People Park (17 page)

CALUM JOLTED UPRIGHT,
the garbage bags taped over the mattress crinkled. His sleep had been deep and leaden, coming out of it now felt akin to being chiselled from a concrete slab. At some point in the night the Hand must have released him, he
hadn’t even stirred — anything could have happened and on he
would have slumbered. On her empty side of the bed was only an apostrophe-shaped impression, where her body had curled against Calum’s. The supply closet’s only supply was a headless mop leaning in the corner. The dusty shelves were empty, the air stale, the stripe of light under the door suggested a world Calum wasn’t sure he had a place in.

From somewhere out there came voices, a silent pause, an explosion (of glass?) followed by laughter, cheers, hoots.

Calum unballed the hoodie he’d used as a pillow, pulled it on, then jeans, then sneakers. From beyond the closet came another crash and delighted whoops. He opened the door, light came searing in, he squinted, the swollen eyesocket ached. Everything was quiet. He felt himself being observed.

His eyes adjusted. Sitting on stools in the middle of the silo were two small figures in sunglasses. Near them, on the floor, was a pile of fluorescent tubes, frosted glass pipettes the length and width of saplings. Through the loading dock’s open doors poured water-coloured light, a choir of hoodies lined the threshold. On a couch against the far wall lounged a shirtless guy in a welding mask, the visor reflected the room. Someone lying with their head in his lap sat up — the Hand. Calum waited for a greeting. She yawned and lay back down.

The welding mask leaned in, seemed to whisper in the Hand’s ear.

The Hand laughed, sat up again. With her eyes locked on Calum’s
she snuggled close to this shirtless, faceless person. Her fingers splayed around his bellybutton. The thumb snuck into the waistband of his pants.

Calum watched.

From within the mask a voice said, You want to play?

This prompted from the hoodies a squawk of sharp, mean laughter.

The Hand looped her arms around the masked guy’s neck, swung her legs onto his lap. In front of the couch was a table littered with papers and bottles and cans and packs of Redapples, a tin of corn-in-a-can overflowed with butts, burn marks pocked the tabletop. From a paper bag the masked character produced a flat, which he fed to the Hand: her lips caressed his knuckles, her tongue flicked and curled, all wetly pink. She giggled.

Calum looked away.

The kids on the stools seemed about Rupe’s age, faces expressionless behind those sunglasses. They perched with perfect, crisp posture, hands on their knees —
ducktaped
to their knees. At their feet was broken glass, a few glossy red dots that had to be blood.

The masked guy spread his arms, indicating a space into which Calum was now welcome — or implicated. Ready to take on my sister?

A bout of laughter, brief and dreary, lifted from the figures at the door and dispersed among the rafters like smoke.

The Hand came over, scooped up a fluorescent tube, smacked it into her palm, something inside rattled and tinked. She held another out to Calum, who took it but couldn’t meet her eyes.

The figures by the door crowded in. Their shadows stretched into the room, the light went patchy and sinister. From the couch the guy said, You think you can beat my sister? You know what she did? Last year? You know what this kid did?

Whooping from the hoodies.

This kid right here? She gets up on the struts under the tracks at
UOT
Station and waits for the night’s last train, it comes through slow, right, because of the construction, and when it comes she, get this,
grabs one of the bars underneath the train
! And rides it like that all the way to the Barns, just hanging there, we’re all running along underneath, and when it lowers she jumps off and is just like, What. My sister, man.

The Hand twirled the fluorescent, laughed a shrugging sort of laugh.

Calum had heard this story, everyone had. It existed in his imagination as a movie. Walking underneath the Yellowline he’d often look up and imagine the weightless thrill of being zipped along, how it might feel to pass through airspace that no other human body had ever troubled, parted, touched.

Now the story had a hero, and here she was: Let’s go, said the Hand. You versus me.

Terse, ironic applause.

You want to go first?

First?

The rules are this, said the Hand. You call a twin and hit it, you get to sit down. You call one and hit the other, you got to take their spot. You miss three lights in a row, you take the spot of the kid you called last. You hit the kid and the light doesn’t break, you got to break the light over your own head. Got it?

The shirtless guy called, Good luck! in a cheery, chilling way.

Everyone laughed again, a rhythmic swell and ebb that felt rehearsed, artificial. It left behind a vaporous sort of silence that swelled and pulsed in the still air of the silo.

I’ll go first, said the Hand. Watch me, I’m the best. She had barely prophesied, Left, before her tube was flying from her hand in spinning flashes of light — and exploded on the kid on the left’s forehead. He crumpled from the chair, sunglasses skittering across the floor. Everyone went crazy.

The kid rose to his knees with a spidery wound opening on his temples. He shook his head, droplets of blood scattered in a little arc, and in a gargly voice choked, Hit.

More cheers.

The boy took his spot back on the stool, swaying slightly. One of the figures behind Calum came forward with the stray sunglasses, slid them back onto his face, and retreated. The kid hawked a thick, gory splat of blood onto the floor.

Your turn, said the Hand.

The tube felt heavier now.

The Hand said, Which one.

Beneath all that blood the left one’s face was pale. The other kid waited in silence.

Right thinks she’s tough, said the Hand. Hit her. Now!

Calum lobbed the tube weakly — it landed a foot short of the stools, skidded, stopped unbroken. Amid boos the girl kicked it back at Calum.

I’m done, I won, said the Hand. Two more for you though or it’s you on the stool.

Come on, son, called the shirtless guy from the couch. The Hand went to him, he folded her into his arms. The visor was blank but Calum sensed a sneer beneath it, he felt mocked. And the way he was holding her, it was familiar
. . .

And he was back down below the night before, the darkness full of screaming, grabbed by those big strong hands, that humid skin against his own, the suffocation, Calum had felt so feeble — and the sense that whoever it was had no face: here he was now, in his mask, holding the Hand, who dreamily stroked his chest. He placed one hand atop her head, onto the pattern of hair, and confirmed what Calum feared: a perfect fit.

Calum’s next throw went pinwheeling wide and high. The intended target watched it sail overhead: the light landed, popped, loosed a dusty puff up from the warehouse floor.

Jeers, screeches, catcalls, whistles. Someone cawed. Someone mooed.

Calum took his final tube from the pile. His reflection warped in the cloudy glass. He could hear the Hand taunting him and the guy — her brother? — taunting him too. But he wouldn’t look at them. His thoughts blurred, their words became noise.

Behind the girl’s sunglasses were the faint shadows of eyes. But they were dead eyes. There was nothing in them. They were nothing Calum could understand.

Calum cocked his arm. From the depths of Whitehall came
the rumble of a train pulling out of the Barns, clacking up onto the
tracks, heading south into the city. As its sound faded the boy on the other stool collapsed, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Blood trickled from his headwound, drastic and crimson on the cement. Calum lowered the tube, waited. But nobody moved. If anything, the air went rigid with impatience.

Come on, said the Hand. Throw!

Calum tried not to register the kid passed out and bleeding on the ground.

Throw! roared a dozen voices.

So he threw.

IV

HE 10:30 MEMORIAL
unveiling would not be covered by
In the Know
, or any We-
TV
correspondents. A small crowd gathered in a clearing in the southeast corner of People Park known as Circle Square. Surrounded by poplars, in its centre was an inactive fountain clotted with dead leaves and bounded by the Community Gardens, the Hedge Maze, and Friendly Farm Automatic Zoo, where, when activated, mechanical beasts (animaltronics) lurched into educational couplings.

The attendees comprised a few patrons of the arts in extravagant hats, a pair of cardigan’d archivists from the Museum of Prosperity, a shifty photographer, a curious family in Y’s paraphernalia on their way to the common. In the shade at the square’s southern edge a special area had been designated for protestors — Pop and Debbie — and though the sun arcing above the
park was bright and warm, a chilly breeze whistled up from the
lake. Debbie shivered. Lark, intoned Pop, peeling a hardboiled egg, a nip bequeaths the air.

Loopy, of course, was the belle of the ball. With her black-clad assistant at her side she waited impatiently for the Mayor to inaugurate the unveiling. Other than its materials (debris salvaged during the Homes’ revitalization), Loopy had kept quiet about the Lakeview Memorial. A white cloth draped over the sculpture suggested a ghost, six feet tall and hovering there starkly. Somewhere under that sheet was a plaque, Debbie knew. Pop had been consulted on the text, though he and the archivists had clashed over the word
restribution
, and in the end it comprised only the names of every resident of Lakeview Homes, 51,201 in all (It is I, claimed Pop, the extemporaneous one!). A tombstone of sorts, thought Debbie, though that seemed morbid. Better: a document and testament. It was, at least, something.

A few pigeons scrabbled and pecked at the cobblestones. With nothing else to shoot, the photographer pointed his camera at a passing cloud, which to Debbie resembled a vulture. She
shivered again, and thought, with a bitter twinge, that she’d attended
Loopy’s last opening too — she was becoming a regular Loopy groupie.
As with most of Loopy’s exhibits, aside from the retrospective that consumed the second floor of the Museum of Prosperity, her previous show,
Us:
, had gone up that past September at Loopy’s Orchard Parkway gallery, Loopy’s, at which Loopy commandeered an underpaid, high-turnover staff of students from the Island Institute, her current assistant was one of these.
Us:
featured portraits of the most popular Faces of We-
TV
.

Even before it opened the project was celebrated on
In the Know
: What a diverse proclamation of municipal pride, Isa Lanyess had gushed. This truly is the best city on earth, and who better than Loopy to show the people of our beloved island to us, in all their and its glory. Loopy also guested on
Salami Talk
, flirting along to Wagstaffe’s inane questions. How do you like your sausage, soft or hard, he yucked. Oh, I like it hard —
very
hard, Loopy said, batting purple eyelashes, and they both took big bites out of rods of cured meat, and winked. At home, Adine threw the remote at her
TV
.

For divergent reasons (politics, indignation), Debbie and Adine decided to crash the opening. From the sidewalk outside Loopy’s they watched the city’s sophisticates congratulate each other for being there. Photorealist paintings wallpapered the room from floor to ceiling, art appreciation burbled out onto the street alongside a tinkle of inoffensive jazz.

Debbie hid behind Adine. What if we get kicked out? For sure Lanyess’s in there. We weren’t invited. I don’t want to —

Can you relax? said Adine, and by the elbow steered her inside.

Fifteen minutes later Debbie was following an irate Adine up to the rooftop patio of a pub above Cathedral Circus. A jug of cider arrived, they drank in silence, Debbie eyed Adine warily across the table while traffic wheeled through the roundabout below. Down in the park the poplars swished in the breeze, with the late-summer twilight just starting to settle over the city.

Debbie said gently, It’s nice here.

Except for all the people, said Adine. See, here’s the thing: people suck.

Aw, come on. They don’t.

And by people, I mean people in this city especially. They think the world ends at Guardian Bridge, and all a superdoosh like Loopy needs to do is hold a mirror up to their stupid insular world and they’ll love her for it.

Debbie listened. As far as she knew, Adine had never been off the island.

Was that
art
? No, art challenges people, but people don’t want that. They just want to be reassured, to see themselves, to see each other, to feel comfortable in the world. What kind of art only makes you comfortable? Paintings of We-
TV
? What the fug is that?

Well, said Debbie.

But Adine was on a roll: As if that whole culture isn’t inward-looking enough. You’d think if you were going to paint people from
TV
you’d, I don’t know, have something to say. But no, she just replicates what’s already there. And people love it!

Wait, inward-looking? Don’t you think that if people were a little
more
inward-looking then maybe —

You’re not hearing me: people suck.

But, Debbie said, wait
. . .
Isn’t there merit in showing people that there are other people like them? Being a person’s lonely, what’s wrong with art that makes us feel less alone? To create a space where people can connect, with a common language —

No way. Adine tipped back her glass, swallowed.
Whose
common language?

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t love the show either, but don’t you think it was at least an attempt to show some diversity —

Diversity! That word’s a fuggin joke. If it was diverse then you’d have a diverse crowd. But everyone there, all those rich dooshmasters — what they were doing? Shopping
.
Patrons of the arts
?
Yeah right. They’re fuggin
customers
.

Debbie resisted defining the word
patrons
, instead reached across the table for Adine’s hands. She scowled, but offered one, which Debbie stroked. Maybe it’s your job then to make stuff that shows people something they haven’t seen or thought, that’s apart from their lives? That challenges what they think they know?

Right, I should be working. That’s what you think. You think I’m lazy.

No! I didn’t say that.

Fug that, said Adine. Fug that, fug you, fug everything and everyone.

Something hitched in Debbie’s throat.

Adine filled Debbie’s glass. You know what I mean. Come on, let’s get drunk.

Two hours later, with Adine asleep on her shoulder Yellowlining
home, what had begun as a slight yelp of hurt burrowed down into Debbie’s guts and gnawed away down there, persistent and parasitic. She was sad — not at being attacked, that had passed, but at the chasm she felt opening between them.

Until that night, whenever Adine told her of any conflict — with
neighbours, motorists, gallerists — Debbie had sided with her
wholly:
the world was wrong, Adine was right, and the unwavering
allegiance
helped stitch
them together. But Debbie had enjoyed
Us:
, it’d been nice, inclusive, heartwarming. Of course she kept this to herself, and so at home in bed, feeling disloyal and duplicitous, Debbie did the only thing she could: took Adine in her arms and held her, as close and long and hard as she could.

THERE HE GOES,
said Starx, turning on the car stereo — too far, too hard, the grind of distorted guitar filled the Citywagon.

Olpert watched Raven disappear into the We-
TV
building with Wagstaffe and a pair of pages while Starx banged away on air drums. This music wasn’t music, it was noise, Olpert looked at the radio, thought about turning it down.

We’ve got an hour to kill, screamed Starx. What do you want to do?

Do?

We can’t just sit here, can we? Let’s just drive around. Find some trouble.

But.

Your turn to drive though.

Drive? I don’t really —

But Starx, weirdly quick, had already circled the car, opened Olpert’s door, and now waited there massively on the sidewalk while a sax solo wailed from the speakers.

Though there wasn’t much traffic due to the holiday, navigating downtown’s one-ways, plus his hangover, plus his natural anxiety behind the wheel, plus Starx’s music, plus Starx with his seat slid into the backseat, thumping the dashboard, howling,
Drag you down, drag you down, drag you mutherfuggin down,
caused Olpert’s grip on the steering wheel to tighten into white-knuckled panic. As he turned onto Paper Street, the song climaxed in a commotion of cymbal crashes and throaty howling.

Olpert cracked his window.

What are you doing.

It’s, Olpert yelled, it’s just a little loud. The music, I mean.

It’s freezing out.

I don’t drive very often. I’m, Starx — I’m finding it hard to concentrate.

Not a Cysterz fan, I guess. Starx snapped the radio off. Better, princess?

Olpert pulled to a stop at Lakeside Drive. He turned, hand over hand, toward Bay Junction and the southern edge of People Park, while Starx played with the powerlocks: chunk, chunk. Chunk, chunk.

A barricade blocked the roundabout’s exit to Parkside West, two
Helpers sat in lawnchairs arm wrestling atop a cooler. Olpert leaned
out, displayed his khaki, was waved through onto the empty street.

Where are you going? said Starx.

You said just drive around!

By the park? What if the
HG
’s see us, figure we’re shirking duties? Think, Bailie!

Down the slope Crocker Pond shimmered in the sunlight. Spectators, already numbering in the hundreds, filled the common.

Hey, said Starx, I need to express myself. Pull over.

What?

Urinate.

Here?

Yeah here, I’ll go in the trees. Nothing quite like urinating in the open air.

Can’t you wait?

Bailie, what the fug, mine’s not your average flow. Starx clawed across the frontseat, grabbed the wheel, and yanked the Citywagon over two lanes toward the curb.

A thump — something smacked the windshield, something white and sudden from above. Instead of braking Olpert stomped the gas, the car shot under the Yellowline tracks, veered into the Citywagon lot, and with a succession of explosive highfives, tore the sideview mirrors from a row of vehicles parked along the median.

Bailie, whoa, what are you doing?

We hit a bird, moaned Olpert, we killed a bird.

Brake! Fuggin Bailie, brake!

I’m braking, I’m braking.

The car slowed, Olpert signalled, checked his blindspot, pulled over, stopped.

We hit a bird, said Olpert.

Yeah, I saw that. Quite a performance, Bailie.

The bird, he said, do you think it’s dead?

Starx got out of the car. Olpert trembled, tried to steady his breathing. The walkie-talkie crackled and Griggs, in a typically listless monotone, droned, Silentium. Logica. Securitatem — and before Prudentia Olpert clicked the thing off. In the rearview he watched Starx survey the debris, shake his head, move south.

Oh man, Bailie, he called. You gotta come see this.

Olpert joined him: at the end of a trail of shattered glass and plastic, lying in a heap of feathers against the curb, was a dove.

Oh no. It isn’t.