We All Looked Up (29 page)

Within a few minutes, they'd run slippery lines of vodka all across the store. They met up at the registers, where Andy produced a book of matches.

“You wanna do the honors?” he said, offering it to Anita.

“What a gentleman.” She scratched a match hard against the strip. It hissed into life, white to blue to red. In the flame, she could see the store transformed into one enormous conflagration—the toys and the books and the CDs and the towels and the build-it-yourself furniture. It was the fate waiting for all of them, most likely, less than forty-eight hours from now. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. And even if this was all just a bunch of junk, Anita couldn't help but think it probably didn't want to burn any more than she did. They had so little time left. Did they really want to spend it impersonating Ardor? Was humanity's only legacy going to be wrack and ruin?

She blew out the match.

Bobo snickered. “I knew it. I knew she'd pussy out.”

“I don't think I'll be able to enjoy my last few hours on Earth with the death of a Target on my hands.” Anita looked to Andy. “Is that okay?”

He took the book of matches and put it back in his pocket. “Totally.”

They'd gone only a few steps when Anita heard the flick of a lighter behind her. Bobo took a drag from a cigarette, then touched the orange tip to the floor. And there it went—the streaking arrow of destruction. The aisles lit up one by one, like lines of dominoes falling over. “Check that shit!” Bobo said. “That's like the Fourth of July right there!”

Anita walked out of the store, the heat already palpable on the back of her neck. She didn't know why she was so angry—it was just a Target, after all—but she couldn't help it. Why did boys always have to destroy things to feel alive?

“I'm sorry about him,” Andy said, following her out. Peter and Eliza had retreated across the parking lot to lean against a savaged old Hyundai and watch the Target burn.

“It's okay.”

“No, it's really not. That's not me, Anita. I don't want you to think that's me. And that didn't used to be him either.”

“If you say so.”

“I'm serious. Bobo's changed. And it's starting to freak me out.”

“What do you mean?”

He gestured for her to follow him farther away from the store, so they wouldn't be overheard. Even then, he whispered. “I think something's gone seriously wrong with him.”

“You're saying that like it's a recent development.”

“This is different. He says that Miz is staying with him at the Independent, but I'm staying there too and I haven't seen her once. And he hasn't let me inside his apartment in days. It's like he's hiding something.”

“What are you saying? Is Misery back there right now?”

“I'm saying I don't know where she is.”

Bobo, momentarily framed in flames, emerged from the Target and made straight for the passenger-side door of Andy's station wagon. “Come on, Mary!” he called out across the parking lot.

“One sec!”

“So what are you going to do?” Anita asked.

“I have to figure out what's going on. I owe that to Peter.”

Anita smiled. “You did tase him.”

“I know. I can't believe he hasn't kicked my ass yet.”

“Me either.”

“Let's go!” Bobo shouted.

Andy took hold of her hand. “I'm gonna bring Miz home, okay? Just in time for our party.”

“Okay.”

Our party
. Anita was so focused on the warm feeling these words gave her that she barely paid attention to Peter and Eliza's conversation in the car as they drove home.

“I don't trust him,” Peter said.

“You mean Bobo?” Eliza said. “Who does?”

“We should keep following them.”

“Your sister is a big girl, Peter. She can take care of herself.”

“Maybe.”

Anita reached between the seats and flicked on the radio, but there was nothing but a windswept desert of static now, all the way across the dial. And maybe she should have sensed something brewing in Peter's stoic stillness, in the resolve of that clenched jaw. But she was halfway to the front door of his house before she realized that he'd never left the car. Then Eliza was running back down the brick path, toward the driveway, screaming bloody murder at the back of the Jeep as it pulled out onto the street and sped off toward downtown.

P
eter

THE LOBBY OF THE INDEPENDENT
was empty. Dust motes floated in the failing light like dead insects in a puddle. The fireplace was one giant pile of trash. In the corner of the room, a genderless junkie was wrapped up in a dirty sheet, humming a wordless (and thus endless) version of “Ninety-­Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Peter stood at the abandoned reception desk, wondering what the hell to do next, when a couple of guys came through an arched doorway at the back of the room. They were dressed in ragged black leather and studded boots.

“Hey,” Peter said.

“The fuck you want?” The guy's tone was less menacing than exhausted.

“I'm looking for my sister. Her name's Misery. Or Samantha.”

“Never heard of her.”

“What about my”—and Peter cringed inwardly as he said it—“friend Bobo?”

The other guy smiled, revealing a mouth full of mustardy teeth. “He's up on six.”

“You know what room?”

“Why would I know what room? I look gay to you?”

“No. Sorry. Thanks for your help.”

There were candles set up here and there on the stairway, though most of them had burned out. On the sixth floor, music from a battery-­powered stereo slipped out from someone's apartment. Peter stretched his arms out wide and pounded hard on every door, left and right, as he jogged toward the window at the other end of the hallway. He heard a couple of them swing open behind him.

“I'm looking for Bobo,” he shouted.

The sound of doors shutting, a scrap of muffled laughter. Then, just a few seconds later, something quieter, very close.

“Peter?”

It came from behind the door closest to the window, farthest from the stairway.

“Miz?”

“Peter! Get me out!”

He reached for the knob, but though it turned as if unlocked, the door wouldn't budge. Down near the floor, he found the culprit: a metal flap screwed into both the wall and the door, held in place with a padlock. Bracing himself against the opposite wall, he kicked out again and again, until the screws of the padlock were pulled out of the plaster and the door swung free of the frame.

Misery came running out of the darkness. Black mascara was streaked down the tear tracks on her cheeks. She grabbed on to him, sobbing. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “He just told me to wait for a second, and then he locked me in.”

“It's okay,” Peter said. He stroked her hair, glad to be so much taller so she couldn't see the look of horror on his face. He'd always known that some people would turn desperate as Ardor approached, but he'd never expected that desperation to touch him so closely.

Misery pulled away, and in the wan light from the window, he saw her eyes widen. “Peter,” was all she said, but the tone of warning was unmistakable.

He turned. A pack of silhouettes was coming down the hallway, amorphous and faceless.

“Who's down there?” one of them said.

“Get ready to run,” Peter whispered.

There was no way they could both get past, but in the dark, in the confusion of limbs, he could make space for her at least. A running double clothesline, launched unexpectedly, took everyone down in a pile, and Peter watched from the ground as Misery disappeared back down the staircase.

They were just a bunch of kids really—not much older than Peter himself—but all of them had the hollow, haunted faces of drug addicts. They took him back into the lobby and through a door marked
FITNESS CENTER
. Down another set of stairs, Peter found himself in a pretty pathetic excuse for an exercise room—gray carpet, a few ancient stationary bikes, a set of scuffed-up iron weights—everything flickering and predatory in the candlelight.

“Take off your shoes,” one of the guys said.

“Seriously?”

“Just do it. Socks too.”

Barefoot now, Peter was prodded past the bikes and the weights, past a rack of threadbare towels and an empty watercooler, and through a swinging door into the locker room. The heavy smell of steam. A black plastic mat on the floor bit little hexagons into the soles of his feet. Then a frosted glass door opened with a whoosh of hot air onto a wide, low-ceilinged room, lit with a single battery-­powered halogen lamp. There were half a dozen showerheads built into the walls, and all of them were turned on, sending their separate streams toward the single drain at the center of the room. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all tiled in a sickly yellowish brown, and everything was fuzzy with fog. The water was scalding hot, forcing Peter up on his toes.

On a long brown bench just inside the door, Golden sat back against the wall, wearing nothing but a towel and his infamous necklace. He smiled when he saw Peter.

“This guy kicked in Bobo's apartment door,” one of the junkies said. “Says he came for his sister or something.”

“Go get Bobo,” Golden said. “He should be up on the roof.”

The junkies left. As the door swung shut again, the steam swirled, revealing Golden a little more clearly. His skin was a dense sketchbook of tattoos: on his right arm, an upside-down cross, dripping blood; on his left, a naked woman stepping up to a gallows attended by a black-suited executioner. His entire chest was taken up with a depiction of hell—all faded-red flames and devils punishing the wicked with pitchforks. The eyes of the suffering men and women were aimed upward, toward the place where the tattoo finally ended, just below Golden's Adam's apple.

Peter considered making a run for it, but Golden was between him and the door. A snub-nosed pistol lay on the bench by his hip, like a pet.

“Hey there, big man.”

“How do you still have hot water?” An inane question, but Peter felt stupid with fear.

“We rigged up the gas. Why, you want a shower?”

“I was just wondering.”

“No, that's a great idea! Why don't you undress for me, big man? I'll get more comfortable too.” Golden reached behind his head and unclasped the necklace, uncoiling it loop by loop.

“I'd rather not.”

“I wasn't asking.” Golden glanced over at the gun.

Peter knew it would be interpreted as a surrender, but the room
was
stiflingly hot with all that steam. He took off his sweater and the shirt underneath, if only to be better prepared for whatever was coming next.

“Peter!” Golden said with sincere amusement. “You've got ink!”

“Yeah. So what?”

He'd had it done a year ago, in Los Angeles, when the basketball team went to Nationals. After their last game, they'd all gotten thoroughly wasted in the hotel, then set out to explore the city. They couldn't find a bar that would take their fake IDs, but a tattoo parlor called Sunset Body Art was happy enough to have their underage business. While most of the team went for the usual stuff—Chinese symbols for victory, jersey numbers, girlfriends' names, and, in Cartier's case, an anachronistic
MOM
done in an elaborate Gothic script—Peter had wanted something special. He told the artist that he was looking for some way to honor his brother without being obvious or sentimental.

“What's it mean?” Golden asked.

“Nothing.”

“Of course it means something.”

“It wouldn't mean shit to you,” Peter snarled.

Golden picked up the gun and fired it once into the ceiling. In such a small room, the sound was deafening.

“Try again,” Golden said.

“It's just hard to explain,” Peter said, his voice shaky. “It's a Celtic cross, like you see on gravestones. And the circle around it, the snake eating its own tail, that's a symbol for eternity. But a circle with a cross inside it like that is also a symbol for Earth. So I guess, for me, it's about the Resurrection. Or resurrection in general.”

Golden nodded. “I like it. Resurrection. That's nice. You know, I got something similar myself.”

He stood up and turned around, revealing the thick ropy muscles of his back, and also another, fresher tattoo. It reached all the way from his waist to the knob at the top of his spine. The colors radiated so bright and vivid that the whole thing seemed to be backlit. At the bottom left corner, just above his waist, spun the tiny blue marble of planet Earth. From there to the opposite shoulder stretched a vast expanse of pitch black—bespeaking dozens of hours of agony under the tattooist's needle—broken up by a handful of small white stars that were only Golden's natural skin tone shining through the ink. Then, taking up his entire right shoulder, a jagged, misshapen rock, blazing through the sky in reds and purples and oranges—divine fire—and just above it, a gigantic hand emerging from the clouds, shaped as if it had just thrown something. On the side of the rock, some words were carved:
AND GOD SAW THAT THE WICKEDNESS OF MAN WAS GREAT IN THE EARTH.

“You know that line?” Golden asked.

“It's from Genesis.”

“That's right.” Golden turned back around. “It comes just before the flood.”

The door of the sauna swung open. Bobo looked bone-tired, with bright purple crescents under his eyes.

“Peter?” he said. “What the fuck?”

Golden tossed his necklace over to Bobo, who just managed to catch the end of it. “You're never gonna guess what the big man here did.”

“What's that?”

“He busted in your door.”

Bobo's face twisted up, terror and rage competing for primacy. “Where's Misery?”

“She got out,” Peter said, and didn't bother to hide his satisfaction. “She's gone.”

The first punch was surprisingly solid; Peter was rocked back on his heels. A splash of red dripped from his nose onto the tile. He raised his fists to defend himself.

“Hands behind your back,” Golden said. He had the gun trained on Peter's forehead. “Bobo, tie him up. He'll probably kick your ass by accident otherwise.”

“You don't have to do this,” Peter said to Bobo. “What's the point?”

“The point?” Bobo said, pulling the necklace tight around Peter's wrists and knotting it. “What point is there supposed to be? This is the end, man. There's no points left.”

“This isn't the end.”

Bobo shook his head. “We can't all afford to be optimistic like you, Peter.”

“It's not optimism—”

“How about I prove to you that this is the end?”

—
it's faith
, Peter was going to say, only before he could, another blow had landed, and then he couldn't remember if he'd said something or if he'd only wanted to say something, because there was just the pain and the stifling steam and the feel of Bobo's skin as he bore Peter down hard against the tile floor, and then the fists falling fast and heavy as meteors, each one exploding in his brain like a supernova, until finally, gratefully, he let the agony overwhelm him and wash the world away.