Lighthouse Island (9 page)

Yes, sir, and killing people on live TV will also be a first. And it will never get old.

Won't it?

Nadia wondered where she would go if she had to get out of the pool room.

Maybe some criminals will actually volunteer
. The Facilitator looked up into the dusty blue sky, thinking in real time and on live TV.
Sometimes I think we just want to be seen. Sometimes when I know everyone has gone to bed and I am on the air, I feel really lonely.

Nadia got up in one smooth movement and slipped her feet into the little, worn-out heels. As she did the man laid his hand on her arm and said, Well, hang on a minute.

Get your hand off me, she said, and walked away.

 

Chapter 12

S
he found the stairway to the roof in the middle of the night. She ran up it, her tote in one hand, and when she came to the door at the top she pushed it open without any trouble. She stepped out onto a terrace where the cityscape shone before her in the night.

Streams of bright-lit main avenues shot off to the distant horizon like arrows and in between were millions of points of light from lanterns and single bulbs in rows of windows, the repeating blocks of apartments in a long and barbarous visual rhythm and a smoke haze drifting above it all through which hang gliders blundered. A ceaseless racket of human activity that never stopped. On and on to the end of the world. She held on to the balustrade and the hot night wind pulled at her hat.

Above her the peaked tower and the great clock face shone like a moon. She put her hands on the parapet and leaned back and searched the sky. There were the Dipper and the Chair, reminding her once again of Thin Sam Kenobi's brown hands laying out the foil stars and his patient voice, buried somewhere unknown. Between these great constellations, despite the city lights, she could see the small and timid North Star, an infant pinpoint circled by its two enormous parent constellations who were so full of brilliant luminaries.

For a moment she was struck by a forlorn feeling, a feeling of abandonment, as if her parents had only now deserted her on the street, this very moment. Immense great windy beings, our parents, the immortal possession or gift or misfortune of every solitary human being on earth, all that were and all that are to come in their billions upon billions.

She walked by potted palms that thrashed in the high night wind and were outlined against the avenue lights far below. She reached out to touch the palms and drew their fringed and sashed fronds through her fingers and was amazed at their complexity and irregularity.

These have to be watered, she said aloud, in a low voice. Probably watered every day. Then she continued to walk around the rooftop garden;
tock tock tock,
her heels sounded on the tile.

Nadia bent over the parapet and searched every dim-lit street and each segment of the horizon. Even if she could have seen her old neighborhood she would not have known it. The apartment she had shared with Josie and Widdy would be far to the south, hundreds of miles away and also the office and Earl Jay Warren and his oversupervisor wife and the young men her own age who spoke in flatlined tones and those who went for the tissue engineering and permissible rage. The unceasing feeling of danger. Of being spied upon. How good to be away from it, if only briefly.

O thank you St. Jude patron semidivinity of escapes and evasions. She bent her head to her hands on the parapet. Sometimes life called for expressions of gratitude sent out into unknown distances.

At one point on the northern horizon she could see a place where there were no lights at all. Just one or two faint orange sparks in a great area of dark. That must be the countryside. The open countryside. Not too far away; within reach.

Her heart leaped with a jet of delight and desire. She was meant to live in a wilderness. She had been born to dwell on an unsettled seacoast or forested hills or dry mountains shouldered by sand dunes or among windy plains and if this included insect life and evil weather that would make her look like crispy fries, there was no help for it. No help at all. The human world was one of metropolii or metropolises and she, on the other hand, was some
Homo ergaster
left behind and in search of the Paleolithic.

Nadia sat on a bench. It could not be helped. It was like being born with auburn hair. There was a certain fold in her brain matter that caused it (or whoever folded the folds). It was not her fault! Why had she not thought of this before?

She put her hands on the crown of her hat and felt the wind rushing through her clothes. It was intoxicating to be up so high and to see the millions of chimneys spilling out vapors into darkness and the crawling single lamps of bicycles and on the great avenues the double cones of bus headlights and among the taller buildings around her the swinging lights of delivery trucks backing up and turning. Spaced throughout the cityscape were turning windmill blades of wind chargers, the flat reflections of solar panels. She felt released.

Nadia listened to the vague distant sounds of a bicycle bell and two men's voices fifty stories below in the street arguing and the sound of pigeons and sparrows talking to one another in their sleep. Here and there giant illuminated billboards rippled slightly in the wind. She sat unobserved and rested. The palms clapped their hands.

Then she heard another sound, a low grinding noise from someplace nearby, here on the roof. She gripped the edge of the bench. A rotational noise, steady and repetitive. It was growling toward her out of the darkness. She listened for a few moments as it grew louder and her heart began to speed up.

The noise was coming straight at her back. She finally stood up and turned, her eyes wide.

A man in a wheelchair was moving toward her. He came steadily on over the tiles and the city lights shone on the spokes of the wheels as they rolled. There was no sound of a motor. His hands rose and fell as he spun the wheelchair rims. His face was outlined against the ambient light and he had a broad nose but other than that she could not see his features.

Well, he said. There's somebody here.

Yes, there is, Nadia said. She shriveled back into Sylvia Plath, poised and neutral.

A flashlight flared in his hand and swept over her from her hat to her shoes.

And so good evening, she said. She wondered if he would go away or not. If he did not she would have to go back downstairs and find some place to sleep like the floor of a shower or some corner of the pool room and take a serious chance of being discovered and questioned. If he did go away, she would sleep up here. She very much wanted to sleep up here and watch the sun come up over the city.

Who are you? The man tipped his head to one side as he spoke and his voice was low and easy. If I may ask, What are you doing up here on the roof?

She said, Just a guest. Seminar guest. I came up for some fresh air.

I see. He regarded her with a wry smile that turned up one side of his mouth. He reached down to the handrims and rolled himself closer. In the dim light she could make out that he had coarse brown hair and a long face, a somewhat broad nose that looked as if it had once been broken and was large at the tip and light eyes that were flat to his face. Limp legs inside thick trousers and neat shoes, a coat wide and ample like a cloak thrown over the back of the wheelchair. His skin was pallid and his hands long and muscular. A bottle of Mamosi glinted in a sort of cup holder on the arm of the wheelchair. He said, So did I.

She lifted her shoulders. She said, The air is swampy down there in the pool room. It's like a marsh. A fen.

Yes, but you don't have to hang around the pool room. Fen or no fen. He was watching her with an interested look.

No, true, true. I came up for the view. She turned briefly toward the parapet and the city lights and turned back again. My room is on the third floor. Not much of a view there, just a wall. Very tedious.

He nodded and was silent for a moment. Then he said, The third floor is all linens and dry cleaning.

Yes, she said. She felt her face getting hot. I meant the thir
teenth
floor. And you are an attendee as well, I guess.

She stepped back because although she was standing he had to remain sitting and it was a way of not forcing him to look up at her.

I am indeed. He turned his head to gaze out over the cityscape. Well, then. Here we have this sector of the city. It goes on forever, doesn't it? Amazing view from up here.

Well, it does seem to go on forever. The question of the third floor sparked and ran between them like a lit fuse. She had made a terrible mistake. Why could she not just shut up and be mysterious? She said, Except there is a dark space over there. I was wondering if that was a recreational, ah, open space or something.

He leaned forward in his wheelchair and rubbed his knees and then leaned back again. You don't know what that is, he said.

No, I don't. What is it?

It's a neighborhood under interdiction. Everything cut off. Water and electricity and so on. TV reception. They are all perishing for want of TV reception.

Oh. She turned to look again at the distant dark space. Well. They can't watch
Barney and Carmen,
then. She felt a sharp, punishing disappointment and knew there might be tears coming to her eyes. It was not the open countryside. No rivers there, no out-of-focus vegetation with tigers, no sea reflections in any tiger's eyes. She bit her lip and looked down at her hands grasping the parapet. What is it called? She said this as if it were a normal thing, to ask for the name of a place instead of a gerrymander and neighborhood number. For some reason she was testing him. She did not know why.

He was silent and in that silence the wind seemed to have increased slightly. He said, It used to be called Soldier Bend. It was a wildlife area on the Missouri River, which at one time made a border there between the old units of Nebraska and Iowa. But of course now it's been swallowed up in apartments and brick factories. They have indulged themselves in strikes and now they're cut off.

Well. Nadia nodded. I guess they will evacuate them.

The man clasped his hands. They are slated for removal. Workers are needed somewhere, so just cart them off. But you must know that. He paused, and then said, In there are some fifteen-story buildings that will have to be demolished. He stared at the dark hole in the city-world. There were not even the dim sparks of kerosene lamps.

Why don't the people just go away? she said. Go away to someplace else?

He turned to her and smiled a wry smile and then said, There isn't anyplace else.

But there has to be.

A person would think so. Depends on what you mean by “else.”

I mean, it's the planet Earth, isn't it?

He turned his head up to the thin light of the stars. My dear, we seem to have fallen into a curiously intense conversation here. Within a very short time.

Well. Maybe not a good thing.

Maybe not. The man ran the flashlight beam over the edge of the parapet as if checking it for faults and then clicked it off. You are a curious girl, he said. As in
inquisitive
.

She gripped the edge of her hat against the wind. I suppose I am. And what conference are you with? To prove your point.

He took a deep breath and sighed it out through his nostrils as if he were tired. I am with the demolition people. Cloud cover and air overpressure. I do demolition and cartography. Actually the cartography is a hobby. He grasped the wheel rims and rocked the wheelchair back and forth. His hands were roped with muscle.

What has demolition got to do with cloud cover?

It affects the blast pattern, he said. We don't have much cloud cover in this part of the city but other sections do. Is that comprehensible? The blast goes up, hits cloud cover, and flattens out, and the shock wave goes places it's not supposed to.

She lifted both hands. Got me, she said.

He nodded slowly. Yes. Maybe I have. And so, yourself?

I'm with the poetry people. The Sylvia Plath people.

He tapped his fingers on the wheelchair arm and his expression was not so kindly now and the wind brushed up two spikes of his heavy brown hair.

There isn't any Sylvia Plath group. I must be very direct with you. What's your name?

I know, I know, we don't advertise ourselves. She waved one hand. I suppose we should.

And your name is . . . ?

She hesitated and then said, Nadia.

Nadia what?

Ah, Nadia Stepan.

I see. Mysterious Nadia who walks on the rooftops and wants to know what the dark spaces are. I am James Orotov and I am a solitary and curious man, who blows things up and lives in a wheelchair. Do you know which Nadia Stepan you are?

She said, Fourteen-fifty-nine zero zero SB. So there.

Very good. What's in your handbag?

She bent down and picked up her tote bag. She adjusted her hat. You know what? I think it's my bedtime.

It may be, he said. But I suspect you don't have a bed. You are not here on a Sylvia Plath seminar. Your shoes are very worn. You got them in a
ropa usada
store. Let's go from there.

He did not seem hostile, just deeply interested. Nadia laughed and bent down and brushed imaginary dust from the rosettes. She said, I did not get them from a
ropa usada
store. (But she did.) I am indeed here on a poetry seminar. Anyway, it's late.

And so I suppose you're also acquainted with Ramsey, he said. Surely you have not shot your wad on one solitary poet. He watched her with his flat blue or gray eyes and a slight smile as if he were some sort of particularly informed social counselor or an interviewer.

No, no, she said. “We knew our way from dawn to dawn, and far beyond, and far beyond.”

Ah, he said. You do know it. He relaxed in his padded nest. How few people know it.

Poetry soothes the savage breast, she said.

Not always but it's a nice sentiment. It's very hard to find a copy of “Anthem,” he said. I, however, have one. Nadia saw that a soft felt fedora was pegged on the back of the wheelchair as if he would, despite his paralyzed legs, appear manly and maybe even debonair.

Good! she said.

Copied it out by hand myself from a borrowed book. “It was the old ones with me riding . . .” Let's see . . . ta dum ta dum . . .

“Out through the fog fall of the dawn, and they would press me to deciding, if we were right or we were wrong . . .” And then it goes on for many more stanzas. In Italian sonnets.

You have it memorized. He leaned back against the backrest. How good to hear it.

And how good to meet somebody who appreciates Ramsey.