by Nina Post
“Just curious. Don’t you have access to them?”
“Yes, we do. I guess we didn’t think they were important. We have so many things to work on, you know? Planning the End of Days, figuring out whether we should purchase the ab machine that the Jackal wants in the fitness center, whether we should add a security camera to Roger’s living room so we have a better idea of what’s going on in his life, whether we should change the automat’s coffee brand to Cluck Snack. So busy, especially with so many board meetings.”
Imamiah’s answer was just as ambiguous as Roger’s, which made Af worry. Imamiah seemed to be spending his time on trivial matters, but that didn’t mean he was against trying to escape―it only meant that he wanted to make sure the building was maintained and the reserves bolstered until they did manage to escape. Or was he being too optimistic?
If Raum and the rest of them managed to escape their prison―and he considered Amenity Tower a prison, as much as any brass vessel at the bottom of the sea or Ms. Pac-Man game in Erie, Pennsylvania―why would they care what condition the building was in after they left?
At a loss, Af pressed the up elevator button and waited as he considered the situation. Some of the fallen angels physically bound to Amenity Tower had probably been cast down at some point, but they were all mysteriously bound to the same place. In some cases, both, and in every case, they left angry.
They were resentful and stuck in a perpetual angel adolescence, and would almost certainly want to raze their condo prison behind them as they left. What was one more bridge burned? They’d have to keep burning things behind them over and over in the vain hope that it would assuage the pain of irrevocable loss.
But it couldn’t. Only amenities could do that.
The elevator arrived, he stepped in, and the doors closed with inches to spare when a white hoof insinuated itself between them. The doors reopened and revealed a jackal with the feathered blond hair of Andy Gibb, on a white horse the color of Af’s favorite paper towel brand and coconut sorbet brand.
“Forty-eight, please,” the Jackal said with a mellifluous, smoky voice. The horse clomped on the granite floor.
Af pressed forty-eight, one of the penthouse floors, and kept as much distance as possible between him and the horse. He wondered where Tom the giant water scorpion was. Maybe it was his day off.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” The Jackal tossed back his shiny hair. “Pestilence and I were just out enjoying the snow.”
“Pestilence should take the cargo elevator,” Af said, a tad churlish.
“I will do that in the future,” the Jackal replied politely.
The elevator stopped and opened the doors. The Jackal kicked the side of the horse, which neighed and tossed its head and pranced into the hallway.
“Ta.” The Jackal waved.
Af continued to his condo, where he called the front desk to report a horse using the high-rise elevator. He was fairly certain that horses or their variations like Pestilence weren’t allowed; they should have taken the cargo elevator at the very least.
He figured that the Jackal got sucked in through the air handler on the roof, found a unit, and hadn’t bothered to read the rules and regulations yet. But the Jackal did have a lovely voice and lustrous hair.
Af put the kettle on and made a sardine sandwich, which he ate at the counter. Then he tended to his laundry, safety-pinning his socks before putting them in the washer.
urray called and asked Kelly to come back to the apartment to take Tubiel on a run. She was checking units on the sixteenth floor and took her call by the window.
“Tubiel doesn’t seem like the running type,” she said.
“No, a run to return a small bird to its owner. There’s no actual running involved.”
“How has he managed to return them before?”
“I’m not the boss of him,” Murray said. “Can you do it?”
“I’m only on my first disguise, and I’m not even close to checking all of the units,” she said, not bothering to mention she had no idea what she was supposed to be looking for and that maybe Don should have been more specific if he wanted to find this target. “I can’t leave now. Can’t you take him?”
“I’m on a job, too.” He sounded petulant.
“Why is your job more important than mine? I only have two days.”
“Mine is about to jump off a building. But I’m going to drop off a vehicle for you,” Murray said.
“I’ll be right there. But if Don gives me crap about this, you’re covering for me. By the way, an acid-shooting fungus in a paisley tie dissolved a moth monster in the hallway with its corrosive juices.”
“I love our talks.”
Kelly sat on a stone ledge next to her building and chewed some red string licorice.
A few minutes later, Murray pulled up in a black sidecar motorcycle and listed severely to the left as he braked. Another smaller sidecar swiveled off to the side of the sidecar like a tray table.
“What is that thing?” She had to yell over the engine noise.
“It’s your outfit. But you’d better hurry,” he yelled. “It tends to stall.”
“Where did you get this?”
“A commodities trader who invokes me every time he gets a panic attack. When he goes to the sand dunes, he takes his pet bobcat and the bobcat’s pet chinchilla, hence the second sidecar. He let me borrow his hack for the day. He lets me borrow anything I want.”
Murray stepped out of the main car in his ever-present brown suit, and fell. He popped up behind the motorcycle and waved.
She climbed into the car and adjusted the goggles he handed her.
“You look like Snoopy on the Red Baron,” Murray said.
Tubiel came running out to her, wearing his usual clothes.
His pale arms were wrapped around a birdcage with a small blue bird inside. He hovered nervously for a moment before attempting to get in the main car with her.
She pointed to the sidecar. Tubiel nodded and climbed in, holding up the cage with a questioning look. She gestured to the third, smaller sidecar, and he placed the cage there. She gave Tubiel goggles to wear and assessed the four-speed gearbox.
“Patience is a virtue here,” Murray yelled. “Don’t rush the gears.”
After expending considerable effort to release the clutch, she put the bike into gear and listed to the right as she gave it gas, leaving Murray behind on the sidewalk.
At the next block, Tubiel pulled on her sleeve.
Steering felt like pushing a mastodon. She turned right, pushing hard on the left grip as she pulled up to the curb. Maybe this would be Tubiel’s only task, and she could go right back to the job.
A cab driver stuck his head out his window as he waited at the nearby light. “What is that thing?”
“It’s my outfit,” she said.
Tubiel scrambled out, ran to a tree, and captured something in his hands. After running back to the bike, he opened the door to the cage and put the small yellow bird in with the small blue bird. He scribbled something on a sketch pad and showed it to her, a downtown address.
“You were invoked again?” she asked, taking off again.
He nodded.
“How do you normally get around?”
He shrugged. She suspected this task would take much longer than she expected or wanted.
They made four detours, collecting a dozen small birds on the way to the downtown address. They rode through alleys and parks, delivering the birds to a firehouse, a horseman of the Apocalypse working in the police’s mounted unit, a sandwich maker, and the president of an insurance company.
On the way to returning a chickadee in the middle of nowhere, the bike started to leak fuel.
Kelly pulled up to the curb by a park, pushed up her goggles, checked out the carburetor gasket, and clenched her fists. It was late. She already lost hours from her job. She gestured at Tubiel to get out of the sidecar and he carefully set the cage in the seat.
“Find me a large frog. But don
’t go too far.” Tubiel headed into the park. Several minutes later, he returned with a large frog. “Go wait for me in that bus stop.” He did. “But don’t get on a bus!”
She held the frog with her left hand. With her right hand she took out a knife. “Sorry, frog,” she said quietly. “I need your help.” She killed it humanely with her thumb then skinned it. She put the frogskin on the hot carb gasket and the skin adhered to the metal pores, stopping the leak.
After she plugged the leak, they drove home, plowing easily through high drifts of snow. Tubiel pointed to the soda fountain across the street.
“You want to go there?”
He smiled and nodded.
Kelly parked and called Murray from a phone booth to let him know they were back.
In the booth, Tubiel held the cage with one hand and drew a frog and a question mark on the glass.
“He was a great frog.” She waited for Tubiel’s expression to change. “He’ll be remembered, out of all of those other frogs.”
Tubiel nodded, reassured.
They went inside the diner and ordered. The birds chirped and sang until she put her jacket over the cage. Nearly ten minutes later, Murray rushed in through the door.
“Sorry it took so long.” He dropped his bag on the seat and a book, Handy Invocations for the Troubled Banker and Trader, on the table.
“Local outreach,” he said. “Getting the word out, building my brand.”
Kelly sipped a vanilla milkshake while Murray and Tubiel shared coconut cream pie. Tubiel took out a miniature bottle of Cluck Snack Top’n (“Makes Anything Taste Like Cluck Snack”) and dribbled it onto his slice of pie. He glanced questioningly at Murray, who shook his head. Tubiel gave him a ‘you don’t know what you’re missing’ kind of shrug.
f’s board position, Member-at-Large, was a title for the commitment-phobic. He sat in the front with the board, because it was expected, but put his chair as far to the side as he could get away with. The board meetings took hours now, and were held weekly, a compromise Af negotiated with Raum. Af opened his notebook and started writing his review for a new brand of copy paper.
Forcas, the board president, cleared his throat. “Do we have any comments from homeowners? No? OK. We have a quorum with all five board members present. Approval of minutes from the previous meeting.”
The board approved the minutes then moved on to the agenda item of the death worms. It hadn’t escaped Af’s attention that more residents were adopting death worms. He’d seen one that was five feet long, like a large tube with silken fur and unnerving jaws at one end.
“This is an abstract quality of life issue,” Imamiah, board secretary, said. “Allowing tenants to keep death worms, to allow them to take them down in the elevator and through the lobby―well, it would be like death by a thousand cuts. It doesn’t add to the feng shui of your life.”
Forcas agreed. “We would have to change the Building Declaration Grimoire, and that requires a majority diabolical signature from the owners.”
“Forget it,” Raum said. “That sounds like way too much work.”
“Fine with me. Next item: club room furniture,” Forcas said. “Roger?”
Roger cleared his throat. “We recently cleaned the club room furniture at an expense of $750. But we need to replace three coffee tables. They were danced on during the last party. Danced on hard.”
“Which party?” Imamiah asked. “‘Unbound’ or ‘Bound But Proud’?”
Roger checked his clipboard. “The former.”
A resident raised his hand and Roger called on him.
“Replaced for how much?” the resident asked.
“No more than $1,500,” Roger answered.
“You know what, piss on the new coffee tables,” Crocell said.
“Crocell!” Vassago said.
“Well, who cares about the damn coffee tables? Don’t you want to get out of here? Because I do, and I know a lot of you do, too,” Crocell said, turning and addressing the residents who attended the meeting. “We’re all bound here. OK, some of us are bound here. We should be using this time to figure out a way to escape, not to worry about the contracts or common element repairs or a tree rental!”
“Crocell is right. Let the building rot and the death worms roam free. Forcas sat forward in his chair and put his hands on the table. We’re going to find a way to get out of here―with the reserve money―and then what does it matter if we don’t have a landscaping contract, or a scavenger contract, or a plant in the lobby?”
Vassago, board vice-president, glanced at Forcas. “If I may say something.” Forcas nodded.
“We don’t know if we can escape, and we certainly don’t know when. We need to maintain the building in the meantime.”
“It’s a quality of life issue,” Imamiah repeated.
“Yeah, right,” Crocell said, sneering. “Quality of life.”
“Oh, you don’t think so?” Vassago said. “Do you have any idea how much garbage this building produces? If we let the scavenger contract lapse, and you couldn’t escape yet―well, this would be a hell you wouldn’t like.”
Roger held up a finger. “On that topic, the second installment of the Scavenger Rebate has been received from Pothole City. These funds have been deposited into the Association operating account.”
Raum grinned and tapped his hand on the table. “Perfect. Bringing about the End of Days is not inexpensive.”
Vassago put a finger on the table as though to hold it down. “Crocell, you used the pool yesterday. Did you benefit from the non-slip pool deck material? Or the well-balanced chemicals?” He lifted his finger and made circles toward Crocell as though he were mixing the chlorine with it.
Crocell scowled. “I suppose.”
“And I saw you using a treadmill this morning,” Forcas added.
Vassago wasn’t done yet. “Do you like the view from your window, Crocell? Or making your famous chicken pot pie in your kitchen? Or walking out on the patio without chunks of the building falling onto your head? How about being able to drop off your trash and have it taken out of the building? Do you like how the trash doesn’t build up in the chute?”
Forcas leaned over to look at Crocell. “Do you enjoy watching cable TV, Crocell?
One of the residents shouted, “How about discounted movie tickets?”
Forcas glared at him. “We’re bound here, idiot!”
Af glanced up from his notebook and stretched his neck. In the seat next to him, Murmur, a Fallen whom Af sometimes saw in the elevator, was knitting a scarf, or maybe a death worm sweater.
Crocell stood. “But we ought to be using at least half of our time every meeting to figure out a way to escape from this―this prison! Because that’s what it is. A prison, with a pool and a hot tub and a sauna and a library―”
“And our own luxury apartments,” Af said. “Some on the penthouse floors. The horror.”
“Well, I want to get the hell out of here,” Crocell muttered.
Forcas agreed. “As much fun as I’m having, I believe that we’re not fulfilling our purpose as long as we’re bound to this building.”
After a brief silence, Vassago jabbed a finger on the table. “As long as we’re bound here, we need to run the building along with Roger. And we need all of this time at our weekly board meeting to do that. So I propose that we officially form a sub-committee.”
Raum clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Yes! Let’s form a sub-committee so we can really focus on our escape plan. Great idea, Vassago.”
“Uh, we already formed that committee, Raum,” Vassago corrected. “I’m proposing that you move your escape business to the End of Days Sub-Committee, and let the board work with Roger to manage the building.”
“Our business,” Crocell said. “Just to clarificate, escaping is all of our business. We should be working on it together, not in some radical splinter group.”
Af made a face. Just to clarificate?
“Hello?!” A sea
cucumber-like monster gestured at the board. “Could we get back to the rest of the management report, please? I’d like my floor construction approved before the End of Days. Not the meeting of the sub-committee, but the actual event. You’ve put it off for two meetings and I need my floors redone!”
“We’ll get to that next week,” Forcas said, and the infuriated cucumber-monster made a face and extruded his guts all over the floor.
Forcas rolled his eyes. “If you show up next week, I’m going to wrap you in duct tape before we form a quorum.”
Roger cleared his throat. “OK, let’s table the sub-committee issue. We have an air handler project update. Our engineering consultant is continuing to review the velocity data as well as photographs of the mesh performance during the last few snow storms. We anticipate a full report at the next board meeting.”
“What are you talking about?” A humanoid swamp monster tossed up his hands in exasperation. “Can we see some slides or something?”
Af had no intention of joining the End of Days sub-committee or whatever they called it. He had come to accept and even enjoy his situation, while many of the others couldn’t. He would really just prefer to do quiet things indoors that didn’t involve massive destruction or the deaths of humans.
Sure, they were angry, Raum and the others, the ones who wanted to escape. And normally, he would be the angriest, on a professional level, or at least the one wreaking epic-scale wrath on a professional level, but not now.
Af knew that clinging to his past, tempting as it was, stole from his present and future. He had to move on, as much as he wanted to go home. Instead of wasting his time wallowing in things that couldn’t be fixed, he’d rather use the amenities and focus on writing his book and his product reviews.
Yes, he was bound to the building and had no idea why, but he wanted to make the most of it.
While he thought about this, the agenda continued.
Roger cleared his throat. “Be it resolved that the board approves expenditures totaling $2,312 authorized by the property manager for various common element repairs. We have $400 in hot tub repairs, from when a resident drained the water and replaced it with gravy.”
