The City Still Breathing

by Matthew Heiti

  The snow smacking wet across the windshield, the wipers clearing everything but that little white shark fin in the centre. The car coasting like a boat across the slush – winter tires still wrapped up in plastic in the basement – and Slim’s thoughts coasting with it.

  The Polaroid on his lap like a baby. Trying to remember the last time he took a photo. The last real one. Not the stupid smiling pictures he took for Francie’s cousin’s wedding. Not the yearbook poses he let Mr. K talk him into taking. Something real. Something that was here and gone, caught in that split second.

  Never should’ve applied for that stupid art school in the first place. Never should’ve let her talk him into it. Sure, she said all the right things, said she loved his stuff, said he could be famous or whatever, anything he wanted – but he doesn’t even know what the fuck he wants. Who does?

  Francie sleeping in the shack at the end of summer. Her bare shoulder, a curl of brown hair around her ear. Tip of one thumb curved toward her lips, open just a crack. The instant before her eyelid would rise, before she was there awake and all that truth would just fold up.

  That was the last real one he took.

  He comes back to feel a clunking underneath him – something giving on the right side of the car. He slows down and takes the next left, Heck immediately twitching in his seat. ‘Why’re you turnin here?’

  ‘Feels like a flat.’

  ‘Aw, man, you gotta be shitting me.’

  He pulls them down a short drive, out of sight from the street, and turns off the ignition. They hop out. Heck shivering while Slim checks. ‘Aren’t you cold?’

  Slim looks down at his T-shirt. ‘Nope.’

  ‘You’re gonna get sick.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m real worried about a sore throat right now. How’s your side?’

  ‘Fine.’ Heck looks down for the first time. ‘Fuuuck.’

  ‘What is it?’ Slim comes around to the other side of the car, following Heck’s stare down to the front tire, brick flat, a square of white and something black sticking out of it. He grabs and pulls. The shine of metal – a switchblade – the square of folded paper coming with it.

  ‘What’s it say?’

  He unfolds the paper. Four words, each letter formed very carefully in black ink so there’ll be no mistake. My brother before midnight.

  He gives it to Heck, who reads it and then keeps reading it like some great mystery will come popping out. He fingers the knife, pulling the hasp and the blade jumps back into the handle. Heck looking up at the sound. ‘What’re we gonna do?’

  He slips the switchblade into his pocket and throws Heck the keys. ‘Spare’s in the trunk.’

  ‘What? I’m not gettin it.’ Heck looks to the back of the car. ‘There was a dead guy back there.’

  ‘Get the fuckin spare, Heck.’

  ‘And then what? Then we go drive around some more? We can’t go back to your place – he knows where you live. He knows your car. You don’t wanna go to the cops. So what’re we gonna do – wait for him to find us?’

  ‘We’re gonna flip the tire.’ He sits down on the hood, looking out at the line of tall naked poplars waving in the wind. The creek below. Back here behind Wembley Public, and he didn’t even know that’s where he was driving the whole time. ‘And then we’re gonna go find that body.’

  They slide down the bank by the bridge and follow the trail all the way to the black mouth of the culvert. Heck kicking at the snow and sulking the whole way. ‘This is a bad idea, Slim,’ like a broken record.

  It’s a half-moon of old brick, sagging like busted teeth, holding up the road above them, traffic running over, the water running slow and dark underneath. He gets right up to the edge and spots a small ledge not more than two feet wide running off into the black. Heck at his shoulder, peering past. A warm exhalation of air runs over them.

  ‘How far does it go?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Slim playing with the flashlight, pushing the button, not getting anything. ‘The creek runs under half the city. They buried it up years ago.’

  ‘Isn’t this where Normando used to bring kids and eat them?’

  ‘Don’t be a wastoid – those’re just stories.’

  ‘Well, there better not be any bats or cannibal hobos in there. I don’t got my tetanus shot.’

  Slim smacks the flashlight against the edge of the culvert, warm light flickering on, and pulls off the sunglasses. ‘C’mon.’

  They shuffle forward, following the beam of the flashlight, playing across the ledge, the concrete walls, the dripping ceiling, the water. Slim’s nostrils fill with damp and mould. He takes one look over his shoulder to see the circle of street light receding behind them, shrinking to a penny.

  There’s a rumbling overhead and Heck jumps forward, almost knocking him in the water. ‘Chill – it’s just the cars.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, man.’

  Slim keeps the light moving across the creek, looking for any sign – a hand, the pale glow of flesh. Reflections off the water making shivering ghosts on the concrete.

  The tunnel bends to the left and he steals one last look back – a pinhole of dying light. Two more steps and it’s gone.

  ‘Slim?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘What’re we gonna do if we find it?’

  ‘Bring it back.’

  ‘Yeah, cool. Why?’

  ‘Give it to Milly.’

  ‘And then he’ll stop shooting you.’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘Thought you didn’t know if it’s his brother anyway.’

  ‘Well … he seems pretty sure.’

  The air is getting tighter here, older, and he can feel the ceiling dropping down on them, so close now it forces them to stoop. There’s another gust of warm air across his face, like this place is alive, like it’s been waiting for them.

  ‘Y’know what I heard? I heard after he killed his parents he used their bones to make furniture – like chairs and shit.’

  ‘Stop spitting on my neck.’ He remembers Mr. Oliver’s history class. Some lecture about the catacombs in Paris. A grainy slide, hundreds of skulls arranged in the pattern of a heart. The light flickers and he slaps it until it comes back strong.

  A faint sound is growing, like the snow on a dead TV channel, and the ceiling continues to drop. Slim gets down on all fours, swinging the camera to his back. ‘We’re gonna have to crawl.’

  Heck mumbles something that sounds like Bad idea, but grunts along behind him all the same. The light bobs ahead as he crawls – more ledge, more water, stretching on. It makes him dizzy and he concentrates on his watch instead. Bringing him back like it always has, like that one bubble of focus in a photo, everything blurring around it. All the shit he’s been through, least he’s always had this. Gold plated. Speedmaster – the one the astronauts wore, Van used to say when he let Slim hold it – a moonwatch. The watch reminding him this is who and where you are – you are Slim Slider, you are in some seriously deep shit, but you’ve got a chance. Find that body.

  Heck shrieks and jolts him from behind – making him lose his grip on the flashlight and there it goes, splashing into the water. He reaches for it – too late – the water glowing sick and green as it sinks, sinks, hits the bottom and dies. Darkness.

  Heck whimpers behind him. Slim kicks at him. ‘Smooth move, Ex-Lax.’

  ‘Something touched my leg, man!’

  ‘Probably just a fuckin rat.’

  ‘Don’t joke, I hate rats – you know I hate fuckin rats, man!’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘What’re we gonna do now?’

  He kicks out again. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  The dead TV sound has continued to grow – now a whooshing – and he can feel a warm spray, like spit, on his face. He looks down at his watch – the hands glowing faint in the dark. He shuffles forward again, deeper into the thick dark.

  ‘Hey – where’re you goin?’

  ‘A bit farther.’

  Anothe
r whimper. ‘But we can’t see nothin.’

  ‘Wanna go back for your Teddy Ruxpin?’

  They squirm on, Slim humming under his breath, losing all sense of distance, time and direction. The culvert seems like years ago already, and they might be a hundred kilometres down to the centre of the earth or just a few dozen feet from the entrance. He realizes he’s humming that Rick Wakeman album that always used to give him nightmares. The electronic notes and images of giant glowing mushrooms ringing in the dark.

  The stone is coated in slime here, like the diving rocks down at the lake. There’s something old about this place, older than the concrete around them. Men on their bellies digging for gold and finding nickel instead. He’s heard that the entire downtown has enough ore in it to keep the place going forever, but they’d have to blow it all up to get at it.

  The sound is now a thundering and it’s close, so close they’re almost inside it. Maybe the water drops off here. A pool where things gather – it might be right here. He pushes forward another foot and hits something, hard and stuck. He yells back at Heck, ‘Hold on!’

  He runs his hands over the grit of rust and cold metal – iron bars. A grate of some kind blocking their way forward. Stopping them this close. He slams a fist into the bars, but it doesn’t give.

  The face of his watch glows. Find the body. Find the girl.

  Fuck focus.

  He squeezes his arm through the bars. Reaching up, trying to find some latch or lock. Nothing. He stretches out, feeling the stone ahead, pressing up against the bars – reaching as far as he can.

  Something grabs his hand.

  Something out of the thunder, out of the slime, out of the darkness.

  He pulls back, his hand slipping loose, scraping through the bars and falling back against Heck. Lifting his camera as he falls, the flash going off. In that split second, that dying moment, he’s not sure but he thinks he sees something – pale naked flesh beyond the bars, two globes of light in the flash. Like the eyeshine of an animal in a photograph. Here and gone. Hello, darkness.

  He lies back into the warm and soft of Heck. Sinking into the darkness and maybe it’s shock but his mind again kicks up Mr. Oliver’s lecture – tunnels in the catacombs that were walled up and people left inside. Buried alive.

  Just like this. Just enough space to get the whiff of fresh air. Then slam a grate down. Grates on every side of you, burying you into a life before you’ve had a chance to choose. Give them the time and they’d brick the whole thing up, him and Heck with it.

  He realizes he’s being pulled back and he fights the entire length of black until they’re out in the air again. The cold like a slap across his face. Heck tosses him on the ground and leans over gasping. ‘Are you mental?’

  Looking up at the street above, the glow of lampposts like a Lite-Brite board. ‘Didn’t you see it?’

  ‘See what? I couldn’t see anything past your ass, man.’

  ‘It was right there, on the other side of the grate.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The body!’

  ‘What? But how would it get through the grate?’

  ‘I dunno. Maybe there’s a hole underwater.’

  ‘I don’t think so, man.’

  ‘Then maybe there’s another way through.’

  Heck’s face scrunches up. ‘And how would it get there?’

  ‘Something grabbed me, Heck. I felt it.’

  The street light flickers off and then on. They both start to shiver.

  ‘Like no way, m-m-man.’ Heck stammers in the cold. ‘That’s not possible.’

  Slim looks down and sees the Polaroid still hanging from the lips of the camera. ‘I snapped a picture of it.’

  ‘Lemme see.’ Heck grabs the photo, brings it right to his nose and then relaxes. ‘You dick. I thought you were for real – that’s not funny, man.’ He chucks the photo at Slim and heads back up the bank to the car.

  Slim holding the photo, the bars of the grate lit up by a flash, nothing beyond it but the black secret water no one would see because they brick up anything real and alive.

  Back in the Dart, both of them stinking like ditch water. The note on the dash. My brother before midnight. And Slim’s moonwatch says it’s already past eight.

  Heck stops chewing his fingernails long enough to spit a few out on the upholstery. ‘No cops.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No body.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No plan.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Totally not cool, man.’ Back to chewing his nails.

  ‘I just need some time.’

  ‘To what – become bulletproof?’

  ‘To think.’

  ‘Okay, well, we can’t go to your place and I’m not bringing you over to my house so my parents can get shot at. Oh shit!’ He pats his pockets and pulls out two small squares of paper. ‘I totally forgot – my mom got me tickets to see this Victor guy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He’s a peenist.’

  ‘A penis?’

  ‘No, shit for brains, a pee-nist – y’know, like Mozart. Anyway, he’s at the Grand – show’s already started, but we could catch the second half.’

  ‘I’m gettin shot at and you wanna go to the theatre?’

  ‘C’mon – there’ll be lots of people around, it’ll be safe. And it’ll give you time to think … or whatever.’ He shoves the tickets at him like he’s going to tear them then and there. ‘You got any better ideas?’

  The lobby’s empty, their footsteps echoing across the granite, scaring a mouse back into a hole gnawed through the thick wood panelling. Slim listens to the door and hears music, so they sneak into the dark theatre. The smell of old popcorn and mothballs.

  A spotlight is on a little man in a tuxedo sitting at a giant piano. He’s banging away, none of the notes in tune with each other. ‘This guy sucks,’ Slim whispers, but then everybody laughs and he wonders what he’s not getting.

  Some pimply usher he recognizes from the high school makes a big deal out of being all official and taking their tickets, making them wait while he gets his little penlight working. He leads them over ancient carpet down to their seats, right near the front. Heck muttering a thousand scuse mes as he wriggles in.

  The man onstage stops playing to glare down at them and cracks something about starting over again and everyone yuks it up. Slim feels himself going red like he always does when he’s the centre of attention. He leans over to Heck. ‘This was a bad idea.’

  The piano man goes back to attacking the keys. It’s real classical stuff, like what you hear at Christmas or in doctors’ offices, but everyone seems to be enjoying it. Then he makes a big dramatic gesture and falls off the bench.

  Everybody laughs – just like that – because this guy fell on his ass, and sure he looks okay as he gets back up, but it’s cruel. People are the same all over.

  And just like that, he’s off the bench again, kerplunk, and looking all surprised. This time it’s even more hilarious to everyone – the woman beside him laughing so hard she starts coughing, big wet phlegm on her fat lips. People’re the same. Laughing at this little old geezer with his thin moustache. Laughing more the more he falls, the more he hurts. Laughing when you’re down, laughing when you fuck up cause they’d never fuck up. Laughing when you piss your pants in Grade 1. When your dad leaves, cause they all knew he was no good to begin with. When you wear the same clothes all week cause your mom can’t afford new ones. When you say you want to be a photographer, cause you’re supposed to be a mucker, or if you’re any good laughing cause what the fuck good is a photograph. When your girl leaves you, when your best friend’s sick of you, when you got nowhere left to turn – when you’re finally face down, full of bullet holes and dying, there they’ll be standing over you, laughing. Cause you never were any good. People are cruel all over. Well, fuck em.

  The piano man’s on the floor a third time and they’re howling, rolling in the aisles, even Hec
k now, and it makes you so sick you want to jump up in the middle of the whole theatre, stand tall like Lee Marvin against the mob and say, Stop it! Stop laughin at him, you fuckin sickos!

  But you don’t cause they only do that in the movies and the thought of it all stopping and everyone looking, the spectacle of it, makes you want to cover your face cause it’s so fuckin embarrassing to be alive.

  The piano man gets up, flips up the lid of the bench and pulls out two straps, metal clattering. A seat belt. He sits down and straps himself in.

  And so even this little frail old geezer is part of the joke. Fuck it all.

  His head throbs and he looks down at his watch. Arms stretching out, but even that’s not inviting because all it’s saying is three hours – less than three hours left.

  ‘Do you like good music?’

  He looks up – it’s the piano man. Seat belt off, he’s at the front of the stage, looking down at Slim, holding some pages against his chest. Not accusing, not making fun, and although there’s a twinkle in his eye, it’s kind. It sets Slim at ease, he doesn’t turn red.

  ‘Do you like good music?’ the little man asks again.

  ‘Uh, yeah – sure.’ He says it real quiet, but the piano man smiles, big and friendly, and leans down, holding out the papers. Offering. Slim reaches forward and takes them, and for a moment the piano man holds on, seems about to say something else. Maybe make a joke. But instead he just lets go, turns back to the piano and straps himself in again.

  Slim looks down at the papers – sheet music. Hungarian something by Franz somebody he’s never heard of before. But down at the bottom of the page is a note in messy handwriting. The shortest distance between two people. And that’s it.

  Is what? It’s missing something. Did this little man, back playing more music that makes the audience go haw haw, did he write it for him? What is the shortest distance between two people?

  Van as far away from him as a person can get. Martha a few blocks away down at the diner, but in some ways as far away from him as Van. Heck two inches to his right and his best friend, sure, but does he really know him? Then Francie.