Grey

by Jon Armstrong

  Fortunately, Elle had so much trouble balancing her wig that our proposed dance didn't happen. We wound up standing side by side, her assistants holding up her hair.

  Fireworks filled the air with smoke, and as the Beavers ended their song with big bucktoothed smiles, the swimwear Frix soda man and woman returned, each cradling plastic baby monkeys in their arms. The crowd had been quiet until then, but must have been prompted to stand and cheer. And, as the silver-haired director called to us to smile and wave into the cameras, the house voice said, "There it was, folks . . . the greatest, most magical and romantic evening in the history of corporate mergers!"

  Seven

  During the post-date interviews, the reporters were supposed to just ask about us and our feelings, but kept questioning my experience in the slubs, RiverGroup's troubles, the stock collapse, the exodus of customers, and the like. When someone finally asked Elle what she thought of me, she threw her arms around my chest and applied her tongue to my ear. The director thought that the place to end and yelled, "Cut!"

  Minutes later, Joelene and I were back in the green room. Slumping in a chair, I swabbed the furrows of my ear with a sanitizing towelette. "Did you hear how vicious she was?"

  Joelene got onto her stomach on the floor, opened the trapdoor, and stuck her hands in. After she had entered a code, the back wall disappeared. Standing, she picked up a bag, stepped before the wires and tubes, and ran her finger over a shiny metal label on the biggest pipe.

  "Joelene," I said, worried she had lost her mind, "what are you doing?"

  Pulling a handful of folded material from the bag, she tossed it to me and said, "Put that on."

  When I shook the velvety thing open, it was an ugly dark maroon jumpsuit with a gathered waist, a hood, feet, and attached mittens. Worst of all were the closures down the front. "Snaps? What is this? I don't want to wear this."

  As she began to slip into a matching outfit, she said, "Protection from the cold. Come on, we don't have much time. Put it on!"

  "What are we doing? Are we going to see Nora?"

  "Yes." She pulled the hood of her outfit over her head, and then she grasped the large, metal sprocket—like a steering wheel—and with great effort began turning it. The wide toilet-bowl-shaped opening began to fill with a clear, viscous liquid that reminded me of corn syrup.

  Glancing at the maroon jumpsuit and the pipe and back, I said, "I am not getting in the sewer!"

  "This is the building's cooling system."

  "Whatever it is," I said with a nervous laugh, "I'm not getting in. Besides, I don't know how to swim."

  She turned to me. "The elevators are on the system. The stairs—which would take us a couple of hours to climb down—are on the system. Even jumping off the side—as foolish and difficult as that would be—would be on the system. If you want to see Nora, this is it." Since I hadn't moved, she took the jumpsuit from my hand, tore open the front so that the dozen snaps sounded like a drum roll, and then held open one of the pant legs. "And don't worry," she added, "we won't be swimming. We'll be falling."

  I didn't like her joke, but stepped into the first leg. "I'm not going to die, am I?"

  "What kind of a question is that?" She eyed me. "No! The SunEcho isn't far. I've charted a course that will get us within one block. We just don't have much time." After I stepped into the other pant leg, she pulled the velvety material up and over my suit and began snapping the front closed. Then she dug into her bag and handed me what looked like a yellow diving mask. "Put it over your head," she said, showing me how it worked.

  I gazed at the open pipe and the strange, convex bubble of thick liquid that looked like a clear pillow. "You sure about this?"

  She grasped the metal wheel above, pulled herself up onto the rim, and straddled the opening. "It's just bulk metallic water." The phrase meant nothing to me. From a pocket, she produced a small spray bottle, and spritzed the surface, which turned dull like beach glass. Then she began stamping on the stuff with the force one might use to try and kill a steel cockroach.

  Because she looked ridiculous, I laughed, but obviously the stuff was tough skinned, like a tomato. After several kicks, her foot finally punched through with a heavy glop. Clamping her teeth around the air-supply mask, she lowered herself in and as she did, the liquid made wet gurgles and burps. Holding onto the rim of the pipe with one mitten-covered hand, she turned, and reached her other toward me. She spoke, but with the air supply in her mouth, the only word I thought I understood sounded like Ora.

  "I don't like this," I said, backing up.

  "Ora!" she said louder. "Ome ere!" Pushing herself up a foot, she shot her hand toward me, and grasped the front of my jumpsuit.

  "No!" I cried, as she began to pull me toward her. "Joelene, stop!" Although I tried to twist away, her mitten-covered grip was as strong as iron. I got my hands on either side of the pipe and, as though I were doing a push-up, tried to keep her from dragging me in. The jumpsuit stretched over my neck and shoulders. My arms began to vibrate and I could feel my muscles lose power. The stuff stunk like gasoline and bleach. "Okay!" I said, giving up. "Stop! Let me put the mask on!" When she let go, I slipped the mask over my face and bit the mouthpiece. For a second, I wasn't sure if I could breathe with it on. The plastic tasted sour and the goggles made everything distant and hazy. Peering at the thick fluid, I wasn't sure I really wanted to get in. There had to be another way!

  Joelene, as if impatient, grasped the front of my jumpsuit again and dragged me in. Next, I was falling head first in complete darkness. I screamed into my air supply, but the stuff absorbed all sounds. I hated to be going head first, but there wasn't room to turn. It was like I was a human bullet in some strange slime-filled gun barrel.

  A tiny green light shot by and for a split second illuminated the shiny walls and my mitten-covered hands. Two beats later another flew past at a hundred miles per hour. Craning my neck, I saw Joelene ahead in the next green strobe. She was two feet farther down and was covered in a slipstream of elongated bubbles like jade scimitars. Her head was down as if trying to see where we were going. In the next flash, she gazed up, as if checking on me.

  How long were we going to fall? And what would happen when we hit bottom? Would we be squashed? Would they find us days later flat and frozen?

  We were never going to get to the SunEcho. Nora would wait and wait. Finally, when the news of my death came, she would throw herself to the floor, devastated.

  Trying to wave at Joelene, I wanted to signal her to stop this and get us out of here, but in the next several green flashes, she was gazing down. Then she extended her arms above her as though she were going to catch me.

  Next, I smashed into her. Only, somehow we didn't quite touch, and when I flipped over backward, and fell onto my back, I was dizzy and shocked, but not hurt. Maybe the liquid had insulated the impact.

  We weren't in the pipe anymore, but in a large tank, fifteen feet wide, illuminated with a grid of tiny blue lights like a geometric sky. The liquid was thicker, heavier, and colder down here, and it took all my strength just to suck air through the mouthpiece.

  Joelene stood and put her masked face before mine. First she nodded, as if to confirm that I was alive, then she pointed left.

  I shook my head. She pointed adamantly, but I shook my head harder.

  Grasping my arms, she hoisted me up and carried me over her shoulder. I hit her back because I hated her and wanted her to get us out of this. After a few steps, she pushed me into another smaller pipe, and that's when I panicked because I didn't want to fall again.

  Trashing, I tried to kick her and get her away from me and then I don't know if my air ran out, or if I just didn't have the strength to inhale. I got one hand to my face and yanked the air mask off so I could scream, but the thick goo filled my mouth and tasted sour and acidic like an uncoated aspirin. I began to gag and then instinctively inhaled and sucked in more of the cold lava.

  I was dying. My chest was beginning to spasm.
An adrenaline terror started in my heart and shot toward my hands. Flailing my arms and feet, I felt like I had milliseconds left.

  Meanwhile, Joelene put one hand on my right shoulder, the other atop my head, and pushed me down. She was killing me! My body began to cry for air. I was frantic. My throat and lungs burned.

  Below, my feet touched a distorted glowing yellow circle. She shoved me again. I squeezed through an opening and all around was blinding light. For a second, I was inside a blob, like a solid balloon. With a rubbery snap, the gunk tore itself from my throat and chest and all around, and dropped me onto a hard surface. I retched, and then sucked in air.

  The warm, perfumed air smelled like fresh apples. I inhaled deeply, coughed, but could breathe. Then I sobbed a few times, because for a moment I had been sure I was I going to die.

  Above, I heard wind and gently bubbling water and decided it was on a sound system. A couple of feet away, sat a glowing pink commode, and on a shelf was a vase of violet dahlias. This was a woman's bathroom.

  Above was a hole torn in the white ceiling tiles. Inside the open end of a three-foot-wide pipe was the shine of the gunk and a few distorted blue lights. A dark shape appeared in the liquid and then a foot encased in clear goo emerged. I rolled away as Joelene was first lowered in an elongated orb of gel. When it snapped away, she fell to the floor.

  Pulling off her mask, she laughed as if relieved. "We made it."

  "I hate you!" I told her. "That was terrible! I couldn't breathe."

  Scanning me up and down, as if afraid, she asked, "Are you all right?"

  "No! You almost killed me."

  "Can you move?"

  "Yes," I said, sorry that I hadn't broken my skull.

  "Come," she said, giving me a hand up. "We must hurry. Put your goggles on."

  "I'm not going back in!"

  "No," she said, "now it's your disguise."

  I hesitated for a second, then pulled the mask over my face, but didn't breath through the tube. We stepped from the bathroom into a long dark hallway. At the end of it was a twelve-foot-tall wooden door. Joelene pushed it open.

  Then we were on the street in boiling hot air filled with meat smoke from street vendors, hundreds of intense perfumes, and a note of rotting trash. Hundreds of people passed in all directions—salarymen in cheap cherry, peach, and lavender suits, shoppers with bags and boxes, tourists in night swimwear and headpieces, partiers in sheer garb, and dating couples holding hands, kissing, or leaning against the walls feeling each other. I saw two Box 4 readers all in white with artificial tears dripping from metal tubes next to their eyes. I saw an Om Om girl in a brown suit with her lips cut open. Two Ball Description girls were dressed as cats in big pastel gowns. A group of Ültra boys, in all manner of fur, kelp, high-heeled boots, and scraggly black wigs, skipped by. And all up and down the street hung glaring speakers singing about rewoven fabrics, buttons, beads, lace, ric-rac, and other notions. Others promised recreational surgery, vegetable alcohols, and iambic psychodramas.

  "'Is way," said Joelene, enunciating her words like someone might while holding a cigar between their teeth. As we wove our way through the masses, we must have looked like two service men on their way to a biohazard and no one recognized me. A block down, we crossed the street, ducked into an alley, and soon came to the unmarked side entrance to the SunEcho.

  Joelene said, "We only have a minute."

  I paid no attention as I started to unsnap the jumpsuit.

  "No!" she said. "We're back on the system. Don't take if off."

  "I can't see her in this!"

  "You have to."

  I hated to have come this far only to look this bad. Grasping the metal bar, I yanked the door open and marched inside.

  The SunEcho had been in existence as long as I had been alive. The story goes that not one customer came in for a decade. Then, one day, a tall, lean man entered. He wore a long, dark grey jacket and had his face covered with charcoal net. After he drank a cream coffee, he sat and scribbled in a notebook for several hours. He then paid and never returned. Exactly a year later, a new magazine, called Pure H, appeared on the newsstands. The magazine soon sold out as fashion devotees discovered the brilliant writing and imagery. And in that issue was a story about a disfigured but disguised man, who visited the SunEcho, worked in his notebooks and went on to publish a copy magazine. Since then, the waiting list for the SunEcho was more than six thousand days.

  Although Nora and I didn't need reservations, we were not going into the main sitting room. As was the custom, when one suggested to meet at the SunEcho that meant the auxiliary room.

  It was a square room thirty by thirty feet at the back of the shop. Why it was there, or what purpose it served wasn't clear, except to the owner, one assumed. The walls were covered with a warm, double-warp wool broadcloth. Underfoot was a mosaic made of scrap metal from 100 Loop accidents. Besides the two doors, one leading out into an alley, and the other into the concierge's area, the only other feature was a single small, straight-backed wooden chair that sat in the middle.

  The room was packed and warm. As my eyes adjusted to the dim, I saw Nora two feet from me. She wore a long grey coat buttoned to the neck. Her hair looked darker, her nose flatter, and something was odd about her eyes. For an instant, I worried that her father had hurt her—beaten her or given her some terrible and disfiguring drug. A second later, I realized it wasn't Nora.

  The two women on either side of her resembled Nora, too. The one on the left had her eyes, but her lips were too thin. The other had her chin and neck, but her eyes were the wrong shade of mahogany. The three of them looked me up and down and sneered.

  As my eyes continued to adjust to the dim, I saw that the room was filled with young women all Nora's height, with dark hair, and olive complexions. Each was similar to her, but wrong.

  My heart sank. Nora wasn't here! She hadn't come because she had hated the date. And she hated me. She didn't want to see me after I had even pretended to flirt with that cat-bunny-beaver girl. And now instead of her, I was in a room filled with Pure H imposters and Pure H pretenders. I felt heartbroken and angry, and was about to tear off my goggles and throw them to the floor, when I noticed someone on the chair.

  She too wore a long grey coat, but its material was smoother and more refined than all the others. And her loosely hanging hair had been brushed not combed and was at once perfectly ordered and yet free and unfussy. Most of all though, she was the only one not glaring at us, not trying to guess who we were, or trying to decide if we belonged. She alone waited patiently and calmly.

  Eight

  When I stepped before her and saw her face, I chided myself for thinking that any of the others even slightly resembled her. And it wasn't just that her skin was softer and smoother, her features perfectly symmetrical, her eyes a deeper achromatic black, but that she seemed at once stronger and more vulnerable than all of them put together.

  She had been gazing forward, with her smoky-colored eyelids half closed, as if meditating. When I stepped beside her, first she looked up with fright, but then as she peered into my eyes through the mask, warmth filled her. Standing, she put her arms around me, nestled her mouth close to my ear, and said, "A week of green rain."

  Her words completed the full quote from our first date. And she was right, we had become that dead couple in Pure H, who lay side by side, their hands an inch apart. Only it wasn't rigor mortis or chance that had separated our hands, it was the world . . . it was our families.

  I held her to me for the first time and discovered how our bodies matched, how her eyes met the height of my lips, how my arms surrounded her and exactly fit the curve of her back. Squeezing her to me, I inhaled the sweet sandalwood of her hair.

  Then she removed the goggles and air supply from my face. I felt silly for having left it on and was about to say so, when she tilted her head to the right then touched her mouth to mine.

  Like an enormous bubble, the universe collapsed, and the on
ly thing that remained was the two-dimensional plane where our lips met. Hers felt warm and creamy, like butter frosting. Then, I don't know which of us began moving first, we were circling our lips against each other. A tension like the winding of a miniature watch spring begin to build. We rubbed our lips together, and then we were pressing our bodies firmly against each other. We opened our mouths, and just as I felt like I wanted to kiss her hard, or bite her, she pulled back.

  Her nostrils were flared, her lips, swollen. She was breathing through her mouth. And several errant hairs fluttered in front of her eyes. One stuck to her moist forehead. With a husky breath, she said, "Stop."