“Quite,” I reply, startled (why can’t I be left in peace?).
He’s right, though, whoever he is. The tiniest thread of heat is now stealing through the dome like a furtive gas, and it does seem slightly brighter out. Looking around with new eyes now, I can see that some of the flowering shrubs are slightly less flowering than they were last week.
The man rolls over in his chaise to face me.
“And do the lawns look…spotty to you?” he asks.
I squint out at them. “I don’t think so…”
“The first sign of a general decline, perhaps.”
“It’s fine, it’s nothing,” I reassure him, though clearly some of the neighboring lawns are beginning to show subtle staining, like lightly soiled underarms.
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
He strikes me as the sort of reactionary who examines the world in hope of its betraying a decline of some sort, constantly on his guard for a frayed edge, moral turpitude, a change in atmosphere and mood.
Conversely, Dennis—walking up to lean against a sun umbrella on the patio in front of us, e-cigarette dangling from the narrow stroke of his mouth—seems to be relishing any sign of upheaval, environmental or otherwise, if only for the novelty of it.
“Hello, boys, did you hear? A fellow, injured on a treadmill in the gym this morning. They brought him out on a stretcher. The power surged, the belt sped up, he fell. Badly concussed.”
“That’s terrible.”
“The runner whom the race outran,” Dennis offers, deadpan.
“Electricity has become as iffy as the gardening,” my neighbor laments.
“Percy,” Dennis says, looking me squarely in the eye, ignoring the other man, “let’s take this as a good omen, you and me. Maybe things will finally begin to get interesting around here.”
Though I want to do nothing of the sort, and so gather my work and leave.
The day has listed, sagged under by the time that Mr. Al’Hatif and I finally sit down to our game of checkers. He appears totally indifferent to these new portents, though he is clearly bothered by something else entirely.
“Mr. Percy, what is that? Is that you?” he asks while I set up the board. He puts his pocket square to his nose.
“What?”
“That odor?”
“It’s the heat.” I’d been lounging by the pool. Perspiring.
He looks me up and down. “Where’s your uniform? Not back yet?”
So, back again at the flat, I search the Freehold directories, but the Same Same shop isn’t listed on any of them. If I want the uniform back, I’ll have to drive back into town, won’t I? Which will eat further into my project-time. That is, unless I just hang on a few days more, then I could wait for another mass event, and sneak off….No, it can’t wait any longer. I’ll lay low now, but tomorrow morning, I return to the city. Np.
I remove my soiled clothes and let them fall where they may. Man, my room is also getting out of hand. The bed is a roiling sea of salmon-colored sheets, a filthy sock, an encrusted food tray, that mammoth novel I’m slogging through, splayed and broken on the floor—all my leavings from yesterday are still here, my sweat and sloughings, signs and stains…
I make a quick attempt to tidy up, myself included. I run up a hot shower.
Once in there, I put off leaving, the hot water feels so fabulous. I wait long enough that I lose my will entirely. I just sit down on the floor of the stall for a while and allow the water to drench me over and over again; scrubbing myself with the sponge, over and over, staring at the shapes in the tile-work. I spend a lifetime in here. When I’m out again, assured that I am clean as could be—albeit completely bereft of energy—I remember that I have nothing to change into. My dirty clothes from home are smeared across the floor. I do not want to get back into them, thereby undoing all the benefits of the general cleaning. I stand here, naked and dripping, cursing my lack of foresight.
Then I turn slightly, and notice a package sitting on the floor, just inside the door to the room.
A box. There is no name on it, no address, no label.
But I know what it is immediately. As if I had invoked it.
Ha.
Neatly folded inside. My uniform.
Well, the stain is gone. Just gone. Totally gone. No more moist spot. There’s no remnant of it. Not a trace. There isn’t even any of that telltale paleness you often see when a cleanser has been used aggressively on a fabric. Just as good as new. I turn the garment inside out, examine each of the seams. It is pristine, inside and out.
Mr. Al’Hatif was right. This place is incredible.
I put the garment on me, slip it on over my head, step into the pants, adjust the belt, and walk around the room, feeling its weight, its tolerances. It hasn’t shrunk. Feels precisely the same. If anything, it feels better. It isn’t creasing under my fingers when I pinch it. I bunch a bit of one shoulder together and pull it toward my nose. The fabric now smells like almonds and lavender and vegetable fibers. It smells…great. Well, that’s one success in a long string of small failures. Maybe it presages good things for my work.
E/o/d, and I’m wearing my crisp, newly refurbished outfit. I am heading to dinner with everyone else, along the pathways. “Hello, Percy!” “Hello!” “Good evening, Percy.” “Good evening to you,” I reply, as the fellows pass, and greet me. And—aren’t they all looking, well, a tad…shabby? I’m noticing little signs of wear and tear on their uniforms. Perhaps it is my newfound confidence, but it seems as though a few of them have allowed things to unravel a bit at the edges. I’ve detected a missing button, or two, a frayed collar, a thread poking pubicly out from a seam, a slight discoloration…tsk, tsk, I think. And it occurs to me that I will be one of the few here under the structure who looks truly sharp, etc. And what’s that? I stop for a moment, bend down. A piece of paper someone has dropped. Stooping, I pick it up, roll it, drop it in a bin beside the path.
How quickly things begin to fray. Only a few weeks ago, the campus was totally pristine and I was a mess—now it is starting to seem like the other way around. All a matter of perspective though, isn’t it.
And just as I am pondering this, the Mysterious Woman appears on the lit path heading back toward the Enclave from whence I just came. As we pass one another, and sensing an opportunity, I gamely say “Hello!” and try to infuse the greeting with all of the import I can muster. She looks up at me with those exotic eyes of hers, says “Hello, Percy. You’re looking very handsome,” then walks past purposefully, and is gone past the gate and off down another path. I stand there alone for some time, frozen in place, disoriented, musing on her meaning, her importance, her slender neck and the bones that protrude, noticeably, from it—not, Psa, you know, in some kind of romantic trance, as she is not “for me,” not in that sense, but I mean more in the manner of: What is it that this Mysterious Woman has to do with anything at all? That is, I suppose, what has she to do with me, and what is her meaning w/r/t the Institute, and why is it that she is so rife with meaning after all? (A gap) And it isn’t before long that I suddenly come to, surprised at my own absence from the world, and I shake my head, and now find myself, surprisingly, making my way back again to the Enclave, my feet taking me as it were, and I’m headed back toward the familiar comforts of my bed, and then there is, for some reason, blood on the floor of the hallway.
I stoop down to investigate further, and it is tacky to the touch. This is, indeed, blood Imo. I smell it. No smell. I think of the words: “brown spillage,” and then the words “human hydraulics,” and then there is another big blank
“Big blank” to be indicated by the space inside of the letter O
O
and it will not be until the next day, now that is, that I have begun to wonder (am wondering) about what had happened (then) to all my initiative (then).
&n
bsp; Initiative I must protect (now). Initiative I must (now) store up; shore up. Time (then, as well as now) isn’t endless after all.
20
(EXCURSIONS)
Gin rummy fever sweeps the place. Now it’s backgammon. Charades, dance competitions, shuffleboard, war games, bocce, craft circles (also checkers, obviously, though this is really Mr. Al’Hatif’s and my thing), and now it is excursions. A souk, an art exhibition, a football match, an archeological dig…educational, fun. the Institute sure does love an outing, and I attend as many as I am able. I do this, mostly, to keep stagnation at bay; and the excursions do serve as a welcome distraction from my project’s stubborn refusal to spark. I think of the project now, as almost like a word or name I have forgotten and need to remember. “Think of something else, Percy, and it will come to you,” I say to myself. When the project is going well (rarity), it does feel like remembering, rather than making. Strange. But distractions can be salutary under such circumstances—that’s the theory anyway, and there’s just so much to marvel at out here. Out there in the desert, that is.
Recently, we have been trundled into the sleek glass buses just about every week; off to visit a series of singular structures—follies, always picturesque, almost all of them in the middle of nowhere, always abandoned, increasingly strange, and standing without context amid the dunes. Our first of these desert trips is to an ancient ruin of some sort. The ruin isn’t roped off, so we can wander around it as we please. The walls of the ruin list and tilt—what’s left of them. The structure is barely noticeable as such. Eroded formations, rough hieroglyphs, lines, crevices, the sand’s woven record of all of that wind. You could walk right by this site without even realizing that the whole thing wasn’t just a slightly more chaotic moment on the plain.
(“Isn’t it splendid,” Mr. Al’Hatif exclaims.)
The following week we go out to a large limestone sphinx—cryptic and crumbling. That same day, we visit an obsolete lighthouse. No water anywhere in sight. But still, this dilapidated erection in the middle of the desert, its milky eye, impassively reflecting nothing but sand, cloud, and the occasional vulture. We try climbing up to the glass, but the stairwell is too narrow, and blisteringly hot. Also, a large bridge, several hours’ drive deeper into the wasteland, all gray stone and wire. Bereft of a river to traverse; red silt creeping up its piers.
One time, en route to a falconry demonstration, our bus sidles up alongside a wall of brick, stone, earth, partially buried, piercing through the dunes like stitching in cloth. The earthworks barricade snakes on and on, for what purpose is anyone’s guess, though one would think its use was as a defensive redoubt of some sort. Who knows. Anyway, we are headed elsewhere, and leave the impressive wall behind us.
A month on, we head out to the site of a solitary white marble cenotaph—extravagantly sculptured, its inscriptions smoothed and unreadable. Again, no other pilgrims at the tomb. Just us, we uniformed geniuses; ganged together like schoolkids.
One midday, back on the bus, I look out my window and see a single black line begin to creep up out of the horizon in the distance; it seems to emerge from the desert floor like a mechanical pencil lead. The shape grows taller and taller, taller by far than any gantry or oil rig. It is huge. At least three hundred meters. Is it a minaret? No. More like a crane; though it’s black.
It must be an antenna. As we approach it, the structure continues to thrust, obscenely, out of the sand, widening out now at its base. Look; it is growing feet—four of them, separated by huge, semicircular gaps. An obelisk atop a giant metallic quadruped. At the tippy-top, above its bulb, it tapers to a needle point. A communication tower? But no power lines extend from it. No transmitters; transformers. If the scale of the proceedings were different, it would be a sundial; its sharp shadow as clear as could be atop the swelling sand beneath it, stretching out and out.
The giant black steeple seems to have its own gravitational orbit, pulling us in, though when we arrive no one else is there. No tourists, no tour buses, no gawkers, selfie-takers, trinket shops, information kiosks, queues, guides, no restaurant, no trash, no parking. Our bus simply pulls over to the side of the road when we arrive. The tower is entirely deserted. When we clang down the steps of the tour bus, we are hit by waves of heat, vibrating on the electric wind. The heat is amplified by the enormous steel mesh of the tower. Still: we stand on the highway shoulder, idiotically, for several minutes, devices raised like hand mirrors.
And how I long to be up there, perched on the irreducible needle point of the structure. Frightfully high. High as a fever. Alone. But there is no going up. The double-cabin elevators haven’t worked for ages. The stairs, locked off and rusting. So we just gawk, until the heat overwhelms us, and so return to our air-conditioned seats.
Occasionally, we go to eat lunch, and visit the shops in town.
The Freehold’s capital always makes for a good excursion.
I take one such opportunity to sneak off again.
Does she see me do it? When we first arrive downtown, while everyone else is disembarking, in the bustle of arrival, while everyone buddies up, does Miss Fairfax see me duck and run? I am careful—pretty slick about the whole thing, Imho. The admins haven’t been taking attendances lately, so. Anyway, I am not away for that long. Not long at all.
I’ve gone back, you see. Back to the Same Same.
My uniform came out so well, I’ve had a few other things taken care of. Small things.
My favorite pen. Had to get that leak shored up.
The peeling sole of my left shoe? Done. It’s back on my foot already. Repaired in that indistinct back room while I waited. The seal between lower and upper is tight as could be, and it feels great. The entire shoe looks spanking—the younger sibling to its partner. Shining. He must have polished it up, and now I’m left with this strange (aesthetic, and literal) imbalance between my feet. (I’ll have to go back, to do up the right shoe.)
All told, on this particular day, I am probably gone about twenty minutes. Tops. Surgical strike. No one missed me.
Frankly, I can’t wait to go back there again, I think, as our bus rebreaches the Institute’s boundary, and lumbers onto the highway. We are off again. And this next outing should be fun. It is Venice after all. Yup Venice (or: “Venice”). The Freehold’s largest, most frequented mall.
* * *
—
So large, this mall, that from our vantage point in the middle of the huge, open gallery, nothing can be seen of its exterior walls. The building is several stories tall. White canvas and netting hang down from the ceiling, giving the space the feeling of an enormous Bedouin tent. Walkways are tiled in brilliant white, and shoppers—tourists, and those posh faux-locals—parade up and down the concourse, some carrying bedazzled bags, others having these bags carried for them by servants. Cutting in between the walkways are, of course, the winding, swimming-pool-turquoise Venetian canals—placid, but for the small waves made by the silent gondolas which navigate them and transport the tourists to the chain stores. (You just can’t make this stuff up.) Many of the people in the mall wear white gowns and headdresses. Most are navigating the promenades blindly, through some innate or coenesthesial knowledge, whispering and cooing to their slabs, or looking through them to capturing the moment. Soft music. Wrought-iron standing lamps tastefully light the arcades; plastic spider plants hang from them below banners advertising everything, and whatever. The perfume from one of the Sephora franchises leaks out.
Unlike the Institute, the air here is comfortably cold. The gondola poles make tiny splashes, like brushes on cymbals. Miss ☺ the Brand Analyst is astern, facing me, her legs crossed out in front of her, looking about her—me, in the prow. “Wow, this is so real,” she says. She has a dreamy expression on her face while the electric gondolier punts us slowly, robo-barcarolling us through the channels of commerce.
She isn’t really l
ooking at anything specific, Miss ☺, just taking in the general impression of trans-global enterprise, and also perhaps lost in the sounds of the splashes of the pilot’s pole, and perhaps also entranced by the Syntho-Oud mash-ups which burble about us. We’ve snuck off from the body of the group, who were far more interested in shopping than we were. We caught the first boat we could find. And we have the mischievous grace about us that clings to children escaping field trips.
“See?” she says, and points.
“What?”
I follow the line of her sight, from her blue eyes out over her right shoulder, along her slender bicep and down along the gently veined waves of her tanned hand, slipping briefly along her lacquered nail and out. She’s pointing over the waters to the mall’s arcades and signage, to those bright places in the Venetian Souk, above the generous entrances of the shops where the signs glow: the rows of corporate selling-interests which stake out the mercantile rows of this fake Venezia. Galeries Lafayette, Debenhams, Marks & Spencer, Lacoste, Chopard, Nike, Hershey’s Chocolate World, Mumbai Se, Harman, Virgin, Kinokuniya, Red Lobster, Wafi, Scoozi, Vapiano…
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
(BHV. Harrod’s. Starbucks. Spinneys. LuLu Hypermarket…)
“Yeah, just look at them all.”
“Everything needs one. We all do; did you ever think of that, Percy?”
“To everything, a sign?”
“Even you.”
I put up two Ls with the thumbs and index fingers of both my hands as if to frame a billboard:
“Percy Frobisher: Mystery Man.”
“Is that what you want? To be a riddle?” (Cipher, on a blank field. Stain, on a field rampant.) “Not a winning look, Percy.”
“All right then,” I say, “what about you?”
Simple, you’d think. One of these: ☺. But no, no, she’s a forward arrow: →. Or, a fingerpost. Better still, just a finger, pointing; ☞. For the jolly little trendsetter that she is: a disembodied finger. A finger with a pretty little pink nail. Pointer finger. Trigger finger; pew, pew. Digitus secundus. It’s perfect actually—as apical creative and ideation manager at a creative consultancy responsible for branding, systematic trend-watching, scenario development, and visioning. A modern oracle, she is. A roadmapper. A strategic consultant. Sniffs for trends, and then sells forecasts to high-bidding clothing manufacturers, game designers, packaging specialists, fashion conglomerates, entertainment studios, food labs, app developers, and even, ourobouros-like, to other creative foresight consultancies. For a not-insignificant outlay of money she will tell you what that color, that style, that phrase, that cadence, that disposition or humor, that taste will be—the one which will appeal next season, next year, in ten years, as far down the pike as you wanted her to look, all the way to the end of cindered time. Incredibly high success rate: predictions-to-outcomes. Day after day, in her offices, diode-lit by three monitors, tabs open, phone lines on speaker, silent feeds unspooling, networks and platforms auto-updating, page-view by page-view, analytic by analytic, click after click, vibrating with the hum of cooling fans and brushed by the building’s ventilation, peering at now’s entrails, its wasted wants, its dissatisfactions and refuse, reading in this…
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