People Park (7 page)

That’s kinda crazy, said Adine.

Who knows what he’ll do? said Isa Lanyess. We’re all really excited.

The woman doesn’t so much talk as
bray
. Don’t you think, Sammy?

It’s kinda crazy, said Sam. Why’s it kinda crazy Adine?

Buddy, that they can even
do
that sort of thing. Turn the city into a movie set, I mean.

And then don’t forget, said Isa Lanyess, starting on Saturday, Cinecity’s going to be broadcasting the Jubilee
Spectacular
, all weekend. And don’t forget
All in Together Now
, the movie for the people, by the people, that
you
all helped write and create!

Oh, wait, said Adine.
This
is the worst ever.

Ever Adine?

Ever.

The report ended. An ad for
Salami Talk
came on, a feline slink of bass guitars and saxophone beneath the sultry voice of its host: Tomorrow on
Salami Talk
we’ll —

Adine hit
MUTE
. This fuggin show, she growled. This fuggin guy.

They’re having Raven on tomorrow. As a guest.

Right.

Lucal Wagstaffe’s chin, said Sam, is a very big orange chin.

Hey, Sammy? How’s that thing on your face? Are you taking care of that?

Can we watch this interview Adine?

Don’t pick at it. Remember what the doctor said. And you got that ointment, make sure you’re putting that on. And food? Today’s grocery day, right? Make sure you go.

Yes. Adine? Raven’s on at one o’clock. That’s perfect, that’s when we do the work.

It is.

Adine?

Sammy?

I’m sorry.

You’re sorry.

Yes.

For?

Because you can’t see okay.

Oh. Ha. Right. Well thanks.

But we’re doing the work right Adine? We’re doing good communication. And it’s only Monday when it’s our birthday and we’re thirty-six and time’s machine —

Indeed, buddy. I appreciate it.

Adine hung up and Sam sat for a moment with the phone pressed to his ear, waiting for the dialtone to be replaced by the machinations grinding away beneath the city’s surface. When it emerged, the sound was faint. Did that mean the machine was slowing? Sam wasn’t sure. He checked his three watches. The first two had stopped, their six hands aligned at midnight, the final watch’s three still wheeled. He put the receiver back in its cradle, looked around his room at the various parts and elements, trying to decide if a last-minute cog or gear required adding before the end.

Sam touched the scabby crust along his jawline, felt a loose flake, and pulled. The pain as it peeled from his cheek was lemony and sour, his eyes watered. The air was cold on the raw spot. He brushed his finger over the sore, paused, then stabbed inside. The hurt was sudden and sharp. Sam closed his eyes and said, This is time’s machine and not a dream, and gouged, and finally, gasping, pain blazing in his face, examined his fingertip: capped in a thimble of blood.

ON THE FERRY
to Bay Junction Sam stood on the deck with his hands on the railing, the boat’s engines growled, the water frothed and sloshed, the day dimmed. An Islet-bound ferry passed transporting workers home from their downtown jobs, their own work. Citybound it was only Sam and an elderly man with his cane on his lap, whom Sam avoided. It was important workers were unseen, and good communication with Adine was important too, though Sam’s own work had many elements: good communication, proper attire, dream checks, systems maintenance — all of it, all the way to time’s reversal, and then they’d be at the beginning again, before everything went wrong and changed.

When the ferry arrived at the mainland Sam did not head down into Bay Junction Station as the old man did. He could walk to Street’s Milk & Things, though it was much farther than it had once been. When he and Adine were kids they’d lived so close that if his mother Connie needed milk for her coffee he could run over and get it before the water even boiled, though they had to
go together, the Polyp’s products were often expired: you had to
know the calendar, you had to check the dates.

Normally Sam walked, head down, up the path from Lakeview Campground into the woods, past the Friendly Farm Automatic Zoo and out beside the People Park Throughline, then down into the common and up through more woods, finally entering the clearing and past the houseboat to the glowing white sign of Street’s Milk & Things. But today Sam stopped at the edge of the poplars on the southern ridge of the common and stood for a moment, looking.

The common was empty, the muddy ground golden in the late-afternoon light. On television that morning the whole park had been teeming with bodies, all those bodies that existed within
time’s machine, each body held a brain that made it a person, and
each person had a mother and maybe a sister, or a brother, and
friends, or at least other people they knew, and those people had brains and families, and more people attached to them, and it was endless, a great sprawling lattice of people and their brains upon people with more brains that grew and looped back upon itself and grew again, forever, yet everyone was so separate. Though soon time’s machine would bring them all together.

Deep underground (and monitored on Sam’s wrist) turned the three final hands, most people were oblivious, they just lived their lives. Which was fine. Only a select few could be responsible for
the work, though Sam had to remind himself that anyone among
the city’s bodies could be a worker — you didn’t know, you were only permitted to connect with two other workers. And his connects were Adine and the Polyp.

Atop the Grand Saloon Hotel the towerclock’s hands were locked at nine. Sam recalled Raven putting his fist to his forehead and his eyes opening and the nothing within them, they were just holes, and the clock had stopped. It had only two hands, was not official, its rotations were marked by minutes. So Sam stared at the clock and counted to sixty. The hands did not move. He counted again: nothing. Yet upon his own wrist his third watch still chipped away, seconds to minutes to hours
. . .

Sam listened: birds chirruped and the leafless branches of the poplars creaked in a tired wind and on Parkside West cars went by with an airy, breathy sound — but there was no grinding of gears, no clank of levers, no steady drone of engines or tick of meters or hiss of valves from underground. The earth didn’t vibrate and hum. The towerclock was still. Sam touched his scab and felt pain. This was real. He looked out over the common and said, Hello? But to whom. The park was empty. There was nobody there.

STREET’S MILK & THINGS
hadn’t changed since Sam was a kid: the sad clinking of the bells over the door as you entered, its owner the Polyp affixed to his stool behind the counter, everything furred with dust, you came out feeling grimy and damp. Near the door was a rack that held one yellowing dirty magazine and a poorly folded map, the scantily stocked shelves were organized by container type: boxes of cereal and detergent and nails, canned goods huddled together below — corn-in-a-can, catfood, motor oil, a labelless can, in black marker it asked:
BEANS?

In the back of the store was a sign that heralded:
MR. ADEMUS’S THINGS
. Upon these shelves Sam filed the parts to be collected by another worker who passed them along to another worker to maintain time’s machine. Now though the shelves were empty. Everything was in place. The work was done. There was nothing to do now but wait for Monday, the end. But what about the towerclock, locked, and the silence —

Mr. Street the Polyp came waddling out from behind the counter. Hello, Mr. Ademus, once again. Old friend! As you can envisage for yourself, you’re a sellout. Success!

A hand came at him: a bulge of meat that slumped into a wrist, an arm, up to a humped shoulder, a neck lost under a sludge of chins. Grinning lips, yellow teeth, from the mouth a bad smell. But first the hand.

Grudgingly Sam took it: now Street had him, he squeezed. The fat man started ranting, nothing Sam wanted to hear — restribution this and historiographically that — all the while pumping Sam’s hand with his fat, hot hand. At last he pulled away grinning. Mr. Ademus!

Hi, said Sam, Mr. Street, but what about time’s machine? It’s stopped or I can’t hear it okay. And it’s supposed to be Monday that the machine reverses and time turns back, the third hands I mean. And do you think it’s Raven Mr. Street? Who might stop the work?

Pop shook his head sadly. Almost without refutation, he sighed. This charlating they’ve plotted upon our fair island, how could he not be balsamic of all your whoas?

And so? Should we do something Mr. Street?

Mr. Ademus, prehaps more work? More
things
, prehaps?

But should we try to stop him Mr. Street?

Unrefutably! He must — Pop looped an arm over Sam’s shoulders,
placed his mouth to Sam’s ear, dropped his voice to a whisper —
be stopped
.

Okay.

Now, said Pop, clapping, Mr. Ademus, about you endowning me with new works.

Sam told him no.

Ah. So today you endown me only with shopping?

Sam told him yes.

Then beplease yourself and shop till you’ve dropped!

From the freezer Sam took a stack of nuclear meals, put them on the counter, and waited for Pop to ring them in.

Once again, Mr. Ademus, please consider these on my house. As grace for your things.

Sam took his groceries, turned to leave.

Until tomorrow, Mr. Ademus?

If there even is a tomorrow okay, said Sam, and headed out the jingling door, home.

VI

HE GRAND SALOON’S
pent
house was in the cathedral’s former belfry. On either side of the suite’s door stood the watchmen of B-Squad: the Summoner
— Starx — and Olpert Bailie.

Inside the room napped Raven, he needed his sleep, though who knew what he got up to in private, thought Olpert. There was something strange in his eyes — or, more, it seemed they weren’t there at all. The illustrationist had requested the A/C cranked, so the air was icy and brittle. While Starx fiddled with the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, Olpert shivered, blew into his hands, hugged himself.

Starx looked him over from head to toe and said, You haven’t thanked me yet, Belly.

Bailie, said Olpert. My name is Olpert Bailie.

Sure, sure.

You want me to thank you.

I knocked that kid the fug
out
!

A kid. You punched a kid.

He spat on you. And you were just standing there. What’s wrong with you?

Olpert had no idea what to do with this question.

You got a lady, Bailie?

A girlfriend.

Starx nodded.

Not currently.

You go out a lot?

Out?

To meet ladies.

Olpert thought about the last date he’d been on, nearly a year ago. His colleague Betty had set him up with her sister, Barbara, of the recent divorce and red leather pants. Things had been going fine, considering, until the nosebleed.

He shrugged. Sometimes, I guess.

Starx’s walkie-talkie crackled — Griggs, with instructions: at six p.m. they were to escort the illustrationist to the hotel’s banquet hall. The
NFLM
had taken the liberty of booking Olpert off work until Tuesday. So he’s all ours, said Griggs, all weekend. Then he recited the four pillars, traded Good lookin outs with Starx, and the radio went dead.

Listen, let me buy you a cider, said Starx, turning to Olpert, when we’re done tonight.

A cider.

Or two. Or nine. You ever been to the Golden Barrel?

In Upper Olde Towne ?

You sound nervous.

Nervous?

You’ll be fine with me. That’s my hood, been out there since — a while. Tell you what, we’ll do our business, bust outta here say eightish, and be over there to make wing night. The Barrel’s got a
killer
wing special till nine.

Wings.

Holy shet, yes.

Somewhere, the
A/C
came on with a whoosh. Olpert closed his eyes, shivered. Opened them.

And standing there was the illustrationist.

Olpert’s bowels slackened, but didn’t release.

Gentlemen, said Raven.

Starx took an elongated stride backward and stooped — more of a lunge than a bow.

Raven said, You are my escorts to this dinner, I understand. This celebratory
homage
.

We are, said Starx.

Good. Your names?

Starx.

Olpert. I mean, Bailie.

You attended my arrival this morning.

We sure did, said Starx. Really amazing stuff, sir —

Fine, yes. But may I ask how the morning’s events made you feel.

Sorry, said Starx. Made us
feel
?

Yes. What emotions did you experience. When I touched down, or made the illustration involving the birds, or when I trunked away. How you — Raven’s hand twirled in an evocative gesture — felt. Please explain.

His accent could be described
only as foreign, something bad actors might adopt to suggest
somewhere else
, all rolling r’s and hacking k’s, but even then nothing was consistent — a sentence later the vowels might drawl and twang.

Olpert said, I felt a bit nervous.

I don’t think that’s what he was after, said Starx. He’s always a bit nervous, this guy.

No, no, said the illustrationist. Nervous is good. What else.

Um, scared.

Scared, good.

I was sort of hungry, said Starx.

Raven’s eyes flicked briefly to Starx, back to Olpert. His gaze was vertiginous — like an undertow, that helpless sensation of being tugged under.

Mr. Bailie, how else did you feel.

Anxious. And frightened. And worried, uneasy.

Starx elbowed him. Those are the same as nervous and scared.

Perhaps they are, said Raven. But continue. Why, what made you feel this way.

Something felt
. . .
wrong.

God, Bailie, don’t tell him that.

No, this is good, said Raven. This I can use. You see, as the one making these illustrations, the emotions they might evoke are alien, almost unimaginable, to me. Precisely because I am at their centre, I remain at an experiential remove — the eye of the storm, so to speak. So your neuroses interest me. Come, let’s sit down.

Olpert and Starx followed him inside the suite. The illustrationist seemed to glide across the marble floor.

Sweet digs, said Starx, collapsing onto a plush white settee. Olpert joined him.

Raven moved to the window that overlooked People Park. Yet when he spoke his voice seemed somehow inside Olpert’s head: Now, Mr. Bailie, what else fills you with fear?

What? Else?

I ask because I wonder what it was about this morning that struck fear into you. Perhaps it is at the heart of something. As I’ve said, as the generator of the experience, all this is beyond me. I want simply to understand. To achieve some
. . .
clarity.

Raven’s voice seemed come from somewhere out the window.

Perhaps we are on the wrong track, said Raven. At the risk of sounding forward, could you tell me your dreams, Mr. Bailie. Your most secret dreams. Are there motifs.

Sorry?

Motifs, Bailie, said Starx. Patterns, themes. Stuff on repeat.

In the scary ones? There are snakes sometimes.

Snakes, said Raven.

Though that might be because of Jessica.

Starx perked up: Who’s Jessica?

What else appears in your dreams, said the illustrationist — he sounded now high above, hovering against the ceiling.

Other than snakes?

Yes. Tell me.

Something heavy and hot clamped upon his shoulders
— Raven’s hands. Olpert tensed, but from the illustrationist’s fingers a soothing, sedative warmth spread into his body. When Olpert spoke the words came slow and didn’t seem his own: Motifs in my dreams are less things in my dreams than things not in my dreams. Absence as a motif. And by that I mean total absence. I’m all alone and there’s nothing else there.

Raven let go. What else, Mr. Bailie?

Well I have this one dream
. . .
Olpert had no idea what he might say. But the words just kept coming, tumbling more quickly now one to the next: I’m on this big ship, as big as a building, one of those ships that’s so big it feels like a mall or something.

An aircraft carrier? said Starx.

Mr. Starx, please, said Raven. Then, to Olpert: Go on.

Okay, the ship’s so full of people I can’t move. You can’t imagine
how many people. Millions. And everyone’s lined up for something, but I’m for some reason smaller than everyone else so I can’t see what it is. I can’t see over their heads. I’m a kid. Or feel like a kid, clarified Olpert, though none of this was true, he’d never had this dream, it spilled out of him from nowhere. Anyway, he continued, everyone’s looking at this
. . .
thing
, whatever it is, at the front of the ship — starboard? aft?

The bow, said Starx.

The bow, indeed. Thank you, seaman Starx, said Raven. Continue, Mr. Bailie.

So I want to see it, Olpert said, or at least find out what it is, but when I go to talk no words come out. I can’t ask anyone, and getting to the front is impossible too because the crowd is packed so tightly in. And it’s then I get this feeling, this
wash
of a feeling, that I’m alone. All these people are united by this thing and I don’t even know what it is. And that’s when the crowd starts spreading out from me. Like we’re on an iceberg breaking apart. Nobody’s actually moving but the space around me just gets bigger and bigger, and it’s not even that I don’t want to move, I don’t know where to go. There’s no one in the crowd I know, no one to go to, but the feeling of being alone like that — I can’t even describe it to you. I can’t. And the deck of this ship is expanding all around me, and the crowd is fading farther and farther away. I stand there and stand there and let it happen, until the crowd is eventually gone — they’ve disappeared. They’ve vanished.

Vanished, whispered Starx.

Oh, Mr. Bailie, said Raven, without even pressing you, we learn so much about your heart! Now, continue, please.

Well then I’m just alone, on this big open grey deck of some
thing that used to be a ship, but now it’s just
. . .
everything. It’s the
whole world, as far as I can see, and I’m there, and it’s the same
everywhere I look, just the greyness, and the sky is sort of colourless too, and I’m totally, completely alone. I’d walk somewhere but I don’t know which way to walk. And who would I walk to?

And this makes you afraid.

It’s the most terrifying feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life, said Olpert Bailie.

Starx’s eyes were wide, astonished. The room felt spellbound.

And then what, Mr. Bailie.

And then?

Olpert straightened. Starx blinked. The trance was broken.

And then? And then I guess I wake up.

AFTER RETRIEVING
her papers from the Galleria’s security office Pearl wandered back to the foodcourt, where Kellogg and Gip and Elsie-Anne queued for nonresident processing. Go on, Pearly, said Kellogg, be a while here yet, we’ll meet you at the campground, and flashed a big thumbs-up. But Pearl couldn’t take her eyes off her son, who gazed at his mother with an uncomprehending, anaesthetized look.

She’d never seen Gip like this, almost catatonic, and though Dr. Castel claimed that a double dose of meds wouldn’t be harmful as a one-off emergency, she wondered. He’ll be fine, he’s a tough little guy, Kellogg had assured her, crushing four pills into a can of apple juice. Usually her husband’s brightness bolstered her, now it wearied her into surrender — hadn’t Gip himself looked frightened, swallowing the potion down?

One of the Helpers took her by the elbow, steered her away. The line shifted, her family disappeared. From within the crowd came Kellogg’s desperate, warbling cheer: See you soon, Pearly!

She was taken out of the foodcourt, past the shops, to the Galleria’s southern exit, where the Helper said, Welcome home, gave her a little shove onto Paper Street, and locked the doors behind her.

And there it was: the city.

All that concrete and glass and steel seemed ushered up from underground. Pearl imagined the buildings folding in at their rooftops and blocking out the sun, she had to lean against the Galleria’s wall to steady the ensuing vertigo. Though down below was no less disorienting — people, so many people, barrelling around and past and between each other, a choreography of chaos, a percussion of footsteps pattering this way and that. How did each one remember who they were, or where to go —

Pearl laughed. She was being ridiculous. Though she’d been away a few years, the city had been home for most of her life. She stepped away from the wall and levelled her thoughts and tried to look at things rationally, anthropologically. What had changed? She knew the buildings along Paper by name: Municipal Works, the caustic Podesta Tower, We-
TV
’s
HQ
on the corner at Entertainment Drive. The few new businesses bore merely cosmetic changes in signage, the architecture original and unchanged.

Even so, everything had the slightly skewed look of some dreamworld rendering, nothing matched her memories, not precisely. Though she’d never felt comfortable downtown, its joyless parade of suits and high heels, so she took Paper east to Parkside West, crossed over and stood at the hilltop looking down. And with the park spreading out before her, she tried to summon how it felt to be home.