We All Looked Up

by Tommy Wallach

  Peter

  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.

  Andy

  ALL THE WAY BACK TO the independent, as Bobo bitched about Peter (the asshole who sucker punched him) and Anita (the prude who wussed out at Target) and Eliza (the tease with the big ego), Andy felt the bonds between him and his “best friend” disintegrating, like the single sugar cube Anita always took in her coffee. He’d been so sure that he’d fucked up at the navy base too deeply to ever be forgiven, but then his whole karass had shown up at Northgate. Anita and Eliza had hugged him (and was it just his imagination, or had Anita’s hug been particularly drawn out?), and even Peter, who had more reason to hate him than anyone, had made it clear he didn’t hold a grudge.

  Andy didn’t have a lot of experience with forgiveness­—Bobo had never pardoned his breaking of the pact—so he’d never realized how powerful it could be. It made him want to be a better sort of person, the kind who deserved forgiveness.

  So now he had a new quest. He would find Misery and he would get her home, whatever Bobo had to say about it.

  “I’m gonna go see if she’s feeling better,” Bobo said, once they were back at the Independent.

  Andy followed him up the stairs. “Actually, I think I’ll come along with you. I haven’t seen Miz in forever.”

  “Can you maybe wait until later? I could use some time on my own with her right now.”

  “What for?”

  “Just leave it alone, okay?” Bobo shouted, his words ricocheting off the cement walls of the stairwell. Andy’s heart began to pound like a kick drum in his chest. For the first time in his life, he felt afraid of Bobo.

  “What’s going on, man?”

  Bobo threw his hands up in frustration—and did he notice Andy flinch? “I don’t know. I mean, I’m not supposed to say.”

  “Not supposed to say what?”

  “I can’t tell you in here. Anyone could be listening. Come on.”

  Up on the roof, Golden’s perpetual party had dwindled down to a dozen people congregated around the one working heat lamp, like hobos warming their hands at a trash fire.

  Bobo led Andy to a cold, quiet corner of the roof. “Okay. You ready for the truth?” He took a deep breath. “Misery’s pregnant.”

  Andy’s heart began hammering again. Not because he believed Bobo—the explanation was way too long in coming and way too soap opera to be real—but because of what the lie signified. If Bobo was willing to go this far just to keep Andy from talking to Misery, then something seriously fucked up had to be going on.

  “Wow,” Andy said, playing along as well as he could. “How long have you known?”

  “A few weeks. She wanted to get it dealt with, but all the Planned Parenthoods shut down. That’s why she left home. She felt like she couldn’t hide it once Eliza moved in.”

  “She must be freaking out. I should talk to her.”

  Bobo shook his head. “Nah. She’d be pissed if she knew I told you. And besides, she’s exhausted, like, all the time. I’m sure she’s asleep right now. I’ll try and get her to come out tomorrow, though, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Now let’s drink a couple of beers and forget about all this shit.”

  Only there wasn’t any beer left—just a few cans of room-temperature Sprite—and Andy wasn’t about to forget anything. He was a sleeper agent, secretly working for Team Karass, waiting for just the right moment to activate.

  And he didn’t have to wait long. They’d only been up on the roof for an hour or so when some guy Andy didn’t recognize burst out of the stairwell.

  “Hey, Bobo!”

  “What’s up?”

  “Golden says you should come downstairs. He’s got something for you.”

  “Hopefully it’s more weed,” Bobo said. Andy had to grit his teeth to smile. “You wanna come along?”

  “Nah. I’ll hang up here.”

  “Cool. See you in a bit.”

  Andy gave it a couple of minutes, then headed straight for Bobo’s apartment on the sixth floor.

  He wasn’t sure what to expect, but he had a distinct horror-movie feeling as he walked the long Shining-esque hallway. The door nearest the window had been kicked half off the hinges. On the ground, a latch and a padlock, still clamped shut. The room beyond the door was a wreck—mirrors shattered, sheets shredded, furniture in splinters—as if a wild animal had been imprisoned there.

  There was only one explanation. Somehow Bobo had tricked Misery into coming to his apartment, and then he’d locked her in. Maybe he’d wanted to punish her for dumping him, or maybe he’d really thought that he could convince her to forgive him, if he could only get her to listen.

  Andy was disgusted that someone he’d once called a friend could do something like this. But at the same time, he also felt strangely relieved. Ever since the night the pact went wrong, he’d been suffering under a lead weight
of self-reproach. Now, at last, he was free to hate his best friend. And he did. As deeply and purely as he’d ever hated anything, he hated Bobo. It felt good, to finally arrive on the same page as the rest of his friends—Misery, Anita, Eliza . . .

  And Peter.

  The final piece of the story fell into place. The busted-in door. The “something” Golden had waiting for Bobo downstairs.

  Andy sprinted back down the hallway, took the steps two at a time, moving so fast that he wouldn’t even have noticed them in the lobby if they hadn’t called out to him.

  “Andy!”

  It was Eliza and Anita.

  “Hey!” His happiness at seeing them transformed immediately into fear for their safety.

  Eliza grabbed hold of his wrist. “Is Peter here? Have you seen him?”

  Andy knew that if he told her what he’d seen, she’d insist on coming downstairs.

  “You need to leave, Eliza. Go back to Peter’s house. I promise I’ll bring him and Misery as soon as I can.”

  “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s dangerous here.”

  “We don’t care.”

  Every second he wasted arguing with her was a second he wasn’t helping Peter. “Then just go up to the second floor, okay? Apartment 212 should be unlocked. It’s where I sleep when I’m here.”

  “Is Peter there?”

  “He will be.”

  Then Andy was off again, through the door and down the stairs to the fitness center. He caught Bobo and Golden just as they were coming out of the bathroom.

  “Andy, my man!” Golden clicked the clasp of his necklace back into place. “You just missed the show!”

  “What show?” Andy had directed the question at Bobo, but his former best friend didn’t say a word. He looked as if he’d just been through a war. “Bobo, you okay?”

  “Don’t worry about him,” Golden said. “He was a fucking champ in there. Unfortunately, we have lost track of his lovely little girlfriend.”