by Linda Nagata
The 14th Avenue Exchange is two long rows of bike racks, run by a girl in an ankle-length black sweater and with a shaved head just sprouting yellow fuzz.
For the 12 speed, they get two little bikes.
They ride on dirt streets between little buildings that look like beehives. Joey likes the sparkly red banana seat his bike has, though he doesn’t actually sit on it until 12th. His legs are too long until then.
“Watch this,” Joey says just past 11th. He does a wheelie. It’s a fine one, lasting seconds, rear wheel following the bike tire rut in the road. But when he comes down, his helmet falls over his eyes. “Hey!”
He stops. She’s giggling at him. He takes the helmet off and throws it disdainfully to the ground. But he’s glad to see her smile. Her teeth are white as dinner plates.
She picks up the helmet, then attaches it to her purse. He realizes she’s taller than him now.
Joey wants to entertain her.
He tells jokes, he rides no-hands, he puts on a floppy straw hat with a hole in its top. At a house that is nothing but a brick foundation, a low wall around chest-high bushes, he captures a small tan lizard. He puts it into his mouth and pretends to chew and swallow it. “Gross!” she says. As she looks away, he spits it out. He tastes something sour-yucky. The lizard peed inside his mouth.
Just down the block is one of the beehive houses. It’s crumpled on one side but has a smooth slope on the other. At the bottom of the slope, there’s dirt piled up in a big half-pipe shape.
“Whoa!” he says.
Kids have ridden this house before.
He hikes up the crumpled side, part-rolling, part-carrying the bike.
To his surprise she follows him, bringing her bike.
He climbs on his bike, looks at her. She’s pale, unsmiling, nose-lines deep.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says.
She stares at him. “I want to.”
“Cool. Just wait till I’m out of the way.”
He does the beehive. It’s steeper than he’d thought, and he panics at the start, but then his body takes control. Wind in the face, joy of speed and weightlessness, crackle of plaster beneath his tires, then he’s on the dirt. He veers up the half-pipe, slows, turns and coasts back down to a stop.
She comes down as slow as she can. Braking, coasting, braking, so slow he’s sure she’s going to fall. But the fall doesn’t happen until she reaches the half pipe. She loses her momentum, teeters, then falls onto her side.
“Are you okay?”
He’s expecting terror. But she’s giggling, and the nose-lines are almost gone. “Let’s just go a little further downtown.”
He’ll do anything she wants.
Eon ends north of the 6th Avenue ziggy-rat.
Joey’s heart goes thump-thump. He’s never been south so far, never seen the ziggy-rat so close. Hills of rubble at its base. The ziggy-rat itself is as tall as the VLM building. It’s built of gray bricks stuck together with green mortar. It’s got a long staircase out front that seems to touch the sky.
He’s inspired. “Let’s climb it.”
“And ride down?” she asks.
“Yeah!”
She grins. She’s missing her top front two teeth.
They walk their bikes across the little hills, which are made of bricks too, only pieces. They walk carefully, because the bricks shift beneath their weight. On top of one hill there’s a crushed soda-pop can. When Joey kicks it his shoe comes off.
He ties the shoe back on as tight as he can.
They start up the ziggy-rat. The sun is bright in a glaring blue sky. The staircase bricks warm his feet and make them sweaty so he slides in his big shoes. He’s soon breathing hard, arms hurting from holding the bike. He wants to rest, but would be embarrassed to rest before the girl does. Halfway up the staircase there’s something metal in the shadow of the staircase wall. When he gets there, he’ll rest.
The girl’s bike makes a ka-chink each time she raises it a step. The ka-chinks get slower and then they stop.
She leans her bike against the wall.
“You don’t want to ride down the ziggy-rat?”
“I’ll help you with your bike.” Her face is red. “And you say, zigg-oo-rat.”
“Uppsies say,” he says, irritated. But he lets her hold one handlebar, while he holds the other and the seat. His irritation passes. He keeps looking at her. Her face is cute. Sweat sticks a strand of hair to her cheek. He wants to brush it back but touching her would be weird since she’s a girl.
The metal thing’s a rusty bike with training wheels, atop some clothes and sticks. He doesn’t stop. “What’s that?” she says.
“Training wheels!” he says.
“No, below it.”
“I don’t know.”
She lets go to look. He keeps pushing. He gets a few steps further up when she lets out a cry. “It’s bones!”
She’s moved the rusty bike. It’s left an orange bike-shaped drawing on the black cloth. A sweater. He’s sees finger bones sticking out from beneath. There’s a lump beneath one end of the sweater.
He pushes at it with his toe and a yellow skull comes out.
“Hey!” he says, jumping back.
The skull seems to look at him, then starts rolling down the stairs.
It makes a fragile tap sound against the bricks.
“Cool,” he says, though he’s more scared than delighted.
She looks at him. Her nose lines have returned. “We can’t go any farther.”
“We’re almost to the top.”
“It’s not safe. People don’t come back from where we’re going.”
“But you wanted to.”
“I changed my mind.”
He looks at her. She’s chewing on her lower lip. She has all her kid’s teeth now. He says: “Maybe I want to keep going.”
“No,” she says. “Come back with me.”
“Why? Why should I?”
“Because,” she says. Then the nose lines go away almost. “Because I’ll let you kiss me again.”
“I could kiss a lizard too,” he says, but he picks up the bike and turns it around.
They take Century north. At 12th Avenue she stops. “I want to look in here.”
It’s an abandoned mud-walled building that had once been covered with colored tiles that made a picture. Now all you can see of the picture is the head of a dog, cocked to one side, and part of a sign above the head. The sign says records an apes.
“I’ll guard the bikes,” Joey says.
The wooden door at the entrance has an oval-shaped hole, which she crawls through. Joey hears her move things inside, watches dust puff out from the dim interior.
He’s rubbing his knee, which is sore from riding or maybe growth pains, when a kid rides up to him.
The kid’s on a tricycle that’s way too small, and he’s wearing a tie and Uppie dress slacks that are way too big.
“Nice wheels,” Joey says.
“Give it to me,” the kid says.
It’s Pony-tail. His long hair’s loose and shiny black, his pudgy face dimpled.
“What’s it to you?”
“You stole it. It’s not yours.”
“Finders keepers.” Joey studies the grease stains on Pony-tail’s slacks. Must have caught them in the chain. “Hard to be a bike-tyke when you’re dressed like a bounder.”
Pony-tail gets off the tricycle. “What did you call me?”
Joey stands. “I didn’t call you anything. But you are dressed like a bounder.”
“I’m dressed like an Uppie!”
“Then you are a bounder!”
Pony-tail punches Joey square in the stomach.
Joey bends over, eyes watering. He regains his breath after a few seconds, sees Pony-tail standing with his hands in fists but waiting, as though it’s Joey’s turn to throw a punch. Instead of obliging, Joey charges, ramming his shoulder into Pony-tail’s chest, knocking him down.
“Stop it!”
It’s the girl. She pulls Joey off Pony-tail.
“What’s going on?” the girl says.
“He hit—” Joey starts.
“He stole—” Pony-tail says.
“Is this about the model?” she says. They both nod. She pulls the Ghengis Khar out of her purse. One wheel is missing. She digs in her purse until she finds it, and pushes it back onto the axle. Then she hands the model to Pony-tail. “You’ll take it back to VLM?”
“Yes.”
“You do that. I wouldn’t want you to lose your job.”
“Did you find what you wanted?”
“Yeah,” she says. “A record.”
“What record?”
“I’ll let you know.”
They eat spare ribs at Minute Steak on 26th Avenue, then ride a tandem bike toward Midtown. She’s riding forward, steering, looking fine. Her sweater looks less ugly in the deep blue light of dusk. She kissed him during dinner, and promised to kiss him once again. Joey wants more, of course. She won’t say where she’s taking him. He’s hoping to her apartment. She lives on 71st, in an apartment with maid-service and a doorman.
He’s at her mercy and riding a rush like he felt going down the beehive.
But she turns way too early, making a right on 35th.
“Hey!” he says.
The Land Yacht has not been towed.
Streetlights are on now. But they don’t explain the brightness of the Yacht. “It’s burning,” she says, but they get closer, and understand. There are candles, dozens, of all colors, fat and skinny, tall and short. They are burning on the car, the hood and top and bumpers mostly, but some are affixed to the windshield, and even a few to the side windows, pointing horizontal, though the flames go up. Rivulets of wax streak the sides. Bouquets of flowers circle the Yacht, piled three-deep on the asphalt. Smells comes in alternating waves, now hot wax, now carnations and gardenias.
“It’s like a shrine,” she says.
“But nobody’s here worshipping,” Joey says. “Maybe it’s a thank you.”
“For what?”
“For changing the model.”
She says nothing to this.
They get off the bike, step across the Police Line tape. He looks at her. This old, the nose-lines are etched permanent, but they get deeper when she’s worried. Not now. Now, she smiles.
She unlocks the passenger door, and tells him to get in and go to the back.
It’s dark in the bedroom. As he steps down from the passenger aisle, Joey trips and falls on the bed. “Can you turn a light on?”
“I want to save the battery.” She draws back the curtain near the vanity. The candlelight colors her gold and shadowy. She opens the vanity’s top drawer, takes out not the negligee or condom that Joey hopes for, but a record player. After setting it on the vanity, she plugs it in, then takes the record she’s found, a 45, out of her purse. “Dance with me.”
“Dance?”
“Yeah. Don’t you like the Bay City Rollers?”
“Not Leif Garrett?”
“Couldn’t find that.”
Hisses and pops as the record starts. The song is “Saturday Night.” Loud and optimistic and as joyfully irresponsible as youth itself. Joey dances with her. They clap with the Rollers, they brush against each other, they shout the chorus. She pushes up the sleeves of her sweater, raises it to show her thighs. Joey’s thrilled, smart like he’s just drunk a single beer, and as he touches her hand, she suddenly makes sense to him. “You know, you only have to take care of yourself!”
“What?” she says.
“You can live without being responsible for everyone!”
She shakes her head as though she can’t hear him, but then she turns the music louder. And they dance, and they dance, and Joey forgets his thought, and in the candlelight the lines along her nose seem to disappear.
The Black Feminist’s Guide to Science Fiction Film Editing
Sandra McDonald
Scene one: a dingy hotel room at night. A somber man sits at a computer while police gather outside. His name is Neo. He works for the mysterious figure known as Morpheus. They are monitoring brilliant young hacker Tina Anderson, codenamed Trinity, who unwittingly lives in the construct called The Matrix. Neo’s job will be to look handsome, deliver plot information as necessary, and help Trinity defeat the evil cyber-overlords.
The newly compiled footage loops on my monitor. Keanu Reeves has been dead for decades, but Neo will make the perfect sidekick.
“I still think you should swap Morpheus and Switch,” says my co-worker, Gloriana, from one cubicle over. She’s rebuilding Star Wars: A New Hope, the story of a young farmgirl on a quest to save Prince Luke from an evil empire. I wish she would focus more on her own work than mine, but she’s still sore about getting stuck with George Lucas.
That’s our job, you see: film reconstruction. Correcting the cinematic injustices of the past with modern, thoughtful, gender-balanced versions.
On Gloriana’s monitor, Leia Skywalker stares wistfully at the sunset while inspiring music plays in the background. Gloriana changes the angle and says, “Trinity needs a female mentor. Switch is the only member of the ship’s crew to dress in white, which is obviously a goddess reference.”
There’s a slight shadow on Keanu’s face. I touch in an adjustment. “I’ll make it clear that Morpheus is subordinate to the Oracle. She’s the strong crone presence who guides Trinity to her destiny.”
“But the training scenes in the dojo construct will show a dominant male archetype physically and psychologically aggressive toward a woman,” Gloriana replies. “Is that what you want young girls to see?”
Of course not. No one does. But I have a soft spot for Fishburne, especially his later work in the reboot of The Last Starfighter as a post-apocalyptic tale of redemption. He reminds me of my dad, maybe, with his calm gaze and powerful voice. I should call my parents more often, I think, adding that to the neverending to-do list.
Patiently I say, “I’ll deal with the dojo when I get there. You just worry about Aunt Beru.”
“No worries at all, my friend. By the time I’m done with her, she’ll be the baddest pistol-packing matriarch to ever make the Kessel run in twelve parsecs.”
Gloriana’s ancestors came from China. Mine came from Africa. You don’t see many people with our skin color in old science fiction films, not unless they’re the disposable extras. We’ve brought that up in staff meetings, how we should challenge racial norms while we upend gender stereotypes, but re-establishing women is always our first consideration. We can rework existing characters in a film—and by rework I mean everything from new shots, new scenes, and new dialogue—but we’re required to use the images of the original actors. We can’t create entirely new people.
“And here’s Minervadiane!” says a hearty voice coming down the hallway. “She won an award for Star Trek last year.”
“Oh, I loved that!” is the response. “Captain Uhura is the burn.”
Gloriana grimaces. She’s still stink-eyed about my win, which overshadowed her work making Denise Richards the true heroine of Starship Troopers. The loud voice belongs to Sibilia, our boss, who is six feet tall and utterly brilliant. She created the technology we use to manipulate billions of pixels each night. As director of our agency, the Women’s Movie Bureau (WoMB), she has provided positive role models for millions of women around the globe. She also puts the G into Glamour. No matter what her outfit—vanilla silk suit, pink leather trousers, combat camisole—she always tops off the look with a scarf that shimmers like gold fireflies at dusk.
With her now is an intern who looks Hispanic and has a strong handshake for someone who is, what, fourteen years old? Schools keep churning them out younger and younger these days.
“I’m Ann,” the intern says.
Gloriana sniffs. “What a quaint old-fashioned name.”
“Short for Annastacialiese,” Ann adds.
“I’m leaving Ann to learn from t
he best,” Sibilia says. Already she’s halfway down the hall again. Like a firefly, you can’t pin Sibilia down. “Teach her well, Minervadiane!”
Ann pulls over a stool and peers up at my monitor. “Carrie-Ann Moss is really acid.”
I’m only about five years older than she is—okay, maybe six or seven—but who can keep track of all the hip language these days? I hope “acid” is a good thing, because we’ve got a lot of Moss ahead of us.
“Where’d you study?” I ask.
“ReDreamWorks,” she replies, and okay, that’s impressive. Excellent program. She’s probably been splixing her own vids for years, snooked into global entertainment 24/7, spinning out her bright digital dreams. But the work we do here is much more complex and important. If it weren’t for reconstruction, people would think Arnold Schwarzenegger was the star of Total Recall and not Sharon Stone. They’d believe that Sylvester Stallone defeated Wesley Snipes in Demolition Person instead of giving credit to supercop Sandra Bullock. And of course there’s Back to the Future, with Lea Thompson’s heroic efforts to save her youngest son Marty from a mad scientist’s time-traveling clutches.
Ann tilts her head at the screen. “I hope you make Switch the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar. She’s clearly the goddess figure.”
“You can stay, kid,” Gloriana says, just as Aunt Beru shoots a bounty hunter in the Mos Eisley cantina.
It’s only eight o’clock. This is going to be a long night. Little do I know that the first act turning point is on its way.
If you studied screenwriting during a certain period of history, say 1980—2020 or so, you were taught that a movie contains a certain number of dramatic acts, and each act ends on a plot point that increases the stakes for the hero on her journey. Take Avatar, the story of an alien woman’s fight to save her people from greedy male Earthlings. In the first act we establish her dominant role in her tribe; the first turning point comes when she sees the Earth spaceship drop out of the sky. No modern filmmaker worries much about linear narratives, but I edit classic texts. I’m always thinking of where the story goes next.
Just after midnight Sibilia calls me to her office. It’s up on the third floor, past the cubicles where Irene Adler and Vivian Rutledge are solving mysteries with the help of their respective sidekicks, Dr. Watson and Philip Marlowe. I never liked working in the Mystery Department. Too many killings, not enough spaceships. If I couldn’t work in Science Fiction, I’d ask for Musicals. Every girl deserves a scene like the one with Debbie Reynolds singing and dancing in the rain.
