Crow came up out of a strange half-sleep, half-dream where he was walking across a wide river on the backs of stones, a series of boulders that led out across the river toward a low barren shoreline half-hidden in mist and water spray. A huge ancient-looking building stood on the distant shore, a stone temple it looked like, with a long line of heavy stone columns holding up a Greek roof. It was massive—hundreds of meters in length—and half-covered in a tracery of brown lines. They were vines. Dead vines, looking like claws and webs and tangles, out of which this huge temple was struggling to rise.
The river he had to cross was slate gray, a rushing torrent, and the banks seemed to be a mile apart. The river roared at him like a panther in a pit. He felt blasted by the strength of that roaring. Other than this strange Greek temple, both banks of the river were bare or lined with stunted trees, the leafless branches coated with ice. The rocks of the riverbed were slippery and icy, but it seemed very important to cross this river. It was in his mind that he had no choice in the matter. Away in the distance he could see a huge cloud of what looked like steam, and he heard a low rumbling growling that came up from the earth itself. He did not want to enter that sweeping, rushing river, and he stood at the edge of it, staring across at the temple, buffeted by the force of the river; the wind howled at him, and the booming of the earth shook him. He was afraid.
The current sucked at his boots and swirled around his ankles, tugging him, trying to pull him down. Spray was flying, a mist of water and ice, but when it hit him, it seemed hot, seemed to burn him, and he struggled to clear it from his face. His eyes were stinging now, as if the water were acid, and he tasted salt in his mouth. He heard men’s voices and knew they were searching for him. He struggled to take that first step into the river. The spray from the white water over the rocks was in his eyes, stinging them. His eyes opened.
He was being crushed by a terrible choking heat. Sweat was running off his forehead and streaming into his eyes. He blinked and rubbed them hard with the sleeve of his guayabera. The shirt was soaking wet. He sat forward, dizzy, momentarily disoriented. He was under a roof of some sort, and all around him there was a city, a horizon of low brick rooflines and chimneys and tangled TV antennae, wires crisscrossing in a spiderweb netting, black and thick as cables under a sky the color of burning sulfur. He looked down, away from the brightness, and saw a green face staring up at him, huge yellow eyes and a bright green beak. For a moment, it frightened him.
It was a turtle face. It was that green plastic pool full of dead herbs and dry soil. He was on the roof of Cheong Sammy’s, across from Joey Rag’s cleaning plant. He must have fallen asleep in the heat. That angered him. He was growing soft and careless.
He stood up, swayed a bit, walked to the edge, and looked across North Capitol at the Quality Industrial Cleaners office. The blinds were open now, and the sun was shining strongly into the office space. Crow had left them closed. Now Paolo Rona was sitting at the desk in the office, leaning back in Joey Rag’s wooden swivel chair, talking into a telephone. He was upset, angry, waving his hands, making some kind of point for his listener. He could not have been more visible if he had set himself on fire.
Looking down into the street, Crow saw traffic, the people of the town walking, trudging through the heat, the shoppers and the gang kids and the rootless aimless unemployable trash that lived in this terrible city.
He saw also a van with all of its windows closed, parked on the opposite side of the street from the laundry, and another position taken by a cab with its roof light off and two men sitting in the cab. One of the men was skinny, and even from this angle Crow could see a shock of pure white hair, a section of brown cloth. Crow stepped back from the roof edge and withdrew into the shadows of the overhang.
Good, he thought.
It begins.