People Park (36 page)

WITH HIS FACE
pressed to the microwave, eyes inside each of the structures he’d puttied around the holes, ducktaped hand on the
POWER
dial, Sam waited. The kitchen was still. There were no machines, there was nothing. If Sam had ever trunked him, Raven was gone. Only nothing remained. All that was left was to join this nothing. Sam wasn’t frightened: this is just what it was. This was the work. The house was quiet. Upstairs the others were in their beds. But now there was a noise outside — footsteps. Someone was coming up the walk. He’d have to hurry. Okay Adine, said Sam, and sucking in his breath widened his eyes until they ached and cranked the dial as far as it would go and the microwave hummed, and all Sam could see was light.

This is life brought to ruin —

Street by dreaming street.

—
Kevin Connolly,
Drift

I

N THE KITCHEN
tiles lay the man in Olpert’s stolen khakis who’d said his name was Sam, though that was all he’d said. When Olpert had arrived home he’d discovered this Sam staring into the microwave, his face pressed to it, the oven hummed, a smell of burning plastic and something wet and hot filled the air. Olpert said, Hi? and Sam wheeled to face him. His eyes were strange. They seemed to be bubbling. With horror Olpert realized he’d been cooking them: they hissed and sizzled while the microwave whirred and light streamed from twin holes bored in its door.

What are you doing, said Olpert, who are you, what are you doing?

I’m Sam, said this man in a hoarse, sick-sounding whisper, and fell to the floor.

Olpert unplugged the microwave, it died, and he knelt over Sam. His pupils were pinpricks, the irises glossed with a milky mucous, the whites raw. Olpert dampened a teatowel and pressed it to Sam’s eyes. Again he asked Sam what he’d been doing, and why. But Sam didn’t make a sound, even of pain.

There’s no ferry till morning, said Olpert. I’ll take you to hospital then. Okay?

He pulled the towel away. Sam’s eyes had the look of scorched jelly. You need to keep this on them, said Olpert, and he wrapped the towel around Sam’s head as a blindfold for a party game of bluff. He swept up the twists of plastic that littered the floor, sat in a chair at the kitchen table, and, with Sam sprawled at his feet, waited for the sun to come up.

Hours passed, the tang of burnt flesh and molten plastic faded, Olpert nodded off, awoke to the rattle and scrape of Sam’s breathing, noticed one of Sam’s hands was wrapped in ducktape — had it always been? — and dozed again. Morning arrived: through the blinds light striped the kitchen gold and grey. Sam sat up, turned his face toward the window, said, I can see it, it’s daytime, I can see the light! Though the hitch in his voice suggested dismay.

There’s a seven-o’clock ferry, said Olpert. We can walk out there now and wait for it.

Sam scratched at a scab on his jaw with his ducktaped mitt.

We have to get you to the hospital. Your eyes —

Shhh, said Sam, an ear cocked at the floor. He might be down there okay.

You need to go to hospital. It’s not my business but if you want me to take you I will. If not I’d like to go to sleep. Okay? I’m very tired. Are you all right?

The fridge came on with a hum.

Sam said, Help me, and extended his arms.

Help you, help you what.

Go to my room. Downstairs.

You’re in the basement? That’s your unit?

Olpert pulled Sam to his feet, his face came close, it smelled of broiled meat. Olpert said, You can’t see anything, can you?

I can see it’s light okay, Sam said.

You need to go to the hospital.

But Sam shook his head. No, my room, he said. The work’s not done. Help me.

OLPERT STEPPED OUT
the front door with Sam on his arm. The sky was opening up into a clear and pretty morning, yet the lawn was sodden. Olpert’s first thought was that the septic tank had ruptured again. But this was surface water: at the southern edge of the property little waves rippled up from the lake.

The Islet had flooded once before, when Olpert was nine. He and his grandfather and the other residents had been rescued by
ferry. The flood itself hadn’t been frightening. Coming ashore the
real terror had begun: a fleet of ambulances screaming out of the
city,
a storm of flashbulbs and jabbing microphones, a gawking crowd from Lakeview Homes as the Islet’s evacuees were lined up like hostages and tallied.

Why are we standing here, said Sam. What’s happening?

Nothing, said Olpert, and looped his arm around Sam’s neck and helped him around back where steps descended to the basement unit.

Opening the door released a damp and earthy aroma, inside this soured into a yoghurty bouquet of mildew and infrequently
washed man. Olpert set Sam down on the couch, a plastic approximation
of leather, flaking and lumpy, greasy and stained.

You okay?

Sam said nothing. The compress seeped through in twin damp ovals.

Olpert had never been in one of the other residents’ units. He took a moment to appraise it: bags of garbage positioned into hedgerows, a bed neatly, almost institutionally made, junk strewn everywhere — broken toys, kitchen appliances missing key parts (a bladeless blender, a toaster oven without a door), stripped car stereos, a heap of sawdust, lumber, a toolkit, a saw — and a huge armoire against the far wall, the doors boarded up and chained in what resembled braces against invasion.

From inside this armoire, someone knocked.

Hello? called a faint voice — a child’s. Hello?

Sam tensed.

Let me out, whined the voice.

Who’s in there, said Olpert. You’ve got a kid in there.

Sam said nothing, jaw clenched, teeth gritted.

The child knocked again and called for help, its voice as detached
as waking-world sounds to the sleeper slipping into dreams.

I don’t know who you’ve got in there, but I’m going to let them out, said Olpert. Okay?

Sam seemed to be listening to something else. Olpert heard it too: a glubbing sound. Water bumped against the basement’s groundlevel windows. From the bottom of the windowframe a lightning-shaped chute jagged down the wallpaper.

First, the kid in the cupboard.

Do you have the combination to this lock?

There’s a way but I don’t know it okay. The work was not letting him out.

Well we’re letting him out now.

Sam pawed the crust on his jaw.

Olpert stepped to the armoire, spoke to it: Don’t worry, I’m here to help.

Who are you? replied the child’s voice.

He didn’t know what to say to this. In the toolkit he found a
hammer and pried the boards off, knocked the bolts from the
hinges, the door folded open. A fattish boy drifted out from the shadows.
He wore a red cap and matching knapsack and he moved with the sludgy gait of a sleepwalker.

The boy sat on the couch. Where is this? he asked Sam. Did I trunk here?

Did you change into a boy, said Sam, or did you take Raven’s place?

Yes, I’m taking Raven’s place! My name is Gip Poole, said the boy. Don’t forget it!

Gip
. . .
Poole? said Olpert. You were onstage? Not Bode?

Poole, said Gip firmly. Gosh, why does everyone — he looked hard at Sam. Hey, I know you. You’re the one with the lock. Why do you have that thing on your eyes? Are you sick?

People are looking for you, said Olpert.

I trunked! said Gip happily. Didn’t I?

Sam shrugged. If you say so okay.

Olpert peeked into the armoire: yellowing newsprint, a splotchy pillow. What make of kidnapping was this? The boy hadn’t rushed to freedom, Sam seemed only perplexed. There was nothing nefarious or sinister between abductor and abductee, side by side on the couch. They looked like strangers waiting for the same latenight train, bewildered that anyone else might be taking it too.

From upstairs came footsteps — the other residents collecting in the kitchen. The floorboards creaked, voices muttered, water trickled in through the window.

Sam, said Olpert, do you know the other people who live here?

What time is it, he said.

Time? I don’t know what time it is. Morning! Time to leave! Your eyes — and you, Gip, what about your parents?

My parents are Kellogg and Pearl. And I have a sister Elsie-Anne but I call her Dorkus and she calls me Stuppa because she couldn’t say Stupid when she was little and it stuck.

From between the couch cushions Sam dug the
TV
remote. The set burst into static.

I think it’s broken, said Gip.

Overhead the footsteps moved across the floor to the front door, and through the basement window Olpert watched two men and a woman go highstepping across the flooded lawn. The leak was thickening — tributaries into a forked river, all the way to the carpet — while Sam flicked through fizzing, broken channels.

We need to get out of here, Olpert said.

We
do
, said Gip. We have to go because
I’m
the one that’s supposed to finish the illustration. Because he chose me. I’m the chosen one. Raven —

Raven? said Sam. He turned off the set. In the
TV
’s empty face, bowed and grotesque, hovered his and Gip’s reflections. What do you know about Raven?

What do I
know
? Only everything!
Nobody’s
a bigger fan than me, mister, got it? Maybe you didn’t see me trunk here? Now can we
go
, please? I’ve got work to do!

Work? said Sam.

Quiet, both of you, said Olpert.

The water had submerged the basement window. And now
Sam’s front door was leaking too. On the other side Olpert imagined
a little tiered waterfall cascading down the steps, pooling at the bottom, seeping greedily under the door.

The water’s coming in, it’s flooding, said Olpert. I’ll take you both. We have to go.

AFTER AN ENDLESS
tumble through the darkness, the cart stopped with a judder. The Mayor pitched forward, clutched the sides, somehow didn’t fall. The air was black, it seemed both sprawling and to compress around her. Tilted on an incline, she realized someone or something was holding the cart: a foot against the wheels, a hand upon the edge, inches from her own hands. And even before he spoke, she knew who it was.

Greetings, my queen, said the voice — that creamy, sleepy voice.

The Mayor sighed.

Can you see me?

It’s too dark.

Look at me. Try.

I don’t go in for this sort of craziness. I can’t be party to it.

Nor I, Mrs. Mayor, nor I. But please. Focus your eyes. Allow them to acclimate.

She closed her eyes, opened them: and saw less than when they had been closed.

And now? said Raven.

Is this where you’ve been hiding? A hole in the ground?

Is that where we are? A hole? It seems to me more complicated than that. But what do I know, this is your town —

City. This is a city. My city.

Pardon me, of course.
Your
city
,
your
splendid metropolis,
your
great megalopolis.
I trust you’re aware what comes next.

Feeling herself easing downward again she grabbed the sides of the cart. The movement halted. Raven rocked her softly, back and forth, like a babe in its cradle.

What are you doing, she said. What have you done.

Done?

Done!

Ah. To tell you the truth, I thought this would be amusing. I didn’t know that it would be — that it would be, well
. . .

Well what. A disaster?

You think it’s that? May I ask, Mrs. Mayor, what you think existed here before us?

Where does it go, this tunnel.

Oh, don’t worry. For certain, we are totally alone.

Yes, but where
are
we. Where is
here.

Such a question. Have you considered that perhaps
this
place does not exist even now. Perhaps it never has? Perhaps
we
never have.

I exist! Aren’t you talking to me?

Yes! Such sagacity, such simple truth. You exist in your words, and I in mine.

The rocking stopped. The stillness and darkness were absolute. Everything pitched outward into oblivion. When Raven spoke next it was in a whisper: We do indeed exist, all alone down here, wherever we are. We’re unique in that, Mrs. Mayor — so dreadfully unique, you and I.