Swarm (21 page)

I didn't ask him what he meant because I didn't want to get him going. I remembered that day in the botanical garden, in what seemed like another lifetime. But Marvin didn't start any lectures. Instead, he nudged the cup of water toward me, encouraging me.

“Drink up,” he said. “We've got plans.”

“We do?”

“We're going to celebrate your freedom.” I didn't answer. I wasn't sure I wanted to be free.

“From the tyranny of the do-gooder,” Marvin said. “The prison of the plutocracy.”

“It wasn't so bad.”

“You didn't seem torn up about leaving.”

“It's complicated.”

“I saw that,” Marvin said, a freeze in his voice that stopped me from speaking except to tell him that the only plan I had for the day was to find my way back to my old bed, in the apartment I'd shared with Margo. “Suit yourself.” He turned away to pull a small cast-iron pan out of the compartment in the bottom of the stove. The metal and steel rattled with his movement.

Margo
and Walter were laughing when they came in the back door. She was carrying a white bowl, five brown eggs inside. I swung around on the stool to face her. Abrupt, because I was ready to leave, couldn't stomach breakfast, wanted to get back to my job hunt, to an ordinary life. I asked her for the key to our place. Somewhere along the way I'd lost mine, probably under the fold-out bed at the soup kitchen.

“I'm going to head back,” I said, imagining that nothing had changed. But a silence fell, like the ones that seemed to emerge whenever Marvin and I were alone. Her eyes widened with fake worry.

“You left,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I had to make decisions.”

Walter pushed into her side, his arm spreading around her shoulders. The lurch of his hip into hers tipped the edge of the bowl sideways. Two eggs tumbled out, splattering on the dirty tile floor.

“Walter! Fuck!”

We all stared at the splattered yolks, the tiny slither of a bloody umbilical.

“Well,” Walter said. “You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.” He laughed, but no one else did. Margo looked up from the mess on the floor, straight at me.

“I moved in with him,” she said and clarified, as if there would be confusion: “Walter.”

I paused. Remembered my room the day I'd left, the bed unmade, the digital alarm clock set for 8:00
AM
, an orange sweater I'd found in a box on the street in my laundry basket to be cleaned.

“What about my stuff?”

She shrugged, her arms extending snakelike, like a Hindu goddess looking to hypnotize. My voice rose.

“What's that mean?”

“You disappeared off the face of the earth. You never even fucking called.”

The men watched.

“Did you give back your keys?”

“Yeah.”

“Has it been rented?”

Margo shrugged. “Probably,” Walter said into the last cold pool of his coffee.

I put my hands over my face. When I removed them, I saw that Margo's eyes were dark and hard. Like Phoenix's, I thought, as I stormed past her, slammed the back door. My throat grew tight with a choking sensation I'd never felt before, not after my parents were evicted or even when I was laid off. How would I get my things, I wondered, but then quickly realized I had nowhere to put them, no place to live. No money. Very few friends.

I thought about returning to Thomson and Phoenix, begging them to take me in again, but I knew I'd burned my bridges the night before. I rubbed my forehead, clenched my arms around my chest. My stomach lurched and I leaned over the railing, let loose a hot gush of liquid. The worst of it, Melissa, was that I knew I wasn't unique. All over the country people were abandoning things—walking away from houses they could no longer afford, leaving cars, pale yellow traffic tickets ruffling under the windshield wipers like feathers—whether it was their choice or not. I was not special; my terror was not unique. Instead, I was simply joining their ranks.

No
one came for me. The smell of eggs and canned fish and cigarette smoke drifted through the screen on the kitchen window, over its rotten window box filled with dried-out soil, the yellow husks of dead begonias. For nearly an hour I stayed outside, staring up at the stupid, happy faces of the couple on the billboard. Had anyone ever felt like that? Like the future, symbolized by the image of the clear, blue horizon behind them, the lilting boat, wind billowing its pure white sail, was right there for the taking? My parents, I remembered, the day that snake of oil had appeared in their field, before they'd lost everything. I sat on the top step, pulling on the roots of my hair, until I realized I had no choices. I was not free.

“She
returns,” Marvin said when I went back inside. Margo leaned against the counter, smoking. She'd put lipstick on without a mirror and it bled outside the boundaries of her mouth.

“I can go back, right?” I asked, and her wrinkled silk blouse rippled when she shrugged.

“It was all still there when I left.”

“They might have sold it,” Walter said. “That's what I wanted to do.” Margo reached out and pushed at his forearm. “What?” he asked. I turned away. It was too much and I felt sweaty and grubby and wanted to get clean, brush my teeth, before I could start thinking about what options were left open.

I asked Marvin about that, if I could bring a bucket of water upstairs, if he had any soap, and he said, “I can do better than that.”

He led me to a wooden shed in the backyard. A black barrel sat on the roof. Piping fed down from it and ended in a shower fixture suspended over a stall with plywood walls. A towel lay over the back of a chair. A bar of gummy, homemade soap sat on one of the wooden joists. Hooks made from bent wire hanger were hammered into the beams.

“I can't guarantee the temperature, but with how warm it's been . . .”

It was impressive. “You should make one of these for the diner.”

“I did,” he told me.

He stood in the doorway. “Do you want help?” He came toward me, reaching for the bottom of my shirt, but I stepped away. I didn't want to be touched. He lifted his hands, palms out, and then pointed at a nozzle above the shower head. “Just turn that open. Close it when you're done. It runs through fast.”

“Marvin,” I called before he walked out. “What you read from last night. Can I see it?”

“Sure,” he said, and he was gone.

The water was so cold it made me hold my breath. I hunched over, letting it drop its needles on my back before I rubbed the soap hard between my hands, made beeswax-smelling lather and cleaned all the grimy crevices of my body, washed my hair as best I could, and rinsed. When I finished, I realized how hungry I was, how thirsty. I turned the water back on and drank until the barrel emptied, which wasn't much. The clothes I had were wet still and dirty from running through the streets but when I pulled back the shower curtain, I saw that Marvin had brought me other ones. A pair of his jeans that were tight at the hips and that I had to roll up and a black T-shirt with the anarchy symbol hand-scrawled across the front in crinkled red paint. I put them on.

Suddenly
I was in a different life. Mid-morning, broad daylight, the air cool enough to need jackets over long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. Marvin's hand hovered over my lower back when we turned left instead of right at the street the diner was on. We passed a derelict car, the back tires both flat, a dirty blanket stretched out on the back seat, and I glanced back as Zane came out the doorway of the diner. Two large, bleached bones in his hands. After they'd been used up for soup Phoenix sent them to the park for the stray dogs. Thomson didn't like it, but she always said that's what they did in Mexico. Zane saw us, saw me, and tentatively lifted his arm. Quickly, I turned away. Bile rose in my throat again, burning, and I thought I might throw up again but only a sour acid burp emerged. One link in that new chain, I kept walking down the road, and the four of us stepped through a gap cut in a plywood-reinforced section of the perimeter's fence on the western edge of the dark zone. Margo first, then me, then the men, into an overgrown thicket in the back corner of a city park.

On the other side, crouched under the blanketing boughs of a spruce tree, the three of them tugged their hoods up. Margo tightened and tied a bow in the turquoise strings of her hoodie, worn under her wool-lined jean jacket. Walter pulled a balaclava over his head, his blue eyes brightened by the black of it.

Marvin, his face circled by a grey hood, said, “You can't wear that.”

“Why?”

“Too obvious. Too much of a
fuck you
.”

“That's what I'm going for.”

“They'll target you. You'll get arrested.” Marvin's voice hammered, loud in the trees' close, prickly cave. I wondered where they were taking me, could already hear the din of noise, conversation and drumbeats, the loud peal of horns.

Walter took it off, flopped up the hood of his green military parka without a word. Marvin pulled a blue tube of fabric out of his pocket, like a grandfather retrieving his hankie. He handed it to me, brushed his hands over his ears in demonstration. “Cover your head.”

“Why?”

“You'll see,” said Margo, so I did as instructed. The material pressed my still-damp hair against my ears and my head felt cold. Like four kids entering Narnia through the back of a wardrobe we walked into the park, which was scattered with slumps of dirty snow and garbage. Beyond that: people, thousands of them. I didn't see police. We moved through the crowd as if in a maze, Marvin leading. Past protestors drumming on overturned plastic pails, under banners demanding jobs, income parity, solar energy, and a whole new world, now. He stopped when we were dead centre of the crush that pushed along the street like the muscular body of a snake. My gaze wandered, kept catching on white-haired men and women with their heads wrapped in colourful scarves, thinking I recognized Phoenix and Thomson over and over again. Would they be there or was it a regular workday for them—Zane taking the bones to the park, Phoenix stirring scattered spices into the broth, Thomson gathering water all by himself. Guilt surged in me, like I'd made them promises I hadn't kept.
Powdered sugar
, I remembered, and wished I could at least do that, leave it on their doorstep in the middle of the night, hoping no one else would take it.

“This is what democracy looks like,” Marvin shouted, blasting me into the moment. The words a singsong chant, held up by a hundred voices, more. Marvin's fist jabbed into the air and I found the rhythm and followed. A kid spray-painted
BOMB THE BANKS
on a plate-glass window just before a rock smashed through it and he hunched down and scurried back. We turned a corner, curving west as if following the sun, and saw police spreading out from a side street to line the edge of the crowd. We surged forward, filling the open street, and I felt a hard thing thrust against my shoulder like a punch. A Plexiglas shield shoved me away from the cops' line. Through the thick plastic, I stared at the officer's wide, frightened eyes. His pulse jumped in his neck. I stopped walking, wanting I guess to explain, to tell him I was blameless, but Marvin grabbed my arm, as he had that first night, his fingers hitting the same spots where he'd bruised me when he'd told me how he saw things, the inevitable end. On the other side of the road, I saw a protestor swing from a flagpole above the doors of a hotel. He lit the flag on fire. Cheers erupted as flames ate at the fabric.

Two police on horses rounded the corner. People close to them threw down teddy bears that were crushed by the horses' hooves. Stones flew. A cloud of tear gas appeared up the street, billowing toward us, and I heard screaming, shouting. Marvin's hand closed around mine and he pulled me back but his fingers slipped loose and I lost him. He, Margo, and Walter pushed against the current, escaping just as the police line swung forward, corralling us like a herd. Another heavy shield pushed me. A man in front of me fell to the ground. Zip-ties quickly fastened around his wrists. I felt fingers grabbing at the back of my clothes and, I could have sworn, a creature's hot breath on my neck, and I ran as hard as I could, dodging between people, aiming for the sidewalk, an opening along the wall of boarded-up storefronts. Just as the tear gas hit, I saw them. Walter with his balaclava held up to his face, his arm around Margo, turning into the mouth of an alley. I tried to go to them, but a thousand sparks combusted in my eyes. I stopped. Blinded. A horse whinnied. I reached my arms out, feeling my way toward what I thought were the buildings, searching for the safe hollow of a doorway. People slammed into my arms. I lowered them, totally lost, not knowing where I was, which direction was which, how to move forward. I started to hunch, hoping to disappear, and then I smelled vinegar, a blast of it, in my face. Nausea rose in a surge and somebody pushed me, grabbed me, led me, lifted my hand to touch a wall of cold concrete. I threw up and then arms tipped me back and water gushed into my eyes, over and over. When I could see again, as if in a dream, I found Marvin. Blurry, as though I was looking through swim goggles. Like an outlaw, he had a scarf tied over his nose and mouth. One exactly like Phoenix's: red, printed with black skulls and cobwebs. Rubber bullets cracked in the air.

“Come on,” he said and pulled me down an alley to the other side of the canyon wall.

We
went to a bar called the Pantomime and sat in the courtyard. Garden gnomes that had lost all their paint and looked albino stood on the shore of a frozen pond. Music blared from speakers bolted to the surrounding brick walls, a driving guitar chord that agitated me and made me reach for Margo's cigarette and suck a long drag. I felt exhilarated, high, and when I saw Marvin's eyes trolling the crowd, serious, assessing, I reached out and touched his arm, brushed the hard muscle under the cold leather of his jacket, remembering how he was when he came to my rescue: his assurance, how he took charge. Marvin's mood switched, seemed to lighten, and he met my gaze and smiled.