“You don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t want you protecting me.” I gripped the bag even tighter. The rocks inside pressed into my chest.
My Friend looked up from the floor at me. “Are you ready to join them?”
“No!” I shouted at the window. The Being turned, walked away through the crowds. “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “Can’t you understand you’re hurting them? They can’t eat what you’re feeding them.”
I couldn’t see her, but the voice told me, “They do what they need to do.”
“You’ve got to take it back,” I called. “Please. You’re just doing what Channing wanted you to do. Why can’t you understand that? You’re hurting Alexander.”
“No,” she said. “Alexander is safe. He has left the room and no one is harming him.”
“You’re harming him. You’re destroying his career.” No answer. “Don’t let them do this!” I yelled, but she was gone. And down on the floor, the Twins remained, singing without mikes now, just their hands cupped in front of their mouths.
I didn’t dare look around me. It wasn’t as strong here, but I still could hear choking laughter, people slammed against the glass, others thrown on the floor. The floor was slippery and it smelled. “Ellen,” a voice called to me. I didn’t move, just stood with my head pressed against the window. I’d closed my eyes. “Ellen,” the voice said again, as a hand grabbed my shoulder.
I swung the bag around as hard as I could, knocking the woman down onto a pile of shifting bodies.
Then I saw her, or maybe just part of her, like seeing an arm buried under a landslide. I don’t know any more, I can’t remember precisely what I saw. “Alison!” I cried, and reached down for her arm before they could suck her away from me. The people around her were one body, they were all mouth, and they wanted to swallow her. But I got her loose, jerking her to her feet with one hand, because I knew I couldn’t let go of the bag, it would vanish, Margaret Tunnel Light would steal it away from me.
“Ellen,” she called once again and held on to me, trying to squeeze me into her body, as if she could absorb me directly into her skin. “I tried to stop it,” she said. “I called everyone I knew. I told them everything, I begged them, just for a delay, just a couple of days, even a few hours if I could just talk to Timmerman. Ellen, they wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t listen to anything. I felt like such an idiot. They can’t think. They can’t see it when I explain it to them. They can only see that she’s Benign, and how could a Benign One cause any harm? I explained it to them and they just wouldn’t listen.”
“I know,” I said. I was holding her, stroking her and touching her back, her shoulders, her hair. “It’s like she’s bitten them. Or injected some kind of narcotic into them.”
Alison kissed me, on the cheek, the neck, below my ear, my collar bone. Suddenly she made a noise, a grunt or a scream, and it took me a moment to realize she was staring through the window at the trading floor for the first time.
“It’s getting worse,” I told her, and held her tightly, stroking her body the whole time I was talking—the two things, the talking and touching, unconnected, as if different people were doing them. “It just keeps getting worse and worse, and nobody can stop it. They’re already clawing at each other, at everything they can reach. They’re not going to stop. I thought it was harmless, but it isn’t, it’s not.” I was kissing her now, kissing and then stopping to talk, back and forth, unable to stop either action. “She said we’re protected, you and I. Like she’s cast some Goddamn blanket over us.”
Alison was moving up and down my body, making herself liquid as she spread her fingers wide and slithered them down my arms, my breasts, slamming her thighs into mine, pushing me up against the railing. “She said she’d protect us. All the stuff I brought, the stuff from Annie—” I realized suddenly that I’d dropped the bag. I knew I should look for it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop touching Alison. I didn’t need it, I told myself. Margaret Tunnel Light would protect us.
Alison was touching my breasts through my clothes, rubbing my nipples with the flattened palms of her hands. At the same time, she kept grimacing, crunching her face, as if in pain. Several times she opened her mouth, with no sound, until finally she burst out, “That goddamn music.” For the first time since Alison had shown up, I heard the song, the shrill whine of the Choir of Angels.
7
“It’s all right,” I told her, only vaguely conscious of how absurd the statement was. I was kissing her, sliding down and rubbing against her. I knew I should take her away, cover her ears, but all I could do was kiss them, biting her ears and then all over her face while I pushed her back against the railing. Near me, someone was vomiting convulsively while someone else squatted underneath him.
I started pulling at Alison’s clothes, unable to remember how they came off and getting lost in the fabric, or scraping the zipper of her windbreaker across my tongue and then my breasts. Alison was doing something, she was crying for some reason. I wanted to lick the tears for the salt, but couldn’t move my mouth from her clothes, her skin, where they met…
Someone slammed against me. A woman of about seventy was trying to get at the window, through the window, trying to reach the song. There were children hanging on her, a very young boy and girl literally holding on to her arms, which she waved about as she butted her head against the plate glass, so that the children almost flapped in the air like flags.
Get out of here, I thought. We had to get out of there. But my bag was gone. I needed my bag from Annie-O. “Help me find my bag!” I shouted at Alison, who began pushing people aside to reach the floor, where people were rolling around or else touching and hitting each other. Somehow we found it, two women had it, they were rubbing the leather against their bodies, laughing as they pushed it up against their breasts from below. Now they were opening it, taking out one rock, or cord, or fabric at a time in order to taste it or rub it in their hair. I thought Alison and I would have to fight them for it, but when we pushed them aside they laughed and immediately took to pushing each other and then whoever was next to them, laughing and pushing and then kicking as hard as they could.
I grabbed a dress I’d gotten from Annie. “Put this on,” I ordered Alison. “Over your clothes.” I didn’t dare undress or let Alison expose any more of her skin. The sight of it burned, I could see it crackling, small licks of flame flaring on her face and arms. The dress was a “relic” charged with the energy of outlaw enactments Annie and her cross-sisters had done in caves, computer centres and anonymous hotel rooms. While Alison put it on, I chose my own relic, a strand of heavy blue beads on a red silk cord. Annie and her relics had power because of who Annie was, and because of the blessing work she and her women had done over decades. But she had special power for Alison and me because she’d done everything without the help of the SDA or Bright Beings.
There were pots of red mud in each bag, one clay jar for each of us to smear on our faces, necks and hands. It made me think of Timmerman and his mud-covered escorts, but it cooled me and weighed me down, as if it covered my whole body, turning me into one of those cave statues, all breasts and hips, you sometimes see in museums for precursors of the Revolution.