It wasn’t until Bruno and Baby Jane jumped up behind her, partially blocking the light, that Mannie Groening laid down his trumpet and everyone stopped and looked up.
Kurtz’s face was plunged almost completely into shadow so that only a few people, standing very near the truck, recognized her now. And when she did begin to speak, even with the help of the cordless microphone she carried, people didn’t immediately seem to hear. They leaned in toward one another and asked, “Who is that?” or “What did she say?”
Even Lota, who was standing nearby, had to strain, at first. The microphone screeched. Then Bruno and Baby Jane stepped back; the light they’d blocked burst out in a brilliant flash.
“Cruelty and injustice,” Kurtz said, her voice carrying now, the light framing her in a luminous glow. “Intolerance, oppression.”
The murmur of the crowd grew to a rumble, then almost to a roar. “Sometimes,” Kurtz said, “you have to take a leap of faith.” The crowd exploded. Mannie Groening played a few licks on the trumpet. “The time for that leap is now,” Kurtz said.
The music erupted; the dancing began. Instantly, Lota was swept into the crowd. She tried hard to push her way back to the edge. She pulled and shoved, tore blindly at people both in front and behind, but it was no use. The crowd had her firmly in its grip; it refused to release her.
She gave up. She tried to give up—to allow herself, like the moment itself, to simply exist, cut off from any seeming direction. She stretched out her hand and let it be clasped in passing. She felt the electric shock of contact. She stumbled, nearly fell, was lifted up.
The future is this, she thought. Is here. Is carrying me along…
Another hand reached out and she took it. But the pressure was different this time. Her whole body tensed; she tried and failed to retract her hand.
“Haroooooooooo!”
It was her brother Miles. His head swung dangerously in her direction and his eyes were lit up—nearly yellow, like a crow’s. “Can you believe this?” he shouted.
Lota could smell his breath—it was strangely sweet. Again she attempted to release her hand.
“Can you fucking believe this?”
Lota yanked her hand hard and managed to free herself—but Miles caught her by the sleeve. She was no longer thinking about getting back to the edge and only wished, desperately, that she could lose herself again in the crowd. She didn’t want to have to hold Miles’s hand, to shake her head at him, to say, “No, I don’t fucking believe it!”
A hard lump formed in her throat. She lurched forward—but Miles’s grip was solid; he righted her.
“You okay?”
Lota doubled over again and heaved, but nothing came. Miles continued to hold on. He floated—a dark shadow above her. A dark shadow with yellow eyes. Yes, he and everyone else in the whole world, Lota thought, allowed themselves to float, to be simply pushed along, when she—alone—could not.
“You okay, little sister?” Miles asked.
In the eighth grade, Lota remembered, she had a teacher with hair nearly as red as her grandmother’s had been and a thick mainland accent Lota had tried to imitate for a while. She hadn’t even known she was doing it until her family said, “What’s wrong with you?” Her mother had forced her mouth open to see if anything had got stuck down her throat.
The teacher—her name was Miss Everly—had told them a story about crabs in a bucket. If you put crabs in a bucket they will try to climb out, Miss Everly had said. But the crabs on the bottom will keep pulling the crabs at the top down into the bucket, so instead of a few, or all, of the crabs getting up to the top of the bucket, none of the crabs will get out.
At the end of the story, Miss Everly asked the class what they thought the story was about.
“Crabs,” said Dex, in the row next to her. He emphasized the word in a way that made it sound dirty, and everybody laughed.
Miss Everly shrugged. “Yes and no,” she told Dex.
It wasn’t until years later, when she heard the story a second time and understood it right away, that she realized she hadn’t understood it the first time.
But it wasn’t the story (how she understood it then or later) that mattered to her in that moment—or the reason it floated back to her as she bent over double in the street. It was how Miss Everly had stood at the front of the class and looked at them with an expression that was, at the same time, both disappointed and bored. How—in the same accent that Lota had failed to imitate, which had sent her mother down her throat convinced that something was choking her—she’d said “Yes and no,” and then, after a brief pause: “You decide.”
Of course Miles couldn’t believe what was happening! When he’d told her about Kurtz and Black Zero three years ago, he’d acted like it was some sort of joke. And yet here they were. The future had arrived. They were free to move in any direction they chose; free to stumble, to trip over one another, to be pushed and pulled in any direction, without aim or desire.
Lota heaved again, and this time tasted bile. It’d been a damn lie, she thought. Miss Everly, the crabs, all of it. You couldn’t just “decide”! It didn’t work like that. She reached out to steady herself and grazed the shoulder of a passing stranger. You could only…blunder along. Be pushed forward and then backward, into whatever space opened before you; into whatever space, ahead of you, happened not to already be filled.
She heaved a third time, and a rush of sour-tasting liquid splashed onto the pavement and the toes of her boots. Everyone but Miles jumped back.
“Oh ho! You okay there, Sister?”
He stood there above her, swinging his head, his eyes glinting in the light. Then the darkness that ringed the square pressed in and her vision narrowed. Miles drifted farther and farther away. His eyes dimmed, his voice echoed strangely in the distance.
“Hey there, Sister! Sis!”
She saw a light, tapering at the bottom like the pattern of sweat she’d followed that morning, on Verbal’s back.
Her head pounded. The light flashed brighter—then it, too, dimmed. If she could just keep it in sight, she thought—just keep following it this time…
She collapsed, her hands reaching toward the absent light. Miles caught her awkwardly before she hit the ground. He shook her, slapping at her cheeks. “Sister! Sis! Wake up, you hear me! You all right?”
Lota blinked. The world adjusted itself; the past receded. She opened her eyes and saw only her own knees, bent up nearly to her chin; saw Miles’s thin arm, the lights from the police van, and a few shadowy forms hovering overhead. Everything, including the music, the heat, and the smell of her own vomit, felt too loud and close.
“Sis!”
Someone handed her a bottle of water. Miles tilted it to her lips and she drank. The water spilled out, splashing on her face and chest. It felt good. She drank some more. Then she got up unsteadily, spat. Her head was beating painfully, but she felt all right.
She turned back toward the flatbed. Mad Max seemed to be speaking, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying over the music and the noise. She turned toward Miles, but he was looking at the flatbed—at the black flag Kurtz had hoisted there, with its central white circle—a zero, or an atoll. Something out of nothing, or was it the other way around? The end, or the beginning.
He seemed drawn to it, and in another moment he was gone—pulled into the crowd. Lota glimpsed his head bobbing along, not far off. It was a distance of little more than a pace or two, but she couldn’t have reached him if she’d tried, and then she was no longer even entirely sure it was him she was looking at.
She let herself be thrust along—driven by the impulsive movements of the dancers. She watched the flag above the flatbed, concentrating on its white centre. She tried to move toward it, like Miles, but felt herself being pushed backward instead. She willed herself to focus, but everything felt blurred and out of joint. The horizon line seemed to tilt toward her, as though everything was bending back on itself. The future, she realized—and
another sick wave passed over her—no longer stretched ahead of them. It pressed in. It surrounded them on every side.
The thought was interrupted by a powerful jolt from behind. A shout went up. Lota felt herself being grabbed and pulled; she stumbled, fell to one knee. For a panicked moment she thought she would go under.
Directly beneath her someone yelled, “Help!” Lota could hear the cry distinctly but she couldn’t trace its source. It was as if the earth itself had cried out.
An alarm blared for half a minute or more, then cut out. Lota managed to right herself and realized, with horror, that her right knee had been pressed against a woman’s back, pinning her to the ground. She leaned down and helped the woman up. Bewildered, and without acknowledging Lota, the woman shuffled away.
The flag hung listlessly in the distance. Lota could just make it out, lit up by the high beams of the police van.
“What the hell?” It was Miles again, swimming—unaccountably—back into view.
“A kid,” someone said.
“Marty,” someone else said, nearer. “Marty McDougall.”
“Is he all right?” It was Miles. “Can you see anything?”
“God help us!”
“What’s going on?”
The crowd contracted. Someone yelled, “Stay back!” Again Lota was pushed. Again she faltered, almost fell. “Who the hell was driving?” Miles said.
“What happened?”
“A kid. Lily and Darrel’s little boy.”
“Hurt?”
“Dead, I think.”
“Dead!”
A hush fell over the crowd. They could hear a woman begin to moan loudly. Lota looked around. Everyone who, a moment before, had been nearly stupid with joy was now equally dumb with confusion and fear. Someone had lost control of a car, she heard somebody say. Lily and Darrel’s little boy had been hit badly. He was dead, someone said. No, he was alive, said someone else.
People who’d fallen got up slowly and dusted themselves off. Nobody knew what to do and so they just stood there, looking around, waiting for clues. Lota almost found herself wishing the crowd would press in on her again—sweep her and the moaning woman and the little boy away. She almost wished that without knowing where they were going, or why, they could be pulled and pushed together again, in all directions. Because, just as mere moments before, when Mannie Groening played the trumpet and everyone shivered and shook, moving their feet and shoulders and hips in time to the beat, there was nothing to do now but give in to what was happening—to watch and be carried by forces and events quite beyond their control.
But now this fact weighed heavily upon all of them.
A few people asked questions or cried a little, but mostly they stood in silence and watched as the kid got lifted into the car that had hit him. The car revved, a space was cleared for it. It drove away.
When it was gone, there was a moment of disturbed silence—then Mannie Groening raised his trumpet to his lips and played a few mournful notes. It was not at all clear to Lota as she watched and listened when these brief notes became a phrase, or the phrase a song. It was not clear at what point the other musicians lifted their instruments, or when—out of sheer relief—the first shout went up and the celebration resumed.
FOURTEEN
Rachel was sitting on the floor again, listening to music drift up from the street—to the odd, distant shout. There was no moon, and the brilliant glare of a single street lamp through her window made the night sky appear darker, even more absolute. She tried to raise herself high enough to glimpse the embassy yard, but even straining she was still too low to make out anything but the lamp and the empty sky.
She pushed against the desk and the drawer slid to its limit, then stuck. She tugged again, uselessly. The drawer didn’t budge. If she could just manage to pull from a different angle. From above or below, rather than straight on…
Yes, that was it. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? It was possible to unhook the drawer from the inside; she knew it for a fact. On her very first day in the office she’d slid it out completely in order to dump the debris (paper clips, pencil shavings, and, horribly, a few small, hardened crumbs of food) left behind by a former occupant. It had resisted at first, but after a few shakes, the drawer had shot out cleanly, as though there had never been a catch. What was difficult, she recalled, was getting the drawer back in again. She’d spent a good ten minutes attempting to line up the edges before it would slide smoothly back inside.
Rachel scooted as far as she could, until her back brushed the far wall. She shut her eyes and yanked down hard. Her wrists burned; the drawer wobbled.
She inched closer—keeping her arms extended this time so that the drawer didn’t slide. She pressed her feet firmly against the back legs of the desk and gave the drawer another sharp downward tug. It sprang loose and fell with a clatter to the floor. Pens, paper clips, a flurry of envelopes, some sticky notes, and a few of her own business cards scattered.
Rachel picked up the drawer with her bound wrists and gave it a quick shake. A few more stray bits of paper fluttered, unhurriedly, to the ground. Her wrists throbbed painfully, but they didn’t seem to bother her now. She held the drawer above her head like a trophy; felt happy, exhilarated—free.
Too quickly, the feeling faded. She lowered the drawer to her lap, flexed her wrists, and—without caring any longer who did or did not hear her—howled.
So the drawer was no longer attached to the desk, but her hands were still attached to the drawer; her pants were still wet; she was thirsty, hungry, and trapped on a remote island without any sign of help.
She’d begun to sweat and now, for the first time, she realized that the air conditioning had been turned off. So that was why the building felt so quiet and strange. She’d never been in the building without the air conditioning on and so had never realized how loud it was—or that it was possible to miss something you’d never even heard.
The silence began to bother her. Why, she wondered, had no one answered her shout?
Without actually deciding to do so, Rachel began moving toward the door. She progressed slowly at first, painfully, but even so, once she was on her way, the idea did not seem such a bad one. Didn’t she owe it to herself at least to try?
Try what? Her mind raced. Surely, she thought, there was something to be done if she could only just think of it. If she could talk to the ambassador; find out what he knew and what he didn’t…
Rachel felt a flutter of panic in her chest. She hadn’t quite worked out what she’d tell the ambassador about her own encounters with the insurgents.
Well, she’d simply have to tell him the truth, wouldn’t she? As shameful as it was. This thing was bigger than her. How she came off looking was not really the point.
She shifted the drawer slightly to her left and lunged forward on all fours. Good. She was almost to the door.
It had been a long time since she’d pictured recounting anything of what was happening to her—a long time since she’d done anything, or had a single thought, that was worthy of report—but she pictured it now. “Of course I was scared,” she imagined telling Ray. “I was nearly out of my mind. But there comes a point when fear turns into something else, when it doesn’t matter anymore.”
With a little manoeuvring, Rachel managed to wedge a foot between the door and the wall, opening it wide enough to pass.
She pictured Ray, leaning in, his look saying both “You surprise me!” and “I should have guessed.” “There’s a certain autonomy,” she’d inform him, “an innate sort of optimism, in losing all hope.”
Outside, the only light came from a window on the third-floor landing and the Exit signs that glowed at each end of the hall. Rachel looked left first, past the storage and copy rooms, then right, toward Fred Bradley’s office, and the ambassador’s.
Yes, the ambassador, Rachel thought, as she headed down the hall. He’d know what to do. Or at least he’d know what needed to be secured—and how t
o secure it. He’d know how to locate and erase certain files. If things started to look really bad (the thought flashed before Rachel suddenly—nearly dazzled her) they could simply burn the building down.
But that was getting a bit drastic, wasn’t it? Rachel gritted her teeth and shoved herself another few feet down the hall. In any case, she couldn’t simply sit around any longer and wait—especially when she was no longer sure what exactly she was waiting for.
She could still hear the shouts, the music, drifting up from the street—the distant sounds of a victory being celebrated that could not (despite all evidence) actually have been won.
And yet, what else could she assume at this point?
She passed Bradley’s door—shut tight. Rachel hesitated in front of it, nearly tapped it with her foot. But something stopped her. It would be better, she considered, to go straight to the ambassador. Besides, there was something that had always disturbed her a little about Bradley. There was something a bit…too calm about him, as if he’d already anticipated everything. Even before you could finish a sentence, he’d be murmuring, “Right, right,” like he knew exactly what you were going to say. It was on account of trying too hard to please, of course—but, still, it came out wrong. Dismissive and condescending.
She continued down the hall with the drawer in front of her now, like a sort of crutch. She made even more noise this way and once or twice she stopped to listen, her ears pricked for any sound coming from either inside or outside of the building that indicated she’d been heard.
Nothing. Nothing from Bradley’s office or from the ambassador’s—and nothing from outside except for the same drifting strains of music and voices.
Finally, Rachel reached the ambassador’s door. She hesitated—suddenly unsure. Then, the drawer dragging painfully, she lifted her wrists and knocked twice.
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