Ambient

by Jack Womack

  I dove into a nearby doorway, estimating I'd be missed. The soldiers shrieked like ghosts as they reloaded. I edged my head past the corner of the door and looked out. The wire shirt beneath the truck had pulled away on one side; someone so observant as I tossed in a mollie. Seconds later the truck hurtled into the air, crashing in flames on a group holding the corner of Kenmare. Those troops who survived were extracted from the wreckage by samaritans, and torn and shredded.

  I ran down Delancey, a wide street lined with buildings' dry shells. The Brooklyn sky was deep red; the towers of the old Williamsburg bridge far away shone bloodish in the reflected light. I heard shouts; the truck blew.

  On Eldridge Street I slowed. Nobody lived here, not anymore, not even squatters. Hanging from the sides of buildings were bloody-boned remains, left as warning. The Moonboys, an undernourished contingent, controlled this area; but they knew me, and if any prowled nearby, they must have supposed it not worth giving greeting. Haphazard blockades of cement blocks, boards, and barrels still filled the intersections, tossed across by citizens long lost. I walked the street's middle, whistling "Big Noise in Winnetka," avoiding open manholes and excavations. There were no streetlights in our zone-they brought good money as scrapand it was a smoggy night, but I pulled my flash and had no trouble. I passed the hull of a century-old synagogue; every inch of it was graffitied. There were the usual tags, obscenities, and political messages: U S OUT OF NORTH AMERICA, NO FUTURE, MY RIGHTS OR I BITE.

  A better-lettered sign stood in the midst of the street, placed by the Army years before. Don't Touch Anything, it read, It Could Kill You. Smudged handprints nearly obliterated the warning.

  I climbed over heaps of debris where buildings had fallen into the street. Near one heap was a skeleton, lying languidly on the pavement, as if awaiting the next course. Feeling my high school soccer-team days again, I booted the skull down the street; ran and booted it again. It went for point against an empty hydrant; startled rats scrambled for cover. Two copters whipped over, all searchlights on, their pale beams piercing the smog. Someone had dropped off a city bus further along; it lay on one side, blasted and burned. HAVE A NICE DAY, its destination sign read.

  Heading east on Houston Street, I entered my quarter. People crowded the streets once more: residents of every creed and color, Ambient throughout. I walked north on Avenue C. My part of the neighborhood was safe as could be; our Droozies kept a pretense of order in the area, and Ambients tended not to injure others reasonlessly-though when they had reason they were the most dangerous opponents of all. As I walked through, I felt the sustaining comfort of being in the place where I had grown up, knowing all and having all know me.

  In lieu of streetlights, trash can fires, supplied and fed by the block associations, cast warm orange light through the haze. Our building was at Avenue C and 4th, two five-story tenements joined years before to form one. We had abandoned the upper three floors; nobody around here could afford to rent apartments no matter the charge, and landlords weren't esteemed no matter who they were. I'd blocked the windows of our building, and sealed the upper stairway, but bargain finders had still snuck in. The last time I'd looked, it appeared that much of our roof was out on indefinite loan.

  Enid and I lived on the second floor. On the ground floor were her two small businesses; Ambients were born entrepreneurs. One was a nickelodeon, the Simplex, a rep house showing classic films on vid. The screen was of unbreakable thirty-foot liqrystal that she'd obtained in trade for our father's old leather coat. The sound wasn't marvelous, but you could usually hear something. You kept your feet propped unless you wished to feed the rats. The marquee was unlit, but I knew what was playing. This week's bill-subtitled in Spanglish-was A Clockwork Orange and The Wizard of Oz, favorites of the heartyoung nostalgic.

  The other business was her club-hough, Ambients called itBelsen. It catered to Ambients and lovers of Ambient music. Ruben and Lester, the bouncers, greeted me as I entered. Being Ambients, they dressed as if Halloween Carnival went on year-long. Being Ambients they would have been hard to miss in any season; Ruben had no arms, and Lester had no body below the navel. Their agility was so great as the average Ambients'. If any customer grew testy-except during Happy Hour-Ruben loosened them up with his hobnails; then Lester leapt on and windsored. Lester was quite the sweeter of the two; he wore a black reverse Mohawk and a domino mask with sequins, the kind Woolworth's sells. Ruben, whose hair was uncombed blond, wore a discarded camouflage jumpsuit, obtained when he had discarded the former wearer. Inverted crosses hung from their ears. Ruben and Lester were lovers, which, though no longer illegal, was frowned upon among non-Ambients.

  "Hi-de-ho," I said. They grinned.

  "Who hangs and how high, O'Malley?" Lester asked me.

  "Skyhigh," I said, "How's biz?"

  "Bloody fucko."

  "Enid near?" I asked.

  "To the clouds she rolled," said Ruben, gesturing upstairs. "Margot atow. Persuading what she lists."

  "Spin and wheel with little diddle," Lester laughed. He reached up, pulling himself onto a stool one-handed. His arms were big as my legs.

  "Little little."

  "Margot lowlying still?" I asked. Margot was Enid's lover. She bartended three nights a week. Except for Ruben and Lester, Enid never hired any but women, notwithstanding that discriminatory hiring was illegal.

  Ruben shook his head, tossing his cigarette to his mouth with a quick flip of his chin. "To sight your ragged puss in glory grand," he laughed, "to taunt your mind with apish tricks."

  "Wonder and glory," I sighed.

  I sat at the bar, nearly ordering my usual-a Pepsi-then, changing my mind, ordered a triple gin. I hadn't drunk alky in years, but that evening I wished to bibtuck my mind a spell. The bartender, a young black woman whose right hand consisted of two thumbs joined at the shoulder, was new; except for Ruben, Lester, and Margot, there was constant turnover in the hough. Ambients tended to circulate in ease if not care. She knew me; she waived payment. I left her a penny tip anyway; the glass was clean and unbroken, and she hadn't thrown it at me.

  Over the backbar was a scrawled poster listing coming attractions.

  TOMORROW

  ANN FRANK/BATTERED CHILDREN/MULTIPLE BIRTH DEFECTS

  SATURDAY

  CELESTIAL PALSY/IRREVERSIBLE BRAIN DAMAGE/ZYKLON-B

  The club was closed on Sundays.

  At the far end of the bar gathered a pride of transies, resembling proxies at first viz. Their dresses, their hair, makeup, and forms approximated. Transies were unique among voluntary Ambients in that they chose to add rather than subtract. Those who could bribe it had T and A augmentation; no one became a transy who couldn't bribe it. Having done so much, they retained their artillery, to flash at the uninitiated. They made love only to each other; posed and preened for all.

  I wasn't sure which band prepared to play; Ambient bands were as one to me. This outfit had a one-armed bassist. They stumbled over, untuning their instruments. I drank my gin quickly, hoping to exit before midnight. The band introduced themselves by throwing a table into the audience. They began bashing the first song; a composition of their own, I suspected. The audience thrashed about, hopping up and down, smashing heads together, clapping stumps, flapping flippers, bouncing from side to side, wailing and baying and howling for the moon. Ambient singers are prone to tonelessly shout all lyrics at voice's top; this fellow was of the traditional school. Two-thirds of the way through their first number the clock read midnight, and Happy Hour began. The red lights on the ceiling flashed and the sirens blared. I gulped my gin and made for the side door. The audience pulled out their toys and began to play. The chainsaws were revving up as I ran to our apartment.

  At the top of the stairs, I stepped over the homebodies who had bedded near our door; they were called such because their bodies were their homes. There were seven in our hall. Many places provided floor space for them-even the Army let some spend each evening in Grand Central, perhaps a thousa
nd, by their count. The official government tally, much lower, enumerated only those who died before morning.

  I unlocked the five locks on our door, then the two on the gate, and went inside. I relocked the locks and slid the gate shut and put up the police bars. Enid was there, watching TV; Margot lurked unseen.

  "Hi-de-ho, Seamus," she said.

  "Ola." Something about her was different; for a moment I couldn't tell what. "You painted your nails."

  "Finified bright and embaled dark," she said. She'd painted them black; they'd been red. Enid, tired of her head simply shaved, had six months earlier wheedled the Health Service-she'd gone to high school with a doctor in the appropriate field and had something on her-into implanting nails, points up, in her scalp. There were seven great spikes above her forehead and fourteen smaller ones scattered over her skull. Officially the Health Service refused to treat Ambients, much less offering to adapt those who wished to become such.

  Enid's presence awed the most jaded. She was my height-six three-and not dissimilar in bulk, for she had worked with weights since she was seventeen. Tonight she wore a black blank tee, her spike bracelets, and pink tanga lacies.

  "They're you," I said, sitting beside her, kissing her cheek. Stuffing oozed onto the floor from the sofa as I sat; a rat pattered off to the kitchen as if to bring me my slippers. I removed my hardhat and my boots and pulled off my ears, laying them carefully on a nearby crate. Enid gave me those earrings for Easter, three years before; I was quite protective of them. The throb of the drums and the bass and the chainsaws resounded through the soles of my feet; I lolled to the lulling sound of breaking glass.

  "Fizgiggling and wandering far, I viz," she said. "How does downstairs go?" She was drinking from a bottle of Stolichnaya; she drank two quarts a day.

  "Bloody fucko, I'm told."

  "Beat me. Pestered full and joyful?"

  "Looks that way. Little bitty surly one near?"

  "Don't meanmouth," said Enid. "You think her such a whipperginny. Consider her mode."

  "Dreadful thought."

  She looked at me, quizzical. "Does alky wash your mind?"

  "I had one drink."

  "Tu?''

  "None other. I left when Happy Hour got under. Idolators fawning the great bore me."

  "Eyeing you guzz would appall," she said. "Stolly?" she asked, waving the bottle.

  "I'll use a glass, thanks."

  "A glass!" she laughed.

  "Try it," I said, "You won't break so many teeth."

  She tossed a lamp at me; I brushed it away, walking to the kitchen. In that room's dark I heard the voice of the refrigerator: Door ajar. Please shut. The door was not ajar, but the computer-a number three-couldn't know; dust had gotten in the chips. Thousands of times, day and night, the refrigerator cried Door ajar, please shut. We never had appliance money, and so could afford neither new refrigerator nor repairperson. The voice was pleasant, and the sentiment inoffensive; you got used to it.

  Getting a glass from the cupboard, I brushed away the roaches and rinsed it out. I looked out the window; through the smog I could see only the warm glow of fires. As I left the kitchen, a tremendous chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling. There were gaping holes in every room of the apartment where the plaster had been shaken loose by the vibrations below, or where our small roomier had chewed through.

  "What sore-eyed sights so dearlynear," I heard, reentering the living room. "Long steeped in urinals, flecked roundabye. How runs this eve, mewlypuke?"

  "Amazing," I said to Enid, staring at Margot, who had come in from the bedroom while I was in the kitchen. "You didn't move your lips once-"

  "Sizist," said Margot, addressing me; her contratenor rang like clanking iron. "The mouth gapes wide and drops the brains away. "

  She lifted herself onto the sofa, snickering at me. On hobnail Margot was about three foot nine, an achondroplast: a dwarf, a born Ambient. She wore a shapeless blazer with the buttons and sleeves ripped off, and a tee that read ELVIS DIED FOR SOMEBODY'S SINS BUT NOT MINE. Her pants-cut off above her ankles-looked to have been yanked from a corpse.

  "Control your manikin, Enid. People will talk."

  "True tones told in dulcet crystal," said Margot. Enid handed me an untapped bottle. I filled my tumbler, and drank.

  "Cheers," I said.

  ` `Fuckall, " they said.

  "Rolling soon?" I asked Margot.

  "Rolling raw to rock away," she said. Margot packed a swordstick four feet long; she used it as a staff. Around one wrist she wore a pink leather bracelet beaded with razors. Her black hair was cropped close, except in the front, where it hung over her face in long dreads. She'd recently filed her teeth into sharp points. I didn't dislike Margot, but she could be overly candid in her expressions toward me. "As we cats awayed," she said, "how then did piglet play?"

  "Well," I said. "And now expecting a nice, quiet evening in casa. "

  "Opt for pleaz and not for pain, eh?" she said, hopping off the sofa, grinding her heel against my foot. "Losient."

  "Pick on your own size," I said.

  Margot balanced her cane across her shoulders, her stubby arms outstretched. "Your mind sets a great sail burstfull with wind."

  "You'd look lovely crucified," I said.

  "How the thickened plot."

  "Lay no blows, my loves," said Enid, intervening. "So cruel to each and all."

  "Relax," said Margot, smiling. "With rude children only games entrap. "

  "Good eve," I said, taking my place on the sofa. Enid stood to see Margot out.

  "You're off?" she asked her.

  "To skim the wide surf," said Margot.

  "Have fun," I mumbled.

  "Again this way you will?"

  "Again and ever," said Margot. "To the gone world till then."

  "You'll go how?" asked Enid.

  "On angel's wings," said Margot, "with angel's feet."

  Enid bent down to kiss her. Margot lifted her head in caressful submission; nicked a small slice from Enid's cheek with her razors. My sister shivered with delight. "Merricat," she whispered.

  "Cuddles," said Margot, her voice raw with throat's lust. Enid began unlocking the door.

  "Bye," I repeated.

  "Order your house, gullyguts," commanded Margot of me, smashing a favorite vase of mine with her cane. She twisted through the opened door and was gone.

  "Till tomorrow eve," shouted Enid down the hall. After she relocked she came back over, took my hand, held it, and squeezed it hard.

  "A long time of it?" she asked. "You're wearish to my eye."

  "Just an average day," I said. She laughed, lighting another cigarette; no one but Ambients smoked anymore, not even the Old Man. The untouchable caste of American smokers never extended to American producers of tobacco; smokestuff could be exchanged for so many useful things from countries whose health concerns were less exacting. Tobacco's sale was again legal in America, but the national habit had been fairly broken over the years. There were still private antitobacco groups in existencetheir favored mode of reprisal being, upon sighting a smoker, to squirt lighter fluid upon the offender and torch away-but you would never find their reps in a Twilight Zone.

  "What have you been doing with yourself?" I asked.

  "Nada fatal," she said. "Kept a coil in the hough a time. While the bands delivered. Margot ticed me off and away. Sub- tlelured. We played bedwedded brides in Heaven's soft arms. We ingled and tongued, unblushing and hellraked."

  "Sounds like joy overjoy."

  She sighed, and smiled.

  "Anything on TVC?" I asked.

  "Overload. Flip your fancy if you list."

  We had a 1:25 Cinescope Sony. We rarely used our unit's VCR; we could rarely spare money for tapes, and the ones used in the theater didn't fit. I took the remote in hand. With Citicable we received nineteen channels. Enid had it tuned to one of the vid channels, the limited one that on occasion played Ambient groups; there were three vid channels besides Vidiac
. I started punching through the stations. "I Love Lucy" rerun. Basketball game; the Hanoi playoffs. Movie, Devil Bat. Variedade from Cuba. "Leave It to Beaver" rerun. Movie, Sound Of Music; to save time for commercials, all the songs had been cut. "Twilight Zone" rerun. News program from Japan. "Amos N'Andy" rerun. Health network; a doctor detailed the dangers of nonessential amputation. Movie, Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster. "Dobie Gillis" rerun. Static. "Honeymooners" rerun. Weather channel.

  "Return to Lucy," Enid said. We sat there, drinking and watching. TVC shows had commercial breaks every three minutes, and so it was hard to make any sense of whatever plots there might once have been. It was always disquieting to watch those old shows, even when they were colorcoded (they never got the color right-for example, I could not see Fred Mertz wearing purple pants) and transferred to digital tape. I regretted not having more of a choice in TVC viewing. There were seven other special channels, showing business reports, art programs, classical music and opera performances, ballet and modem dance events, gray-bearded British comedy and drama shows. Only owners and thrifty, pretentious boozhies had money enough to obtain those channels. The Drydens never watched them; if they watched TVC at all, they watched the Violence Channel. That was strictly controlled, so as to shield from the owners' impressionable youth ideas for acts that they hadn't yet conceived by themselves. Porn channels, like the magazines, no longer existed; under the Equality Acts ours was not a society to favor the exploitation of women over any other group equally available.

  "What sinks your lids so low?" Enid asked.

  "Nothing. I'm just tired. "

  "No yielding when you're fishyeyed," she said, again watching the screen, zapping repeatedly to savor the color's shifting murk. "No lipsalve spent. When you guzz over the flow will spill like Serena itself."

  "Nope. "

  "Does the pain burn diamond sharp?"

  "No pain yet in what isn't hurt."

  "Did something implead your name too near?"