The mall was packed. Sky City North was always busy. People here had money to spend. More than most of the inhabitants of Sky City South, anyway.
Rattle and Hum turned out to be the perfect target. Parker had never been here. No one would recognize him.
Half the music store screamed with blazing neon and splashy banners devoted to Transcendental Tal. Most of the other half was covered in Go-Boy posters, clothing, hats and t-shirts, soundtracks and images of Colby Max in action. Colby was backed always by his sidekick Igby Fry, the boy-genius inventor of the Go-Boy Battle-Suit.
On the back wall Parker found the display of posters, hung like pages in a giant book. He flipped slowly through the display and found a poster featuring Tal spread across the rear spoiler of a Merc II. The glossy black sports car was the most expensive automobile ever built, constructed entirely by hand. Tal lay with her head thrown back, her back arched. Her white lingerie was probably hand-made too, like the car. Bubba had this same poster on his bedroom wall; he said he must’ve been a famous race car driver in a past life.
Below the poster display was a bank of little numbered boxes all packed with posters. Parker pulled one of Tal’s posters at random from its cubby. Then he surveyed the store.
Nearby, two young, morbidly obese teenaged girls occupied one row of the gospel section. Their manicured fingers flipped through the alphabetized racks of music. One girl said the selection was poor. Blond, salon-fresh hair arrowed down her back. The other girl agreed the selection was very poor, very poor indeed, and went on balancing on the stiletto heels of her shiny, lime-green shoes.
A man with skin the color of chocolate and wearing a red KC Cyclops cap coughed into his fist, then coughed again, louder, almost as if he were choking. The obese girls grimaced at him. He put his hand in front of his face and waved it down and away in what had to be Sign Language. He tapped his throat apologetically. The obese girls turned their backs on him without speaking and moved out of the gospel section.
A security guard stood by the doors. A gold badge gleamed against his starched white shirt. He hadn’t been there a minute ago.
Parker turned his back on the security guard, the obese girls, and the man in the red cap. He considered the poster tube in his hands. It wasn’t too late to walk away.
He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. The security guard was probably watching him, just like the Unity Up! woman wearing dark glasses in the park. Looking over his shoulder would appear suspicious.
Thou shalt not steal . . . .
It was that annoying voice in his mind, offering advice again. He was fairly certain he’d heard that tidbit somewhere; probably from Regina Black.
He considered it.
He could put the poster back in its place and walk away. It wasn’t too late.
But he needed to sleep. The nightmares were happening more often. And Tal had helped him. He needed her. He needed the poster.
He slid the long white tube into the waistline of his jeans and down one leg. He held it in place with his fingers, buried deep inside his front pocket. He glanced casually over his shoulder.
The security guard was still there, watching the obese girls exit the store. He lifted a hand-held radio to his mouth and spoke into it.
Parker meandered through the store and pretended to shop. He would wait until the security guard moved away from the doors. Otherwise he would have to walk past him. Parker strolled between the endless racks of alphabetized artists until he was near the doors.
The security guard walked over to the bank of registers. He leaned across the counter and said something to a young female cashier with artificially-crimsoned hair. Had the guard had moved away from the door deliberately? Daring Parker to commit his crime?
All that remained was an artful dodge through the open doors. Nothing would happen until he exited the store. It wasn’t theft until he was off the premises. That’s how the judge would see it. Until then he was just a warpunk with a poster down his pants, just another Southie urchin on the wrong side of the monorail tracks.
Parker headed for the doors. His pulse pounded in his ears. A hollow feeling clenched his stomach.
He expected a heavy hand to fall upon his shoulder, expected the security guard to shout at him.
A few more awkward steps . . . and Parker was out of the music store. The high ceilings and faux-crystal spires of the mall loomed around him, filled with the white noise echoes of hundreds of shoppers. He walked faster, as fast as the poster in his pants would allow.
Ahead of him sprawled the food court. Beyond the food court loomed the bright colors and flashing silver lights of Sky City Hobbies and Toys. Beyond the toy store he could see the escalators and the herds of people moving in and out of the monorail station. He would be invisible there, lost in the crowd.
He hurried through the food court. The two obese girls sat in front of Shepherd’s Pie, Bubba’s favorite pizza joint, at one of the hundreds of tables, devouring wide slices of pizza larger than their heads. Parker tried to resist the urge to look over his shoulder but couldn’t. He glanced back. He saw a flash of white shirt weaving through the people behind him. A flash of gold. A badge? Or just an expensive earring? He walked faster.
He passed Sky City Hobbies and Toys, where he’d go tomorrow with his dad to meet Colby Max and see his Battle-Suit. Maybe actually touch it. The real one. Unless he got arrested in the next five minutes.
He reached the bank of escalators and joined the shortest line. He waited his turn and stepped onto the rising mechanical stairs, pretending he wasn’t fleeing. The crowded escalator carried him in slow agony up to the monorail station.
He hurried through the wide archways of the station entrance to the endless line of electric gates arranged like soldiers guarding the trains. He crowded close behind an elderly woman. She wore a black fur scarf wrapped around her neck, despite it being the height of summer. He moved close to her. When the gate opened, he thrust his hand between the mushy rubber blades. The sensors kept the gate open and he hurried through before it demanded money from him. Money he didn’t have. He walked stiff-legged across the platform where a Redline train waited to depart. He stepped onto the train. He watched the doors, willing them to slide shut. Through the window there was a flash of a man in a white shirt. Was it the security guard? The white shirt was obscured by the herds of people.
The security guard stepped onto the train an instant before the doors closed, a collective rush of air mixed with the squeak of tired hydraulics mashing together synthetic rubber door molding. His white shirt stood out in the crowd at the far end of the monorail car. He remained standing, reaching out to hook one arm around a silver pole. The gold badge gleamed.
A trickle of sweat beaded down Parker’s ribs, a cold tickle.
The train rose on its electromagnets and began to move.
Parker remained standing, the stolen poster rigid against his inner thigh, preventing him from sitting. He scanned the train for sky marshals. It was impossible to pick them out solely by their attire. He’d once seen a man wearing a black trench coat and pink patent-plastic shoes pull a gun and a badge from out of nowhere and pop a guy in a three-piece suit. The guy in the suit had been standing next to an elderly woman reading a book. He grabbed the book out of her hands and lunged for the door. The man in the trench coat drew his piece and fired once. The bullet hit the man in the back. He fell on the platform, dead before he hit the ground, shiny black shoes still on the riveted yellow safety line.
Thou shalt not steal . . . .
The man in the trench coat and pink shoes showed everyone his U.S. Sky Marshall badge, picked up the book and returned it to the elderly woman, and life went on. The next day, Bubba unfolded his electronic newspaper and showed the story to Parker, amazed that Parker had watched the crime happen. Mrs. Black read the bold, black headline over Bubba’s shoulder: BOOK THIEF SHOT DEAD. Bubba tapped the headline and the article expanded. “It’s a real shame when a well-dressed white boy tries to steal a
book from a little old lady on a train,” said Mrs. Black. She headed for the kitchen. Her special signature cornbread baking in the oven filled the apartment with its sweet fragrance. “There goes the neighborhood,” Mrs. Black muttered. She uttered that sentiment often. It always made Parker smile.
On the other side of the train, Parker saw a man near the door, seated on the blue plastic bench. Navy blue business suit, pink silk necktie, pink silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. Bubba claimed anyone wearing pink was a skymarsh, claimed pink was a subtle part of the uniform, how they picked each other out. Parker disagreed. It was too obscure; too many people wore pink for no other reason than they liked pink. Hadn’t Sunny said something about pink being the new black? Or maybe black was the new black. Or was it white? He couldn’t remember.
The man looked up and caught Parker watching him. The man surveyed him up and down, probably wondering why there was a Southie warpunk on his train. Parker offered a curt nod and looked away, casual, like he didn’t care, like he didn’t have a stolen poster shoved down his pants. He counted, one, two, three and snuck his eyes back to the man, who’d returned to his paperback. He continued reading and didn’t look up. Parker tried to see the cover of the book. Raised silver letters gleamed on the glossy black cover: Malina. Raised red letters at the bottom spelled the name of the author: petal darker. The name sounded familiar. He would mention it to Sunny. She liked to read, liked to talk about books. Her family owned several books. Sunny even had a book of her very own, a gift from her mother. Sunny had shown it to him one Saturday morning, while they were alone in her bedroom. They’d sat on her bed, careful not to ruffle the comforter. Sunny had reached under her pillow and carefully pulled out the book. She’d held it like a piece of fine china. A beautiful woman embossed the black cover, a nude woman with her arms out, and beautiful balls of colored light inside her and above her head. Sunny said it was The Vitruvian Woman by a famous artist named Jason Lincoln Jeffers.
Sunny was about to open the book when the door opened.
Mrs. Harper burst in, a short glass tumbler in one hand. Sunny tried to hide the book behind her back, but her mom had already seen it. Mrs. Harper approached the bed.
Ice cubes tinkled in her glass. With glassy eyes she stared down at Sunny and sipped at the clear liquid. When she swallowed, she winced. Parker smelled the drink, like the sherry Mrs. Black sometimes cooked with. Mrs. Harper asked Parker to please see himself to the door.
Nearly three weeks passed before Parker saw Sunny outside of school, where she was just a blur hurrying through the halls between classes. She came over to help him with his calculus homework one day as though nothing had ever happened. She sat next to him at the kitchen table. He watched her face, her eyes, and listened to the tap-tapping of her yellow electronic pencil as she whisked through his differential equations. Her lips glinted with a thin sheen of her Cherry Lip Lover lip gloss. It was the only cosmetic indulgence permitted by her mother. He smelled the sweet scent of artificial fruit. He wanted to ask Sunny about her pillow book. But he couldn’t. And he never did.
Parker held tight to the monorail’s cold aluminum handrail overhead. Everyone swayed together when the train moved. Most people kept their eyes down, reading their electronic newspapers or digital magazines. Some held bags between their legs or on their lap. One man sat with a set of small golf clubs, perhaps a gift for his son.
A large map of the Sky City Monorail System hung near the doors, a colorful grid of red, blue, yellow, and green rail lines punctuated by white and black station dots.
Next to it was a familiar poster showing a lone backpack sitting on the ground, with bold black words: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. It was a good slogan, borrowed from neighboring New Yorkers. Parker knew it was important to be vigilant, but the thought of what was inside that bag scared him every time he saw one of the posters. He turned his eyes and his attention to the scrolling marquee sliding across the roof of the train. It showed images of Colby Max in his Battle-Suit, flying through balls of orange fire and black smoke, spraying bullets across the sky. The new movie hit screens tomorrow. He and Bubba had been waiting nearly a year to see it.
The train glided out of the station and into the dark tunnel. It gathered speed, emerged into daylight, and hummed along its track, across a mile of open sky.
For the second time in his life, Parker was guilty of theft. He told himself stealing wasn’t wrong if you really needed something, that had he any money he would have paid for the poster. But the argument was as thin and transparent as the clear plastic cellophane wrapped around the poster, cold against his skin. One more thing he would have to forget.
The security guard stood by the far door, staring out the window. Had he radioed ahead? Would someone be waiting for him at the station in Sky City South? Backup, ready to grab him if he tried to run? Parker tried to act casual, but he was suddenly completely self-conscious. He was going to feel very stupid if he got the poster home and later that night or the next day there was a knock on the door and he opened it to find a cop standing there with the store manager, the stolen poster tacked to the ceiling above his bed.
The security guard turned around.
Parker stepped across the train, stood behind a woman in a white coat. He looked down and realized he stood next to the man reading the Petal Darker paperback. Just like the guy in the suit who was shot in the back.
Parker felt a firm bump from behind.
He looked up.
The woman in the white coat had backed into him without noticing. The security guard was facing him. Watching him.
Parker tried to act casual. He looked down at the man holding the book.
The man glanced up at him, then down at the book in his hands. He closed the book and slid it into his coat, stood, and moved across the train to the door, obscuring the view of the security guard.
Another drop of sweat dripped from Parker’s armpit.
The south tower drew steadily closer. Thousands of windows reflected blue sky like diamonds sparkling underwater. As was the case with most buildings in Kingdom City, each window of Sky City South was also a transparent solar array gathering electricity to power the building’s electrical and HVAC systems, and the anti-aircraft weapons and myriad ground defense monitoring systems. Employees charged their vehicles while they were at work. Excess power was sold as a commodity to other businesses or sold to power companies at a standard market rate averaging ten to fourteen percent profit; not as good as selling privately but more readily available. Protest groups screamed about Global Cooling resulting from a loss of ambient heat in the atmosphere; heat that would normally be returned to the environment was being gobbled up by solar cells and, according to the protestors, hurtling the entire planet headlong into another ice age. It was impossible to know who was right, but prudence and sensible conservation seemed appropriate.
The stolen poster shifted inside Parker’s pants. He tried not to think about the security guard twelve feet away.
Chapter 5
Why Don’t You
Ask God
To Help You?
A Shadow Passed Over the Son Page 5
