MY SEARCH FOR her started the next day. I followed the streets east as far as the bridges. She’d sworn to never leave the city, and I believed her, not because she was trustworthy but because I knew it was true of both of us, I felt it in my bones more real than gravity. I searched the riverbed, dry and filled with garbage and abandoned cars, and knew I wouldn’t cross over. I turned back and headed north. Days passed. I begged for food or scavenged through boarded-up buildings. I crossed back and forth over the city. To Hell’s Kitchen, then east to Central Park, where I wandered up to Harlem and kept going north. When I reached the Cloisters, I turned back. Some streets just tasted wrong, like aluminum on the tongue. I didn’t see her anywhere. I searched the Central Park camps, with their rings of barbed wire and patrols. I scanned the line of people with their pillowcases of canned goods in front of the Plaza Hotel, waiting to be interviewed for acceptance into the clans.
“What do you think you would be able to offer a clan?” asked one of the tie-wearing interviewers. He, like the others, sat behind an office desk that had been hauled out onto the sidewalk.
A pert young woman with uneven bangs smiled anxiously. “I’m assertive and good with traps.”
The interviewer made notes on a clipboard.
I returned to the eastern edge of the city for no reason other than that it was opposite where we’d been together, and something in the message of “fly east” wouldn’t unhook from my thoughts. None of the street crews on the West Side had seen her. Emma claimed she hadn’t either, although I thought she might lie.
I walked past the hospital again and found it more dilapidated in the light. Across the street the dorms were buzzing like a hive. The children I’d seen before caught me looking at the many windows and ran out to chat. The oldest teased me that the woman I sought was my “girlfriend,” the word stretching out along her wide, wicked, child smile.
“You love her,” she purred. I gave the kids some apples that Emily had given me and continued down First Avenue. I walked nearly to the tip of Manhattan. At the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, I considered walking across the East River. I stared across the muddy ground between me and Governors Island. Her promise to not leave the limits of the island repeated inside me. I felt an ache in my body. My back rippled with every step. I needed to rest.
I headed to the subway. I’d been in the tunnels but never seen trains, although others claimed they still ran. The nearest station was City Hall. I passed the agent’s booth and jumped a turnstile. On the platform, candles burned in sconces bolted to the support beams. Commuters read books or old newspapers. I picked up some pages myself and read news decades old, thought of the papers that Lily freed after Phil’s death. The train that eventually arrived had no headlights, and so it burst from the black tunnel like an eel, its brakes screaming. My heart beat faster, but when the train slowed, I saw that the interior was lit and filled with people.
I stepped into a car nearest the conductor, as if he provided some kind of protection, and examined the other riders. Entire families called the train home. I saw men and women lost in the vague intimacies of life. Five children received reading lessons from a man who seemed father to none of them, a legal pad on his knee as he drew letters, upside down and backward from his perspective. “Cat,” he wrote. “Dog.” I watched until he wrote “Train,” and the children gave knowing smiles to one another.
A blanket lay across several seats, and beneath it moved the shapes of two lovers. I walked past them and those who casually sat near them, reading or sleeping or watching. I found a seat beside a woman with a small electric hot plate attached to a battery. She cooked eggs she sold for a dollar a plate. People lined up and offered their money. She served in order, throwing oil and eggs into a small black pan. She took pity on me and gave me an egg for free. I had no cash and offered her my jacket, but she refused it. In a thick accent, she said, “Be nice to someone else. It all comes back.” She said something in a Slavic tongue, smiled, and turned to her next customer. I ate the egg in silence.
At the next stop, a priest stepped on board, and the people nearest the door shouted at him to leave. Someone from farther down the car shouted back, “Until he hurts someone, he stays, just like the rest.” It might have been the teacher, but it could have been anyone.
The priest walked among the passengers, speaking of God and holding a cup for donations. None came. One man told him, “You’d be better off becoming a carpenter, like Jesus. Then you’d be productive.” The priest ignored him and quoted a passage from the New Testament.
I returned to Phil and Lily’s building, my building. I was nearly crippled, my back so knotted that standing was difficult. The stairs to the top floor nearly wrenched me apart, and with every step I recalled seeing Lily carried up them. I had failed spectacularly in my attempt to save her. She had disappeared, and I knew that whether I returned to the party or not, she would be there. My guilt was crippling me.
The next day I regretted having come back to that place. No one knew I was there. I had little food. I spent hours on the kitchen floor, lying on my back or my stomach. I crawled through the apartment on all fours, searching for food. Instead I found the remains of Phil’s hidden stores of alcohol hidden behind cleaning products in the bathroom, in the lowest kitchen cupboards, and under threadbare blankets in a closet. I medicated the pain, found that even if the pain didn’t leave, at least I did. I drank myself to a stupor during that day and the next and wandered in and out of consciousness during the night. Awake, I cursed myself and Lily, Phil, Emma, whoever passed through memory. When I sobered enough to look out the window at the hotel, sunlight blurring its windows, I would wonder what day it was for an instant and then turn to the next bottle. I relived Phil’s death. I talked to ghosts and memories. I waited for suns to rise and set.
When at last I ran out of Phil’s remaining stash, I filled the bottles with water and watched light filter through them, ran my fingers through the rainbows they cast on the floor. I waited for daylight to break through and catch them in new ways. I drank the bottles during the evening, telling myself over and over that there was more I could have done, nothing else I could have done. My ears were filled with my own circling babble, and just before I fell asleep, I heard words slip from me that made the pain in my back crackle like electricity.
“It was her choice to go,” I said. Then I fell asleep.
The following morning the pain was gone. I woke and turned to my side and didn’t shudder or moan. I lay still for several minutes, sure the pain would creep up and take me again, certain it waited for me to think it gone in order to injure me more when it returned. When it didn’t, I sat up and looked around the room. It was dark, and the sky outside the windows rolled with heavy clouds. Thunder shook the bottles on the sill.
Rain splattered against the bottles, ran from the sill down the cracked plaster wall, and pooled on the wooden floor. The puddle was growing, gathering bits of plaster debris, dust, small pieces of paper that floated across the top like water bugs. The water followed the unseen contours of the floorboards, the paths dictated by grain and wear, toward the center of the room, jogged sideways twice, and then formed a pool beside my mattress. If the rain continued, I knew that the mattress would be ruined. For the first time in days, I stood. I found the tentacled device, no milky fluid or smell of memory around it. It was as if someone had cleaned it. I took it back to the mattress, lay down, and held the device to my chest.
Outside, the storm continued, the sky so dark it was impossible to say if it was day or night. Streetlamps and neighborhoods blinked on and off in the distance. Nearby, lightning lit the streets. I followed the odor of food down the hallway to the living room and found a milk crate with three Styrofoam containers inside. I opened the top one and found a turkey dinner with potatoes and broccoli. I opened the other two and found two more of the same. Had Lily taken some odd kind of pity on me, or had Mana or Josh come to make peace with Phil? I put two in the refrigerator; the third I ate with my bare hands. When I was done, I left the container on the floor and carried the device back to bed. No longer bogged down by my stomach, I knew what I wanted: to see if the device worked. I wanted to see Lily again, even if only in memory, and this twisted thing might give me that. But I was still afraid to find out. I curled my hands around it and held it under my pillow.
Rain hammered the buildings, and I lay listening to its work. I could imagine the years of dirt that washed away down the drains of the city, the dust taken from the air. It tasted cleaner. I ate the other two meals when I became hungry and then wondered at who had brought them. The empty containers floated around the living room on top of the half inch of water that covered the apartment floor. It ran under the front door, spilled over the steps, and rained down the stairwell. My mattress squished beneath me.
Another day or night and I woke to more smells. I followed them to the living room and this time found a plate wrapped in foil. Under the foil, held firm by coagulating gravy, were nine Swedish meatballs. I walked to the window, looked across the alley, and saw lights glare from the first and second floors of the hotel. My party was tonight. I saw one of myselves run through the rain to the front entrance. The Elder, I was sure, who had brought this food. In a flash of lightning, I caught another scurrying along the side of the building, a Youngster, probably one of the first, maybe even the Inventor. I left the plate on the sill, and rain mixed with the gravy.
Lily would be there tonight. If I could have convinced her to leave with me, then the deaths would be avoided. Six months hadn’t been enough. A year would be. I’d go further back. I’d try again.
I found my suit in the closet and my three guns. I’d been wearing clothes that belonged to Phil, so going back in them, meeting Lily and Phil a full year earlier, while wearing his clothes would lead to unwanted questions. A year earlier, or more. Two, three? And no memory device; she’d never steal her memories back from me. I changed into the suit and then weighed what to do with the guns. They anchored me to the spot as I debated. If they weren’t present in the present, if I took them further back and got rid of them, if I also took Phil’s gun from a year earlier, then the Suit’s events might change so dramatically that the shooting would never occur. I’d never come back here, and I might not know what events would come, but at least the deaths might be avoided.
At the front door of the building, I watched the hotel pop in and out of sight as lightning flashed, the scramble of the guest-hosts arriving. I couldn’t go back, but I had to go back. It had to come to this, to my return. I wasn’t going to attend the party. I was going to get back to the roof, to my raft, and then I’d be gone from my Elders and Youngsters for good. I’d save myself from myself, and Lily as well. To do this meant hiding in plain sight. I’d have to act like I belonged so that I could disappear. And in a flash of lightning, I knew how to do it. In that flash I saw my reflection in the door glass. In that reflection I saw the Drunk.
I had lost weight, gained gray and a beard. My eyes were dark, my hair long and unruly. I was sober but didn’t look it. I was the Drunk. I was the one who would kill Lily. I wasn’t a drunk. I wouldn’t kill Lily. No one would want me there. No one would talk to me. I could walk through the lobby and to the stairs, reach the roof, and be gone. But I needed to be cautious. Taking the guns with me to the past was one step. The second was keeping them from working. I took the guns from my pocket and emptied the bullets, dropped them to the floor of the lobby. They clicked around my feet, spun away into the dark. I repocketed one gun, stowed the others in my waistband, hidden under my jacket, and stepped into the storm.
I ran across the alleyway through the rain, getting drenched, and went in through the side entrance. An Elder, head wrapped in a plastic shower cap, jacket soaked through to his shirt, swore as he wiped rainwater from his sleeves. Two Youngsters, both near the Inventor’s age, laughed at the Elder with the sad recognition in their eyes that they would, one day, literally be him. Their high-pitched giggles seemed forced. One of them looked up at me, and I realized he would later become the Nose.
“Oho.” he called. “The life of the party has arrived.”
I felt the weight of my jacket, the water running down my back. I played my part. “Is the bar open?”
Both boys laughed. Had I really been so self-centered and judgmental? I had. I am, I thought. “Not yet,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”
I longed to scare them away. I realized I had all the ammunition I needed. “You know, it’s not too many years before you become me.” Their laughter stopped.
I headed for the main stairs. They were rotten and dangerous, and I’d avoided them for years, but this time I toed past soft steps and railings that were only casually attached. I’d hoped to reach the penthouse on them, but on the landing between five and six lay the rubble of what had been the stairs from six to seven. Broken windows leaked. Water slid over splintered wood. A gap too wide to jump yawned before me. I left the stairwell and walked down the empty sixth-floor hallway. The lights were out, and I followed the wall with one hand. I heard whispers, soft-edged words, secrets in the dark. I stopped and held my breath. Parrots, I thought, or the echoes of my own progress. Or, I wondered, was I talking to myself?
I navigated from memory. Just a few paces past the last room, I found the intersection and the door to the rear stairs. It was dark, as it had been for the Suit on his descent from the penthouse. I’d have to hurry to avoid crossing his path. I counted steps as I ran, my chest burning and legs shaking as I reached the penthouse. I continued up to the roof, the last flight ending at the heavy door. I threw my weight against it, the alarm blaring above me, and exited the building onto a roof empty except for an inch-deep puddle and slanting sheets of rain.
No matter how long I stayed on the roof, it would still be empty. My raft was gone. I gasped for air, still winded from the climb, and swore at myself. Had I mentioned to Seventy where I’d put the raft? How had they found it? Why move it?
“They want me here,” I told no one. “They need me here.” I could almost picture Seventy sending Screwdriver up here, one more task for Screwdriver to carry out. Another roll of thunder and I took hold of the door handle, but a thought froze me and I couldn’t open the door. I was still tethered to an Elder. For someone downstairs my struggles were memory. I cursed myself. I plagued myself.
My arm worked at last, and I yanked the door open. The alarm blasted again, a stuttered bleat as it malfunctioned, and I recalled the alarm at the elevator’s descent that I’d heard as the Suit. He’d go to the stairs soon. I rushed down the steps. I expected to find them dark and deserted, but I heard voices again. I fought to keep my breathing quiet and even. Footsteps in the dark below me. I strained to hear voices through thunder. Before I reached the tenth-floor landing, the voices stopped. I reached for the handrail but found a hand instead.
“You’re late. Get downstairs and act normal.” The voice was mine and older, but I couldn’t tell how much.
“Late for what?”
The hand against my chest. “Just go downstairs. It’s already started.”
I reached into my pocket, possibly to get a gun, I don’t know. I withdrew my hand from the pocket and felt something fall and hit the floor between us.
The Voice repeated himself. “Go. Now.” Before whichever me this was realized who I was, I turned and descended, unseeing but somehow at a step-leaping pace. I’d gone three floors when my voice called from above me.
“Hello?” That would be the Suit, I recalled, the elevator now misbehaving. I realized I’d dropped my timepiece.
I reached the second floor. No one there. I’d expected the muttering group, the conspiracy. I heard nothing, saw no one. The elevator button was lit. Before I could consider what it meant, I heard the grind of metal on metal. A rush of air smelling of oil and rot spilled from the elevator shaft. The floor beneath me shook a little until at last the elevator’s fall stopped and I heard the chatter of cables striking one another. The button stayed lit. I knew what waited inside. I ran down the hall into the nearest open room, closed the door save for a crack. In moments voices came into the hall. They spoke clearly, not whispering.
“It’s here all right,” said one much like my own.
“Of course it is,” said another, older. Probably Seventy, I realized. “As you knew it would be.”
“As we all knew.” Another voice, younger than Seventy. Something hard in its edge made me think it was Screwdriver. “Move out of the way. I’ll get it open.”
I heard metal being worked at, the snapping of forced latches.
The oldest voice said, “Put him right there, on his side.”
The youngest said, “He still looks peaceful. He cleaned up well.”
Seventy’s old voice rattled toward me, as if he were looking in my direction. “He always will. Now, where is he?”
“It’s a longer walk down than you’d think.”
I opened the door a crack and looked at them—Yellow, Seventy, and Screwdriver—as they waited for the Suit to arrive. I tried to remember how long I’d stayed upstairs, how long it had taken me to come down. Where would Lily be right now? Could I find her? For an endless minute, I wondered if I’d become untethered from the Suit, if I’d already changed something and he might never arrive and start the search for the killer. At last his footfalls echoed from of the stairway.
Seventy looked at the others. “Don’t forget, I do the talking.”
I remembered their conversation as it unwound. I remembered it as I remembered so many of the events of the evening, from multiple viewpoints and deepening understanding. I didn’t need to hear them tell the Suit that someone in the building had killed Sober in order to know it wasn’t true. As the Suit I’d killed the Drunk. Had they cleaned the corpse and planted it here? The dead man was me a few hours from now, at the evening’s end. Seventy’s lies rolled out as I listened from the door. If I was untethered from them, they wouldn’t remember I was there. I worried that I was still tethered to one or more of them. They’d tricked me before. They could trick me again. None of them moved toward the door, none of them looked at it. Was I that good a liar?
They knew I would shoot Lily. They knew I wasn’t a team player. They were toying with my death, their own survival, and Lily’s life. I cursed them for taking my raft. They were running this for something, some benefit. I couldn’t see what. I could only clumsily chase after it, like a blind and wounded animal. I would look for Lily. Maybe I could get her out of the building. She would enter the ballroom. I’d look for her there.
I forced a window open, and rain fell in. I spotted the fire escape ten feet to my left and climbed out to it. I looked up. Hours from now Lily and the Suit would break the top loose, letting it crash into the alley. I lowered the escape ladder and climbed down, soaked from wet to wetter. Lightning lit my way to the side entrance again. I made sure to stagger in and fell without meaning to. Some Elders reached out to me to help me up, hesitant to touch me. I avoided eye contact.
I slurred out a thank-you, made a show of brushing visible and invisible dirt from my pants and jacket. They stood back, let me shuffle past into the lobby. I bumped more than a few selves as I ran. I noted that some cleared away before I arrived and remembered doing so myself. The Drunk’s run through the lobby was a favorite memory, and at the last moment I recalled what made it so memorable—the leap over the dessert cart. A Youngster saw me coming and stepped aside to reveal a rusting cart loaded with a punch bowl and pastries. By that time I was already airborne. The tip of my foot knocked a brownie from a plate, but otherwise I cleared the cart easily. I landed and ran on without stopping to accept the roar of applause. I was haunted by and haunting my past.
I bumbled along the wall, shoving chairs aside and receiving an odd mix of annoyed glares and averted eyes. The Youngsters hated me, which I could understand, as I was their unpleasant-smelling future. No one wants to think his future stinks or, worse, deserves to stink. What confused me were the responses of the Elders. I had imagined at first that there must be embarrassment behind the Elders’ lack of concern for the Drunk, but what I felt wasn’t embarrassment. It was impatience. They shook their heads and whispered.
I reached the bar and passed by to go through the door where Lily would enter. Beyond it was the empty hallway and several locked doors. I scouted from one end to the other, even as far as the deserted kitchen, but saw no signs of her. I hadn’t had a drink for a long time and didn’t want one, but I needed to appear to be both drunk and sloppy. I returned to the bar and took a seat. One of the Bar Brats leaned toward me, sweet vermouth on his breath.
He scrunched up his nose when I said, “Pour me a whiskey. Something cheap.”
“Cheap?”
“I want to get drunk, but I don’t want to enjoy it.”
When he set the drink in front of me, I stared at him until he looked away. I poured it onto my sleeves and the front of my jacket. I poured some into my hand and wiped it in my hair.
The Bar Brats assaulted one another with seltzer bottles and unpeeled bananas, the elder two especially harsh toward the youngest, who didn’t yet know the order of punch lines. I tapped my knuckles against the bar for their attention, pointed at my mostly empty glass, and turned it over to indicate I needed more. A small bit of whiskey spilled from the glass and pooled. The youngest Brat pointed at the puddle. “Uh-oh,” he said, voice mockingly grave. “Liquor spill.”
I soaked it up with my sleeve. “Don’t you mean ‘Lick her spiel’?” I immediately regretted having provided him with his terrible joke.
His face cracked, and he laughed.
I would stay here, I decided. Lily would arrive, and I’d try to speak with her. Behind me rose whispers; I turned around.
The Suit entered the ballroom.
I cursed myself for not thinking this through. I was right where the Drunk was supposed to be.
The Entrance took place. I understood his distracted eyes better than even he could. He’d just seen the Body. He’d just been given the task of stopping a killing that had already occurred. I lost track of myself and took a sip of the drink, which was meant to be a prop. Grimacing as he approached, I turned it into a horrible grin and greeted him with a wave. He looked through me, unseeing, and ordered his drink. I watched him through strands of my too-long hair, trying to seem harmless and praying I smelled of alcohol and filth. Disrespect was my camouflage.
Yellow joined the Suit at the bar. I watched condensation fall from their glasses and wondered after Lily. Images of her arrival unwound in my head, and I was stunned at my recall, despite how much the Suit was drinking. She would arrive shortly after Yellow went to fix the skipping record. I looked over my shoulder and saw a group of Elders arguing over a pile of phonograph records, each with a different remembrance of the music’s order. I wondered which, if any of them, was tethered to me. I took Lily’s farewell note from my pocket, read and reread it. “If it’s dark, I’m gone.” She was desperate to leave behind everything she’d been, and that also meant me. I knew too much. She didn’t want to be saved. Well, he was just the man to not do it.
Behind me the Fifth Dimension skipped. Repeated suggestions to fly away in a balloon, their panic palpable, filled the room. Yellow stepped over to do whatever it was the Elders did with the record player. As he passed, he tried hard not to look at me but couldn’t help himself; I saw the same Elder glare, the disappointed expectation I received from the others. After he walked by, I slid two seats closer to the Suit.
I took my glass with me and laid my hand over the mouth, then laid my head down as if on a pillow, as I’d seen Phil do, and as I’d seen myself do six months ago. The Suit pretended not to see me. I remembered pretending. I said, “Not enough women at this thing.”
Gears sometimes turn when we least hope they will. I’d never worked to maintain conversations; as I grew older, I’d trusted that I would say what had been said. This was not a play. I’d learned no lines. But now I wondered how I could free myself enough to keep things from unraveling as I’d remembered them if I couldn’t even keep myself from delivering a script. At least I’d left my worst props behind, the bullets in another building, harmless. I should have thrown them into the sewer months earlier.
Suit laughed at my observation. “I guess that’s the truth.”
I pitied his discomfort. I hated his judgment. “You have no idea what’s coming.”
“Do you?”
“Yes and no.” If I weren’t going to change my lines, I should at least remember my character. I slurred my speech, rolled my eyes. I pointed at the bottle of twelve-year-old scotch that was just within reach. “You’ll want to refill the flask.”
I recalled his biting comment before he said it. “You would know.” I felt his remorse at saying it.
I closed my eyes as he poured the whiskey. The dark behind my eyes reminded me of those nights when Lily would return and lie with me, take me into her, my arms around her sides, hands looking for cool spots along her ribs, waist, hips. “Wake me when she gets here.”
“What? Who?”
I heard the door beside the bar open and couldn’t help myself—I looked up to see Lily. Beautiful in the tight red dress—I never did find out where she got it. It hugged her figure and revealed just enough of the long tattoo I wished I could forget she had. It made her, for only a moment, someone I didn’t know. Brown hair fell around her face; green eyes ignored the room.
The Suit poured whiskey over his arm and the bar.
The Brats leaped forward. “Liquor spill, liquor spill.” The youngest shouted, “Lick her spiel.” His eyes on mine, smile crumbling when he realized I wouldn’t return amusement at my own joke.
The Suit put the bottle down and leaned back as the Brats swiped white towels at the spill, making a wet situation worse when the bottle tipped. One Brat caught it against his wrist. They squeezed the towels into tumblers, prepared to drink the fresh-squeezed whiskey themselves. The Suit could only watch Lily. I remembered his confusion: She flashed like a beacon, yet no one else saw her. I looked over my shoulder and realized how wrong that was. The Elders were already conspiring. They casually walked to block the Youngsters’ tables, kept them from viewing Lily. Some carried phonograph albums and chose that moment to hold them up before Youngster noses. At the card tables, games suddenly grew loud and boisterous, arguments erupted to draw eyes and ears. Youngsters always loved to watch Elders fighting among themselves. Now I saw that the Elders only pretended to argue. The conspiracy began long ago.
Middle Brat held out the folded note to the Suit. It dripped inky whiskey. “Is this yours?”
The Suit took it and read the message. “No,” he said. He set it afloat in a puddle of liquor.
I reached for it, trying to fail at acting casual. The Drunk was awkward before, he’d be awkward now. “Must be mine.” I pocketed it.
Events were lining up too well. Seventy escorted Lily to the table beyond the bar. He pointedly did not look at either the Suit or me. I laughed at the list of things he must have to remember, all the details of his times here that he must recreate. Then I remembered my own list, details I had to undo. I had multiple guns. I had to get rid of them, hide them somewhere in an upstairs room. I left the bar knowing that the Suit wouldn’t notice or care.
I left the ballroom and spotted a group of familiar faces in the crowd of me. The Pilaf Brothers. My nose was about to not be broken. At a spot where I could witness the nonchange of my face structure, I leaned against the wall, then squatted down against it. Others walked around me with only a moment’s glance. The line at the bathroom grew by one when Savior joined. The Pilaf Brothers muttered and munched on rice. They stared in my direction conspicuously. This was all a plan, I thought. One placed his plate on the floor and looked back at me with a grim smile. I prepared for the event, the mix of trip and recovery that demonstrated untethering, but at that moment a pair of legs stepped in front of me. It was Yellow.
“Can we talk?” His face flickered with panic.
I still didn’t like him and took some consolation in the fact that we were untethered. “I suppose.”
“You know what’s happening here. You realize what you have to do.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He was flushed, sweating heavily in his yellow sweater.
“You look hot. Take off the sweater.”
“Fuck the sweater.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me from my squat, tried to yank me down the hall. I pulled back, peered over his shoulder. There I was, on my way to not breaking my nose.
I whispered, “What the fuck’s your problem?”
Yellow leaned in so that only I could hear him. I could smell whiskey on his breath. Lots of it. I was impressed that it didn’t show more. He didn’t stagger, nor did his words slur when he said, “You were supposed to plant the fucking gun.”
He looked me in the eye, blinking rapidly. I was locked in place. My arm felt cold in his grip. “What do you know about the gun?”
“You’re monkeying around with my timeline. Fuck things up and we lose what little control we have. Stick to what you remember. Do what should happen.”
“Where did you move my raft?”
His teeth bared. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
We appraised each other for a moment before Screwdriver appeared.
Screwdriver grabbed Yellow’s arm and twisted it to force him to release me. He shrugged at me, almost like an apology, then pulled Yellow close and said something into his ear. Screwdriver cautiously patted at my jacket and found the unused revolver, yanked it free of my waistband, and handed it to Yellow who nodded several times and moved off through the crowd.
Screwdriver said to me, “Keep doing what you’re doing. We have no doubt you’ll figure this out.”
“The gun is no good,” I said. “It doesn’t have any bullets.”
“No, I collected them off the lobby floor. I already put them under the table.”
I tried to breathe but couldn’t. So I was tethered to Screwdriver? He knew where to find them? “Why would you do that?”
As if to answer my question, he raised his head and yelled out to no one and everyone, an affected slur mushing the words, “I told you I could barely remember it.” After, he stepped away, as if embarrassed, eyes on me, all but pointing. I looked to the restroom doors and saw Savior, Nose, and the Suit begin their swirl of nasal investigation. It was that moment that the untethering began. It was in that moment that I’d broken free and trouble had leaked in. That moment was the reason I was going to die in a couple hours. Screwdriver had slipped off. I turned to walk away from the stares.
Young eyes followed me through the hall, but once I had reached the lobby, only the Elders watched me. In the ballroom I found Seventy walking toward the table Lily sat at, a drink in both hands, cane hanging over his arm near a crooked elbow. He sat, and they smiled at each other. I stopped. I couldn’t recall when I’d last spoken to Lily. I was jealous of his being with her. Details of the room fell away, sounds muffled. I reached out to tap Seventy’s shoulder.
He turned and looked up at me with a grin. “Yes? How are things going?”
“You’re drunk, and you smell like the saloon spittoon.”
I leaned over, my eyes on Lily, waiting for her to break her pleasant visitor smile and reveal she knew me. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe we all looked alike to her. “I’m not drunk. I’m trying to stop this thing from happening, but you’re actively working toward it. And you lied about what’s going on.”
Seventy’s smile faltered. “What do you mean?”
“How did Screwdriver know what to yell? I thought you all were untethered.”
Seventy screwed up his face. “We are, but that doesn’t change some facts. For example, I should think it would be clear that he knew what to yell because he was always the one to yell it. Not you.”
Questions about the raft floated in my head, but somehow I kept my mouth shut. Was it possible he didn’t know that Screwdriver knew something only I knew?
I looked from him to Lily, whose smile was gone. She knew who I was. I reached out and touched her hand, the same one held by Seventy. For a few moments, we made a sandwich of her fingers, Seventy and I. She didn’t pull away, but her muscles tensed. I said, “You’re on the wrong side of this. You should get out now.”
She shook her head. “This is my place. I remember it this way.”
I laughed. “Have you remembered how this ends?” When she wouldn’t respond, I said, “Shit. Just go out that door. Please.”
Now she did pull her hand away. “I know what I’m doing.”
To Seventy I said, “You’re not as in control of this as you imagine.”
No smile. They were all for the Suit, apparently. “Who among us is.” Not a question.
I reached into my pocket and found the two revolvers I still had. I stood and turned, and my eyes fell on the Inventor. He was leaning back in his chair with a group of Youngsters, who watched the Suit skulk across the room to the bar again, their envy and impatience obvious. They thought him everything they longed to be, even as they recognized that from him it was all downhill to me. I marched across the room, and behind me I heard Lily tell Seventy, “Here’s where he does something stupid.”
I stood across from the Inventor until he looked up. Everyone at the table had youth’s arrogance, each assuming their own brilliance beyond their years. The Inventor was the youngest, but the others treated him with deference, since without him they wouldn’t be there. They hadn’t yet remembered that his arrogance was rooted in fear and self-loathing, hadn’t yet seen through their own dark cores to that hard truth. I hated and marveled at them.
When the Inventor finally looked up at me, he said, “How will I get that scar?” His companions laughed. Of course there could be no answer, if I followed the rules. It had been my habit to test this rule and laugh at the Elders’ reaction.
I reached up and found the line on my temple, which he’d delivered to me six months earlier, which he would deliver to the Suit later that night. “Come with me and I’ll tell you.”
The table fell silent. He said, “Seriously? What about the fourth rule?”
The Youngsters looked at the Inventor, and he looked at me. I was unorthodox, feared and exciting. They all exchanged glances. Those older than the Inventor understood that this hadn’t happened previously. They weren’t as drunk as the Bar Brats, and they leaned in to whisper with one another about my deviation from the understood timeline. A few quivering fingers combed figures in the water rings on the table. I felt a little dizzy. Although I was already untethered from them, I realized with some flips of my stomach that I had just untethered them from one another, and not in a minor way. My conspiracy cut them loose. I could almost see each of them—they looked at one another as at strangers—with the streams of their thoughts and fears pouring out ahead of them, in similar currents but each one unique, slightly apart, arrogant, and paranoid enough to think himself the prime mover, the source of the current. I recognized that need, though I no longer felt it myself.
The Inventor lacked their frames of reference. Untethered but unaware, he said, “Okay.” His voice cracked, and I realized, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time, how young he was, barely out of rude dreams. He was a baby. I looked at his face, my own, and wondered who he was. I called on a child to vanquish men.
To the others at the table, I said, “Stay close. He’ll be back, and he’ll need you. God help him, you’re the only friends he has.” The others, slightly older than the Inventor, seemed even more naïve. I wondered at myself then. Was I either better or worse off than any of them?
I steered the Inventor around the corner toward the hallway full of our future and past chatter, forced passage, belches, farts, rude jokes, odors, inhibitions, fears, taunts, and terrors. I leaned in close to his ear and whispered. “There’s something going on.”
His eyes were large, his lips lifted in a conspirator’s smile. “What?”
“Elders,” I said.
The smile dropped. “You’re an Elder.”
My eyes glazed, and I lost focus for a moment. What am I doing? I thought. “You realize that’s all relative. Next year you’ll be your own Elder.”
“I guess.”
“Elders—my Elders, if that’s how you have to think of it—are up to something. There’s a woman—”
“Someone brought a woman?”
I smelled hormones. “Forget the woman. She’s not important. What’s important is who she’s with. An Elder, the eldest of us. Old man. Tweed suit. He walks with a cane.”
“And a woman.”
I took hold of his arm and squeezed. “She’s not the key here. The old man is. You understand. Tell me yes.” I tightened my grip.
He winced. “Yes.”
“She’s just a flag waving you to him. You find him, when he’s alone, not with her, and you take him to someplace upstairs.”
His eyes darkened as he tried to imagine an upstairs that hadn’t fallen downstairs.
I said, “Trust me. There are places. Fourth floor you’ll find lots of empty rooms. Take him to one and keep him there. Have some of the others help you if you have to. Nothing too harsh. He’s an old man. He’s who you will be. Treat him as you would want to be treated.” I instantly regretted those words. I knew it meant poor treatment at best.
“What if he won’t come?”
“Convince him. You started this whole show. He’ll listen to you. He’s just you, after all.”
“He’ll know I’m lying. He’ll remember.”
“He won’t. You’re not on the same timeline. Part of the reason he’s up to something.”
He blinked rapidly in confusion, and I realized I look ridiculous when confused. “What?” he said. “What’s he doing that’s so—”
“Just trust me, right? Now remember: only him. Not the woman. No one else. Anyone asks where he is or why you took him, no answer. Keep him there until dawn.” I released my grip. The boy would do as I asked. “Are we agreed?”
“Yes, all right. But at the end you tell me what all this was about.”
“At the end, if you can do this, I’ll tell you everything.” Because if he could, it wouldn’t matter any longer if he knew.
The Inventor skulked into the ballroom to gather his future conspirators. If only they took Seventy upstairs and kept him there, this plot might fall apart. If the plot fell apart, perhaps Lily would survive.
In the alley at the hotel’s back entrance, Phil’s building, dark windows yawning, stood over me. Dirty rain stung my face. I felt I might never be dry again. Steel drums half filled with refuse lined the wall. I pulled out the gun I’d taken from the Drunk, the one responsible for shooting Lily. I wrapped the gun in some newspaper and buried it under the garbage in one can. I pictured the bullets skidding across the tile floor of the neighboring building’s lobby. I wished I’d kept them, if only so Screwdriver hadn’t gotten them. I’d keep the final gun as a warning to others. If I needed to wave a useless weapon, I would. Yellow would have planted the gun by now. I’d need to get under the table before the Suit. Efforts to maintain events was idiocy. Seventy and Screwdriver were maintenance. I would be avoidance.
I entered the lobby for the third time, dripped on the carpet, smiled grandly at Elders who muttered about me under their breath.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I whispered with gusto into the crowd, and found an easy path to the buffet table. For a moment I feared that the gun would be gone, that the evening was slipping away too fast. As I knelt down, I landed in the arms of Yellow and another Elder I’d not seen yet.
Yellow took a tight grip, his fingers squishing filthy rainwater from my jacket. “Poor old boy,” he muttered, eyes on the rivulets running down my temples. “Under the weather?”
They pulled me off my feet and took hold of my arms, Yellow’s fingers jabbed deep in my armpit. I heard a pop in my back as they twisted, and I grunted in pain. They moved us quickly through the halls toward the restrooms. The crowds of Youngsters were gone, and Elders watched them drag me through halls despite my calls for help. Yelling was unnecessary and my calls perfunctory. The fact that they all watched and did nothing meant they never would.
“Help,” I said to one, voice calm despite my pain. “I think I’m being kidnapped.” He turned away, and Yellow dug his fingers deeper. “Careful,” I warned. “We’re ticklish.”
In the restroom an empty stall waited, and we entered as a trio. Stall door slammed, footsteps as others left, and the bathroom door clicked shut. Accomplice let go, but Yellow threw me down. I fell forward hard against the toilet, striking my side, losing my breath. When I looked back at Yellow and his Accomplice, they glowered at me. I tried to stand. Yellow shoved me against the toilet, and I sat down.
“You thought I wouldn’t watch for you?” Yellow held a fist in my face. If the sweater were any less dapper, he might have been threatening. “Quit getting in the way. Do as you’re supposed to.”
My side was killing me, and I worked to force a breath into my lungs. “What?”
Accomplice nudged Yellow. “Is he serious? Shouldn’t he have been upstairs by now?”
Yellow shook his head. “The Suit goes upstairs soon. This one disappears for a while. That’s what we’re trying to prevent.” He leaned in on me. “Look. We’re all on the wrong side of this death, and it’s got to be straightened out.”
Now I did feel sick. “Why?”
“The shooting. Because of the shooting.”
“I’m working on it.”
“No you’re not. The Suit is. You’re the shooter.”
I looked at them both. I shifted, and we all heard my gun knock against the toilet-paper dispenser. I said, “I’m the shooter?” Did he mean I’d shot the Drunk or that I would shoot Lily? Which was more important to him?
Accomplice touched my shoulder. “Look, trust us. This all works out.”
Yellow shook a fist at Accomplice. “The hell it will. He keeps getting in the way. I shouldn’t have had to put the gun under the table.”
“You know that everything will work out.”
The bathroom door squeaked.
Both Yellow and Accomplice put a finger to their lips. Yellow called over the stall door, “We’re almost done in here. Two more minutes.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
They stared at me, and Yellow said, “It’s him.”
Accomplice nodded. “I’m really sorry I can’t be of more help.” Both Yellow and I looked at him. “All I want is to get on the right side of the shooting.”
Yellow said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
The end of a screwdriver appeared in the gap between stall door and frame and flipped up the latch. The stall door opened, and Screwdriver grabbed Yellow by the collar and yanked him out. Accomplice put his hands up and smiled at me. “Good luck. You’re doing fine.”
Accomplice turned, and I leaned around him to see Screwdriver punch Yellow in the jaw. Yellow fell into the gap between two sinks and slid to the floor. Blood on his chin, splattered on tile; he moaned. Accomplice kept his hands in the air and stepped out of the stall past Screwdriver. To Yellow he said, “Again, sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
Screwdriver pointed at the door. Accomplice left.
Screwdriver joined me in the stall, shut the door, and looked down at me. “How you doing?”
I sat on the toilet and considered the question. My side was feeling better but still ached.
“That should feel better soon. It’ll look worse than it feels.”
I lifted my jacket and shirt. The skin was already turning a deep purple.
“You’ll be fine.” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “You get the mood. There’s a general—”
“Impatience.”
“Impatience. Yes. Give me the gun.”
His hand hung before me, empty. I said, “Why move my raft?”
“I didn’t.” His smile said he knew more. He wouldn’t say what. “I’ve got to make sure you’re ready for what comes next. Give me the gun.”
Gun lifted from my pocket, I handed it to him. As I did so, his eyes locked on something. At first I thought it was the gun, but as I drew my hand away, he reached out and grabbed my wrist. He pulled the sleeve back and turned my hand over, stared at the tattoo I’d gotten from Lily.
“Is there a problem?” I could see the same tattoo on his arm, just as I’d seen it on the Body, just as I imagined Seventy had it and Yellow and everyone in between.
Screwdriver’s eyes locked on mine. “He said you were tethered.”
“Who?”
“The old man.” I imagined he meant Seventy. “He said you and I were tethered.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Screwdriver turned his own wrist so that it was parallel to mine. We stood beside each other, arm resting against arm, each of us looking down at our tattoos.
Our parrots faced in opposite directions. If our hands were north, then my parrot flew west, his east.
Screwdriver, voice shaking, “He said you weren’t tethered to the Body, but you are. What does that mean?”
“You and I aren’t tethered.”
“What does that mean?”
I said nothing. He pulled back and stepped partway out of the stall. I could see his mind trying to realign around this new information. Long moments of listening to water drip in from leaks behind the sinks, the toilets, in the wall. “What has he been telling you?” I asked at last.
He watched dirt stains on the floor, Yellow’s blood drying on the tile, our face in the mirror. “Nothing. Nothing. It’s too late. I’ve got to stick to the plan.”
“I’ve learned that our planning doesn’t account for shit.”
He laughed and looked back at me. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“If you’re finding that things are moving off the track, you can make your own choices. You don’t have to listen to the old man. We can still change things.”
He continued to hold my gun in his hand, bounced its weight up and down, looked at his own tattoo. He shook his head, an internal debate I was losing. “No. No, there’s too much to be done for you to go around fucking everything up. This will still work out. You’re doing fine. And I’m sorry.”
“For?”
He swung his fist, gun handle out, in one smooth upward arc, struck me once on my right temple, and I was out.