“Uh, you weren’t alive back then.”
“But I read, Duncan. I do read. I’ve read enough to know well that man never possessed the sky. He only ever passed through it, on his way up or on his way back down.” She leans dangerously over the creaking rail, an arm outstretched toward the dragons. “That’s our lot in life, isn’t it? We fall through the world without leaving a trace, all the while trying to grip the air. Oh, to be an unstoppable force of nature. To belong somewhere as they do…”
Ripple hasn’t laughed like this in a long time. But all of a sudden, the plump silhouette of Swanny from the back, the quavering line of her finger, tracing shapes in the night, the petulant, know-it-all timbre of her voice, suddenly coalesce not into a person, his fiancée, but into the punch line of a ginormous prank being played at his expense, like that time in underschool when some of the guys wrote WASTED on his forehead when he was passed out and no one said anything about it till the ID Holosnaps were already taken. And once he starts laughing, he can’t stop. Dimly, it occurs to him that Swanny did the same thing to him earlier, back in his room, so whatever. They’re even now.
“I don’t see what’s so amusing,” she says uneasily.
“You want to be a dragon?! You really are swamped.”
Swanny starts to reply, then freezes, half-turned to her right. In a different, lower voice—both more feminine and more insinuatingly unpleasant—she says, “How rude of me not to include you in our conversation. By all means, please join us.” For a second, Ripple thinks she’s still talking to him. Then Abby creeps a little closer, into the dim glow of the city’s lights. She’s wearing one of his mom’s old teddies, a flimsy pink thing with feathers around the neckline, under the green camo hoodie he had on this morning.
“You weren’t in your room,” she says. The sleeves of the sweatshirt are almost down to her knees, the hood like a cape down her back: it’s just like that ugly coat she used to wear on the Island, only with less bird shit on the shoulders. She sinks to her knees at his feet, and for a second he half hopes, half fears she’s going to do something unspeakable, but instead she scratches Hooligan behind the ears. His tail thumps the all-weather carpet. “Where’s Cuyahoga?”
“I don’t believe you’ve properly introduced your ‘friend,’ Duncan,” says Swanny. She returns to her hemlock glider like a queen reclaiming her throne.
“This is Abby,” he says, staring at the girl’s blond hair. It seems to give off a glow, even in the urban near-dark, and he thinks of a story his mother told him long ago, about an abandoned subway tunnel so full of smugglers’ treasure it shone like daylight inside.
“Abby what?”
“Just Abby.”
“Just Abby,” Swanny repeats. “How insouciant.”
Abby is rubbing Hooligan’s belly intently; he wriggles to and fro, occasionally clapping with delight. Ripple gently prods her with the toe of his sneaker, but she doesn’t stop, or look up at him either. Great. Now they’re both mad.
“See this bandage?” He rolls up his sleeve. “My HowFly misfunctioned. But I got lucky. Abby saved my life,” he admits. “I guess I should’ve said that before.”
Now Abby lifts her head. Her eyes are redder even than Swanny’s, and for a confused second he wonders if she’s been smoking too. Then he realizes she’s been crying—not to get his attention, but alone, in her room. Because she missed him.
Him. That’s all she wants. Not his fortune, not his name. Him.
“You have a heart,” she reminds him, trying to smile. “You proved it to me.” She reaches out her hand. And OK, he takes it.
“Well.” Swanny stands up, a little unsteadily. “Duncan, I couldn’t have asked for a more enlightening premarital conference. You are the most despicable chauvinist I could ever hope to encounter; it is as though you looked into my secret heart and answered every fear with your Neanderthal’s ‘hell yeah.’ And while we’re on the subject of each other’s mothers, as we were a while ago, I’d like to express my admiration for the immigrant showgirl who gave you life. Digging for gold is exhausting work. I now know from experience. Thank you for the intoxicants. Also, I hate your dog.”
She sashays back to the French doors and disappears inside. Abby rests her head on his knee. He closes his eyes for a second, trying to lose himself in sensation, and when he opens them, Cuyahoga’s perched on the railing, right where Swanny stood before, watching. The vulture was circling this whole time.
* The Gone World by Ryden Marx vividly portrays the last violent days of the dinosaurs, mired in lava, scarred by meteor shrapnel, resorting to cannibalism, beneath an orange hell sun choked in volcanic ash. It was regarded by the CGC’s board as an allegory for the day when, like these lizards of history, the dragons too would become a thing of the past. But others saw it as a skeptical look at the future of global trade in a city no longer fit for human occupancy.
11
SOULMATES
Swanny is not certain whom she wants to kill: Duncan, her mother, or herself. Perhaps all three. But if she’s to kill anyone at all, it’s imperative that she stop sobbing first.
The curious thing about this drug, though, is that although one part of her is curled in the empty Swirlpool of a randomly selected fourth-floor guest bathroom, weeping inconsolably, another part of her is hovering over the scene, reporting her sensations back in the distant third person. It’s rather like being a character in a book. Even as Swanny hiccups and wipes at her eyes with hanks of quadruple-ply toilet paper, she is noticing the details of this moment—the almost pleasurable irritation of her newest tooth, still just below the gum, the pressure of her feverish skin against the frost-cold porcelain, the shiny knobs of the hot and cold faucets, like the steering wheels of miniature cruise ships. She can almost lose herself in these observations, can at least forget the cruel words she and Duncan exchanged on that terrace for a moment or two, before it all comes rushing back.
Really, she should smoke more: enough of this substance might erase her memory entirely, at least until morning, at which time…well. Perhaps morning will never come. The only problem with this plan is that the fateful bag went back into the pocket of Ripple’s pants, which are probably strewn by now amid the other garments on the floor of his room. The thought of finding him and the anorexic in flagrante delicto is more than she can bear. But suppose she went directly to the source? Ripple revealed his supplier: Osmond.
A journey through the labyrinth of the mansion sounds for a moment like an impossible task, and risky too. She sees again that endless corridor of tight-shut doors, the crass womanizer waiting at the end of it like a Minotaur. The story seems so very old. She thinks of this morning—only this morning!—when she was the baroness, a dizzy romantic with a hope chest so full that it took Corona and the dentist both to drag it down the stairs. She could not have been more eager to leave the house behind, with its cobwebs and its drafts, its swimming pool, even after all these years, like a newly filled grave. But now the grave she sees is an open one, stretching out before her: this mansion, in all its grandeur, is the sepulcher of her marriage. Swanny has read it is possible to die of heartache, and she imagines the slow drift into oblivion, her soul lapping back like a tide. The problem is, some larger part of her still wants to punch things. Specifically, Duncan Ripple’s face.
“I am too strong,” she murmurs. “Despite myself, I will endure.” She hefts herself out of the empty tub and toddles out into the hallway to score more drugs.
Swanny is not looking her best, it’s worth noting. Her eyeliner, applied this morning with a painterly hand, has turned to watercolor, and her ringlets, once glossy and segregated with mousse, are windblown (from the terrace) and snarled (from her writhing paroxysms of grief). Her chinchilla coat hangs open asymmetrically; she isn’t sure what’s become of her shoes; her crinolines protrude from beneath the hem of her skirt. Yet there’s a madwoman glamour about her now, and when she steps into the elevator, she regards the mirror with approval. So it
should be, on a night like this.
Swanny has been studying maps of the Ripple house since the contracts were finalized, and even in her current condition, finding Osmond’s library should present no difficulty. But on the sixth floor, the elevators open on complete darkness—so complete that, as Swanny steps into it, she scarcely can glimpse the carpet under her feet before the sliding doors eclipse the gilded chamber’s light. She feels like a signature with ink spilled over it, like graffiti in an unlit tunnel. She reaches for the wall next to the elevator, but succeeds only in knocking over a large stack of…books?
“Who goes?” thunders a voice. All at once, the library is illuminated in synthetic candlelight, revealing Osmond Ripple, irate, wearing a dressing gown and an old-fashioned nightcap, wheeling toward the railing of the upper stacks. “Will the indignities never cease? Am I to be burgled too? Oh.” He puffs. “It’s you.”
“Good God,” gasps Swanny, “you nearly frightened me to death.”
“Rightfully so! If I’d had my hurlbat, you’d be lying dead where you stand.” Osmond adjusts the tassel of his pointed cap. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Baroness?”
Swanny has not prepared for this question. It might not be politic to demand he hand over his medication right away. Besides, if she’s honest with herself, that isn’t the only reason she’s come.
“I’ve wanted to see you again since dinner,” she hears herself say. “It was quite unfair that you were cast from the table for defending my honor. At least that’s what I assume you were trying to do when you were so vigorously urging me into prostitution.”
“No apology is in order. My brother—and his strumpet bride—are entirely to blame for my callous expulsion from this evening’s repast. Now, please, dry your eyes. You look like a besmirched Punchinello. I fear it will trouble my dreams.”
“But it isn’t just that”—she hesitates—“Uncle Osmond. There’s no one else here whom I can talk to, you see.” As she says it, she tries to ignore the nagging feeling that it’s true. “I feel you and I share the same affliction. Not physically, of course, but, well, spiritually.”
Osmond nods slowly. “You suffer too.”
“Yes, yes, terribly.”
“The braying of this brutish race threatens to loose you from your senses.”
“Quite nearly.”
“You long for truth and beauty.”
“Both.”
“I saw it from the first—a kindred spirit.” Osmond wheels back into the bookshelves. “There is one remedy for our torment,” he calls down.
“There is? Whatever can that be?”
“Companionship!”
Osmond reappears with what looks like a blown-glass didgeridoo.
“And, of course, good conversation,” he continues, opening a nearby dictionary. A great quantity of loam is pressed between the pages. He sweeps it into his hand and tamps it neatly into a protrusion at one end of the colossal bong. “Please, join me.”
On rainy afternoons in Wonland County, marooned between novels and bored beyond measure, Swanny has browsed idly through her mother’s old overschool philosophy texts, and in their brittle highlighted pages, she has read about the dualism between mind and body. Yet only at this moment, as Osmond’s library fills with smoke, does the issue press upon her with the full weight of its importance. Swanny feels that her mind and body are not only separable but separated, as when her childhood stereoscope ceased to align its two images properly and its scenic postcards became depthless and blurred.
“Good God,” Osmond sighs, “you’ve gone cross-eyed on me.”
“Oh yes, of course.” Swanny blinks until her vision clears and settles back onto the worn leather fainting couch, amid the bundled papers. “Excuse me, you were describing…”
“The tragedy of my paralysis could hardly be expected to hold the attention of your addled young mind. I’ll recount it another day.”
“Uncle Osmond, please, I was quite fascinated.”
“As I was saying, when military intervention failed, the days of the Challenges began. At that time, I was fifteen, and the dragons were celebrating their second anniversary in our skies. Though as an athlete, I remained untried, I was something of an expert in ancient lore and, the despised younger son of an exacting tyrant, I grew convinced my destiny lay somewhere loftier than the prescribed avenues of business and academics—to be precise, in the soaring battleground of the city’s firmament.” His voice rises sharply. “You’re sleeping.”
“I’m not,” says Swanny around a yawn. She’s tucked her legs up under her and is resting her head on an encyclopedia.
“It was that day I learned firsthand the truth of the old ballad’s sad refrain: ‘Dragons live forever, not so little boys.’ ” Osmond steers his chariot to the wall and presses on one of the lower bookshelves. It springs open, revealing a knee-high refrigerator stocked with bottles. “Though I did, against all odds, escape with a faint pulse and provisional custody of my mortal soul, this living death is no exception to their rule. The creatures know no mercy. It wasn’t just victory that eluded my grasp. Even the glory of a martyr’s sacrifice was denied me.”
“Wait.” Swanny props herself up on an elbow. “You fought the dragons?”
“I challenged them, yes.” He pops the cap off a stout, tastes it, and hands it to her, then selects a doppelbock for himself. “I’d tell the tale at length if you’d so much as bother feigning interest.”
“But I needn’t feign it, Uncle Osmond.” The “uncle” slips out quite naturally this time; even when she’s sober, Swanny suspects she’ll be hard-pressed now to call him anything else. “The dragons have always held the greatest fascination for me, ever since I was a child. They’re terrible, of course, but the nobility and valor, not to mention eleventh-hour excesses, that have sprung up in their wake—it’s all ever so romantic.”
“That was what I once believed, my lark, before a monstrous skyward trouncing robbed me of all sensation in my lower extremities. In retrospect, I believe I’d prefer the type of romance that includes the physical act of love.”
“Oh! So that’s how you were mutilated.” Swanny’s gaze trails down to his little feet, lifeless in their woolly socks. “Do you ever regret it?”
“Erotic indignities aside, the paralysis has left me prey to a host of grisly co-morbidities, including my recent bout of Shivering Kidney. And it would be pleasant to kick your husband’s mongrel in the ribs. But I have my thwacking canes. I soldier on.”
“Why did you do it—fight the dragons?”
“To properly understand, you’ll have to allow me to begin at the beginning.
The Noble but Tragic Tale of Osmond Ripple and the Dragons, as Related by the Man Himself
“Our father always preferred Humphrey. As eldest, my brother was his namesake and rightful heir, and from earliest childhood, I can recall the blatant favoritism, which he made no attempt to hide. The two would trundle off to gawk rubeishly at aerocar shows or the metallic carnage of the robotics coliseum with alarming frequency, while I lingered at home with our mother, a delicate contessa whose paranoid agoraphobia confined her to a single floor of the house. Together, she and I would play a great number of games which I even then suspected were not devised for my entertainment, such as Name That Sound and Are All the Windows Locked?
“The root cause behind our father’s preferential treatment was, I think, Humphrey’s innate and puzzling enthusiasm for business. The essential talent there is not intelligence, in which I outpaced him handily from my first burblings, but the ability to ask the right questions of the world. While Humphrey made the mechanistic inquiries best suited to a future grease monkey of industry—How does this work? How may it someday work for me?—I posed to our father the philosopher’s riddle, why: What’s all the fuss? Why even bother? A reasonable concern, I felt, since we already had a greater fortune than we knew what to do with. I don’t exaggerate. My father’s philanthropic efforts bore little resemblance to genuin
e altruism. They were the desperate measures of a man bailing out the hull of a ship rapidly filling beyond its capacity. As preeningly self-important as he was, the fact was that his fortune would continue compounding itself eternally through accrued interest, without anyone’s interference. We were all now superfluous to it. Particularly him.
“But I digress. Though the Scheherazade unfurling of our mother’s neurotic prophecies proved diverting for a time, as I surged toward manhood I realized that I would not remain content waiting—and dreading—for something to happen to me. I yearned to take action, to claim a starring role in a story myself. Luckily (or rather, unluckily, as experience would prove) a true epic was playing itself out in the air right above our heads.
“I was not a natural contender for the Challenges—glitz and glamour have never been the birthright of our class, and the entire phenomenon was the misbegotten brainchild of a mad impresario. One who saw, in the ancient struggle between good and evil, little more than a vehicle for corporate advertising.
“You may not recall, but in the years before your birth Toob featured newsworthy content, often streamed live, in place of spectacles like your husband’s hormonal posturing and the dreary parade of dated rerunamenta that greets us there today. One of the last new programs of note was produced by Jim Danger, an aggressive self-promoter whose smile suggested a flossing shark’s. It was his idea to fund, follow, and film the doomed heroics of a phalanx of so-called Weekend Warriors, hapless Everymen who attempted, with touching hubris, to eliminate the menace in our skies. CHALLENGER, as the show was called—the announcer spoke the name in all capital letters—became a sensation as Warrior upon Warrior stepped up only to plunge to televised besplatterment. I heckled their mortality from the couch, until one day derision brought me to my feet. While my father and brother applied themselves adroitly to the most existentially distressing of tasks, here the problem was reversed. These common joes had an unimpeachable answer for why, but they failed at how miserably. I was indestructible with adolescence; I would fast put them to rights.
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