Ben Marcus - The Flame Alphabet

The smoke smelled clean, fruity. Whatever work was going on was soundless.

A man wearing a clear vest stood by the manhole with a clipboard. After vigorously massaging my face to prepare it for speech, I asked him what was going on.

He smiled, shook his head, pointed to his ear.

This meant, what, he was deaf?

I pointed at the manhole, shrugged, and mouthed: “What is it?”

The man shook his head in the negative again.

A worker climbed from the hole as I walked away. He picked clumps of a wet cheese from his face. Tethered to his waist was an orange cable as thick as a man’s leg, and he dragged it from the hole where they pinned it in place on a specimen table. I’d seen that cabling before. The man with the clipboard grabbed his radio and, instead of speaking into it, held it out at the cable, as if whoever was on the other end of the radio needed to hear this.

But then I heard it, too, and it was unmistakable. From that orange cable, with no listener attached, came the voice of Rabbi Burke, singing one of his songs. A song I’d heard before.

In the lobby of the Oliver’s I looked for Murphy.

People hurried around breaking things down, packing boxes. A stack of crates sat at the door, waiting to be loaded into the vans. The crates had breathing holes drilled into them, arrows painted on their sides, pointing up. The sweet, gamey smell of a zoo was in the air.

A young man in coveralls sat at a table up front, seeming official. When I asked him if Murphy was here, he could only repeat the name back to me, as if I’d issued a math problem he was not expected to solve.

I explained that Murphy had invited me down here. Spitting image of LeBov, I didn’t say. Rest his soul .

It was hard to understand him through his respirator, a steamed-over mask covering his mouth.

“Invitations aren’t required,” I think he said, pointing at the open door.

An elderly couple swept into the lobby. They clung to each other, looking at us as if we were wild animals. The woman cried out, fell. From nowhere rushed two guards with blankets. They covered up the couple and dragged them away.

“We’re open to everyone,” said the young man.

He pushed his respirator to the side, wiped his mouth, then carefully fit it back on. With a handheld mirror he checked the straps that cut across his cheeks.

“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t. “But Murphy thought my research might benefit, or that, what I mean is, people here might benefit from the work I’m doing.”

The man returned the sort of smile professionals are trained to give no matter what you’ve said. I could have threatened his life, my own. I could have asked for the bathroom. I’d get the same lunatic smile.

He leaned in close, placed his finger over my mouth.

He wanted me silent. I supposed I understood, so I didn’t reply, only nodded, looked away.

From a box he retrieved a white choke collar, mimed for me to put it on. It was smeared in what smelled like Murphy’s grease, cold on my neck. My face relaxed when I fastened it on.

He said Murphy’s name aloud, as if that might jar his memory. Finally he said, “I’m sorry. I’m not very good with names.”

I wanted to say: Red hair, large face. Excels at ambush. Perhaps immune to the problem we’re all here to solve. Not who he seems to be? That Murphy?

I couldn’t say LeBov. It’s LeBov I’m looking for, because I have reason to believe that he’s still alive, operating under a different name. Murphy. But you probably know all of that, don’t you?

“Is there someone else I could talk to?” I asked.

And say what? And do what?

“I’m afraid the time for that is over.”

Literal language was useless for what I’d come to do. This man was refusing to read between the lines, acknowledge any subtext, and thus we were locked in a prison of exact meaning, impossible to shed.

It would turn out that LeBov’s language protocols, as practiced by his staff, prohibited nuance, inference. They were nearly moot now anyway.

He stood up, gathered some papers, among them what I took to be a copy of The Proofs .

I pointed at it. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

He pointed at a pile of them sitting on another table.

Right. He would victimize me with facts, fail to elaborate, force me to excavate an ultra-specific set of questions to which he would then show his dumb, blank face. Quiet uncertainty is perhaps the most medicinal mode . I was not going to like this new form of speech.

He pushed a pamphlet at me. “You might want to look at these protocols. Some things to keep in mind when you speak, if you really must speak. You’ve mentioned yourself a few times, and it’s probably worth avoiding. It’s not personal. Or I guess actually that it is. It’s really personal. It’s just that the studies are pretty conclusive about this stuff.”

“The studies?” I asked. “Is that what you’ve been doing here?”

A low growl issued from one of the crates, triggering a chorus of animal cries throughout the lobby.

“Or talk all you want,” he said, bored. “But do it somewhere else.”

His smile had a little bit of clear shit in it. I could smell it.

I took the pamphlet, stared at it without focus. The text was slightly darker than the white paper it was printed on. My hands were unsteady and the text wobbled, as if it hadn’t been fastened to the paper. I felt sick, a tightness in my chest.

“It only seems harder to read,” he smirked. “It’s much, much easier on the… you know,” and he tapped his head. “We’re probably going to see a lot more of that soon.”

I pictured seeing more of something you could hardly see to begin with. That great unused resource, the invisible air. We’d fill it with text, the nearly translucent kind. That would solve everything.

“Sorry to run but you’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “We’re closing up. This Forsythe is probably not going to meet again. Maybe that guy you’re looking for, Murray ? Maybe he’s in Rochester?”

Murray of Rochester. In my mind I hacked at him with a long knife.

It was dark outside and the Oliver’s staff had finished loading their vans. They drifted out of the lobby into the parking lot. I guess they would go home and pack now, maybe get an early start and hit the road later tonight, before the sun came up. Beat the traffic.

It’s hard to describe people who are silent as a matter of life and death, who move through the world in fear of speech. You can hear the swishing of their limbs, the music of their breath. None of them spoke. They left the building with small waves of the hand to each other, faces down, and walked out into the night.

As the man in coveralls walked off I asked him if he’d had any news, if he knew anything. I tried to raise my voice but the white collar on my neck seemed to limit my volume.

“Go home, stay inside,” he said, over his shoulder. “Do not talk to anyone.”

“Right,” I said. “But do you know what’s actually happening?”

“We’re telling people, just to be safe, to say their good-byes.”

I watched him leave. He embraced an older, well-dressed woman on the way out. She was crying. He kissed her cheek, then disappeared into the throng of vans.

There was one place left to try. It would involve parking the car at Blister Field, ducking under the fence, and trekking through the woods until I reached the stream. The stream would be dry now, maybe iced over, and I’d have to traverse the bank in darkness, groping on hands and knees until I found the half-rotted footbridge that would bring me across.

Then the far bank would need to be climbed and tonight it would certainly be slippery. Slippery and sharp, with stones pushed up from the frost heaves, the bitter ends of tree roots bulging out to collect heat from the air.