Jake and the others stared at him.
Noah slipped one hand free so he could wave at them. There was a grin on his face. He hadn’t screwed around like this in a while, not in public. He was supposed to fit in.
Balanced on the roof, Noah could let all his doubts and assumptions go to hell and be himself, enjoying the rush.
The others watched. Noah walked on his hands to the edge, and turned around. The city stood above him, the world turned upside-down, but it wasn’t really different. Cars zoomed along inverted streets like slot cars. Somewhere in the sky, Rickie was getting rich. The city was like a cave roof with spikes of buildings hanging down. No different; there was still uptown and downtown. Noah could stare forever into the blue of the sky below. It was empty, lonely, and needed something to fill it. He imagined turning into a bird and flying away into space. His muscles strained and wanted to launch him through the sky.
But he walked himself back and let himself flop onto hands and feet on the tar paper. He was playing around.
For days he did handstands by the edge. Bare-footed cartwheels that burned his hands and feet in rotation. Like being strapped to a wheel in hell, forever going around. But when Friday came, he got distracted.
It was the TV on the roof. The other cleaning guys were doing their thing, idly watching the news. Noah had glanced at it: people standing around in the storm’s wake, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
Noah did his exercises, limbering up after a day of scrubbing on hands and knees. Today he’d try something tougher.
Jake spoke around the joint in his mouth. “Why you doing that?” Smoke twisted from his lips and the haze bathed and blurred them all, like none of them were real.
Noah spat. “I got a name.”
Jake waved him off. “So what’s the deal?”
“Leave him alone,” said a guy at the poker game. “He knows what he’s doing.” Only Jake was watching Noah; everyone else had lost interest or something.
Noah heaved himself up onto his hands. “Got to feel like I’m doing something, you know? I can’t sit there.”
Jake only grunted. The lilac-ammonia smell of him plus the weed made him stink.
So Noah did his thing again. Back when he’d been in school he’d read a book about slaves who’d made a fighting style out of dancing, in Brazil or someplace, and Noah had thought it was cool. Since school didn’t do sports except basketball, he’d asked the teachers to offer it, and waited for an answer. He would’ve given up but for Rickie, who’d seen him trying to do the moves and called him some nasty names. Noah started kicking his ass for that, but before he was done they were laughing and making fools of themselves, shooting kicks at each other like a couple of Chinese kung-fu stars. Nobody snitched on them for fighting, of course, even though Rickie had started bringing a knife to school in fifth grade.
Noah tried to remember how the moves went. He got up and swayed like a wino, then pulled himself tight all at once to flip onto his head and spin halfway around. His hair mopped filth off the hot tar paper. He was the axle of the world for a moment, and then he was rolling with an easy move onto his back, kicking up to stand and flip again.
The TV said, “…an experimental settlement on a manmade island on the sea.”
A glimpse of the TV’s image spun through his eyes and into the sky. In the blue bowl of heaven he saw an island full of ships and castles, flags and sails, with waterfalls of clouds. It burned against his eyes with the force of the sun.
Then Noah was spinning, falling…
And like a drowning sailor he grabbed the rail in front of him. He was hanging by his hands from the building’s edge, with the grey city below and the infinite blue above. His heart pounded, telling him he was stupid, stupid.
But by God, he felt alive!
4. Garrett
Garrett felt dirty. He’d gotten through that conversation with the Granger family, and it didn’t sound like they were going to have him arrested or sued. He felt like he deserved punishment, but no one would dispense it. He was weak, inept, dangerous, unworthy!
He’d even called Uncle Haskell. That man’s reaction was, “Work harder.”
By evening Garrett was shopping for gear. Some of the island’s businesses were smashed and others still boarded up. The dive shop (called You’re Going Down) was a well-lighted place full of toys and a scent of neoprene rubber. Garrett greeted the shopkeeper and browsed, list in hand. Unfortunately there was no need to replace Alexis’ set of dive gear, but much of Tess’ set was gone too, and other things needed fixing. A cluster of college kids chatted and rifled through the wetsuits. Hangers jingled. Above a knife display a bumper sticker asked, “Remember when sex was safe and diving was dangerous?”
He smiled grimly and was about to ask the clerk for help when the students approached him. “Hey, are you that guy doing the farming platform?”
Garrett blinked. “How did you know?”
The guy who’d spoken pointed to a skittish-looking friend, who wore a fancy set of i-glasses. “You’re on CelebPix.”
The whole group wore computers, Garrett now noticed. “We’re here on vacation. Do you offer dive tours?”
“There’s not much to see, and it just got trashed.”
The first guy shrugged. “We’ve got certification for wreck diving.” He saw Garrett’s downcast look and said, “Platform diving. We can pay, especially if you’ve got a boat and someplace to sleep.”
Garrett said, “Sorry. It’s too dangerous.”
Even after the guys left, the shopkeeper wouldn’t let the subject drop. “What are you doing? Times are tough and people are waving money at you.”
Garrett sighed. “We got hit hard.”
“Who didn’t?”
“Someone died, okay?”
The clerk paused. “Sorry. But look, if you can explain the danger and do your best to protect them, it’d be stupid to turn them down. It’s money, and there’s only so much you can coddle people, right?”
Money again. Everyone was after it. Garrett didn’t care about piling up numbers in a bank account. If he did, he’d have kept his cash and taken a vacation on an island somewhere. Strike that. Maybe skiing. What did the numbers have to do with honest work or with having a good time? Money was almost totally abstracted from the realities of food and labor, bales of grain and ingots of steel — the things that equipped people to survive.
But these guys were here to have fun, and he certainly could use the profit. Garrett hated how pliable and uncertain he felt, to be flip-flopping like this. Gah. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted.
“Excuse me,” he said, and hurried from the store in search of the would-be divers.
The boat was crowded with the four passengers and their gear, along with all the stuff Garrett had bought at the dive shop and elsewhere. They motored through bright water. With these guys aboard he felt obligated to make conversation. “So,” he said, “what’s with the computer gear?”
“We’re actually most of the CelebPix founders,” said a guy calling himself Argus.
Garrett had heard of the company through Valerie, who called them exhibitionists. The founders preached near-total openness of information, to the point of recording everything they saw or heard for public record. They also happened to be profiting off a gossip system that let people track celebrities. “You’re recording now?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Although he wasn’t hardcore about hating surveillance like Val was, it bothered him to be studied and judged by an unseen audience. Better to be blissfully unaware of the peanut gallery. It was odd, too, to feel watched while surrounded by empty sea.