Wild & Steamy

by Carolyn Crane

  Robert had a vision for public art that involved modifying urban landscapes, of taking the decrepit and making it strange or beautiful. Sophia was more of a two-dimensional artist—she had piles of sketchbooks full of imagined landscapes drawn in colored pencil. However, she’d often collaborate with Robert, sketching out new possibilities for installations—she’d look at a photo of an alley and decide that it needed this or that detail, or a shape here, an object there. The possibilities she saw felt so right as to almost feel inevitable. Vivified landscapes, they’d call them. Though Robert could will matter into specific shapes, it was tough-minded Sophia who’d dream up the bold and the glorious. Her entire way of being was a kind of gift to him as an artist. And as a man.

  It was only later that he’d realized the talent of Sophia’s that he so admired—the knack for visualizing that which seemed to belong—was precisely what made her such a powerful highcap revisionist, so good at creating false memories.

  Maybe there were clues, but he’d never noticed. All he saw was his brilliant, passionate Sophia with her big intense gaze, red hair glowing in the streetlights.

  They’d sneak out at night and vivify spaces by enhancing shapes, and adding new forms. It didn’t matter that their work would be trashed eventually. Vivification was illegal—technically it was property damage—and also temporary, like a moth. Many of their ideas had been inspired by the great urban sculptor, Grentano, with whom they were both obsessed.

  They sometimes vivified hidden alleys. Sophia would paint a mural on one side and Robert would add cool geometric shapes or strange gargoyle heads to the other. Sophia would sign her work with an “S” but Robert didn’t need to sign his—whenever a force field highcap like him modified a structure, it took on his seal, like a fingerprint. Robert’s was a tiny bird.

  They once vivified the undersection of the old highway bridge. They climbed up the decrepit wooden structure to where the supports joined in a rough “Y.”

  Robert could remember Sophia clinging onto a dark wooden beam above their precarious perch, laughing, vowing to kick Robert’s ass for getting her to climb up there. She hated heights.

  He’d teased her; it had been her idea to place the faces so high.

  I can’t help if it’s where they needed to be, she’d told him. Robert remembered the feeling of pushing his will into the wooden surfaces, the faces slowly emerging, and the feeling of loving Sophia more than ever. She was usually so fierce and bossy, but being out of control made her more relational, even in the way she spoke of the people down below. They’re all just finding their way, she said. Even the creeps, they’re just finding their way.

  He’d stood up against her, then, and he’d kissed her. He loved his fierce and bossy Sophia all the more when he saw her heart—that’s how he felt, like he was seeing her heart.

  Lovers. Artistic collaborators. Robert had felt like they were unstoppable.

  He blamed Sophia’s parents, Boss and Mrs. Sidway, for victimizing his mother. They’d presented her, no doubt, with an impossible choice. Maybe they’d even entrapped her because they heard her child was a highcap who could manipulate force fields. He’d dreamed of destroying them once he got Sophia safely away.

  Not that he completely excused his mother—he was her child, her little boy. She should’ve found another way. Robert’s search for her went on, fruitlessly. Years later he’d dug up an old missing persons case in Iowa that seemed like her. He feared the worst.

  Sitting there in his Tanglemaster tower, Robert twirled the paperclip S.

  Being so utterly discarded by his mother and then, even more painfully, by Sophia, had revealed to him some essential truths about the pointlessness, hopelessness, and utter solitude of human existence.

  He should thank them, really.

  But now, ten years later, here he was a grown man, and the thought of Sophia visiting him sent his heart beating right out of his chest. Monstrous.

  Back when they were eighteen and supposedly in love, Robert and Sophia had learned that the great sculptor Grentano was taking on an apprentice to travel the world with him. Sophia had encouraged Robert to apply.

  It would be an awesome opportunity to work with the amazing Grentano, and of course Sophia would go too. It would be the start of their new life. Sophia also encouraged him to apply for group shows, scholarships to the finest academies as a back-up plan. It’s time to get out of this cow town, she’d said.

  Eventually, the flurry of rejections came. The schools didn’t want him. The group shows didn’t want his modern gargoyles. Worst of all, Grentano had hated his slides. Grentano suggested he stay in construction.

  All this was around the time the Sidways were bidding the massive twenty-story multi-turnpike project, a billion dollar project that would be impossible without Robert. Not that he cared. But after the rejections, Sophia talked him into staying, at least for the turnpike.

  No sense in rushing out of here until there’s something to rush to, she’d said. They would save money, plan together. They had to be smart. He agreed; he would stay for a while longer and they’d think of a new plan. Naturally, the rejections saddened him, but he didn’t lose faith in his vision. In fact, he was mostly frustrated to have to wait to get Sophia away from her twisted, dangerous parents.

  Some time after, Robert was up by the railroad yards working on one of his modern gargoyles when a sixty-something man drove past; he stopped his car, got out, and confronted Robert, demanding to know if he was Robert Ferguson—he recognized Robert’s style. When Robert told him that he was, the man wanted to know why Robert had rejected three scholarships and a Grentano apprenticeship to stay in construction. Why bother applying in the first place?

  Robert was dumbfounded.

  The man, an art professor, insisted he’d personally spoken with Robert on the phone, that Robert had accepted the scholarship and had promised to turn in some forms, but all the man got was a terse letter, declining it after all.

  Robert remembered nothing of the sort.

  Was the man crazy? Robert looked into it and found out he was telling the truth. Who would impersonate him? Only Sophia knew about any of it.

  It was here that the idea that she could be a revisionist got hold of him. It had made him sick to doubt her, even the tiniest shade of doubt. He became determined cleanse himself of all doubt by ruling it out. He set up a test—fake news about a scholarship, and he would tape the interaction on a hidden tape recorder. He did it to prove her innocence. But just in case his wildest doubts were true, he’d left a note to himself about the tape recorder with instructions to push play.

  He remembered his surprise upon finding the note, knowing what it might mean. Then he played the tape and he heard the whole thing. His exciting news. Her fake happiness for him, followed by some mysterious moments of silence, and then her voice. Idiots. I can’t believe this. They would reject you? Are they insane? You should be the one rejecting them! Uh! I’m so sorry, Robert. The hell with them, anyway. You don’t need them.

  The discovery had sent him reeling. He’d loved her with all his heart. She’d said she loved him.

  But it was all fake. Those mysterious moments of silence were her revising him. It made him sick just to imagine it, but there it was, the proof.

  He went after her, looking for her all over, but couldn’t find her. On his way around town he destroyed all of the projects they did together. It was the worst thing he could think of to do. The depth of her betrayal was nearly incomprehensible.

  Years later, he’d heard Packard say that revisionists couldn’t revise emotion, and he recalled thinking that Sophia would hate that—she hated doubt, hated a lack of control. It made him wonder if she’d been building her skills on him, as he’d been building his skills as part of the Sidway crew. Or was he just entertainment?

  He never did find Sophia that day he learned the truth, or the next, and she wouldn’t answer his messages. Then he learned she’d scurried off to college. Apparently Robert�
�s value had ended with the dashed hopes.

  He sometimes went back in his thoughts to that girl who was his collaborator, his friend, his fierce protector. And he would remember how her spirit would shine especially bright during those rare moments when she felt out of control. Like under the bridge. Was it fake all along? Was their love fake? A teen girl trying on personas?

  It didn’t matter, because it was over. Again he’d been discarded, again in the cruelest of ways.

  But it was okay, because he now understood something important: that beautifying the ugly and hated corners of the city was a lie; it was a form of revision in itself. His art, up to then, had been a cover-up of ugliness and hatefulness, which was the true state of things in life. There was nothing to believe in, and no point to anything. Least of all love.

  He was glad to know this.

  He turned his full attention to the Sidway multi-turnpike project. As usual, Sidway Construction had created fake blueprints; city commissioners would rubber stamp a child’s drawing if that’s what Sidway and their mob friends presented. Anyway, Sidway would be using Robert to shape the concrete and rebar, and Robert didn’t read blueprints, he read pictures. Once he had the visual of what he wanted a structure to do, he would touch it and commune with its atoms, and slowly, it would shift to take his vision.

  As the start date neared, Sidway and his foreman would show him photos of other turnpikes in other cities, as well as X-Rays of how the rebar was to run through, and Robert would nod. The Sidway Multi was to be a double-up of one of the more famous turnpikes from out east—it would merge five highways in different configurations.

  Grentano had once written that sculpture should express the truth, and Robert was determined now to capture just that. Looking at the pictures for the multi-turnpike, Robert had a new vision for a new kind of sculptuary—a piece that would express the ultimate truth, and at the same time, destroy the reputation of Sidway Construction for years to come.

  Alone in his shabby room at night, Robert created his own plans for a grotesque confusion of roads. He’d build it twice as high as they’d scoped, make it run to triple the budget. It would be a hateful and Mobius-like mockery of turnpikes, an ugly, bloated, Slinky of a triple cloverleaf that would seem on the verge of toppling, though it wouldn’t thanks to his fields. He planned for extra curlicues that didn’t need to exist, underpasses that shaved shockingly close to the overpasses. He’d build it backwards and from the inside so that Boss Sidway and the foremen wouldn’t see the whole until it was too late. His work would be too slow for the eye to see, but it would be relentless. A relentless bloom of pointlessness and despair. Just like life.

  As the project progressed, he talked the corner-cutting Sidway foreman into trucking in old discarded sections of highway from other locales and depositing them under the structure; he told them that as long as they connected the pieces physically to the structure, he could use his mutant power to mold and incorporate them, thereby saving on concrete.

  Yeah. He could do that. But he wouldn’t.

  He also requested the metal skeleton of an old farm silo be deposited under there, and told them to pour a line of concrete to connect it, and he would re-mold parts of it to form the highway rail. This too, was well within his power. But he would leave it there, as a flagrantly senseless touch, a slap in the face of the taxpayers.

  The Sidway interchange would be a monument to pointlessness. It would be sculptuary on a scale even Grentano had never imagined.

  The thing would be unusable, unsalvageable. There would be an outcry, investigations. The national news might pick it up. Blueprints would be seized and Sidway’s corrupt business practices would be exposed. How would Sidway explain it? It’s not like they could claim to have been following the advice of an eighteen-year-old highcap. Highcaps didn’t even exist. Heads would fucking roll.

  As the interchange took its full outrageous shape, it occupied over two square miles of land. During the final stages of the project, he worked night and day, deep in the belly of it, feverishly interfacing with parts of the structure, raising, lowering, and twisting roads, undoing or crashing the corrective work the Sidway crews were attempting. He figured they’d be hunting him by then, trying to stop him, and they’d eventually catch him, and Boss Sidway would kill him. But that was part of the vision—Robert imagined himself going down in flames, a fiery comet off the top of the turnpike.

  Some pathetic part of him also imagined that, after he was dead, Sophia would recognize the Tangle for what it was before it, too was destroyed.

  He still loved her—that was the hell of it. The fact that he loved her showed the hell of everything.

  Surprisingly, it was Boss Sidway who died. Robert was so hard at work deep under the massive structure, he didn’t even realize when the anger and editorials started up. The investigations were instantaneous. By the time he emerged, Boss Sidway and his foreman had thrown themselves off the top of the structure—some said they were pushed—and Mrs. Sidway had fled to the Philippines with other Sidway heads. The company crumbled. Sophia stayed gone.

  Much to Robert’s surprise, his multi-turnpike wasn’t torn down. Midcity crews attempted to stabilize it and started rerouting the highways to it. He went to the new commissioners and pointed out hidden flaws, begging them not to let cars on it—never in his wildest dreams had he imagined they would. They were grateful for the lifesaving warnings, but they had to use the turnpike—too much money had been invested to abandon it or knock it down. Robert got involved in the safety modifications.

  Plus, there was always something more to add to it—a dizzying new tilt, a bent light pole, a grim twist of guardrail. He couldn’t stop working on it.

  Three days later, Robert was officially in charge of the stabilization efforts, given the title of Tanglemaster, and construction began on a tower for him to work from. He and the Tangle became deeply connected. The Tangle lived and breathed, or more, Robert lived it, Robert breathed it, morphed it to match his undulating despair.

  And now he sat in his tower, waiting for Sophia. She wanted to see the Monk. He wouldn’t have told her he was the Monk. Therefore, Sophia would reappear. Sophia couldn’t stand to be told No.

  *** *** ***

  Sophia sat in her car at the foot of the tower, engine running, heater on high, trying to focus on anything but the way Robert looked at her. The sense of a wall. He didn’t want her, didn’t want to see her. She could only imagine his expression if he learned what she was, what she’d done.

  Back before it all went to hell, she’d wanted to confess how she used her powers to support her parents’ criminal enterprises—that she’d revised enemies, witnesses. She was doing that work before she realized the harm of it. As she got older she felt guilty, but she kept on. It gave her power in the household—made her a kind of princess really, granting favors and getting treasure. Refusing to do it would render her powerless, or worse. It was always easier to say she’d stop tomorrow.

  The closer she and Robert had grown, the more convinced she’d become that it would disgust him that she hadn’t refused to do her father’s bidding. God, she was a coward! Robert valued truth, and she was all about erasing it.

  After she betrayed Robert, she really had thought of tracking him down and telling him what she’d done, thinking it might help him to know that Grentano and others had very badly wanted to work with him—even if it was too late to do anything about it, he’d know it.

  But there had always been some excuse not to. She didn’t know where he was. It would hurt him to remember. It would hurt him more to know the truth. Bla bla bla. In truth, she just couldn’t bear for him to be even more disgusted with her.

  She’d searched for Robert in other men. Not intentionally, but it was no accident she’d hooked up with Detective Otto Sanchez when she moved back to Midcity years later. She couldn’t tell by looking at Otto that he had the power like Robert’s—no highcap could recognize another—but early on she had noticed the way O
tto pressed his hands to the wall at a crime scene. Communing with the structure, sinking into the atoms. She’d seen Robert do it a million times.

  Like Robert, Otto was a visionary with big ideas—she found that exciting, and she’d encouraged him. They’d hatched grand plans for a safe, prosperous Midcity and she’d felt almost happy again. She and Otto would be partners, reigning over the transformation of the city. She was her old kitten-tiger self, managing perception and memory around him, using her power to further their schemes. How had it gone so wrong? The things she’d done …god, how she hated herself! She’d tried to stop revising, but she always had some reason to erase something. Or Otto did; Otto was a great believer in the end justifying the means. And there were times when the revision he wanted her to do was so outrageous, so impossible, she had to try it. Like climbing a mountain because it’s there.

  And sure, there had been times when she’d used her powers for the greater good, like when she and Packard and the gang were kidnapping and questioning people in connection with the serial killers—if she hadn’t revised the people afterwards, the bad guys might have gotten warned about what they knew. She remembered how that righteous hypochondriac Justine had looked at her—the horror that Sophia would take a person’s memory, even a few minutes of it. Sophia had just laughed in Justine’s face, but inside she’d felt sick. She could act as if she didn’t care, act as if she didn’t hate herself, but that’s what it was—an act—and seeing what she’d done to Robert was the icing on the evil cake.

  She craved the Monk’s brand of annihilation more than ever now. She had to stop. Had to be stopped—she was just too weak to stop herself.

  She would find the Monk, throw herself at his feet, beg him to do his whammy on her. She’d heard he usually got the targets after the other disillusionists had softened them up, but she felt sure she didn’t need to be softened up—she was ready! Burning with regret over her many misdeeds. She had this fantasy that he’d disillusion her instantly, and she’d bounce back good, like that snake Corny Chambers, who now went around helping the homeless after years of butchering them and eluding prosecution.