Atlas grips the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. His head throbs.
“It’ll be safer than sitting in the car. It’s only one guy.”
“Smit is not merely ‘one guy.’ If I have the power, you will not stand within three hundred kilometers of him.”
Samuel gasps. “Look out. Attie’s using the metric system.”
Gene scowls at the mat beneath her feet. “Geez. What’s with you? I want to help. Since when did you get so,” she shifts her mouth, “possessive?”
His brows cinch and breath sticks in his throat. Independent of road bumps, a jarring shock rattles his spine and sweats his palms and his twisted gut surfaces memory of the first Imperium guard to confiscate his footwear after discipline. Ownership, they said, will drench your being vicious before you can reckon its origin. Your possessions will chain you. The responsibility will overtake you. They will replace Absolute and grind you to dust beneath the treasure you slave for. The grooves in Atlas’s brow deepen.
He has chanted these words; they again drum against his skull: centrifugal unification. Only divided, says Absolute, can you be unified.
“Gene, this morning, Samuel explained to me—” Atlas kneads his hands and says, “Samuel claims you are in—”
The Mustang jolts left and Atlas’s head slams the window, his seatbelt yanking against chest and waist. He groans. Samuel throws the steering wheel right again, wavers left, right, and then straightens his tires on the road, no vehicles behind or in front. Atlas rubs his head.
Samuel meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Not in my car.”
Atlas contorts his face.
“Good heaven.” Gene gawks at Samuel. “What are you doing?”
“Trying not to flatten someone’s calico. What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be praying?”
“There wasn’t any cat.” Gene squints. “Let’s pray together. Dear Lord—”
“And we’re here. Meadowcroft Grill & Brew. Did you bring ID?”
“—please forgive Samuel and lessen his evil—”
“Cocaine. Hooker. Incest.” Samuel veers into a small parking lot and, letting go of the wheel and gearstick, sticks his fingers in his ears. “Mafia. Decapitation.”
Samuel concludes his impressive list, so thinks Atlas, of mostly fabricated words when he shifts his vehicle into park at the far corner of the lot cradling an L-shaped, single-story building. Gene glowers as they climb out of the Mustang. Three other vehicles inhabit the space.
Shimmying one leather band tighter up his arm, Atlas looks across the deciduous canopy drooping over cars, brushing the building’s aluminum roof. A few leaves curl their edges yellow and web rigid brown toward desaturating stems: summer’s end’s beginning. The building ages too; chipped brick, rounded corners, three chimneys strain to peek above overgrown branches, and the shorter of two merging rectangles forming the structure’s L clings to paint cleaner, brighter than the longer’s beige. It’s an extension to a decades-old building that has changed functions more than once.
Samuel steps across asphalt, loose shards grinding underfoot, shadows dancing on his back, and Gene follows. Atlas bites down and squeezes his eyes shut.
“Gene.”
He hears footsteps return to him. Hands curve around his shoulders. Atlas opens his eyes.
“You’re not stupid. I’m not stupid.” Gene clenches his shoulders and meets his eyes. “But where’d we be if we’d never done stupid things?”
“In safety.”
“In Sidera.”
Atlas looks past her and frowns and she drops her hands.
“And is such how you would be rebutting if our roles were reversed?” Atlas asks.
“Probably not.” Gene shrugs. “I don’t want you to track down Eden. Goodness, I don’t want you near your prophecy because then you’d know what she wants to know, which screams ultimate stupid to me.”
“Hypocrite.”
She laughs without smile. “Yeah. But then the only people who aren’t are children.”
Lifting a hand, Gene presses her palm to Atlas’s cheek and the corner of her mouth turns up. He holds his breath. She moves her thumb a centimeter, one centimeter stroke, and then lets her hand fall.
Atlas swallows. “You’re insinuating what?”
Gene grins.
He exhales and glimpses Samuel up the building’s sidewalk, two paces from the door. “Stay near.”
Gene trails after Atlas, who trails after Samuel through the screech and ding of the structure’s door and jingling bell. Neon light glows their silhouettes. Centimeters behind, Gene warms Atlas’s back and Samuel strides a lead across loose gray linoleum swirling blue, pink, green hanging lamplight, each step bulging a half crescent highlight around foot. Windows’ blinds hang closed. Dust hides in corners and evades afternoon sunlight wilting on sills. In one corner, a couple sits at a small table. An older, male walker sits atop a stool at the bar. Three or four exchanged words crawl beyond the drone of musical vocals slumping from wall speakers; behind the bar, two employees stroll and chat, their figures distorted at some glass tower’s fringe. A tower of drinking glasses. Base and rim, base and rim, glasses stack into rows into a triangle upon the bar counter.
A voice, not the employees’ or music’s, bleeds toward Samuel. Atlas squints past him into a nook beyond spotlights’ neon.
“They’ve come.”
Smit sits in a booth behind a wooden table. Its edges splinter. He presses his elbows into the table’s grooves and leans forward, his nose and chin grazing light’s threshold.
“Kenny,” Samuel stops at the table, “how’s life? Had fun in your hole all day?”
Smit’s shoulders hunch but span the booth’s width. He tilts his head and a clump of his bangs slides off his forehead, the rest flattened against his scalp. Atlas and Gene stop a good meter and a half behind Samuel.
“Show me. Show me the face,” Smit says.
Samuel grabs the back of Atlas’s neck and yanks him forward. Gene peeps. Atlas staggers.
“Here’s the Sideran for ya. Ain’t-he dainty?” Samuel folds his arms. “But we’re here just to chat.”
“No,” Smit groans, “the scarlet. Show me the face of blood.”
“Here he goes.”
Stepping on their toes, Gene wriggles between Samuel and Atlas. Smit curls his lip that unearths flaxen teeth.
“Gene,” Atlas whispers. He grabs her arm; she shakes it off.
“There she is.” Smit exhales. “Come, little lamb. Let me smell the sweet sanguine in your veins.”
Wind electrocutes Atlas’s arteries, cutting, stabbing, burning all the way to his hands, where he spreads his palms and flexes his fingers. He twitches air that drifts with a vent’s buzzing outflow a couple meters away.
Samuel slaps Atlas’s shoulder blade. “You can talk to the lady after you tell us where Eden is.”
Smit bellows a laugh. “That isn’t not how no machines work, young prophet. Please the priest and he’ll cleanse your sins into iron. Please the smith and he’ll turn it to nails. Please the Roman and he’ll drive them into the feet of Christ. Another sin is committed.”
“Shoot. He’s too drunk.” Samuel turns toward Gene and Atlas. “Let’s go home.”
Smit growls, lunges out of the darkness, over the table, and grabs Gene’s wrist. He jerks her toward him. Her hands slam the table’s surface, a sliver scraping her palm, and she whimpers a tremble. They stand leaning toward the other’s bead-brewing brow. A drop of blood rolls down Gene’s hand.
“A cut,” Smit smiles at Atlas, “to a question.”
Atlas moves before he knows. Samuel grabs him from behind and constricts his arms into his sides. He angles to Atlas’s ear.
“All good,” Samuel says. “Look around you.”
Atlas scans the building through his periphery. Four walkers. One glances at them.
“Yes. Their sin will crucify.” Smit squeezes Gene’s wrist as his eyes rove about her shoulder, her collar. “It’s already
time and eight days end tomorrow, walkers—treaders—escapers. I’ll give words.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?” Samuel says.
“Travel.” Smit makes a face. “What else?”
“Travel,” Samuel nods, “where?”
Smit laughs. “Oh. Travel to Sidera. It’s all planned, see? She’s waiting.”
Atlas curls his fingers into fists that churn wind. “Eden will travel to Sidera?”
“Did I say that?” Smit purses his lips and narrows his eyes. “What did I say? Say, say—all the same. Repeat, repeat, and no one says anything never said. Circles. You wander in them, Titan.”
Atlas stands still, jaw locked, and Samuel releases him.
“You think you’re the key, the maps the cartographer drew, but The Presage holds more than one name. You think you’re the wind but little moth’s just caught in it. You think you break from barriers, sinner, but you break into prison. War’s in the sky and your shoulders will crack underneath come winter. You are not what you think.”
Atlas watches Smit’s hand around Gene’s wrist. “What am I then?”
Darkness washing his figure, Smit sinks into his seat, tugs Gene lower, closer, and glints his eyes’ liquid marbles through shadow. He crawls his free fingers up Gene’s arm, dances five chipped, grooved nails blackened at the edges over her ivory skin and its currant-ruddy divots of leftover burns. He traces a small bandage. Then rips it off and digs his thumbnail into the scab uncovered. Gene’s cringe glimmers in Smit’s eyes and prodded wound, torn and bleeding, sticks in Atlas’s. Smit wipes thumb’s new scarlet blot onto his jeans, though the majority clings behind his nail, reddening its dirt.
“You’re Atlas,” Smit says.
Gene glares at the opened wound on her forearm, her same hand slivered and tacky; and Atlas glares between her and Samuel and the wine-licorice crescent caking Smit’s thumbnail and quivers on lifted heels, bent knees. He tics forward, a dozen different starts tipping his tongue, but Samuel spreads the back of his hand before Atlas’s nose.
Hand steady, Samuel taps his foot. “How can we get to Eden? She in Elisium or with Minkar or what?”
“Samuel,” Atlas says to his knuckles.
“The garden’s been waiting for Adam to partake—”
“Gonna stop you there,” Samuel says. “It’s been a long day.”
Smit grunts. “The city.”
“Like Pittsburgh? Eden’s in Pittsburgh?” His hand falls and eyelids droop. “Really? Why?”
Gene gasps and clatters into the table; Smit yanks her. She staggers after her seized arm, sidesteps the table, and catches her balance at the padding of his booth. Fondling the palpitations in Gene’s wrist, Smit scoots across booth’s creaking plastic till his hip touches her leg. Atlas burns his stare into Smit’s and lifts his palm.
“So troubled, bevrijder.” Smit peels back his flint-encrusted lips in smirk. “No maiming of the lamb. One hush minute with your lovely,” he cocks his head toward Gene, “and one answer.”
Atlas channels wind down his arm. “No.”
Gene bows her head into her hunch, arms trembling, and says, “Go ahead.”
Smit grins.
“Absolutely not.” Atlas steps to the table, stretches his fingers toward Smit’s eyes, and lets seethe the tornado one millimeter beneath skin. “Come, Gene.”
“I’m fine.” Gene’s voice cracks. “Tell him, Samuel.”
Samuel eyes her, his frown askew. He pats the front of his jacket, the lump in his pocket, and then puts an arm before Atlas. He pushes him two steps back.
Atlas’s breath, his first in half a minute, sucks nettles into his depths that remember the taste of bleach. He forgets where he is and more minutes pass and he forgets them, his charged arm swaying till settled at his side.
Smit hums a throaty rasp. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he opens it, leans into Gene, and inhales at her hair. A few strands drift toward his nose. They flutter in falling and, bending into its soft curve, Smit runs his nose down her jaw, to her neck, where a pounding pulse oscillates the veins visible. Five heartbeats, and he withdraws his flared nostrils and jutted jaw and raises his free hand, knuckles tattered and spotted. He touches a fingernail to Gene’s collarbone.
Atlas jolts. And Smit scrapes his nails from Gene’s clavicle to her neckline. She peeps and two red strings ooze beads from their buntings sloped to her skin, two four-finger-wide scratches fraying her chest.
“Gene!” Atlas reaches.
But her headshake freezes him. Gene snatches at table’s napkin dispenser and wads a handful of tan paper against her scrapes. She fakes a smile at the bartender squinting from behind the counter, then reels in her focus, smile dwindling. “I’m—” Her breath splits. “It’s fine.”
Smit retracts with a glimmering, salivating mouth and glassy eyes and blinks four, five, six times through corner shadow, into distance beyond Pennsylvania. “The garden’s waiting for you,” he eyes Atlas, “sinner, breaker. Looking. Hooking. Waiting for you to wander to where world’s barrier thins.”
Atlas shifts a pop into his jaw and blurts before knowing: “Such means?”
“She sits like sponge—” Smit smacks his lips “—es. Like sponge cake. No. Too stale. She sits like she does between ancient Egyptian towers at horizon.”
Wind pours from Atlas’s palms and bursts open his fists at his sides, rippling his, Smit’s, Gene’s, Samuel’s clothing and wafting their hair.
“Words have a function,” Atlas says. “That function is understanding. Imperium help me, I will pick through the blood in your brain until it tells what you conceal. No more games. Express with clarity: where is Eden?”
Smit bares his yellow smile. “At Pylon.”
XXIX
Fuel
“Eden’s in Pittsburgh and,” Samuel raises an eyebrow, “Pittsburgh is Pylon?”
“Mmhmm.” Nodding, Smit lends him and Atlas a look. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Atlas closes his fists and squints into the obsidian pools of Smit’s eyes.
“The gateway to endings and beginnings, like Janus. Two faces, two sides. Sidera—Pittsburgh—Pylon between. All has a veil and it can be torn.” Smit stares back. “That’s how you came to the city, breaker: through the slits. Big, big dimension rip in Pittsburgh. Big pit.” He laughs. “Pit.”
“How do you know any of this?” Atlas asks.
“I’ve been a long life, Titan. Life full of secrets, blind, blood, soul, fire, death, metal.”
Samuel elbows Atlas. “Heh. Death metal.”
“Then you know of The Presage,” Atlas says, without hitting Samuel.
Smit’s eyes glisten. “Yes.”
“You can tell me of the prophesied that can open Pylon then. Who it is.”
“Mmm.”
Samuel rolls his eyes. “Attie, Eden doesn’t even know that. He knows squat.”
Atlas rubs his fingers into his palms and swallows the night in Smit’s pupils. “What does The Presage express about me?”
“Price, priccce.” Smit clears his throat. “Another answer for another minute.”
He squeezes Gene’s wrist and she whimpers. He hushes her. He sweeps her hair behind her shoulder and his fingertips brush the side of her neck not tickled by napkins.
Leaning over it, Atlas claws the table’s edge. Slivers prick into his palm a second dampness incubating under sweat and he welcomes both. Gene’s eyes water but harden, her brow chiseled, crinkled. She frowns at Atlas.
“ ’S okay,” she says. “Close your eyes.”
He shakes his head. Smit tugs Gene downward and inclines. Atlas glares. Mouth open, its corners cracked, Smit hangs his eyelids halfway down lightless chasms and holds his lips centimeters from Gene’s, their noses closer. His blood-caked nails stroke a honey lock from her temple.
An explosion erupts.
Smit, Gene, and Atlas jump, their eyes wide, faces pale. Samuel bends his elbow as he tips upward his revolver
’s barrel, a smoke wisp twirling from its bore; a hole spots the wall panel three fingers’ width from Smit’s ear. Someone across the bar yelps and three, four, other voices whisper and race and scramble.
“I like doing that.” Samuel shrugs and tucks his revolver in his jacket. “Let the lady go. We’re done.”
Smit thrusts Gene from the table; she staggers. He stands.
“Gun.” Looking at Smit through his eyelashes, Samuel points to his jacket. “You’ve just got candle hands and your arm’s still holey. Thanks for poetry hour. It’s been iffy. Bye.”
Atlas grabs Gene’s arm and steadies her. They back from Smit’s corner.
Smit curls his fingers under the table and hurls it at Samuel. Samuel hops sideways. The table bounds, grazes his arm, tips and falls and cracks against linoleum, wobbles settling onto its own face as it skids into a potted plant meters away. The old man at the bar makes a noise and stands; the corner couple runs out the front door. The bartender pulls out his phone.
Samuel twists to the bar and yells, “We’re all just very drunk.”
“Garden’s pet lost in mortal ways.” Smit looks him up and down. “Poor caged animal. Unexpressed rage stirs a storm.”
Samuel again reaches inside his jacket. “You know it.”
Gene trembles. “Samuel.”
Smit lights a hand, flames licking up his wrist, and steps from corner’s shadow. Neon pink glows his scalp; warm orange rides the ridges in his loose clothing.
“Wash the blood from your hands and they’ll bleed. Limping dog, you can’t be like them. Never cleansed,” Smit says. “Poor yelping dog. Put it to sleep.”
Samuel glances to Gene, Atlas, the employee on the phone. He pulls from his jacket his hand free of weaponry and spins around. Air whooshing across his cheek, distorting in his ear, Atlas whips his head after Samuel’s blurred figure running for the bar exit. Samuel waves to him and yells.
“Go, stupids.”
Atlas pushes Gene toward Samuel and she too runs. Without slowing, Samuel swipes the bartender’s phone from his hand after the first “hello” and chucks it at the wall; on impact, it crunches and breaks into parts. He reaches for Gene’s shoulder and they skid past the farthest bar stool.
Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn Page 37
