People Park

by Pasha Malla

  This was all drowned out with a fat band of light and a purr of engines. Out of the dark appeared a mirror-windowed and sleekly aerodynamic yacht. A teenage girl waved from its helm. We’re here, she cried, the Lanyesses are here!

  Pearl was pulled aboard, the pig went spinning off. Below decks, dozens of survivors wore matching stunned expressions and housecoats. Many sat with teacups dangling from their fingertips, others drifted in and out of private berths, from the lavatory emerged a bearded man in a white bathrobe monogrammed ISA.

  A woman was close, eyes wide and empathic, hand out. Pearl took it to shake, realized it was clenched in a fist and holding a marker.

  Hi, said the woman, I’m Isa Lanyess. Now, actually I was just going to number you so we don’t go over capacity. Turn your hand over?

  She wrote the number 16 on the inside of Pearl’s wet wrist.

  Still room for one-thirty more! We’ve already rescued our full capacity once, just getting everyone safe. Doing our part because we can. The woman turned to address all the newcomers, dazed and dripping. Good luck with the animaltronics, huh? Now, I’m out of robes but towels are coming out of the dryer soon. Anyone care for some hot cider?

  Lanyess, said Pearl.

  That’s us! We’ve got the yacht so we figured we might as well help —

  You used to be a ballplayer. For the Y’s.

  Maroons, pre-Y’s. Funny you’d know me that way . . . Anyway it’s a small world!

  A small world, said Pearl, and this small world responded by tilting vertiginously, swirling into a kaleidoscope of her family’s faces: Kellogg’s, Elsie-Anne’s, Gip’s. Lanyess caught Pearl by the elbows and said, Okay there, I got you, and a sob swelled and burst in Pearl’s throat. There, said Isa Lanyess, yes, let it out, holding her while she wept.

  As The Know prowled People Park, scooping survivors from the water, the Podesta Tower’s rotations finally shuddered to a halt.

  So that’s it, said the Mayor.

  With the solar power exhausted the elevator was out too, Diamond-Wood stabbed vainly at the CALL button, shot the Mayor a look of panic and dismay. She blinked, her eyelids so heavy it was a struggle to raise them again. She’d never felt so tired.

  If you want to leave, she said, there’s always the stairs.

  The outdoor stairs?

  Off the viewing deck was a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT with a diagram of a man fleeing flames. Diamond-Wood pushed it open: an alarm would have normally gone screaming through the building, instead the only sound was the muted putter of helicopters. Gripping the doorframe in a skydiver’s pose, Diamond-Wood gazed down into the floodwaters.

  Go, said the Mayor, go if you want to. But do you see how they’ve abandoned you?

  A soft wind rumpled his hair.

  Go!

  He paused. But then where, he said. How will they know where to find me? I get to the bottom and then what? And then I’m stuck there, and then the water keeps coming up . . . look, everything’s gone — look!

  Into the room drifted chemical vapours churned up from Lowell Canal. A trio in a bathtub paddled past, a shower-curtain sail bulged and hustled them toward the mainland, where the newscopters stroked the beach with fingers of white light.

  Mrs. Mayor, I’m scared, what should I do?

  She shrugged, turned away, looked out over the city.

  Her view was that of a ship captain up in the bridge. Other than Podesta Tower only a few structures broke the flood’s surface: the tallest skyscrapers, the spire of the Grand Saloon, the top of the Thunder Wheel, where bodies swarmed and seethed.

  How many hadn’t made it? There was no telling. The Mayor thought of elderly couples entombed in Fort Stone attics as the water crept upstairs, covetous Bebroggers who, retrieving jewellery, had fallen through sodden, wilting floors, or, citywide, the irrevocably lonely who’d spent lifetimes waiting for a chance to end it all — and here it was, dribbling obligingly up to their front doors. The trapped and stubborn, the stupid, the unlucky, the vain . . . All those quiet secret deaths, happening unknowably in the night.

  After this, she said, we will be even stronger as a city. This is just a test. It’ll pass.

  She looked to Diamond-Wood for corroboration, but his back was to her. The smell from outside was ammonia, human waste, spoiled meat.

  There’s a boat coming, said Diamond-Wood. I’m going. I’m sorry.

  Okay, said the Mayor. Go, ye of little faith. She smiled. Yes, imagine us after this! Just like now, but better, touch green. Imagine it: a place like this one, but everyone’s happier. Or at least they believe themselves to be. What else do people need?

  But, turning, the Mayor discovered the boy already gone, helped onto the deck of The Know by Edie Lanyess. The yacht went churning north — leaving Diamond-Wood’s crutches twirling in the water like the hands of a crazed malfunctioning clock.

  WHAT ARE YOU doing, why have you sojourneyed from your stroking?

  Olpert gestured with his oar: There’s people there, on the spire.

  What do you conspire, evil one?

  No, the cathedral spire. The Grand Saloon’s. They’re on the top of it.

  And?

  And we should rescue them.

  Pop stared.

  What? We shouldn’t? We should just leave them there?

  Ah, and so now after a lifetime of esquivalience you wish to play the hero! You pretensualize restribution! Well fine, prehaps this will envisage the airs of your ways!

  With an ironic curtsy Pop steered the boat south.

  All around them watercraft loaded with people and belongings were crossing the Narrows. A little outboard-fitted junk putted by loaded low with people, sad and weary, eyes wide but unseeing.

  Rats, said Pop. Desertioneers!

  Olpert paddled. As they closed the distance he could hear the people — there were two — clinging to the spire calling, Help, help us, please.

  The boat glided up alongside. Olpert looked at the two strangers, tried to show something firm and authoritative in his face that suggested all was okay. And then seeing who it was, his oar slipped from his hands into the water.

  And now this, Pop howled. Some hero, he can’t even get a grip!

  Debbie clapped. Pop Street, she said, Pop, you came for us.

  The small woman beside her said, Who would have guessed?

  Yes, said Pop, whom?

  Debbie, said Olpert. I know you. We met. At the Taverne? On Thursday . . .

  Of course, evil one, we all are recognitive of every each other. This is some great phenomenology? Bah. It is life!

  Olpert reached over the gunwales, steadied the houseboat against the spire, extended a trembling hand to Debbie.

  Thanks, said Adine. Fiercely she levered herself past Olpert and aboard. Then she turned to help Debbie and Olpert stepped between them. It’s okay, he said. Let me.

  Debbie eyed him curiously. She took his hand.

  Hi, he said. I’m Olpert.

  Olpert knows you, Deb, said Adine. A fan maybe. You sportos get all the love.

  As Debbie climbed aboard the boat yawed, she lost her balance, fell into him.

  Olpert folded her into his arms. She squirmed, he held her tight. Destiny!

  Their mouths were close. He pressed his to hers, the blows upon his back and shoulders had to be of passion, he kissed her harder, everything in the universe had converged in this final moment and here it was, one big yes —

  Something sharp and hard stabbed his lower back. Olpert crumpled, released Debbie, he reached for her, clawed only air. What was happening?

  Standing above him the small woman and Pop brandished oars like truncheons. He was aware of Debbie shrinking behind them, wiping her mouth with the back of a hand. Olpert rose on shaky legs, offered a pacifying gesture, his spine ached.

  Pop and t
he woman advanced. Her eyes were fierce, his manic, he was whispering, And so we see your truthful colour, evil one. They backed him up against the railing. The small woman was saying something, her lips moved, yet the words were drowned by Olpert’s booming heart.

  Debbie went inside the cabin. She watched from a little round window. Olpert implored her with a desperate look. She pulled away.

  Animal, the small woman said. You fuggin animal.

  An oar came at him. Olpert dodged it, but he lost his balance and tumbled over the side, surfaced, grabbed for the first thing floating past: a grey shoe, the tongue lolled, it had no laces. Olpert looked at the shoe, dumbfounded, and then up at the houseboat, which was pulling away.

  Gip, watching from the porthole, told Debbie, He fell overboard, that man fell overboard, and Debbie, sitting on the floor, released her face from her hands. What?

  He’s in the water, said Gip, we’re leaving him —

  Debbie rushed to the porthole. Adine and Pop rowed at opposite gunwales. She looked around the cabin, snatched up a lifepreserver from the wall, barrelled out onto the deck, and, though in the dark she couldn’t see the man — Olpert — flung it into the water, and watched with desperate hope as it floated off, almost idly, in the houseboat’s wake.

  THE MAYOR DOZED shallowly, dreaming of the sky, being inside the sky, not flying but just existing there, with no earth below, all there was was sky. At the slop of water against the windows her eyes opened. At last the flood had reached her.

  Gone was any impression of captaining a galleon to port, this was more akin to a periscoped glimpse of open water from a submarine. The lake stretched west, the moon carved a silver tunnel to the horizon, spectral and grand. Yet it was the stars that amazed the Mayor. The night was full of stars and stars.

  She’d never seen a sky like this. Evenings thudded down upon the island in a dim curtain, waxy and purplish with the moon throbbing dully behind. But this night was a living thing, it seemed to pulse and breathe. The Mayor was in awe. Awe at the spectacle of it, at that immense luminescent fury, awe that such astronomy had always existed — she’d just never been able to see it.

  This view, though, was shrinking. In a trembling line the lake bisected the viewing deck and crept higher up the glass. She was sure of it now: the island was sinking, the tower lowered (or was being lowered), the whole city swallowed into some subterranean layer amid the bottomfeeders and the lakefloor’s churning guck.

  The water swelled muddily up the glass, opaque and blotting out the cosmos inch by encroaching inch, there was nothing to look at inside it, not even fish. It seemed to eat the sky. The Mayor had stayed expecting to feel noble and proud, possibly even martyred. Instead, as she watched the water swell up over the stars, she was consumed with longing and melancholy. She was alone, hopelessly alone. And soon there would be nothing left, nothing but water. Still, before it was gone, she relished that last visible band along the top of the window, a final jangling dazzle of that silken miracle of sky.

  X

  AMERALIGHTS LIT THE beach like intermittent signal fires. In each islanders gave enthusiastic accounts of their escapes for mainland TV. Survival conferred the status of hero, everyone was championed as brave, resilient. You’re an inspiration to our viewers at home, one of the reporters told a humbled family, and passing by Adine couldn’t help herself: Not like those sad fuggers who didn’t make it, and Debbie shushed and manoeuvred her down toward the water.

  Hand in hand Debbie and Adine weaved through the crowds, between the medical tents and media and boats along the shoreline, calling, Sam? Sam? But they’d searched the entire beach twice, on each pass enviously eyeing reunited families and friends. Fellow searchers passed them wide-eyed or squinting, in their faces were both camaraderie and estrangement.

  As the crowds thinned a figure materialized out of the dark, stumbling up from the water’s edge. They rushed to him: not Sam, this man was in NFLM khaki — and for a moment Debbie blanched that it might the strange man they’d flung from Pop’s boat. But it wasn’t him either, this guy was taller and sad-seeming, in his eyes was the same defeated look in Adine’s.

  Sorry to run at you, he said, I thought you might be my daughters. It’s okay, said Debbie, we thought you were someone too.

  We’re looking for my brother, said Adine, guy about my size, short hair, probably wearing a suit? The Helper shook his head. Adine continued: We’ve been up and down the whole beach and haven’t found him, so if he isn’t here then where the fug is he? And once again Debbie had to steer her away and on along the beach.

  For the third time they reached the edge of the inlet where the pebbles swelled into boulders and still they hadn’t found him. Out here, the tinny smell of the lake drifted ashore with each crashing wave.

  Let’s go out on those rocks, said Debbie, we’ll be able to see the whole beach. Yeah?

  Pebbles and stones chiming beneath their feet, they moved out on a little promontory that sloped down from the cliffs into the Narrows — misnamed now that the lake sprawled unperturbed to the point it folded into the starry sky in a sort of crease.

  From the outcropping Debbie surveyed the shore: the sporadic glow of cameras, TV vans in the parking lot of the airport motel, antennas blinking and jettisoning signals into the ether. It’s dark, she said, there are thousands of people, he could be anywhere, let’s wait for morning. I’m sure they’ll have a station set up to reunite people —

  But Adine wasn’t listening. She watched the water. What’s that? she said.

  Something floated out there in the moonlight. Debbie’s first instinct again was that it might be the man they’d turfed overboard, and at the sight of it she felt both relief and shame. Though it wasn’t a person, too boxy and bright. A little boat, maybe a raft, carrying the flood’s last survivors? But it wasn’t really boat-shaped, and no one rode aboard — a coffin?

  Whatever it was, riding a crest and ducking down, vanishing, then reappearing on the peak of the next wave, it was coming ashore.

  What is that? said Debbie.

  Adine shook her head, looped her arm through Debbie’s.

  The white box lifted on a swell, dipped into the trough, came up again. It was the size of a coffee table and advanced with the resolve of something driven or steered.

  The night was cool, the surf hissed. The lakebreeze smelled of pennies. They waited, watching the odd little craft bob and dip. Thirty feet out it caught on a fallen tree, the branches held it fast — as a gift, thought Debbie, dangled tantalizingly before a child.

  What do we do? said Adine.

  We go see what it is, said Debbie.

  She kicked off her shoes, hitched her pants, and waded out, the icy water stinging her shins, sand swirling with each step.

  And then she was upon it: a trunk — somehow dry all over, though it swam, fashioned from some material that was not glass, metal, or ceramic, but perhaps an amalgam of all three, sheer to the touch, dented in spots, and which repelled water as if coated in wax.

  Debbie took hold of one of the handles and pulled. The tree groaned, the branches scraped the trunk’s sides, before it slowly, almost reluctantly, eased free. She pushed it toward shore, not heavy, though it did drag in the water in a somehow solemn way, and in the shallows the trunk lodged in the sand.

  Adine waded out to help. It looks like a treasure chest, she said. Wait, I wonder —

  From the trunk came a snapping sound. The latches flew open. Debbie recoiled, Adine crabwalked frantically back up onto the beach. The lid opened, fell, bounced on its hinges. A figure all in white unfolded from the box — and rose to full height, grinning, arms wide to command applause.

  When there was none, Raven frowned. Debbie joined Adine on the shore, where they watched the illustrationist remove his whip from the bottom of the trunk and lash the water. The shallows parted into a narrow path to the beach, which he too
k, then whipped again, and the water collapsed into place with a plop.

  There you have it, he said, sweeping his whip over the lake. What do you think?

  Adine said, I fuggin don’t —

  She was interrupted by a humming, sputtering sound. A helicopter dipped out of the night blinking red lights. This provoked a clamour on the beach, the TV crews wheeled to shoot its sweep to the Scenic Vista eighty feet up the cliffs, where it settled and perched. I believe that’s my lift, he said, pushed between Debbie and Adine, and headed up the slope.

  Do we do something? said Debbie.

  What?

  All eyes and cameras were on the helicopter, it gleamed under all those lights, sitting there insouciantly at the bottom of the boardwalk. They seemed to be waiting for its pilot to appear. Meanwhile Raven skirted the crowd, scaling the cliffs in the shadows.

  He’s not in there! cried Debbie. He’s here!

  But the crowd was surging toward the helicopter, howling (No! was all Debbie heard — No! No! No!). Some people threw stones, these arced up haplessly and had to be dodged on their way back down. The illustrationist’s helicopter seemed to smirk in defiance.

  Look at him, said Adine.

  There was nothing magical about his scramble up the cliffs: just the hunched and shaky ascent of someone not used to climbing for anything.

  Still the cameras hadn’t found him, their lights focused on the chopper. Some enterprising broadcasters up top were hanging over the cliff’s edge and shooting it from above, others were lugging equipment down from the motel’s lot. Some particularly enraged islanders began scaling the cliffside, though it was sheer, the rocks slick with moss, many missed handholds and fell to the pebbles below.

  Listen, said Adine. She cocked an ear.

  They’re angry, said Debbie.

  No, not them. Something else.

  Debbie listened: a windy sound, whistling and whispering in her ears.