Rosemary turned back to the main entrance, where an enormous inflated castle dwarfed the vestibule. It looked intact other than two drooping turrets. She had seen these in old movies, in school carnival scenes and birthday parties, but never in person. That was a different kind of childhood, a different kind of growing up, a Before to her After, full of real human bodies navigating the space between each other. One bounce, just to try it, and then she’d run.
34
ROSEMARY
Free Will Astrology
This time Rosemary couldn’t avoid the hospital. The cop waiting for her below the castle insisted, so she couldn’t say she got hurt during arrest or intake. He recorded the whole interaction, for his own protection, he said, though she imagined his buddies might get a laugh out of her misstep.
He also insisted on waiting for an ambulance rather than driving her himself. Everyone else had scattered, leaving Rosemary and a couple of others who must have been too close to the door the cops came in. The only one she recognized was the Simrats’ singer, who gave her a salute as he was loaded into a van. The van was mostly empty; they must have been expecting to pick up more people, which they probably would have if this had been a normal show and not a controlled burn. Hopefully the police weren’t suspicious.
When the ambulance finally arrived, the cop watched them load her, then followed in his own car.
The EMT who rode in the back with her was friendly and curious. “How did you do this?”
“I turned my ankle.”
“Well, yeah, I can see that. But how?”
“Have you ever seen a bouncy castle?”
The EMT laughed. “Not in a million years.”
“Me neither. I couldn’t resist.”
“And that’s why you’re being arrested?”
She tried to play it cool, like she did this every night. “Nah. That’s for trespassing and congregation. And, uh, resisting arrest. He said I shouldn’t have kept bouncing.”
“Huh. Must’ve been a fun night.”
“It was! We could make it more fun if you want to slip me out the door somehow.”
That was the end of the friendliness. “Can’t do that.”
“Sorry. I was kidding. I just didn’t plan on getting arrested tonight.” Then why had she stopped to bounce? She’d wanted to. And maybe part of her wanted to be caught, to be punished, for what she had done in Baltimore.
“You’re not going to get far on that foot, in any case.”
When they’d taken off her shoe to apply ice, she’d caught a glimpse, purple and swollen, majestically damaged. One look was enough; two would remind her where they were going, and she was trying very hard not to think about that. She loathed doctors. And hospitals. Probably nobody liked them, but the cocktail of hate and fear that her mind concocted on the drive made her queasier than the injury. It’s only your foot, she told herself. They won’t keep you.
The hospital wasn’t far. Certainly not far enough to hatch some grand escape plan. She let them wheel her off the ambulance and into the emergency bay. Her escorted entrance must have gotten her some kind of preferential treatment, because she was whisked right into the examination area. A nurse took her medical history, gave her another ice pack and a painkiller, then showed her to a sealed exam room to wait for them to call her to X-ray. She waited. And waited.
A quiet night, or just the way hospitals were these days? She had a closed door instead of a curtain; maybe the rooms isolated noise as well as germs. Her last reference point was a dozen years in the past. It involved halls lined with screaming people, the pox burning nerve-imagined holes in their skin; her own screaming, too, the sounds you made because your body had to make them, the knowledge that the doctors were doing everything they could, but it didn’t touch the pain, and they didn’t believe you when you said you were on fire. The thought of it made her want to run, but the cop was sitting in the bedside chair.
A diversion wasn’t a bad idea. What she wanted to hear right now was “Blood and Diamonds.” She raised her Hoodie and put it in clearview, keeping an eye on the cop to see if he objected. The song reminded her of hospitals—she’d been humming it since she walked in the door, she realized—but not in a bad way. It reminded her of nurses, of people who had tried to cheer the kids in their care without condescension. Safety, recovery, strength.
She played it twice. The song still retained its magic, but now it made her want to hear Luce’s newer songs again. She had an album on her hacked phone, old-school, which she didn’t want to listen to right now in front of the cop; she didn’t want her behavior to stand out in any way. She searched to see if anyone had ever uploaded any footage of Luce’s shows to the usual channels, but all she could find was stuff from Before. A different Luce.
Luce performed in spaces where people didn’t upload to hoodspace. Why would there be anything? Try again. And, wait—she played in bands. Rosemary was looking for Luce Cannon. She tried “Harriet” and “music” instead.
Her search returned dozens of versions of a single immersive video labeled some variant on “Harriet—live—do something!” “Harriet speaks truth!”
The cop was off in his own Hoodie—maybe doing paperwork, from the way his hand moved on his thigh—and surely somebody would get her attention when it was X-ray time. She entered the video.
Drone-shot. That much was obvious from the swift and steady pace. They moved through a wooded estate, toward a gate covered in musical notes. Other drones flew into view, aiming for the same location.
Someone asked, “What is it?” Someone else answered, “I dunno. Somebody’s losing it outside the gate. GlitterFan said to come see.”
Then they arrived at the gate, hovering, the noise of dozens of drones drowning out the person on the other side. This drone surged forward, until it was almost touching the gate, and its microphone must have been unidirectional, because the other noise fell away.
Luce stood on the other side, her hair greasy and disheveled, her middle finger raised in the gate’s direction. “Fuck StageHolo. Don’t give them your money. Learn an instrument. Go see a real band play. Get this place reopened and walk around it in real life. Everybody is afraid; it’s what you do when you’re afraid that counts. The world isn’t over yet.”
“This chick is crazy,” the operator said.
“Nah—wouldn’t it be awesome to be here for real?”
“Ssh,” said someone else.
Luce continued. “The world isn’t over yet. We don’t need to keep all the old things, but we need something new. Borrow a guitar and learn how to use it. If that isn’t your thing, figure out what is. Invent your own genre. Carve your initials into something. Brand them, paint them, shoot them, transpose them, change them entirely and sculpt yourself out of a new medium. Instrument and tool are synonyms: we can still construct ways to belong. Our song is a work in progress.”
She started playing, something Rosemary hadn’t heard before: angry, dark chords. A minute later, she looked up like she heard something, and then Rosemary heard the sirens, too.
“Good night, Memphis!” Luce said, waving in Rosemary’s direction, then running for a nondescript van parked up the road.
Memphis. She was in Memphis, which was in—Rosemary had to look it up—Tennessee. That wasn’t far from Asheville at all, but if she was traveling, she might be gone by the time Rosemary got there. If she was traveling, maybe that meant Rosemary hadn’t ruined her life. Or maybe she had, and this was a filmed breakdown. It didn’t look like a breakdown. She came across sincere and driven, if not entirely in control.