Man he said, impressed, who put this on you?
Chevette stood up and shivered, this tremor running down through her like a live thing, the way those red bracelets had moved.
How she felt, now, was just the way shed felt that day shed come back to the trailer and found her mother all packed up and gone. No message there but a can of ravioli in a pot on the stove, with the can-opener propped up beside it.
She hadnt eaten that ravioli and she hadnt eaten any since and she knew she never would.
But this feeling had come, that day, and swallowed everything up inside it, so big you couldnt really prove it was there except by an arithmetic of absence and the memory of better days. And shed moved around in it, whatever it was, from one point to another, til shed wound up behind that wire in Beaverton, in a place so bad it was like a piece of broken glass to rub against that big empty. And thereby growing aware of the thing that had swallowed the world, though it was only just visible, and then in sidelong glances. Not a feeling so much as a form of gas, something she could almost smell in the back of her throat, lying chill and inert in the rooms of her subsequent passage.
You okay? Nigels greasy hair in his eyes, the red ball in his hand, a cocktail toothpick with a spray of amber cellophane stuck in the corner of his mouth.
For a long time shed wondered if maybe the fever hadnt burned it out, hadnt accidentally fried whatever circuit in her it fed back on. But as shed gotten used to the bridge, to Skinner, to messing at Allied, it had just come to seem like the emptiness was filled with ordinary things, a whole new world grown up in the socket of the old, one day rolling into the nextwhether she danced in Dissidents, or sat up all night talking with her friends, or slept curled in her bag up in Skinners room, where wind scoured the plywood walls and the cables thrummed down into rock that drifted (Skinner said) like the slowest sea of all.
Now that was broken.
Vette?
That jumper shed seen, a girl, hauled up and over the side of a Zodiac with a pale plastic hook, white and limp, water running from nose and mouth. Every bone broken or dislocated, Skinner said, if you hit just right. Ran through the bar naked and took a header off some tourists table nearest the railing, out and over, tangled in Harus Day-Glo net and imitation Japanese fishing floats. And didnt Sammy Sal drift that way now, maybe already clear of the dead zone that chased the fish off the years of toxic lead fallen there from uncounted coats of paint, out into the current that sailed the bridges dead, people said, past Mission Rock, to wash up at the feet of the micropored wealthy jogging the concrete coast of China Basin?
Chevette bent over and threw up, managing to get most of it into an open, empty paint can, its lip thickly scabbed with the gray primer that Nigel used to even out his dodgier mends.
Hey, hey Nigel dancing around her, unwilling in his shy bearish way to touch her, his big hands hovering, anxious that she was sick and worried shed puke over his work, something that might ultimately require the in-depth, never-before-attempted act of cleaning out, rather than up, his narrow nest. Water? Want water? Offering her the old coffee can he kept there to quench hot metal. Oily flux afloat atop it like gas beside a dock, and she nearly heaved again, but sat down instead.
Sammy Sal dead, maybe Skinner, too. Him and that grad student tied up up there with the plastic worms.
Chev?
Hed put the coffee can down and was offering her an open can of beer instead. She waved it aside, coughing.
Nigel shifted, foot to foot, then turned and peered through the triangular shard of lucite that served as his one window. It was vibrating with the wind. Stormin he said, like he was glad to note the world outside continuing on any recognizable course at all, however drastic. Stormin down rain.
Running from Skinners and the gun in the killers hand, from his eyes and the gold in the corners of his smile, bent low for balance over her bound hands and the case that held the assholes glasses, Chevette had seen all the others running, too, racing, it must have been, against the breaking calm, the first slap of rain almost warm when it came. Skinner wouldve known it was coming; hed have watched the barometer in its corny wooden case like the wheel of some old boat; he knew his weather, Skinner, perched in his box on the top of the bridge. Maybe the other; knew, too, but it was the style to wait and then race it, biding out for a last sale, another smoke, some bit of business. The hour before a storm was good for that, people naking edgy purchases against what was ordinarily a bearable uncertainty. Though a few were lost, if the storm was big enough, and not always the unestablished, the newcomers lashed with their ragged baggage to whatever freehold they might have managed on the outer structure; sometimes a whole patchwork section would just let go, if the wind caught it right; she hadnt seen that but there were stories. There was nothing to stop the new people from coming in to the shelter of the decks, but they seldom did.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and took the beer from Nigel. Took a sip. It was warm. She handed it back to him. He took the toothpick from his mouth, started to raise the can for a swallow, thought better of it, put it down beside his welding-torch.
Somethins wrong he said. I can tell.
She massaged her wrists. Twin rings of rash coming up, pink and moist, where the plastic had gripped her. Picked up the ceramic knife and closed it automatically.
Yeah she said, yeah somethings wrong
Whats wrong, Chevette? He shook hair out of his eyes like a worried dog, fingers running nervously over his tools. His hands were like pale dirty animals, capable in their mute and agile way of solving problems that would have hopelessly baffled the man himself. That Jap shit delaminated on you he decided, and youre pissed .
No she said, not really hearing him.
Steels what you want for a messenger bike. Weight. Big basket up front. Not cardboard with some crazy aramid shit wrapped around it, weighs about as much as a sandwich. What if you hit a b-bus? Bang into the back of it? You got more m-mass than the b-bike, you flip over and c-crack open crack your His hands twisting, trying more accurately to frame the physics of the accident he was seeing. Chevette looked up and saw that he was trembling.
Nigel she said, standing up, somebody just put that thing on me for a joke, understand?
It moved he said. I saw it.
Well, not a funny joke, okay? But I knew where to come. To you, right? And you took it off.
Nigel shook his hair back into his eyes, shy and pleased. You had that knife. Cuts good. Then he frowned. You need a steel knife
I know she said. I gotta go now Bending to pick up the paint can. Ill toss this. Sorry.
Its a storm Nigel said. Dont go out in a storm.
Ive got to she said. Ill be okay. Thinking how hed kill Nigel, too, if he found her here. Hurt him. Scare him.
I cut them off. Holding up the red ball.
Get rid of that she said.
Why?
Look at this rash.
Nigel dropped the ball like it was poison. It bounced out of sight. He wiped his fingers down the filthy front of his t-shirt.
Nigel, you got a screwdriver youll give me? A flathead?
Mine are all worn down The white animals running over a shoal of tools, happy to be hunting, while Nigel gravely watched them. I throw those flathead screws away as soon as I get em off. Hex is how you want to go
I want one thats all worn down.
The right hand pounced, came up with its prize, blackhandled and slightly bent.
Thats the one she said, zipping up Skinners jacket. Both hands offered it to her, Nigels eyes hiding behind his hair, watching. I like you, Chevette.
I know she said, standing there with a paint can with vomit in it in one hand, a screwdriver in the other. I know you do.