People Park

by Pasha Malla

  The crowd scattered, the air grew cold. Kellogg shivered as he hustled the family up the path out of the common. Along the way Gip kept silent as he was recognized and accosted: You were the boy onstage, how’d he do it? Pearl got snippy with one family who suggested Gip had been in on the trick and was now responsible for explanations. Leave my son alone, Pearl snapped, sweeping him under her arm while Kellogg shrugged and chuckled in a diplomatic way, he hoped.

  At their campsite Pearl said, It’s too cold for camping, my kids are not freezing to death in a tent tonight, and herded them onto Harry’s backseats. Car sleepover, yelled Kellogg, fun! and grinned into the minivan. Gip gazed back blankly, his face emptied of life. What an amazing night! Kellogg roared, and Pearl said, Hush now, get the sleeping bags, you’re letting the cold in.

  He headed to the tent feeling unsettled. The night had been amazing — hadn’t it? To think Gip had been centrestage alongside his idol for the whole miraculous thing, a dream fulfilled, before thousands of witnesses. Though why did the boy now seem so numb? The night struck Kellogg as a jewel — sparkling, perfect, yet flawed when tilted to the light. Worse: with some ghastly embryo fossilized inside.

  Outside the tent Kellogg shivered, bedding heaped in his arms. Across the site, inside Harry, was his family, they couldn’t see anything beyond the lit-up interior of the minivan. He watched Pearl blow her nose, excavate her nostrils, inspect what she found, and ball the tissue in her fist. The campground was quiet, everyone was going to sleep. The air felt wintry and thin.

  And now, the next morning, winter had arrived. Kellogg turned the keys in the ignition, the engine growled and the fans came on with a blast of cold air. And yet still no one woke: cocooned within sleeping bags Elsie-Anne and Gip slept soundly, Pearl leaned against the frosted window, a little ellipsis of clear glass where her breath melted the ice.

  Kellogg had to pee. He slid out of the minivan quietly, eased the door shut. A half-inch of snow covered the ground. In the fog floated dark forms that might have been trees, he aimed in their general direction, shivering, and as he zipped back up from the neighbouring site an engine came coughing to life. The red squares of taillights appeared. Holy, said a voice, can’t see anything out here.

  Another voice responded — quieter, murmuring, followed by the pneumatic wheeze of an opening car trunk. Kellogg moved toward the lights and voices, the squeak and crunch of snow and gravel under his feet. The trunk closed with a whump.

  At the neighbouring campsite forms materialized from the mist: a young man, a green hatchback, a camping stove, blue flames wobbled around a tin pot. The car idled and chugged exhaust, the door hung open, and in the passenger seat a young woman flipped through a mess of static on the radio.

  Morning, said Kellogg. Some fog.

  The man — more of a boy, a fist-shaped medallion dangled from his neck — nodded down at the burner. I’m trying to make coffee.

  Not going so hot? Heh.

  Kellogg’s joke went unheralded. The girl joined them. The radio’s like, dead, she said.

  The boy pulled the lid of the pot, revealing water as flat as glass.

  My family’s sleeping a few spots over, said Kellogg. We were camping, but —

  Weird, said the girl. Look at the snow! Yesterday was so nice, then, bang, winter, just like that. You ever seen snow and fog at the same time? And this shet with the bridge —

  What’s the um, shet with the bridge? said Kellogg.

  They’re still blocking off the PPT and Topside, said the boy. I went for a walk up there this morning and a Helper-guy told me — the bridge is just gone.

  What, still?

  Yeah. I mean, it can’t be gone, said the girl. How are we supposed to get out? We had camping plans this weekend, we aren’t even supposed to be here.

  Our stupid dorm’s being fumigated, so.

  And now there’s no way off the island.

  Could be worse places to be though? said Kellogg.

  You’re not from here?

  My wife is. Originally. We’re here on vacation. That was my son onstage last night!

  We didn’t watch the show, said the boy with pride.

  And the magician? Maybe when he turns back up he’ll fix —

  The girl said, Do you know how much money they spent to bring that guy here?

  No, said Kellogg. How much?

  She looked blankly at her boyfriend, who offered nothing. Lots, she said. Money they could have used for more important things.

  Such as?

  Housing programs.

  For?

  People.

  Gotcha, said Kellogg.

  This water, said the boy, it’s just not boiling.

  What I’m saying is, said Kellogg, maybe the trick’s not over.

  I mean, they’ve got to do something, said the girl. She looked forcefully and with disappointment at Kellogg, implicating him in this they.

  They will, he said.

  From the fog a voice called, Kell?

  He excused himself, discovered Pearl on her knees in Harry’s backseat rooting through a mess of wrappers and juiceboxes and snot-wadded facial tissues. The kids were awake, blanketed to their chins and shivering.

  Pearl stepped out, took Kellogg by the elbow. I can’t find them, she whispered.

  Can’t find what?

  His meds, she said. I can’t find Gip’s meds.

  THE FOG FIT snug as a lid over the island, dying at its edges in raggedy wisps. As the view from Podesta Tower rotated east the Mayor, torso still estranged from the lower half of her body, was faced with People Park: the common was a bowl of milk overflowing into the city. Fog scudded along the streets and up the sides of buildings, thick all the way to the water in every direction.

  The deck rotated: Fort Stone, Li’l Browntown, Bebrog, Greenwood Gardens, the Institute’s campus knuckled into the island’s southeastern corner — all of it hidden under a melancholy lather. To the south, Perint’s Cove was also lost in fog, the Islet didn’t exist.

  To the west the fog spilled through downtown, connected in ropy sinews to the low-slung clouds concealing the office towers’ tops, lapped up Mount Mustela right to the Necropolis, in LOT ignored and bounded over and through the gates of the Mews, engulfed Knock Street, threaded into UOT and Blackacres, the tenements swathed, the power still out, in the northwest corner of the island Whitehall was invisible too. And on the westside, as with the east, the fog stopped at the water. As if, thought the Mayor, a wall had gone up around the island.

  Now she looked north: where Guardian Bridge had been was only absence. Across the Narrows, the mainland, was fogless and clear, not a wisp reached its shores. NFLM patrols clustered at either end of Topside Drive and at the opening of the People Park Throughline, into which snaked a trail of cars. That morning a queue had begun forming of commuters waiting for the bridge to reopen — or reappear.

  Though this she couldn’t see, and only knew from the memo Griggs had faxed over at dawn. The gist: At four a.m. some hysteric had broken through the barricade screaming, Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors! and tried to sprint out over the Narrows. There’d been no cartoonish moment of the guy suspended in space, he’d just plummeted straight into the river. The current had been particularly swift and Luckily, reported the NFLM, there were no witnesses, and the story had been swept away with him.

  Phone, said the Mayor, and Diamond-Wood passed her the handset, retreated, the cord connected them umbilically. The Mayor coiled it around her finger, let it sproing back and dangle slackly, listened to the steady bleat of the dialtone. She liked when expecting a call to ambush the person phoning, to pick up before it rang and disorient them, to always have the upperhand.

  People who weren’t quick and sharp infuriated her, inefficiency was the bane of any city. This was the reason she’d whittled her council in half her first te
rm, why she’d cut the city districts to four, and now met only quarterly with representatives from each quadrant. The Mayor was methodical, which wasn’t the same as slow: methodical meant developing a methodology and then operating, swiftly. If life were a minefield, the Mayor reasoned, you informed yourself and blazed into it, never tiptoeing along in meek, weak terror. If your leg got blown off you hopped. And now with a shudder the Mayor thought of her own legs: if you lost both, apparently, you found someone else to push.

  Connect me to the Temple, she said.

  Diamond-Wood dialled, the handset purred, the Mayor imagined the NFLM line jangling unheeded on some desk, the men asleep in bunkbeds — kids playing firemen but with hairier feet.

  The view swung around to People Park. On its north side, the Thunder Wheel looked like a rusty sawblade lodged halfway into a robustly frosted cake. Beneath it, damp with fog, the rides would be shrouded in tarpaulin. Island Amusements was scheduled to open that evening, yet how could it possibly in this?

  She let the line ring a couple more times, hung up, ordered, Hit PAUSE.

  The deck stopped turning. Everything was still.

  Look, she said, pointing to the Thunder Wheel. What a beautiful thing. Do you love this city? I love this city. I was born at Old Mustela Hospital fifty-seven years ago and I’ve lived here all my life. You know how many times I’ve left in those fifty-seven years? None. Why would I leave? I’ve never been on an airplane. On a boat exactly once — the fireworks barge during the centenary celebrations. You don’t need to leave this place. So why get bent out of shape about being trapped here — where else would you rather be?

  Silence from Diamond-Wood. The Mayor checked the phone again — nothing — handed the receiver to him, he deposited it into its console. Take off that tape, will you? she said. It’s like talking to a coma patient.

  He did.

  Better?

  Yes, he said. Thanks.

  Anyway where was I? Oh yes — trapped, bah. The idea of being trapped here, it’s like a child being trapped in a . . . in a . . . wherever children like to be. A store for children’s things. Games or what have you!

  The Mayor could hear the anxiety rising in her voice. Like a child in an adultless land, she decided, and continued with rekindled vigour: And while these aren’t ideal circumstances, doesn’t it offer the potential to bring the city together? Maybe it’s exactly what we need to make us realize how lucky we are! So the bridge is gone, so what! Right?

  Well, said Diamond-Wood, the power’s still out in the Zone —

  Those people are used to struggling! If anyone can deal with a little hardship it’s them. Few people are aware of this, but I come from poverty.

  Oh?

  The Mayor peered over her shoulder at her aide: hunched upon his crutches, patchy stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, his uniform had the appearance of a rumpled paper bag. She looked away, continued: Touch green! Grew up in a trailerpark in what was then called South Bay. This was before the Lakeview projects. I was born in a house on wheels. Not literally, I was born at Old Mustela, but a trailer was where I spent the first few months of my life. So I think I know a little something about struggle. I understand people — rich, poor, young, old, fat, stupid — and that’s what makes for an effective leader in times of crisis: empathy.

  The phone burbled to life.

  Give it to me! she screamed, nearly falling off the dessert cart.

  The High Gregories sat around the speakerphone in their underground conference chamber — Griggs, Wagstaffe, Magurk, Noodles. Bean stood at the portal that led up into the Temple, hands behind his back in the pose of niteclub bouncers. In an adjacent chamber, Favours was having his morning treatments administered by two Recruits in latex gloves and surgical masks. From another came whimpering — tears?

  Bad news first? said Griggs, his voice as inert as the basement air.

  Fine, said the Mayor.

  No sign of him, said Wagstaffe.

  None? said the Mayor. What is wrong with you people? What did you —

  It’s nothing we can’t sort out, said Griggs.

  And Island Amusements? said the Mayor. It’s expected to open —

  Don’t get your gitch in a gotch, said Magurk. That’s the fuggin good news.

  Everything’s all set, said Wagstaffe.

  Everything? said the Mayor. I wouldn’t say —

  Let’s meet here for a face-to-face, said Griggs. There’s a car waiting for you outside.

  Now?

  Now.

  See you soon! said Wagstaffe cheerily, and the line went dead.

  Griggs looked around the table. Anyone hungry?

  Noodles nodded.

  Bean, said Griggs, fetch us some flats. And wake B-Squad up. I’m sure the Mayor will want some answers from the dynamic duo meant to be keeping tabs on Raven.

  SAM SLID BACK the cover from the peephole. The armoire was empty.

  If you’re there say something okay, he said, and moved his ear to the door.

  Silence. Sam touched his face. The scab was dry.

  I know you’re in there okay, said Sam. I know you can make it look like you’re not. But you can’t go anywhere Raven. Sam tried the handles: the boards and chains and locks held fast. There’s no way out.

  Sam placed an apple on the tray he’d affixed through a slot halfway up the door. You can have an apple for breakfast. If you want more I can get more.

  He pushed it through, heard the dull thud of the apple falling, put his eye to the peephole. From the bare overhead bulb fanned a cone of yellow light that dwindled in the dark corners. Upon the armoire’s newspapered floor sat the apple, gleaming. There was no hint of movement from the shadows, darkness there and nothing more.

  If the apple’s bruised I can bring you another one okay, said Sam. Or if you don’t like apples tell me what you like. I have juice. Or water. Or I could nuke you a meal.

  Sam waited, eye at the peephole. Nothing.

  The phone rang, the sudden burst of it a small explosion in the still room. Sam stood over the console. It alternated ringing and not — a tinny jangle, then silence, and the silence felt expectant, and Sam synchronized his breathing to it: inhale as the phone rang, and exhale between rings, not picking up because it would be the same voice, a deadened echo as though the call were coming from the bottom of the lake. Like speaking to his own drowned ghost.

  The phone stopped ringing. The room waited. Then, from the armoire: scraping. Sam held his breath. A thump. And then something scrabbly and wet-sounding — the watery snap and crunch of a mouth biting hard with its teeth into an apple.

  AT THE SOUND of fluttering Calum raises his head. Swooping down from above is a grey bird. A pigeon it seems at first but as it stills itself in the air with a slow backward beating of wings it might be a dove, though dirty or dusted with newsprint or ash, he thinks.

  The bird, whatever it is, lights upon the railing of the pedestrian walkway, its claws curl around the metal bar, and tilting its head regards Calum with something evaluative or curious. He stares back. He feels cold. He laces his arms around his shins and pulls them close and wedges his chin between his knees. In the bird’s pinkish eyes glitters something suspicious, he thinks. It doesn’t trust him. It can’t be trusted.

  Calum says, Go away. And the words again are eaten.

  The bird lifts one foot, then the other, puffs, shudders, but doesn’t go anywhere.

  So Calum lunges at it — though halfheartedly, if he caught it what would he do. The bird maybe knows this, it makes no effort to fly away. It only regards Calum steadily with those eyes like two droplets of something’s pale and mucosal blood. Calum feints again to smack it but the bird holds its ground undaunted, so he lowers his hand and for a moment the bird looks familiar, he thinks, though his memory feels emptied and what he can’t think is from where or when, or wh
ere where might even be or when, when.

  He takes another swipe. Deftly the bird swerves out of reach, resettles on the railing, nods, caws, squawks, chirps, what does a bird think or mean to say, is it taunting him or only making noise for itself. Watching the bird gloat Calum feels repelled and repulsed.

  Go on, he says, get out of here.

  But his voice sounds like a tape played in reverse, each syllable sucks back into itself.

  He looks up and down the bridge which narrows identically in both directions to little pinprick endpoints, tunnelling into a sky that has forgotten how to be a sky. Which way to go, does it matter. All that matters maybe is movement, away from this bird.

  Calum picks a direction, he doesn’t know which one, and begins to walk.

  II

  EBBIE AWOKE ALONE. The covers on Adine’s side of the bed were undisturbed.

  Adine? she called, sitting up. Adine?

  No reply. She got up.

  In the den Pop’s bedding remained heaped in the middle of the floor. The bathroom door was open, no one was inside, nor was anyone in the kitchen. Other than Jeremiah, blinking at her from the couch, the apartment was empty — Debbie did not count herself.

  Normally the fridge hummed, the mixing bowls atop it jingled. But with no power everything was silent, the air brittle. From the couch Jeremiah, tail alert and coiled at its tip into a fiddlehead, watched her. Debbie shivered, scooped the blanket off the floor and took it to the window nook, swaddled herself, and curled up looking out over the street: but there was nothing to see, UOT was smothered in fog.