People Park

by Pasha Malla

  At which Pop growled, That’s not the point of it, evil one!

  Diamond-Wood retreated to scattered, tepid applause, slid behind the Mayor, and retaped his mouth. All eyes fell upon their civic leader. Of the two white sheets hiding secrets, it was clear which one they wanted removed. The Mayor gestured irritably at the sculpture. Do it now, for the love of green.

  Loopy bowed. I give you . . . the Lakeview . . . Memorial!

  But before her assistant could perform the big reveal the pigeons came flapping at her in a ragged formation. Overwhelmed, the assistant tripped, grasped at the white sheet, which whisked away — and there was nothing beneath it. No pedestal, no sculpture, no plaque. Only emptiness. It was as if the cover had been floating there all along, inflated by some internal wind.

  What the fug kind of art is that? said the Mayor.

  That’s not it, shrieked Loopy. My work’s been stolen! Someone’s stolen my work!

  Disgrateful, said Pop, shaking his head. A complete and utterful disgrate.

  Debbie giggled. Which met with scowls from all around.

  Hardly the time for humours, Pop chided.

  Her smile faded. If only Adine were here, she thought. Adine would find this funny, would supplement the scene with the perfect wiseacre crack to tip Debbie’s amusement into hysteria. But if there’d been a humorous moment it was gone. She stood there awkwardly while Loopy wailed and, stonefaced, Pop demanded a detectivial assembly!

  A noise disrupted everything then — a whooshing, a squawk, faces swung skyward and fingers pointed. Through the space where the statue should have been flapped what appeared at first another pigeon, but swooping back up over the trees it caught the light, blazing white against the blue sky. Through his viewfinder the photographer watched it loft higher and higher, zoomed in, at last snapped a picture.

  Was that? said Debbie.

  Yeah, said the photographer, lowering his camera. One of Raven’s doves.

  V

  HROUGH HANDS cupped to the window Calum looked into the Room: lights off, benches up on tables, Debbie’s deskchair wheeled back from her workstation, tilted at an angle that suggested a swift and drastic escape. And despite the CLOSED FOR LONG WEEKEND sign it seemed inconceivable that Debbie wasn’t puttering around in the shadows. She was always here. He pounded on the door, shuffled back to the window, blocked the light, and looked again: nothing, just grey stillness.

  Overhead a Yellowline train went clattering south. Calum looked up at the underside of the tracks, at the flashing shape of it moving along, and thought of the Hand — suspended in space, the train ziplining her along.

  The cuts on his forehead, where the Hand’s shirtless friend or brother had smashed the tube, were drying into a scabby acne, his left eye remained swollen shut. Moving away from the window Calum avoided his reflection for fear of what he’d see: a monster. But a very weak monster, weak as a slave, who’d stumbled bleeding and delirious out of the silos into Whitehall, and now found himself here, outside the Room, the slave who’d escaped, found the world too big, and dragging his chains returned to the only place he belonged.

  But that was not the whole story. When his final throw had landed harmlessly in the girl’s lap the silo had gone silent. Uh-oh, said the Hand, and a great crest of laughter rose up and came crashing down, Calum felt useless and stupid, dumbly confronted with what he hadn’t done. The shirtless guy in the welding mask grabbed the Hand by the hips and pulled her onto his lap and said, Gotta break that thing on your head, those are the rules.

  The rules. In shame Calum collected the tube from the girl’s lap. She was chuckling. Her twin brother (were they twins?) was coming to on the floor, making soft groaning noises. She said, Nice shooting, and everyone found this very hilarious indeed.

  Yeah, nice shooting, the guy said, lifted the Hand’s shirt, his fingers scurried spiderlike up inside.

  Calum’s fingers closed around the tube. He stared into the girl’s dark sunglasses, at the suggestion of eyes in there — he sensed scorn. Let’s go, called the guy from the couch. Crack that thing on your face, he crooned, my sister here’s dying to see it. Another surge of laughter — and Calum wound up and smashed the tube across the girl’s face.

  She wilted from the stool and lay there twitching on the floor. Half the tube remained in Calum’s hand, the other half shattered into craggy bits. He tossed it, a faint tinkle of glass followed by a thick, brooding silence. And then there was a rush, like a flock of crows unleashed from a rooftop, and Calum turned, and, led by the guy in the mask, a faceless mob was descending upon him.

  Now, moving down the laneway beside the Room, his vision kept clouding over, he had to shake his head to clear it. He reached the water, made fists, bashed his knuckles together in a hollow knock of bone on bone. Out on the lake someone’s sailboat, a little white A, tacked across Kidd’s Harbour. Calum watched until it moved out of view, then he headed back out to F Street. After a few steps the world reeled and swam, he staggered, had to regain his balance on a parked car. Halfheartedly tried the door: locked. Farther along was a payphone, which he checked for quarters. One sat in the slot.

  Calum tossed the coin in the air, guessed heads — tails — flipped it twice more before he got heads, then fed the phone. But who to call? Not Debbie, he only had the number of the Room, not Edie, not one of their friends, not his mother. Not the Hand.

  The money clunked down and was lost. He jiggled the cradle, no luck, took a measured step back, stomped the phone as hard as he could, his sneaker fell off on the backswing. Sullenly he fetched it. His stomach gurgled. He felt dizzy and sick. He leaned against the wall.

  Where was Debbie? Calum thought about how giving she tried to seem, how generous and caring, yet she maintained a safe distance: he didn’t even know where she lived. Who was she, really, this person who wanted everything from him, that he talk and share and trust her, for him to be better — and she believed this was generous, just to listen.

  Calum headed south down F Street, his head humming a muffled, cloudy sort of tune, with nowhere to go and no one to see, and nothing to do with them when he got there.

  AN ARTIST SPEAKS only with her hands, said Loopy, and displayed them: palms, then backs.

  The Museum of Prosperity archivists stared.

  Likeways, to exfabulate upon my hands, Pop said, laying them on the picnic table: My hands are my words. And my words are my hands. Therein lives the paradox.

  The Mayor used her own hands to hide her face.

  But back to this travestation, said Pop, and whom we can be sure is gullible.

  The archivists met his knowing, shrewd look with equal bewilderment.

  Do I have to spell it for you? The illustrationaire!

  And to think these hands once sculpted his likeness, moaned Loopy.

  Moreover! To think he has now, poof, into thinned air, envanished the only remaining relish of Lakeview Homes!

  One of the archivists blinked. The other said, Relish?

  Prehaps you need an illustration of my own! Pop thumped the table, held up his fist, rotated it slowly, almost forlornly. How are we to take back the night if the moon — the fist’s rotations paused — has been conciliated by the irradiating sunshine — here he covered the fist in his other hand — of a forever-long day?

  Pop concluded by exploding both hands outward, fingers fluttering, and then hid them under the picnic table. In his eyes was triumph.

  Banished to the periphery among Friendly Farm’s animaltronics were Debbie, Loopy’s assistant, and Diamond-Wood. The latter’s walkie-talkie buzzed, he listened, whispered, hung up, and tapped his crutches against a pig, its metal hide clanging, and shot the Mayor an urgent look.

  What, she said.

  Diamond-Wood ungagged himself. My people think it’d be a mistake not to rule out certain parties known for vandalism around the city. We —
<
br />   Pop snorted. Parties? Perhaps your own party wishes the city’s attentuations misguided? For was it not your party, sir, whom initiated the illustrationaire’s pretence?

  Excellent point, said the Mayor. Touch green.

  Diamond-Wood staggered forward, bumping the pigs — which activated their animations: one mounted the other and began to thrust. Though their lovemaking began gently, almost sensual.

  Ignoring the carnal whinnies and jigglings, Diamond-Wood hobbled up to the picnic table. Please, he said, Mr. Street —

  Don’t you please me! Aggregately, your organization has also empropriated my home! My home, Mrs. Mayor! You are savvy to this?

  The Mayor said, Nope.

  The mechanical coitus intensified, the pigs’ prerecorded ecstasy escalating into howls, metal clanged against metal. Debbie and Loopy’s assistant cowered behind a dromedary.

  I can’t speak to that, said Diamond-Wood, though the proper procedures —

  My home, Pop roared. First my home, a quartered century hencefrom, and now . . . Once again, my home! Recurrently!

  But —

  As though time itself has too gone loopy!

  Loopy leaned into the conversation, grinning benevolently.

  But everyone’s attention had been diverted by the pigs. Their squeals reached a pitch both tortured and rapturous, one slammed into the other with force adequate to either resuscitate it from near-death or kill it for good. And just as the frenzied creatures seemed ready to rip free from the cement, with a final heave they lurched to a stop. Everything was still. The creatures’ eyes were stupid and oblivious.

  Well, said Debbie, that was something, and everyone agreed.

  HI ADINE. This is Sam.

  Hi, said Adine. You’re about two and a half minutes early, buddy. Give me one sec?

  Through the phone Sam could hear his sister’s TV, a voice was talking. He flipped around until his set’s sound matched hers: channel 73. It was a boring show, just a woman at a table telling the camera about her sadness. Through the phone Sam could hear his sister breathing in the steady, in-and-out way of someone sleeping. Then the woman said goodbye and thanks for listening and there was a rustle on the end of the line and Adine said, in a small voice, Hey, buddy, sorry about that.

  Hey buddy, said Sam. Are we watching Salami Talk?

  Oh man. I guess. That’s on 12, right?

  That’s on 12 right.

  In the Know was wrapping up in a fanfare of kettledrums and trumpets. The closing credits rolled over images of kids splashing in the waves at Budai Beach amid frothy green runoff from Lowell Canal, and they ended with the We-TV logo, the screen went black, and here was Lucal Wagstaffe’s mouth in extreme closeup, welcoming you to Salami Talk — and the mouth took a big bite of juicy sausage.

  Today’s intro montage featured images of magic through the ages. Witches are being burned Adine, said Sam. They’re tied to tree trunks okay. But there’s a guy now hanging upside down over the water. His hands are tied okay. He’s escaping. There’s some —

  Let me listen.

  Sam closed his eyes, just to see: Wagstaffe’s was a voice you trusted. It wasn’t lying. It talked about the history of magic. It talked about religion. Sam opened his eyes: the pictures on TV were of cloaked bearded men and miracles in the desert, then some grainy footage of soothsayers performing out of covered wagons, then fidgety films of a stage magician whisking a tablecloth out from a dinner setting, while women in bikinis smiled. And then there was a sound of wings and the screen went black and the black took the shape of a bird, flapping away from the camera toward a big white moon in the night, and on the face of the moon appeared: Raven — Behind the Illustrations.

  Now Wagstaffe was standing in a dim brown library lit by brass lamps with jade-coloured shades, the books stacked floor to ceiling, speaking in a voice of liquid gold. Sam tried to explain the scene but Adine hushed him: It’s Wagstaffe, I hate him, let’s see what dooshy things he has to say.

  This morning, Wagstaffe was saying, join us at Salami Talk for our exclusive, one-hour interview with Raven, live, from We-TV Studios.

  The screen is black, said Sam. Oh. The videos are of Raven now.

  What’s going on?

  He’s doing things with birds. Birds are appearing, disappearing. Everyone’s clapping. It’s in a place with rivers, boats, he’s on a bridge. They’re saying —

  Shhh.

  Sam waited, the scene shifted. They were back in the library and Wagstaffe was sitting in a big purple chair and in another was Raven. A fire crackled in a fireplace behind them.

  Why is the TV telling me to live Adine? said Sam.

  Sammy, no. It probably says live, said Adine, as in alive. Not liv, like . . . liver.

  The host introduced Raven. Raven is smiling, said Sam. His smile is odd Adine.

  Odd, what do you mean? Odd how?

  Just odd okay Adine.

  The interview began. Wagstaffe asked, How are you finding the city?

  Fine, fine.

  And your accommodations?

  Adequate. What I require.

  For those not lucky enough to attend last night’s banquet, my colleague Isa Lanyess will be providing full coverage later today — you won’t recognize your Mayor by half.

  Only the beginning, said Raven.

  And that bit with the trunk? Reappearing at the hotel? Pretty remarkable.

  Trunking. It’s a little . . . theatricality, something I incorporate into every performance.

  Could you trunk yourself anywhere?

  With the proper image, yes, and the proper mental preparation.

  So if you’d had a picture of a different hotel, you would have shown up there.

  Exactly. The image I take with me into the trunk dictates where I will reappear.

  Sammy, said Adine, you there?

  I’m here Adine.

  What about, said Wagstaffe, a picture of the moon?

  Well then perhaps you’d find me on the moon.

  Or my house, what if I put a picture of my house in there.

  Then, Mr. Wagstaffe, you might very well come home to find me sitting at your kitchen table. With your wife.

  That rattled him, said Adine, right, Sammy?

  Sam was quiet.

  And, because I’m sure our viewers are dying to know, continued Wagstaffe, can you tell us what you’ve got planned for tonight?

  Ah. If I may be so bold: perhaps my greatest illustration yet.

  Lucal Wagstaffe is staring at him, said Sam. But Raven’s looking into the camera. His head is very shiny. His eyes are. I don’t know what they are.

  Odd?

  Not just. More than that. Or maybe less Adine, maybe less.

  Raven said, If I may? Let me explain not just this evening’s illustration, but the grand oeuvre of my work. What I do is not magic. Magic is based in illusion, and illusion is based in lies. Visual fictions and other illusions, Mr. Wagstaffe, worry people who seek certainty from sight. But what I create are not fictions. They are not lies. They are, instead, revelations. I illustrate simply what already exists, by removing —

  Yes, we know, said Wagstaffe. The fog that obscures the truth.

  Precisely. The way we perceive reality is imaginative. People forget this. One’s own imagination transforms what one sees into images, and then understands these images as things. We think of spectatorship as inherently passive, but it is in fact a highly engaged and active process. Your brain, for example, Mr. Wagstaffe, registers the pattern of light produced by this object you sit upon and translates it into some signifier, but this is not the lone process for your brain to understand it: chair. I do not wish to confuse that process, but merely to focus the brain, each of your brains —

  He’s pointing at me, said Sam. At you Adine. At us.

  — t
o a new way of seeing. I wish not to create illusions, but to illustrate. Illusions are about faith, which does not interest me. Faith is only that faculty of man to believe things he knows to be untrue. I am not interested in duping or cajoling my audience. Seeing is believing, and seeing depends on an imaginative use of ambiguities.

  Sausage? offered Wagstaffe.

  No, said Raven. Further, you see half of something, or the vague shape of something, the brain can still understand it as a whole. And so what if the world the eye sees, or which the brain tells the eye it sees — or which the eye tells the brain it sees — what if it is only a partial version? My illustrations are an attempt to excite those ambiguities and complete the partial version of the world which exists in viewers’ minds. Tonight, I wish to display a whole version of this city to everyone who lives here — the truth about this place, gentle viewers, where you live.

  What is that nutcase talking about? said Adine. What whole version of this city? What truth? This is nonsense. It’s psychobabble. Meaningless. How does anyone buy this?

  Lucal Wagstaffe chewed thoughtfully on some jerky.

  What’s going on, Sammy?

  Silence.

  Sammy?

  Yes.

  You there?

  Yes Adine.

  You’re quiet.

  I’m letting them talk Adine.

  Everything okay?

  Yes Adine.

  You seem . . . faraway.

  I’m here Adine. The big clock is stopped but I’m still doing good communication Adine. I’m doing the work, he said, and he stared into Raven’s hollow dark eyes and scratched the crust on his jaw until something jammy came dribbling out.

  THROUGH THE PARK Debbie walked Pop back to Street’s Milk & Things. Near the base of the Slipway, something white lay off the path amid the bushes. A shopping bag, or a sheaf of paper.

  Lark, all these bins and still people strew refuse, lamented Pop.

  Debbie moved closer: whatever it was flapped slightly, maybe caught in the breeze. She crouched. The white was feathers, the flap was the feeble lift and collapse of a broken wing. And here was the glossy black pebble of an eye, a beak. It’s a bird, she said. It’s hurt.