Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

There was no blood on her fingers. Her fingers were clean and dry of blood. They didn’t mar the butter of her thighs or the precarious labyrinth of her labia to which she attended every moment, pampering its petals and soothing its inflammations after Wade’s violations. Watching, Etcher sank into the swirl of her. On the bed next to her he reached out to touch the place where her body opened, that he might raise his fingers to his mouth and taste something other than blood, since taste was the one sense he never dreamed, since taste was the sense that told him it was not a dream. He was inches from her when she knew she had to decide now to let him touch her or not: she never said no, but her abrupt gasp at the moment of truth made him draw back again. He felt a bit humiliated, in his position. In her position, he knew instantly, a man would feel humiliated as well, except that it was the fundamental difference between a man and woman, the difference in their brands of humiliation. “I was made,” she explained, “to be seen and not touched.”

He nodded. It was the fundamental difference between a man and woman that she would not, in such a position, feel she’d let him down. But she did offer a consolation.

“I can take you from the city,” she said.

SHE ADDED, AS AN afterthought, since she didn’t believe it would matter to him, “It’s dangerous,” though she might have meant the two of them sitting there together, in the silence and the dark.

“How?” he finally asked, startled.

“Things can happen.”

“I don’t mean how is it dangerous. I mean how would you get me out of the city.”

“Through the Arboretum.”

“There’s a way out of the city through the Arboretum?”

Her voice dropped. “I can take you and show you,” she said. “You have to be sure. No one changes his mind at the last minute. They’ll kill you before they let you change your mind.”

“The police are watching me,” he advised her. “They know you’re here right now.”

She got up and put on her coat. Looking around, she said, “It has to be tonight. Do you understand?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It has to be tonight, if you want me to take you from the city. It has to be now. You’ll need money and you can’t bring anything with you. Do you have money?”

“Some,” he answered, wary.

She knew he didn’t trust her. “Well, it’s up to you,” she said. Her accent was most pronounced when she was speaking colloquially. She leaned over and turned out the lamp, and when she’d turned out the lamp she leaned over and kissed him, in case she never saw him again, or in case he was the sort of fool who trusted a kiss. “I’ll be at the Arboretum in an hour….”

“Where will I find you—?”

“I’ll find you, if you decide to come. One hour. I won’t be there after that. He’s looking for me.” She opened the front door soundlessly and sailed out against the rapids of the night. She didn’t close the door the whole way and he sat on the edge of the bed looking out the crack of the door until he got up to push it almost shut. With the flash of her blond hair the police would certainly see her leave. In the dark Etcher changed his clothes as quietly as possible and got together all the money that he still had after what he’d sent north to Sally. Then he sat for ten more minutes and waited. He waited for that moment when the police would begin to relax, having seen the blonde leave and decided Etcher had gone to sleep. There would be no fooling them for long but he needed that extra minute or two; once he got as far as the outlaw zone they would fall back a little. He couldn’t appear to be up to anything but another trip back to Fleurs d’X. It was going to make the police nervous no matter how you cut it, two trips to the Arboretum in one night; it was going to look unusual. Etcher hoped it wasn’t that maniac Mallory who was out there.

It figured that if there was a way out of the city it was the Arboretum, though Etcher couldn’t imagine what it was short of a hot-air balloon from the top-level tenements or an underground tunnel through fifty miles of cold lava. But he couldn’t wait anymore. He couldn’t stand this feeling he had, he couldn’t stand any more dreams. Whether the Woman in the Dark was telling the truth or lying, whether she was correct or mistaken in what she thought she knew, if there was any getting out of Aeonopolis it figured to be through the Arboretum; and he couldn’t wait anymore and that was that, and he got up from the bed and pulled open the door he hadn’t quite shut, and stepped out into the circle. He didn’t run but walked, not across the white of the circle but around the black edge, and then he slipped out of the circle between two darkened units. He didn’t look back to see the police following him. He didn’t think about never coming back again.

He walked through the streets of his zone, crossed another zone and came to Desire. He didn’t think he was going to make the Arboretum in an hour as she’d said, but then he hoped she’d be late too, miscalculating her own time and distance. When the silhouette of the Arboretum appeared he kept his eyes peeled for her blond hair; he knew she wasn’t going to wait for him and he knew he couldn’t afford to wait for her. He was sure the cops were somewhere behind him thinking it odd that he was returning to the Arboretum tonight. He assumed cops had an instinct for these things. There was nothing to stop them from going into the Arboretum if they thought they had a reason, ambiguous as their jurisdiction might be. As he neared the neighborhood there was no sight of her. He paused for a moment outside but knew it was a mistake to stop; it would only make everything appear all the more suspicious. He went inside.

He was halfway down the first corridor when he felt someone in front of him. He felt her fingers run up his face and stop at his glasses. “It’s me,” he confirmed.

She took his hand. “Come on,” he heard her say, and she pulled him down the corridor and around its U-turn, continuing to the interchange chamber where they crossed to the door on the far side and its spiral stairs. Far away below him on the stairs he could hear, as one always heard in the stairwell, the faint sound of waves crashing. Mona went first before him and he followed.

They descended past the three doors to the fourth that led to Fleurs d’X, and then they passed that one. They climbed further and further down, passing another door and then another and then another, the light in each more ominous. Etcher had never gone this far down in the Arboretum. He could see what appeared to be the final door beneath him, the eighth by his count. She stopped before reaching it. “You brought the money?” he heard her ask.

“Yes,” he answered tersely.

“This is your last chance to change your mind,” she said. “It’s dangerous from here on.”

“Let’s get to the door,” he said.

“We’re not going to the door,” she said in the dark. There was a pause. He felt her reach up and touch his leg. “On the other side of you,” she said, “there’s an opening.”

“The other side?” She meant the other side of the stairwell. It was pitch black. “Let’s go a little further down,” he said, “into the light of the door.”

“That’s not where it is,” she explained in the dark, “it’s where you are, on the other side. Where there is no light. That’s why it’s there, because there’s no light.”

He listened and realized that the sound of water crashing in waves was indeed coming not from below him but to his side, in the black of the other wall of the stairwell. He reached out but touched nothing; the wall, and the opening she said was there, was beyond his reach. “I can’t reach it,” he said.