A Kind of Compass

by McKeon, Belinda; Rahill, Elske;

  It was the horse, the soldiers said – couldn’t we see that the horse had died?

  The uniforms of the soldiers were covered in pale dust, but the creases were still sharp. The teeth of the horse protruded almost horizontally from the mouth, huge and gleaming.

  We can’t just leave the horse, the soldiers said. We have to do something about this horse.

  Yes, of course, we said, but what can we do?

  They were already manoeuvring the cart around to the courtyard, to the well.

  We will need you to take the roof off this well, the soldiers said, almost apologetically.

  We argued with them. Why should we take the roof off our well?

  But the roof came down.

  Then the crossbar and bucket, soon they were gone, too – and the old rope lay loosely at our feet.

  We’ll need a hand, the soldiers said. A hand with this horse.

  The horse seemed to shiver, but the horse could not have shivered – the horse was dead. The soldiers grinned, almost apologetically.

  It took all of us to lift her. She went in headfirst. She entered the water noiselessly, but all the way down there was the shrieking and cracking of huge teeth against stone.

  CITY INSIDE

  Porochista Khakpour

  For the first time in his life, Henry was living in a famous city. Even his apartment building had a well-known history – the broker had told him some tale about a famous deli owner and his famous death in the building. His whole block was bustling. There were rough-looking bars meant to attract college kids. There were Japanese-looking hair salons full of the Japanese. There were convenience stores run by men of ambiguous origins, selling cold fish, canned pantyhose, prayer cards, everything. Dry cleaners with signs that boasted ‘delivery.’ A nameless store that sold only a dozen plain white t-shirts. The block was packed. In that first week, it was enough for Henry to just walk up and down it. He decided to save himself and take it slow with the city: content to sit in his new apartment, listen to the radio, read the Classifieds, make phone calls, check his balance, nap. He let entire portions of the day escape him. He let the day exist only as it did outside his one and only window.

  He lived in a small studio on the third floor, which he accessed by elevator. The elevator was a good alternative to the strange traffic of the steps, which had presented itself to him on his first day, as he lugged the last of his boxes and found himself overtaken by a pack of howling children. They were in a bad rush. Henry was shoved against the railing. He was not convinced it was an accident. He suspected one child had even tried to trip him. He also felt mildly sure he had heard another mutter old man.

  Henry had just turned 33.

  It felt right to be paranoid. The city seemed to say to him, I am a city of the strange, a city to interpret paranoically. He was adjusting. Still, he felt it would not be wrong, in the adjustment month or two, to stay in more, to know his space a little better, and then branch out. There was no hurry to know the city in full, to know all his neighbours. He already got his share of the outside world just sitting there. He could even count on some socialising, as he could count on daily visits from maintenance.

  Since he had moved in, the building’s two maintenance men had been constantly at work in his apartment. The maintenance men were remarkably active, while their landlord-boss remained entirely anonymous. (Henry sent his rent cheque to a name whose source was shrouded in absolute mystery: ‘Bettina.’ He didn’t know what – agency, person, or what – ‘Bettina’ was.) Their work never ended. They were constantly checking radiators, unscrewing and re-screwing knobs, tapping at ceilings, flushing toilets, running water, stepping on things, talking in hushed voices between themselves. One night, Henry awoke to the taller one standing on the ledge outside his window. He was painting. The maintenance man explained that they had painted the outer window frame just before Henry had moved in, but that they now had to repaint them, because ‘Bettina’ didn’t like white; the building, after all, was off-white. What annoyed Henry even more was how they almost always left their tools in his apartment, knocking hours, sometimes days, later to retrieve them. The first few times this happened they had not even knocked; they had keys, and they let themselves in. Henry didn’t have to be there, they reminded him, but Henry let them know he was always at home, he did his work from home, and that knocking was nice. They respected this.

  The city said to him, as if with a playful rib-jab, Deal with it, jerk, and so he dealt with it. He reminded himself that the maintenance men were really a minor complaint. It was worth it – worth the thrill of the city that he felt more than enough, perhaps even more strongly, he thought, bottled in as he was, looking out.

  The window was not for everyone. The broker had even shrugged at it, emphasising the high ceilings instead: You know you’re in the city when your ceiling is high! In the other cities that Henry had lived in (towns, really), they had only had short buildings with short ceilings, wide roads full of lanes, parks packed with giant trees and picnicking families, and he was sick and tired of that stuff. In a city like this, a man required height, he thought, and a high ceiling symbolised this nicely. It also somehow made up for the many square feet his floor space lacked. In the city you give up a few things – space is one – to be in the city, to really BE in the city, get my drift?

  So, beside the window, he set up his swivel chair – the one he had stolen from his old office on his final day, duct-taping it to the floor of the cargo van for the 180-mile-drive up the coast. He adjusted the height so his head got a good bottom quarter’s perspective of the view.

  The view was sky-less. All he faced was another jutting part of his building, the portion of it which, he imagined, contained one- and two-bedroom apartments. All he had was another person’s window and its insides.

  It belonged to a woman.

  In his down-time – mornings when he waited for his mind’s fog to clear, evenings when he fought a gassy restlessness behind his ribs – he watched her. Mornings and evenings were good times, because they were the only times the woman appeared. The woman worked.

  She was alone, always. She was not the type of woman men watched, he figured. Sometimes it did occur to him to feel strange or even guilty – after all, in those other towns, good citizens regarded such watching as suspect, even bad. But he was in the city now, he reminded himself, and he was just looking out; it was allowed; he paid a high rent; it was not his fault there was a woman in his view.

  Plus, her sight was not seductive. She was a thick, although not fat, woman. What little he saw of her flesh – wrists, neck, face – revealed a body solidly clotted and permanently flushed. She had an ample bundle of carpet-brown hair that she tied back with a rubber band. She did have nails, however, long and red and professional. He could not tell her age.

  His interest was innocent. He admired her substance. The first time he saw her – his first night there – one word instantly popped into his mind: decency. She looked decent. Here was a woman who respected the right things in life and in return got respect. She did not seem to participate in ‘going out on the town’. She stuck by a routine. She came home at roughly the same time each evening, in suit-sets of respectable shades (gray, navy, brown, black) and tasteful makeup; then she would disappear and return in sweats, a t-shirt, and a scrubbed face. She would pop a meal in the microwave, lie on her couch, and watch TV. Shows and more shows. Once in a while, when her face was lit with the battling flashes of the television, he could see her mouth something to herself. Sometimes she would smile. Once he saw her sneeze. Then when it came time to end the day, to get the recommended eight hours of sleep, she would one by one switch off the lights, and shade by shade, in dimming frames, simply disappear.

  Then the day came when Henry suspected she might have caught his eye catching her. He was not sure but felt it was possible. She had abruptly turned away from the television and walked over to her window to get something left on the sill, he figured. As she reached ou
t for it, Henry sensed her seem to become, for a quick second, conscious of him. He was not sure. After all, it was possible that her eyes might have accidentally fallen on the air-space that corresponded with his exact eye-level. Who knew? All that mattered was that she had looked away and gone on with her business.

  But an hour later when his doorbell rang, Henry felt the stirring of a small yet staunch fear, like the unlodging of old gum in the gut. He quietly walked to his door and looked through his peephole, hoping for the maintenance men. It was not them, but it was thankfully not her either.

  It was a child.

  Of course. The building was teeming with children. And sourceless children, children whose parents were invisible. He did not expect this of the city – he was sure the city would say, I am a fucking-nice city, but not a good one for families (at best, couples with dogs.) But not his building. His was full of them – children seemingly on their own, children with big words, children with money in their pockets, children going places, children with authority and agenda. Children who made their presence known.

  The child was a girl, a wisp of a little girl who Henry had not yet seen.

  She said, ‘Sir, do you have heating, sir? We think the boiler’s down and that we should call maintenance.’

  He assured her that he had heat. He went as far to ask which apartment was hers. She said she lived downstairs. Henry smiled, relieved.

  The girl suddenly said, ‘Hey, sir, wait, I have something for you!’ She darted off and came back with a black plastic suitcase, which she dramatically flipped open before his eyes. Inside: knives.

  ‘Steak knives,’ she said, the words glowing through her almost. ‘We’re selling them to family, friends. And neighbours! I’m sure you could use a new steak knife set, right? I mean, really think about your steak knives – when was the last time you got around to buying one? We got it all, eight-piece, nine-piece, all made in Germany, with high-carbon-stamped-stainless-steel, micro-serrated-four-and-a-half-inch blades, with three-rivet polypropylene handles, full tangs, on birch wood blocks or in pine gift boxes or plastic carrying cases, 61% off the list price, sir. We got real beauties …!’

  Henry looked at her gleaming, sharp, deadly things, and her freckles and glasses, and explained – tenderly – that they were very nice, but that no, thank you, he couldn’t. Still, a part of him was sold; since the move, with his silverware still boxed, he’d been working at meats with plastic knives. Plus he had never owned steak knives, and he could believe they were nice.

  ‘Whatever, sir!’ the girl snorted, skipping off.

  Minutes later, his doorbell rang again. This time it rang several times in a row, with an urgency that worried Henry. When he looked out the peephole, he saw a young gangly boy who looked somewhat like the girl – same freckles, same frame.

  The boy held his middle finger up to the peephole.

  Henry opened the door, for the sake of being natural, once the boy had galloped off. Although he realised it was a gesture not uncommon in the city, and maybe not even intended for hostile interpretation, he was glad to avoid confrontation. He didn’t know what a child like that could do to him.

  Exhausted, Henry slumped into his swivel chair. The evening had been congested with events. He turned to the window until the woman’s lights went out and he decided it was time be done.

  But it was bound to occur; that he knew. So when the moment came, only days later, that she noticed and made it known that she had noticed, when she didn’t, even out of politeness, break the stare, Henry felt its inevitability like a bad knee ahead of a rainy day.

  He did not lose control. He paced. He cursed the placement of his window – better yet, the architects of the building, for not thinking ahead and knowing better. He cursed his space – he wished he had other rooms, any room, that he could go to. He thought of the bathroom; he dashed into the bathroom. He was embarrassed to have ‘dashed.’ He sat on the lid, cursing his own alarm. He was disappointed in himself for letting a minor sensation of dirtiness loiter inside him, for something he hadn’t done – or rather had done, and a lot, but for an altogether other purpose; namely, no purpose. None at all.

  He flushed the empty toilet bowl and decided to go back out. He would just turn off the lights and go to bed, just like that. Then he realised there was the possibility he would look all the more conspicuous and guilty and dirty – what if she thought the darkness meant him wanting to be alone with and discreet about and enraptured by the whole mess? – and he did not want that.

  When he finally walked out, he tried his best to avoid the window. But by the time he made it to his chair, out of the corner of his eye he could sense something. Something big. There was suddenly no flashing of a television, no other light. Her world was blocked off by something else in his view.

  There she was, in sweats and a winter coat, standing on the ledge by his window, her red, red nails tapping away on the pane. Her knees were shoved up against the glass. He did not have to look her in the eye to know she was quite, considerably, pissed.

  He did not know what to do. There he was, staring her up with his head only at her shin-height – and there she was, glaring him down, a mad tower of woman, taking up the full length of his window perfectly – just as he envisioned those Amsterdam red light window girls – standing and waiting, her face wearing the worst expression he had seen on it yet, tapping away with her nails (square-tipped, he noticed now), probably not banging only because it was glass – now that was decency – because by her expression, if she could, she would be banging. He felt the throb of a stale heat inside him. He quickly banished the Dutch whores from his head.

  He had options. He knew this. He could, for instance, just not let her in. Just look at her, shake his head, turn off the lights, and go. Where? He had no other rooms. He could go out. Grab his keys, his coat, gloves, hat, and leave. But then he’d be in their courtyard, and certainly she could follow him out to the street. That would not be getting rid of her; that would just be transporting her to another spot.

  Or he could, for instance, open the window a tiny slit and say, ‘Yes?’ And she could say her part and he could apologise, no matter what she said; anything, anything just to make her go away. But what if she didn’t go away? What if she yanked the window up over on her side, crammed a thigh in, and then what?

  Or, he could, for instance, just try to communicate with her through the window – certainly they could hear each other, somewhat at least, through glass. But what if they couldn’t really? What if the outside world – the cabs, the kids, the city – just didn’t allow it? Certainly that could anger her more? What if she grew frustrated and went back, to her window, to her living room, to her door, out her door, down his hall, to his door, knocking, banging – then what?

  He sat there, spinning idly from side to side. He went to the corner that served as a kitchen – where the minifridge heaved atop the microwave, next to a table topped with rice maker and blender and juicer and hot plate and hot pot and toaster oven – and he found his mug. He dumped in three spoonfuls of instant coffee, turned on the ‘H’ tap, filled it halfway, and drank.

  He couldn’t avoid the window altogether. She was not going anywhere. Sometimes the tapping would stop and that would only worry him more – her just being there. Then he would look over, just for a quick scan of the hard white of her face, or the hazy blur of her hair’s wild brown. And then it would start again. Tap, after tap, after tap.

  After a while, it occurred to him that outside it was probably cold, and that the cold could kill a person. He decided he had to do it. It had been a while. He could not let the cold get her. He was not that kind of character.

  ‘What the fuck were you looking at?’

  She had repeated the sentence over and over. Her dirty diction hurt. Fuck: the right word – maybe; a city word – yes. But from her: bad, wrong, out of place, mislead, unforgiving, overeager …

  She said other things too.

  She said, ‘You know, t
hat wasn’t the first time. I see you, you don’t know that, but I’ve seen you do it, asshole, and I want to know what the fuck …’ He thought of the gangly boy and his middle finger. The city said Be tough and you’ll BE tough.

  She said, ‘How would you like it, bastard, if someone was doing that to you? You like being watched? I mean, what the fuck were you looking at? You like being a spy? You think it’s some kind of joke …’

  He felt embarrassed that his house was so bare and ill-lit and that still, weeks into his arrival, there were boxes everywhere. Her voice sounded different than he had imagined, but somehow familiar and still nice, in spite of the words. He considered putting them away, pushing them to the side, something.

  She said, ‘I mean, I am not leaving until we get this fucking nightmare sorted.’

  He nodded to himself.

  He would have to find a nice way to get rid of her.

  She said, ‘Busted, bastard!’

  Busted: he had a history. He remembered the feeling as a child. Getting busted for busting, for example. He remembered kindergarten, and in particular, their lunch hour. He remembered the rules. Like the one about saving the dessert for last. The teacher had even reiterated it that day: meal first, then dessert. The dessert that day had been cantaloupe. His peers, no matter how dull the dessert, always wanted to go for it first. Henry never did it; he understood the rules and respected them. The disobedience of his peers annoyed him. And on that particular day, he had really had it –

  She said, ‘Bastard! You hear me? Son-of-a-bitch!’

  So when the kid next to him reached for her cantaloupe slice, he shot his hand up. He had something to say about that. Teacher came over and he told on his neighbour, just like that. His neighbour began to cry. Teacher looked at his neighbour, the crying girl, then at Henry, over and over, thinking long and hard about it. Teacher put an arm around the crying girl, and turned to Henry, and tagged him with a word he knew well from the playground –