by Sue Perry
I bunched up the shoulder of my top to show Kelly Joe the lanyard underneath. I assumed he would recognize what it was. "Can this be part of my training? It's driving me nuts."
He put a quick hand on my shoulder and covered it. "That equipment can only help if no one knows you have it. Any being with power can override it. Who else knows you have this?"
"Only—A and A," I put my finger to my lips the way he had done when he stopped me from saying Anya's name, "and the healers. And maybe Shastina. And now you."
"Let no one else know."
"Got it. Okay." I felt foolish but I was used to that.
The Hudson glittered in the setting sun and birds fluttered in a sidewalk tree, preparing for nightfall. There is more nature in a city than most people notice. Kelly Joe noticed. "The current has shifted—do you see how the fresh ripples intersect the fading ones?"
"Thank you, I do see that—now. Is this river crazy, too?" I couldn't enjoy the view if I knew the Hudson was cackling somewhere, even if I happened to stand in a Frame where I couldn't hear it.
"No. This river's ailments are physical. You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that what we Neutrals do to the rivers in this Frame affects their essence in other Frames."
That almost qualified as a personal anecdote. Kelly Joe was much more open tonight. I would later come to understand that he is more open on the days when he doesn't play music. He withdraws after he plays.
"You mean Neutral pollution made the East River crazy? Wow. I wonder if we'd stop if we knew."
"I have few answers and that's not one of them," he said. "What do you know about your—this?" He touched my shoulder where the lanyard was.
"I know what little I've been told and what I've experienced. It reduced pain when I had a bad injury. It's supposed to warn me when I'm in danger but since I moved here I can't take it seriously. It warns me about everything—even truck exhaust. It warns me all day and I can't figure out what it thinks the danger is, most of the time."
"You need to calibrate your equipment so it understands what danger means to you."
We strolled along the wide sidewalk by the river and he casually looked one way and the other. I wondered if he chose this route to maximize distance from other pedestrians.
During my weeks alone in New York, I was a Teflon ghost, untouchable, unseeable. Kelly Joe had restored the Frames to me—and a sense of looming danger. I could feel it, closing in.
"Has there been a threat? Are we in danger?"
"If not now, then soon. Let's start calibrating your equipment. To do that, remember a time you were in danger and imagine getting a warning from your equipment when that warning would have helped you the most. Yes, go ahead and do that now."
I remembered the being that looked like a human cobra. He dragged me into another Frame and blasted my shoulder with an energy that left it scarred. If I hadn't escaped his interrogation, he would have killed me. I imagined the lanyard jolting me with lightning warnings the instant I first saw him. The lanyard jolts started in my imagination but turned real. "Ow," was how I let Kelly Joe know I had followed his instructions. No one can be eloquent all the time.
"Good. Now, one more."
I remembered laying defenseless on the volcano Shastina, feet uphill, too weak to stand, surrounded by Warty Sebaceous Cysts and their Entourage, the creepy manufactured beings who act out the Cysts' disturbing impulses. The Cysts ransacked my thoughts, then turned me over to their flying chainsaws and clockwork dogs. As before, the jolts started in my imagination but turned real. I rubbed my chest where the lanyard crossed it and told Kelly Joe, "Double ow."
"Now look around you and feel the freshness of the evening. Does your equipment cause you pain about this?"
"None whatsoever."
"As it should be. Your equipment learns from your past to watch your future. You'll feel fewer small warnings even after just two calibrations. Repeat the procedure every day, but calibrate gradually, with only one danger each day. Accept some small warnings and be glad for them. They bring your attention to the now."
"Okay, got it. I think. But there's a flaw in the system. Those warnings I just imagined? If I got them back when I needed them, I wouldn't have done anything differently. I would have made the same choices."
His laugh was like flannel sheets on a winter night. "No equipment can repair poor judgment."
"Does everyone have equipment like this? Do you?"
"I do not. My fate is known."
I didn't like the sound of that. There's a line between acceptance and resignation and he was on the wrong side. That's one of my issues with fate. Why keep trying if there's an inevitable?
"There is no fate," I proclaimed with the assurance of a high school debater.
"Do you reject your prophecy?"
My prophecy. The prophecy that brought Anya and Anwyl to me. Although how they decided the prophecy was about me, I still don't know. In the blackest of days, a seer, a walker, and a Neutral will lead the foes of darkness. Anya is a seer, Anwyl is a Framewalker, which makes yours truly the Neutral.
"Of course not! I so want the prophecy to be true. It validates—everything. Whatever the hell it means—it's so vague, it's more a Rorschach test than a prediction."
He stared where the sun had been. "Is it power or importance that appeals to you?"
"Neither. I want –" What did I want? Why had I come here, chasing the chance of meeting Anya and Anwyl again? Kelly Joe waited while I thought it through. "I want to make a difference."
"It's good to make a difference." He stared into the blackness where the river was. Someday, maybe I could ask him about it. That sadness in him. And something else I couldn't name. Yet.
It was odd, having a conversation with Kelly Joe, but I could get used to it. Maybe I could capitalize on his mood and get answers to a few of the questions that littered my head.
"How do you change your tattoos so often? Doesn't it make your skin sore?"
His chuckle suggested warm molasses. "I don't change my messages. Sometimes they change."
"Messages. They tell you things?"
"From time to time."
"May I see them?"
He slid his sleeves up over his elbows and folded his arms. I unpocketed my phone. This was a job for flashlight app!
Tonight the tatts were stark as prison graffiti, all black and gray. The lime green hummingbird was gone.
"Was the hummingbird a message to me?"
"I don't know." He started to hum.
"Don't you wonder about your messages?"
Eventually, he said softly, "I no longer wonder."
The way his voice sounded, my question session had expired. "The hummingbird had to be for me. It made me stop and talk to you." I moved my phone flashlight up and down his arm. No sign that previous tattoos had ever been there. Encircling his left wrist was a simple but intricate pattern like a Celtic knot. It reminded me of the Connector map, which shows the routes between Frames.
"I want a tattoo like that." I held my light on his wrist.
"No. No, you don't." He pulled his sleeves down and resumed walking.
"Does it hurt to get inked there?"
"The memories can."
I pretended to be cooperative and let it go. "What else is on the agenda for tonight?"
"Only one way to find that out, Nica. Come along now."
11. NEGATIVE POWER
At night, Frivolous Bedlam is festive. The buildings have their lights on and flash them when they laugh. Taxis and buses rev in the mechanical equivalent of drum circles. Electric awnings and escalators rattle and glide, adding syncopation. If possible, night is noisier than day there.
"You'll want to be comfortable in Frivolous Bedlam," Kelly Joe explained our excursion. "The buildings will watch out for you and they know all that happens in the New Yorks."
I unfocused my attention and listened to the buildings gabbing.
"They used cheap stucco on my cornices. Won't last a decad
e."
"Neutrals."
"Wait until they pull your carpets up, that won't be fun."
"How refreshing to have new carpets!"
"Stop looking on the bright side. You're annoying."
"There's the one who shaved a cat."
"Just call me Cat Shaver," I waved in the direction the words had come from. The closest buildings spun their revolving entry doors and spread the name down the blocks, until a joke distracted them.
"Knock–knock," one building called.
"Who's there?!" other buildings shouted.
"Who isn't?" the first building yelled.
This joke was a huge hit—block after block, the buildings repeated it. Meanwhile, they continued other conversations.
Kelly Joe sauntered evenly but my pace and direction were erratic. I'd speed up, slow down, detour, trying to catch everything the buildings said, but that was impossible.
He stopped in an intersection. "Excuse my interruption," he called without raising his voice. The adjoining blocks grew quiet, attentive. "Has Cat Shaver had visitors at her home on Ma'Urth?"
My Frame was called Ma'Urth. Good to know.
A murmur rose then diminished as buildings passed the question northwest, toward Julian. Kelly Joe resumed his stroll. The murmur rose again as the answer came back, "She has not but the cat has."
"Thank you kindly," Kelly Joe replied, then leaned in to my ear. "Sometimes you can get information from the buildings when you ask them for it." Later that night, I came to appreciate the sometimes.
An internal flashbulb popped. I had set out to investigate Sam Strongfellow's social club in Brooklyn. If I visited the location in Frivolous Bedlam, I could actually talk to the building!
I tugged Kelly Joe's jacket sleeve and yelled in his ear, "Can we detour? I need to investigate a case and maybe the buildings can help."
He looked at me like we'd never met and stopped walking. He stood still, as he does, and I fidgeted, as I do. Eventually, he replied, "Perhaps they can. In any case, you'll get practice finding your way around Frivolous Bedlam, and that's important." I understood why I needed practice. The streets were the same and yet often unrecognizable with the buildings so lively.
As we walked, I described the case. When I mentioned that my client was one of his regular listeners at Columbus Circle, he rubbed his arms absently as though his tattoos ached. This strengthened my sense that helping Lilah was something I had to do.
Based on Lilah's annotated photo, the social club meeting room was above a Chinese restaurant in the second floor of a building on Keap Street, just south of Williamsburg. In Bedlam, the building had buck–teeth delivery doors that protruded differing amounts over the sidewalk and rattled when the building tittered at knock–knock jokes.
The stairs to the second floor had an entry gate. Unlocked. The second floor meeting room was a single open space with nothing in the room, but it didn't feel vacant. This is typical of rooms in Frivolous Bedlam. The buildings don't use their rooms yet the rooms remain perpetually clean and comfortable, the essence of shelter.
I circled the perimeter of the meeting room and opened each window, which let in the distinctive odor of Frivolous Bedlam, a smell of overworked electronics and fresh–cut timber. I tried to imagine the equivalent room and view on Ma'Urth.
Kelly Joe had a hand against a wall and stood as though listening.
"Anything I should know?" I touched the wall, knowing I wouldn't sense what he was sensing.
"This room has held negative power, but not in this Frame. Negative power is blocked from Frivolous Bedlam."
Downstairs and outside, I stepped into the middle of the intersection and yelled to the buildings, self–conscious about the differences between our species. "Folks. Um. Structures. A word, please." The ceaseless chatter continued. I screamed, "I need information about this building on Ma'Urth. The Frame where I shaved the cat."
Only Kelly Joe listened to me.
"Cat Shaver speaks of Ma'Urth." He said it like I hadn't just said it. He got his voice to go everywhere without raising it. The wall of chatter broke and many nearby buildings paused their gabbing.
I took over, or tried to. "Neutrals came to that room, up there—um." Could the buildings see me point? Did they refer to their innards as rooms? "The Neutrals met every day." Did the buildings know what meetings were? Did they recognize days here—did they have a sense of time passing? I sympathized with the centipede who became unable to walk because he obsessed with the motion of his feet. "Now those Neutrals are gone. I need to find them. Do you know where they went? Those Neutrals?"
"No, don't. Not only," replied the buck–toothed building with the meeting room.
"Don't what? What do you mean by 'not only'?"
"Not! Only?" The building across the way picked it up and changed it.
"Not, on–ly." Another building picked it up.
"Naught tone lee!"
The words circled the block as the buildings played with the sounds, distorting a response that was inscrutable to start with. The buildings laughed then got bored or forgot about us and resumed their chatter.
I looked to Kelly Joe. "Well, that was helpful."
"Their answers may make a different sense later. Their memories are different than ours, as are their words. You'll want to return another day and ask again." He extended his hand. "You'll need rest soon. We'd best get you home."
This time I agreed with him.
12. A WEE BIT OF RESENTMENT
After all that time in Bedlam, when we got back home my ears buzzed like they were on tour with Spinal Tap. "So my Frame is named Ma'Urth –" I began. People in line at a Halal food truck glanced at me. I must be speaking louder than I realized.
Kelly Joe's lips moved but I heard nothing. I gestured that my hearing was wonked. He gave a slow twirl to his fingers, suggesting patience. Did he really know me so little?
New York is a different city on mute. If anything, it felt more crowded, although by this time of evening the streets were less packed. I got jostled repeatedly because my ears missed the cues that somebody was about to collide. The taxi headlights all seemed to be on bright—I guess my eyes were trying to compensate for my failed ears.
By the time we reached my neighborhood, my ears were functioning again. Kelly Joe stopped walking at the subway stairs a block from the Julian, and I heard his parting words, "Have a restful evening. You learned well and made progress today." He touched my arm and was down the stairs to the trains.
Looking down the stairs made me stumble. He was right, I needed rest.
At my corner, Leon sprinted up from a basement and paced me, five feet away but I could hear his purr. "Hey buddy, good to see you! Did Ben show up again?" Leon trotted past the Julian and around the corner. "See you inside."
Outside my apartment door was a sight that made me whoop. It was late enough that this might have disturbed someone, were it not for the downstairs neighbor, who was hosting a hell–raiser of a party. After the emptiness of the Henrietta back in Los Angeles, it was refreshing to live with other tenants. I rarely saw anyone but I heard them all the time. Fortunately, noise helps me concentrate and sleep.
What made me whoop were two shipping boxes, to N.Y. me from L.A. me. When I dropped the boxes at Amtrak they were cubes; now they were abstract, but the repair tape had kept most of the contents inside.
I dragged the boxes to a place of honor in my main room, for they held the important worldly possessions of Nica S.T.A.T.Ic., the stuff I wouldn't leave behind but couldn't fit in my carry–on.
Leon perched on the chair and watched me unpack. One box was boring: warm clothes and boots. The other box held my special stash. Coffee maker. Books and mementos of loved ones. And speakers! I set them up and blasted my most New York music on shuffle, alternating mid–century jazz with protest folk with CBGB house bands. Last unpacked was a cheap aluminum lawn chair. It once belonged to my friend and gardening mentor, Jay, an early victim of Warty Sebaceous Cy
sts' scheme to free Maelstrom. Back home, when I sat in the chair I witnessed Jay's bloody death—from the chair's point of view. The chair was sentient.
I had been reluctant to sit in the chair after it shared its memories of Jay's death, but I couldn't leave it behind when I left L.A. So here it was. I unfolded the lightweight frame and stared at the webbed seat, wondering what else the chair knew. I flopped on the couch and stared at the chair. I imagined taking the two steps to go sit in the chair but I stayed on the couch.
When I woke up, the windows glowed with dawn and mine was the only music in the building. Oops. I silenced my speakers.
I went out to buy fancy coffee beans to commemorate the arrival of my caffeine–dispensing equipment. When I returned, Leon stood on the sidewalk, gazing up at Ben, who sat on my stoop, texting. Ben had a latest generation iPhone as well as the antique flip phone for calls from Hernandez. I knew better than to wonder how he paid for phone service.
Upstairs, I deposited the coffee beans and replenished Leon's food and water levels. The cat was recouping months of food deficit every day.
"Are you missing L.A. that much, Neeks?" Ben sat in the lawn chair before I could stop him.
I forced myself to resume breathing. If the chair imparted visions to Ben, he was too busy texting to notice. I had to smile. Nobody could lounge more thoroughly than Ben.
He tapped the chair arms. "You should put this out on the fire escape. You could watch the sunsets."
"Wouldn't somebody take it?"
"Not if I stop them. Be right back," and he was out the door before I could warn him that I needed to leave soon.
I marched over to the lawn chair. Knowing that Ben would be right back allowed me to grow a pair. I lowered my rear onto the webbed seat. No power surges. No death gargles. Just a surprisingly comfortable seat. I really did want to put it out on the fire escape. I unlatched the bathroom window bars, hoisted the chair out to the fire escape.