Nica of the New Yorks
Page 3
Could I trust Leon? Monk and Miles, the Watts Towers, once told me that it was okay to love Dizzy, but that I shouldn't trust her because cats have only their own side. What were the odds that two cats in a row would have a side that aligned with us, the allies, against Warty Sebaceous Cysts and Maelstrom? If Leon was trustworthy did that increase the chances that Dizzy wasn't? Did you ever notice that male cats seem less bright than female cats? Maybe it's because they are more easy–going, which means that –
Nica! Focus! I was late getting out the door for today's subway line. Although I was reassured to catch myself digressing. First time in ages. I really hadn't been myself lately.
Self–knowledge gained. I liked being alone when in my city of birth with loved ones nearish–by. Being alone across the continent made for a whole other shebang, and only felt okay now that I knew Kelly Joe and Leon. Momentarily this made me feel weak, but needing loved ones nearish wasn't a trait that I could change, so I acknowledged it and moved along.
6. A PLACE OF GREAT POWER
My plan was to take the number 7 train under the East River into Queens. I got to Grand Central then kept walking. I didn't like using either mega–station, Times Square or Grand Central. Going inside was like entering scenes from before I was born.
"Good morning, Nica." I recognized Kelly Joe's baritone and spun around. He was right behind me.
"Hey." I suffered a sudden loss of conviction. Maybe he wasn't a tutor from the Frames, maybe he was some weird street busker that I had just made a date with. Except how did he know my name or where to find me? Well, if he were a weird enough street busker he could.
I got a grip. After all, I wore Anya's lanyard across my torso, hidden under my clothes. The lanyard signaled me when I was in danger and it never let out a peep around Kelly Joe, although it had been driving me nuts since I arrived in New York, with prickling warnings of no consequence. Just this morning, it gave a jolt of pain because I was about to step in a puddle.
Kelly Joe stood motionless while I worked through all this. We were close to Grand Central so the sidewalks were crowded and people flowed around us. He studied my head.
"I cut my hair off," I acknowledged.
"You did. It suits you both ways."
I wanted to know a lot more about him. He didn't talk or act like a Frame Traveler. Except for playing music of unearthly soul. And, p.s., having tattoos that changed.
"We should get started. Anya gave me a list of ways you need to be trained," he said.
Anya. Hearing her name come out of someone else's mouth. If hope is a brain scan, mine just spiked after a lengthy flatline.
"An –"
He rested a finger on his lips. "We won't mention her again," he said.
Which left me with so many questions I had a logjam between brain and mouth. Why not? Was she in danger? Were we? From the Framekeeps? From Warty Sebaceous Cysts? How did he know Anya, anyway? To passersby it may have seemed like I was sharing my guppy impersonation. I hoped Kelly Joe wasn't someone who put much stock in first impressions.
"It's a fine morning for a walk," he noted.
I shut my mouth and joined him heading east, across Lexington Avenue and away from Grand Central. It was indeed a fine morning for a walk. Sun warmed the air but did not yet bake the sidewalks. Commuters had commuted, so traffic noise was no longer continuous. All around us, pedestrians whistled for taxis, placed orders at food stands, barked instructions into cell phones. Hell–bent bicyclists swerved at the last minute and yelled like a collision would be your fault. It must be Kelly Joe's presence that made my sensations so acute.
Or it was just New York. Dirty loud crowded vibrant alive. On the streets there, I was isolated and part of a whole. I could not comprehend the variety of lives around me but felt they were people much like me.
Kelly Joe held out his hand. "Will you take my hand? I want to show you where you are."
I wanted to push his sleeve up to check his forearm tattoos—did they change all the time? were they changing right now?—but figured I should wait until I knew him at least six minutes. I took his hand instead. His skin was cool and dry despite the humidity, his grip was casually strong, and his clasp distracted me. Those long thin musician's fingers. I stopped thinking about ways to play them when I could no longer hear myself think.
New York is always loud but this was to loud like a supernova is to a cigarette ember. I searched for the source, but the noise came from all directions. This wasn't the New York I knew. Around us, the buildings looked familiar but all signs of people had vanished and vehicles seemed to be grazing on the asphalt, as I had seen them do in Miles and Monk's Frame, Next Vast. This was not my Frame. My musician was a Frame Traveler, powerful enough to take me with him when he shifted Frames.
I was so excited I felt shy. I tried to sound cool and collected, but I stripped my throat yelling above the hubbub, "Did we Travel to Next Vast?"
Kelly Joe leaned close to reply. "Thereabouts." His voice remained soft yet I heard him, or felt the words. With his cool breath on my ear lobe, I wished he'd say more. Instead, he gripped my hand tighter and we Traveled to another Frame where it was quieter, although still much louder than home.
Here the streets were under water and each block's sidewalk bobbed like a dock. Our steps intensified the bobbing and made buildings bump each other. Which was impossible! I had a slew of questions but he touched a finger to his lips.
I sensed rather than heard him say, "When I have questions, I observe more closely until I have answers." Then he chuckled.
"What are you laughing about?" I yelled. Me, the answer had to be.
"Anwyl said I'd need time for questions."
"He knows me!" I looked around, taking it all in, grinning. At last I was Traveling again.
As we approached the East River, a disturbing noise grew, like someone cackled while gargling. With each cackling episode, I grew more uneasy.
"That's just the river," Kelly Joe assured me. "Pay it no mind and it will ignore you, as most predators do."
"Okay but why does –" I cut myself off, challenged to prove I could walk one block without questions. "It sure is loud here."
"And in all the New Yorks," he nodded. He Traveled us back to the first Frame we'd visited, the loudest of them all. The noise was like a thousand mix tapes, played simultaneously, backwards. I tried to pick out individual sounds but the harder I tried, the more I got lost in the rush of noise.
"I hear everything but nothing," I complained.
"Soften your attention," he instructed. "Take your focus away from what interests you."
I couldn't get it. He began to hum. I tuned into his baritone and gradually the background noises sharpened and separated. They were voices. Hundreds of voices, near and far. Yet I saw no beings in this Frame.
Eventually, over many visits, I pieced together the situation, no thanks to Kelly Joe, who seemed more willing than Anwyl to tell me stuff, yet—like Anwyl—rarely told me things I could understand.
New York is a place of great power, with a persistent presence through many Frames. Of course it has sentient structures, as all cities do. What is different about New York is that the land itself transmits so much power that it imparts a little bit of sentience to every structure, from the Waldorf Astoria to the pretzel cart across the street. The sentience derives from the construction materials, the wood and metal and glass and rock, much of which comes from sentient beings. Every structure is a mixture of sensibilities that, in places of power, becomes a personality. Usually the sensibilities add together and create a modest intellect, occasionally they conflict and induce schizophrenia. Each personality persists through all the New Yorks, that is, all the Frames where the land imparts power. The land's power is strongest in the Frame where we walked now, (whose name sounds to me like) Frivolous Bedlam. The land's power weakens with distance from Frivolous Bedlam and in those Frames, fewer buildings have sentience so the noise level diminishes. In the New Yorks, a quiet Frame
is one that is far from the source of power. Or it's a Neutral Frame. Neutrals can't hear the buildings because of filters that shield Neutrals from awareness of other Frames.
As my own Frame teaches, sentience guarantees neither intelligence nor wisdom, and as Kelly Joe and I walked in Frivolous Bedlam, most of the chatter around us was simply that: buildings gossiped, discussed the weather, complained about leaks and creaks, told jokes. The truly sentient structures—the beings like Henrietta, my home in Los Angeles—were quiet. They only speak when they have something to say.
"That one shaved herself and then a cat," I heard a voice, followed by titters.
I stopped walking. "Hey, they're talking about me!"
"As they do, as they will." Kelly Joe murmured.
"How do these buildings know or care? They didn't see me shave the cat. I don't live anywhere near here."
"Few Neutrals are Travelers nowadays. The buildings like to keep an eye out."
I stumbled. Struggling to keep up with the pace of information, I'd stepped in a pothole.
All too soon, Kelly Joe brought us back to my Neutral Frame, where a typical Manhattan work day suddenly seemed silent.
"Thank you for taking me to other Frames! I've missed Traveling. So much! Even though Traveling used to make me feel like crap. How come that didn't feel bad? One time when Anya held my hand and we jumped off a roof, Traveling didn't hurt then, either. Was it because you held my hand? Why is that less bad? The worst was the time Anwyl took a bunch of us to far Frames really fast, to escape Warty Sebaceous Cysts. Is going to far Frames the hardest?" Ahhh. I hadn't had a good babble in weeks. Kelly Joe stood, fidget free, as patient as a broken clock. "You're welcome to answer any of those," I concluded.
"When I take your hand, you Travel on my energy and I share your journey. You'll feel less pain as you Travel more."
"What if –" I plugged my question spigot.
Kelly Joe's finger was back to his lips. "It's time that you learned to Travel on your own."
That left me speechless.
7. A DEEPER MODE
Cut to unknown hours later. "So your instructions are, relax and don't think about it while concentrating with every molecule of my being. In your Frame, do you have the concept 'mixed message'? Wait, don't count that as one of the questions I'm hardly ever allowed to ask, rhetorical shouldn't count."
"This is my Frame, too," was all Kelly Joe said.
"Sorry, failure makes me testy."
"Success will come."
"It really doesn't help that you're so calm and reasonable."
He watched a traffic light change. "Would you like to take a break?"
"No way. Not now." And I strode up Second Avenue as though the next Frame had a head start.
My feet advanced, left right left right. The only thing on my mind was stepping into a new Frame. Walking into a new Frame was all I thought about and that pallet the delivery guy just dropped with a thud that chattered my teeth which reminded me I might need to find a dentist –
Crap.
I stomped back to my teacher. Kelly Joe met my gaze, face unreadable. His expressions were on par with Monk's sentences. If you thought you got the meaning, that only proved you didn't.
He took out a harmonica from a jeans pocket that had a white worn strip where the harp lived. Much as I loved listening to his music, I needed to get this right. I strode forward. The only thing on my mind was stepping into a new Frame. Right left rightleftrightleft.
Kelly Joe strolled behind me. He bent bluesy notes, all keening, yearning, and sighs. The music distracted me, but with it I tuned out other distractions. Left right left right left right. I heard the music as I pulled away from it. And then –
– something clicked, my thinking shifted to a deeper mode, no longer influenced by my thoughts, which were pollen in the winds of daily life. Now I had to strain to hear the harmonica because it was so loud here, so many voices chattering at once. I stumbled with a sudden vertigo, like I dropped sideways in an elevator. At the same time, I thought I might barf.
The stumble converted to a victory leap. This combination of sensations was what I felt when I changed Frames in the past! I jumped up and down while shouting, "I did it! I did it!" By the time I had leaped back to Kelly Joe and clasped his biceps in an awkward hug, whatever had clicked in, clicked out again and I was back in my Frame. I continued to whoop my success.
New York is a good place to act like—or be—an idiot. I could have run down the block with a roman candle in each fist and armadillos looping around my wrists—and the only sign that any pedestrian noticed would be the minimalist change in direction to avoid collision with my circus.
I stopped on a mental dime. "Wait. Was that me or you who did that?" If I needed his music to change Frames, what had I accomplished on my own?
"Compare this experience with our earlier walk."
"This time I felt woozy and nauseous! That was awesome!"
"Yes, that's the proof that you found your way. My music showed you how to focus. Soon you won't need help."
I took off west without him or his harp. I tried changing Frames another dozen times, succeeded maybe twice. I grew ever more dizzy and nauseous. Fortunately, we returned to our home Frame within a short dash of a trashcan and soon I was no longer nauseous. Unfortunately, that was because I vomited a considerable volume into the trashcan.
Barfing is wrong. I so hate it. Go ahead, call me emetophobic, you won't be the first. My first and third husband, Ben Taggart, learned the medical term so he could tease me about my phobia in two languages. Whatever you call my concern, over the years it has been a deterrent to all manner of bad behavior. Shows how much I love Frame Travel; I'm willing to emeto for it.
Kelly Joe extracted a neckerchief and water bottle from his denim jacket. He dampened the cloth and gently wiped my face, then encouraged me to empty the bottle down my stinging throat.
"Thanks, you'd make a good dad, Kelly Joe." I returned his empty water bottle.
"Those are words never spoken," he said, with an un–positive expression I didn't know him well enough to define.
We got to Columbus Circle subway station and he stopped at entrance.
"You'll want to go home. A visitor left you a message."
"How do you know?"
"The way that all information spreads in the New Yorks."
"The buildings in Frivolous Bedlam!" Was that a chuckle? "Did you just laugh at me? How was I funny?"
"Your accent is unique when you say..." he thought his words were inflected differently but they still sounded exactly like "...Frivolous Bedlam."
Damn. I'd never get those names right. But I slammed the door on frustration—at least I had some new Frames to mispronounce now!
"I need to hear you play a couple songs before I go home. I've had a rough day."
"Have you?"
"Amazing but exhausting and don't forget I barfed."
"Then come along." For a moment, I thought he might smile.
That afternoon, his music was giddy and fun. It sent me flying to the moon on homemade wings and dancing a jig around Saturn's rings. A pair of kids seemed to inspire the difference. The girl, maybe four, and the boy, maybe three, bounced in place as kids do when they must move but can't go far.
The platform was packed, a train delayed. Typically, this generates bad tempers, and usually, when a late train arrives, the crowd presses en masse into the cars. Today, many lingered to keep listening. Now there is a testament—Kelly Joe's music kept New Yorkers from pushing forward.
I slid back on a bench, ignoring the way one pants leg stuck on something. Glad I wasn't wearing shorts. A train pulled in; a train pulled out. I closed my eyes to let the music penetrate more deeply. Could music be addictive?
A gulp and a sniffle. On the other end of the bench, someone was crying. It was the same young woman who cried here yesterday. Her eyes said she recognized me, too. She turned her head away.
"Did you come to this st
ation every day before he played here?" I tried to break the ice, waited a New York hour for her to respond, closed my eyes again.
"Ye–es," her voice cracked, "it's my commute."
"Did you stop at all since yesterday? Crying, I mean."
"I don't remember." She stared at the cavity left by the most recent train.
"You remind me of me after my fourth husband died." She reacted to the fourth. "It takes me a while to get things right."
"Didn't you have hair yesterday?"
I snorted. How to answer her underlying question. Why had I buzzed my head? The blonde thing hadn't genuinely bothered me for ages. Starting new? Solidarity with Leon? Behind the gentrification, it's still Travis Bickle's Manhattan? My companion shared my hair color. Maybe blonde was her crowning glory. If I ever got to know her better, I could ask her. Her question held a splash of concern. When you're twenty, you buzz your head and people figure style. Let a couple decades elapse and a new guess arises, chemo.
She waited—polite, patient, bemused. I rubbed my silky scalp. "Long story."
"My brother cut his hair like that. He allowed me to rub his head but no one else could." She stormed up again. Even dry, her eyes would be the watery blue that goes best with blondes. My brown irises had let me skip that stereotype.
"I'm sorry you feel so miserable. Let me know if a private detective could help."
She reacted with surprised thoughtfulness. "Maybe—I—that might—I—never thought of that. But I couldn't afford that."
"I've got a floating pay scale, goes down with need, up if you're an ass. May I?" I tore a piece from the paper grocery bag that stuck out from her tote. On brown paper the shape of South America, I printed my address and cell number. "I just moved here," I added, as though I planned to get business cards made. Ben and I made business cards once. Sheridan and Taggart, Marauders at Large.
"S.T.A.T.Ic.? Your last name is an acronym?"
"Sheridan Taggart Ambrose Taggart Ickovic."