“‘…thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student happenings with spaghetti filled Volkswagens, dawn in Seattle, automated evening in L.A.’” He looked up, confused.
“You’ve been in Seattle and Los Angeles, morning and night, too?” Her green-eyed smile flickered beside the flames.
“No…” He shook his head.
“I have. It’s still not weird.” Still flickering, she frowned at his frown. “It’s not about you. Unless you dropped it in the park…You didn’t write it, did you?”
“No,” he said. “No. I didn’t.” Lost (it had been stronger and stranger than any déjà vu), the feeling harassed him. “But I could have sworn I knew…” The fire felt hottest through the hole at his knee; he reached down to scratch; blades snagged raveled threads. He snatched the orchid away: Threads popped. Using his other hand, he mauled his patella with horny fingers.
Milly had taken the book, turned a later page.
The green-eyed girl leaned over her shoulder.
“Read that part near the end, about the lightning and the explosions and the riot and all. Do you think he was writing about what happened here—to Bellona, I mean?”
“Read that part at the beginning, about the scorpions and the trapped children. What do you suppose he was writing about there?”
They bent together in firelight.
He felt discomfort and looked around the clearing.
Tak stepped over a sleeping bag and said to John: “You people want me to work too hard. You just refuse to understand that work for its own sake is something I see no virtue in at all.”
“Aw, come on, Tak.” John beat his hand absently against his thigh as though he still held the rolled paper.
“I’ll give you the plans. You can do what you want with them. Hey, Kid, how’s it going?” Flames bruised Tak’s bulky jaw, prised his pale eyes into the light, flickered on his leather visor. “You doing all right?”
He swallowed, which clamped his teeth; so his nod was stiffer than he’d intended.
“Tak, you are going to head the shelter building project for us…?” John’s glasses flashed.
“Shit,” Tak said, recalling Nightmare.
“Oh, Tak…” Milly shook her head.
“I’ve been arguing with him all night,” John said. “Hey.” He looked over at the picnic table. “Did Nightmare come by for the stuff?”
“Yep.” Brightly.
“How is he?”
She shrugged—less bright.
He heard the harmonica, looked:
Back on her blanket, the other girl bent over her mouth harp. Her hair was a casque of stained bronze around her lowered face. Her shirt had slipped from one sharp shoulder. Frowning, she beat the mouth holes on her palm once more. The notebook lay against her knee.
“Tak and me were up looking at the place I want to put the shelters. You know, up on the rocks?”
“You’ve changed the location again?” Milly asked.
“Yeah,” Tak said. “He has. How do you like it around here, Kid? It’s a good place, huh?”
“We’d be happy to have you,” John said. “We’re always happy to have new people. We have a lot of work to do; we need all the willing hands we can get.” His tapping palm clove to his thigh, stayed.
He grunted, to shake something loose in his throat. “I think I’m going to wander on.”
“Oh…” Milly sounded disappointed.
“Come on. Stay for breakfast.” John sounded eager. “Then try out one of our work projects. See which one you like. You don’t know what you’re gonna find in ’em.”
“Thanks,” he said, “I’m gonna go…”
“I’ll take him back down to the avenue,” Tak said. “Okay, so long, you guys.”
“If you change your mind,” Milly called (John was beating his leg again), “you can always come back. You might want to in a couple of days. Just come. We’ll be glad to have you then, too.”
On the concrete path, he said to Tak: “They’re really good people, huh? I just guess I…” He shrugged.
Tak grunted: “Yeah.”
“The scorpions—is that some sort of protection racket they make the people in the commune pay?”
“You could call it that. But then, they get protected.”
“Against anything else except scorpions?”
Tak grunted again, hoarsely.
He recognized it for laughter. “I just don’t want to get into anything like that. At least not on that side.”
“I’ll take you back down to the avenue, Kid. It goes on up into the city. The stores right around here have been pretty well stripped of food. But you never know what you’re gonna luck out on. Frankly, though, I think you’ll do better in houses. But there you take your chances: Somebody just may be waiting for you with a shotgun. Like I say, there’s maybe a thousand left out of a city of two million: Only one out of a hundred homes should be occupied—not bad odds. Only I come near walking in on a couple of shotguns myself. Then you got your scorpions to worry about…John’s group?” The hoarse, gravelly laughter had a drunken quality the rest of Tak’s behavior belied. “I like them. But I wouldn’t want to stick around them too much either. I don’t. But I give them a hand. And it’s not a bad place to get your bearings from…for a day or two.”
“No. I guess not…” But it was a mulling “no.”
Tak nodded in mute agreement.
This park is alive with darknesses, textures of silence. Tak’s boot heels tattoo the way. I can envision a dotted line left after him. And someone might pick the night up by its edge, tear it along the perforations, crumple it, and toss it away.
Only two out of forty-some park lights (he’d started counting) were working. The night’s overcast masked all hint of dawn. At the next working light, within sight of the lion-flanked entrance, Tak took his hands out of his pockets. Two pinheads of light pricked the darkness somewhere above his sandy upper lip. “If you want—you can come back to my place…?”
5
“…OKAY”
Tak let out a breath—“Good—” and turned. His face went completely black. “This way.”
He followed the zipper jingles with a staggering lope. Boughs, black over the path, suddenly pulled from a sky gone grey inside a V of receding rooftops.
As they paused by the lions, looking down a wide street, Tak rubbed himself inside his jacket. “Guess we’re about to get into morning.”
“Which way does the sun come up?”
Loufer chuckled. “I know you won’t believe this—” they walked again—“but when I first got here, I could have sworn the light always started over there.” As they stepped from the curb, he nodded to the left. “But like you can see, today it’s getting light—” he gestured in front of them—“there.”
“Because the season’s changing?”
“I don’t think it’s changed that much. But maybe.” Tak lowered his head and smiled. “Then again, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.”
“Which way is east?”
“That’s where it’s getting light.” Tak nodded ahead. “But what do you do if it gets light in a different place tomorrow?”
“Come on. You could tell by the stars.”
“You saw how the sky was. It’s been like that or worse every night. And day. I haven’t seen stars since I’ve been here—moons or suns either.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’ve thought, maybe: It’s not the season that changes. It’s us. The whole city shifts, turns, rearranges itself. All the time. And rearranges us…” He laughed. “Hey, I’m pulling your leg, Kid. Come on.” Tak rubbed his stomach again. “You take it all too seriously.” Stepping up the curb, Tak pushed his hands into his leather pockets. “But I’m damned if I wouldn’t have sworn morning used to start over there.” Again he nodded, with pursed lips. “All that means is I wasn’t paying attention, doesn’t it?” At the next corner he asked: “What were you in a mental hospital for?”