And finally there was the last stratum, the workers who had been mostly invisible before, faces on the subway or at a bus stop: black and Hispanic, or foreign-borns, so many names heavy in consonants or vowels, the grunts who staffed the restaurants and cafeterias, the mailrooms and custodial sheds. These pictures were grim, like mugshots: work IDs and grainy family portraits and Polaroid-framed moments of forced relaxation. These people all seemed exhausted, as if they’d known disaster before this day, too, like flood survivors clinging to trees. Often, the missing person wasn’t even the focus of the photograph – you could see two other people had been cut away from the picture and all that was left was poor Jupaheen in a secondhand suit, standing in a building lobby, hands folded in front of his lap. Bleeding patience.
Remy was lost in the faces when he glanced over and saw a guy standing next to him, a Middle Eastern man in his sixties, about Remy’s height, wearing a beautiful wool coat, with razor-short hair, round glasses, and several days’ growth on his craggy face. “Do you want to know what I have always believed?” he asked, with a dentured whistle, and the faintest shadow of an accent.
“Okay,” Remy said.
The man turned back to the wall. “I have always believed that there are two kinds of people: those whose every day is a battle to rise up, and those whose every day is a battle to fit in. There are no other kinds of people. No races or religions or professions – you are either trying to rise, or trying to fit. That is the only war, between the risers and the fitters. That’s all.”
Remy looked back at the pictures. What was this man saying, that it was democratizing, all these people dying together? Remy couldn’t see it that way, didn’t imagine them coming together in the end, grabbing hold of one another in burning corridors or comforting each other as the heat rose and the ground beckoned. He’d seen too many people fall alone and it was too easy to imagine the rest crying alone, huddling alone, and burning alone – generally being alone, which, no matter how we live, is always the way we go. Remy looked down at his own hands, calluses on the pads and palms, gray dust in the creases of his nails.
“We miss Communism,” the man said. “Not as a form of government, or economics – obviously that was a failure, as rife with corruption and disincentives as any other system. But the ideal, the childlike optimism – without it the world grows into cynicism. Sometimes I think we need another way, a political or economic route to morality and generosity. When I was a young man I believed that my faith was a path through the violent thicket of modernity, but honestly, I just don’t know anymore. Maybe we all have to be dragged through, huh?”
The man gestured toward the photos. “Did you know that Jesus is mentioned ninety-three times in the Koran?”
“No,” Remy said, “I guess I didn’t know that.”
“Nobody knows that,” the man said. Then he put a manila envelope in Remy’s open hands. “I think this may be what you’re looking for,” the man said and turned to walk away.
DARK AT the edges, and in the center a blinding, narrow green light an indeterminate distance in front of him, sliding back and forth across a short horizon. “And tell me, Brian. What are you seeing now?”
Remy’s chin and forehead were pressed into some kind of smooth, cool plastic. The green light moved back and forth. “Brian? Are you seeing the streaks right now? The floaters and strings?”
“Yes,” Remy answered. “Streaks. And the ones that look like chains. Floating.”
“Okay. Look up, please.”
He looked up.
“Now down.”
Down.
“Okay. That’s fine. You can sit back now.”
Remy sat back in the chair, which had a cushion for his head. The lights came up and Remy’s eyes burned as the pieces scrambled for cover. His wild-eyed ophthamologist, Dr. Huld, wore a small light above his head, a tiny miner’s helmet. “I wish I had better news for you. But it’s definitely gotten worse. Much worse.” The doctor turned and looked maniacally at Remy – his bulging round eyes framed by thick black lashes, Marty Feldman after corrective surgery – and then scratched some notes on a pad. “I definitely don’t want you to fly. The change in air pressure would be bad for your retinas. Do you think driving would be too hard on your back?”
“No,” Remy said. “My back is fine.”
“Well then, if you must take this trip, I think it’s best that you drive. At least for now… until we get the pressure stabilized.”
“Okay,” Remy said. Then he would just have to drive. “Uh… Dr. Huld. Did I… by chance… Did I happen to tell you where I was going?”
Dr. Huld didn’t look up as he wrote on his pad. “Kansas City.”
“Right, Kansas City,” Remy repeated. He laughed, as if trying to pass this all off as a game, but the doctor ignored him and spoke without looking up from his pad.
“How’s the medication working out for you? Do you need another prescription?”
“I don’t know.”
The doctor looked up again, his eyes bugging. “Are you taking the pills I prescribed, Brian?”
“Honestly, I’m kind of having trouble remembering some things. There are these… gaps. They’re coming faster now… Could that be a side effect of the medication?”
Dr. Huld removed the miner’s light. “What kind of gaps?”
“Well, sometimes-”
HIS OWN face stared back at him from the bathroom mirror: thinning brown hair, faint beard over a jutting jaw, seams of blood in his left eye, and on his lips a distant, wan smile. And of course, the whole picture was covered with flecks, like a crackling old movie. Remy looked down. He was naked. He was getting thinner, lean muscles popping at the skin. And he was half-aroused. “The good half,” he said quietly, surprised by his own raspy voice. Jesus, was he drunk again? He breathed on his hand and smelled sweet booze. Brandy? Port? He didn’t drink port. Did he drink port? He imagined the syrupy coolness and suddenly craved a glass of it. Maybe he did drink port. Or maybe he should start. Remy looked around. This wasn’t his bathroom. Okay. The floor was tiled with small alternating tiles; there was a sink, a medicine chest, and a toilet. It was very clean. Okay. Okay. There were candles draped in ribbon on the back of the toilet. Candles. This was a woman’s bathroom. Well, that was good, anyway. If he was going to be naked in a strange bathroom, better to have it be-
“Is everything okay in there?” A woman’s voice… youngish, a little tentative, maybe, but… nice.
Remy stared at the door. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.” He tried to come up with the girl’s name: Amelia? Olga? Maria? Jesus, it could be anything. Betsy? Phil? Rotunda?
He looked around wildly and then opened the medicine chest, looking for prescriptions. But there weren’t any. He opened a drawer and there were two medicine bottles. He read the names on the bottles: April Kraft. April. Kraft. April. April Kraft. Was he with this April Kraft? What if April Kraft was the girl’s roommate, not her?
“Uh… you don’t have a roommate, do you?”