Widdy dashed in from the bathroom down the hall with a saucepan and put it on the stove, in the midst of making some kind of cosmetic. Nadia looked up and then held out the greasy label.
We’ve got to help her, she said. Widdy, do you hear me?
Widdy slowly turned her face to Nadia while she dropped in red food coloring one drop after another like a slow bleed.
Leave it alone, Nadia, Widdy said. They’ll be monitoring this apartment, okay? It probably wasn’t Josie. Hey? No, it wasn’t Josie’s fault, come on, come on.
Widdy wiped a fingertip over her arm and saw it was a nice blush effect. Nadia knew it was for tonight when some guys from the office were coming over; it was Old Movie Night and the television would treat the populace to the story of the beginning of the Urban Wars, Dr. Strangelove, and it would be nice to have a social life, wouldn’t it? After their childhood of fright and terror and midnight arrests, just to have a damned social life? Widdy said, Leave it alone, Nadia, please?
Nadia said, Were there other messages from Anna?
Widdy set the saucepan on the table. One. We tore it up. Widdy’s face became stiff with guilt.
Well, rot in hell! said Nadia. She slammed her hand on the table.
And there was another about old man Kenobi. Widdy washed her hands at the sink. Nadia stared at her. Yes, where he was or was buried. Leave it alone, Nadia. I tore it up.
Josie smirked. She took the label from Nadia and struck a match and set it on fire.
Nadia took hold of the cart handles and started her rounds: the pens, paper, joke books, copies of the Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary, and mail packets from the courier. She carried a deep, fatalistic knowledge that she would continue on this downward slide until she hit bottom. An eventless place without joy. The cactus farms.
Nadia hid food and never signed anything. She had an escape kit prepared in case Josie ratted on her or the oversupervisor decided to drop her, Nadia, down the memory hole. She kept a copy of the Girl Scout Handbook, 1957 edition, in her large tote purse along with copies of her favorite poems. She had a Day-Glo pink feather duster and a heavy piece of tapestry-like material. Also a little sewing kit in a metal cough-drop box that held needles, thread, and the silver St. Jude dangle. She collected old dimes and quarters because she would have to pay for things on the street. She went without things like new shoes but she carried the tote bag with her every day to the office and wore her garnet earrings. She had thrown away her youth in a brainless affair. Thin Sam Kenobi had been right.
Tucked in her tote was the last note that the Class Two adjective adviser to the assistant secretary for Cactea Opuntia Processing’s PR group, Earl Jay Warren, had written her.
We can’t go on like this, the note said. He was apparently unaware that this had been said before. My wife knows. Ditto. She will destroy you. I have to try to repair what is left of my marriage but I will never forget you and your bubbly personality and your little cart. Likewise our romantic rooftop meetings. Be who you are and the city will love you as I always will from an official distance. In the meantime you had best apply for relocation or she will send you to the dryers. Love is a many splendid thing and fades like the waning moon. May fortune guide you.
Nadia wadded the note. No point in keeping it, a reminder of grimy tar on a rooftop and a wilted secret flower on her desk like a snigger. He said he and his wife were separated but they were not. Why was the world so full of liars? Why did she always believe them?
Nadia passed by Oversupervisor Blanche Warren’s office. The woman looked up with grief and pain in her face and tears in her eyes. A personal fan ripped at the papers on her desk in a way that made it seem that nothing ever written on any sheet of paper mattered anymore, nothing mattered when married love was destroyed, torn to pieces. And here was the guilty Jezebel, the vandal, passing by her door pushing a cart and looking completely normal. The city dying of thirst. What do a lot of stupid papers mean? What do these black marks mean? The criminal must die.
You Jezebel, said Oversupervisor Blanche Warren. You vile dirty bitch.
Nadia hurried on down the hall.
Chapter 7
One day in September when García Lorca and Blasco Ibáñez and other Spaniards would have been on Big Radio, Nadia saw the water in her water jug shivering in rings. This only happened when more than five people were running down or up the stairs, which they did at lunch. Ten thirty in the morning meant an arrest crew. Nadia calmly took up her tote bag from the lower shelf of the cart and put on her hat and walked over to a bulletin board and ripped off a notice about the tissue engineering and permissible rage program for young men. A crowd of people thundered like confused beasts into the far end of the hall, carrying balloons and grinning in all directions.
Who put this up? she said to them. Do you know who put this up? This is outrageous.
What?
The man in front stopped in confusion; behind him a woman in a white tunic carried a boxy portfolio that said Pedicures in bright pink with cartoons of smiling toes.
Hey! We’re here to deliver a birthday party for the oversupervisor! Come on! Only some special people are invited! Are you Nadia Stepan?
Office workers with alarmed faces peered out of doors.
There’s a drawing for a pedicure! said the woman. She was trying so hard to smile happily that her lips shook.
Just a minute, damn it, I am going to find out who dared put this up, said Nadia. Somebody’s going to pay for this, and I mean pay. In a state of near-paralyzed dread Nadia managed to sound convincing.
They stared at her in a perplexed silence.
She picked up her tote bag and stormed off with the bulletin in her other hand, down the stairs, out the front door, and onto the street.
It was not good to move too fast. She wadded up the bulletin and threw it away and sauntered through the crowds, across the street to a notions stand. There was a young girl on the other side of the plank counter. Her green-and-yellow flag hung limp in the heat. The girl shook a fly-brush of newspaper strips over crumbling pies made of rye flour and tapioca and over the green Quench candies, her tin can for contributions to bribe money. A long brown bus was parked in front of the entrance to Nadia’s office building and on its side was painted, over windows and all, Surprise Parties and Special Occasions! It burned oil like a waste dump and since the windows were closed the temperature inside had to be well over a hundred. People inside it were probably fighting for their lives.
The girl looked at the bus and said, quietly, They dry people out. Then they’re like leather.
Nadia watched as more men in blue coveralls got out with balloons. She laid three pennies on the plank. How do you know?
I know, the girl said. They turn people into like thin wood.
Nadia reached for a jar of green candies and shook out three and dropped them from her trembling hand and snatched them up again. They cost either a copper penny each or a hundred Cessions paper dollars. Three pennies on the counter and one in the bribe can.
A sudden noise from up the street sounded like an enormous flock of birds calling. The noise resolved into human voices; voices of alarm, surprise. A dense crowd of people ran toward her down the sidewalks and the middle of the street, slamming into others who had stopped. They were yelling, Premature demolition! Get back!
Women in hats and office dresses turned and ran on their little heels, men in suits and ties, workmen in coarse cotton overalls carrying the orange warning signs, women with their baskets of street food for sale, all running, swarming past the party bus.
A thump sounded, as if the air had been struck with a massive, soft hammer. Bricks and drywall and boards burst up in a grainy giant fountain, far over the rooftops. A mushroom cloud of rolling dust came down the narrow canyon of the street bringing with it bits of cotton from burst mattresses, raining down on the people darting into doorways, alleyways, wit
h their hands over their heads. Buddy cars came to a stop and the drivers got out and ran.
Nadia bolted for a pair of double doors going into a production building. People crowded in after her, coated with a white, fine powder. Nadia’s clothes were crumpled, the bow wobbling on her hat but she went on in a calm stride down a long passageway. A woman ran past with her hat askew, asking. Is there another one?
You got me, said Nadia, and kept on walking.
The air in the passageway filled with choking dust but Nadia found a deserted tool room. She went into the room and came upon a glass two-quart bottle of water with the name Joe Fineman written on the koozie. She jammed it in her tote bag.
Now she was a water thief. Now she was in trouble. There would be no explaining this to a magistrate. She had stolen someone’s water allowance. Death by cactea opuntia.
She casually walked out the back of the building. Dust still hung thick in the air and a siren sounded and she saw a man lying in a heap of clothing and dust along with a purse, a torn package, scattered among fallen brick. She saw a pair of round eyeglasses with tortoiseshell frames and picked them up.
Emergency workers in orange coveralls came running through the dust scrim and shouted at her to go back but she walked on toward them. The telephone poles were down and electrical wires curled in the rubble. Nadia waved her hand and shouted that she was a property accountant for the Interurban Low-Rise Reconstruction Architectural Committee and that she had to make a quick sketch of the remaining foundations. She had to. That was her job. Did they want to see her ID? She was bluffing about the ID but she said confidently, Don’t try to obstruct me, please.
The ten-story building had collapsed down on its own footprint in a cascade of bricks and flooring. The buildings on either side were also cracked and swaying, and between them a deep hole and someone crying out in long demented moans.
Nadia ran to it. A hole had opened up in the building’s foundations. Stuff hung down into it, linoleum and strips of wood and snarled wire. She teetered uneasily on the edge to see that two feet below her, a set of ancient steps marched downward. She sat on the sliding linoleum of the edge and dropped down onto the first step and then the next and the next and disappeared into darkness.
She ran down the stairs past a man lying to one side of the staircase, head-down on a kind of avalanche of broken tiles, bricks, and lathing. She stopped to gasp for breath and swallow. He was lit as if by a spotlight from the sun lancing down the hole. His lips were a bloody, sparkling crimson. A hard hat fallen from his head lay farther down like something from a decapitation.
He said, Are you Medisave?
Yes, she said. How did you get down here?
I was blown down here, he said. He didn’t move. He seemed to be able to talk perfectly well. He tried to lift a hand. Get a stretcher.
Is there anybody else farther down? she said. Her voice was not steady and she had to hold tightly to the railing.
I don’t think so. Go up and get an ambulance for me.
Okay. She hesitated. You’re sure there’s nobody else down here?
Not as far as I know. His hand scrabbled in the broken stones and tile, a long slope of wreckage. He said, It went off before they cleared the area.
What is this hole? What was in here?
Old entrance to the trains, he said. Go on. Go up, get an ambulance for me.
I will, she said in a sincere, lying voice, but instead of turning and going back up the shaky staircase she ran on down, into the underground, below the city, descending through archaeological layers one after the other, time reversed, down into the age of the big Urban Wars with its burned soil and brick and occasional unexploded ordnance and then below that the age of cell phones and handheld devices and multiple TV channels and pizza deliveries and then the mysterious caves full of stored food and supplies and finally the squashed layers of LP vinyl recordings and calendars with numbered years. Below that, the train tunnels.
She stood powdered with mortar dust and sticky with cooling sweat on a dimly lit platform. The train tracks were a few feet below her sliding away in dim ribbons. Her heart pounded and she was very thirsty but did not drink from the stolen two-quart bottle. She had no idea when she would get more. A chain of fluorescent tubes lit the tunnel. On the far side of the tracks, in a wall honeycombed with large holes she saw a heap of dirty clothes. She stared for a long time to see if it was a person, or a body, or merely a wad of rags. In her state of cool terror everything seemed removed, or secondhand. Then from a loudspeaker overhead a voice said, Hi!
Nadia didn’t move. She didn’t turn her head. She said, in return, Hi!
Give me your destination and we’ll get started, the voice said.
Nadia said, The old Sissons Bend neighborhood.
A pause.
I’m sorry! That destination is no longer valid. Do you have an alternative?
Nadia thought in a desperate jumble; names, random nouns, anything that could be a destination.
The voice said, If you are unsure of your destination, could you give me an approximate direction? Say yes, no, or I don’t know.
North, said Nadia.
Good! That’s a start. The next train north is in ten seconds. Step back from the platform, please. Did you know a change in our thinking is coming? Be alert! When you board our special northern service train, you can use the keypad to the left of the . . .
And the rest of the words were drowned out by a deafening roar. A bright headlight shone from far down the tunnel to her right, and then the platform itself was lit up by the intense searchlight on the engine and the noise was terrific. It sighed to a stop and the doors opened. The interior of the car was lit by brilliant fluorescent lights. Bare plastic seats. She hesitated.
Here you are! said the voice. This is the four-twenty north carrying the locomotive post. Here you are. This is the four-twenty north. Watch your step. Watch your step. Here you are!
Nadia stepped in and the doors slammed shut.
There was no one else in the car. It was perfectly empty. She sat down and clung to one of the stanchions. The train bolted forward and increased to what seemed an incredible speed. All the cars ahead of her and behind her were brilliantly lit and empty. She had never ridden in an underground train; she had never known of anybody who had ridden in one; she had never known anyone who had even gone down into the underground system. Everything smelled of diesel smoke and plastic.
She looked for the keypad but there wasn’t one.
Wherever it stopped, she would get off, and keep on walking. She would walk north.
Why not just keep on, sidling along like a kind of tidy derelict through the world, unnoticed, unremarkable, unavailable to all the computer records that would contain her entire history, housed underground somewhere? She would be beyond the reach of oversupervisors and arrest teams, beyond the reach of the buses that baked people alive, beyond anybody’s reach. To the end of the world. To Lighthouse Island.
After a while she fell asleep and dreamed.
Someone called her by name, an urgent call in a low voice. Nadia! She was in youth housing of some sort that was made of glass or crystal, or perhaps it had no walls at all, only a series of steps from one level to another also made of something transparent. It was evening outside and in this landscape leaves lifted and fell slowly in a sea wind, leaves as big as book covers and they were dark green and very glossy.
She didn’t belong there but she wanted very much to stay. Then a man came walking down the glass stairs with the most splendid smile. It turned her heart over and she called out to him, Oh it’s you! He was about to say something important when she woke up, chilled and dusty. She lay slumped over on the plastic-covered seat with her notebook and tote bag fallen to the floor in front of her and her garnet earrings sparkling as if her mind were still on sleep mode and had temporarily lodged itself in the dark gem
s.
Chapter 8
She placed her straw hat with the bow back on her head as pipes and wiring flashed past on either side. She ate one of the Quench candies. She wondered how much time had passed but there was no way to know.
She sat thinking about the incomparable feeling of the dream and stared down the long line of illuminated cars. Her eyes focused. She saw a man sitting in one of the seats perhaps three or four cars down. Just one man. She had not seen him before. She wondered if the train had stopped somewhere when she was asleep.
Nadia watched as he shifted one hand from the stanchion and took hold of it with the other. He was dressed in a sloppy dark shirt and pants. She leaned back, as if to hide. But she couldn’t hide.
He turned to look at her and she could see the round white circle of his face and two black dots for eyes. He was staring at her.
Nadia opened her tote and took out her notebook as if she had something important to read. She glanced up. He was now walking forward through the blue-white fluorescent light. His eyes were fixed on her. He turned a handle and passed forward from his car to the next one and sat down again. He never stopped looking at her. His abnormally large mouth made him look like a lizard. He sidled a knife or an ice pick out of his clothing.
From under the crushed brim of her hat she watched and the dark tunnel rocketed past.
She got to her feet. The car lurched; she took firm hold of a stanchion, and the steel was slippery in her hand. The train began to slow and then it stopped. Three cars in front the empty spaces began to fill up with a yellow smoke or mist. In the dim light she saw nozzles on both sides of the tunnel pouring out a fine spray in expanding rooster tails onto the outside of the train and also into the inside as the doors opened. The sharp, chemical odor struck her in the face and tears started from her eyes. She felt an instantaneous urge to throw up.
Lighthouse Island Page 6
