by Sue Perry
I sat behind my locked doors and window bars, listening as hard as I could. After the music stopped and spectator applause dwindled, how many pairs of boots retreated and dissolved into city noise? Did all 100 pairs depart?
Long after the boots retreated, my lanyard jolted me. The street–facing wall of my apartment shook and there were shouts and crashes downstairs. And smashes. And more yelling. And eventually pounding that sounded like hammering.
Leon and I stayed inside, away from windows, with all lights on. Leon didn't sleep for a long while, which was unusual for him. In a companionable way, he watched me pace and circle the room. My heart played drums with every little noise outside. But fight or flight gets old. Eventually, Leon went into the kitchen for a snack and reason told me that if he was comfortable enough to eat we must be okay. Belatedly, I noticed that the lanyard had stopped prickling. I continued to pace but I didn't move as fast.
By the wee hours I wanted music; however, I also wanted to hear every last noise. I played music through my phone's speaker and continued to patrol my apartment. I needed to get my fuck you back, so I turned to Eminem. His cyclone emotions gradually smoothed me and by the time dawn tinted my windows, I was on the couch with Leon draped across my feet and we were listening to Gershwin. I contemplated ways to thank the cat and the lawn chair. Without Leon's noisy bad dreams, probably chair–induced, I would have stepped outside just as the Entourage closed in from both directions.
15. SHOULD EVERY QUESTION HAVE AN ANSWER?
It was a bright and sleepless night but as soon as the sun came up, I did manage to doze. I awoke to honey bees in a bag, a buzz which came from Leon's megapurr as he gazed out the kitchen window. Kelly Joe slept on the lawn chair on my fire escape.
Asleep, he had a profound air of placelessness, like musicians who live on the road. How many Frames did he grace with his music? He slept with the slightest hint of smile. Did the chair know his dreams? Would the chair dish? Imagining such an invasion of privacy made me sheepish as well as nosy.
I opened the bathroom window and unlocked the bars.
Kelly Joe woke instantly. "Good morning. Eight Seventeen Keap Street asked to speak with you. I'll be out front." That was the Brooklyn address where Sam Strongfellow's social club previously held meetings.
When I went downstairs, I discovered the cause of last night's shouting, smashing, and hammering. Someone(s) had smashed the Julian's shimmering antique glass door. This morning, the front door was two–by–fours laced with rebar and cinched with an industrial–strength deadbolt. No doubt other tenants appreciated the deadbolt. I appreciated living in a sentient building. The Entourage had tried to enter the Julian, and the building had kept them out.
With a Sigh of Ages, I joined Kelly Joe on the stoop. "Last night was a weird one."
"So it was and more to come. Your fear was justified but now let it go. You'll rise to every occasion."
His confidence made me feel safe again. "Did you expect them to show up? Is that why you've been pushing my training?"
"We've been warned to expect many things." Kelly Joe touched finger to lips, which meant Anya had told him.
We took the subway downtown, headed southeast to Keap Street in Frivolous Bedlam. I was able to Travel without a hitch in conversation. I was learning! Some of the more difficult kinds of Travel were definitely not second nature yet, and I didn't like imagining an encounter with the Cysts or Entourage. Say, guys, could you stop menacing me for a sec? I need to concentrate to get away from you. Would my current understanding be considered third nature? First nature? Or would –
I could no longer hear myself think. We'd arrived in Frivolous Bedlam.
Among the usual chatter, I heard the occasional Cat Shaver as the buildings sent word to Keap Street that I was on my way.
"If the buildings talk about me, doesn't that make it easy for Warty Sebaceous Cysts to find me?" I must have voiced this fear because Kelly Joe answered me.
"No one can visit Frivolous Bedlam without invitation and evil is not invited here. Warty Sebaceous Cysts would need control of all the Free Frames before they could enter Frivolous Bedlam."
"Our side had got some powerful resources."
"So long as our cause remains just, we'll stay aligned with Frivolous Bedlam."
"How could our cause not be just when we're fighting the Cysts."
It was rhetorical but he replied, with a dark voice I didn't understand. "Justice and evil aren't opposites."
"Can you give me a f'r'instance?"
Metal scraped the asphalt behind us. A flock of food carts trailed us. "Aw!" said the front cart when I turned around. "We wanted to surprise you."
"I'm very surprised," I assured them, and they pirouetted with huzzahs.
"Hey, musician, play with us!" On this block, the buildings fluttered their first floor doors and windows as Kelly Joe passed, and he tapped their walls to match whatever rhythm the building created. Every time he matched a rhythm, the buildings cheered.
After a block of this, he swigged from his water bottle—building play was physical—and responded to me. "Should every question have an answer?"
"Maybe not. But my questions should."
"In other words, every question should be answered."
I stopped walking. Cart brakes scraped behind me. "Are you teasing me?"
"I just might be." And Kelly Joe hummed a bit as he led me forward.
Damn, I loved this man. And I wanted more than this occasional glimpse of him under the shells of teacher, musician, wanderer.
Behind us, food carts tossed my name back and forth like the playground game, Red Ro–ver Red Ro–ver. Cat Sha–ver Cat Sha–ver.
"How am I able to talk to these buildings and carts? Is English a universal language?"
"Speakers and listeners don't need the same language." Which launched an explanation that lasted two blocks of walking. The basic answer is that we have abilities we don't use in our home Frame. As we do more and better Travel, we develop a kind of fitness that unlocks new abilities. The first and most basic is the Traveler's ability to understand speech by other Travelers.
And here we were in Brooklyn, outside the social club's former meeting place. "Hello again, Eight Seventeen Keap Street!" This time, I would talk with an assumption of being understood. "It's me, Cat Shaver. I understand you have some information for me about where that social club moved to."
The building replied, "This just in. In protest over the increase in violence associated with street gang activity, residents will walk King Avenue tonight, as part of the 'Take Back Our Streets' campaign." The voice changed from newscaster modulation to the tense whisper of a frightened child, "I see dead people." Then it took on the jangly positivism of a commercial. "Make your lawn greener and save yourself some green." The newscaster came back. "Authorities released the identity of a third American fighting with the Jihadists." Next the voice matched the nasal sarcasm of Robin Williams. "So you're going to a cemetery with your toothbrush. How Egyptian." Then the voice imitated a tinny newsreel. Someone yelled into a loudspeaker in German and a crowd roared approval. The someone might have been Hitler. Finally, the metal delivery doors wiggled and the building blew a giant raspberry, issuing a sustained pfffffft that made me wonder why I'd hurried to get here.
I crowbarred my mind to stay ajar. The building had asked me to come here. It wanted to help. This collage of gibberish must mean something. But all I could understand was that somebody in some Frame watched a lot of TV and the building remembered it all. For the splittest of seconds, I distracted myself wondering how the building would have answered in the age of radio.
Eight Seventeen Keap Street kept repeating the snippets in different orders. I looked at Kelly Joe with the confidence of a rookie sent back to the minors. I had not a clue, and the next repeat of the seemingly random snippets made me want to tell Irene goodnight.
It was the strangest feeling. When the building shuffled the phrases one more time, I understood.
&nbs
p; 16. THOSE LEFT BEHIND
Bronx cheer. Dead people. Lawn food.
"Woodlawn Cemetery!"
Eight Seventeen Keap Street snapped its awnings, slammed its windows, and issued a couple more raspberries—aka Bronx cheers—which its neighbors picked up for fun. "Well played, Cat Shaver!" the building behind us said, and I got the feeling they could have just told me the damn name.
"The social club moved to Woodlawn Cemetery?" I asked. The buildings ignored me, making elaborate noises based on the Bronx cheer.
Kelly Joe didn't have to shrug to give me a shrug.
I had my answer and it made no sense. I'd never been to Woodlawn Cemetery but I had seen it from the subway station that bears its name, at the end of the number 4 subway line in the Bronx. Famous people are buried there, so Woodlawn Cemetery has many visitors. Did it have meeting rooms for a social club? Or had the social club joined in a suicide pact? If they had killed themselves, surely that would have made the news—oh. Heh, maybe it had. I hadn't caught the news in weeks.
Kelly Joe pushed up a sleeve of his denim jacket. "This came today." Among his messages was a new tattoo with pale gray ink: weathered tombstones climbing a grassy hill.
"Guess you're coming with me to Woodlawn Cemetery!" I could hear the relief in my voice. Now that the Entourage had appeared, it seemed like a hiatus had ended and I needed to find Sam Strongfellow and give Lilah closure while I still had time to do so. But now that the Entourage had appeared, I liked how safe I felt around Kelly Joe.
He led me down to a subway track. "We'll have to finish our Travel in Ma'Urth but we can start from here. Frame Travel to cemeteries is blocked in respect for the Neutral dead."
The buildings began to play with the word cemetery as though it were new to them.
"Do cemeteries only exist in Neutral Frames? What do they do with their dead in other Frames?"
"That's a topic for another time."
It was as close to a rebuke as I'd ever heard from him. My questions seemed to upset him although I couldn't ask why. I couldn't speak. Frame Travel on a speeding train is like threading yourself through a needle during a toboggan run. I kept my chin tucked and my jaw clamped to lessen the sensation of whiplash.
Back on Ma'Urth, we exited the train at Woodlawn station and discovered that just outside the cemetery gate was a small construction site. On this late afternoon, it must be past quitting time—the chain link fence surrounding the site was locked and the site was empty. Nonetheless we stopped. I reacted to the sign: Lantana Ltd. Kelly Joe sensed something inside the site. He circled the fencing then said, "Our enemies are bold."
"Good afternoon!" The cemetery gate guard was a pink–skinned fellow whose Woodlawn khaki stretched tight across a stomach as round as a trash can. "We close in 50 minutes, but I can push that to an hour so long's I don't have to hunt you down on the grounds."
"Much appreciated," Kelly Joe nodded.
Woodlawn Cemetery was huge. Big enough to have a seat on city council, if its residents could still vote. It was perfect walking weather, the sky packed with clouds fluffy enough to decorate a pre–school. I hadn't noticed a cloud overhead since I got to Manhattan. With so many tall buildings, it kinks the neck to look at the sky. I was happy to see these clouds, although I couldn't muster my previous innocent love, now that I knew to be cautious around them. Clouds can be messengers—and spies.
Kelly Joe's gaze moved from cloud to cloud as though he were looking for someone he knew.
"You never seem to worry about eavesdropping clouds," I noted as we climbed a grassy knoll.
"Here, we'll speak with care. In the city, clouds don't hear much. Most words reverberate among the buildings and the flow of the rivers distorts the rest."
We wandered at a fast clip to maximize our hour before closing time. Woodlawn was acres of grass, trees, hills—a lovely peaceful resting place. But within half a mile, I needed out. The tombstone inscriptions oppressed me with the longings of those left behind. Woodlawn would be a nice place to be dead, if the living stopped clinging. But I wouldn't judge. Some of us get more practice letting go than others do.
"Might as well get out of here. I can't figure out why that building sent us here. Let's go back to Bedlam. I need to talk to Eight Seventeen Keap Street some more."
"I'd let the experience sit overnight, but whenever you want to return to Frivolous Bedlam, go on ahead. From now on, you may Travel there on your own. It's safe for you to make that trip." Kelly Joe's delivery was syncopated, matching our steps as we descended a steep hill.
"Wow!" I was allowed to Travel solo! Nica S.T.A.T.Ic., Frame Traveler.
"Only the trip between Ma'Urth and Frivolous Bedlam, mind."
"Just for now, right? Someday I'll be able to go to other Frames on my own?"
"Someday soon."
Nica S.T.A.T.Ic., Detective of the Frames.
We were a couple turns from the cemetery exit when the wind picked up and delivered a new cluster of clouds overhead. The air became as still as the moments between lightning and thunder. I stopped; and touched Kelly Joe's arm to confirm he had stopped, too. I couldn't look at him because I was staring at the clouds, from which a familiar voice emanated, a bass voice that blanketed the landscape and rattled the tombstones.
"Go, cloud, and take this message to all who love my brother."
I loved the brother and I loved the being behind that voice. It was Monk, the Watts Tower with a knack for speaking inscrutably. He radiated the deep calm of a zen master, until his brother Miles vanished. I couldn't tell from Monk's voice whether this message about Miles would be good or terrible. Every muscle in my body tensed.
"Go cloud, and carry my message," Monk repeated, sounding puzzled. "Cloud, why do you linger?" It was like listening to the start of a recording, Is this thing on?
A voice that sounded like Monk but with less vibrato repeated everything he'd just said: that is, the cloud repeated Monk's words, so Monk could review his message. There was nothing to review. Monk had failed to give the cloud a message to convey.
The air vibrated with the static buzz of Monk's laugh. "Thank you, cloud, for waiting. Joy makes clumsy news! Here is my message: Miles is home and his injuries will heal."
(He didn't say Miles, and actually his name isn't Monk. Those are the nicknames I gave them because I can't say their names, which are 17 syllables and all consonants.)
Miles was alive and safe. I dropped to the ground and pressed my face in the grass. I'll always love the odor of lawn chemicals because they remind me of that moment.
The wind picked up again and the clouds scuttled away.
Kelly Joe's eyes glistened and he mumbled, "Praise and thanks, praise and thanks." I leaped up and hugged him. He grew a shadow smile when I used his shoulders to launch my next leap higher. We had found nothing at Woodlawn but hearing Monk's message made the trip priceless.
When Kelly Joe and I got back to the cemetery gate, the guard leaned out of his kiosk to say, "Right on time, 'preciate that."
I fished out my photo of Samson Strongfellow. "Nica S.T.A.T.Ic. I'm a private detective and I'm looking for this man. I have reports he's been here at Woodlawn Cemetery. I know you see many people but –"
"That –" The guard was in the act of taking the photo when he recognized the face and withdrew his hand. The photo fell and he muttered apology but I was the one who picked it up.
"Why're you looking for that—him?" And why would you serve pond scum for dinner?
"So you've seen him?"
"Too often! I gave him warnings and a citation. I promised jail if I saw him again."
"No kidding! What did he do?"
"He harassed the guests—shouted insults! Crazy things. White supremacist, blow–up–your–enemies things. He yelled at everybody, even a little girl the size of an angel. 'Course he made her cry. As far as I could tell, he hates everybody."
"Was he alone?"
"'Course not—cowards never attack alone. He was the ringleader
but the others'd egg him on. I hope you don't find him near here."
"Thank you for your time and your candor."
He had to slam the gate to align the lock or get rid of his anger toward Sam.
At some point during my conversation, Kelly Joe had wandered off. I found him at the construction site. "Did you hear all that?"
"I did." He nudged his head in the direction of the subway platform. "You go ahead, I'll catch up."
"Okay." The force of will it took to not ask why, what, wherefore. In the Silence Olympics, I got the gold.
The so–called subway was elevated here and the train tracks were upstairs. This gave me a good vantage to watch the construction site. I couldn't see Kelly Joe and then I could. Here he came, strolling and humming, with smoke tendrils rising from inside the site fence. By the time Kelly Joe was on the stairs, flames flared like a Christmas tree ignition. As we stepped aboard the train, the platform shook with an explosion from inside the construction site.
"Staging a work slowdown?"
"Thereabouts."
17. THE BASIC STATE OF BEING
On the train back into town, Kelly Joe slid his sleeves above his elbows and studied his messages. The tombstone tattoo was gone, that skin tanned with no evidence of ever having been inked. "When the tattoo disappears, does that mean what was supposed to happen, did happen?"
"Time will tell."
"Please don't advocate patience around me, it stresses me out."
He chuckled and lowered his sleeves. "Change is underway," is all he would say. He repeated that when we walked into my apartment, and added, "Best you stay in Frivolous Bedlam. Take a few minutes to gather things you'll need. You should be safe to return here, briefly, to change clothes or make a phone call. But don't leave Julian. Go outdoors in Frivolous Bedlam, not Ma'Urth."
Things were finally happening! My relief trumped my fear. "What kind of danger am I in? Is it the Entourage? That's what I call them. That team of identical guys who are mental appendages of Warty Sebaceous Cysts who were outside last night."