The City, Not Long After

by Pat Murphy

  She felt soothed by the steady rhythm of the waves, by the endless stretch of blue horizon. The air was filled with the briny scent of dying kelp. She watched a line of pelicans flying single file over the water.

  She squatted in the wet sand at the water’s edge and began shaping the sand with her hands. A long diagonal line became Market Street. She used a flat piece of driftwood to smooth the sides of mounds of sand, forming the skyscrapers of downtown. With a stick she etched streets in the sand, creating the Mission District, the Western Addition, the Richmond District, the Haight, the Sunset District. She piled up sand to make Nob Hill and Mount Sutro. She collected blackened sticks from an old bonfire near the seawall and scattered them over the burned sections on Nob Hill. With bits of broken glass, she made an intricate pattern where Frank’s Garden of Light stood.

  The sun climbed to overhead, but she did not notice. When the sand dried so that she could not sculpt it, she found a rusty can and carried water to moisten it again. She gathered seaweed for the greenery of Golden Gate Park and constructed boxy apartments in the Western Addition. Just beyond the Sunset District, she dug a trench to mark the edge of the city, smoothing the trench walls to form the very beach on which she worked. The waves flowed into the moat, lapping at the beach.

  The fear that had overwhelmed her on the hotel roof had retreated. It was not completely gone: she could remember the panic that had made her breath catch in her throat and her heart beat faster. But now, squatting in the sand, the panic was far away.

  She sat back on her heels and straightened her shoulders. Her back ached from stooping, a pain that she had been feeling for hours but had refused to acknowledge. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had not eaten breakfast.

  When she stood, she heard a flurry of wings. Her sudden movement had startled a seagull, which had taken flight. She grinned at the bird. A tiny city was spread at her feet and the sounds of wings did not frighten her.

  “Hello, Jax!”

  Jax looked over her shoulder and saw Ms. Migsdale, hurrying along the beach toward her. “I’m glad to see you. I just got back from the library. Books says that Danny-boy is looking for you.”

  Jax stretched, relishing the twinges of pain from reawakening muscles. Ms. Migsdale was studying the city in the sand. “How lovely,” she said. “You must have worked on it for hours.”

  Jax glanced at the sun, which was low in the sky. “I guess I did.”

  Ms. Migsdale shifted her gaze to Jax’s face. “What got you started on such a project?”

  Jax shrugged. She spread her hands, unable to explain the feeling that had compelled her. “The city’s too big for me,” she said at last. “I wanted something more my size.”

  Ms. Migsdale nodded. “I see. Sympathetic magic. By making something, you gain control over it. Makes sense.”

  Jax stared down at the city. If Ms. Migsdale wanted to try and find an explanation, she was welcome to it. Jax felt free of the constraints of the city, and she was content with that. She thought about Danny-boy and smiled. “I guess I’d best be heading home.”

  That night, when Jax undressed and crawled under the covers on the big double bed, Danny-boy came and lay down beside her. He put his arms around her and kissed her gently.

  He made love to her again, and the warmth that had come to her on the roof returned, moving through her body with an inexorable rush. The feeling, she realized, had nothing to do with the sunlight and the flowers. It came from within her, in response to Danny-boy’s touch.

  Afterward, she lay awake, listening to him breathe softly and evenly in the darkness. He slept on his back with one arm touching her thigh, the other relaxed at his side. She did not understand how he could sleep like that—so open and vulnerable. When she turned restlessly in the bed he did not wake up, as she would have. Still asleep, he merely adjusted his body to hers.

  More than once that first night she woke up, startled when he moved in his sleep or changed the rhythm of his breathing. For no reason at all she touched him as he slept, caressing his shoulder or stroking his arm. It was good that he was sleeping with her, she decided. If a threat arose, she would wake up. He obviously needed to be protected.

  Even in her sleep, she was aware of the warm body beside her. She dreamed, as near as she could remember, of happy times.

  Danny-boy woke at dawn, when the first light crept in the window. Jax slept in a fetal position, with the curve of her back protecting her vulnerable belly, her arms held tight by her head. He wondered, watching her sleeping face in the pale light, if she ever relaxed.

  She needed him, he decided, watching her unsmiling face in repose. He would show her that she did not need to be always on guard. She could relax with him. He curled his body around her, fitting himself to the curve of her back. He would protect her. She would learn that she was safe here.

  CHAPTER 16

  MORNING SUNLIGHT FILTERED THROUGH the library’s dirty windows. On his cot in the history department, Books yawned and blinked his eyes. He had been up late the night before, attempting to pinpoint a mistake on an ancient Chinese scroll. For the past few years he had been studying both Chinese lettering and the Siddham alphabet used to transcribe Sanskrit in the seventh century.

  The text that had kept him up was the “Heart of Perfect Wisdom” sutra. After hours of comparing the Chinese characters with the original Sanskrit, he ascertained that a Chinese translator had transcribed two syllables incorrectly, rendering the Chinese text meaningless. Only after he discovered this could he finally go to sleep.

  Books rubbed his eyes, stretched, and wandered out into the reading room. Light flooded through the windows. On the central table, beside Books’ scroll and set of dictionaries, there was a neat stack of books. It had not been there last night. Beside the stack, a single slim volume lay open on the table.

  Books glanced around the room. Nothing else had been disturbed. Three cats slept peacefully on top of the card catalog.

  The old man approached the table and inspected the open book. It was a collection of essays translated from the Chinese. The open page was headed “The Art of War, by Sun Tzu.” Books glanced at the other volumes in the stack: The Selected Writings of Mao Tsetung, Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, A Short History of Guerrilla Warfare, The Anarchist Cookbook, and Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara.

  The air in the room was warm and stuffy. As always, it smelled faintly of cats. But Books felt a sudden chill, as if a cold wind had blown through the library. Must it come to this? He was not a violent man. Certainly he had fought in a few barroom brawls in his youth, but that had been long ago. He had never picked a fight; he had always tried to leave when one started. Besides, he was an old man, not ready to lead a war. At best, he might serve as an advisor for some younger leader.

  He turned away from the table, picked up the metal bucket that he kept by the reference desk, slung a towel over his shoulder, and went downstairs. Outside, he squatted beside the stream that ran past the library. The water chuckled quietly to itself as it curled around the marble stones of the library’s side steps. A frog jumped into the stream, disturbed by Books’ presence. Minnows darted for cover as his shadow crossed the water. Out here, Books could forget what he had found on the table.

  He pulled off his shirt and took a bar of soap from his improvised soap dish, a niche in the ornate carvings that decorated the lamppost by the steps. He washed his face and splashed his chest, gasping when the cold water touched his skin. He ducked his head just below the stream’s surface, then dried himself and combed his long white hair, taking his time and letting the sun soak into his bones.

  When he could delay no longer, he filled the bucket with water and carried it back up to the reading room, where he filled the kettle and lit the flame on his kerosene stove. When the water boiled, the kettle whistled softly, a homey comforting sound. He made a cup of mint tea and ate a breakfast of bread and cheese. Then he could think of no other way to postpone looking at the books. Ever
since Ms. Migsdale had brought him the message in a bottle, he had feared it would come to this eventually.

  Carrying his second cup of tea, he reluctantly returned to the books on the table and sat down in front of the open book to read:

  All warfare is based on deception.

  Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity.

  When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are near.

  Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him.

  When he concentrates, prepare against him; where he is strong, avoid him.

  Anger his general and confuse him.

  Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

  Keep him under a strain and wear him down.

  When he is united, divide him.

  Attack when he is unprepared; sally out when he does not expect you.

  These are the strategist’s keys to victory.

  It was good advice, Books thought. He continued reading, pausing occasionally to sip his tea. One of the sleeping cats relocated to his lap. There was a certain grace to the writing, an elegant logic that elevated warfare from brute struggle to something closer to philosophy or poetry. And that wasn’t so strange. After all, a Chinese general had to be a poet as well as a warrior.

  Books finished the essay and picked up The Writings of Mao Tse-tung. It would take some study, but perhaps he could be ready for war.

  Jax slowly brushed baby-blue paint onto a section of railing. Earlier that week, Danny-boy and The Machine had sandblasted the railing to remove the loose and peeling paint. The newly exposed metal was pitted from the salt air, and the paint went on unevenly, sticking in the crevices.

  The weather was clear and fine, the perfect day for a work party. Danny-boy had a good turnout—thirty-five people had come to help paint. A light breeze blew to her from the north tower, carrying bits of conversation and laughter. Jax knew most of the helpers. They were friendly enough; they joked with each other and shouted across the bridge, shared food and wine when they broke for lunch, talked continuously about projects and plans. Gambit kept calling down to people, telling them about the music that the wind played in the cables: “That’s a perfect fifth. Can you hear it?” Ms. Migsdale recited poetry as she dabbed paint onto the base of a tower. At the far tower, Mercedes and her two helpers chattered in Spanish. But Jax didn’t get the jokes, and the constant discussion made her head hurt.

  Over the course of the day, she had drawn away from the others, choosing a place to paint that was as far as she could manage from the other people. She was working in a spot midway between the two towers. There, in the center of the main span, the cable dipped down to the roadway, then rose in a graceful arc to the tower tops. A monkey chattered at Jax from a perch on the bridge’s cable. The animal had followed her out from the city and throughout the day had watched her paint.

  In the distance, she could see the others. On the south tower, Mercedes and her helpers were painting an elaborate design of overlapping triangles in royal blue and turquoise and navy. On the north tower, Snake dangled from a rope. Jax could see the outline of a tremendous dragon; its massive coils encircled the tower. The body was outlined in pale blue. Some twenty feet above the roadway, Snake was working on the head. Danny-boy stood below him, calling out advice and instructions. The words, blown to Jax by the wind, were as meaningless as the cries of the seagulls or the baying of sea lions from beneath the bridge.

  On the far side of the bridge, Gambit was methodically working his way up the main cable with a can of spray paint; he carried four spare cans, tied together with rope and slung around his neck. Lily was using an industrial rig to spray a coat of vivid turquoise on the base of the north tower.

  The monkey chattered at Jax again. She had grown used to the monkeys and did not mind their noise. They seemed friendly enough, and their chatter was often easier to bear than the conversation of people. The animals did not expect her to chatter back, or to laugh in the right places, or to be polite.

  “I’m a little tired of all this painting too,” she said to the monkey. It tilted its head to one side, watching her, and then spoke to her again. “Can’t make out a word of it,” she said, and then dipped her brush and dabbed blue paint onto another foot of railing.

  When she looked up again, the monkey had started climbing up the cable, walking on all fours with its butt in the air. About fifteen feet up the cable, the animal turned and looked back at her. Its expression was encouraging.

  Jax glanced in the direction of Danny-boy and the other artists. No one was looking her way. She balanced her paintbrush on the edge of the paint can, climbed over the railing onto the cable, and followed the monkey.

  The cable’s surface was ridged, providing a purchase for her sneakers. Two wire ropes ran on either side of the main cable, offering fragile handholds. Ahead of her, the monkey bounded up the cable. Drawn by the promise of the deep blue sky overhead, Jax kept climbing.

  It was a long walk up to the sky. The wind shook the main cable and tugged at Jax’s jacket, as if it wanted to pick her up and carry her aloft like a kite or a cloud. She could see white caps on the water below. The monkey always stayed a little bit ahead of her, stopping now and then to look back over its shoulder.

  Halfway up, she stopped. She had not intended to climb so high, but she liked the feeling of the wind on her face. The people on the bridge below were tiny. When they waved to her she lifted a hand and waved back, but she felt no urge to return to the roadbed.

  The slope of the cable steepened as she approached the tower. The paint that covered the cable’s ridged surface had peeled. It crackled under her feet as if she were walking on dead leaves. Whenever she took a step, the newly broken fragments blew away in a flurry of orange chips.

  Once, her feet slipped and she had to cling to the wire rope to keep from falling. The monkey stopped and watched in silence from a few yards above her. Her hands were numb from the cold, and she could scarcely feel the wire rope, even though she gripped it tightly. A seagull, caught by the wind, called out to her as it blew past. She could not make out the words, but it sounded like a warning.

  The top of the tower had been blasted clean by the wind. The cable ran through a saddle in the center. She sat down beside the cable and drew her knees up, hugging them for warmth. The monkey huddled beside her, leaning against her. “Long ways up,” she said to the animal, but the monkey didn’t reply.

  To her left was the Golden Gate, the opening that led from San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. To her right was San Francisco, shrunken by distance to the size of the city in her glass globe. She could have cupped it in her two hands.

  She was alone. She could not hear the artists or the gulls or the sea lions, only the steady rush of the wind past her ears. She looked out toward the city and tested the hollow place that she had found within her. It was not really a pain, but an emptiness. She had noticed it when she was listening to the artists joke amongst themselves.

  She had been in the city for almost two months, but she had not found her mother. The city led her to one place or another, but never to where she really wanted to go.

  She lay back on the tower top. The sky overhead was precisely the color of the satin ribbon that she had buried with her mother. Her eyes suddenly ached with tears. Her mother was dead. She had known that all along, but she had locked the knowledge away, hiding it from herself. Even if she found the angel, the best she could hope to find was her mother’s ghost.

  A gust of wind whipped the tears from Jax’s eyes. But once the wind caught them they were not tears at all, but tiny blue butterflies that fought the wind to fly back to her. They hovered close to her body, sheltering from the wind in the folds of her clothing. They crept across her hands, tickling her cold flesh with delicate legs. Heat spread from each tiny pinprick where a leg touched.

  She could not stop weeping. She was not sure why she wept. For her mother? For the city? But the
tears came, and she could not stop them. She lifted her hands to wipe her eyes, and butterflies fluttered on her fingertips. They surrounded her, soft wings and velvety bodies gently brushing her face. She watched them creep on the bridge itself, flattening their wings against the orange surface and trembling just a little when the wind blew. They pressed themselves so close that they merged with the metal, covering the orange paint with their iridescent wings.

  Her tears came more slowly. The air was filled with butterflies and her eyes hurt with the dry gritty feeling that follows tears.

  “Jax?” Danny-boy’s voice echoed from somewhere below her. “Jax?” His anxious tone was amplified and distorted by the echo. She heard the rattle of metal and a trapdoor opened. Danny-boy climbed out.

  He did not call again, but came to her and put his arms around her. She did not pull away. He was warm from the long climb up the tower’s interior and he smelled of sweat and paint. Beside her, the monkey grumbled at the intrusion. The last butterfly landed in Danny-boy’s hair, its wings trembling.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right.” She nodded and looked down at the bridge. Everywhere she looked it was blue, the color of her mother’s satin ribbon, of the sky at twilight, of butterfly wings.

  A Marin farmer, on his way to Duff’s trading post to trade fresh produce for tools, stopped his wagon at the first tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Will you look at that. They painted it blue.” He stared at the dragon that coiled around a tower.

  His ten-year-old son had already jumped down from the ox cart. He ran over to examine the tower more closely. “It’s butterflies, Dad,” he called back.

  “What do you mean—butterflies?” The farmer climbed down from the wagon and followed his son to the tower. Up close, he could see the gaps in the blue paint. It did look like someone had painted thousands of butterflies on the metal surface. Flecks of orange showed where the wings had not quite covered the surface; the blue was darker where wings from two insects had overlapped. The blue shimmered in the sunlight, slightly iridescent.