Lexicon (13 page)

“
Vestid foresash raintrae valo! Stop!
”

The kid shambled through the words like they were water. Eliot drew the gun.

“
Stop! Campbell, stop! Valo! Stop! Valo!
”

The kid’s lips stretched back. The tendons along his forearms tightened. The ax rose. Eliot squeezed the trigger. The kid grunted. His expression didn’t change. Eliot pulled the trigger twice more. The ax clanged to the blacktop. The kid fell to his knees. He tried to rise, grunted again, and fell face forward onto the road.

Eliot sank to his haunches. The sun had almost set. The world was awash in orange. He rose and began to load the kid’s body into the car.

•   •   •

He buried the kid in the desert and drove through the night. When the city lights rose, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and pulled over onto the shoulder and climbed out. He leaned on the car and dialed, inhaling night air. Cars whizzed by. “Yes?”

“It’s Eliot.”

“Ah.” He heard a tinkling: ice in glass. “How are things proceeding?”

“Campbell’s dead.”

He heard Yeats sip at his drink. “Do you mean he failed to return?”

“I mean I shot him in the chest.” He closed his eyes, but that was no better, so he opened them again. “I mean he came out of there carrying an ax and I shot him.”

“You sound unsettled.”

He dropped the phone from his ear. When he could, he raised it. “I’m fine.”

“You’re saying Campbell came back insane. Is that correct?”

“Yes. Insane. Compromised. Something.”

“Do you know how it happened?”

“He made it to the Emergency Room. We were talking. Then he just stopped.”

“How did he sound up to that point?”

“He was cool under pressure.”

There was silence. “It’s so intriguing,” Yeats said. “What I would give to know what she did in there.”

He waited.

“Come home, Eliot. It’s been long enough.”

“I haven’t found Woolf.”

“Woolf is dead.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Stop believing what you want to believe. It’s unbecoming. You’ve found no trace. Your assignment is terminated. Come home.”

He laid his head against the cold metal of the car and closed his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

•   •   •

A dot appeared in the snowscape. A car? Yes. Eliot checked his coat, made sure the gun was out of sight.

Behind him, Wil’s footsteps clattered down the airplane steps.
That was quick
, Eliot thought.
He must have thought of something.

“What happened to being
worth it
?” Wil shouted. “Isn’t that what you said to me? Those people who died back there, I had to make myself worth it?”

Eliot didn’t answer.

“Is that a car?”

Wil’s shoes crunched toward him. He stopped beside Eliot, hugging himself. Eliot glanced at him. “Don’t leave me, you motherfucker,” Wil said.

“Fine.”

“What? So . . . we’re good? We’re staying together?”

“Yes.”

“Then what the hell was that before? Was that a joke?”

The car slowed. Eliot saw glassed-in faces gaping at the plane. “This will be easier if you’re calm.”

“Are you
fucking
with me now? I’m trying to deal with . . . magical, killer poets and you’re
fucking
with me?”

“I reconsidered,” Eliot said. “You made a good point.” He walked toward the car.

GHOST TOWNS: #8: BROKEN HILL (AUSTRALIA)

Following discovery of the world’s richest zinc-lead ore deposit in 1883, Broken Hill became one of the world’s largest mining towns. At its peak, up to thirty thousand residents lived here, many employed by the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP).

Following exhaustion of two primary mines in the 1970s, however, the town began to decline. Several smaller mine sites remained viable, but isolation—the nearest city is three hundred miles away—and the inhospitable environment contributed to a steady fall in population.

In the early afternoon of 14 August, 2011, the zinc-lead refinery, situated near the heart of the town, experienced a catastrophic explosion followed by a rapid, hot-burning fire. Reports suggest a river of deadly methyl isocarbonate flowed down the main street. Within the next few hours, all three thousand residents died from toxic fumes. Several emergency services teams that entered the town in the ensuing hours were likewise overcome.

The town is currently fenced off at a radius of five miles and expected to remain uninhabitable for the next two hundred years.

From: http://nationstates.org/pages/topic-39112000-post-8.html

Re: broken hill conspiracies???

what people don’t realise about broken hill is alot of the people didnt die from fumes at all at least not directly. it was the panic when they realised what was happning and couldnt get out my uncle was on the first perimeter team and he said people were killing each other in there

[TWO]

She sat in a red leather armchair and watched a fish. The fish was in a tall hourglass, with water instead of sand. Every few seconds a drop fell from the top to the bottom with a
plink
she could hear only because the room was a mausoleum. The fish wandered around, ballooning as it approached the curved sides and shrinking away again as it neared the center. It didn’t seem to care that its world was shrinking one drop at a time. Maybe it was used to it. When the water level was low enough, the hourglass must tilt, swing the fish to the bottom, and start refilling one drop at a time. Some kind of art, she assumed. It was installed in the middle of this room with no other function; it had to be. It was making some point about time or rebirth. She didn’t know. She shouldn’t be thinking about the fish anyway. She was in a situation.

Charlotte had driven her, deposited her in this room, and clack-clacked off into the depths. Charlotte had not spoken during any of this, not one word, even though Emily tried to provoke her. There was a disturbing softness about Charlotte this morning. A kind of sympathy in her silence, which Emily did not like at all.

She wished Jeremy were here. She wished there was some possibility of this day ending in his room, her telling him about it.
You would not believe this fish hourglass they had
, she’d say. And Jeremy wouldn’t say anything but she would be able to tell he was interested.

Her time at the school was over. That was what Eliot had said. But no one had made her leave. They’d put her in a different room and in the morning a fresh school uniform was hanging on the door. Then Charlotte, soft and silent. Emily didn’t know how to reconcile all this.

She was giving serious consideration to running. Many problems, Emily knew, could be solved through running. She was not exactly sure which way led to the street, since she had arrived here via an elevator from the underground garage, but still. It was worth keeping in mind as an option. She stared at the hourglass.
Plink. Plink.
She couldn’t see a tilting mechanism. But it must move soon, because the water level was getting pretty low.

She heard heels and identified them as Charlotte’s. It was her last chance to flee and she let it pass. Charlotte emerged and crossed the room without looking at her. She opened a door and waited.

Emily rose. “Are we leaving?” Charlotte did not respond. She looked at Emily and her eyes made Emily feel like she had made a mistake not running. But it was too late for that. She would get out of here one way or another. She always did. “O-kay,” she said, and went through the door.

Charlotte took her to a stairwell and finally to a door marked
ROOF
. She opened this and Emily stepped out into sunshine.

The roof was maybe a hundred yards to a side, with gardens and a pool and a tennis court. Like a floating resort. And she could see other rooftops floating in the sky around her, and they were all the exact same height, because this was Washington. She marveled at this for a moment and the door clacked shut behind her. She turned and Charlotte was gone. “Hmm,” she said.

She began to explore the gardens. There was a noise like:
schock
. Following this, she came upon a man in light gray pants, no jacket, standing with his back to her, straddling a green mat. His knees were slightly bent. He was holding a golf club. She stood very still, because even from here she could tell it was Yeats, the man Jeremy had promised her she’d never have to speak to, who had shark eyes.

He swung the club.
Schock
, and a golf ball arced into the air. She watched it, thinking it was going to land on one of those other buildings, but they were farther away than it seemed. The ball fell below the horizon of the low rooftop wall. That would be kind of dangerous by the time it reached ground level, she felt. Kind of like a bullet.

Yeats turned to her. To her enormous relief, he was wearing sunglasses. He almost looked normal. Or not normal, but like a politician—a congressman or senator, someone who might tell her the country needed cleaning up. More solid than normal. He wasn’t smiling but didn’t seem angry, either. He was just looking at her.

“Hi,” she said.

He took a white cloth and began to clean the end of his club. This took a while and his eyes didn’t move from her, as far as she could tell.

She shifted from one foot to the other. “Charlotte brought me here but—”

“
Vartix velkor mannik wissick
. Be still.”

Her mouth snapped closed. It happened before she realized what she was doing. The surprise was that it felt like her decision. She really, genuinely wanted to be still. It was the words, Yeats, compromising her, she knew, but it didn’t feel like that at all. Her brain was spinning with rationalizations, reasons why she should definitely be still right now, why that was a really good move, and it was talking in her voice. She hadn’t known compromise was like this.

Yeats took a golf ball from a basket and dropped it to the green mat. He positioned himself, raised the club. He struck the ball and watched it sail into the distance. When it disappeared, he returned to the basket and did it again. He wasn’t watching where those balls landed, she noticed. It wasn’t like he was taking some kind of perverse joy in turning golf balls into bullets. It was more like he didn’t care. She had misjudged this whole situation. She had thought it was going to be about her. That hourglass in the lobby, she realized, that didn’t tilt. It was someone’s job to come by twice a day and replace the fish.

Yeats continued to hit balls and she fought to move but couldn’t. She felt violated and angry but also ashamed that she couldn’t control her own body. It was humiliating. It was making her reevaluate her relationship with herself.
Breathe fast
, she told herself, because that would be like being still but not exactly. She had to find a place to drive in a wedge and work from there.
Breathe.

Yeats’s head turned to her. What he was thinking, she had no idea. But she had the feeling that the golfing part was over. He returned his club to the bag and lowered himself into a wrought-iron chair and began to untie his shoelaces. He did this with great care, as if his shoes contained secrets. When this was done, he entered a black glossy pair. Business shoes. Shoes for business. He laced them firmly, and stood, and headed toward her.

She breathed. She could force a tiny amount of air between her teeth, making a
hsss
she could barely hear. That was it.

Yeats removed his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. His eyes were gray and characterless as stone. There was a flatness to his face. She’d have suspected a face-lift if it wasn’t crazy for a poet to reveal a mental weakness for vanity. Maybe he’d wanted to erase his expressions. Or maybe he was just like this. If you never smiled or laughed or frowned, she could believe that this was the kind of face you wound up with, smooth and empty as an undisturbed pond.

He unbuttoned his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. He was close enough to scratch or bite or kick in the nuts but she couldn’t do any of that, of course.
He is going to kill you!
she shrieked at herself, but it made no difference. Her brain had become very fatalistic. It knew she was responsible for Jeremy and it was hard to argue she didn’t deserve everything she got.

Yeats folded his hands and closed his eyes. For long seconds he did not move. She thought,
Is he praying?
Because that was what it looked like. He couldn’t be, because the idea of a religious poet was even more ridiculous than a vain one. Belief in God was a mental weakness, revealing a need for a sense of belonging and higher purpose: desires poets were supposed to master. They were potential avenues of attack. They advertised your segment. She had been taught this. But Yeats was giving every indication of communing with a higher power. Her heart thumped painfully. There was nothing about this situation she understood.

“Sss,” she said.

His eyes opened. “Goodness,” he said. She thought he was mocking her, but maybe not. His eyes searched hers. She felt surveyed, as if by engineers: dispassionately, precisely, with instruments. “I was told your discipline was poor,” he said. “But this . . .”

Moments passed. She could see his nostrils flaring in and out. She said, “Sss.”

“You are, supposedly, gifted. You possess an aptitude for attack, considered sufficient to offset your deficiencies in defense. I would see this. Because presently, my dear, I have trouble imagining how this could be true. I will allow you one opportunity to speak to me. Use it to convince me why I should keep you.
Vartix velkor mannik wissick.
You may speak.”

Her throat loosened. She coughed, to prove it. She said, “Ug.” It felt good to make that sound. Yeats waited patiently. It would take one hell of an argument to convince him of anything, she thought. She had been in situations like this, where people said,
Convince me
, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said,
Convince me
, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute. She didn’t know if that was true of Yeats. But she did not feel that she could talk her way out of this. Why should Yeats keep her? She was fucked if she knew. She was nothing but trouble.

“
Fennelt!
” she said. “
Rassden!
” These were attention words, which she’d collected from other students. It was incredibly unlikely they would do anything to Yeats; she didn’t even know his segment. If she fluked one, he was no doubt capable of shrugging off anything a student could manage. “
Thrilence! Mallinto!
” He didn’t react. Didn’t so much as flinch. “Die!” she said. Which was kind of stupid, but she was out of words. And she wanted it very much. “Die, you flat fuck!”

“Enough.”

Her mouth closed. Words clogged her throat, bobbing up and down. They tasted hot, like bile.

Yeats looked at her awhile. She couldn’t read him. She didn’t know whether she had lived or died.

“I have a name for you,” he said, “when the time is right.” He walked away. She heard him reach the door but couldn’t turn her head. “You may move, in a while.”

Some time passed. A bird landed near the golf clubs and began to hop hopefully around the little green mat. She breathed. Her chest loosened one muscle at a time. That was how she got herself back. Filament by filament. She had survived, somehow. She was still here.

•   •   •

She was collected by a woman she had seen once before, stepping out of a black town car alongside Yeats that time he had visited the school. She didn’t introduce herself but Emily already knew her name was Plath. She had asked. Plath was all cheekbones and elbows and gave Emily the feeling that she would push her in front of a train for a nickel. She had cruel shoes and a phone and looked at Emily in a way that reminded her of being stepped over on a San Francisco sidewalk on a bad day. “Can you move?” Plath said.

“Yes.”

Plath beckoned. Emily followed. There were stairs and then she was in the parking garage. A car Emily knew well was there and her heart leaped. It was the first moment she had truly believed she was getting out of here. She looked at Plath and Plath said nothing so Emily walked to the car. Its engine turned over. She opened the passenger door and inside was Eliot. “Hi,” she said. She wanted to kiss him.

Eliot didn’t speak. But he looked at her and she knew she was safe. He was still angry with her, of course. But he was not dangerous. She could relax in a car with Eliot. When the car exited the garage into bright sunshine, she closed her eyes. Somewhere in the snarl of streets, she fell asleep.

•   •   •

She opened her eyes and was somewhere else. “Where are we?” She saw a road sign. “Are we going to the airport?” Eliot flicked on the turn signal. The car drifted toward a lane marked
DEPARTURES
. “Hey,” she said. “Eliot. Yeats said I could still be a poet. He tested me and I passed. I don’t have to go away.” It was like talking to a wall. “Eliot, I can go back to the school.”

He pulled alongside the curb and took something from the seat pocket. “This is your passport. This is your confirmation number.” A blue booklet with a white business card tucked inside. The card had a string of letters and numbers in blue ink above
TOM ELIOT, RESEARCH ANALYST
. “Use the machines inside to check in.”

“Talk to Yeats. Eliot. Call Yeats. He’ll tell you.”

“These are his instructions.”

She stared. “But I passed.”

“It’s temporary,” Eliot said. “You can come home in a few years.”

“Years?” she said. “
Years?
”

“Please appreciate that this is the best possible outcome.”

“No. Eliot. Please.” He wouldn’t look at her, so she put her hand on his arm. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Eventually, she understood that this was final. “Well,” she said. “Bye, then.”

“Your bag is in the trunk.”

“Thanks.” She opened the door. It was difficult, as if everything had gotten heavy. Her hands were numb. She dragged herself from the car.

Eliot said, “If you work hard, and discipline yourself, you can conceivably return in—” She shut the door on the rest.

•   •   •

First the red-eye from DC to Los Angeles: six hours. She landed at dawn and spent half a day moving the two hundred yards from Domestic Arrivals to International Departures. She hadn’t slept in the air so she curled up in a seat, but there were families and kids vibrating at high frequency and men with booming laughs. A younger couple discussed in-flight movies in a flat, broad accent. She was going to Australia. Her boarding passes told her so. “We should get
Lord of the Rings
,” said the man.
Lawwwd
, she thought.
Lawwwd of the Reeengs
. They sent convicts to Australia, right? It had been a penal colony. A place of banishment.