Empire City

by Matt Gallagher

  A block from the grocery store, Sebastian checked the map on his phone to make sure he didn’t get lost again, and turned left at the next cross street. It led him to an isolated building surrounded by empty cement lots. A flickering streetlight at the corner revealed a four-story structure made of brick and sandstone trim. A pointed roof shot from the top in a rush, matched by a chimney on the side. Broken stained-glass windows covered much of the front, parallel to a slab of gray stone with the year “1876” carved into it. A decaying wood sign hung underneath the windows, bearing words written in Hebrew or Yiddish or something. Sebastian wasn’t sure.

  “A real temple,” he said to himself. “Funny.”

  Dance music rumbled from somewhere beneath the building. Sebastian walked around to the far side of the temple and spotted a staircase. Following the noise of the music and lights intermittently flashing blue and yellow, he came to an open steel door. A thin woman with a long neck and scarf met him there, handing over two drink tickets without a word or eye contact.

  The basement was dim, the air in it dank. Sebastian waded into the throng, some of whom were indeed wearing fringed vests and black jeans and wallet chains. It was standing room only, fifty or so people jammed into darkness under dueling strobe lights. Onstage, a lanky bearded man wrapped in a camo poncho read slam poetry, his words attempting to match the beat and rhythm of the music. Sebastian found a pillar in the back to lean against.

  “Splish splash, a fascist was taking a bath,” the man whispered into the microphone. “All alone on a knock knocking night.” Then he began chanting. “Who’s there? Life! Liberty! The pursuit of diggity! Like life without the F. Or country without the cunt.” His voice lowered in timbre and pace. “The fever dream… indulges. The gobblers… wargasm and… the… chickenhawks… crow. So… we… they… I… fought. The rest is. Is? Is!” Now he raised his voice. “Who will survive America? Another man’s morning, another son’s gun!” And, again, a whisper. “My supper is maroon. My star is spoon. Forever fleeting, looms.”

  Sebastian was beside himself. If a sense of shame didn’t keep a person from free association like this, some sort of social contract needed to. The man dropped the microphone and walked offstage, out of view. A voice in the crowd yelled “Golf clap!” and a small round of polite applause followed.

  Need beer, Sebastian thought. He headed to the bar in the near corner while the thin woman from the entrance walked onstage and picked up the microphone.

  “Wasn’t that something,” she said, somehow smiling without moving her lips. “Awesome, Pablo Joe, as always.” Her long neck craned down as she unfolded a sheet of paper. “Time for the next question in Utopia trivia. First correct response I hear gets another drink ticket. So: in episode four, on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, Bobby confronts McNamara and—”

  The crowd booed at McNamara’s name.

  The woman smiled again without moving her lips. “Bobby confronts McNamara and says, ‘Some men see things as they are and ask why.’ What does he say next?”

  “I dream of things that never were, and ask why not!” Sebastian adored that line, and knew it by heart, but couldn’t bring himself to shout it. Someone else did. The crowd cheered and the woman with the mic handed down the prize.

  “Now, something else. A band setting the world on fire. Scenedarella calls them ‘indie’s next great hope.’ The Colonel Mustard Times wrote just last week that the single ‘The Emperor Has No Fashion Sense’ ‘resonates with burning detachment.’ And Pitchfork—Pitchfork!—named them a Gypsy Town must-see. Please give a warm welcome to the one and only… Derivative.”

  A faint brunette walked onto the stage, followed by a tall white guy with slick-backed hair wearing a leather jacket and a tiny white guy with slick-backed hair in a tan turtleneck. The brunette wore a maroon romper and black tights and had bathed her face in a powdery makeup. The tall man in the leather jacket took his place behind the drums while his turtlenecked comrade began tuning a guitar. The woman looked over at him, and he nodded. She burped into the microphone.

  “That’s a burp,” she said, voice blank as a state radio host. Then the guitarist started in with a long, lurid riff. The amps snarled to life and the dance floor began moving like an octopus, arms flailing one way then the other, without discernable progress in any direction. A ripple in the crowd pushed Sebastian forward. He caught himself on the shoulders of the person in front of him. He felt the body go rigid.

  “Sorry,” he said over the music. “Crazy in here.”

  A short, freckly man with ginger wisps turned around and sized up Sebastian. He wore tight jeans and an even tighter black shirt that showed off a well-maintained physique: full delts, ball-like biceps, thick triceps, and abs flat as a coffin. Show-me muscles, Sebastian thought. Superb ones. A large wooden cross dangled in front of the man’s chest, held there by a leather string that wrapped around his neck.

  Sebastian studied the black shirt for signs of beer spillage, and, finding none, sighed in relief. The freckly man tilted his head and grinned, revealing a pair of dimples and blocky, gapped teeth. “The hostage,” he said, reaching up to grip Sebastian by the shoulder. “Been a minute since Germany.”

  “Oh, shit.” Recognition smacked Sebastian late. “Grady Flowers. Good, uh, to see you.”

  Grady Flowers, better known as the Sniper. Proud American, proud member of the Volunteers, fond of boating, duck hunting, and appearing shirtless on the cover of Bourbon & Bullet. “The extroverted yin to Pete Swenson’s reticent yang,” one of the profiles declared. “Grady Flowers was a high school baseball star in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who heeded the warfighter’s call.

  “Every American war since the revolution has included a Flowers man in it, to include a Medal of Honor recipient who fought in the trenches of World War I. According to Grady, ‘I wasn’t about to end that.’ He enlisted in the fabled 75th Ranger Regiment, deploying multiple times to combat zones across the globe. ‘Did what we had to do to accomplish the mission,’ Flowers says when asked about his tours, before citing Deuteronomy as a book that inspires him. Flowers joined the then top-secret Hero Project, which would meld his elite training as a soldier with breakthrough technology developed by the U.S. government under the supervision of the Council of Victors…”

  “No offense, man,” Sebastian continued in the basement of the Temple. “But you’re pretty much the last person I thought would be here.”

  Flowers laughed and ordered two cans of beer. The bartender handed them over and took his cash with zero affect. Sebastian raised his hand as a show of thanks. Flowers fist-bumped Sebastian’s open palm instead.

  “No one here knows who I am,” Flowers said, pointing out at the crowd. His accent summoned of mist and forest. “It’s weird.”

  Sebastian nodded. He didn’t know what to say. Flowers probably hadn’t been anonymous for a very long time. And if he’d ever before had a conversation with Grady Flowers, he didn’t remember it. All of Germany seemed a blur. He wanted to ask about everything that had happened since, but where to begin? Hey, Flowers, what’s it like being the most feared killer on the planet? What’s it like being able to teleport? Sebastian was a fanboy but didn’t want to come across like that. They were bonded because of the cythrax bomb, and would be forever, but he knew Flowers through the stories and press. Flowers knew him as “the hostage.” That was it.

  He thought of something to say.

  “Britt Swenson?” he asked. “She invited me.”

  Flowers’s face twisted, confused. Then he pointed to the stage. “Right behind you, hostage.”

  Sebastian turned around.

  “I don’t love you like I love me,” the singer rasped, moving across the stage in a pair of banana-yellow Converses, “and that’s all, all your fault.” Sebastian realized now the glut of white powder on her face was intentional; she was going for a geisha look, complete with bright red lipstick and bunned hair. She stared out above the crowd, indifferent and faraway, or at least tr
ying to convey that. Her voice lacked the range of a pure vocalist, but its jaggedness worked, given the half-sung, half-spoken lyrics. The rest of the time it was concealed by the guitarist, who was keeping his head down like he’d stepped into a puddle. The drummer smiled openmouthed, a knit cap cocked back so it folded over itself.

  “Whoa,” Sebastian said. “Didn’t realize that was—she’s killing it.”

  “Yessir,” Flowers said. “Lady like that—I’d settle down, go straight and narrow. Even deal with Pete’s nonsense, since we’d be family.” He paused. “Too bad she’s got a fag thing.”

  It was Sebastian’s turn to make a face, first because of the word Flowers had used, then because he didn’t know what he’d meant. How to tell a Ranger, a Volunteer, that language was malleable and culturally delicate and they weren’t in the Barbary Coast? Sebastian didn’t know. So he asked Flowers to explain.

  “Those two.” Flowers pointed to the guitarist and drummer. “They’re gay. Like, with each other.” Then he pointed to Britt. “Also her boyfriends. Like, with each other.” He shook his head and sipped from his beer. “Would never fly in Tennessee.”

  Sebastian held a puritanical streak, he knew, something he’d inherited from his mom and she from her mom before her. But part of moving to Empire City as a young person meant shedding the mores of the provinces, or at least pretending to. Live and let live and the like. So he just shrugged and said, “Everyone’s a little gay, right?”

  Flowers blinked and blinked and eventually laughed. “You’re crazy, hostage.”

  The two men may have been strangers, but they were strangers together. So they watched the set together, too, filling strained pauses with jokes about bohemians and vague allusions to their shared stay at the hospital. Flowers said he didn’t remember much from it, either. They got another round of beers, then another. Flowers asked if Sebastian would do a Truck Bomb shot with him. Sebastian winced and told him they didn’t call it that here. Flowers apologized, he’d forgotten he wasn’t in the South, and ordered two Kill Shots like a proper citizen. The shot roiled Sebastian’s stomach, but he managed to keep it down. Sebastian tried not to look at Britt much, even though he knew she couldn’t see into the crowd because of stage lights. They were pretty good, Sebastian thought, though Derivative’s style and songs were a bit, well, unoriginal. He asked about Pete Swenson. Flowers said he was supposed to be there, had been the one who told him to come, but the oversize bastard was nowhere to be seen.

  “Typical Pete shit,” Flowers said, his voice flexing hard to sound amused. “Do as he says, not as he does.”

  Time passed. Derivative kept playing. Flowers left for the bathroom and didn’t come back. Sebastian got another beer. Someone bumped into him, and he felt a trickle of cold liquid on his back. He counted to twelve very slowly in his head then found another pillar to lean against. Some more time passed. Derivative kept playing.

  Sebastian yawned and his right leg began twitching. He took off his sunglasses and chewed on one of the ends. Then he popped a blue Valium from his pocket and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. It’s all good, he thought. All good. Something about the noise, and the sweat, and the flashing lights, and the talking with Flowers, made him think of the night he’d been rescued. The short guy with the asterisk scar had gone home, so the other militants had unbound him and let him join the dominoes game. The one with the crooked smile and construction-worker hands knew bits of English and was asking why America could put a man on the moon but not bring electricity to the lands it invaded. It was a fine question and Sebastian hadn’t known the answer. Then the helicopters came on like a tempest, and the whole building began shaking. They’d bound and blindfolded him again and hid him in a pile of loose blankets and boxes and told him not to even think about making a sound and they all grabbed their AKs and ran upstairs and gunshots rang out in mad, dizzy minutes and then there was a pause like a long echo and he smelled ice of all things so he’d sat up and pushed off the blindfold against a box corner just in time to see the whole world turn to the brightest, darkest star and—

  “Hey! Hostage!”

  Sebastian shot back to the now.

  “Sleeping standing up. I’m impressed.”

  “Naw,” Sebastian said to Flowers, checking his chin for drool, then readjusting his sunglasses. “Praying to the boho gods.”

  Britt, her face wiped clean of geisha makeup, stood next to Flowers with her head tilted. The omega symbol on her arm glinted like an X on a treasure map.

  “They wouldn’t listen to you.” Britt frowned and looked at his feet. “Nice shoes.”

  Sebastian shook out his legs to make sure they hadn’t fallen asleep, too. “That was really good,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  Britt brought her hands together into prayer and bowed her head.

  “See Pete yet?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t make it,” Flowers said, cutting in. “Gonna meet up with us at the lofts.”

  Britt didn’t respond, just turned and walked toward her boyfriends, who were waiting at a rear exit. Flowers clutched at his heart, winked at Sebastian, then trailed her steps. Sebastian stayed at his pillar until Britt called over her shoulder, “Come hang with us, Sebastian Rios.”

  As he moved into the midsummer night, following Flowers who followed Britt who followed her boyfriends, Sebastian caught a whiff of something different, something he’d never smelled in Empire City. Rain was coming, but that wasn’t it. Wood smoke, he decided. Like new beginnings. He kept that to himself, though, not wanting to sound eager. He jogged to catch up with the group.

  CHAPTER 5

  MIA WOKE BEFORE the alarm. She usually did on weekdays. She was a person of routine and that’s what routine did. Sleep whispered like a lullaby through the black morning but she pushed it away, sitting up in bed to put her mind in order. If she’d been dreaming, she’d already forgotten what about.

  Monday, she thought. Cardio.

  A storm had rolled through the city late in the night, leaving the brittle musk of rain. A coldness nipped at the top of Mia’s shoulder. How do they keep getting in here? she wondered, rubbing at the mosquito bite. I shut the screen last night.

  Jesse hadn’t come home. He’d sent a few texts, first saying he wasn’t sure when he’d be leaving work, then saying he wouldn’t be. All-nighters during Bureau emergencies weren’t unprecedented. Mia knew the deal. All part of marrying a special agent. Even if waking up by herself in darkness brought on a loneliness she didn’t trust.

  Mia ate a yogurt, then changed into light workout gear and fitted her running leg and sneakers. Downstairs, the summer air smelled of metal and moss. Dim streetlights lined the corners like sentries and the sidewalks had almost dried. A garbage truck on an adjacent block groaned through the still while monitor drones pulsed red in the sky. She stretched her left leg and then her core in front of her building, looking up to watch the flag whip around atop the Global Trade. Sixty stars and thirteen stripes, pale against the dark. All those rings and stars in the blue canton struck her as cluttered, still.

  Mia finished stretching and tapped at her right knee. Her running prosthetic was hard and coiled, like a spring. She appreciated the city most during these early morning runs, because it was empty enough to seem welcoming, even hopeful. It reminded her of the city from her childhood. It reminded her of the America she’d grown up in.

  Daybreak always ended the spell.

  Cut the crap, Mia thought. These ten miles aren’t going to run themselves. Then she took a deep breath, set the digital green of her wristwatch to 00:00, hit start, and began, the joints of her leg cracking with the motion while the socket of her prosthetic did the same. She headed west, toward the harbor.

  Mia had run most of her life, discovering as a girl that she was good at it and being good meant respect, and trophies, and approval. It made an object of her body, but it was a functional object, something that mattered to her even before she’d figured out why. She’d push
ed herself to be very good at points in her life, competing in college for two seasons before it interfered with ROTC, and later running the city marathon her first year with the prosthetic to prove that she could. But she’d never crossed into greatness, and for that she’d come to be thankful. Mia lacked the masochism of true runners, the renegade fanatical gene to ignore and ignore all the warning blinkers thousands of years of evolution had instilled in the human brain. Bloody calluses and angry muscles were one thing. Tendons ripping from bone were another.

  The baby, or not-baby, entered Mia’s mind. She focused on her breathing. Then came General Collins’s job offer. She focused on her breathing.

  The first scratches of sun were tracing the water. Lady Liberty rose in the distance, droopy torch in her right hand. The whole statue needed repair, though how, and when, had become a political hot potato. Decades’ worth of money allotted for national monuments had gone to the Council of Victors, toward honoring the triumph of Vietnam. No one wanted to be the congressperson who redirected funds from that.

  A lot of citizens had come to loathe the statue, considering it an eyesore. Mia’s father thought it a sentimental leftover. She sort of liked it, the way a person enjoys a musty childhood blanket found in storage. She remembered climbing to the torch on a field trip as a girl, through a staircase of graffiti and rickety metal, seeing the city from an entirely new angle. A snapshot of old American might, sealed in memory.

  They’d closed the torch after the Palm Sunday attacks, then the entire island. Students like her adolescent cousins wouldn’t ever see Empire City as she had. No one could now. The sad, corroding statue was their normal. It was all they knew. In the meantime, Lady Liberty sank slowly into the island it rested on. Turned out it’d been set on sodden ground.