Scott and Ray rest side by side in the engine house. Neither one can sleep. Ray lights a cigarette and the walls flicker, pale for a moment; then it’s dark again.
“You getting any closer,” he says, “with that woman you’re after?”
“Could be,” Scott says. “It’s real slow and steady, you know. She’s coming around, but it’s real gradual.”
“Right. And what about the other one?”
“What one’s that?”
“The last one,” Ray says. “The one who robbed the place with you. How’d you lose hold of her?”
Scott rolls onto his side, thinking, listening to the trucks on the highway. He doesn’t exactly want to tell the story, yet he also wants Ray to hear it, to know these things.
“There’s lots of stories,” he says. “How we met, some of the things we did. All the traveling. But that’s not the sad part. That’s not where I learned anything. Chrissie—did I tell you her name was Chrissie? We were hitchhiking together, middle of last winter. Up along North Dakota, into Montana.”
“And whose baby was it?” Ray says.
They are whispering, but still their voices echo.
“Chrissie’s,” Scott says. “Man, you got some memory.”
“I mean, who was the father.”
“She never said. It doesn’t matter. She was pregnant before I ever met her, you know, and she was really close. I was thinking about it all the time. What we’d do. And then those lottery tickets were blank and everything.”
“You didn’t tell me that, before.”
“They were useless,” Scott says. “Not one bit lucky.”
“Tell it all,” Ray says.
“Well, I wanted to help her, you know. I had this idea. This’ll sound stupid. Thing is, we weren’t together, exactly—she didn’t let me touch her like that. I was just trying to see ahead.”
“So what was the idea?”
“I never told her. I just had this vision of us, after the baby came, out there in a western town. And we’d be living in a house painted all a pale blue, and I’d be looking after them out there. I wanted to take responsibility. I wanted to be responsible, there.” He shifts, his shoulder against Ray’s; neither pulls away.
“Chrissie went into labor in Big Timber. That’s in Montana. We got to the hospital, the clinic, in time. Everything went all right. It took hours, all night, but it went smooth, they said. I was out in the hallway, going outside to smoke, standing in a blizzard, beyond wired, waiting.
“The next day, I saw him. The baby. Through the window, you know; they didn’t let me hold him. He was beautiful, beyond beautiful. Healthy, they told me, and so was Chrissie. Thing was, they wouldn’t let me visit her. Said I wasn’t her husband, wasn’t the baby’s father. There was something else behind it, though—I could tell. I waited two days, sleeping there, walking through the snow to the gas station for some food. I was hoping she could see me through a window, that she’d ask for me when I got back.”
“Tell it,” Ray says, filling the silence when Scott pauses.
“On the third day, a nurse lent me a twenty. She said to get a decent meal. I went across the street, just across the street to a diner there. I could watch the clinic through the big window, and I sat there, after I finished eating. It was warm, and I smoked cigarette after cigarette, thinking ahead, about the blue house and all that. After a while I realized a taxi was parked in front of the clinic, idling, smoke jerking out from its tailpipe.
“A nurse, the same nurse, came out of the clinic, pushing a wheelchair with someone in it. When the person stood up, I saw it was Chrissie. And she held the baby, all wrapped in blankets. She bent down, climbed into the taxi, and it drove away.”
Scott stops talking. His eyes are on Ray, but all he can make out is the silhouette of the old man’s face.
“You quit smoking,” Ray said.
“That’s for the tests,” Scott says. “And everything.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ray says.
“I didn’t do something right. I never saw her again.”
“Unlucky,” Ray says.
“You think you’ve been lucky?”
“Lucky or unlucky doesn’t matter,” Scott says, “looking back. I wanted to be responsible, you know? When things haven’t worked out, that’s when I didn’t do it right, when I didn’t try hard enough.”
Ray doesn’t argue. Scott listens to his friend’s breathing, and he realizes that telling the story did not hurt, as he’d feared it would. He feels right to have told Ray, honest; he has shared a secret, which is what friends do. He matches his breathing with Ray’s. Gradually, he joins him in sleep.
When Scott awakens in the darkness, hours later, he realizes the old man’s arms are wrapped around him, holding him; his own arms are grasping back. Ray is asleep. Scott extricates himself, lying there, and when the old man sleepily reaches out again, he does not resist.
The second time Scott awakens, he opens his eyes and stares across the floor. Light filters in through the dirty skylights in the roof and the high windows, which aren’t boarded up. A cockroach—on its back, seemingly dead—suddenly rouses itself, scuttling away. Breathing in, Scott smells fish. The river. Ray is pressed up against him, and there’s warmth along the length of where their bodies touch.
Now he hears a sound like hands clapping together, and he knows it’s the wings of crows and pigeons outside, lifting off. Something has disturbed them. Next, he hears a car engine draw near, rattling down; after a moment, there are footsteps.
Scott stands, his boots in one hand, his backpack in the other. Slipping outside, he smoothes his hair, rubs at his eyes, tucks in his shirt. His boots are stiff and cool. He steps around the corner and sees the man, facing away from him. His immediate thought is to turn and run, but then he thinks of Ray.
“Hey there!” Scott shouts. “Good morning.”
The man turns. He is tall and thickly-set, perhaps twice the size of Scott. He wears a yellow hard hat, a plaid shirt, a cellular phone on his belt.
“Morning.” He gestures with a steaming thermos. Over his shoulder, up the river, crew teams are already rowing, the sun beginning to rise.
Scott stands at the corner of the building, facing the man at the same time as he keeps an eye on the engine house door.
“Walk along here every morning,” Scott says. He’s talking loudly, hoping to rouse Ray. “Work over at the hospital. Sometimes I stop and look at the buildings here, but I don’t touch anything. Gate’s broken.”
“Plan to reclaim this,” the man says. “Reclamation project. Big building’s going to be a restaurant. I just came out here to make some initial estimates, you know. Structural appraisals.”
“Hundred years ago this was all working,” Scott says. “All the city’s water, and everything—after that there was the aquarium, I guess, and then the swimming pool.”
“And now who knows what kind of activity happens around here,” the man says.
“I hear you,” Scott says, and then, in the corner of his eye, he sees movement. It’s the front wheel of Ray’s bike, coming out the door. Stepping sideways, trying to slow the man, Scott keeps talking. “All that grass there was underwater,” he says, “and water got passed through the engine house, pumped into pools up toward the museum, which wasn’t even there, of course.”
“You seem to know quite a bit about it,” the man says. “Could come out here and give the tours on the weekend.”
“Too busy,” Scott says. He swivels on his heels, turning the corner with the man. There’s no sign of Ray. “Better get to it.” Scott heads toward the gate.
“It’s all under control,” the man says, behind him.
Scott walks past the dried-out fountain, under the overpass. This is the safest time of the day, when the dealers are gone, wherever they go to get their only sleep of the day. There are no men under the trees, and there are never any women here—only the occasional college girl in running shorts, moving too fast to catch, screaming if anyone looked her way. Homeless women stay away, and those who do come around don’t last; for them it is safer in the shelters.
A train sits motionless on the tracks, as if resting, deserted. Dipping a rag in the river, he scrubs the front and arms of his jacket as he walks down the gravel of the bank. He slides his pack around and takes out half a bagel from the day before, a jar of baby food. Whipped yams. He’s heard people say insanity leads to homelessness, but he knows it’s the other way around—the lack of sleep, the poor nutrition, the worrying—all that drives people beyond. He watches himself. Slugging water from a glass jar, he swallows a handful of vitamins. If today’s test goes well, he’ll treat himself to the pancake special at IHOP.
Little birds perch in the bushes, twitching their tails, ratcheting their necks as if mechanized. Farther down, where the bushes are taller and thicker, the boy hustlers hang out; sometimes they’ll drop their waistbands to show their bare asses as he goes by, and other times they’ll stand with their pants torn open, straight up the back seam. It’s quiet today. A man’s white face flashes once from the foliage, then is gone.
Scott cuts across the tracks, through a half-empty parking lot, and angles toward Market Street. He’s not so hungry now, and the night is far in the future. His confidence rises with every step.
At the bank, he checks his hair in the plate glass window. His face seems fairly clean.
When they unlock the door, he is the first one inside. Vacuum marks show on the carpet. Computers hum. He has almost three thousand dollars, now, and he trusts the bank with it because it’s clear they have so much more. Standing between the velvet ropes, he waits to be called, his account number memorized. Video cameras point down at angles, and he feels everyone watching him, the people he can see and others hidden in rooms, where he’s shown on television screens. He smiles.
The teller waves him over. She has a tattoo of a scissors and comb, crossed, on her forearm.
“Hey, smiley,” she says. “Yes, we still have the machine that counts coins.”
“I won’t be needing that today,” he says.
He withdraws five dollars, pockets a handful of free lollipops, asks to use the restroom.
“I’ll be in here making some more deposits in the near future,” he says. “You can count on that.”
The restroom shines. He has to move fast; first he relieves himself, jamming a handful of toilet paper into his pack, stocking up, as he does. He takes out his toothbrush and razor, exiting the stall, then runs the water, letting it get hot as he brushes his teeth. He always says he’s the kind of person who doesn’t get very dirty, but one of his secrets is how much he can accomplish with a sponge. He scrubs between his legs, under his arms, the back of his neck.
His beard grows better on one side than the other. He could have one sideburn, if he wanted it. His whiskers are darker than his hair, and this reminds him of Kenny Rogers; Kenny’s beard was perfectly manicured, always the exact same color as his hair—caught between gray and white.
He’s half done shaving when a man wearing a suit comes in. He uses the urinal, then washes his hands at the other sink, his shoulder almost touching Scott’s. In the mirror, he pretends to look at himself, but he’s actually surveying the situation.
“You never locked yourself out of your house?” Scott says.
The man does not reply.
“I have an account here,” Scott says to the closing door.
Time is running out. He rinses his face in cold water, cut whiskers circling to the drain. A few nicks under the chin, that’s it. Stepping back from the mirror, he smiles. Not bad at all.
Outside, the skin of his face feels red and raw, clean. The heat is coming onto the city. He wants to reach the hospital before he really starts sweating, and it’s a fine line, trying to rush without getting overheated. Sticks of lollipops poke him through his pocket; he’ll probably give them away, since he avoids sugar when he can. For energy, though, they’ll be a decent last resort.
He walks toward the bridge, the river. In the distance, approaching, he sees a man on a bicycle. It’s not Ray, though that’s not clear at first; it’s another old black man, a squeegee like a lance over the handlebars, a bucket hung off the other side.
The train station looms to his right as he crosses the river; seeing it, he thinks of the train leading to the airport, and of Ruth. He’s watched her through the singed curtains of the abandoned house, often seen her going to work, and on Sundays, all dressed up, her whole body loose inside a flowered dress, her dark feet strapped by white sandals. The thought quickens his stride. He doesn’t want Ruth to forget who he is, yet he doesn’t want to approach her near her house again, to frighten her—at least not so much that she’ll get someone else involved. He has to be patient. He’d like to take the train to the airport right now, to see her, but he has no time.
At the hospital, everyone wears white. Everything is in motion, and it all seems so clean. The water in the drinking fountain is warm. Scott calls the number on the card they’d given him, using the phone in the lobby. A man’s voice says someone will be right down.
Scott waits. He feels no different than those around him, and he’s certainly better off than some. They have no idea who he is, whether he’s visiting a friend or is a patient himself. This is different than at the drug companies, where he had to wear a different colored scrub shirt, depending on his trial, and a name tag at all times. Twenty-five dollars it cost, if he was late, which he never was. Here it is different; he’ll take less money, every time, to be treated like a human being.
It’s Lisa Roberts who comes to the lobby. She points and leads him down the hall, to the elevators.
“Remember me?” he says.
“It’s all set up down there,” she says, stepping into the elevator. “You just follow their instructions. She’s checking her watch; her ankles flex like her feet want to be walking.
“I’m the one,” he says. “All those questions. Maybe I’ve changed a little.”
“I don’t know if they told you this,” she says. “But you’ll get a copy of the image they get from the scan, along with your payment.” She just watches the numbers count down, above their heads. Scott realizes they’re going underground. The doors open.
“This way,” she says, then “this is Beverly”
Beverly is a short, black woman, matching his smile. Her fingernails are dark red, long, and curved. She wears a long white coat that hides the shape of her body, her name embroidered over the pocket.
Scott looks around, and the elevator’s doors are closing. Lisa Roberts is gone.
“How far down you reckon we are?” he says.
“Time is precious,” Beverly says.
“I’m with you, there.”
Taking his pack from him, she swings it into a locker. The only words he can read on her clipboard are his name.
“I have the key,” she says. “Trust me. You wearing any metal? Any metal in your pockets?”
“That safe in there?” he says.
“That’s what I said.”
“No metal at all,” he says.
“Stand here,” she says. “Now read the letters on the wall.”
“Can’t quite make it out.”
“Try on these glasses. That better?”
The eyeglasses are all plastic, with square, black frames. Where there had been metal screws, at the temples, there are loops of clear fishing line.
“A little he says.
“How about these?” She holds out another pair.
“Yes,” he says. Everything is suddenly crisp here, underground. Shimmering.
“You’re near-sighted, that’s all. Follow me.” Her white clogs make no sound on the floor. He has to hurry to keep up. Doctor’s names are called out over the intercom, code words and numbers for disasters he can only guess at.
The door of the room has a special handle, gaskets like those on a refrigerator. A sign shows a picture of a floor buffer, circled with a slash through it. It reads WARNING: STRONG MAGNETIC FIELD.
Inside, a huge, silver torpedo rests on the floor, ten feet high with a hole at one end, tubes sticking out the top. A table stretches from the open end; Beverly gestures that he should sit on it.
“Looks like science fiction,” he says. “Hardly seems real.” He does not want her to see that he’s nervous.
“Just a big magnet,” she says. “Simple. You like this, maybe you can move on to the internal cameras, see how you like that.”
“You’ll probably get some surprises,” he says, “when you look at my brain.”
“The first test,” she says. “You’ll hold this handset, here, and hit the right button if the person’s expression is happy, left if it’s sad, and the middle one if it’s neutral. The images will be projected out here; you’ll watch them through a little mirror.”
“You staying in here?” Scott is on his back now. Beverly is packing pillows around his head, so he can’t move it.
“I’ll be right behind that window, there.”
“I can’t see through there.”
“I can see you,” she says. “The second test is just memory. You’ll see. And, whatever you do, don’t move.”
He feels her take off his boots. He knows his socks are stiff and gray. Next, she lays a thin blanket over him.
“For the noise,” she says, her face close again. He feels her fingernails inside his ears, then the foam earplugs, expanding; he can hear nothing but his own breathing, the sounds of his body.
Beverly closes down something like a plastic birdcage, around his head, close to his face. The table begins to slide, feeding him to the machine. A mirror is attached inside the cage, tilted above his eyes. In it, past his feet, he sees Beverly walking away, returning with a screen, and then leaving him alone again, closing the door behind her.
He can hardly move his arms, it is so tight. He does not know if he can stand it; only embarrassment keeps him from calling out, trying to extricate himself. He thinks of all the stories he was told as a boy, about being buried alive, and he tries to breathe, to calm himself, to think of something else; he wonders about the internal cameras Beverly mentioned, how it would be with a cable down his throat, to see his heart at work, all that space in there.
Despite the earplugs, he hears a plinking sound, a plunking, and then another, like a ratchet tightening around his head. He hears them and feels them at the same time, though it is not painful. It rises to a jackhammer, then eases off; the plinking and plunking resumes.
The light changes, and then the faces start shifting past him. Happy, sad, neutral. They are mostly old people, in black and white, staring down the tube into his mirror. Too many of them have half-assed smiles, tending toward grimaces, though he knows that his own smile, even when he forces it, makes him feel better. He does not want to get anything wrong, and his fingers are sweaty on the handset, the noises all around him. The people look out as if they live in some other world, where all they do is simulate expressions and never have actual emotions. They exaggerate to make it easy for him, to show they understand.
Inside the machine, he has the sensation of motion, travel. He thinks about cars, his plans for the future, and he wonders at how thoughts lead to actions and how actions lead to thoughts. He imagines Ray’s garden, all that work for beauty, and he thinks of Ray holding onto him last night, while the black river ran past outside the engine house, the darkness and the moon. It was the soundest sleep he can remember.
“Scott!” It’s Beverly’s voice, right next to his head, as if she is inside the machine, lying alongside him. “Don’t fall asleep,” she says.
“No chance of that,” he says. He cannot hear his voice.
“Next test I’ll show you some faces again; hit the right button if they were in that first group, if you’ve seen them before, and the left one if you haven’t.”
“You didn’t warn me,” he says.
“Exactly,” she says, but when the images come it’s easier than he expected, as if his brain had been picking up details—sizes of ears, tilts of heads, strange wrinkles, twisted lips—while he’d hardly been paying attention. He goes through the whole series and, after a pause, the lights come on. In the mirror, he sees Beverly, walking toward him. He begins to slide back out of the machine.
She takes off the birdcage, then the earplugs from his ears. She’s moving as quickly and silently as before, wheeling the screen out of the way, stacking pillows. Scott sits up, swings his legs over the side of the table, above his boots. He’s a little surprised to find himself in the same room, and he looks around for a clock, wondering what kind of time has passed. Half-bewildered, he eases himself down from the table, reaches for his boots.
“That’s it?” he says, clapping his hands.
“Yes,” she says.
“You were probably a little amazed,” he says, “when you saw my brain working.”
“It’ll be a while before we know how the scan went,” she says. “Whether you moved or anything.”
Scott just smiles. He takes off the glasses and the edges of the room retreat from him. He has no idea where he is; somewhere down in the ground, under the hospital. The nearest people to them could be miles away. He watches Beverly; she does not really remind him of Ruth, except that she is black and a woman. That is enough to get him thinking.
“Listen,” he says. “Hyperthetical question—how do you think a guy like me could get someone like you to spend some time with him?”
“Let’s pretend you didn’t ask me that question,” Beverly says. “It’s not going to happen.” She stands in the door, the key in her hand, motioning for him to follow.
He looks back once, at the machine he was inside, then hurries after her. She holds out his backpack, and he takes it. The sound of the elevator door startles him; it opens right next to him.
“Can you go up by yourself?” she says, as if she doesn’t want to be in the elevator alone with him. “First floor, then follow the signs out onto the street.”
“I can,” he says, and as he turns away he slips the plastic glasses into his pocket. The door closes, and the floor beneath his feet begins to rise.
He hurries down the hallway, between people, stretchers swooping around him. On the street, he feels surrounded by space. The air is hot and heavy, thick in his throat. He is thirsty, hungry. Taking out his glass jar, he drinks from it, water splashing down his throat. He’s thinking of pancakes.
When he slips on the eyeglasses, he cannot believe it. Everything is vivid, he feels even more aware; he’s always believed his vision was perfect, and now this, almost as if his eyes can catch up to the speed of his mind. He can read signs, and the numbers on license plates. People’s faces leap out at him from distances, all the way across the street, and they all remind him of faces from the test. Happy, sad, and neutral, they pass around him. A helicopter circles above, its rotors chopping into visibility, setting itself atop the hospital. A billboard all the way down by the river, over the expressway, reads GET LUCKY.