Lighthouse Island (10 page)

There's an affinity, I suppose. James ran his fingers over the handrims. Because of Ramsey's life in a wheelchair but I am not yet an alcoholic, although I have considered it but it's too debilitating.

Well, she said. Most people who can read are put off by his simplicity.

He's not simple. They have the whole thing on Big Radio.

I know. When does it come on? I forget. With Whitman.

June. Narrative long poems, he said. “Ancient Mariner,” et cetera. Where does your group meet? He clasped his hands together and leaned forward. What floor? I would love to hear a discussion of “Anthem.”

I'm afraid we're all done, she said. Everyone's gone.

There is no group, he said. None.

Why not? She opened her hands. Why shouldn't there be a poetry group?

Because it's not listed. He leaned his head on one hand, the elbow on the armrest. And you slipped up saying the third floor. You're here for the food and drink, I'm afraid.

She sat very still for a moment and then lifted one hand in a throwaway gesture. There you go, she said.

You made it up.

She laughed. Right you are. It's just me. A single, solitary attendee of a poetry seminar of my own invention.

He sat and said nothing for a few moments. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a blister card of mints and broke one out of its pocket of foil and put the mint in his mouth. It was the last one. He said, Excuse me, and tipped up the bottle of Mamosi and drank. Then he shut his hand around the empty card. How did you get into this building?

Discovered and unmasked, here at the very start of her journey to Lighthouse Island. She should have hidden the moment she heard the sound of his wheelchair wheels. She should have gone back to her assumed name, lifted it like a domino carnival mask between her two hands and secreted herself behind a potted palm.

On the strength of my charming personality. By the freight elevator.

That's very dangerous, he said.

She turned up one foot and regarded the decorative rosette on the toe of her shoe. Nevertheless.

Are you trying to get into the interdicted area? You have a boyfriend there or something?

No.

Then what? He did a drumroll on the arm of his wheelchair. I have no intention of reporting you.

For what? she said. I came up for air. For the view.

And then what?

She reached up and held her hat against the increasing breeze that smelled of the tar of rooftops and industrial smoke and concrete, hot with man-made energies and sinkholes of dense air. There was a long silence. The man in the wheelchair with his stiff brown hair did not interrupt this silence.

Finally she said, Where does the city end?

Ah. He turned his head to look out over the panorama of lights and the dark area and in the distance the fierce glow of some distant place that was more well lit, a brighter existence there, richer people, riskier lives. The breeze was changing into a hard wind, and it made his brown hair stand up like the crest of an exotic bird or a helmet. Is this just curiosity?

No, she said. No. I am going to walk to the end of it.

The end of the city?

Yes.

James Orotov leaned his head on his hand and laughed. He held the empty blister card in his hand. I am speechless. How odd. He raised his head and regarded her. What the hell will you do when you get to the end?

I don't know, she said. Maybe there will be water there. She noticed he was waiting for her to say something more. Or a kind of desert? Maybe mountains? I would love to see mountains with no buildings on them. No people. The mountains going on without us. There is a poem that says something like that.

The garden, he said.

Yes, the garden going on without us.

And that's it?

Yes, she said.

That's all?

Yes. That's all. She lifted her shoulders in a kind of overdone comic shrug.

Well, strike me dead. He regarded her with a still and expressionless face. Didn't you get any credits for vacation time where you worked?

I did, I did, but then I lost them all on demerits. She clutched her tote in both arms against her chest as if defending herself against marauding demerits. It was just me. I kept getting demoted. I started out well and then just went through life getting repeatedly fired. That's what comes of reading.

I see. And you didn't sign up for any particular vacation? There are ways around that you know, of course you know, you subvert and corrupt the poor fellow making out the precedence list. You choose a plan and lay siege.

Oh yes, certainly, they did have all the plans. There was Country Gardens and Celebrity Splendor cruises and Skateboard Championships and Village Stroll. Where you shop at ethnic food stalls. Let's see . . . Northwest Challenge where you go with Captain Kenaty's men and stay out all night. Locker Room Tour for the guys, and Undersea Adventures, that's an aquarium somewhere, and Lighthouse Island. She ticked them off on her fingers. And I couldn't bring myself to lay siege to anybody and they are all virtual anyway.

He nodded. They are. Well, no. Lighthouse Island isn't. Skateboard and Lighthouse Island are the two that aren't virtual.

Really? Is there really a Lighthouse Island?

He hesitated and turned the flashlight over in his hands. Yes, he said. Yes, there is. In a way.

And that big wooden house?

Yes.

I
knew
it. Nadia clapped her hands together. I knew it.

And you are going to go there and light up the tower.

Is it out?

For now, yes.

Where is it?

You wouldn't know if I told you. He tapped his fingers the way people with operable legs jiggle their feet. North, he said. It's north. So why did you lose all your credits to demerits? Did you strangle your supervisor or what?

I don't work well with others, she said. I look for individual solutions to collective problems. Could I get there if I walked?

Walked. My God. His smile brought out the creases around his mouth like brackets and enlightened his plain, long face. To Lighthouse Island. It would take you two or three years or so, given luck and given help.

You lie, she said.

I don't.

So if I walked north for two or three years I would come to Lighthouse Island. I'm just trying to get this straight.

Ah, probably. It would be in the Northwest.

Oh, said Nadia. I see. Up there among the savage hippies.

That's what television tells us. We are all such innocents, aren't we? He looked at her carefully. For all I know you really did strangle your supervisor, “Anthem” or not. Do you have a leave permit?

Her doubts all came back like rats. It was possible he would turn her in. Report her. Then she would never see a free river or bare mountains. She would never get beyond the dense city blocks and the demolitions and the trucks carrying evacuees somewhere to die. The television going on without us. We are but turnips in the clinches of the agencies, the human spirit as a useful if nonnutritious paste.

So. No leave permit.

She lifted one hand to her garnet earring and then finally she said, No.

Where is your ID?

They took it away.

You can't walk to the end of the city without an ID and in those clothes.

I have to, she said. These are the only clothes I have. I need to look normal.

That's true, that's true. He pressed his lips together, thinking. Go directly northwest, he said. The end of the city is a very long way. More than four hundred miles. Then there is a sort of interurban area before the next city begins. Massive scrap yards. Then mountains, with mining barracks. He bit his lower lip and then said, You'll end up jailed or killed.

But it ends somewhere, she said. The urban areas end somewhere.

It ends for individuals, he said. When they die.

 

Chapter 13

T
he wind increased to a ghoulish howling. James shut his eyes against it and said, Come with me. He grasped the right-side handrim and turned the wheelchair on one wheel, spinning, and started away down the tiles, one shoulder to the parapet. She stood watching him; she saw there was a keypad on the wheelchair armrest, and beneath the seat, a motor, but he was not using it. Come with me, he said. There's a place where the wall is higher.

He wheeled down the tiles and around a corner where there was a parapet higher than their heads. It was easier to talk in the wind-shadow. He wheeled himself beside one of the potted palms; its long, barbarous sharp-leaved fronds moved only slightly.

Sit beside me, he said. He placed his hand on the pottery container. Here, wait. He leaned forward and shifted the big ample coat from behind himself and laid it on the edge for her. She sat down gingerly and was again briefly amazed at the liveness of the palm fronds and the way they lashed around and were not torn off the trunk.

So you are going to go marching on.

Nadia said, I have decided that it is compulsive. A brain affliction involving some inherited defect, a fold in the cerebrum, and so it's not really a
fault,
you see; it's a faulty neuron involvement. She paused.

I'm listening.

Well, then, I used to dream of washing up on Adrian's Island, or being Captain Kenaty's secret guide, or being hired to clean the lighthouse windows. Very adolescent but leading on to flight. She laughed, and as he stopped smiling and regarded her with a more serious expression the laugh trailed away. To live outside the city. I am looking around for a way to say this.

Keep looking.

I just always dreamed of living anywhere there is some kind of natural landscape since I was very small. I was meant to live in the wilderness. I don't tell people this.

He nodded. Well, it argues a certain amount of philosophical stamina. He looked down at his useless knees for a long moment and then carefully placed each hand on a kneecap as if to hold the kneecaps in place. I work with enormous machines, he said. And high explosives. Hydraulic shears, hoe rams. And here I sit. He lifted his head and said, All so strange. Very well, the first interurban area to the northwest is four hundred miles away. Do you know how many blocks to a mile?

No, she said.

About eight, he said. Count them. And so if there are eight blocks to a mile, how many blocks before you get to the thinning-out area?

Let's see. She bowed her head so she could think.

Try three thousand, two hundred.

Oh my God.

And during your long nights sleeping in doorways you might brush up on basic math.

I will. She nodded. His coat smelled of his own lax body and some kind of good soap. She wanted to reach out and take his hand but she was still carefully neutral, pleasant and unruffled. A thinning-out area?

Scrap. Huge scrap piles where they sort and recycle. Not so carefully policed. If you make it to the e-waste scrap piles you might find a way to stow away on some kind of transportation, going on northwest. His hands remained on his kneecaps and he caught his upper lip in his teeth as if it helped him think. Three thousand two hundred blocks. That's if the blocks are regular. I expect you to be dead or ill or arrested within a week. How interesting to meet you. He cocked his head to one side. What do you do in life?

She tapped her fingertips together. I bring in the supplies for a personnel office, personnel for a public information group. I distribute pencils and pens to whoever wants them. Hand them
The Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary
. Refill the paper dispenser. I mean I did.

Which PI group?

Recycling veterinarian supplies. I used to write copy for a
cactea opuntia
processing public relations group, a sub-sub-subgroup of Nutrition and Cleansing. About nopal recipes and so on. I did some TV ads and wrote a couple of jingles, chant things. Then there was some trouble.

Nadia gestured uneasily. So, demotion! Like a regular thing. Down to vet supplies PR, then down to the PR group for
recycling
trash from vet supplies. Can you imagine the state of mind it needs to write ads for recycling used veterinarian supplies?

No, he said. I don't want to try.

Then I was demoted again.

Veterinarian supplies. He cocked his head. An appendix bureau. No use for it anymore but there it still is. Since there are no animals anymore. Or almost none.

Nadia hesitated. Does veterinarian mean animals?

Yes. Medical care for animals.

I thought so. Nadia looked off into the distant city and said, There is a woman in this hotel with a cat.

Yes. Takes a lot of paperwork and sensitivity training classes and then you wait for years. He crossed his arms in front of himself and she could tell he was chilled but decided not to try to get him to take back his coat for fear of seeming too solicitous. He said, So you have decided to live under the radar.

Yes, said Nadia. Under the radar tree.

There's more here, he said. You have told me of a pull but there is always a push. That is, some sort of impetus flinging you out of what might have been a more or less normal dull life.

Not really. Don't other people get flung?

Yes, but you don't want to meet them.

No, maybe not. So, okay. I never told anybody I just wanted to walk out of the city.

That was bright of you, he said.

Okay, well, then there was this birthday party bus that came to work and I knew it was a removal bus and so I . . . it's a long story. Nadia clasped and unclasped her hands in a small nervous fit. So.

Something else was going on.

She looked down and banged her toes together. The rosettes on the toes of her shoes wobbled. I had an affair with a married guy in the office. His wife was on the removal advisory committee. In fact she was the head of it.

Foolish girl, foolish girl.

I know it.

And she put your name at the top of the list.

Looks like it. She stretched out her legs and clasped both hands. I won't go into my hellhole life with an informer in my Youth Housing unit. So it was run or off to the cactus farms for me.

Some people survive. What's her name?

Who?

The wife of the married guy you had an affair with.

Ah . . . Oversupervisor Blanche Warren.

He laughed and briefly put one hand to his forehead. An oversupervisor. Damn.

Why am I talking to you?

People talk to me because I'm a cripple.

Well, she said, and could not think of anything else to say.

He said, It makes me seem harmless.

But you're not.

Not entirely.

The wind poured like a waterfall over the tall parapet behind their heads. From a distance the sound of a siren, a subaudial deep thumping bass. He turned to her and bent forward and reached out with one pale hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

He said, What is a person going to eat on Lighthouse Island?

Fish? Nada mentally began to go through
The Girl Scout Handbook
. Go fishing in the sea?

Despite the tall parapet the wind thrashed the fronds of the potted palms. She watched them, so flexible and resilient. Now she had to raise her voice to speak to him over the noise of the fronds and the wind.

You know nothing about the sea, he said. Or wresting provisions from nature.

No, no. Right you are.

Or about basic mechanics of, say, wind turbines or setting gill nets.

No, but that's the least important thing right now. I mean, I'll figure that out later. I do have
The Girl Scout Handbook,
1957 edition.

Ah,
The Girl Scout Handbook,
he said. Amazing. Bad weather, he said. What will you do when it's bad weather? That is, on your journey to the end of the city?

Get under bridges? Like in
Condemned
.

God save us, you're off walking to the end of the world on the strength of information you get from television programs.

Well, I just saw it once. I don't watch television.

You don't watch television?

No.

Ever?

No, it bothers me. It affects my eyes.

James put a curled forefinger against his mouth and stared out at the city. Go on, Nadia. There's more.

Nadia said, Okay, here you go, so I was blind until I was six so I never watched it when I was young. I can remember
hearing
it. Nadia pointed to her ear with a forefinger. I remember the other kids would stop playing with me or talking to me when it came on like I was a toy they weren't interested in anymore. And I could never understand the stories, about, like, Pepper Spray and Long John, because I couldn't see. The television characters would all go Oh! but I couldn't see what was happening. So I got to where I just didn't sit and watch. But it seems to make people mad. It makes them mad that I don't watch it. I just try to get away alone and read.

Poetry.

Yes. I memorized a lot.

He thought for a moment. You said, when you couldn't see. What happened?

They found something to cure it. Vitamin A. I guess it's a rare substance. And my vision goes bad if I look at the screen anyway.

Probably better. Now that they are considering gunning people down live on camera. I suppose the infidelities of Barney and Carmen were becoming stale.

Nadia turned her head to the city's far-flung lights and so he saw her profile fretted by the light flutter of loose strands of her hair. Will they really?

All too likely. He took the empty blister card and began to split off the back. He said, You might make it to Lighthouse Island. Maybe not. The real problem is what you are going to do when you get there.

What is on the way?

Let's see. On the way. Well, directly north are some abandoned apartment towers. You need to get to the top and see your way ahead.

Yes, said Nadia. Her voice was anxious. See my way ahead, I'll do that. She watched his face. She had a feeling of suspended delight, an uncertain hope. They were actually plotting together.

Make a map as you go.

I already am.

You are? Marvelous. Very good, very good, I am amazed at you. He paused. Just to the north beyond this building is an agency sector. Fairly important agency offices and homes, our parasitic privileged moiety, of which I am so far one, so there will be a lot of Forensics guards and you must get past it as soon as possible. Get on the street past the Dollar General and stay on it, that's north. Then there are the abandoned housing towers. They are called Dogtown Towers, I don't know why. Beyond that and near them are chemical factories, pharmaceuticals. It will smell heavy, or I should say rather bready. Don't stay in the towers for very long. They are slated for demolition. Past the chemical factories is an industrial area. Actually, northwest. Past that are the scrap heaps, including the e-waste, and then the big field systems. If you can do twenty miles a day you can get to the interurban area in something like, well, say a month. Now say that back to me.

To the north, a section for higher-ups, agency head offices. Get past that area ASAP. Beyond that the old housing towers, abandoned. Dogtown Towers.

Yes, said James. If you speak with people use local names as much as possible. As if you were from there.

Yes, I will. Then on, drug factories that smell like bread. Then industry then the scrap heaps and e-waste. Then field systems.

That was very good, he said.

And so what are they like? The big field systems.

Mainly just agriculture. Dusty fields going on for miles. Convict labor. Then after a stretch of agriculture, there is more city, another gerrymander. After that some formidable mountains, mining at high altitudes. Then on the other side, more city. And so on. Then you will come to the coast. Then you will cross water. Beyond that is a rocky island in the sea. This is like a video game or a tarot reading. James leaned his head on one fist and pressed down his tie. Perhaps they are the same thing. Both based on the ancient quest theme with which I am sure you are familiar, charted out in those tattered little plot books they hand around to apprentice scriptwriters. On the way you must fall in love and be assaulted by doubts and felons. He regarded her and smiled.

But this is not imaginary.

No. It's not. There are very few maps. And there are good reasons for that. Indisputable reasons. Neither you nor I made the city. I don't know how we became so primitive. My brother is head of Meteorology and people in the other agencies think it means meteors.

Does he go up in weather balloons? The hot-air kind. Like Maturin and Diana Villiers.

Ah, his terrible dream, said James. Diana dying with that enormous gem in her hands.

I was reading it in the kitchen, said Nadia. I couldn't stop. I was crying. The semolina burned. I only found five of the books.

James looked into her eyes; he was searching for something. The wild nighttime city shone in his pupils and it seemed to her as she watched him from the shadow of her hat brim that he was knowing and wise and would not betray her. He was a wounded person, stopped and waiting with the enormous gem of human wonder in his hands shining like the blue peter.

He sat back in his wheelchair and said, No, not a weather balloon. He's a pilot. Slowly he stripped out the little foil flaps from the empty blister card and put them in his pocket. I don't know why I'm doing this, he said.

Nerves, she said. I terrify you. I am the Rooftop Strangler.

On the contrary. He separated the two layers of the blister card and handed her the back portion. That will get you out of this building and into almost any building and most vending machines.

She took it and stared down at it in her hand. What? You're kidding.

No, I'm not. And if you're caught with it, it will be serious trouble. I'm a techie. We do stuff like that out of frustration. When we're bored. Those were not mints. They are a medication that I'm taking. Experimental. Possibly very dangerous but it may allow me to walk again after a fashion or perhaps not after any fashion, but actually walk. And thus my plot thickens.