The Airways

by Jennifer Mills

It was like they never left.

  CIRCLE

  Beijing draws them into its system, accommodates them easily, churns on undisturbed. It feels familiar, known, a body patterned after bodies, a generous host. It loves and welcomes all forgotten things. They slip quickly through the city’s surface, travel safely beneath its skin. They are glad to be on the crowded subway, to have won some ease of motion, recovered from flight. They are gaining power.

  They leap with the air, enter with breath and rise with blood. They are strong enough to let the bodies push back at them, reform them. They bend with shoulders that bend the way their bodies make them. Whole lifetimes have been lived in each of these bodies, places known as superficially, as deeply, as cities.

  Even at night, when the trains stop, they don’t need to travel far. They linger with security guards. They stay as long as they like; some of these bodies are tired, caught in routine, they don’t fight hard. Once, they spend the night in a woman who scuttles past the platform to sleep in the gap beside the rails, curled into the nest that she has made there, and they keep her awake until the trains start up again, leaving her in the morning as shaken as a lover is by violence.

  Down here, everything is simplified, separated and divided into a web of rails, stations; there are tracks, procedures, rules. There’s a centre and a growing periphery. It’s like the games people play on their tiny screens, their bodies burrowed into them. Little functions, small rewards. They feel the movements in the bodies as they play. Running endlessly, dodging obstacles, poised in battle, they are twitching in the shoulders, feet. The mind’s commands so simple, pre-intellectual. They feel safe in that lapse. They run through the bodies in the same way: ghost impulses, quashed reflexes, crimes thought about but not committed. They make rupture. They play too.

  This woman, an ache in her heels like fire. She shuffles to an empty seat but too late to take it, frowns down on the balding winner – she could smite him. TV screens bleat cartoon instructions, happy cops jumping. The line is new-built and skips stations. Each announcement holds a name they don’t recognise. It’s all new, a new city that sprouted in this city’s place, but it didn’t displace the old one; they found ways to live together.

  The woman clicks her jaw and mutters something. Her mouth tastes dry and stale. They will never not wonder at how bodies work, how each act cascades into the next; they will never be able to simplify the infinite stream of messages, or understand how people manage to live while ignoring so much of what being alive feels like. Maybe ignoring most of it is necessary. All these desires and hurts, signals and impulses, it’s too much to integrate with one awareness. Sensations flare and are extinguished like hot ashes falling on water. No-one could manage full consciousness of a body, of dying, and believe in their own singularity.

  She moves a little closer to the door, checks her station, resting one heel then the next. Her eyes trace along the line of glinting lights; the next stop beckons. They switch the signal in her feet, reroute the tracks for her, and she steps lightly from the train, the pain forgotten.

  There is joy in these small interventions. A musky scent, his face down at a screen, the thumb trembling from its use. Flicking through videos, lightning attention, holding his breath. A spasm runs up his arm. They unstitch the thumb, yank at the muscle. The body is returned to awareness. It meets itself, closes the space that had been open, and they slide out at the next station. Any body could be theirs, an infinite palace of human rooms.

  Here, folded over. Shrunk by migraine. She looks up, catches her reflection in the window, flinches. They shift her gaze away from the moving mirror and into the distance, the train ahead, which for a moment gives the illusion of infinity: a paradox of receding possibility. Just looking at it hurts her, but she can’t look away. They hold her there against her will, the headache bursting. They want to feel the wound in the back of the skull. They want to remember.

  She’s so tired. There is pain, and then there is the boredom of pain. The bodies will all be like this. There will be an endless repetition of the same injuries, the same aches and fears and tensions. Their fury can’t sustain them, any more than grief sustains the living. There’s nowhere to land. They should have gone a long time ago.

  She blinks back tears.

  They flee her shadow. They must keep moving, stay with the looping circle line. They feel its vibrations in the bodies, bodies that all seem to think they are safe. They flicker quickly, carelessly.

  In the next man something wants to snap. The energy at half capacity, a body in struggle. He’s holding on against the flow of crowds, the roll of the train, his own fatigue. They cling to him, a possibility. Afraid of signs, he shrinks from the proliferation of instructions. Smells of country, horse-work, leather. Worn hands slip against the steel railings. He mutters something, a prayer or a list of stations. There’s comfort in the pattern in his mouth. He gets off at a transfer station, follows the crowd. Tiles crack down one wall. Stops at a poster for wolves, fascinated. The animal shape of his want does not belong here, it wants to break him. The crowd flows past. They return to its river.

  A woman rolling a suitcase with one broken wheel, the blouse confining, sweat against her sides. She drags the case downstairs. Halfway, the weight lifts behind her; someone has picked up one end, and her face lights up, ‘Xièxie nǐ,’ as she turns. The girl nods, serious and strong, and answers in a hushed Beijing purr, ‘Méi shìr.’ When they reach the bottom she lets go and they go with her, brushing the sweat from the carrying hand against one thigh, walking steadily away, the lifted weight of a small kindness.

  She touches the watch on one wrist, twists without consulting it. She doesn’t pause, she knows her way; they like her easy intention. Her muscle, her strength. She does not hesitate before the opening doors, but strides in. There are seats but she stands with her arms folded, legs set apart. Knows how the train moves, no need to hold on. The rhythm of place lives in her body, it has entered her. They want her confidence, her power.

  She watches another woman across the aisle, seated. A pulse of desire, hidden below skin. Her face doesn’t change. They release her control a little, and she shudders with pleasure, then looks away.

  There’s no space for them. They give her what she wants, and leave her.

  A boy writhes in the other woman’s lap, homework open. She begins to read the signs aloud and point to the characters, teaching him the mother tongue. He isn’t listening, and her flat hand lifts, tensed. They stop it in the air. Her mouth hurts inside, where she has gone uselessly over the words too many times. They soothe the ulcers, soften the hand, restore a little patience.

  Stronger and more careful now, capable of kindness.

  And what of their own desires, their own need? They’re looking for something impossible.

  But they feel it there, just around the corner. The trains turn their wide circles, make their exchanges, the bodies breathe each other’s air. It’s sometimes a scent that pulls them forward, sometimes an image: the back of a head, the motion of a hand. There is a way through. It’s so close. Take this young man, his awareness. He is tall, slender, a little androgynous. A curve of hair touches one cheek. A glimpse at the periphery. He looks up:

  And there is Adam. Like he’s been waiting for them all this time.

  SYDNEY

  Adam sipped from a can. The aluminium might have been chilled by the ice in the laundry tub, but the beer itself was barely cooler than room temperature. He didn’t know many of the people who had shown up at the party, and drifted from room to room, adding to a few conversations, unable to interrupt others. The mood was tight, conspiratorial. No-one seemed to see him standing at the edge of their group, let alone invite him to join in.

  Marita’s law-student friends came in two types: the clean, uptight ones who were doing coke in the front part of the house, and the scruffier ones who were out the back, stoned and talking loudly. Both groups prob
ably went to the same private schools. The rest of the guests, squeezed into the small lounge room or standing around in the kitchen, must have been Kate’s friends, or possibly Yun’s; the queers had got hold of the stereo and were dancing.

  After leaning against the wall in the laundry for a minute, he chose the backyard and sat on a bench near the stoners, who were talking intensely about the latest political grudge match. When no-one spoke to him he pretended to read the can in his hand. Beside him, a young bearded man was explaining the shortcomings of emissions trading to a patient young woman. Adam thought he might involve himself in the discussion, offer an opinion about Rudd or Turnbull, but he could not muster strong feelings about either of them so he gave up and let the sound of the man’s voice wash over him. At least the rain had cleared, though the bench was damp; it was soaking through his jeans, which might explain why the seat was vacant. He stayed where he was mostly because the thought of having to get up and find somewhere else to be filled him with despair. From the house, he heard the sound of broken glass, then someone laughing.

  When he looked up he saw Yun in the doorway, peering out. They caught his eye and their expression changed. Adam shifted along his bench to make room for them, but they disappeared inside again. He turned to pay attention to the conversation beside him, but found he could not follow it at all; he had lost the thread. The woman glanced at him, then laughed into her plastic cup of sparkling wine; she seemed to be enjoying herself at somebody’s expense.

  Adam picked his way through the kitchen, past abandoned plastic cups of half-drunk sangria, empty cans, the remains of a plate of dips. Red wine was pooled in the baba ghannouj. He pressed himself into a gap between two dauntingly tall women – netballers, Kate’s – and into the hall. On the stairs he paused, dizzy and bereft. He had drunk too much beer too quickly, he thought; he was light-headed. He decided he needed to piss.

  Usually, when he paused here, the house was empty, or asleep. He looked down the hall now, past a couple of close-talking law students, to Yun’s door. It was closed.

  The music was beginning to irritate him, but people were still dancing, and neighbours had not complained yet. If they did Marita would deal with it. She was good with cops, after her experience. Somehow he found himself drawn into a corridor conversation, the third and silent party in an argument about a band that may or may not be as amazing live as people said they were. He couldn’t really hear the argument, so edged away. A stranger’s iPhone sat on the bookshelf, unattended; his own discarded iPod lay unplugged beside it. He tucked it into a pocket.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, pressing the girl’s shoulder when she did not hear him. She ducked out of his way without flinching too visibly. There was a line, mostly girls, blocking his way to the bathroom. He considered going out into the lane behind the house, but decided to wait.

  The girls were like a catalogue, a range of shapes and sizes. Women, he corrected himself. He watched them, assessed them, cautiously attentive to any response in himself. Adam had had girlfriends, a few anyway, but none who had really moved him. The girls had chosen him each time, and each tried to mould him into a different shape. It never felt very fair.

  He saw Yun press through the corridor, past the argument about the band that had turned into something more intimate. Adam averted his eyes, tried to hide from them, though he could not have said why. He watched them move, at once elegant and awkward, to their door. An emptiness expanded in his solar plexus. It was harmless, nothing serious, just a temporary fascination. He was a good guy, he knew that, watching them struggle with the doorhandle with one hand. They pressed one hip against the wall to steady themselves, the other hand curved around a glass. Water, or something clear. He wanted to go down there and open it for them.

  ‘All yours,’ a woman said, and then another behind him, more loudly, ‘Hey, mate, bathroom’s free.’ He turned away.

  The guests trickled out much earlier than he had expected; apart from the few who were headed to a club somewhere, the night had quickly grown subdued. Too much talk of the vigil for that woman had killed the mood. Adam stood on the stair, looking down the corridor, the scene transformed to its proper silence. A light was on in Yun’s room now, the door left ajar. He thought he remembered a light. A look returned, an invitation. Afterwards, he wasn’t sure.

  There would be so much that he did not remember. His hands under the cold tap, the laughter of women outside. The way his body felt, the mingling of fear and relief, as he crept upstairs. Then lying awake in his room, waiting for the music to stop, the noise of conversation to disappear. Waiting until the house was silent and dark and he could pass through its belly unseen.

  He didn’t know he would forget. The calm in Yun’s undisturbed face, their fragile privacy, the curtain of night that protected them both. He thought at the time he would remember every detail, that it was significant, that something was about to change. Something serious.

  It was embarrassment, more than anything, that cleaned up after him. The necessity of simplification. Like his mother, clearing her husband’s things from the house, not wanting to see a single reminder: removing the evidence that might bring her grief. Well, she had done nothing wrong. And neither had he.

  It was not his fault, what happened to them. Some people must be marked this way, a fault line in them.

  When he stood in their doorway, he saw that the light was coming from a bedside lamp. They had fallen asleep with it on, their face hidden in the pillow. Kindly, quietly, he walked around their bed to switch it off for them. They did not stir. He looked down from this new angle at their face, their body, feeling the breath move in his chest in time with theirs.

  He would not remember standing there, aware of the life in his own body. Or reaching to touch Yun’s one exposed shoulder, the delicate, smooth skin. Or feeling them breathe beneath his touch, then turning, opening their eyes, pale like two carvings of the moon. He would forget their face. There was nothing else he could do.

  ‘Adam,’ they said.

  Adam smiled. He had almost forgotten his name. He thought he would not need to remember; he thought this would stay in his body forever. Their skin under his hand, and the sweet movement of the breath in their body, met in his own. He had crossed over at last. He kept his hand there as if stopping an invisible wound. But he felt them start beneath his touch, and sit up in the dark, and scramble away from him. He felt the sudden pain of separation, as desire became poison.

  ‘What the fuck, Adam.’

  The flat of his hand was still tingling.

  ‘You can’t be here.’

  But he was here, and he was not hurting anyone. He did not deserve their strange fury.

  ‘Can you hear me? Adam. For fuck’s sake, get out of my room. Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone.’

  FLICKER

  They see him before he sees them. The face so lost, he could be sleepwalking. They have a chance to watch him, while he doesn’t know they’re watching. A rare pleasure, not unlike a mirror.

  The boy lets them look, but they can feel resistance building. A long fringe covers one third of his face. His lips pursed, perhaps in thought. He blinks, and they enjoy the shadow cast by lashes. They feel close to him, help him lift a sleeve to push the hair from the eyes so they can see. He accepts this much, as the train turns. When it straightens, they send his eyes down the row of people, crowds of businessmen and -women, teenagers, traders, readers, screens; they look restlessly on, past a woman staring at her phone, sucking absently at a corner of her collar, past a bald head, a scarfed one, a hunk of curls, until it all becomes impressionistic, a kaleidoscope of body parts in motion.

  There he is. Still there. They could almost laugh.

  They could hold his breath. Shut down the autonomic override. Seize the diaphragm, the lungs, until he dizzies, falls. Until the oxygen doesn’t get to the brain, his body gives out, the system collapses. They
could stop everything; they could fall with him. Let rage drift away, let it dissolve into the air. And maybe this is what they were always supposed to do. They are tired of flight.

  His gaze catches.

  The train turns a corner, and while it does all distance disappears. The vertical lines concertina closed around the vanishing point. The train straightens, begins to pick up speed, and his skin prickles lightly on the back of the neck. The palms emit a little sweat. They know the signs, but not how long it will take. A minute or two, and he will start to go.

  Still uncertain, they cast his eyes down the spine of the metal reptile. It’s like looking into a doubled mirror at an infinite regression of selves. Of course they are strangers. His vision is beginning to spark as the cells fire, panicking. They feel his fight and override it. They make him look. They hold his breath, hold him upright, maintain the pressure on the wound. Until they fix on a still point, the animal in shadow. Their gaze will wake him.

  At last, two familiar eyes look back. Smooth, like polished stone.

  Dim concrete whips past in the dark. The face has changed a little, but the gaze is just the same. That slight unhinging in it, the need. It isn’t beautiful; it wasn’t ever beautiful. Some private damage, private hope, kept secret from himself. Did he think he could escape it?

  They find they pity him. Maybe they always did.

  They watch as Adam rolls aside for the people pressing past him. He isn’t comfortable. He looks too heavy for himself, too bulky to stand up properly, his skin ill-fitting. His body is awkward here, uncultured, rough; it hasn’t learned how to be. A few of the other passengers watch carefully, as if he might do something strange or inappropriate at any moment. A woman in a yellow cardigan, a man in a cheap blue suit, and this youth.

  Adam checks his reflection. Adjusts the collar of his jacket. They can see where the fake lambskin has rubbed away like mange. An animal innocence, hardly aware of itself as predator, as prey.