by Thea Lim
But as soon as she got to her lodging, she would call Donna. Donna would know where to find Frank. Polly would call the police if she had to. It would all be sorted out by the end of the week. Her mind bleared the particulars of her situation, laboring to protect itself from itself.
Now they were driving over water, and Polly turned to look out the window in the back door. She saw everything backwards, only after the van had passed it by. On the left, a cluster of five or six bonfires swam in the sky. On the right, a lightless hotel loomed over water like a mangrove. Its balconies gave the look of a tremendous honeycomb, but stark white against the total night. The hotel had no neighbor but brush as tall as houses for miles. They were at a checkpoint and she heard her name, distorted, as though the voices were speaking through a tin-can phone. Every time she tried to inch forward, nausea pinned her. A row of uniform junipers lined the road like the highway was wearing blinkers. She glimpsed guards at a checkpoint, reading maps by flashlight. For the first time she thought to be concerned that there was no light. No streetlights, no headlights from other cars, no table lamps on sills.
When she opened her eyes this time, a garden of golden huts was rolling past. Then came an empty concrete plain a mile wide, then came objects that Polly could not compute. They passed ten or fifteen of these somethings: a familiar shape, like a house or a church or a corner store, but the outline was wrong, baggy and shaggy like a beast. Then she understood. Strip malls, warehouses, and offices were canopied in shrubs and grasses that seized their first stories. Anything higher was bound by jumbo-leafed ivy that smothered doors and windows with wiggling tendrils, bricks and mortar transmuted into jiggling, unearthly life-forms.
It was like seeing the face of a loved one where a moustache is missing, or an eye. Her fear was present but vague, like an emotion she had once felt a long time ago.
She woke again, banging her elbow against a rivet. She finally remembered the most important thing: the day of the week. What if it was Sunday and she’d already missed the first Saturday?
She dragged herself, seat by seat, up the aisle, pausing only when the nausea became dire. She writhed into the bench behind the driver as the van plunged into light.
“You all right there, miss?” He had a pockmarked face, like an old dish sponge.
“What day is it?” The tires hit gravel, rattling Polly’s teeth, and she looked for a sick bag.
“Friday.”
Her relief was so intense, it was painful, like blood coursing into a sleeping limb. With all these guardhouses, Frank hadn’t been able to make it to the time travel facility in Houston, but he’d be in Galveston.
But was she in Galveston? This was not Galveston. She’d been once, and it didn’t look like this.
“Where are we?”
“Galveston.”
“That’s where we’re going?” she asked.
“That’s where we are.”
“We’re in Galveston?”
“Yes. Is something wrong?”
“We’re not in the outskirts?”
“We’re in Galveston.”
“Why does it look”—she struggled to think of a nice word and could not—“abandoned?”
“Pandemic took ninety-three percent of us, through sickness or flight, but each remaining has the strength to do the work of twenty.” Then he scowled, his bottom lip pinning his top lip to his nose. “I’m giving you information out of order. We’re not supposed to say that first.” He popped a finger up against the windshield. “Look! It’s not abandoned at all.”
A boulevard was unfurling out of the desolation. Thick, hooded figures rose out of the median. Now Polly’s fear swamped in from that long-ago place, swift and searing. But the figures were just bushes, hedges, painstakingly carved into animate shapes.
“Tyrannosaurus rex,” said the driver, pointing out the topiary shapes as they passed. “Mickey Mouse. Spiral. Cups and saucers?”
There were explanations, things that could help create sense. She just had to corral the right questions from the wilds of her mind.
“Ninety-three percent of what?” Polly asked.
“What?”
“The pandemic killed ninety-three percent of Americans?”
“Not necessarily killed, also chased away. This is Harborside Drive.” The driver continued the tour. “It’s the first thing the vacationers see when they come off the ferry.”
“Where do vacationers come from?” But she thought of a more pressing question. “Where are the other travelers? The ones I arrived with?”
“I’m not positive. They probably went to the holiday resorts at Rockport, Padre Island, Lake Charles.”
“Why am I here?”
“To work in a holiday resort. Right?” With one hand on the wheel, he used the other to flick through a stack of bound papers on the seat beside him. “Polly Nader?”
She wanted to ask him to watch the road. “Yes.” Then again, they hadn’t met a single car.
“You’re here to work for Henry Baird, head decorator at the Hotel Galvez.”
They turned right, into darkness.
“We’ve only completed development around the perimeter of the island.” The driver drew a circle in the air with his finger. “Like a roller rink. You and me are going a smidge inland. It’s more rustic.”
The headlights found a lone, gawky high-rise, age-spotted and brown, crisscrossed on one side with fire escapes but gaping open on the other, this height-wise hole covered by a flap of plastic that slapped in the wind, like a giant’s skirt. They pulled up in front of a set of double doors. There were no lights on behind the frosted glass.
“Here we are! Best digs in town: Moody Plaza. For O-1s only.”
It looked nearly condemned, but she took comfort in hearing O-1 was still a coveted status.
“Don’t worry”—the driver pointed to the stories-high plastic flap—“they’re fixing that.”
When he unlocked the passenger door, instead of the sweet breeze she longed for, a wall of heat socked her in the face. Her tongue swelled. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and the driver said, “You never been to Texas before?” Her body had reverted to its default: though she understood she was in Texas, she had expected the air of Buffalo.
He had to unlock a box to get at the light switch for the lobby. “Energy conservation program,” he explained. “You’re on the fourth floor. What a break. You could’ve been on eleven.”
The stairwell landing was the width of a broom closet. Up close, the driver looked drained. He started when she tapped his arm to get his attention.
“Will there be time for me to go to the Flagship Hotel tomorrow?”
“You’ll have orientation; first things first.” His voice was muffled as they ascended in single file, her eyes on the back of his dust-colored vest. He was a big man and walking behind him was like facing a wall. “There could be some time for sightseeing later in the day.”
“So I’ll be able to go tomorrow? And tomorrow is Saturday?”
She saw his face as they drew abreast at the turn of the stairs. He was gazing at the risers, thoughtfully or vacantly; she couldn’t tell. But he said, “Yes,” and that was all she wanted.
“What street are we on?”
“Twenty-First.”
They could not be far from the Flagship. She was so lucky.
“Can I make a phone call?” she asked.
“A phone call? Who do you know here to call?”
“I want to call my aunt.” She was surprised by his rudeness, but she tried to keep civil.
“Where’s your aunt?”
“In Buffalo.”
“How do you know?”
Polly didn’t know what to say. His questions were so odd. “She’s my aunt.”
He paused on the third-floor landing to look at her.
“So you have a phone number for her?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a current phone number?”
“Yes!”
“You’re sure it’s a phone number for right . . . now . . . ?” He said this courteously, as if his line of questioning could cause insult.
“Of course.” And then a nightmarish cold gripped her. “Oh no,” she said. “It’s 1998.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
She put her hand out and felt the reassurance of the wall. She said, “Oh boy, oh no,” because she couldn’t tender what was truly in her mind—What have I done? What have I done?—to an awkward stranger.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I see this all the time. People’s minds have trouble catching up with their bodies. They should list it as a symptom of the motion sickness.”
“Can we call now anyway? To see if she’s there?” She hated the weedy tone in her voice.
“I have to go home. I live on the Bolivar Peninsula. If I don’t go now, I’ll miss the boat.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Is there someone I can speak to? Maybe it’s you, or a superior, about my situation? I was supposed to go to 1993.”
“I’m not positive who you can speak to. But listen, your aunt has waited years for you. Trust me, she can wait one more night.” He smiled and so she smiled back, a reflex. “I’ll put you in touch with anyone you want to talk to tomorrow.”
A headache, a pounding, grinding, screeching thing, had joined the nausea. He led her to her door on the fourth floor and dropped the key in her hand. He pointed out the bathroom down the hall. He pulled a jar of beans from his vest pocket. “To fortify you.” A dank, salty wind blew up and down the hallway through the gash in the south wall.
She could not remember what the travel handbook had promised in terms of accommodations. She had not asked too many questions; the official accommodations hadn’t mattered, because she was going to have her own, at Frank’s, there was no doubt.
She could unlock the door, but she could not get it open more than halfway. She reached her arm inside and fumbled for a light switch. But there wasn’t one, at least not anywhere light switches are commonly mounted, scaled to basic human dimensions: within a foot of the door, within five feet of the floor. It was a small but eerie discrepancy. She turned to the driver for help, but he’d gone. She hadn’t heard him say good-bye.
Her gut crowded with sudden childhood fright, her capacity for the strange exceeded. She had to make a phone call and find out where Donna was, where Frank was now, no matter what. But as she turned towards the stairwell to find the driver, the light within it clicked off. The darkness throbbed. She took one step down the stairs, and her mouth filled with sick. She flailed her way back to her room and clung to the wall. She inched forward, toe by toe, until she found the switch, four feet from the doorway, at waist height. Slapdash electricals for a once-grand room that had been divided and subdivided into sorry slices. Brown light shone from a bulb in a plastic seashell cover. She had not been able to get the door open because it was blocked by the bed. There was no sink. She spat into a tiny garbage can.
There was a phone hanging next to the bed, a fleshy plastic lump on a cord. She grabbed the receiver. But the phone had no buttons, not on the front or the back, the receiver or the cradle. It was like a face without features. Her need to vomit spiked all the way up. Her groin contracted and sweat spackled her nose.
She turned off the light and lay down. She pressed the back of her neck against the bed and clasped her hands and jammed her thumbs against her ribs to steady her heart. Of course she would see him tomorrow. Of course he would be waiting on the first floor of the Flagship, sitting in those bulbous burgundy armchairs, where he had a view of the door. Of course she would get there hours before he even formed the thought that she might not make it. And by tomorrow evening, this acid fear that she would never again see his face would have lasted less than a day.
* * *
Polly did not remember falling asleep, but she was woken by a baying like a car horn. The phone was ringing, and her heart zippered into her throat. She lifted the receiver, hearing Frank’s voice before the other end spoke.
“GOOD MORNING!” a voice screamed so loud, Polly screamed back. It carried on, unperturbed. “IT IS 0700 HOURS AND TODAY IS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1998! THE TEMPERATURE IS 92 AND RISING, SO GET OUT YOUR SUN HATS AND SANDALS! THE ASSIGNMENT FOR POLLY NADER TODAY IS: ORIENTATION. YOUR SCHEDULE IS: AT 0730 HOURS, PROCEED TO THE LOBBY FOR PICKUP.” The voice was female and violently cheerful. It paused before every personalized value, and then a low, gloomy voice interjected with Polly’s name and assignment.
Polly had slept in the clothes she had traveled in, the shabby hand-me-downs of a stranger, given to her at the airport to replace her torn blue suit. A towel and navy coveralls hung by the door. She put on the coveralls. She didn’t have any toothpaste. She kept sucking her teeth, embarrassed by her breath.
There was no sign of the driver from last night. A different man in the lobby waved her onto an old school bus and yanked it into drive before she could find a seat. There were three other passengers, all asleep. Polly’s nausea was gone, replaced by the sensation that her insides had been suctioned out. The highway and the ferry terminal were new. Everything else was junk. Kudzu spread like gangrene across the boarded-up buildings, its leaves the size of dinner plates.
A headless palm tree stood alone in a field of wan grasses. Shipping containers lined up end to end on cinder blocks made a winding, rusty snake. There were too many containers to count. They had holes cut in the sides for entry and exit; the containers were makeshift homes. The bus stopped where a crowd had formed along the narrow road shoulder. The people were dusty and creased, with grit in their hair and big, scarred hands, and skin darkened by the sun. They didn’t look like new arrivals going to get oriented. They boarded, coming and coming, the driver counting each body with a clicker. Polly got wedged against the metal siding, three to each bench made for two.
This bus was not going to an orientation. This must be a mistake. She didn’t fit in with these people. Why hadn’t the driver noticed his error?
Or maybe they were going to drop her off somewhere else. This was some kind of public bus. She relaxed. She’d taken a million public buses. Like random shapes that turn out to be words, she understood this context all at once. Her seatmates had the scent of body and onion, but it was just the smell of a regular ride.
A paper bag was passed. Each passenger removed something, then sent the bag on back, not looking at what their hands were doing. Polly took the bag stiffly, holding it with as few fingers as she could, in case it was dirty or wet. Beneath the bag’s rolled rim lay a heap of gleaming tomatoes. She extracted one hesitantly. Was she meant to eat it like an apple? The woman beside Polly tore into hers, red juice running down her chin. A strip of skin with a chunk of flesh still attached swung from the gouge she’d made. Polly’s stomach turned and she dropped the tomato into her pocket. Her face was hot, her mouth tight.
On came the checkpoint and the juniper blinkers and the floating bonfires. But now she saw that the fires were attached to oil refinery towers. From afar, the refinery looked like someone had punctured the coast with a hundred different needles—sewing needles, knitting needles, spindles, syringes. A cyclone fence circled the towers, so tall she could see it from across the water, nearly half the height of the highest tower, garlanded with bales of razor wire.
Now they passed flowering shrubs with cirrus strands dancing in the bus’s wake, and more topiary. Then a high wall of shrubbery, so you could see only the pastel shingles of the vacation homes arrayed on the other side. Then they reached the bowels of the resort: drab utility buildings and the putrid smell of garbage. Here they stopped, by a shipping container.
Polly stayed in her seat until the bus driver honked his horn and shouted, “Gulf Pearl. Come on, everybody off.” Maybe he made everyone get off at each stop for an administrative reason. After, he’d let her back on. But as soon as her foot cleared the step, the driver shut the door.
“Wait!”
“Are you loco? ¿Estúpido?” the driver yelled.
“You’re supposed to take me somewhere else. I’m going to orientation.” She had to shout through the door.
He opened the door.
“That’s not what this says.” He jabbed his finger at a clipboard, making it skitter across the dashboard. “Eighty pax to this cycle center. I’m just the transporter. I go where the manifest says.” He had a scraggly little moustache like a teenager, though he was older.
“Is this orientation?”
“It’s a cycle center.”
The others had vanished down a lane the width of a body beside the shipping container.
“What’s a cycle center?”
“Journeymen come here to ride bikes.”
“For exercise?”
A guffaw urped out of him. “No. It’s the job.”
“I’m not supposed to ride a bike. I was brought here as an upholsterer.”
“A what?”
“I restore furniture.”
“You were brought to the cycle center to fix furniture?”