Down on the floor, no one had shut their eyes. Instead they were grabbing at the videos, jumping up against them, kissing them. Some of them had cut themselves on the sharp corners of the monitors, but they weren’t feeling any pain. They just laughed and rubbed the blood on the screens, all over their clothes and faces, smearing it on the other people who were jumping up alongside them.
At last, I think, Timmerman was starting to understand what they were doing to him. For he was trying to speak, to give out his pronouncements, the revelations of scandal which he had planned as the main event, the denunciation of Arthur Channing and the bankers who’d systematically been robbing the American economy. Only no one was listening. They were all shouting and laughing, you could hardly hear Brother Alex at all, despite the giant loudspeakers hanging from the latticework of computer cables. I could see a kind of desperation in his body as he leaned forward, struggling for the attention of people who were beginning to touch, or lick, everything in sight—the phones, the desks, scraps of paper, any equipment they could rub against, or grab hold of, or climb up to slide their bodies on the smooth surfaces, the hard edges and corners.
Timmerman had to understand, I thought. He had to see finally what Alison and I had been trying to tell him. He could give his speech, he could fire his cannons against Arthur Channing and anyone else, he could submit the text, even the proof, to all the papers and television. But no one was listening. No one would listen ever again. All of Timmerman’s carefully researched findings of corruption and conspiracy in the national banking system would go unheard, drowned out in the astonishment and horror of Margaret Light-at-the-End-of-the-Tunnel 23’s distorted vision of human liberation.
Here on the visitors’ gallery the blessing song was beginning to penetrate us. We couldn’t touch the videos like the people on the floor. We could only hear a secondary transmission of the Choir of Angels. But it was enough to bring some people rubbing up against the glass barrier, even pounding on it, as if they would smash through and leap down to where they could get the undiluted blessing. Others caressed each other or else the loudspeakers carrying up the noise from the trading floor.
Somebody—some guy in a baseball jacket—began to caress my shoulder. I shoved him, or maybe hit him, much harder than I intended as I shouted, “Get away from me!” A woman about my own age, in a leather jacket hung with about a hundred tiny dolls, told me, “That was incredible” as she tried to rub up against me. I did my best to control myself as I pushed her away. I wished I could shout something at them that would wake them up, something like, “Don’t let them do this to you!” but I knew it was no use.
And down below, in the pit, Timmerman was realizing the same thing. The wolfmen and the mudpeople were gone, melted into the mob, but no one was bothering Timmerman. He was standing on his makeshift podium, the microphone still in his hand, but now forgotten as he looked from side to side. Before him, his Friends were still singing in their strange needle-thin voices. Timmerman looked like he wanted to stop them yet didn’t dare. Or know how.
The broadcast cameras, which had been trained on Timmerman, had all turned now, panning the floor or focusing on some particular person or group. A lot of people had stripped off their clothes, or torn them, some leaving only shredded rags, though curiously the clerks, brokers, reporters and pages had mostly kept on their red, yellow, blue and turquoise jackets. And curiously, there was very little actual screwing going on, as if that would only narrow people’s choices and how could they stand to restrict themselves? They were sliding up and down each other’s bodies or even rubbing along the floor, they were climbing the insect arms to slam up against the much larger monitors which formed the insect bodies, laughing as they fell off against the floor, the counter, other bodies.
Just as in Miracle Park, I could see that three-year-old innocence in the way people moved against each other and every object they could reach. They were laughing all the time, even when they were moaning or shouting. Someone who had cut himself, probably on a monitor, lay twisting on the floor, offering his blood to whoever desired it. A whole pack of people kneeled or crouched over his body, while others tried to rub against him, but none of them looked at all aggressive or predatory. Just children playing.
Was I wrong? Even if Timmerman would suffer, would no one else get hurt? Was I just a hypocrite? Hadn’t I just spent the night with a woman old enough to be, well, not my mother, but at least my aunt? Near me, the man who had grabbed me was kissing the woman in the doll jacket. Why shouldn’t they do that? I felt suddenly like one of those people who stand on street corners wearing three overcoats and shouting about purifying the Revolution of “lust and concupiscence” whatever that is.
I shook my head, forcing myself to remember what Alison had told me about her friend Jack, or the other people, cut or trampled. To remember Joan. And yet, something in me kept insisting that I was the one who was wrong, or twisted, that I couldn’t just join in with everybody else. Maybe what happened to Joan was my fault. If I hadn’t rejected her that night we could have broken through the barriers that make love run down, that make orgasms dwindle to a flicker which blows out at the slightest distraction. We could have invited Harry, Alison, anyone we wanted, to feast with us, eating the food Margaret Tunnel Light was offering us. Instead, Joan ended up in the hospital. And here I was again, refusing, refusing.
A prickliness seized my skin, a jabbing all over my body that both hurt and excited me. I could see everything happening on the floor, small details in different places, all at the same time. At one trading station, people were pulling the machines apart, ripping the phones out and rubbing the electronic pieces all over their bodies, cutting themselves or burning their skin. Two women stood in torn clothes, taking turns clawing each other up and down their bodies, using a silver hand with the fingers extended.
I was right, I told myself. This is what I knew would happen. Me and Arthur Channing. What we knew that Margaret Tunnel Light didn’t. But I couldn’t make myself move or do anything, I just stood and watched. Watched as people grabbed the ceremonial oversized pens, the black lacquer and gold ones used for signing contracts, and jammed them into every hole in their bodies, or else stabbed themselves and each other with the gold points, injecting sanctified traders’ ink into their blood. Watched as people began biting each other, as five pages in their turquoise jackets took out ceremonial scarring knives and began drawing patterns on an elderly man who wept as he urinated in their faces. Someone climbed up one of the cable poles, possibly to try and reach the artbirds, or even Rebecca Rainbow herself. When he fell and broke his leg, a man and woman seized hold of his leg and began twisting it, as if to snap it right off. When it wouldn’t come loose they abandoned him to join a group who were rubbing themselves in some play money someone had pulled from behind a desk. Soon, I knew, people wouldn’t stop, not until they were tearing each other’s bodies and ripping out their insides to rub all over faces without skin or eyes. I knew this, I could see it as if it was already happening. But I couldn’t make myself move, not even to get myself out of danger.
Protection, I thought. Now. All the things in my bag that Annie-O had given me. I needed to layer myself or it would swallow me. But instead of emptying out the bag I just held it tightly against my body, as if the objects themselves could save me without having to commit myself to doing anything with them.
A voice said, “Nothing can harm you. I have given you my protection.” I didn’t even bother looking around me or at the loudspeakers. I just scanned the floor. It took me a moment to find her. She was standing on the podium, the platform where Timmerman had tried speaking. He was gone now. And on the platform, between the Twins, she stood there, serene in her black clothes, her harsh makeup.