Lippe Simone - Blank

And then Ray heard a sound that he knew as hope before consciously recognizing it as an airplane. Then it came into view from the south in the unbroken blue of the otherwise blank, hazy sky — a passenger jet. At the very moment that Ray had become sure that he was entirely alone in a world he didn’t understand there was proof that somewhere, even if it was well beyond the city, there was still intelligent life. He needed to get to it. He still needed the key and then a car and a full tank of gas but he’d get out of Los Angeles and back to normalcy. The jet passed over him and in that instant the engines stopped and he watched the plane dive slowly and gracefully into the Pacific ocean.

Ray watched the plane shatter like it was made of glass and the water of stone and he continued watching as the wreckage spread and sank and his long range plans were rendered obsolete. He looked back at Los Angeles and searched the streets and windows and hills for some reason to go back inside and find that key. Finding none, he did it anyway.

Nancy was gone. In fact the entire ill-green hall was empty now. Ray checked the patient and examination rooms and they were all empty too. He peered around the corner and saw that the nurses and visitors had formed a third tier to the rudimentary society building in the common area. They sat or squatted in the periphery of the concentric circles, all but the nurses who had joined the privileged women taken in the Great Junky Conquest. Nancy sat next to the biggest leader. She no longer had her little cups but now Ray saw that hooked on her uniform at her waist was a bulky collection of keys.

Remembering the fate of those who just try to take things from Dodgers fans Ray knew that he’d need to approach with a more deft strategy than a presumption of invisibility. He abandoned his position and headed toward the so far unexplored hall which would lead back to the reception area and then back to the cafeteria. And there he would find bait.

This last hall was unlike the others. Where the opposing hall had windows and a common area this one had the escape-proof fire escape and a dark room with purple curtains over the door and a modest sign which made the room a chapel. The rest of the hall was behind double swinging doors. Past the doors the hall may well have been ill-green like the others but it was closed at both ends by hospital doors and the only light was from the fading blue emergency units. Two doors on either wall were closed and the high portal window on each glowed more static blue. There were no people nor any sign that people had ever been there. Not on this side of the doors, at least, and Ray was in no mood for a surprise. He rushed along the hall as quickly as he safely could and found no difficulty in resisting the urge to look behind him.

Ray was through the doors just slightly short of the end of the hall and the relative cheer of the reception area. He could see light from the windows around the corner and the forlorn goldfish waiting to be reminded what food looked like. On the right was the only door that looked anything like an office that Ray had so far seen. It was big and oak and had a smoked glass portal behind which natural light glowed from an external window. Beneath the portal was a small brass plaque with just a name: Dr. Thomas Spivic.

Ray’s life was revolving increasingly around keys. The doors to freedom were all securely locked and now the door to Dr. Spivic’s office full of answers was locked. Ray’s hand shook on the handle with anger and frustration and fear that shaking the handle would attract attention, so he settled for giving it a good hard impotent squeeze.

So it was back to plan A, which had the mutual and complementary goals of acquiring the keys from Nancy and not being beaten to a pinkish pulp by the new world order. Ray followed the hall in a U-turn around the nurses’ station and his abandoned picnic until he found himself once again outside the cafeteria and just out of sight of the common area.

The cafeteria was small and dark, lit only by a red exit sign above the door, and there were no obvious threats. Most of the room was occupied by three long tables with chairs stacked neatly on them as janitors will do between meal shifts. The remaining side of the room was a predictable stainless steel serving area with trays and cutlery stacked at one end of a long browsing shelf on the other side of which were removable presentation trays, all empty. Behind that was the door to a walk-in refrigerator which at this point Ray assumed was welded shut.

It wasn’t and in fact Ray found the cold room door opened freely to a gold mine. He filled one of the stainless-steel presentation trays with apples and pears and bananas and decided for the moment against oranges, which risked injecting unnecessary complexity into his plan. There were about twenty now in the Dodgers community and he made sure that he had more than one piece of fruit for each. Two each for the leaders.

Holding the tray in front of him like a peanut vendor at a ball game, Ray walked as casually as he could manage into view of the common area and stood looking about, waiting to be noticed, which took seconds. Then he approached the very edge of the carpet marking Dodgers territory, placed the tray on the ground, and sat behind it, facing the tribe. All eyes were on Ray, then the fruit, then the leaders, and then the fruit again, as though following a lively debate.

A few forward infantry made tentative moves toward Ray but were stopped by the single most terrifying sound that Ray could recall ever hearing. A simple grunt from the biggest orderly. It was little more than the sort of harrumph a curmudgeon makes to indicate that he’s thoroughly unimpressed by the soup of the day but it was the first exercise in verbal communication that Ray had encountered in his short period of human consciousness and it meant that he was facing a terrifyingly unpredictable degree of sophistication. The confidence he had in his plan, which was already a frail and withered thing, ebbed.

The tribe cleared a path between Ray and the grunting leader. The massive orderly stood with an ape-like stoop that made him look a little ridiculous and a lot battle-ready. Ray held out a banana. The orderly approached sidelong, one hand outstretched, like he was angling to pull an important document from a blazing fire. When he was within reach the chief hovered his massive hand above Ray’s offering, bypassed it and quickly selected a pear, never taking his eyes off Ray’s. He put the pear in his mouth, took another one, and returned to his position in the center of the tribe.

A peace accord had been reached. The other members of the tribe slowly approached and Ray gently limited them to one piece of fruit each. The women, in some primitive patriarchal instinct, waited until the men all had and were thoroughly distracted by their apples and pears and bananas, which were proving to be a puzzle. Ray caught Nancy’s eye, held up an apple and moved slightly away from the carpet, tempting her away from the garden of Eden.

Nancy approached and when she reached for the apple Ray put it back in the tray. She seemed to get the message and she sat next to him to eat her fill. The plan was working worryingly well. He was a tolerated member of the group but not so integral that they’d mind or even notice when he left, particularly if he left the fruit behind. He’d even made a friend, and it was the only friend he was interested in making. He touched Nancy lightly on the shoulder as he imagined a naturalist would do to habituate apes to human contact. Then he reached for the keys on her waist. Then the plan fell to pieces.

The biggest orderly with the two pears and, apparently, a claim on Nancy leapt once again to his feet with a brief but surprisingly expressive snort. He faced Ray with his legs spread and arms wide as though he judged Ray the type to opt for a touchdown. Then he bounded across the distance between them and made a very telegraphed reach for Ray’s head. Ray didn’t have time to get to his feet or even think but some instinct drew the metal tray between them in time for the massive open hands to smack into it. The giant shook the sting off his fingertips and lunged again at the empty space that Ray had vacated like a startled cricket.