Cryptopolis and other st.., p.15
Cryptopolis and Other Stories, page 15
A war. Racial Holy War.
Samuel felt the giggles returning. Oh God, he thought, what the hell am I going to do? This was a question he asked himself perhaps a hundred times over the course of the next twenty minutes while just standing there, staring…
He didn’t notice them, not through the intermittent giggles and glaring white sunlight and his own confusion. He only spotted them through his peripheral vision when they were already within thirty feet of him: a group of young black men, perhaps as many as a dozen, flanked by a familiar face, the homeless man whose life Samuel had spared. He looked frightened. “He’s the one,” he said, pointing at Samuel.
The young man at the head of the group nodded solemnly and told him to go. The homeless man scampered away.
Samuel patted his jacket, remembering now that he’d left his gun in the van. He spun around and started walking toward it. Too late. Six of the men placed themselves between him and the van. The others strolled up behind him. Samuel stared into the leader’s cool brown eyes.
“I—I don’t want any trouble,” Samuel said. His head was on fire. Sweat beads dripped into his eyes. So hard to see in this glare…
The leader smiled without humor.
Samuel felt nauseous. He needed to urinate bad. He tried to say, “I can tell you who was behind the fire.” But for some reason it was difficult to form words.
He glanced up slowly. A few dark faces peered down at him, peeking out from behind the surrounding tenement windows. Waiting to see what would happen.
He could feel the hatred closing in around him as a scattershot series of images sliced through his mind: a black cat in a doorway, an empty bottle of champagne, a bed creaking beneath the weight of two indistinct bodies fucking each other in the lengthening shadows of sunrise.
White flesh charred black with fire.
A church burning to the ground, filtered red.
Yellow yarn, curling in upon itself like the legs of a wounded spider, as it blackens, disintegrates, and disappears.
Dymaxion Love
Sunday
Under a dymaxion dome the size of an average city block, adrift somewhere in the depths of outer space, three people dream their final dreams before the beginning of another day. If there were an outside observer here, what would he see? He would see two men and one female in a one-story house with cutaway walls. All three figures are human. The female is in her late twenties. One of the men is much older, old enough to be her father. The other man is in his early twenties. All three are lying in bed together. Raymond wakes up first. He opens his eyes blearily and realizes that he’s lying between his wife, Tess, and one of his best students and drinking buddies, Andre. He tries to shake the hangover away but it’s just not as easy as that. He can’t remember what happened last night. He remembers an argument. He remembers almost coming to blows with Andre. He remembers Tess trying to calm the two of them down. But… how did this happen?
He pulls the covers back from Tess’s always beautiful body and is shocked to see a knife protruding from her stomach. And now he sees the lifelessness of her gaping mouth and oddly positioned arms—a hand held over her head, as if in an attempt to ward off a fatal blow. He turns toward Andre to shake him awake. And the thin black sheet falls off Andre’s body to reveal the gaping hole in his chest.
Raymond pukes on the shag carpet while crawling away from the nightmare. He’s shivering all over and deep inside and wants to wake up again and make it all go away but now the memories are coming back and there’s no way to stop them, no way.
He retreats into his mind. Isn’t that what Tess always accused him of doing? Isn’t that why she started the affair in the first place?
The lights go down on Sunday. Red velvet curtains close across the dymaxion dome.
Monday
Eighty parsecs out past a red dwarf star, a black hole consumes an entire starship the size of a planet. Three billion people die. The last remnants of entire civilizations, gone within moments. Raymond steps into the elevator at exactly a half past five, as he does almost every day. Except for weekends and holidays, Raymond spends the majority of his life listening to other people’s problems. He’s a psychiatrist, a damn good one. He’s written a number of award-winning articles, published a respected but obscure book on teen suicide, and even won a prestigious award for his early work correlating the relationship between violence and music. Particularly hip-hop. That’s the worst of all.
The elevators close behind him. He hums a song to himself. A Beatles tune. “Helter Skelter.” Now why is he thinking of that old thing all of a sudden? Then it hits him: A muzak version of “Helter Skelter” is playing inside the elevator. He smiles and shakes his head. He remembers the days when all his peers thought Beatles music would revolutionize world politics. Look where it ended up instead. As wallpaper for elevators.
The elevator sinks to the twenty-second floor, then pauses. The doors open. A teenage kid saunters aboard. Or perhaps he’s in his early twenties? He’s wearing a baseball hat backwards over a mass of overgrown dreadlocks. He’s got a gaudy gold necklace hanging around his neck that spells out the name “ANDRE.” His Levis are about two sizes too large for him and hang down to the back of his knees. Just like the gangbangers in South Central. And yet this is a white kid. Quite pale too. He’s wearing wraparound black sunglasses. A pair of tiny headphones are plugged into his ears. A loud, repetitious drumbeat booms out, almost as if the music’s emerging from a ghetto blaster rather than a pair of headphones. The kid has to be deaf if he listens to that shit all the time.
Raymond studies the kid out of the corner of his eye. He has fair skin. Smooth, except for the messy sideburns trailing down his face. This is a good-looking, handsome young man. Why does he have to ruin his features by dressing like that?
They go down. From the twenty-first to the twentieth to the nineteenth to the… The entire time, Raymond can’t stop watching the boy with his peripheral vision. In the face he looks no more than fifteen and yet his physique is that of a full-grown man. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure, what with all that baggy clothing. The boy’s forehead is coated with sweat. He’s shaking slightly. Symptoms of withdrawal.
The boy presses the red emergency button, bringing the elevator to an abrupt halt. Raymond tenses. Is he about to be mugged?
The boy remains where he is, does not move except to raise his fist to his mouth and jerk it up and down ever so slowly. He presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, causing a slight bulge to appear every time his fist hits his lips.
Raymond blushes, not knowing at first if the boy is making fun of him or… Well, only one way to find out. Raymond pulls out his wallet and slips three twenties into the boy’s palm. The money disappears into the boy’s baggy jeans. So. Raymond puts down his briefcase, then undoes his belt. He unzips his pants, pulls his underwear down just enough to give the boy access.
The boy drops to his knees, the drumbeat still screaming into his ears. At no point does he remove the headphones. Raymond wonders what he’s listening to. He knows a lot about the modern bands from his scholarly work. Sounds a bit like Songz 4 Insane Angelz, a new band out of Detroit.
Upon seeing Raymond’s penis, the boy glances up and says, “Hey!” He has to scream over the music. He spreads his hands in the air, as if to say, “What’s the deal?”
“I’m paying you enough,” Raymond says. “You do all the work.”
The boy shakes his head and mutters a frustrated sound like, “Tch.” He wraps his lips around Raymond’s limp penis and flicks his pierced tongue back and forth over his foreskin.
Raymond leans back against the gold-colored, reflective walls and smiles. Yes, the boys know exactly how to do it. Of course, they would. They know what feels good. He’s never met a girl who could do it correctly. Back in his college days he felt compelled to try a few women, just for appearance’s sake. They weren’t bad. Weren’t good either.
Raymond places his hand on top of the boy’s baseball cap. He likes to run his fingers through a young gentleman’s hair while engaged in this particular pastime. But not kinky dreadlocks. God, no.
He closes his eyes and moans. His heart races as fast as that damn drumbeat. His penis grows larger and larger in the boy’s mouth. Yes, the boy has obviously done this quite often. Probably a heroin addict. Maybe he rides the elevators in the downtown office buildings, making a killing.
A giggle escapes Raymond’s lips. What if all his fine, upstanding colleagues—the very same people from whom he’s tried so hard to hide his secret these past twenty years—are engaged in the same exact tomfoolery right under his nose? After work. On the elevators. During that brief break between roles, between artificial responsibilities, between the office and home.
Raymond shudders as he comes, a warm explosion spreading throughout his body and up his spine and into the back of his neck where the migraines always begin. Right after work. But not today. No, not today.
He digs his fingers into the boy’s cap, holding his skull in place with a vice-like grip, making certain the boy waits for the final spasm, that last load that always arrives with a slight shiver. He moves his groin back and forth in intermittent jerks, squeezing off the final drops into the boy’s throat. Oh, oh yes, the slow smooth dying down of it…
He releases one more sigh, then removes his hands from the boy’s head. The boy rises to his feet and adjusts his cap. He seems annoyed that it has been violated so.
Raymond’s penis is already shrinking. He stuffs it back into his pants, zips up, clasps his belt. Picks up the briefcase.
The boy hits the button, and the elevator starts down again. Down to the lobby. They don’t exchange a further word, not even a glance. The boy leaves first. Raymond follows.
A few minutes later, behind the steering wheel of his black Lexus, Raymond shuts his eyes for a moment. Savoring the memory.
The 405 is a bitch. Traffic jams all the way home. He listens to the classical music station to drown out the noise, the honking horns, the angry yells.
Tess, his wife, is in a bad mood. Apparently, Michel has done something wrong at school. Punched out a classmate on the playground. She tells Raymond to go right on up there and give him a good talking to.
Later, he says, later.
He retreats into his den and continues working on his new article, “The Exploitation of Puberty in Post-Quantum Youth Culture and Bio-Technological Metaprogramming in Visual Space Parameters.” The title alone would get him the new Rockefeller grant. He twists open a bottle of Scotch and knocks back a few shots.
He closes his eyes and allows the liquid to trickle slowly down the back of his throat. No migraines. Just dreadlocks. The thumping drumbeat. The feel of the nylon cap.
A sad, hollow nothing in the center of his gut. Somehow, he knows. The boy will never choose that elevator again. He knows.
Through the closed den doors, he can smell Tess’s salmon cooking, no doubt in her favorite frying pan.
The black hole continues to expand, consuming an asteroid belt that had once been the largest moon in the Chamealeontis constellation, a constellation that made its first appearance on Earth on a celestial globe produced in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius.
Tuesday
Tess is fucking Andre in the master bedroom. Raymond is at a conference for the weekend and won’t be back for several days. She loves doing it in their bed. It just makes the affair that much more exciting.
Suddenly, just as Tess is about to come, Andre releases a strangled howl, then his full weight collapses onto her. At first, she thinks he’s had a particularly good orgasm. But he won’t get up. And he’s not moving anymore.
Disgusted, she pushes him off her. He goes flopping onto the wooden floor like a dead fish. She stares down at him. His eyes are wide open and lifeless. What… what the fuck…?
She crawls out of bed and kneels beside him. She starts whimpering his name and beating on his chest. He couldn’t have had a heart attack. He’s only twenty-two…
And yet… and yet he’d been pushing his cocaine habit really hard. Was it possible that…?
After beating on his chest for twenty minutes she realizes there’s nothing else she can do. She calls the ambulance.
This is a small lakeside village up in Lake Arrowhead. Everyone knows everyone else. It’s bound to get out.
It’s over.
Everything, for her, is over.
She sits on the porch, stares up at the stars and the gibbous moon through the curved glass dome of the sky, and waits for the sirens to draw near.
The Chamealeontis constellation is not visible from where Tess now sits. In Australia, on Earth, the Chamealeontis constellation is often referred to as “the Frying Pan.”
Wednesday
Tess and Raymond lay in bed together at three in the morning, listening for the phone, hoping it will never ring again. Every night for the past week someone has called them at three in the morning. The Hour of the Wolf. Was it their eight-year-old son, Michel, calling to tell them in accusing whispers what bad parents they had been? How could they ever have left him alone with Andre, of all people?
At three o’clock on the dot, the phone rings. Tess digs her nails into Raymond’s shoulder.
“Please, no,” she whispers.
“I’m gonna put an end to this shit,” Raymond mutters, stalks out into the living room, and snatches the receiver off its cradle.
“Hey, pal, what kind of a sick fuck are you?” Raymond says. “How dare you scare my wife like this!”
For a moment there’s only empty silence, then Raymond hears a man with a distinct Italian accent say, “Hey, who’re you callin’ a sick fuck? I just wanna know if you’re ever gonna pick up your kid’s birthday cake, boss, that’s all.”
“Birthday cake?” That’s when Raymond remembers that Michel’s birthday was this past Tuesday. What with the sudden accident and the funeral and all, he and Tess had forgotten all about it.
“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry. My son, you see… he had an accident.” Hearing himself say these words out loud is almost too much to bear. “We’ll come by and pay you for the cake tomorrow.”
“Ah… that’s a fine, boss.” Raymond suddenly realizes the man sounds almost exactly like Chico Marx, the little guy in the Tyrolean hat from those black and white 1930s comedies.
“Say… have you been calling every night at three in the morning for the past seven nights?”
“Yes, sir, that was me, Guido Giovanni, at your service.”
“Why… were you callin’ so damn late?”
“Insomnia. Thinking about the troubles in the world—that can keep you up at night, boss. So that’s when I get my work done. My most important work. Y’understand?”
“I… I guess, but… why didn’t you say anything when you called? Why on earth would you just sit there on the other end, listening to me yelling at you every single god damn night?”
“Hey, how the hell’m I supposed to know? By the way, don’t bother to come in tomorrow, boss. I already ate your dead kid’s cake. Oh, and I’m not really Guido Giovanni. I’m Chico Marx, newly risen from the dead. Badda-bing! Capiche?”
The stranger hangs up.
At first Raymond doesn’t know what to do. He’s not even angry. He’s just numb and confused. Why would anyone play such a horrible prank on him? Now, of all times?
He crawls back into bed and whispers, “Everything’s okay, babe. Michel says he’s in a better place now, and he loves you very much.”
Tess is able to sleep for the first time in days while Raymond drifts off just halfway, stuck between the worlds of slumber and reality, and experiences a waking dream set in a far-off future in which he’s devolved into a doddering old lunatic standing on a bench near the end of a steel pier, beneath the mounting heat of a giant, dying sun, his back to a crimson ocean, ranting at the nonchalant passersby that Christopher Columbus was not Italian at all, but instead a wily Jewish banker disguised as a sun-addled sailor with a poor sense of direction. “It was all part of The Plan!” he yells in the dream. Then his tongue abruptly topples out of his head and plops onto the metal pier, sizzling in the heat like a piece of barbecued beef. Raymond panics, the charred scent of his blackening tongue wafting through the salt-tinged air, all potential words lost to him forever. He can only watch as the charred tongue curls upon itself like a dead spider and disintegrates into particles of black ash that flutter away on a strong gust of hot wind from the boiling red sea.
Thursday
Raymond wakes at 6:48 a.m., three minutes off schedule. He slaps his hand against the clock’s plastic face and knocks it off the nightstand; it lands on the carpet with a clunky bang, still whining but at a lower pitch. He does this every morning. Perhaps that’s why it’s defective. He’s three minutes off schedule, all because of that damn machine.
He knows it takes him exactly forty-five minutes to shower, eat breakfast, brush his teeth, shave, get dressed, and run out the door. He has this down to an exact science. But now he’s three minutes off. He has to either pick up the pace or drop one of his little rituals. He decides not to shave. Today is Casual Day at work anyway. On Casual Day wearing a tie is optional.
He drags himself off the mattress and lumbers into the adjoining bathroom. He’s so glad he and Tess had recently decided to sleep in separate rooms. They both sleep much better that way, and after all Tess needs to be close to Michel in case he starts crying in the middle of the night. He doesn’t want to be bothered with all that damn noise.
It’s not that he doesn’t love Michel, it’s just that… sometimes it’s hard for him to feel… no, forget it, forget it. Just take a shower, he says to himself. Go to work. Tess loves you. She said so last night. Right before she went to her room, to sleep.
He arrives at work at precisely 8:00 a.m. He has a tiny office all to himself at the end of an L-shaped hallway. The office is the size of a broom closet and has no windows. He spends most of his day in there maintaining the official PR Wire web page when he’s not on the phone with clients lining up trade shows for the Los Angeles area. It isn’t difficult work, but there is a hell of a lot of it and the bosses seem to dump more and more responsibilities on his shoulders every day. He’s taken to calling himself The Director of Ancillary Affairs, since that’s what the upper office seems to think of him and his talents.
