A number of men were playing games with pieces of cardboard or plastic they’d written on. Bits of stone were tossed, and men cheered depending on the results. Sometimes pieces were moved across squares and ovals scratched into the dirt.
In other clusters people were singing, a few even dancing, singly or together, the roaches observing nearby. Wherever the roaches positioned themselves, the residents kept several feet away, backs turned.
Daniel searched for the boy he’d met earlier. He’d wondered about him often, thinking how remarkably cruel it was for the roaches to have snatched a child out of his life, away from his parents. There was no justification for it. He doubted they watched this child any closer than the others—certainly he’d been allowed to roam the rooftop free of supervision. He should do something about it, but what? Maybe take the boy to live alongside his group, if the roaches allowed it.
He could always ask Falstaff.
Daniel made his way past several gatherings of men performing exercises. It made perfect sense—you lay on your back most of the day, your mind in another world and another life, the body easily forgotten, simply something to prop up your head. So silent and intent, these men had gathered together for pushups and leg lifts, and weight training with any odd bit of brick or iron from the numerous piles of demolished material like industrial gravesites across the roof.
A large fellow in a rickety chair had set up camp near the center of the roof, surrounded by items he would pick up, examine, and put down again. This activity was casually paced, but constant, repeated over and over again. Now and then he would pause and glower at anyone standing nearby. This big fellow had become a fixture over the weeks Daniel had been visiting the roof. Every time Daniel saw him he looked angrier, particularly if you walked too closely in front of him, as if you had violated his invisible lawn space.
Moving through the more densely populated sections of the roof, Danielencountered more couples, both mixed and same sex, holding hands, talking intimately, occasionally kissing, using the other residents to shield them from the scrutiny of the roaches. It was all quite risky and appealing to Daniel. He moved past as quickly as possible, but still gathered bits and snippets of conversation.
“Do you love me?” she said, her finger against the tall fellow’s chest. “Because I don’t believe it.”
A man with a deep scar on one cheek, the tattoo on his arm resembling layer upon layer of obsessive writing, grabbed a smaller man by the shoulder. “I can’t live without you.” He looked angrier than sad.
“If you didn’t do those things,” another fellow said to a tired-looking older woman, “you wouldn’t have to be taught the lesson.”
And then a figure chasing another through the crowd. “Sweetheart, don’t be so upset. You don’t need to be so upset.”
It was frustrating, not being able to find the boy. There was always the possibility that something had happened to him down in the barracks. Scuffles were not unheard of—it was a tense environment. Bullying was often a factor. Or perhaps the boy simply hadn’t come back from a scenario. That happened with some regularity.
Daniel felt echoes of the heightened alert he’d experienced as Gordon’s father. They never knew when their son would have a spell of difficult breathing. More often than not it would be in the middle of the night, and the monitor he’d had since he was a baby picked up his distress. They’d race into his room to find him gray-faced and grunting, his nostrils flaring as his body struggled for air. He’d been born with holes between the heart chambers, abnormalities in the blood vessels and in the aorta. These things made him smaller, paler than other kids.
Daniel’s anxiety rose, making him move more swiftly through the crowd. He became careless, running into people, never wise in a population exposed so intensely to violence. Someone shoved back. Others became involved. The roaches moved in, their dark insect limbs grabbing, throwing.
He glimpsed the hunched, sitting form out beyond the edge of the struggling crowd. Daniel made his way through and trotted toward the boy, who was sorting through a variety of small charred bits. The boy looked up, said “Hi,” but didn’t smile.
“Hello, I was looking for you.”
The boy still didn’t smile. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“I just wanted to make sure you were safe. What have you got there?”
“Just stuff I found in the building. Nothing you’d want.”
“What’s yours is yours. I wouldn’t take anything that belonged to you. I just want to be your friend, really.”
The boy looked at him suspiciously. “If you say so.”
“Do the other residents take things from you?”
“Sometimes. But sometimes when they wake up, they’re not who they were before. They get confused. And a little, I don’t know, grabby?”
“Can you keep yourself safe?”
“I try to hide when they first wake up. Then it’s okay.”
“I have some friends—they’re pretty trustworthy.” Daniel hoped that was still true. “Maybe you could move into our section.”
The boy studied him nervously. Then he looked away. “Are we on an alien planet?”
Daniel was okay with changing the subject—anything to keep him in the conversation. “I don’t know that any of us really know where this is.” Except perhaps Falstaff, he thought.
“But they want us to think that, right? I mean the dream? The flying dream? The big bugs carrying us here? They want us to think we’re out in space somewhere, right?”
“I’m just not sure.”
“I’ve been picking up all kinds of stuff. I’ve been going through the junk in the rooms, all that broken junk. And the roof?” He held up a small dull metal disk. “I found this. See, it’s all rusted and stained.” The boy put the circular bit of metal into Daniel’s palm. “It’s a coin, isn’t it?”
Daniel prodded and scraped at it with his fingernail. George Washington. It was an American quarter. “Where—” But the boy stared past him, looking troubled. “Anything wrong?”
“That lady, she’s been staring at me all day. I don’t—I don’t like it.”
Daniel turned and saw a woman sitting by herself. She looked away instantly. “Stay here. I’m just going to talk to her for a minute.”
The woman, red-faced, weathered skin, looked alarmed when Daniel walked up to her. “Excuse me. My young friend over there says you’re making him nervous. Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head, her eyes cast down. “I didn’t mean to scare him, but he—he reminds me of my son Paul. I guess I was staring like some kind of weird-o?”
“He’s just scared. I can’t imagine a child being here, going through these scenarios.”
“Oh, that’s bad.” She shook her head, bowed as if it weighed a thousand pounds. “Bad enough for an adult.” She started to get up, “Won’t bother you—anymore.”
“I haven’t met many women here. Is it the same for you? How often do the women do the scenarios?”
She sat back down, looking tired but not entirely unwelcoming. “Sometimes once a week. For a while most every day, with a break, sometimes.”
“Same as it is for the rest of us.”
She looked at him with seeming disinterest. But she responded. He believed it was automatic, that she would have responded to anything he said. “Is it?”
“Yes. But I guess I’m not as familiar with the history of violent women. What roles have you played, if you don’t mind my asking?”
She stared off past him then, her eyes looking intently at something, some distant event. “Bonnie Parker.” She glanced at him quickly, and away. “As in Bonnie and Clyde, you know? Then there was Myra Hindley. And Belle Gunness in America—she killed husbands, kids for the life insurance. A cold woman. I don’t think she cared for anyone, including herself. Ilse Koch—the roaches are obsessed with the Nazis, have you noticed? And of course the Countess Elizabeth Bathory—that one was fuzzy, as if they weren’t giving me enough information to work with, you know? I just kept killing all these girls, killing after killing, and I was never quite sure why. It became habitual, like the way you snack when you’re nervous, you know? Is that an insensitive thing to say? You know it’s bad, but you’re helpless, you can’t stop. And you don’t want to stop, not really.