by S. T. Joshi
* * *
Ira lost track of how many days plodded by without local disturbance. But they offered no respite. Spirits didn’t rebound, no hopes for lasting calm brightened, definitely not for Ira, and how could he be atypical? Nope, more mayhem had to be brewing, and the longer it held off, the tenser the citywide atmosphere grew. In others, moreover, Ira discerned unseemly, ill-harnessed anticipation, as if they were secretly eager for smoke and explosions, a circus, a festival of calamity. Disappointment lurked under new workplace greeting, “Well, no bombs yet.”
Ira deplored this ghoulish hankering, crediting strength of character for exempting him from it. Yes, for weeks he’d had crazy dreams, but how was he responsible for those? Actually they’d have qualified as nightmares, except he woke energized, elated, like Scrooge on Christmas morning. But upbeat mood wasn’t his fault either, was it?
In fact, they only chafed because he couldn’t decipher the remembered chaos so lucid to his dreaming self. Ari’s jagged signature across chrome gate the width of a canyon had been perfectly legible, and Ira had blithely pronounced its chittering syllables. He was basking in the nuclear fusion at the heart of a sun, in teeming red bursts and eddies and vortices, and he beheld in it a parity with rioting mobs packed into malls and town squares, looting and torching and butchering, and both the solar furnace and the carnage filled his ecstatic regard as if he were in two places at once. The act of looking up had thrust him into black space among white maelstroms of gas broader than any planetary system, and had reminded him that everything material spent more eons inchoate than otherwise, that such was everything’s true and normal state, and squinting, he could comprehend the age of each atom as handily as reading a clock. But come morning, alarm clock dispelled any remnants of epiphany, demoting him to sad sack who’d absorbed too many bad vibes from the zeitgeist.
* * *
The mayor had convened a review session of everyone in charge of anything at Public Works, and glowing self-reports droned on as excruciatingly as shadow crept over brick wall across the way from stuffy Victorian council chamber. Rush-hour traffic had all ebbed away before a blue-haired secretary barged in and practically brayed, “Bomb scare at the Arcade! Bomb squad’s there now! Chief of Police and Public Safety Commissioner both called and said tell the mayor immediately!”
Meeting adjourned, before Ira could enlarge upon promising efforts to nab the graffitist His Honor most wanted to rot in jail. Stampede swept disapproving Ira along, involuntarily excited as if by osmosis, among seasoned bureaucrats no classier than hungry paparazzi chasing some poor celebrity. The Arcade was a minute’s trot from City Hall, but intervening taller structures prevented it from sticking like derisive finger in mayoral eye.
Here was another venerable landmark, its survival till impending two-hundredth birthday in question, a veritable temple of commerce with Ionic colonnades and proportions from the heyday of Greek Revival. Touted as the first roofed shopping mall ever, it had ridden out economic crests and troughs galore until current owner evicted its small-scale retailers to install a single major player, who promptly reneged during the mortgage crisis. For years the mice had had three stories of boutique floorspace to themselves.
Used to be, Ira mused, that prospects of lethal blast and dismemberment and rocketing shrapnel would have frightened the public off. Now, however, his colleagues’ bluster and elite rank couldn’t even leverage them up to the police cordon, through crowd thicker than pigeons around a hill of crumbs. Thrill-junkies had flocked from college dorms and repertory theatres and barstools, ditching nightlife culture in the dust. Not that city fathers were setting a more dignified example.
Nobody pushed or jostled. Rather, as if by psychic consensus, everyone strained forward en masse, to exert constant, fatiguing pressure on police line, like a starfish on a clamshell, ignoring orders to disperse without specific misconduct to provoke nightstick reprisal. Bomb-squad armored van was parked on slate sidewalk between cops and Arcade steps, and the crew was somewhere indoors. Nothing to see, actually, apart from the crowd itself, and in isosceles triangle below the roofline, the magenta script “The Stars Are,” stopping short of forlorn Xmas star made of light bulbs at the base of the triangle.
Hey, that was half of a title from Ari’s exhibit! Ira drew exultant breath. He had wily vandal dead to rights, never mind how unwily Ari had been to recycle telltale phrase. What’s more, the foretaste of guilt-by-association was delicious. Maybe bomb prep had taken Ari so long that police arrived before he could finish tagging.
Logic dictated Ari was already miles from the scene of the crime. Too bad! Ira indulged backward once-over just as streetlamps sank incandescent shafts into the dark, and for once wishful thinking was rewarded by sudden spotlight on Ari, cattycorner in the forecourt of an ’80s pink granite office tower. With a nonchalance as if he’d practiced at a mirror, as if his eyes hadn’t met Ira’s, he about-faced and ambled through the revolving doors into the tower’s glass-encased lobby.
Briefly Ira spaced out as he would while watching a seahorse in an aquarium. Then he charged off, without alerting his colleagues, who’d joined relentless mob, or the cops, in no position to assist. He darted through the revolving doors, raised an eyebrow at absence of night guard from receptionist’s island in the middle of capacious lobby, and detected Ira on the black rubber ramp to the revolving doors on the other side of the block. Green rucksack with pair of oblong red reflectors sewn into the flap must have functioned as vandal’s paintbox.
Ira padded along, a casual stone’s throw between them, grateful for de facto tracking device that bobbed away like red eyes of a playful monster skipping backward. Soon, he rejoiced, he’d be phoning police from outside Ari’s home or atelier or next site of misdemeanor in progress. Ira trailed him past Superman Building, across nocturnal sideshow of Kennedy Plaza, up more and more desolate streets beside the glass-and-girder impersonality of Westin Hotel, Convention Center, the coarsely christened Dunkin’ Donuts Arena.
Red-eyed monster was much less worrisome than the foot traffic. There was an awful lot of it, and it only increased dramatically after he and Ari crossed the bridge over Route 95 and headed up Broadway. Lowlife or cleancut, cool or conservative, male or female, pedestrians stalked around with hard, feverish expressions as if out looking for someone to start something and for no other reason, not that this avenue of padlocked cafés, funeral homes, and rundown Victorian mansions provided reasons.
Everyone’s bearing was jittery, loose-jointed, as if they had trouble containing themselves. What had gotten into people? Did they even question why they were rambling under the stars? Was tonight a full moon? Ira narrowed his gaze solely onto Ari’s backpack and every so often repressed an urge to bawl, “Where the hell are we going?” Ari was as keen on the way forward as Ira, never glancing aside or behind. Nothing in his behavior let on he knew Ira was tailing him.
Ira had to weigh the dismal possibility he was in the thrall of a cheeky, solipsistic Pied Piper, a story that never ended well. Simultaneously, to break off pursuit would leave him alone in the thick of maladjusted, hostile humanity, as if Ari at close range conferred safe passage.
A knot twisted in Ira’s stomach as Ari entered Broadway’s final downhill stretch. Yes, they were bound for Olneyville, Ira’s least beloved neighborhood, scuzzy, congested, post-industrial bottomland where bottom-feeder shops and businesses and the city’s social dregs collected. He was aware of how that sounded, but dammit, who could accuse Ira of snobbery when it was the plain truth? And ironically, though downtown touted itself as the Arts District, substantially more artists resorted to the gutted mills and warehouses of Olneyville for low-rent lofts and studios.
In the basin dubbed Olneyville Square (though it was more an unruly intersection), the locals were at their most reckless, most agitated, in such scofflaw numbers that cars weren’t getting through, the net effect resembling a restive carnival midway. He overheard plenty of angry muttering, but saw no conversation
s. Praise the Lord, Ari veered left before gathering riot entrapped them. Ira memorized the name of the side street and debated whether he’d ever been here, had dined at a rib joint around that hairpin bend, shit, it would have been thirty years ago.
But then, forget the rib joint, every sensory input engaging his consciousness began to resonate as if with déjà vu, or with the echo of someone else perceiving likewise. It felt like a nitrous oxide high, and maybe the someone else was Ari, halfway through parking lot of rehabbed multistory factory. Most of the windows, shaped like those tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, were lit and filtering giddy cocktail chatter, lapping like sonic waves out to the sidewalk. Ira shook his head vigorously and cleared it for the moment. Wow, tough day was taking its toll on his pragmatic brain, or was he hyperventilating after crosstown hike?
Squatting behind a minivan in the parking lot, he freed his cell from vest pocket of City Hall go-to-meeting suit and had 911 connect him with West Side precinct house. Two dozen exasperating rings later, he rattled off his name and title and the street and the name of the “arts complex” on plywood sign above the dark arch of the entrance. Inside, he announced, was a graffitist the mayor avidly wished to nail, and possibly the Arcade bomber as well.
The desk sergeant seemed inappropriately lightheaded and cavalier when terrorism and Mayoral priorities were involved. They were kinda shorthanded at present, he hedged, but he’d try sending a car, and what was the address again? “Okey-dokey,” he signed off.
“Okey-dokey?” grumbled Ira at dead phone.
Ari must have gone in by now. Ira scurried to the murky archway, seeking some directory of tenants with Ari therein, or even his true name’s unpronounceable zigzags. Instead he found Ari, taking snide, minute bow and heaving open gray steel door. Ira rationalized he wasn’t more startled because he’d grown used to Ari’s unpredictability.
“That bomb in the Arcade was none of my doing,” Ari greeted him. “In fact, I tipped off authorities when I noticed the break-in while going about my business. I refuse to be upstaged by anything rudimentary as fertilizer and brass tubing, though in light of quick police response, that’s exactly what happened.” He beckoned Ira brusquely inside. “You’ll be safer accepting my hospitality.”
Ira was at a loss for what to believe. He would, however, most likely feel safer behind even this miscreant’s locked door. In short order, cocktail chitchat suffusing night air had devolved into the uproar of a building-wide drinking game. Ira ducked on ahead, tempted to perform a snippy little bow of his own, but why lower himself to Ari’s level?
First-floor offices behind frosted-glass windows were dim and silent. Ceiling fluorescents shone dull on worn varnish of floorboards rife with gummy black spots and oily streaks, and Ira could have sworn the lighting pulsed in sync with the ebb and flow of raucous celebrants. At the end of the corridor were stairs and a freight elevator. Nary a soul had sprung from the woodwork yet, for which Ira was profoundly thankful.
Was accompanying impulsive Ari into confined quarters a wise idea? Ira’s line of sight tarried on the bottom steps till Ari cleared his throat. “I’m four flights up. Odds are better of running into people on the stairs than in the elevator.” Ira nodded haplessly.
Ari bent at the knees to yank elevator door up by a strip of burlap trailing in the dust. He slid aside the inner folding gate. Ira meekly preceded him into the cage and prematurely fretted over whether he’d exit through forward or rear door. Snap out of it, man! Ira had to regain some control before he degenerated into blubbering putty. He hit mental rewind of memories about Ari, stopped indiscriminately. “Do you really think your vandalism will save historic landmarks by publicizing their sorry condition?”
Tarnished brass plaque on the wall sported a big red button labeled “Up” and a big black button labeled “Down.” The frame for the inspector’s certificate was empty. Ari pressed his thumb against red button and held it there, and shook his head as if Ira were a slow child incredulous about the birds and bees. “We’re in 100% agreement that graffiti spells a property’s doom.”
When the hell had Ira told him that? Or was it like Ari’s “Had to End Sometime” title as clairvoyant rejoinder to Ira’s private musings?
“And I’ve used innocuous spray paint to hasten the destruction, rather than risk lives with messy explosions.”
“But why do you want these places torn down?” Furthermore, how long did this rattletrap need to go up four stories?
“Till quite recently I took for granted a morality that informed great art, an ethical code for artists. Then the dreams convinced me otherwise, and I realized abetting the inevitable would lessen the general suffering.”
“But what is it that’s inevitable, and what does flattening old buildings have to do with it?” Ira also puzzled at his poor judgment in decamping from the parking lot, since the cops, assuming they ever showed, would be clueless without him.
“You would know our inevitable end, you would know everything I do, if you let yourself.” Ira was half listening, half diverted by his blossoming bouquet of naphtha, automatically concerned he was offending Ari. No revulsion was evident. “Too many factors are contributing to that end for me to summarize. But would you like to discuss the one in which we’ve played roles?”
Grinding, squealing gears in the elevator shaft shook the cage and made Ira wince, which Ari interpreted as yes. “Obviously, ‘old buildings’ are a tangible part of our history, our cultural memory. Destroy enough, forget enough of the past, replace its traces in enough skulls with the ephemera of today minus all yesteryears, the collective psyche reaches a tipping point, as when infections from separate wounds stage a coup together. Ours then becomes a species deprived of history, mere consumers, like germs in a Petri dish, devoid of purpose or perspective, often in the name, ironically, of progress. And this is good, this merits expediting.”
“This is good?” Ira’s weak echo died as the car shuddered and groaned to a standstill.
Ari lectured on, as if oblivious to stoppage. “It’s good because it’s inevitable, it’s the reality of the universe in naked glory, the state in which we’ll be beyond good and evil, reveling and merging in a holocaust of ecstasy. Dreams have taught me this, and those like you who’ve had the dreams but learned or remembered nothing of them, they still awaken your atavistic selves to foment havoc or hatred.”
Could blithering Ari still relate to the here and now? “Are we going to be stuck here for long?”
Ari frowned again as if Ira were a pitifully slow child. “It stalls like that sometimes.” His thumb released the red button. “Let’s retry our luck later.” Ari was obnoxiously unfazed. “Ever occur to you that elevator factories are always in one-story buildings? What kind of confidence does that instill?” Ari had to grin for the two of them.
No sooner had ratchety elevator motor gone silent than the bedlam of merrymakers rushed in to plug the vacuum. Between the laughter, banging, shrieks, and breaking glass, the residents were already too ecstatic for Ira’s taste. Overbearing racket crimped the wail of approaching sirens into the whine of mosquitoes.
Pragmatic Ira was frantic to debunk this whole evening as an elaborate hoax, a joke, a montage of delusion and coincidence. However, calm and clarity from interior parts unknown assured him his doors of perception required no cleansing. From out of that same uncharted depth reverberated Ari’s soliloquy, a syllable ahead of its delivery aloud, like the pre-echo of first notes on Dad’s LPs, further proof of the empathic party line he and Ari shared.
He shied from buying altogether into Ari’s endgame madness, but something untoward, something surreal was occurring. As a pragmatist he had to acknowledge sober sensory input. And before pandemonium worsened, he had ledgers to balance, dots to connect. “Ari, you underestimate me. This anarchy erupting around us, I remember it from dreams as well as you do. But since I’m such an ignoramus, please, why is that anarchy mixed up in my dreams with feeling euphoric inside the sun and floatin
g in dust clouds a million light years away?”
“Apologies if I’ve misjudged you.” Again with the minimal bow. “But to my credit, I distinguished in you a kindred spirit, the fellow beneficiary of an inborn gift.” Ari paused as thundering feet and concerted jabbering from somewhere below set the latticework gate to vibrating gently. “We’re privileged to observe these preliminaries without engulfment in them. Genetics or more obscure agency has made us brothers in that respect.”
Ari and Ira flinched in unison as a flurry of gunshots prompted a spike in the caterwauling, and then a bated hush, and then shriller caterwauling and muffled pounding. Cops in the maelstrom, as per Ira’s 911 call? Cops bluntly neutralized? With their blood, and that of their marksmanship, on Ira’s hands?
Ari shrugged off his backpack, dangled it by the straps on his forearm. “The rioters, the heart of the sun, the stardust, they are all one. That was the lesson of your dreams, decoded from every cell in your body, had you only been receptive to it. You should have become an artist. Knowledge doesn’t always come of logical processes. Or do revelations belong in the same mythic ghetto as Bigfoot and chupacabra?”
While awaiting tongue-tied Ira’s reply, Ari lowered backpack to floor and fumbled in it, and then the dingy bulb in the ceiling went out. In the treacherous dark, Ira went rigid like a panic-struck pillar of naphtha, but then, light from a battery lantern next to the backpack tainted the cage wan blue, as if Ari had foreseen this blackout.
That question on revelations must have been rhetorical, for he forged on. “If you’d cultivated a less earthbound disposition, you’d have remembered the sounds of my true name engraved on the chrome gate, you’d have remembered how to write it, and you’d have fathomed it’s your true name as well, just as it’s everybody’s true name.”
Ari paused as if forewarned again. Thud! Ira managed to embrace the white lie that a bushel sack of potatoes had slammed into the elevator roof and rocked the cage, in the seconds before a dribble, brownish in the blue light, seeped through the seam around ceiling emergency hatch and pattered onto the floor between them. Ari went on as if such distractions were beneath him, or simply weren’t getting past his manic effulgence.
