Wild & Steamy

by Carolyn Crane

  She was supposed to be in and out; she was just here to get the Monk’s information. Not open old wounds.

  Robert slammed down the phone, grabbed his coat, and pulled on a black winter hat. “I have to go. And I need to lock this place down.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Some kid in the Tanglelands.” He regarded her darkly. “I’m going to have to take you down in the bird.” This like it was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

  “Okay,” she said, understanding the dark look all too well. There were men who’d feel pleased with themselves after a quick toss with the ex, but Robert would feel like a dupe.

  He hit some buttons on a panel and led her out another door, up some narrow steps and out onto the roof where there was a small helicopter.

  You could see everywhere from his windy tower top—the perfect blackness of Lake Michigan, ship lights in the distance, decrepit downtown Midcity, and sludging through it, Midcity River with its shimmery, oily surface.

  Robert helped her into the passenger seat, and then he got in the other side and started it up. Like it was a car or something. It was weird he knew how to fly a helicopter.

  The helicopter lifted off with a backward jerk, then jolted forward, and up up up into the night sky.

  Robert wore his brown hat just a little crooked, and it matched his brown hair, his brows. He’d always looked hot in hats. He seemed to be concentrating with all his might on the task of flying, but she suspected he really just didn’t want to deal with her.

  So many homes and buildings in Midcity were sporting barbed wire, sirens, and floodlights these days, but that was no match for the feeling of guardedness the man next to her now exuded. And something else underneath. Hopelessness. Despair.

  Briefly she wondered if she could ever revise him again. Could she get close to him like that again without it being strange? Reluctant subjects had to be restrained, their eyes held open. It made her sick to picture doing that to Robert.

  They rose over the massive structure, all strange twists and lights, like an alien space station, terrific and awesome and a little bit terrifying.

  “You must do this a lot,” she tried, wanting to say anything, just to change the feeling in the small space. “People must get into trouble all the time down there.”

  “Not a lot call the authorities though. If they do try…well, it’s hard to get reception down there. We find the bodies.” He paused. “Assuming…you know.”

  She nodded. Assuming the sleepwalking cannibals didn’t find them first.

  “I’ve only got two guys tonight. You’ll stay in here and wait.”

  “Why not let me go in and help?”

  “Because it’s a war zone.”

  “And if I go you’ll have three instead of two.” With a deliberately obvious movement, Sophia eyed the rifles on the rack behind them. “Plus I’m probably still a better shot than you are.” They’d had a range on the Sidway compound.

  “Nope.”

  “I know the Monk’s in there, and I’m going in either way. Frankly, there’s not a lot you can do about it.”

  Robert frowned.

  Soon they were nearing the airspace directly above the Tangle; she could see a large span of darkness in the center. She looked down at the twists, wondering, as she so often did, about her dad’s last moments. It was terrible, the things he’d done, the people he’d killed. Well, she didn’t know for a fact that he’d killed, but he directed a mob machine that killed. Still, he’d loved her—both her parents had loved her, and she’d loved them. Of the many highcaps she knew, she was the only one who’d been loved by her human parents. She was lucky in that. Yes, her father taken full advantage of her memory erasing abilities, but she’d never said No, had she? She pictured the three of them—her mom and her dad and her—at the Peanut Barrel, the peanut-shells-on-the-floor restaurant where they’d dine every Friday night. It was one of her favorite memories, the three of them. Their little family.

  Fucking Tangle.

  Her parents had gotten greedy—that’s how it had all started. There had been talk on the city council of redoing the highway interchanges, and her parents couldn’t bear to see the contract go to anybody but Sidway Construction. She remembered some of the conversations—they’d fight for the job and figure it out later. They partnered with another mob outfit, and called in favors to get the city to write the specs in a way that would exclude other construction companies, and made all kinds of deals to get the massive turnpike passed by the council. Lots of people invested and got lined up for cuts. Soon after they were awarded the job, her father regretted the whole thing. Something about concrete prices changing, and the fact that Sidway Construction would have to farm out more of the work than expected, due to other projects running late.

  He let his cohorts know, recommended that they reverse course. That didn’t go well. Mob goons kidnapped her mother, held her for almost two days. Two frightening, harrowing days.

  Her dad promised they’d do the work, that Sidway would make it work.

  That afternoon they found her mother wandering the Midcity lakefront in a drugged stupor, precariously near the big boulders. Sophia never got to see the note that was with her mother, but she heard the conversations about it, knew it threatened both her parents’ lives. There was panic at home. They were having trouble pulling in subcontractors—people were scared of getting involved with such a mob-infused project—the price of failure was way too high. Sidway Construction’s one saving grace was Robert’s growing powers. There’s been nothing so big as to be beyond him yet, she heard the foreman say. And another comment—one of the other leads: those fucking crews couldn’t build a doghouse without Robert.

  She and Robert had been in the thick of making their plans to leave at the time—if he received a Yes from a college, a Yes from Grentano, anything, they were out of there. She would be eighteen, so her parents couldn’t stop her, and she and Robert would make a happy home. Robert, in particular was itching to go. He had grown increasingly angry at her father, blaming him for robbing him of his chance to know his mother, to find his own father, and laughing about what would happen when he left; he knew they couldn’t build without him. It bothered her when he’d laugh about Sidway Construction crumbling, but she understood his anger.

  But now she couldn’t let Robert leave. The turnpike had to go up as planned or the mob families would lose big, and her parents would be killed. Would Robert give up his dreams to save her father? Her mother? Would he do it for her? She wanted to believe, but if there was one thing she’d learned working for her dad, it was that hate and vengeance were usually stronger than loyalty—stronger, even than love.

  So she did what she always did. She controlled the situation through memory revision, the only sure way to control life. Looking back, she realized she could’ve confided in Robert. Given him a chance—given them a chance—to struggle through the problem together. But she hadn’t even considered it.

  She thought of that decision often. She saw it as the point where her true nature had fully and completely asserted itself.

  And so the process began. Robert would come to her, excited about an acceptance, a scholarship; usually he’d have a letter to show her. She would read it and tell him how wonderful it was. She would draw up close and look into his eyes, and he would look back, so trusting. There was always this moment just before she took hold of his mind when he knew something was off, when the trust turned to confusion, and one time, horror. But usually by then she would have enough hold on him that he couldn’t look away. And she would reach in and erase.

  She couldn’t just erase, of course. She had to picture new things to plant in place of the old memory. Robert opening the rejection letter. The feel of the paper on his fingers, and exactly where he’d sit; choreography was key. She’d realized by then that she couldn’t revise emotions, but people would add emotion in as the memory grew roots and connected to genuine memory. Sophia made most of the letters ki
nd, except Grentano’s, which she made complainy, nit-picky, small minded—qualities Robert disliked. She hoped it would make him see the rejection as a blessing in disguise. Sometimes, as if to make up for it all, she would create a nice moment of Baron resting his fuzzy nose on Robert’s knee and looking up in the way Robert always found amusing. Finally, she’d picture Robert texting her, and her arrival, and he’d give her the letter and she’d put it in her pocket and insist on burning it, and from there she’d cut him over to real time.

  “Fuck ‘em,” Robert would say. He’d hold her slender fingers in his big meaty hands and say something like, “There’s only one person I need with me on this.”

  But she wasn’t with him. She was so full of shame during that time, she could barely look at him, could barely stand the shining goodness of his love for her. She wished she could run away, far away.

  Then, one day, she saw their installation on the old bridge had been destroyed—erased completely in a way only Robert could’ve managed. She rushed around town and found everything else they’d ever done trashed, or effaced. Work he’d cherished. It was here that she realized how deeply the rejections had damaged him. Only a damaged Robert would destroy his own art. It shook her that she’d done that to him.

  She’d panicked, unable to imagine facing him, and found ways to avoid him over the following day. Her parents had been pressing her to apply to colleges like her peers, but she’d put it off and off. That day she did a complete turnaround; she announced she’d like to tour her father’s alma mater, Kenwell University in Northern California—immediately. She went that night. She toured and she stayed, signed up to major in political science. Her parents were relieved to get her out of town. They thought the reason she wanted her choice of college kept quiet and secret was because of the tension over the turnpike. They had no idea about her and Robert.

  She got updates on the turnpike through her parents, and soon, the news of it all going bad. She felt sure that if Robert had been in his usual state of mind, he could’ve made it work, but she’d destroyed him in some essential way. Things went worse and worse, and it was all her fault.

  By the time her father went off the top she was consumed with guilt. They said it was a suicide, but she knew better. Her mother fled to live as a broken woman in a Manilla condo.

  Some of the guys on the Sidway crew told her that Robert was living a hermit-like existence within Midcity. Other people thought he’d left town after the debacle. She preferred the leaving town rumor; it allowed her to imagine him repairing and rebuilding, living the life he deserved. She repaired and rebuilt, too, or more, she hardened. Hardening seemed to help her forget.

  Six years later she returned to Midcity and became confidante and ally to the rising city star, Otto Sanchez, clicking around town in her perfect hair and crisp safari suits. If you were in the know, you wouldn’t dare to look Sophia Sidway in the eyes. She was glad to have spikes, metaphorically; it kept people away. Her life seemed to consist of her lounging about in top offices, posh parlors, and restricted areas, directing the past as she saw fit. And she’d mock people who judged her . “Me so evil,” she’d sometimes sneer in a baby voice.

  It was amazing she’d ever been that long-ago girl, scrambling across the nighttime cityscape, hand in hand with Robert, dressed all in black with long flowing scarves—one for her and a little one for scruffy little Baron. Dreaming. Laughing. Vivifying their stupid little scenes.

  Sophia couldn’t erase her own memory. Even if she could, her powers only let her reach back through one day, but if by some miracle she became able to reach back through the years, she’d yank that girl out by the roots. Because sometimes when Sophia was alone in bed at night, those memories felt like battery acid, burning her heart from the inside out.

  Robert lowered the helicopter. Two strange-looking ATVs waited below; they looked like little tanks with massive rover wheels, white exhaust trailing into the sky. They seemed like toys next to the eerie mega-bulk of the Tangle.

  “What are those, militarized clown cars?” Sophia said.

  “You’ll be glad for those militarized clown cars when we get in.”

  She sat up. “You’re letting me come?”

  “More like resigned to. It actually might be safer. And it’s almost curfew.”

  “And you know I’m a better shot than you.”

  He gave her a jaundiced look and they landed with a series of bumps.

  “Out,” Robert said.

  She grabbed a gun and jumped onto the noisy, snowy, garbage-strewn expanse that surrounded the Tangle, ducking until she got clear of the still-rotating blades. The outermost highway rose up above them on fat, gray concrete pillars. Beyond were more pillars supporting more highways, a web of thick roads rising up out of a nest of shattered concrete, rusted wire fences, and garbage. It roared like a motorized ocean, strangely cyclical, punctuated by horns and tire screeches.

  Five minutes later, Sophia was buckled in one of the ATVs, and being driven over the broken barriers and into the maw of darkness by an EMT named Green. Their ATV followed behind the one that Robert rode in.

  “Kids,” Green grumbled. “Tangleland’s a barrel of laughs until somebody gets caught by a deranged killer.” Green had the thickest black moustache she’d ever seen, and he told her that his crew ‘went in’ with Robert only when they thought they’d have success. They had a firm location for this boy, and he wasn’t too far.

  They entered a space that was inky black except for the headlights. Green told her how to run the searchlight and she played the beam across discarded twists of guardrail and giant chunks of concrete, some as big as train cars. She felt like they were traversing the belly of an underground cave system, only instead of rock, it was made of chunks of old highway and garbage.

  Deeper they went, down through a dark gulley, over a pile of rubble, and then they emerged into a dim, cavernous space. Shafts of light came down into the gloom from the curvy crosshatch of roads above. This wasn’t too far? It seemed like another world.

  They got out at the foot of a three-story high mountain of jagged boulders, eerie in the half-darkness. Green handed Sophia a flashlight and she strapped the gun over her back. The Tangle sounded different on the inside, more humming than roar.

  The four of them scaled the pile, which was slow, dangerous going. At one point a boulder loosened under Sophia’s foot and started a mini avalanche behind her. They reached the top and yelled down to the boy, who lay on the other side at the bottom. He lifted an arm.

  “Alive,” Green observed.

  Robert told Green and his partner that he and Sophia would keep lookout up top, and that they ‘could work.’ This turned out to mean that the men could use their telekinetic powers in front of Sophia. Robert led Sophia to the edge of the pile next to a big pillar, and they watched the EMTs scramble down the other side, dislodging debris, which magically veered away from the boy. A stretcher, fitted inside a kind of plastic sled, slid right along down with them and stopped neatly at the foot of the hill. Powerful telekinetics, those two.

  Sophia found the view to be weirdly spectacular, like several underpasses all munched together—pillars and supports rising willy nilly, tilted surfaces. It was like being inside a massive, bombed-out Salvador Dali painting. Was the Monk really down here? There would be something appropriate about that, she thought. The man with so much darkness inside him in this dark, twisted place. And weirdly, it echoed her feelings of hopelessness. It had been selfish of her to have sex with Robert, and now she was further than ever from finding the Monk. She felt like they should talk about it, but really, what was there to say? She crossed her arms.

  “God, his friends left him trapped. I mean, he probably didn’t come in alone, right?”

  Robert nodded.

  “Lucky for him it’s still early evening,” Sophia observed. The sleepwalking cannibals usually didn’t come out until after bedtime—they were normal people who were commanded by a dream invader to kill and
eat in their sleep.

  “They’ve been coming out at nightfall now,” Robert said.

  Sophia stiffened. “Well, shit, I thought guns didn’t stop them that effectively.”

  “They slow them. Usually that’s enough, but if I have to, I’ll throw up a field or suck them into a wall.” He touched the pillar.

  She nodded. She’d thought he wanted them to stand near it for cover, but of course he wanted to stay directly connected to the physical structure of the Tangle. Robert’s powers only worked if he was touching the walls or floor, something directly connected to the structure.

  “I smell fire,” she said. “They like sharpening their teeth together around the fire, I hear.”

  “Fire doesn’t mean anything. Anyone down here could be making a fire. And sometimes the oil slicks catch.” He squinted beyond where the boy lay, at a massive rectangle of road sitting on the floor. When you looked closer, you could see it was two lengths of road, folded, like a sandwich, waiting for a giant with truck-sized hands. Whatever Robert noticed there, he didn’t appear to like it. Way up above, car headlights swirled around on the angular surfaces, strobing the insane, futuristic cathedral ceiling. It was otherworldly, she thought, yet oddly familiar.

  Green and the other EMT had gotten the boy up to the top, a bit away from where Sophia and Robert stood; he and the EMTs called back and forth; Robert and Sophia would keep a lookout while they got the boy down the other side. He instructed them to take ‘the bird’ and he and Sophia would drive back to the tower.

  The EMTs eased the sled, with the boy in it, down the side of the boulder mountain. They used ropes, but Sophia suspected the ropes were there for the boy’s psychological comfort. Those two telekinetics could probably ease him down with their minds.

  “Is it hard being down here?” Robert asked suddenly.

  To be here where her father had died, he meant. To see it.

  “Less than I would’ve thought,” she said, not looking at him. “It seems like another country. Like it happened in another country.”