by Peter Rock
Now Kayla was next to him, leaning close, her shoulder touching his. She put something in his hand, a metal piece that was the handle of a hacksaw, perhaps, connected by thick strands of copper wire to another handle, one she held.
“We each hold these and then—when I say ‘three,’ take hold of that wire with your outside hand. There, just above the transformer.”
“Why don’t we do it one at a time?” he said. “Would that be safer?”
“This is the way I figured it out,” she said. “We just have to keep talking. If I don’t answer, you break the connection. Same with me. That way we’ll be all right.”
Chris stood, looking at her in the half-light. He felt the metal grid sharp beneath his bare feet, through his shoes.
“One, two, three,” she said.
They each grasped the thick wire above the transformers. At first, it was like nothing.
“How long?” Chris said.
“Ten minutes, maybe—I wanted it to be slow, safe.”
“What?”
“As long as it takes.”
At this height, the gravel looked smooth, one solid piece, soft and milky, like he could fall into it and not be hurt. The sky overhead stretched blue-black, shot with stars. And Kayla’s skin shone, so pale, tinged blue, almost, veins forking in her chest, up her throat, her head beginning to tremble, or maybe that was his own head, his vision shaky. He felt a pricking along the surface of his skin, sharp and then dissipating. Next, a hollow ache in his bones, and he could sense every piece of his skeleton, aware of the sharpness beneath his skin.
“Chris!” Kayla said. “Talk to me.”
“It hurts,” he said, his words coming out wobbly, his jaw’s hinges tight. “I’m talking. I don’t know what to say.”
“Listen,” she said. “You know what? Leon took all our money, up in Forest Park? I didn’t tell you that yet.”
“You went there alone?” he said. “Without me?”
“Just to check,” she said, “but the bank was empty, and there was just a note from Leon, saying he needed the money, and good-bye.”
“What?”
“But we’ll find him,” she said. “Don’t worry. After this, we’ll understand him.”
Chris’s eyes trembled and snapped, dry—was that the sound in his ears? He looked at Kayla, tried to, his vision unsteady and slipping past her. Did he see movement in the bushes, a figure standing at the fence they’d climbed?
“Chris!” she said.
“I’m here,” he said. “Maybe we should stop?”
“Listen, here’s a funny thing I was thinking—you know how when kids go missing they make those computer-aged pictures of them? Milk cartons or whatever? For Leon, you know, the face will change to look like someone he’ll never be, older, and for us, maybe—”
“I see someone,” he said.
“It’s me,” she said. “Just me. Hold on; don’t get weird. We’re close.”
“No,” he said. “Behind you. Someone’s coming.”
The figure was over the fence, now. He walked closer, shadows jerking out smoothly on every side, wearing shiny black shoes, creased pants and a white shirt, with Kayla’s pack on his back. Standing below them, he tilted his head to look up, his serious face framed by his black beard.
“Victor!” Kayla shouted, her voice shaky and strange. “Put down my pack. Go back outside.”
“I’m coming to help you,” the man said. “I’m coming to play with you.”
“That’s the guy from the tunnel,” Chris said. “You know him?”
“Just his name,” she said. “Read about him.” She shouted again: “Go away! Put down my pack!”
“I’ve been following you,” the man said. “I saw you. I’m not supposed to, but then I thought I should, also. Because I wanted to.” He began to climb the tower next to the one they were on. His long arms and legs stretched and bent sharply as he rose.
Chris could no longer feel the metal beneath his feet, anything at the edges of his body, his skin. He did feel Kayla, next to him, as close as if they were touching, both watching the man climb.
“Kayla,” Chris said. “Kayla.” His words were coming apart, her name. He tried to drop the metal handle and his fingers clenched tighter; he could not let go.
Now the man had reached the same level and stood on a platform fifteen feet away. Turning, he faced them and smiled.
“I followed you all the way,” he was saying. “It’s great; finally!” He kicked off his pointed black shoes and they bounced and settled against the white gravel below. He unbuttoned his white shirt, top to bottom, his chest all black hair. Smiling still, checking them, he reached out, for balance, his long arm stretching for a cable, and the current arced to him, even as he kept talking.
“We can do it! We can have a lot of fun together!”
The electricity snaked blue around his shoulder; Kayla’s pack smoldered, then turned to flames, a round ball of fire on his back. In a moment, his beard was gone. His white face glowed as his body jerked, held there, sparks bouncing down through the grate, lost against the light and the white gravel. The electricity wrapped him headfirst in a net of blue sparks that slowed into red flames. The flames twisted in on themselves, dark convulsions at their center, which was Victor. They pulled at him; his burning body fell.
Kayla looked away, up, and saw the surge flowing through the wires above them, all her calculations shot and tweaked; the charge floated blue along surfaces, inevitably closer, straight down on them, irresistible. She kicked Chris, kicked him away, his hands loose. His knees buckled, but he did not fall.
Chris turned, his skin numbed and hurting, ringing; he slapped at Kayla until the handles rang loose, swinging and sparking on the metal. Overhead, lazy electrical flickers bounced back and forth along the wires, slowing and sputtering as the arrestors kicked in, the safeguard switches, the cut-offs.
“Come on,” Kayla said.
The two climbed down, trembling, feet numb on the sharp, white gravel. They walked slowly past the cinders of Kayla’s pack, past Victor’s black shoes.
Victor lay stretched flat on his back, motionless. His eyes stared straight up, his long thin arms straight out from his sides. His hair had all been singed away, his face gray and charred; his shirt had burned off, his black pants melted into the flesh of his legs.
“Is he dead?” Chris said.
“He wasn’t exactly alive,” Kayla said.
An alarm sounded, answered after a moment by distant sirens. Kayla pulled Chris away. They climbed the fence, shuffled along through the dark neighborhood. The streetlights overhead snuffed out one at a time, a darkness cast out in waves from the substation.
27.
STEVEN DROVE HIS CAR WEST, across the Burnside Bridge. He turned right on Fourth Avenue, under the tall red gate, and parked. Chinatown was relatively small, and the landmarks—the gate, the Cindy’s Adult Book Store and Japanese Happy Fast Bowl signs—he’d sighted on that strange day were apparent. Finding the shop was easier than he’d anticipated.
He put two quarters in the parking meter and walked down the sidewalk, rubbing his hands together. At Shanghai Shanghai, he paused, then pushed the glass door open and stepped into the dim light.
Paper lanterns, hanging from the ceiling, shivered in the draft as the door closed behind him. The shelves seemed less dusty than he remembered, more full and organized, yet he knew immediately that this was the same place.
“May I help you, sir?” A middle-aged Asian man in a white apron stood at the counter. He smiled, his black hair parted and shining, his hands clasped.
“Is he here, the owner?” Steven said.
“I am the owner. Henry Yee.”
“Chesterton,” Steven said. “I think he’s the one. A tall black man?”
“Perhaps you could explain how I might help you.”
“I appreciate that,” Steven said. “But I really don’t think you can help me.”
The man held his hands abov
e the counter, trying to appear patient.
“It’s difficult to be certain of that,” he said, “when what you desire is so unclear to me.”
Steven stepped closer. Outside the front windows, cars jerked through potholes, conversations drifted closer and faded away.
“I know it’s not something that’s necessarily talked about,” he said, “but do you know anything about the operation upstairs?”
“Upstairs?” The man looked toward the back of the shop, where the stairway stretched into darkness.
“I know about it,” Steven said. “I’ve been there before.”
“There’s nothing upstairs.”
“Do you mind if I go up there, just to see?”
“Suit yourself.”
The lights on the stairs were out, but the hallway at the top shone, daylight coming through the windows. Steven hurried upward, pausing in the doorway of the first room—it was empty, swept clean, nothing left except the four round marks on the floor where a table had stood, cork walls stuck with blue-, red- and white-headed pins.
The second room—the one he had been in before—was, if anything, emptier. Even the dirty white blinds were gone. Steven looked out the window at the signs he’d seen the first time, at his car parked below, then walked the perimeter of the room, around the walls. He could see the scratches in the floor, the marks where the metal cabinets had rested. Bending down, he ran his fingers along the worn linoleum and found tiny slivers of copper, the barest reminder.
It had all happened, and this was where it had happened, but it seemed it would not happen here again. He had hoped they would be able to do it, that they could figure a way that Heather would be able to see—to see herself, even.
Standing, he returned to the hall, toward the stairs; at the last moment before descending, he stepped through the doorway of the first room. He hit the switch, and the lights came on, illuminating the cork walls, the colored pins scattered randomly, holding nothing. A feeling of helplessness passed over him, and a sense of disappointment. This was not just for Heather, but also for himself—now they would likely not do the thing that she had planned, the secret act that might allow her to see herself. He wondered if she would even tell him what this plan had been.
When Steven turned to leave the room, he saw that one red pin—next to the door, it had been behind him—pierced a narrow scrap of newspaper, an advertisement for a mattress company. He tore it loose, and turned it over; the other side was an article from a week ago, about a death at an electrical substation in Sellwood. A man named Victor Machado, on probation for child molestation, had been electrocuted. At the time of his death, the article said, he’d been under suspicion in the recent disappearance of a Portland juvenile, a boy named Leon Carmean.
Steven heard footsteps on the stairs. In a moment, the Asian man appeared in the doorway. He still wore his apron.
“Have you had any luck?” he said.
“This is all different,” Steven said. “This has been changed all around.”
“I’m sorry. I guess you were right.” The man looked down at his feet; he wore rubber sandals, black socks. “I can’t help you—I don’t know anything about this.”
“What?”
“I’ve never really been in these rooms. I do not know what business was done here.”
Steven pinned the article back to the wall. “I understand that there are different rules,” he said, “special ways of doing things that I’m not familiar with. Could you at least tell me where he went? When he left?”
“I can tell you what I know,” the man said. “I have no reason not to. Mr. Chesterton left two days ago, and said he would not return. He signed over the lease and sold the remaining goods to me. Then he stood on the sidewalk and watched as the men he hired removed everything from these rooms upstairs. Metal cabinets, cots, chairs and tables. Nothing special—they threw it all into a dumpster and took it away.”
“I see,” Steven said.
“It’s not impossible that I might hear from him, but I don’t expect to,” the man said. “I wish I did know more—I have my own questions.” He shrugged, and pointed at the stairs, turning away. “The door down there is open; I can’t stay up here any longer—”
“I had hoped to make arrangements with Chesterton,” Steven said, following the man. “That’s all. Perhaps I could leave my name here, my number?”
“As you like,” the man said.
28.
THE SKY WAS DARK, and Natalie’s trailer looked damp and forgotten, rotting, settling into the ground. Kayla squinted as she stood under the cedar tree; she was checking for the truck’s departing tire tracks—as if they would tell her something, if they were visible.
She stepped closer. Broken glass spread underfoot, yet the windows of the trailer seemed whole. She bent down, picked up a triangular shard. They were pieces of mirrors, strewn around with scraps of magazines, torn pages where she couldn’t tell if she was looking at arms or legs, what parts of bodies the hair covered.
“Natalie?” she said, hardly shouting. The name didn’t echo at all, as if it had never been spoken here, as if this were not a place she had ever lived.
The porch shifted beneath Kayla’s weight; she heard the reaction inside, a sound like tearing paper, all the mice scrabbling on the floor and counters, trying to get to safety. The door was unlocked. When she hit the switch, she was half-surprised that the light came flickering on, illuminating the magazines strewn everywhere. White stuffing leaked from the couch and its cushions, out of holes where mice had already burrowed. Orange powder—Tang—had been spilled across the kitchen counter.
The black windows reflected back, and she saw herself—her arms out, her eyes wide, her hair sticking up in clumps—here, alone in Natalie’s trailer. She breathed in, the air thick with mildew and dust, the sour smell of old magazines, mouse droppings.
The faceplates had been taken from the outlets, the exposed wires stripped of their insulation. The copper shone with a dull glow. She stepped through the hallway, into the bedroom, where there was nothing but a bare mattress and a wooden frame that had once held a mirror but now stood empty. Along the near wall, the metal door of the fuse box yawned half-open; on the floor, on the shelves were stacks of blown fuses—small round ones with their glass faces shattered, paper ones with holes torn in their sides. And thin copper wires dangled from the fuse box, hanging twisted along the wall as if they could be lifted and attached to something, bent around a wrist or finger.
Kayla heard a movement, a footstep, the rustle of paper.
“Hello?” she said. She held her breath and leaned against the wall, waiting.
“It’s me,” Chris said, from the other room.
He was sitting on the couch when she came through the doorway.
“Hey.” He lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave. “No one’s here. Nothing.”
“I didn’t know if you were coming,” she said. “If you would come. I didn’t see you at school.”
“First day,” he said. “Everything’s mixed up.”
Kayla stepped closer. She sat on the floor, on top of the magazines. She realized that all their covers had been torn off.
“Were you avoiding me,” she said, “at school?”
“I was avoiding everyone,” Chris said. “All anyone wants to talk about is Leon, and everyone’s afraid to mention him, at the same time. They want to have a whole assembly, you know. Missing children and strangers, drugs—”
“Pathetic,” Kayla said. “Everything’s all torn up.”
She put her left hand on the rubber toe of Chris’s shoe, and turned the magazines’ pages with her right. Men with mustaches were in all the advertisements; selling cigarettes, deodorants, CB radios. The people inside—Abbie Hoffman, Elton John, Ursula Andress—she had never heard of, and the middle of every magazine, where the centerfolds and the pictures had been, were all ripped out, missing.
“The only person who knows what happened to Leon,” Chris said,
“was that guy Victor.”
“People say that,” Kayla said. “I mean, that’s depending if Leon had anything to do with Victor, which I doubt.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “They’ll never—we’ll never find Leon.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
Kayla stood up and sat on the couch, next to Chris. Their skateboards rested, wheels up, on the floor. On hers, the word BEWILDERED, where Leon had written it, was barely visible, almost entirely scratched away by rail slides and other tricks.
“We have to stay together,” she said.
“I don’t want to do that anymore,” he said. “No more wires—”
“No,” she said. “We didn’t get enough, we didn’t follow. Or even if we did, it’ll take a while before we know, and especially then we wouldn’t be able to tell. We wouldn’t care.”
“Let’s just go,” he said, standing, picking up his board. “There’s nothing here.”
The magazines slipped under their feet; they walked close together, their shoulders bumping, their arms brushing each other.
“I want to check this last room,” Kayla said. “One second.”
They stood in the doorway, waiting for the fluorescent light to flicker itself whole.
“What is it?” Chris said.
“Hardly anything left,” Kayla said.
Twelve Styrofoam heads, three against each of the four walls, rested on the floor and stared at each other across the room. Some had faces painted on with fingernail polish and makeup, others were dented and missing noses, ears. Empty hooks marked the walls, and empty shoeboxes littered the floor, and—behind each bald, white head—four thumbtacks in the wall marked the corners of a long rectangle, where the centerfolds had hung. The heads had once held the wigs, all of Natalie’s hair, and the hooks had held her clothing, the boxes her shoes. She had taken it all with her, wherever she had gone.
