Lowboy (19 page)

She stopped very briefly, watching as a taxi rattled past. But she began again before Lateef could prompt her.

“I was wrong about that, of course. Emily was a teenager in spite of everything, a fifteen-year-old girl, as self-obsessed as anyone at that age. ‘I know how hard it is for him,’ she said. ‘How hard it is to even talk.’ I nodded at her, still happy just to look at her and listen. But the next thing she told me undid everything.”

“What was it?”

“She said that Will had told her that he loved her. She said that it had to be true because of who he was. ‘I read a book about schizophrenia,’ she said, as if letting me in on a secret. ‘Schizophrenics never lie, you know, Yda. They
can’t
.’”

She turned her head to gauge Lateef’s reaction. She was afraid that he’d have no response at all, that he’d fail to understand, that her solitude would become absolute. She wondered what would happen if it did.

“That’s not been my experience,” he said finally. “Everybody lies.”

She nearly laughed with relief. “I hope you’re not including me, Detective.”

“Let’s get you upstairs,” he murmured, opening his door. His face looked small and blank.

She stayed where she was. “Emily said one more thing that day but I ignored it. I was too upset by then to think it through.”

“What was it?” said Lateef. His left foot was already on the curb.

She took in a breath. There was nothing else now. “Will called her his favorite problem.”

W
hen he’d told Emily everything she looked at him and laughed. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she said. “Was I supposed to recognize the tune?”

“Tune?” he said, forcing the word out of his mouth. His voice sounded wet.

She nodded and laughed again and squeezed his hand. He’d told her everything and she hadn’t heard a word. He took a breath and tried to start from the beginning but he didn’t know where the beginning was. He couldn’t think of it. Violet was at the beginning but Violet didn’t matter to him now. Neither did Dr. Fleisig. Neither did the school. He tried his best to have a single thought. He closed his mouth and pushed his teeth together. The beginning had actually happened just that morning. Nothing else had any consequence or weight. On November 11 he had run to catch a train.

He was just starting to think as they stepped out of the tunnel, starting to get his thoughts together, but he stopped thinking right away
and so did she. They had no choice but to stop. They stood side by side on the platform like petitioners, both their mouths hanging open, staring up at the glittering vaultwork. No earthly sound impinged on them. The air in their throats was the air of a forgotten age. They were deep beneath the city, almost too deep to breathe, yet by chance or fate a bloodless light still reached them. Her right shoulder dug into his left.

“Have you been here before, Heller?”

“Not ever.”

She swore under her breath. “How come they closed it off? Do you know why?”

“Too beautiful.” His voice was steady again. “Too secret.” He watched the words curl up into the dark.

She took a few steps forward and stretched her arm out toward the terracotta. “I can’t touch anything,” she said. “I don’t belong here.”

“You belong here, Emily. I brought you here.”

The fact of it didn’t seem to reassure her. She shrugged and took another few steps along the wall, not quite touching it with her fingers, keeping as far from the tracks as the platform allowed. Lowboy stayed where he was. He would move toward her soon but not yet. He had to know if they had an understanding. It was important that she understood the reason for what was going to happen next.

“I was talking to you in the tunnel, Emily. I was trying to tell you something.”

“What was it?” she said. She was running her left hand along the tiles.

“Slow down a minute. Are you listening? I was—”

“I don’t want to talk anymore. Look around you, Heller! Look at this place!”

She leaned as far back as she could without falling and laughed up at the ceiling and shook her head in unabashed delight. She was different now, less beholden to him, less sincere. He barely knew her. Something had gotten misplaced in the tunnel. Some small necessary thing had been removed.

“We should stay down here forever, Heller. We should build ourselves a house.” She caught her breath. “I feel like I’m seven years old.”

“You’re seventeen, Emily.” He studied her closely. “You’re half a year older than me.”

“I know that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But with you I can be seven if I want.”

“Why is that?”

She spun back to him and kissed him on the cheek. “Because you’re William Heller,” she said. “Because you know why.”

“Why?” he said. But he already knew. “Because I’m sick?”

She squeezed his hand and spun away again. A small doubt flared up briefly and expired. No doubt could have endured in that sepulchral air. In place of his doubts was one solitary truth, no more and no less. But lesser truths than that had saved men’s lives.

“We could make a fire out of these old benches, couldn’t we? We’d just always keep it going.” She giggled. “What did you say subway rats are called?”

“Track rabbits.”

She chewed on her thumb. “I wonder if they taste like pork or chicken.”

A song came to him as he watched her, a ballad his father had sung on half-remembered evenings. His beautiful pitiful ghost of a father. He began to hum it quietly and the melody beat back at him from the tooled and lacquered tilework as though his father himself were singing it in a bedroom on the far side of the world. I asked my love to take a walk. Just a little ways with me.

“I recognize that one,” said Emily. “What’s it called?”

Seven arches led to a Moorish staircase, seven led away. The glazed florets as pale as palmprints. The platform as symmetrical as the moon. Three times three skylights set with amethyst glass. Tiles green as tidewater, yellow as teeth. The number of steps and arches reckoned solemnly by mystics. Seven for Christ Jesus, three for the Trinity. Sixteen for the newest child martyr. Lowboy opened his eyes
wide and stretched his arms up to the ceiling in hosanna. The platform had been expecting him since October of 1904.

“What are you laughing about?” said Emily. “What are you thinking?”

“You’ll find out,” said Lowboy.

She shut her mouth then. She stopped what she was doing and sucked in a breath.

“It’s funny to be here, that’s all.” He lowered his arms and sighed. “It’s been a very long time.”

“You said you’d never been here before.” She was at the staircase now, fidgeting with her collar, looking down at him as if from a great height. “Were you lying?” The look on her face was one he’d seen before.

“Come over here Emily. Don’t go away.”

“You’re scaring me, Heller. Stop smiling like that.”

“I can’t stop.” His smiled widened. “Come on down here and give me a kiss.”

A sound came out of her then as she clutched at the railing. It reminded him of the mewling of a cat. “I don’t like this,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Lowboy. He was moving again. “It’s not for me Emily. It’s for everyone else.”

“Heller—” she said, then covered her eyes with her hand. She was watching him through the cracks between her fingers. “Stay where you are for one second. Could you do that, please, Heller? I don’t think I can—”

“Emily,” he said. He was at the steps now. “It’s getting hotter Emily. You can’t deny that.” His left hand closed playfully around the railing. “If you tried to deny it something bad would happen.”

The mewling came again but nothing else. He said her name softly to see if she answered but she gave no sign at all. Had it happened again had his voice been disabled. What about her, he thought. What about Emily. Could she have done it.

He looked up and showed her his Will Heller face.

“I’m sorry to do this,” somebody was saying. He was saying it himself. “I don’t want to upset you. I’m upsetting you Emily. I can see it. I’m sorry to do this.” He took a deep breath. “The truth is that I feel a little sick.”

Nothing happened then. The Musaquontas whispered underneath them. Finally she nodded and coughed into her hand. “I know that, Heller. I got freaked out, that’s all. Just please try not to—”

“I want to tell you something Emily. A human interest story. I read it or I saw it on the news.”

She was on the third step by the time he’d finished. The third step already. He blinked his eyes and she was on the fourth. “Stop staring at me like that, Heller. You look like somebody else. You look like you want to—”

“Do you know the Great Lakes Emily? In the Great Lakes there’s a problem with the fish.” He looked at her. “The fish are extincting, all right? No more babies.”

“Heller,” she whined. “If you don’t stop right now—”

“Shut your mouth Emily. Scientists came and found one kind of fish it might have been a perch. Do you know what a perch is?” He blinked at her. “A small fish and greenish. Not pretty.”

She nodded at him from the fifth step. How many steps in all was it eleven. Was she trembling now. Was she crying. Black hair flat across her face like tinted glass.

“There was a problem with the perches Emily. There were less and less new perches every day.” He caught his breath and tried to talk more slowly. “Were they dying out, though? Science said not exactly.” He took two steps to her one. “No fucking Emily. That was the problem. Something wrong with the water.” He clapped his hands and made his courtroom face. “I’m going to ask you to guess what that thing was. Are you listening to me? What do you think it was?”

She brought her left hand up beside her right. He kept as still as a dead perch and waited. He could hardly bear to keep still but he did.

“Was it too warm?” she said finally. “Too warm in the water?” The words came out badly. She sounded like someone from Austria.

“That’s what the
scientists
thought!” He reached for her hand and caught it. “But something else was in it. Something funny.”

She moaned and pulled her hand out of his grip.

“
Meds
Emily. There were meds in the water. Everyone pissing them into the toilets. The toilets go into the water Emily. The water goes into the fishes. There was one med called Traminex it made everyone happy. But it has a side effect Emily can you hear me?”

She nodded and pressed herself against the brickwork.

“Same as Zyprexa Emily. Same as Depakote.” He winked at her slyly. “No fucking.”

He pulled her shirt up and bent over to kiss her belly and she kicked away from him and up the steps. His hand was on the step behind her and it tore under her heel like toilet paper. Have I gone flat again he wondered. Is it the flat time now. She’d stopped three steps above him and he lunged to catch her ankle but when he tried to lift his head he could not do it.

“You tore my fingers Emily. You fucked them.”

Take me back Heller please take me back there I want to go out.

“Out,” he said blankly. “What kind of word is that.” He folded his hand like a letter and tried to get up. His head spun and dipped and his arm vanished up to the elbow. See Emily, he told himself. He saw her. She came and sat down on the step above him. He said something to her and she answered him but there was nothing in it. There’s nothing in it Emily he said. She shook her head and told him something else.

“You should still be where they sent you, Heller. I wish you were still there. I wish they’d never let you out.”

He nodded at that and coughed and got up carefully. She slid away from him and pulled herself up and shivered uselessly against the railing. The blackness pulsed behind her like a searchlight. She seemed to want to keep going upstairs.

“Lift your hair up Emily,” he said. “Come down here and sit. Take off your shirt.”

Her body gave a jerk but nothing happened. She was talking to
herself now or to him or to some hidden other. “Stop crying Emily.” His father’s song was playing somewhere sweetly. “Banks of the Ohio” it was called. She was climbing or staggering up the last steps. There was nothing behind her but gray sweating tilework and light. He pointed his good arm at her like a rifle or some other deadly thing.

“Pull your hair back Emily I can’t see you.”

She turned and ran into the bellshaped stillness. Past a lightbox and tripod burnt out since 1987. A light at each corner and a switch in the middle it looked like a badly drawn robot. Emily did the Robot, he reminded himself. She did it and she kissed me on the mouth. How is that possible. Past the robot and up to a room like a chapel. A dome toward which the keening darkness tended. A wooden booth to one side like a Victorian commode. She was crouching in the corner with her arms around her knees.

“You’re frightened Emily.” He slid his arms out of his sleeves.

“Don’t come closer to me. Please Heller don’t come closer.”

“Sit on this,” he told her. “Put this under your legs.”

He threw his shirt down to her but she shrank back from it as though it meant her harm. Something was different now he wondered what it was. Had he made some transgression. Had he made some minor error or had she. When he closed his eyes he was alone in the station but when he opened them he was less alone than ever. She was rocking forward and backward on her heels and hissing empty words at him and sobbing. Had there been a kiss behind the yellow curtain? Had she given him clothes and food and cigarettes? He looked at her. The halflight sent her features out of plumb. He took a small step toward her and undid the top flybutton of his jeans.

“Lie down Emily,” he said. “Put your feet apart.”

She stared past him and did as she was told. The shirt still lay untouched at her right heel. Her eyes had gone soft. He looked down at her and remembered the magazine he’d found in the briefcase and compared what he saw with the pictures he remembered. She was nothing like those women with their sunburned skin and makeup but something in her face was just the same.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Do you need a doctor?” He frowned and slid his jeans down to his knees.

She sat up at once without saying a word and raked a copper key across his chest. She held the key sideways between her clenched fingers and clawed downward with it like a panicked kitten. He laughed at the thought and began falling backward but at the same time he knew that he was cut across the middle and that she was on her feet and running for the platform. Emily he called out but he couldn’t even hear the words himself. His clothes were heaped against the concrete and his pants were bunched up like a shitting baby’s. Blood was dripping onto them like water from a tap. He got up and called her name again and dropped back to his knees. The air and tiles and cracked rosettes exulted in his pain. She was running in frantic circles at the bottom of the stairs. Her footfalls resounded off the chandeliers and the vaultwork and the bowed walls of that glittering pitiless temple. She was searching for a piece of glass to push into his eyes.