Orbit 11 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Night

  “Alice B., you look lost in thought.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, dear, yeah. What’s on your mind?”

  Mr. Wile was asleep; Alice only had to change his bedpan. His eyes were open when she brought the pan back. Alice had nothing to say but, “Feeling all right?” She felt sorry for him, but more than that . . .

  His eyes were not the least bit clouded. He looked extremely unhappy. If he talked he would be likable; now, Alice could only try not to pity him. His face was very wrinkled and how had all the wrinkles gotten there?

  Alice had very little to say to Mr. Wile, except to apologize that she was bothered that night, and confused. She knew that he forgave her for being bothered. Until Mr. Wile fell asleep again, Alice sat with him and was especially quiet.

  Worse. Sitting by a window in the hot afternoon, cornfield golden crisp in her mind, Alice made a frown. Outside, her own kids were playing with their friends. They kicked a blue plastic ball up and down the sidewalk, scraping. Trudy’s pudgy black arms shook when she clapped her hands. Behind the facade of hard buildings, Alice saw only more hard buildings and years of them. The blues with strings that played on the kitchen radio made the whole thing a dance. A stumpy dance, endless.

  While the children in her head, small boy and small girl, ran in the corn and turned their heads up to be dizzy at the sky. Leaves brushed their tan faces; they circled and collapsed on the ground. A smell of warm dry earth came up. The boy: falling playfully, a whole corn plant under him.

  Black children through the open window were the same as ever. Two of them were Alice’s own. Alice’s sister came up behind her and touched her shoulder.

  “Want to get some sleep before work tonight?” the sister said.

  “No thank you, Annie. And you don’t have to stay around here.”

  “All right, I’ll go for a walk. Listen, honey, you okay? Because all those things you been telling me about . . .”

  “I won’t tell you about no more. I’m fine.”

  The sun was going down. People sat on their front steps and in windows. Time was passing very quickly. When it was time to take the bus to work, Alice felt sad. All the way on the bus, while lone studs gave her the eye, memory of cornfields and a small freckled girl forced itself upon her. She didn’t want it; it hurt.

  Dr. Teagrade was sympathetic. He explained that he would rather have her off work for a while if something was bothering her than for her to be pushed and making mistakes. Alice went in to check on the knife-wound patient who was no longer an emergency case; the stitches were holding. So were the hinges on the stamp collection.

  Someone had put a bottle at Mr. Wile’s bed and a tube feeding into his arm. Veins in the one exposed arm bulged. Mr. Wile looked up and Alice returned his stare.

  “I see that someone thinks you’re not eating enough, Mr. Wile. You better watch out, hear, cause they’re after you.”

  No reading the eyes.

  “Are you cold in here?” He had the sheet pulled up to his neck. Mr. Wile nodded. Alice turned up the thermostat. She crossed the room and reached for the bedclothes.

  Mr. Wile had a long purple scarf, old and faded, wrapped around his neck. One touch, and Alice was shocked. She remembered the scarf. At once she could sense his concern. She put her hand on the scarf; he was a scared little boy, caught. And what could he say?

  Please. Please. Let me stay, for I need you to hold on to. I need you.

  Solid. Please. I need you.

  What could she say?

  Don’t stay.

  * * * *

  A dozen graying men sat in the oak-walled chamber. Napkins and glasses of water were on the table. As he watched, two more men came in carrying briefcases. One of them, a large man with a blond mustache, walked to the head of the table and put his case down on it. There was an important stock option to discuss; already the water glasses were half empty. He tried to concentrate.

  “You awake?” Her husband’s voice startled her. A car went by below.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s been wrong with you? You driving me crazy, you know that.”

  A balding man scrawled something on his pad of paper. He looked up just as a fresh pitcher of water was brought in, and smiled.

  “No, Chad, I can’t help it.”

  “You know what it is I mind. Only what you been telling the children. Now listen to me, woman. You going to stop telling them stories. Else I’ll assume you’re crazy.”

  “I won’t.” Had to concentrate on what the mustached man was saying. There was a decision to be made. A very important one.

  “No more, Chad. No more to the kids. But I’ve got to tell somebody. Let me tell you, Chad.”

  “Don’t tell me no stories, I don’t want to hear no stories.”

  “Chad, they’re in my head! What do I do?”

  “Don’t tell me no stories.”

  The mustached man took papers from his case. And if a mistake was made, there could be disastrous consequences. Had to concentrate. Had to know. “Chad.”

  Chad turned over on his stomach. Alice was shaking; she hugged him and pressed her face against his shoulder. A fresh pitcher of water was brought in. Suddenly the table rose up, the room spun, the old men started shouting. “Chad.”

  Lights in the ceiling flashed brilliantly and the paneled room flushed white suds. Alice winced; tears fell from her eyes onto the pillow. When the phone rang, she waited to catch her breath before answering.

  “Mrs. Costin?”

  “Yes, Doctor, what is it?”

  In nurse’s uniform, Alice walked to Mr. Wile’s room. The door was open. Dr. Teagrade was inside. Mr. Wile’s eyes caught Alice at the door, and his neck muscles strained. He was breathing hard, spasmodically. He followed Alice with his pleading gaze as she crossed the room.

  Mr. Wile had tears; Alice had tears for Mr. Wile. He wanted her help. The briefest sign of panic touched his face. He shuddered, trying to hold on. With a rush of energy that she could feel, he sent all of himself out to her.

  But what Alice saw stopped her and she was unable to respond. Unable to say anything or to accept the thoughts. What Alice saw was a young black woman, herself.

  It was his picture of her. It was so unlike what she knew of herself that she could not keep the revulsion down. His angel of mercy, see what she looked like. A good black woman. And she recoiled.

  Saw only his horrified expression.

  The hold was broken. She began to cry and was interrupted by a sensation that chilled her every bone. Mr. Wile was dying, and she felt it.

  The fear, the futility of holding on. Skin on the skull was peeling away. Muscle burned. Gastric acid came up hot to fill the mouth, choke it. Plastic shot through the arteries to plug them; all canals were stuffed.

  Green mold grew on the decaying head, because the head was forced free of caring. It belonged to the centuries. Blood gurgled in its throat, the last breaths. Teeth tore free of the lips, exploded in a fan. Around the stringy neck, the long purple scarf was rapidly tightening. Up to the chin and higher.

  Alice felt it around her neck, the hot wool breath, the squeeze. She pulled at it with her hands and hands did not help. She opened her mouth and the woolen muffler filled it. It crept down her.

  She coughed it up. Air filled her lungs. Death left her. She lay on top of Mr. Wile, on his bed.

  Mr. Wile was dead. He had been thrust out, shaken from his last hold. Alice stood up slowly. She saw; she held his head in her hands and cried.

  Dr. Teagrade said nothing. The private doctor hung his head.

  “Ask the nurse to back off, will you?” the private doctor said.

  “I think she liked him,” said Dr. Teagrade.

  Alice backed off. She wiped her face with a Kleenex. How could she keep from crying, all the way home, about the old man? What could she have done? Alice asked no questions of herself on the way home. There were too many.

  She climbed into her sleeping husband’s bed and
waited for morning. All night she cried.

  He stood in wet sneakers at the side of the stream and felt tadpoles between his fingers.

  <>

  * * * *

  Charles Platt

  NEW YORK TIMES

  That morning the sky was bright blue and things had happened during the night. The apartment buildings had fallen. The traffic was all over the street. The supermarket stock had multiplied in the darkness and groceries were spilling out in mounds across the sidewalk, like bread swelling out of an oven. I saw a crowd of pedestrians trying to pull free from a fire hydrant; the crosstown bus’s wheels were in the asphalt up to their axles.

  Blankets rumpled. Sunlight streaming in. Plants on the windowsill twisting, thrusting up virile cancerous-brown shoots. Central heating knocking, gurgling, steaming, rattling against the wall.

  Last night she had taken one of the 16-ounce, screw-top, nonreturnable Pepsis from the $2.40 8-pack in the fridge. She didn’t really want it, drank two absentminded sips, left the bottle uncapped on the floor beside the bed. Undrinkable, this morning. Step over it, when you walk out to the kitchen.

  Grab handfuls of cereal; burrow into the box for the special offer coupon; slop vitamin D milk; stack the bowl with other dirty dishes where roaches scuttle in and out over last night’s watermelon.

  Turn on the radio, leave it on, loud. Go in the other room and forget it. Wipe tissues over mouth, cheeks, eyes, ears, anus, armpits. Ball them all up.

  Pick up clothes from the unswept floor. Glance out of grimy windows while spraying face, hair, breasts with plastic. Awake, now, it’s morning.

  What really happened last night? A new split in one of the door panels. Window gate padlock’s been tampered with. What went on on the fire escape? In the parking lot behind the brownstones? Where did those old mattresses come from?

  No one knows. It’s daytime now.

  That spring morning everyone in the city turned off the heat, plugged in the air conditioners. It forced the outside temperature up by ten degrees, made it good to get inside to the coolness.

  The office blocks at the top of Sixth Avenue had grown again, like crystal cultures, feeding on chemicals carried on the heavy air. Multifaceted, they glittered sleek in the sun. Inside, secretaries drifted over furry floors while the elevators chimed.

  A quick orgasm alone in the 42nd Street movie booth watching the hippie pull his girl’s skirt off and get her legs open for the camera to zoom in. Outside again bright and dusty day washed that brief trace of night from my mind. Squashy roll, tenderized beef, crunchy coleslaw, ice water, aluminum foil, crumpled dollar bills, the textures of eating.

  And what did she do? Got on the wrong train, had to take a cab to reach the doctor in time for her checkup, lost the prescription, too late for the job interview but that one hadn’t paid much anyway, best off without it. So she caught up on lunch, bought a women’s magazine, sat reading in Madison Square Garden for an hour. Went home, showered, fresh clothes, makeup, another two sips from another 16-ounce, 8-pack, nonreturnable, screw-top Pepsi, discovered the radio still blaring, tuned it to a different station, left it to go watch TV and read another women’s magazine—left the last one on the subway. Decided which movie to see that night, redecided, reredecided, called a friend and talked long-distance for half an hour, went and retouched her makeup (waste basket overflowing with tissues now), put a record on and stared out of the window.

  * * * *

  After the movie. Walking past Central Park. The reptile-cars are cruising in and out, headlights bleaching the broken asphalt. Sentient, predatory, closing on an awkward, stumbling pedestrian. A glimpse of gnarled hands up in front of etched face, glint of dusty-crumpled metal, restless rumbling exhausts.

  A smothered cry.

  Furtively, from windows scattered in the monoliths, shadowy faces peer out through broken Venetian blinds, around rusting air conditioners; background peeling room interiors flicker TV-blue.

  Dust and fumes mingle as the cars drink the depleted air. Oxygen used up. Movement slows, engines die. The cars jerk and spasm, like a cluster of asphyxiated roaches. Headlights fade to yellow. Springs sag, tires deflate. A creak, a clang of cooling metal.

  * * * *

  Out of the subway walking home on First Avenue. Almost empty even at the allnite grocery marts. The night is taking hold, gripping hard.

  A foretaste: heavy figures approaching me on the sidewalk. The pair of them space out either side of me as they come closer.

  —Do we hit him, Frank?

  The long space of three footsteps.

  —No.

  They pass. Into the darkness.

  Along the black-and-blue canyon of 10th Street, skirting tumbled garbage, congealed vomit, rusting fenders, Coke bottles, iron bars, smears of excrement dehydrated and brittle on the dead concrete.

  The footsteps start behind me and I run, fire escapes rusty trees skeletal hands parading overhead under the smeared moon. The tripwire gets me across the shins, bites in, scrapes the skin off like pink apple peel. My face goes down mashing into a rusty can. Studded boots march braille into my back.

  Inside the building, past the broken-open mailboxes, the junkie slithers out from under the stairs, trembling knife point aimed at my throat. I stumble-run up the stained steps, lungfuls of urine-tainted air, lightbulbs dancing, chest aching, slam the steel-paneled door behind me with a heart-beat to spare.

  Lying on the dusty floor of my empty apartment where the furniture used to be. Dream-images of half-sleep. Then I sit up tense and alert, burglar’s hacksaw carving through the window bars, one lunge and I get him in the throat with my sawn-off pool cue. He tilts slowly like a high diver off the ten-meter board, falls turning, splashes onto the hard black road.

  Down there, streetlights glint on upturned eyes of ten thousand criminals and hoodlums, gathered together silently gazing up hungry and waiting.

  And even as I try to slide the iron bar of the police lock into its catch, the door shudders in against my palms and clumsy fingers let the bar slip. Doorknob in the groin punches me backward. His broken bottle carves my chest, blood welling up like water rising in grooved wet sand.

  They strip me as they strip an automobile: clothes, wristwatch, shoes, teeth, eyes, ears, scalp, fingers, limbs, spleen, heart . . .

  Gutted, they cram me through a drain grating into the sewers. I slide easy, into the slimy, greasy, fetid water of the river; roll into the riverbed in a flowering puff of powdered excrement that settles back down in an even blanket, softening, blurring, obliterating.

  * * * *

  The sun was bright and clear when I awoke the next morning. I left her still sleeping, went and poured fresh pasteurized orange juice, cereal with vitamins enough for another twenty-four hours of my existence.

  I felt good.

  I looked outside. Sunlight had miraculously erased the darkness again. Night’s black ocean tide had withdrawn, leaving only an occasional piece of driftwood on the sidewalk shore: a bloodstained shoe, length of bent water pipe, a crushed hypodermic.

  The radio news said the Empire State was bombed out again; the black surface of 7th Avenue had turned to jelly, clogging the subway beneath; and we were warned of intermittent showers of blood in the late afternoon.

  <>

  * * * *

  John Barfoot

  THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE MYTH

  The first thing we see is a view of the desert from an immense height. It is simply a flat, reddish surface, huge cloud-shadows racing across it, filling the whole of our vision. Through its center cuts the sparkling silver ribbon of the highway. We move downward with increasing speed in a great curve which brings us out above the surface of the highway, moving quickly along its length. The signposts flicker past, the desert slides by like a backdrop, the yellow lines of the thirty lanes arrow straight to the horizon. The highway is empty, we are traveling down its center.

  Ahead, we can see that the point on the horizon wher
e the road narrows and disappears is slowly suffusing with a brown color; the brittle-feeling, softly rough color of dead leaves. The brown stain leaves the horizon and travels down the road toward us, and we can see that it covers the whole width of the highway. Behind it a long brown tail unfolds, covering half the lanes, occasionally straying across into the other half.

  We slow down as it approaches us, until we stop gently before it. Our view straight ahead is of splintered glass around the edge of a frame, buckled metal, yellowed and decayed rubber. The brown color is rust.