People Park (23 page)

AS THE POTLUCK
wound down, to avoid the towers of stew-crusted dishes Debbie’s friends put together an outfit to camouflage her
in Whitehall. A game of dress-up: obediently she tried on an assortment
of coats and blazers. Masks. A handkerchief tied around her face in the manner of bandits. And at last in the very back of the hall closet someone found a coal-black anorak, and they put it on and pulled up the hood and Debbie’s face disappeared and everyone agreed: perfect.

Her last-ditch attempts to get them to come along were shrugged off — No, this is your thing, Tell us how it went, Just be safe — and Debbie hugged each one of them long and hard,
her people, her community, she loved them, and they wished her
well and she stepped out onto the street and the door closed behind her and she stood breathing the chilly night air of Bebrog for a quiet, still moment.

She was tired, the whole night had been tiring. When she’d arrived the potluck’s hosts had made her tour their house, she hadn’t been for a while, they’d amassed a small collection of Mr. Ademus originals. Aren’t they great, she was told, and she had to agree, despite visions of Adine shaking her head in dismay and disgust. The whole night, really, she’d been thinking of Adine.

Throughout dinner the way they’d parted nagged her, she felt the tug of it from across town. What if now she just went home? No, she’d go home after: Adine would be there, she’d always be there, goggled and hermitically waiting, they’d make jokes and/or love, it’d be as if the fight never happened.

Debbie walked to Greenwood Station, transferred at City Centre, and Yellowlined past her stop at Knock Street and up into the Zone. In Blackacres she emerged again into the cold still night, looked north up F Street, back south — a fifteen-minute walk home. But she needed to see. So she flipped the hood of the anorak and crossed into Whitehall, down the murky serviceways to the silos and, finally, underground.

She’d forgotten a flashlight, had to fumble into the tunnel toward that ghastly screaming at its end, a factory of screaming down there in the dark. Along she went, bracing herself — and then with a sudden roar the cavern opened up, a formless howling washed over her, and she stared into the blackness and had to resist the urge to flee.

Noise was everywhere, shrieking, blistering, industrial, the grind and wail of some ruined machine. It stabbed into her ears and buzzed through her face, tingled down her limbs and collected throbbing in her hands and feet. Her skin seemed to surge with it, to expand and contract as though it were an organism apart from her, breathing. But this wasn’t just noise, it was some sort of human music — she had to think of it as music.

As she might enter some black and churning ocean, Debbie
stepped between two towers of electronics into the cipher. And here were people. Someone pushed against her, something electric zipped up her arm. Her instinct was to pull away but the person pressed closer. She waited tensely while their bodies touched, her skin humming. And then this person, whoever it was, released and drifted off into the crowd.

It had all been so intimate: contact, lingering, separation. The music suggested violence but among the people there was none. Everyone moved languidly, almost sleepily. She thought, They’re all figures lost in the same dream. And wanting to join the dream Debbie unclenched her fists, tried to relax. The song, or whatever
it was, had changed — now vaporous and airy, like, she thought
. . .
like what? No words came.

Debbie moved deeper into the group, she was prodded and fondled, the sound transformed. Her emotions tumbled from fear to comfort to pleasure, someone stroked the back of her neck, and now she felt shy, though this person slid away and she was overcome with loneliness. Another step, everything changed again: a rotary saw tearing through metal, a shower of sparks. Hands were tugging her down. She crouched alongside someone who nuzzled into her, and she caressed this person, this faceless stranger. Whoever it was, their body was warm.

ON THE STREET
outside City Centre Station people stood around with the awkward spacing of strangers at a bad party, watches were checked and checked again, toes tapped, exasperation and impatience abounded. Yet when a train arrived each face brightened: finally, the laggard might be here! And should this person come hustling down from the platform, all apologies and performed bluster, the other would sigh and tell them: It’s fine, the park’s full though, we’re just going to have to watch in Cinecity.

Yet in Cinecity, with live coverage projected on the bigscreen, you were guaranteed a view not just of the stage, but of
everything
.
All those cameras afforded perspectives unimaginable for a single
human being, from aerial panoramas atop Podesta Tower to intimate
handheld shots wobbling through the crowds. And in the
theatre each set of newcomers delighted to discover revelry and anticipation equal to what they imagined down on the common, among those witnessing — or about to witness — the real thing.

The night’s events were hosted gamely by Lucal Wagstaffe and Isa Lanyess, lofted over People Park in the basket of a crane-type apparatus. Trained on their faces was a camera at which Lanyess beamed and Wagstaffe tilted his head ponderously. The crane’s arm swung at an elbowjoint and held We-
TV
’s preeminent Faces in its fist, and in their own fists they held microphones, the bulbous foam tips pressed to their lips.

The atmosphere here at People Park is electric, said Wagstaffe, and Lanyess grinned a set of horsey teeth and whinnied, Just the sheer size of the crowd! It’s — I don’t have the words for how it feels out here! and Wagstaffe said, I’ve never seen anything like this in our city before. And we still don’t know, added Isa Lanyess with a coy note of mystery, the answer to the question everyone’s asking: what will Raven do?

Blow himself up, let’s hope, said Adine to her
TV
. She picked up her cordless and hit
TALK
: only the dialtone. Where was Sam? Adine tapped the antenna on her teeth, felt her way over to the
refrigerator, neither hungry nor thirsty, just to point her face at the cool air inside. A funny smell — though not from the fridge. Debbie’s sick bird, she remembered, dying upon the window sill.

Just look at the number of people, cried Lanyess. What a turnout!

Simply amazing, said Wagstaffe. Everyone’s here.

On the little
TV
in their kitchen Cora and Rupe were treated to a grandiose dollying shot over the common.

Rupe said, How come we can’t go there too, Ma?

Hush now. We can see everything fine at home.

But this wasn’t true: the picture was too small, identifying faces was akin to picking out raindrops from a monsoon.

Do you think Calum’s there?

Hush.

If he still hasn’t come home, Ma, don’t you —

Cora swatted at him. I said hush!

Ma? Is that him? There! Is it —

There’s just so many people, said Cora softly. There’s too many people to tell.

THE NEXT DAY,
said Olpert, the walk to school was the saddest walk of my life.

Yeah?

The whole way from Bay Junction I thought about that apple, the way it just exploded, and I thought — and don’t laugh at me here, I was a kid — that my heart felt the same way. Like it had just
. . .
shattered. But with such a soft little tap.

Fug.

And, Starx? Is love like that? I figure it’s that stuff, that steaming stuff, and you soak your heart in it, and then someone pulls out a hammer and smashes everything to pieces. And then you feel so so so so so so small.

Starx stared at him. He didn’t say a word.

The light inside the boathouse clicked off. Raven didn’t emerge. Instead, moaning: a mantra or a dirge.

Olpert turned back to his partner. Am I crazy?

Love’s crazy, Bailie. Though Starx seemed to be talking to himself
— No, thought Olpert, more a memory of himself. Love’s a fuggin punt to the grapes for sure, he said.

BY QUARTER TO NINE
People Park and its adjacent neighbourhoods were filled to capacity, there was nowhere else for anyone to go. And while Gip focused unwaveringly on the illustrationist’s trunk, spotlit at the front of the stage, Kellogg was more interested in the shifty guy with the thing on his face, who emerged from the shadows every so often to examine the crowd. And each time he did Kellogg drew his family a little closer.

Everywhere people trained video cameras on one another. Eyebrows lifted, fingers pointed, lenses reflected lenses to infinity. There you are, people said, waving, Good to see you — Say something to the camera — I don’t know you but hi! What boundless cheer, thought Kellogg, how good and decent a city could be. He wrapped his arm around Pearl, who hoisted Elsie-Anne on her hip, and she hugged him back while Gip chanted Ra-
ven
under his breath — what a champ! Had the Pooles ever had such a perfect, happy time? Not as a family, together, never. And the show hadn’t even started yet.

NFLM
Helpers moved through the crowd handing out sparklers. Go on, Annie, said Pearl, and warily Elsie-Anne shouldered her purse and took a sparkler and held it at arm’s length, hypnotized by the flaring tip. That’s not how you do it, Dorkus, said Gip. He snatched the sparkler and whirled it through the air:
RAVEN, RAVEN, RAVEN
. Easy now, said Kellogg. I just wanted to show her, said Gip, though he’d already lost interest. The sparkler was discarded, it fizzled on the ground into a dead tin stick.

IN MATCHING BLACK
outfits Havoc, Tragedy, and Pop descended from Knock Street Station into Lower Olde Towne. At the station’s entrance Pop removed his balaclava and glared into the security camera. I am whom I am, he howled. Envision me!

Tragedy elbowed into the shot, wonky eye shooting off lakeward, to shake a masturbatory gesture at the lens. Restribution, he said. Right?