Ambient (10 page)

"None other. I left when Happy Hour got under. Idolators
fawning the great bore me."

"Eyeing you guzz would appall," she said. "Stolly?" she asked,
waving the bottle.

"I'll use a glass, thanks."

"A glass!" she laughed.

"Try it," I said, "You won't break so many teeth."

She tossed a lamp at me; I brushed it away, walking to the
kitchen. In that room's dark I heard the voice of the refrigerator:
Door ajar. Please shut. The door was not ajar, but the computer-a number three-couldn't know; dust had gotten in the
chips. Thousands of times, day and night, the refrigerator cried
Door ajar, please shut. We never had appliance money, and so
could afford neither new refrigerator nor repairperson. The voice
was pleasant, and the sentiment inoffensive; you got used to it.

Getting a glass from the cupboard, I brushed away the roaches
and rinsed it out. I looked out the window; through the smog I
could see only the warm glow of fires. As I left the kitchen, a
tremendous chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling. There were
gaping holes in every room of the apartment where the plaster
had been shaken loose by the vibrations below, or where our
small roomier had chewed through.

"What sore-eyed sights so dearlynear," I heard, reentering the
living room. "Long steeped in urinals, flecked roundabye. How
runs this eve, mewlypuke?"

"Amazing," I said to Enid, staring at Margot, who had come
in from the bedroom while I was in the kitchen. "You didn't
move your lips once-"

"Sizist," said Margot, addressing me; her contratenor rang
like clanking iron. "The mouth gapes wide and drops the brains
away. "

She lifted herself onto the sofa, snickering at me. On hobnail
Margot was about three foot nine, an achondroplast: a dwarf, a
born Ambient. She wore a shapeless blazer with the buttons and
sleeves ripped off, and a tee that read ELVIS DIED FOR SOMEBODY'S SINS BUT NOT MINE. Her pants-cut off above her
ankles-looked to have been yanked from a corpse.

"Control your manikin, Enid. People will talk."

"True tones told in dulcet crystal," said Margot. Enid handed
me an untapped bottle. I filled my tumbler, and drank.

"Cheers," I said.

` `Fuckall, " they said.

"Rolling soon?" I asked Margot.

"Rolling raw to rock away," she said. Margot packed a
swordstick four feet long; she used it as a staff. Around one wrist
she wore a pink leather bracelet beaded with razors. Her black
hair was cropped close, except in the front, where it hung over
her face in long dreads. She'd recently filed her teeth into sharp
points. I didn't dislike Margot, but she could be overly candid in
her expressions toward me. "As we cats awayed," she said, "how
then did piglet play?"

"Well," I said. "And now expecting a nice, quiet evening in
casa. "

"Opt for pleaz and not for pain, eh?" she said, hopping off
the sofa, grinding her heel against my foot. "Losient."

"Pick on your own size," I said.

Margot balanced her cane across her shoulders, her stubby arms
outstretched. "Your mind sets a great sail burstfull with wind."

"You'd look lovely crucified," I said.

"How the thickened plot."

"Lay no blows, my loves," said Enid, intervening. "So cruel
to each and all."

"Relax," said Margot, smiling. "With rude children only games
entrap. "

"Good eve," I said, taking my place on the sofa. Enid stood
to see Margot out.

"You're off?" she asked her.

"To skim the wide surf," said Margot.

"Have fun," I mumbled.

"Again this way you will?"

"Again and ever," said Margot. "To the gone world till then."

"You'll go how?" asked Enid.

"On angel's wings," said Margot, "with angel's feet."

Enid bent down to kiss her. Margot lifted her head in caressful
submission; nicked a small slice from Enid's cheek with her razors. My sister shivered with delight. "Merricat," she whispered.

"Cuddles," said Margot, her voice raw with throat's lust. Enid
began unlocking the door.

"Bye," I repeated.

"Order your house, gullyguts," commanded Margot of me,
smashing a favorite vase of mine with her cane. She twisted through
the opened door and was gone.

"Till tomorrow eve," shouted Enid down the hall. After she
relocked she came back over, took my hand, held it, and squeezed
it hard.

"A long time of it?" she asked. "You're wearish to my eye."

"Just an average day," I said. She laughed, lighting another
cigarette; no one but Ambients smoked anymore, not even the
Old Man. The untouchable caste of American smokers never extended to American producers of tobacco; smokestuff could be
exchanged for so many useful things from countries whose health
concerns were less exacting. Tobacco's sale was again legal in
America, but the national habit had been fairly broken over the
years. There were still private antitobacco groups in existencetheir favored mode of reprisal being, upon sighting a smoker, to
squirt lighter fluid upon the offender and torch away-but you
would never find their reps in a Twilight Zone.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" I asked.

"Nada fatal," she said. "Kept a coil in the hough a time.
While the bands delivered. Margot ticed me off and away. Sub-
tlelured. We played bedwedded brides in Heaven's soft arms. We
ingled and tongued, unblushing and hellraked."

"Sounds like joy overjoy."

She sighed, and smiled.

"Anything on TVC?" I asked.

"Overload. Flip your fancy if you list."

We had a 1:25 Cinescope Sony. We rarely used our unit's
VCR; we could rarely spare money for tapes, and the ones used
in the theater didn't fit. I took the remote in hand. With Citicable
we received nineteen channels. Enid had it tuned to one of the
vid channels, the limited one that on occasion played Ambient
groups; there were three vid channels besides Vidiac. I started
punching through the stations. "I Love Lucy" rerun. Basketball
game; the Hanoi playoffs. Movie, Devil Bat. Variedade from Cuba.
"Leave It to Beaver" rerun. Movie, Sound Of Music; to save
time for commercials, all the songs had been cut. "Twilight Zone"
rerun. News program from Japan. "Amos N'Andy" rerun. Health
network; a doctor detailed the dangers of nonessential amputation. Movie, Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster. "Dobie Gillis"
rerun. Static. "Honeymooners" rerun. Weather channel.

"Return to Lucy," Enid said. We sat there, drinking and
watching. TVC shows had commercial breaks every three minutes, and so it was hard to make any sense of whatever plots there
might once have been. It was always disquieting to watch those
old shows, even when they were colorcoded (they never got the
color right-for example, I could not see Fred Mertz wearing
purple pants) and transferred to digital tape. I regretted not having more of a choice in TVC viewing. There were seven other
special channels, showing business reports, art programs, classical music and opera performances, ballet and modem dance events,
gray-bearded British comedy and drama shows. Only owners and
thrifty, pretentious boozhies had money enough to obtain those
channels. The Drydens never watched them; if they watched TVC
at all, they watched the Violence Channel. That was strictly controlled, so as to shield from the owners' impressionable youth
ideas for acts that they hadn't yet conceived by themselves. Porn channels, like the magazines, no longer existed; under the Equality Acts ours was not a society to favor the exploitation of women
over any other group equally available.

"What sinks your lids so low?" Enid asked.

"Nothing. I'm just tired. "

"No yielding when you're fishyeyed," she said, again watching the screen, zapping repeatedly to savor the color's shifting
murk. "No lipsalve spent. When you guzz over the flow will spill
like Serena itself."

"Nope. "

"Does the pain burn diamond sharp?"

"No pain yet in what isn't hurt."

"Did something implead your name too near?"

"His waiting room blew. It drew close."

"Was la puta laced?"

"Avalon, mayhap?"

"AO."

"Wasn't even hurt. Her skin unblemmed."

"Sauce for drake's duckling, then," said Enid.

"Much was on her mind," I said.

"Not her alone and sole. You're under shrift to her wet scent
til the walls pour warm and steaming."

"We may be going away for a while."

"To pass this way again?" she asked. I didn't respond at once.
"Seamus?"

"Of course."

"So deep in mystery you tread. May we hear?"

"In a while."

"Say what upsets you so," she said. "Your dreams?"

"No worse than ever."

"The nightmare rides you hard, but at morningshade you're
left whole and freshly dewed. What else bends you twice?"

"Nothing."

Enid punched off the TVC; she looked troubled. "Then bed and bideaway if words fail," she said. "Care's nurse calls loud.
Sleep in easeful dream."

Enid and I understood one another perfectly; Ambient speech,
like everything, grew on you. To set themselves even further
apart Ambients at an early age had developed their own cant: a
little Spanglish, some obsolete English; whatever slang they liked
or developed on their own. The raison d'etre for Ambient speech
was that only in word and not in image could true beauty be
found, and no inherent horror could ever disguise or disfigure it.
Even the uninitiated found the phrasing musical.

Enid picked up her bottle, I lifted my glass, and we passed into
the bedroom. I took off my clothes and sat down on the bed.
When she disrobed, I turned away. Since she'd had her breasts
removed I'd had difficulty vizzing her with her shirt off; the doctor-the same one she'd known, who'd implanted the spikeshad, upon being requested to do this as well, left enormous scars.
Enid was just as glad.

To be an Ambient was sometimes unavoidable, never illegal,
often disturbing, and always subversive. The original Ambients
were those children born to parents living on Long Island twentysome years before. Of those originals there were fewer than three
hundred, but even before the faithful began to join them, there
always seemed to be many, many more.

Had it not been for the accident . . . on that windy day snow
fell like ash over most of the island. In its wisdom the government assured those penultimately affected that there was small
chance of lasting effects being suffered. The innocents went about
their lives after that for a couple of years, and then new effects,
everlasting, set in. First, across the island there emerged from
troubled wombs Siamese twins, dwarves, giants; the armless,
legless, noseless, earless; children with quiet twins forever nestling halfway into their own bodies; living snakes, prancing imps,
the ill-mixed and unmatched; albinos, popeyes, dogboys, harelippers, gator girls, seal women, and elephant men. Under the old Famplan, abortion was-and is-punishable by death; there
was nada for the parents to do but have and have at, as the government kept tight eyes on them all the while. Not long after, the
second effect occurred; the parents' cancers began to blossom,
flowering as if in a hothouse.

The dying parents gathered up their different children, fleeing
into the city as so many began to leave, where they found acceptance if not solace; the government that demanded their birth felt
it needless to concern itself with their life. So as their parents
died, one by one by one, the young marvels bonded fast; through
attendance at the schools their parents devised for them, they all
knew one another, and they were all fabulously bright. By the
time the last parent died, the progeny's group was formed; their
own name given by their own.

Enid-like me-was born full-formed in the city, but there
were many among the city's disconcerted who saw in Ambients
a chance to add their support to the statement already made; Enid
saw early. By altering the body in unappealing ways and thus
becoming voluntary, the non-Ambient might not only find kinship but could as well demonstrate the iniquity of a society that
forced one to do such. I am not much for dogma, myself.

"Is your fat tongue yet loose and flapping?" she asked, pulling
her sheet over her.

"Not so much," I said; my glass was empty.

"Beat me. Dim our dark room, grace."

I switched off the light, laying down on my side of our beds.

"Speak. My ears hear my copesmate's cry."

"I've a proposition offered," I said.

"That yields such suck to sorrow? What gives?"

"Mister Dryden wants me to kill his father."

"Such prospect pleases?" she asked, breaking what silence
had settled. "Assayed by the signs you viz?"

"I told him I would."

"Paused on the blade of the knife?"

"Yeah. "

"You can't hack and slash till bitter end, Seamus."

"I think I'm too preoccupied right now."

"With?"

"Avalon."

"She loves the smoke yet hates the fire?"

"Oh, no," I said. "She's willing to help."

"What ills, then?"

"I'm scared for her. For both of us."

"Beat the bush and snatch the bird. It's sure she's a big, big
girl, brother-o. Handling herself should go natural."

"AO."

"Sight your own risk first."

"AO," I said again.

"What afears you most, then?"

"A lot. Everything."

"And this eve you feel to be strewing moss over still rocks?"

"In a way."

"So overslip till morningshade," she said, kissing me goodnight, careful not to poke me with her nails. "Toss it high and
glory. "

"All right."

We lay down, my head on my pillow, her head on her block
of foam. She'd tried styro, but tired of pulling it up with her
whenever she rose or turned. The room was hazy; my eyes stung
and burned. Smog crept through the hole in the bedroom ceiling,
over our beds. I made a note to myself-again-to nail something over it. Before I slept that night I spent boozhie notions,
thinking to myself that, as it had gone, no matter how well I did,
it would never be so well as it should have been. That it would
now be seemed-possible, endearingly possible. My pain slept
before I did. Ambients rejoiced that these were the last days, wished and prayed that they were, and would have given over
their souls to whoever wished to keep them if in so doing an end
might be delivered to the world that ran raw around them. I didn't
mind, so long as it was done right.