Strange City

by Anth

  Sabbath? I look for my voice, trying to remember where I'd last heard it, how it worked. For a moment or two I experiment with what sounds like wheezing. Finally. I come close enough to make myself heard, and I ask him. 'Sabbath? A holiday soon, I take it We won the war?"

  He pauses for the smallest moment and reaches up to tip his Crown of Thorns to a slightly different and probably more comfortable angle. Finding his off-duty face, I imagine. His posture shifts slightly and he nods again, a little taller, a bit relaxed. "Halloween! Not even Brannan can ask you to work on Halloween, and he knows that."

  "Oh, yes." I say.

  His mouth twitches "You do remember that it's tonight, don't you? The big one. Halloween."

  I try to remember what comes next in conversations like this. "Halloween. Urn. October, Trick or treat. I'm sure you're excited."

  He nods, and you'd almost think there was more to him than the uniform, winged shoes, ears that hear and mouth that talks, I say "Weli, hurry up. Message receipt acknowledge. Close to sundown. Get going." He's gone before I finish.

  Halloween. I'm back in the Angel's room, through my darkened windows watching the boy flicker as he darts back up to the citadel. I catch myself hoping I'm his last duty of the day so he can get to whatever it is he wants to do.

  He's probably going to spend the night tracking down the "mystery" of his death. Stupid to wear your heart on your uniform like that, but that's the way those guys are, so confident that the world is holding its breath just because they died without knowing why

  I miss Ceille. I wonder what she's doing.

  It's getting dark out again. Halloween, mm?

  When we were younger, we had this game where we'd call up all the radio stations and dedicate songs to each other Any song. It got to where we'd have to make up fake voices to trick the D]s, or bribe them, or whatever it took.

  I still remember the phone numbers. Funny. I push my voice in the direction of next door, where my phone is. Push. Tip the table, knock the earpiece off Turn the dial, one number at a time. I don't even notice how hard this is. The other end rings. Someone, a woman, says "KOTO Request Line.

  I push my voice over the telephone. "Could I make a dedication? The Fairports, Meet on the Ledge? From Andrew to Ceille?"

  She asks, "Could you turn your radio down, please? We're getting a lot of feedback and I can't hear you."

  I push harder to make myself heard- "Could you play 'Meet on the Ledge? By the Fairport Convention."

  My voice is starting to get heavy, and I have to sit down, very slowly to keep the connection. She comes back. "No, we don't have it. It's either too new or stolen or something Got an alternate?"

  Push. It's heavy, and I can't make it very loud. "Also by them, 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes'?"

  She says, "Also by them? Sorry, but they said we don't have anything by the Fairport Convention down here, To tell the truth, I don't think I've ever heard of them Must be too obscure or too new for the station."

  Pause. "Hello? Must be a bad connection. Hang up and try again."

  The phone clicks and I drop my connection too. I'm too tired to dial again.

  It's still very dark in here with my Angel. I look at her for a second or two before I remember what I'm looking at. She doesn't return the favor, but stares at the ceiling with her dried-blood heartwood eyes. Angel, angel. Have you forgotten me, Celatia? I know, it happens to me when i just wake up, too. It's me, though Andrew. Every day in school I wrote you let­ters, and you wrote me back. Do you remember now?

  It's me, Angel. We talked a lot about being perfect. About living life as a work of art, with every breath counting, every move of your head a gesture for the finished product. You wanted everything you did to be perfect Whenever anyone wanted you to compromise, you'd do something extreme instead. I just wanted to be perfect, and that meant never doing anything too extreme.

  We talked. About mind games, about life, about trust and about truth. We promised each other we'd never lie to each other. You showed me your scars and I showed you mine.

  Ceille? Something's gone wrong with your eyes.

  I need to go back downstairs to get some fresh materials from the backyard. To replace what got wasted when the idiot from Thorn interrupted me. The nice thing about work is that it makes you forget that time is going by.

  It's spooky out here now. The moon's out, glimmer­ing in the fog. !s it stilt Halloween? I've lost track again. The weather's gotten past the point of a thun­derstorm. It's heavy, like a cut that's been put off for too long and which has festered. Too much up in the air even to fall as rain, so we have wind without move­ment, fog without rain. Up above, the moon gives light but no heat

  I go to one of the overgrown flowerbeds and start digging, down through the dry husks, black and cloudy amber in the moonlight, Down through the piles of brown, blind leaves. Down between the jagged stumps of rotten poppies until I get to the depth of the soft, dark mud, where the roots are.

  Odd how I don't dig up any bones You see, this entire neighborhood used to be the big cemetery dis­trict. Blocks and blocks of boneyard, from the park to the other side of that hill over there where St. Ignatius' is, but they had to move the corpses to build houses for the living. I don't know what they did with the tombstones. Pardoners got hold of enough of them to build the seawall back in the '30s, but I don't know what happened to the others. I hear you can still read the names on that sea wall, if you know where to look at low tide

  In this neighborhood, you get used to digging up bones in your yard. Generations of hereditary garden­ing has mined out most of the deposits by now, but you always wonder if today will be the day you find someone's finger in your roses. Some people dig and they get treasure. Here, you dig up bones.

  No bones this time, only roots. Nothing in my hole but the white, twisted roots of the dead flowers. Dad was right when he said there's nothing worse than a tree that's gotten its roots knotted, growing inward, slowly strangling itself. They grow underground, like a cannibal forest, all these vegetable worms crawling over each other with no room to stretch out, no time to stop and think. Feeding frenzy over not enough dust.

  The dogwood trees that Dad brought in from back east look dead, so I bet they're rootbound too. It's hard to tell in autumn, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if this whole yard wasn't a huge, petrified thicket of suffocated roots just under the surface. I bet they tried to get under the house, hitting their heads in vegetable blind slow-motion against the concrete foundations until they ran out of strength. Under the house.

  It's almost funny, walking on roots. Every step I take, I'm walking on tightropes. A hundred, a million tightropes, all tangled back on themselves like a maze, without ever knowing when I took that first step out on the wire. Without knowing where the other end is, if there is one. Tightropes wound around skulls and tectonic fissures, and none of us can sleep at night. You either keep moving or you fall.

  One of the last notes I ever wrote to Ceille had a tightrope in it Maybe it was the last one. I don't remember that much, but I remember this one. I used to work on them for hours, writing and then rewriting to leave just enough hints but not enough to get myself in trouble. It was a balancing act, and I guess I was too careful up there, didn't take enough risks. She should have figured it out. I made enough hints

  But because of all the rewriting I remember what I said, more or less, about tightropes.

  If is possible, QeAte, to lead one's life with perfect

  Tfietj tell you that nobody's perfect, that everyone makes mistakes.

  Tfiat'5 bogus. Every singte tightrope walker now Mng is perfect.

  Balance is the secret. Being perfect means having total balance, being able to remain perfectly still There are a lot of tightrope mkersout Severn a lot ofcarnivals; if anyone ever teils yoa that everyone makes mistakes, point to the tightrope walkers, suspend­ed aione between heaven and earth The tightrope walkers Happiness doesn't matter. It's a distraction. The wirecuts your feet up
there, and your feet bleed, bat it has to be light if you're going to balance.

  There. Behold my only surviving work. Andrew P. Malone, R.I.P., survived by a pretentious fragment on tightropes, now probably also lost.

  I remember the way your head would tilt when you were struck by something completely tangential to what people were actually trying to say. It was ... it was as if someone invisible were talking to you, and you were trying very hard to listen, the way that dogs and cats listen. Looking at you listening, I always wondered what had struck you that was so terribly important that you would freeze like a forest animal, i wanted to touch your cheek then, every time. I remember the way you held a pencil, the way you ducked your chin when you'd swallow.

  All the windows are still broken in the garage. I did that, right before my accident, broke them one by one. Funny how my hands never hurt.

  I wish I'd told you sooner, Celtic I wish I'd had the guts or the sense or the confidence to have told you sooner and then gotten on with it from there.

  I wish my life had somehow been allowed to have more dialogue in it.

  It's begun to rain.

  It starts like it always does, with one drop falling for its own reasons, preparing the way, cooling the air as it falls. Then another drop falls, and another soon after, and then the sky loses control of itself. Before you know what's happening, drops are falling in sheets of water, running together in falling streams, and the clouds collapse into a vertical river falling to earth as they forget more and more of their balance.

  Rain smells different now Before the accident, it smelled fresher, more like lightning in the air. Now it smells like old newspapers in the gutter, or like inland, shut-in oceans, rain from the Dead Sea, whole lakes clotted with the white corpses of fish. I bring a hand up to cover my nose, but that only makes the rot worse, and the rain fills my eyes faster than I can blink it away I'm running apart in the rain, like wax. There's a shape in the second-story window of the house and it looks at me with red eyes.

  Rain-channels cut deep into the lawn, tracing strange calligraphy around flowerbeds and between blades of grass. Wherever they go, the channels unbury the roots of plants. In their tangles, the roots are their own maze, with the giants under the dog­wood trees and the eyelashes of the dead poppies all together in knots. The roots are growing in secret, underground, an inverted garden of white flowers, a sea-anemone garden swaying underwater.

  The storm and the thunder run together with the raindrops into a drone. Ohhh, says the voice behind the thunder. Looooow, Naaaay. Oh. Lo. Ne, and again Does that sound familiar somehow? Is that you, Angel? No, it's someone else. Was it one of the voices buried deep in the earthquake, one of the teeth that ground? I don't remember. I don't remember. I wasn't paying attention.

  It is easy, it is easy, someone says. I am fascinated by these trenches opening up like canyons, like the map of a battle or the human hand, forcing solid ground apart like wet paper. I feel like Cm on the only bit of firm land left in the world. I sway a little, almost failing.

  It is easy, it is easy. I take a step onto the tightrope garden Roots and rivulets. Step, then another. Balance.

  Oh low ne.

  There are other people here, men and women and children with olive skin and long dark hair, just stand­ing still, dressed in loincloths, all of them crying. Some of them have seashells in their hair, and their alphabet is knots. Ohhhh, low nay. Oh. Lonely. Oh lo ne.

  Everything is blooming upside down, i can't see straight with eyes full of rain. I forgot the important things like eyelashes, i stagger a little, its thrown my balance off. The mud is slippery and I have to go slow to keep from falling.

  There's something just ahead. The dogwoods are bursting into rootbound bloom

  Here I am, and you are walking very slowly against the gray sky, the yellow haze She is going away again.

  On the other end of the strand between the rising water she is there, Ceille, I missed you. How've you been? She smiles. The smile I remember best. I've been well, Ceille. I've been dead, but otherwise no complaints. She nods.

  We're in a scene now, the ghost of her and I. Both of us have our lines perfectly. It's like we've been doing this dialogue every night for years. We're old pros.

  "Ceille, I was wondering if we could maybe get mar­ried,' I say, reading from the script in my head. [ wanted to write.

  She tilts her head and looks sad. As if it comes as any surprise, but she was always an actress. "Andrew?" she says.

  I nod sadly, going over the lines one more time. "I mean," I say, quoting myself, "we could wait until after school, but I think it would be nice We could wait, or maybe even just get an apartment or something somewhere for awhile."

  She flashes a small smile. There's a nervous giggle in her voice that makes me want to break something. Andrew, this is a joke, right? We haven't even really dated or anything"

  "But. ..." I say. "] don't know any couptes closer than we are. None of them really talk. We're great together, and I love you."

  The smallest pause in the rain. The ghost twitch of a smile. "I love you too, Andrew, but just not like that. I never knew you were interested.

  "You're my favorite person in the world, but I just never thought about you that way. Romantically.'

  "Why?" I say, losing interest in keeping up my part. I just want to leave.

  "You can't explain these things, Andrew. I just never did. Maybe if you'd made some sign, given me some kind of hint, i would have had some time to think about this. It wouldn't be so much of a surprise.' She looks somehow different from what I remember. Not nearly as fragile, but nicer somehow. More solid?

  "I can change. C'mon [ust give me a hint. What have I been doing wrong?"

  "Nothing, Andrew. You're fine, I'm sure I just . , . oh, Andrew, don't be sad. ltd kill me if you were sad over this."

  I think of reasons, then. She doesn't want to talk about them I say some other things. She walks away, back into the rainstorm. She writes, but I never read the letters. And then I'm dead.

  This time. I change the scene. When she turns away, I follow.

  It's hard in the rain to keep track of her and keep my footing both I wish she'd turn around and notice me. Between the roots and the mud trying to make me stumble I'm not making much ground. None of the tightropes in the lawn lead to where I need to go. Tracing their dead ends and knots wears me out, and I can barely see her in the rain now,

  There's something in my way. Is it her? it looks like her. It has her eyes and her hair the color of cinna­mon, and her height and her wrists and her neck. I'm so grateful she noticed I was following her.

  I start to apologize for what I said when I notice that it has wings, and it isn't her I'm too tired to go around the angel, so I stop. I can't go around. I might trip on a bone. I might get tangled in roots. I'd fall off my wire. But she's in my way and I can't see Ceille anymore.

  "Pardon me," I say to my angel, hoping she will move so I can catch up with Ceille.

  The angel doesn't say anything.

  'Move over," I say. "I have to catch her."

  The angel doesn't move. I shouldn't be surprised. When did she ever move, what did she ever say?

  "Please get out of the way," I say, almost sobbing, Every word takes an entire breath. I can't see where Ceille's gone. Talking to the statue only kills valuable time that I need. [ need it so much to meet up with her one last time.

  I'm tired.

  I scream at the angel. "You're just a doll! Get out of the way!" I try to push past it, but the rain makes me lose my balance and we both fall together in the mud. I dart my head up to try and see Ceille, but it's too late. The statue lies there, unblinking, with red wood­en eyes in the rainstorm.

  I call, but I've lost sight of her "I miss you," I yell. "I love you." No one answers. She's gone. All the people are gone. After awhile, my voice breaks and I start to cry and it goes on for a long time with the rain.

  After awhile ! notice that ['m still here, facedown in
the mud. The storm has tapered off into a sort of warm drizzle. The thunder has stopped talking. I am alone again in the yard,

  No allegories, no angels, wooden or otherwise. This is what is true. I am in my backyard, in San Francisco, after the rain. The grass has gone wild over the years, and the dogwood tree I used to play in when I was small has gone to thorns and knotted, mazy branches. In the moonlight, the grass is silvery black against the fence, and the last of the dogwood flowers are fragile, ghost-white, caught in the thorns. My father planted the dogwoods and he made that fence. Here, behind it, the yard is tangled and over­grown with weeds, rootbound and dry, but it is alive. And [ am here, dry and dead, but I can still move, and maybe move to somewhere better.

  There is a woman with the improbable, searing name of Celatia Thompson, and she was a gir! who breathed and who was wonderful. There was a statue made of dry tinder and many, many gathered roots, and it cast a shadow that resembled the woman and blocked the sight of her until she was gone.

  It's too late, Again.

  It would be easy to die here, to breathe mud and run downstream with it ]t would be easy to linger and dry out here with my roots exposed, turning red and dusty. But on the other hand, it's just as easy to drink the rain. I stand up and step off the tightrope and I'm on solid ground.

  Time goes by It's day, now night again, with a mil­lion small stars blinking in space and no one but a few specialists knows their names From time to time one of them loses its balance, sparks, goes out. Time goes on. I'm not going to chain the Winchester ghosts for Brannan, Or anyone else. No more chains, not for awhile, if ever. Starting now, I resign all my commis­sions. When I turn back from the sky. ] see my Angel staring up at me from her place. She can stay there I don't think I'll go back to working on her, at least for awhile.