by Pasha Malla
Animals? Calum laughed a little gunfire laugh.
But no one joined in. He felt an entire traincar’s worth of eyes turning on him, everyone on the pink man’s side, who was saying, They’re just animals — and did this elicit a murmur of agreement? Many faces glared at him. Calum laughed again, a lonesome yelp into the crowd. White stuff foamed at the corners of the pink man’s lips. You animal, he growled, emboldened, you’re just a animal, you’re all animals, and Calum laughed again, but the laugh sounded forced and desperate, and his face was burning, and voices were saying, Get this kid off the train.
Hands fell upon him, he was guided to the exit doors, where a final shove sent him staggering onto the platform. He backed away staring at the people on the train, who stared back: all those eyes loathing his sad two own. The doors chimed, thumped closed, and the train sped out of the station. Across the tracks upon the westbound platform a few dozen commuters observed Calum with mild curiosity. He felt on a stage, humiliated.
And so he ran. Down the steps, into Mount Mustela, east along Paths that curled between houses and duplexes, along Crescents onto Trails and Ways, finally released into the open, lamplit swath of Mustela Boulevard. Here he headed north, passing the fur shops and Bookland, his sneakers slapped and echoed, his lungs burned, he couldn’t stop. Through the Necropolis, he skirted the edge of the dump, climbed the pedestrian walkway over Lowell Overpass, took the stairs back down alongside the canal, which he followed in the growing dark, and at last emerged onto Topside Drive. Up ahead, in a golden ribbon, twinkled the lights of Guardian Bridge.
VIII
ROM THE SPOT he’d procured, front row, dead centre, Kellogg gloated as more and more people arrived to increasingly poor views of the stage. Spectators swelled up the hills to the north, east, and south, and beyond, onto the streets that circled People Park. Despite a handmade NO SPECTATION sign the parking lot of Street’s Milk & Things hosted a tailgate party: in the houseboat’s former site men dug ciders from a cooler and young mums suckled babies at their breasts. Latecomers packed the western hillock out back of the gazebo — though they’d see nothing, not even the videoscreens, at least they could claim having been there.
Look at these poor saps, proclaimed Kellogg, gesturing around the common. Not like us earlybirds, we got the worm! And by worm I mean the best seats in the house. He gave a thumbs-up to Pearl who sat with Elsie-Anne on their little blanketed claim, and landed a triumphant smirk on some lesser father a few rows back.
Gip took his father’s hand. I know, Dad. Thanks.
The wild, panicked fervour that had the boy careening around the park all day had tightened into tenser, almost pensive anticipation. He seemed subdued, or at least focused, leaning there on the guardrail, eyes on the trunk from which Raven would appear at nine.
The sun went down, the crowd pressed in, Pearl and Elsie-Anne joined Kellogg and Gip at the barricades. Gazeboside Helpers flitted around, walkie-talkies crackling: Keep your positions and maintain order — B-Squad ready? — Silentium, Logica, Securitatem, Prudentia — Absolutely retain order . . . The messages sputtered, all those bodies on the common disrupted the frequencies.
So, Gip, said Kellogg, any guesses what Raven’s going to do? — a question he’d asked since noon to no avail. Might there be clues in your book? Want Mummy to get it out of your bag?
It wouldn’t be in the Grammar, Dad, said Gip. As if!
No insights? Being his biggest fan and all?
Can’t you just wait? You’re so impatient. Gosh!
There’s something to be said for surprises, said Pearl, handing Gip the day’s final round of meds and a box of apple juice. No grape? he said, and Pearl said, They don’t have grape here, only this. He washed down the pills, Pearl stashed the container in Gip’s knapsack and dropped it at her feet. This is fun, she said. What a view! Thanks, Kellogg.
But Kellogg was distracted. At the back of the gazebo lurked one of the men in khaki, apart from the rest. Someone’s cameralight, scanning the stage, shone upon him momentarily: a skittish character with a facial abrasion — the man from earlier, the one who’d nearly crushed Elsie-Annie with an armful of lumber. Kellogg waved, the Helper saw him and shrunk into the shadows. Who’s that? said Pearl. He’s . . . Kellogg began, but wasn’t sure what to say.
WHILE A YELLOWLINE train swept from City Centre into Parkside West Station, at the head of the southbound platform a lone traveller sat motionless with a duffelbag between his feet. Dressed in black from head to toe, face concealed in a balaclava, this person watched impassively as the train slowed and unleashed a pack of Jubilee merrymakers and then slid off, evacuated and empty, toward Bridge Station.
Once the crowd had cleared, two figures — one tall and thin, the other stocky and manic, both in leather — approached the seated man. After an exchange of shifty nods, some furtive looks up and down the platform, and a few minutes of contrived estrangement, amid a clatter and screech and a funnelcloud of trash swirling up from the tracks, the PA announced a Whitehall train, the movator started up, and the men assembled to board.
In the first car the trio took seats adjacent to but not exactly beside one another. Hissing, the train eased alongside the empty platform. Through its open doors came the noise from People Park, an oceanic murmur, lunar and tidal and ancient. Then the doors played their song and closed and the PA said, Next stop, City Centre. City Centre Station, next stop, and they were heading off south into the evening.
In a low voice Pop said, Thank you for adjoining me.
Tragedy shook his fist. Fuggin justice, man.
Will be θerved, added Havoc, spat, and smeared the jiggling wad into a wetspot with a generic black sneaker.
BEHIND THE GAZEBO, at the edge of Crocker Pond, B-Squad stood guard outside the boathouse. A light glowed inside this ersatz greenroom: prior to each show the illustrationist required an hour, alone, to prepare himself with visualizations.
So, said Starx, I’ve been meaning to tell you — that dream you said you have?
Olpert was confused.
That dream you told him . . . Starx nodded at the boathouse.
Oh.
I have it too. Exactly the same. It was like you were telling him stuff from my own brain, Bailie. Superweird.
Well, said Olpert, that wasn’t really my dream. I think he . . . put it there.
Whatever, right? I hate this shet about how dreams are supposed to reveal secrets. If you lie to yourself when you’re awake, who’s to say you don’t lie to yourself in your dreams? So your dream, my dream, who cares. It’s all made-up anyway, probably. Me, the only thing I like about dreams is they put me to sleep.
What do you mean?
I mean, if I lie there thinking about the day, or something that’s already happened, I can’t get to sleep. But as soon as I let my brain go off and make stuff up — fantasies or whatever — it shifts into dreams. Like I sort of dream myself to sleep. You?
I don’t know. Olpert looked away, looked back, opened his mouth, closed it, and looked away again.
Something on your mind, Bailie? You’ve been weird all day. Still hungover?
No, it’s just. I was. I don’t know.
Talk.
Okay, said Olpert. Okay, I was just thinking about something. Or I’ve been remembering something. Because of what happened last night, at the bar. With . . . Debbie.
Yeah?
It’s a long story sort of.
What else are we going to do, twiddle each other’s dicks?
Olpert recoiled. Ew, no.
Then?
Okay, Olpert said, and sighed deeply, as if to refuel himself for what he was about to say. Then he spoke: When I was in fifth grade, a scientist came to our classroom. In, you know, one of those white coats? A real scientist. Anyway what he did was, and he probably did some other stuff first, some other experiments or told us some f
acts or something, but then he pulled a container out of his bag, a black medical bag, and he was very careful with it. It was that really cold stuff?
Dry ice.
No. A chemical, not nitrous oxide but . . .
Starx waved his hand: whatever.
So he opens the container and the stuff inside is steaming, there’s fog coming out of it. Like a beaker in a mad scientist’s lab on TV, like a TV version of science. Or witchcraft.
Right.
Then he, the scientist, asks if anyone’s got a piece of fruit in their lunch. I put up my hand, and I don’t know why because everyone, right away, all the kids, started going, Olpert’s got fruit, Olpert’s got fruit.
Starx snorted: Fruit.
And the thing, this is the main thing, so pay attention, okay? The main thing is I’ve got a huge crush on the girl I sit behind, who’s in sixth grade, Katie Sharpe. I stare at her back all day long. Not even a crush, Starx. I love her. But back then that one year makes so much difference. Like she’s on the other side of a river and there’s no way across? But she has no idea I’m on the other side of the river, or there even is a river? I love Katie Sharpe and she has no idea I exist. The ground could fall away at my feet and I could get sucked into that river and drown and she’d — she’d have no idea.
Where is she now?
I don’t know, married probably. Probably happy. But anyway, now you know about Katie Sharpe. So she’s sitting in front of me and the scientist pulls out a pair of tongs and starts clacking them and goes, Okay, son, bring that fruit on up here, which was an apple.
Better than a banana.
So I took my apple up to him. And he takes the apple in his tongs and he does it all dramatic, he holds it up, he takes the apple and lifts it for the class to see, which is agonizing, Starx, especially because of Katie, and then he slowly dips the apple into the container where the fog is coming out of. And he holds it in there for a bit. And I’m just standing there the whole time, waiting for my apple back. Then he pulls the apple out.
How’d it look?
Maybe a bit white but otherwise the same. Then the scientist pulls a hammer, a little reflex hammer, out of his bag and hands it to me, and holds the apple in the tongs and he tells me to tap the apple with the hammer. So I do.
Hard?
No, regular. And it shatters! Like it’s made of glass the thing breaks into little pieces all over the place — my apple! And I don’t even hit it hard, just a little tap, and it just . . . It explodes. Everyone cheered. I remember that, how everyone clapped and I rushed to sit down, even Katie was clapping. I was so humiliated. All I could think was, that was my apple, that was my apple. I felt stupid and, I don’t know . . . small.
Small. Yeah.
And a second or two went by, and I can feel it coming, but instead of going to the bathroom I open my desk and put my head inside, and then, can you guess?
No.
I puked, said Olpert. Splash, splash, splash, all inside my desk. And the room went really quiet and I know everyone’s looking at me, and then Katie says, Are you okay, Olpert — and that’s just too much. I run. I run, Starx, trailing puke through the room and down the hallway, I run out the school doors and keep running until I get to Bay Junction, and I ride the ferry across the Cove, and then run across the Islet, all the way home. My grandpa’s out front raking leaves and he sees me, but he doesn’t say anything. So I lie down on the lawn and tell him to bury me in leaves. And he does. He just piles them on top of me. It’s cool in the leaves, peaceful. I don’t remember much else after that.
AS THE POTLUCK wound down, to avoid the towers of stew-crusted dishes Debbie’s friends put together an outfit to camouflage her in Whitehall. A game of dress-up: obediently she tried on an assortment of coats and blazers. Masks. A handkerchief tied around her face in the manner of bandits. And at last in the very back of the hall closet someone found a coal-black anorak, and they put it on and pulled up the hood and Debbie’s face disappeared and everyone agreed: perfect.
Her last-ditch attempts to get them to come along were shrugged off — No, this is your thing, Tell us how it went, Just be safe — and Debbie hugged each one of them long and hard, her people, her community, she loved them, and they wished her well and she stepped out onto the street and the door closed behind her and she stood breathing the chilly night air of Bebrog for a quiet, still moment.
She was tired, the whole night had been tiring. When she’d arrived the potluck’s hosts had made her tour their house, she hadn’t been for a while, they’d amassed a small collection of Mr. Ademus originals. Aren’t they great, she was told, and she had to agree, despite visions of Adine shaking her head in dismay and disgust. The whole night, really, she’d been thinking of Adine.
Throughout dinner the way they’d parted nagged her, she felt the tug of it from across town. What if now she just went home? No, she’d go home after: Adine would be there, she’d always be there, goggled and hermitically waiting, they’d make jokes and/or love, it’d be as if the fight never happened.
Debbie walked to Greenwood Station, transferred at City Centre, and Yellowlined past her stop at Knock Street and up into the Zone. In Blackacres she emerged again into the cold still night, looked north up F Street, back south — a fifteen-minute walk home. But she needed to see. So she flipped the hood of the anorak and crossed into Whitehall, down the murky serviceways to the silos and, finally, underground.
She’d forgotten a flashlight, had to fumble into the tunnel toward that ghastly screaming at its end, a factory of screaming down there in the dark. Along she went, bracing herself — and then with a sudden roar the cavern opened up, a formless howling washed over her, and she stared into the blackness and had to resist the urge to flee.
Noise was everywhere, shrieking, blistering, industrial, the grind and wail of some ruined machine. It stabbed into her ears and buzzed through her face, tingled down her limbs and collected throbbing in her hands and feet. Her skin seemed to surge with it, to expand and contract as though it were an organism apart from her, breathing. But this wasn’t just noise, it was some sort of human music — she had to think of it as music.
As she might enter some black and churning ocean, Debbie stepped between two towers of electronics into the cipher. And here were people. Someone pushed against her, something electric zipped up her arm. Her instinct was to pull away but the person pressed closer. She waited tensely while their bodies touched, her skin humming. And then this person, whoever it was, released and drifted off into the crowd.
It had all been so intimate: contact, lingering, separation. The music suggested violence but among the people there was none. Everyone moved languidly, almost sleepily. She thought, They’re all figures lost in the same dream. And wanting to join the dream Debbie unclenched her fists, tried to relax. The song, or whatever it was, had changed — now vaporous and airy, like, she thought . . . like what? No words came.
Debbie moved deeper into the group, she was prodded and fondled, the sound transformed. Her emotions tumbled from fear to comfort to pleasure, someone stroked the back of her neck, and now she felt shy, though this person slid away and she was overcome with loneliness. Another step, everything changed again: a rotary saw tearing through metal, a shower of sparks. Hands were tugging her down. She crouched alongside someone who nuzzled into her, and she caressed this person, this faceless stranger. Whoever it was, their body was warm.
ON THE STREET outside City Centre Station people stood around with the awkward spacing of strangers at a bad party, watches were checked and checked again, toes tapped, exasperation and impatience abounded. Yet when a train arrived each face brightened: finally, the laggard might be here! And should this person come hustling down from the platform, all apologies and performed bluster, the other would sigh and tell them: It’s fine, the park’s full though, we’re just going to have to watch in Cinecity.
Ye
t in Cinecity, with live coverage projected on the bigscreen, you were guaranteed a view not just of the stage, but of everything. All those cameras afforded perspectives unimaginable for a single human being, from aerial panoramas atop Podesta Tower to intimate handheld shots wobbling through the crowds. And in the theatre each set of newcomers delighted to discover revelry and anticipation equal to what they imagined down on the common, among those witnessing — or about to witness — the real thing.
The night’s events were hosted gamely by Lucal Wagstaffe and Isa Lanyess, lofted over People Park in the basket of a crane-type apparatus. Trained on their faces was a camera at which Lanyess beamed and Wagstaffe tilted his head ponderously. The crane’s arm swung at an elbowjoint and held We-TV’s preeminent Faces in its fist, and in their own fists they held microphones, the bulbous foam tips pressed to their lips.
The atmosphere here at People Park is electric, said Wagstaffe, and Lanyess grinned a set of horsey teeth and whinnied, Just the sheer size of the crowd! It’s — I don’t have the words for how it feels out here! and Wagstaffe said, I’ve never seen anything like this in our city before. And we still don’t know, added Isa Lanyess with a coy note of mystery, the answer to the question everyone’s asking: what will Raven do?
Blow himself up, let’s hope, said Adine to her TV. She picked up her cordless and hit TALK: only the dialtone. Where was Sam? Adine tapped the antenna on her teeth, felt her way over to the refrigerator, neither hungry nor thirsty, just to point her face at the cool air inside. A funny smell — though not from the fridge. Debbie’s sick bird, she remembered, dying upon the window sill.
Just look at the number of people, cried Lanyess. What a turnout!
Simply amazing, said Wagstaffe. Everyone’s here.
On the little TV in their kitchen Cora and Rupe were treated to a grandiose dollying shot over the common.
Rupe said, How come we can’t go there too, Ma?