on shelves. Overhead, pipes snaked in every direction, circled by the shining rings of stainless steel
clamps.

  And then there were voices, and lights—flashlights, tight beams, round and bright. A group of people approached; Kayla and Chris hid along the shadowed wall, out of sight.

  One man wore a headlamp and walked out in front, talking. The lamp illuminated his long, frizzy hair; when he turned, it shone on the faces of the people—four other adults, two children—who were listening.

  “While sailors were shanghaied in other cities,” he was saying, “Portland is unique because it’s believed that men were actually kept here for periods of time, a ready supply of sailors.” He turned his head, shining the light on a window cut in the wall, metal bars across it. “These tunnels run all the way from Twenty-third to the Willamette River, so you can imagine the extent of the labyrinth.”

  One of the children interrupted him, asking something.

  “Are the tunnels haunted?” the guide said. “No, of course not—though people make up all kinds of stories.”

  “Why didn’t they run away?” a woman asked.

  “Well, they were locked in, and sometimes drugged, and you’ve probably noticed how the floor of the tunnels is covered in broken glass—those who were caught had to take off their shoes and go barefoot. I’ll show you the pile of old boots, a little later.”

  Chris thought he heard footsteps, saw a movement in the darkness, in the other direction, a person hunching along. Chris pointed, trying to direct Kayla’s attention, but she could not see his hand. Now, the group was almost past them, clustered together. Kayla pulled Chris along, sideways, as the guide led the people away.

  The two of them moved slowly, by touch, finding the tight, hidden openings that were not doors, only broken-out bricks. The tunnel seemed to end, then turned back upon itself, blindly, all rough concrete and broken edges, and seemed to end again. They remembered this section, from the time before; they knew they were headed in the right direction. The air around them hung heavy and still, greasy, even hotter as they entered another passageway.

  A thin shaft of light filtered down through a loose floorboard overhead, and in it they saw the flash of a face, twenty feet away. It was the bearded man, the man they’d seen before. He moved carefully, yet confidently; he did not need a flashlight here.

  “Victor,” Kayla said, under her breath. “Victor Machado.”

  “What?”

  “Shh.”

  Carefully, they followed the man, crouching silently as he stepped into a nook in the wall, into a space the size of a closet. He loosened his clothes, then began pulling at the walls; he seemed to hold snakes—they were conduits, cables, wires. He began to wrap them around himself.

  Chris stifled a sneeze, dirt in his nose, cobwebs on his face and in his hair. He leaned closer, trying to see, but Kayla held him back, in the blackest shadows. She pulled him away, down the tunnel, and finally stopped at another tight space like the one the man had gone into. They both stepped inside.

  “This is an electrical vault,” she said, whispering. “I read about them. All this; you see, these are phone lines—we could even tap Chesterton’s line, if we got another headset—”

  “Who?”

  “And there are special phone lines for the police, somewhere, too, but mostly it’s all electrical, high voltage stepped down for buildings. This round thing’s a transformer, same as up on a pole.”

  “What was he doing back there?” Chris said. “That guy?”

  “Quiet,” she said.

  As they stepped out of the vault, into the tunnel, they heard something, and then the shadows shifted as someone approached. It was a woman, slipping from darkness to darkness, with short, black hair, an unfamiliar face. Oblivious, she didn’t see them, but moved past, into the vault, and began arranging the wires.

  “Let’s go,” Kayla whispered. “We’re wasting time. We’re almost there.” She pointed ahead, at the pale square of plywood that covered the entrance to the store. Before they reached it, though, they passed a third electrical vault.

  Leon stood there, looking out, as if waiting to join them, to say something. But he did not. His body trembled; it did not move. His arms were hooked into cables, supporting his weight, and two wires were bent so one pressed against his forehead, one at the back of his head, holding it steady, looking out at them. Only he didn’t see them through his wide eyes, his jerking eyelids; the skin of his cheeks was stretched tight and shifting in waves, a current running through it. His lips were pulled back, his teeth clenched. His shirt was torn at the neck, his pants unbuttoned, his shoelaces snaking loose and white along the dark ground.

  “We have to get him out.” Chris touched Leon’s arm and it shocked him, jerked his hand back at him.

  “No,” Kayla said. “Don’t touch him. He’s fine—believe me, he’s fine. I know. This is just what Victor was starting to do, back there. He was tapping in.”

  “How do you know that? How do you know the names?”

  “Come on,” she said, impatient.

  “If this is what we’re going to do,” Chris said. “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “This isn’t for us,” she said. “We’re not like they are.”

  She took his hand and pulled him away from Leon, toward the plywood and the tight tunnel hidden behind it.

  Kayla went in first and he crawled as fast as he could, trying to keep up. He had splinters in his hands. The trapdoor opened ahead—he heard it, saw the light, felt the change in pressure—and then he was pulling himself up into the store. The glass bottles on the shelves rattled, still settling from the trapdoor’s slap.

  “Hurry, Chris.”

  “This isn’t helping me understand.”

  They whispered, though they were alone. Kayla was closing the trapdoor, pulling the threadbare rug back across it. The sparse merchandise around them cut strange silhouettes, a metal wind chime hung silent, the copper displays glinted, dull, and the unreadable calendars glowed white on the wall, covered in black symbols.

  They hurried up the stairs. Glass from the tunnels was stuck in the rubber soles of their shoes, and it tapped on the floor as they climbed, as they raced down the hallway. A light shone in the first room they passed, empty, its walls covered in maps. Kayla opened the second door, where they’d stopped and listened, the last time.

  Inside, the room looked kind of like a laboratory. All white, with metal counters and cabinets, two bare cots set out in the middle.

  “What if I leave now?” Chris said.

  “Take off your clothes,” Kayla said. She was hurrying around the room, opening cabinets and drawers as if she knew what she was looking for. “You remember; you heard him. It works better that way.”

  She had wires in one hand and shucked down her pants with the other. Chris stood in the middle of the room, watching her; he took off his shirt, folded it, unfolded it, and folded it again. Kayla wore only her bra now and held out two flat pieces of copper-colored metal, held together by wires.

  “These go on your chest and back. Here.”

  The metal was cold; he hunched away from the plates on his chest, and that forced his spine into the one on his back. He shivered. Wires trailed, snarled, their ends dragging along the ground, shedding copper splinters.

  “This looks like the same wire we used to get for Natalie,” he said.

  “Lay down on that cot,” Kayla said.

  He did, and she kept moving around him, making preparations. She fit a kind of necklace onto him, an armband. She twisted wires together. She hooked the loose ends of those trailing from him into the holes in the copper plates she wore. She fit the loose ends of her own wires into holes in his plates.

  “Stop moving,” she said, attaching a frayed end to the piece around his waist. Her hand was inches from his dick, which stirred, half-hard, pointing at her, but she didn’t notice, didn’t say a thing.

  He closed his eyes and heard her step back, heard her cot shift beneath her, and then there was only her breathing, just beyond his, and outside a car horn, a shout, the roar o
f distant traffic, and her breathing, and his own, slow, pulling him inside. The dimness, the inside of his eyelids peeled away like black clouds he was passing through, and it was as if he were high above the trees, all their leaves, swooping lower toward a round pond that was not a pond, though it was full of water—

  “What?” Kayla said. “What are you saying? You’re mumbling too much.”

  “I can see us,” he said. “Up on top of the tank in Forest Park. You’re pretending to swim, throwing your white shirt off the edge and I can see it floating down into the tall grass. Now we’re sitting on the foam rubber, in our underwear, and the sun is bright and we’re looking at each other—”

  Chris opened his eyes. Kayla was watching him, stretched out naked on the cot next to him, naked except for the copper pieces held on by wires; more wires stretched across the gap between the cots, to him. Her face looked like she was in pain, inside somewhere, like she was ignoring it, trying not to let him see.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Close your eyes. Keep talking. Keep telling me.”

  He closed his eyes and saw the gray of the concrete, the red and blue of spray paint.

  “It’s under Burnside,” he said. “The skatepark. It’s you, Kayla, only you’re not skating. You’re sitting there, and putting on makeup. You’re sitting on your skateboard, and you’re reading—I can see you writing in a notebook, and there’s another notebook inside it, and now you open it—you’re checking to make sure no one can see, but I can see, and the handwriting inside this notebook is not your handwriting, and there’s drawings, of two bodies, like diagrams with lines between them that are wires, that are marked down as wires—”

  “Wake up!” Kayla was saying. “Chris! Wake up! We should go, get out of here.”

  He opened his eyes and could not see the skatepark. He was in the white room, and Kayla was jerking the wires from him, untwisting them.

  “Just like I thought,” Kayla said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Later,” she said, panting, half-dressed, leaning close to untwist wires from his neck, his waist.