by Pat Murphy
Her shoulder had started to ache again. She headed downhill in the general direction of the hotel. At first, the street she followed seemed much the same as any other. Broken glass choked the gutters. Cars rested on the remnants of rotting tires. Through the rust and grime she could see words written in chrome: TOYOTA, DODGE, BUICK. She wondered what the words meant.
She was halfway back to the hotel when she noticed a strip of metal sheeting that stretched across the street, attached to lampposts at either end. Someone had cut through the metal; she could see through the oddly shaped holes. Jax puzzled over the shapes for a moment: they looked familiar somehow. After a moment, she realized that the shapes were letters of the alphabet, upside down and reversed, as if viewed in a mirror. She squinted at them uneasily, wondering why anyone would make such a sign.
She took a step forward, still staring up at the sign. A mirror set behind the metal sheeting reflected sunlight into her eyes, making her glance down. On the pavement at her feet, patches of light reflected from the mirror formed large letters that said: GARDEN OF LIGHT.
Moving cautiously, she continued down the street. No rubbish cluttered the gutters here; no cars were parked at the curb. The buildings on either side gleamed white, as if recently painted.
On the sun-dappled wall beside a tree, she saw a flicker of color: shattered rainbows darted across the white stucco, quick as lizards in the sun. Prisms, crystals, and shards of beveled glass hung from the branches, bobbing in the light breeze. Near the top, a mirror ball spun lazily, sending brilliant spots of sunlight everywhere. Jax held up her hand and colors flickered across her fingers: red as a sunset, green as new leaves, blue as a jay feather. The wind blew and the colors danced away, leaving Jax smiling at her own empty hand.
Farther down the street, sunlight sparkled on oddly shaped structures. A mirrored obelisk reflected her face from thousands of tiles, breaking her image into pieces that did not quite match up. Her reflection had no eyes. She moved her head, and hundreds of eyes blinked at her from the tiles. As she walked past, fragments of red from her shirt and blue from her jeans flickered across the mirrored surface like minnows in a pool.
A red arrow, pointing downward, invited her to duck through the opening in another structure. Cautiously, she peered into the opening, and then ducked inside. The structure’s mirrored interior reflected her face endlessly; a crowd of women with ragged black hair surrounded her, all of them staring quizzically at reflections of reflections of reflections. She whirled in the center and the other women spun giddily. She laughed out loud and watched the other women laugh silently.
She ducked back through the opening. Mirrored structures crowded the street ahead of her: cubes measuring several feet on a side; pyramids that stood taller than she did. She walked among the giant shapes, dwarfed by the glittering surfaces. The mirrors took her reflection and distorted it—stretching her body, squashing it, making it ripple in impossible ways. At every turn she met her own reflection.
Feeling a touch of apprehension, she hesitated. In front of her, the structures formed a twisting corridor. She looked back and saw only her own reflection, multiplied a thousand times. From every surface, her own eyes challenged her.
There was a flicker of movement to her right—she caught a glimpse of it from the corner of her eye. She turned to see someone run from between two cubes and dash down the mirrored passageway. She saw only a flash of dark hair and a pale face, but Jax recognized her mother, knew her with a certainty that made words catch in her throat. Of course—the city had led her to her mother. She called out to her mother, “Wait! I’m here!” But the running figure vanished around a bend.
Without thinking, Jax followed, dodging among the mirrors. She listened for the sound of her mother’s running footsteps, but heard only her own. The mirrors fenced her in, blocking her way and leading her into blind alleys. She charged into glass walls only to ricochet off and hurry in a new direction. Everywhere she looked, her own image confronted her. She dropped her crossbow and the rabbit carcass but did not stop—she could not stop running any more than she could stop breathing. Her feet kept pace with the wild beating of her heart.
She passed a stained glass window set in one wall of the corridor. The Virgin Mary smiled from the window as Jax rushed by. Jax followed the twisting path: choosing a right fork, then a left, then a right.
Mary smiled with infinite patience as Jax passed her again. A left fork, a right—and Mary appeared around the corner.
Jax leaned against the wall opposite the window, fighting for breath. Sunlight sparkled through the halo that circled Mary’s head. Plump children with stubby wings hovered over her. Between her hands, someone had glued a mirror. Jax closed her eyes, unwilling to look at herself.
She took deep breaths, waiting for her heart to slow to its normal pace. Her mother was gone. She was alone, but that didn’t matter. She would find a way out and look for her mother elsewhere in the city. She didn’t need any help.
Her breathing became steady; her heartbeat slackened. In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, she listened to a bird singing in the distance. Then another sound: shuffling footsteps coming closer. She opened her eyes and put a hand on her knife. She could hear a man talking: “Take it easy now. Just stay where you are, and I’ll find you.”
A balding man in a worn gray suit shuffled around the corner, still muttering reassurances. “Now everything’s just fine. I’ll get you out of here.” His pale blue necktie (marked in the center with some unidentifiable stain) matched his pale blue eyes, which peered anxiously from behind wire-rimmed eyeglasses.
“I was watching from the roof,” he said, gesturing vaguely upward. “You seemed a bit upset, so I thought I’d…” For the first time, he noticed the knife in her hand. He spread his empty hands. “No need for that. No need at all.”
“Did you see where my mother went?” she asked.
“Your mother?” He shook his head. “You’re the only person I saw.
“I was following her,” Jax insisted. “She was just ahead of me.” She shook her head, staring at the mirrors around her. “I came to the city to find her. I know she’s here.”
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head. “The city plays tricks sometimes. Leads people astray.”
“I know I saw her.”
He shrugged. “You may well have. But she’s gone now.” He held out his hand. “Here now. Come along and I’ll take you back to where you dropped that weapon of yours.”
Reluctantly, she took his hand and let him lead her back through the maze. At each fork he confidently chose a path, talking all the while. “Back before the Plague, there were mazes like this in amusement parks and fun houses. Well, not quite like this, of course, but similar. People take a certain pleasure in being disoriented, I think. Of course I was trying to capture something of the feeling of the city. Loss of control, confusion, uncertainty.”
Jax stared around her, certain she had never been down this corridor before.
“Almost there,” he said. “Ah, here we are.”
She snatched her crossbow from the ground at his feet, grateful to feel the smooth stock in her hands again. She picked up the carcass of the rabbit and looked around. The spot still looked unfamiliar.
“Surprised?” he said. “Didn’t seem like the same spot?” He smiled encouragingly. “You’ll get used to it. Good practice for living in the city. Now come along and I’ll show you the way out.” Over his shoulder, he said, “My name is Frank, by the way. You have a name?”
“Jax,” she said. She liked the sound of it. A short, strong, angular sort of name.
“I see. Well, Danny-boy’s out looking for a woman with no name. I guess you’re the wrong one. Funny—I wouldn’t figure that there were two strangers roaming around.”
“It’s a new name,” she said. “Danny-boy doesn’t know it yet.”
“In that case, Danny-boy is searching for you. He seemed to think you were lost.”
The spaces be
tween the mirrored walls grew wider. When Jax saw the empty street up ahead, she relaxed.
“Here we are,” Frank said. “I hope you’re feeling better.” He seemed anxious and concerned.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll take you through the maze again sometime, if you like. And I’ll show you the other things I’m working on. I’ve made a camera obscura in a house down in North Beach. And I’m building a crystal palace on the other side of town. Danny-boy knows where it is. You should come visit.”
She nodded. “Maybe I will.”
He smiled at her. “Perhaps I’d best walk you home. You can run into some strange things in the city, if you don’t know your way around.” He strolled down the street at her side.
For a time, they walked together in silence. She was uncomfortably aware that he was studying her face. “You know,” he said at last, “you’re not at all as I imagined you would be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tommy describes you as a barbarian, barely civilized.” The observation was made in a matter-of-fact tone that blunted the implied criticism. “Of course, he’s fascinated by you—but that’s mostly because he’s met so few strangers. Ms. Migsdale found you quite secretive, a little mysterious. And Danny-boy was worried about you, seemed to think you’d get lost or hurt.” Frank hesitated, frowning. “Now don’t take all this wrong. I just collect opinions, that’s all. Viewing a subject through several opinions is a little like traveling through a hall of mirrors, wouldn’t you say? It provides an interesting shift in perspective.”
She nodded uneasily, feeling a little dizzy from all his talk. Her shoulder ached even more, and she was suddenly very hungry.
“It’s important not to believe too much in the mirror reality,” he said. “Can’t trust it. It’s like the city. Everyone sees it differently.”
She trudged toward the hotel, concerned only with the reality of food to eat and a bed in which she could rest. Up ahead, she could see the tall tower of the Hyatt Hotel that stood on one side of Union Square.
“I know the way from here,” she said. “Thanks for your help.”
He nodded. “All right, I’ll let you go on alone. You can find me up by the mirror maze most days. Come back and visit.”
“I will.”
Jax found Danny-boy sitting in the easy chair on the sidewalk. He was holding her glass globe in his hands, watching the glitter swirl. He looked up at the sound of her footsteps.
“The park up there is good for rabbits.” She held out the carcass that she carried.
“I thought maybe you’d left. I thought you were gone for good.”
“Why did you think that?” He was silent. She continued, “I have a name now. The city gave it to me.” She pulled the tiles from her pocket and held them out for him to see.
“Jax,” he read. “That’s your name?”
“Sure is.” She was tired, but happy to have a name at last. She held out the rabbit. “We can eat the meat for dinner. I’ll cure the skin for you too.”
“You know, I can show you around the city,” he said. “I’d like to. It’s a dangerous place if you don’t know your way around. You have to be careful.”
She frowned at him, surprised at his concern. “I’m always careful,” she said.
CHAPTER 10
WHEN DANNY-BOY HAD AWAKENED and found the woman gone, he had panicked. He was used to emptiness: empty streets, empty houses, empty city. But the emptiness of the bedroom was different from all that. It was like the sudden silence when a person stops singing halfway through a song.
He had imagined her lost, confused, injured, trapped. She would fall through the rotting floor of a house; she would be bitten by a rabid wild dog. She would be bewildered by the maze of streets, unable to retrace her steps to the hotel. She would leave the city and he would never see her again. He imagined the worst. “I didn’t know what to say when she came back,” Danny-boy told The Machine. He was sitting on the hood of a cherry red ’67 Chevrolet, watching The Machine work on the industrial paint rig. Back before the Plague, The Machine’s workshop had been an auto body shop and a few of the cars remained. The floor was stained with grease and spattered with brightly colored paints. “I was afraid that she’d gone for good.”
The Machine fiddled with the rig, aimed the nozzle at the wall, and switched on the compressor. The contraption coughed up a blob of paint, then sputtered, sending drops flying in random directions. The Machine switched it off. Using the delicate pinchers of his third hand, he began to dismantle it.
“She seems so temporary,” Danny-boy said. “Like she could vanish any time. Poof, she’s gone.” He waved his hands. “I never know what she’s thinking. She doesn’t say much.”
The Machine shrugged, still carefully disassembling the nozzle and laying the pieces on the cement floor. The mechanism of his hand clicked softly as it moved. “That could be an advantage,” he said. “Most people around here talk too much.”
Danny-boy shook his head, not really listening. “I don’t know what I would have done if she had gone. Tried to find her, I guess.” The Machine frowned, but Danny-boy could not tell if he was frowning at the parts of the nozzle or at Danny-boy’s words. “You don’t like her,” Danny-boy said. “Why not?”
The Machine began cleaning each tiny part with paint thinner. “I don’t like most people,” he said. “Because most people don’t like me.”
“How do you know that she doesn’t like you? She doesn’t know you.”
The Machine methodically polished a small brass ring and set it on the floor with the other parts. “Guilty until proven innocent. I don’t trust her.”
Danny-boy shook his head. “She’s different. I don’t know what it is about her….”
The Machine interrupted. “I know what it is.” He looked up from the nozzle. His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Don’t you recognize it? It’s love. Also known as hormones. Biological reactions. It’s the meat talking, not the brain. One of many reasons that I’m glad I’m a machine.”
“Nothing wrong with biological reactions, “Danny-boy said quietly. “Is there?”
The Machine muttered something but did not look up. Danny-boy knew The Machine was avoiding his eyes. “What’s the problem?” Danny-boy said.
“You know the problem,” The Machine said. He was breathing faster. “She left and you hurt. A biological reaction. Pain.” He glared at Danny-boy. “And this is just the beginning—you care more and you’ll hurt more. A simple equation.”
“But T.M.,” Danny-boy began.
“If I weren’t a machine, I would have died with the others in the Plague,” The Machine said. “I would have died in the empty house, where only the machines kept running, going about their business as if nothing had happened. Everything was changed, but the machines didn’t care. I realized that it was better not to care.”
Danny-boy looked down at his own hands. He knew that all the talking in the world wouldn’t convince The Machine. “It’s not all bad, T. M.,” he said. “You can’t just look at the pain. You have to—”
“It’s dangerous,” The Machine interrupted. “Be careful, that’s all I have to say. Watch yourself.”
When Danny-boy returned to the hotel, he found Jax asleep in the easy chair. A shaft of afternoon sun squeezed between the buildings to spotlight her. She was curled up like a sleeping cat. In her lap, she held the glass globe. She smiled in her sleep, her face relaxed and peaceful. A young monkey that was perched on the back of the chair peered down at her.
Danny-boy had never been in love before, not really. For a while, when he was fifteen, he had courted one of Duff’s daughters, a pretty blonde who giggled at everything he said. They had kissed in the shadows by the lake, and he remembered the silky feel of her breast beneath his hand. Apparently, Duff had found out. By the end of the next week she was engaged to a farmer in Marin, a match arranged by her father. Danny-boy had mourned for a while, but it hadn’t mattered much.
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br /> Jezebel ran up to the chair and the monkey sprang down and then climbed up the hotel’s awning. From there, it chattered at the dog.
“Jax?” Danny-boy said softly.
Jax opened her eyes, and for a moment her sleepy smile lingered. “Strange to have a name,” she murmured. “Never thought I would.”
He sat in the other chair. “The name suits you.”
“Yeah?” She straightened up, yawning. “I thought it did. But I didn’t know.”
“It does.” He stopped, not knowing what to say. He wanted to reach over and take her hand, but he was afraid that would bring the wary expression back to her face.
“Ms. Migsdale stopped by,” she said. “Asked me to remind you that there’s a town meeting at City Hall tonight. She said I should come and tell people about Fourstar.”
“Sure,” he said. “I can introduce you to everyone. After all, if you’re going to stay here for a while, you’d best get to know people.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
He smiled in relief. So she did plan to stick around. “That’s great. That’s just great.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy, but for the moment, he didn’t care.
A bonfire burned at the foot of the marble staircase, taking the chill off the evening air. The high arched ceiling of the rotunda was black with the soot of past fires. Beyond the light cast by the fire, candles made puddles of yellow light. The elaborate carvings that decorated the walls of the rotunda were covered with wax drippings.
A crowd had already gathered when Danny-boy and Jax arrived.
The sweet smell of marijuana mingled with the wood smoke. To one side of the hall, Gambit was playing a percussion instrument that he had constructed from laboratory glassware. A harmonica player and a guitarist were jamming with him. Around them, people sat and stood in noisy clumps, talking and laughing. Gambit’s music bubbled through the conversations like water flowing over polished stones.
