Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

My brother tugged off his battered backpack, unzipping it in one energetic motion. A cluster of black cables snaked from the bag to his body, down the neck of his loose-fitting long-sleeved T-shirt. I looked a question at him.

“Welcome up, buttercup,” he said as he reached into the bag. He pulled out a compact notebook computer and fussed with a small box attached to the device. The laptop was a “Toughbook,” a seemingly indestructible and very expensive device. Lucas could never afford something like this on the salary of his part-time clerk job at NYU’s admissions office. This was last year’s Christmas gift from our dad.

The cables connected to the PC sprang free. He flipped open the laptop and dropped cross-legged onto the concrete.

“Hey. What’s up?” I asked. I nodded to the computer.

Lucas smiled, his teeth aglow in the LCD light. “You’ll love it, Z,” he said. “You’ll ’ dore it.”

He raised a hand high above his head. “Okay, so you’ve got bird’s-eye view,” he said, “and you’ve got worm’s-eye view.” His hand now shot earthward. “And of course, you’ve got first-person POV.”

My brother’s fingers now tapped the side of his head. I nodded. He was talking camera angles. Lucas was a film student at NYU. I couldn’t fathom how Lucas’ professors kept up with his supersonic mind.

His eyes never left the computer screen. His fingers slid across the device’s trackpad, double-clicking as he spoke. “But what about a hand’s-eye view, huh? Or a foot’s-eye view? Right? Yeah?”

He extended his arm. A small plastic gadget was strapped to the top of his hand. He tapped his sneaker, where an identical device was tucked into his shoelaces. Cables extended from these, up into Lucas’ clothes. I blinked, doing the math. He’d rigged tiny vidcams to record his parkour moves.

“HAH!” Lucas cried, watching the ultra-jittery digital footage. “Steadicam, it ain’t—but it works!” He finally looked up at me, gesturing at the cable on his wrist. “These wires are a pain in the conjunction-junction, but still. This’ll come in handy for the project I wanna work on. Totally self-financed, fictionalized reality show. Big Brother meets crime-fighting parkour artist.”

“And do you have a name for this zero-budget adventure?” I asked.

“ Traceur Fire, ” he said proudly.

I laughed, wondering if this preposterous project would suffer the same fate as most of his invented words. My brother is one of the most ambitious, creative people I know… but there are so many ideas whirring around in his head. He can’t choose which project to prioritize, so he flits between them, hummingbird-style. Never getting too deep.

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Lucas said as he unplugged the cables and cameras, stuffing the gear into his backpack. “But it’s gonna be epic , man. So what about you, Z? You experience anything epic today?”

I laughed again. Yeah, you could say that.

I gave him today’s highlights as we traveled from Well7 to my apartment on Avenue B in Alphabet City. We had about an hour to get to the funeral home where Gram’s memorial service was being held.

I pedaled and Lucas bounded along beside me, occasionally busting out into a low-key parkour move. His body deftly pitched around streetlights and trash bins.

“Hey, how’re you dealing with it?” I asked him. “Losing Gram?”

“Freedom’s on the march,” Lucas replied. “Seriously? Aching, but mending. All the signs were there, Z. I just didn’t want to see ’em. But when she died, the pieces finally clicked into place, like Lego bricks. Click . She’s gone. Click . We’re still here. Click . We mourn, we move on.”

“That’s pretty damned insightful of you,” I said.

“That reminds me. Hang on a sec.”

Lucas removed his green backpack and opened it. He closed one eye, concentrating, as his hand dove into the pack. He looked like he was about to pull a rabbit from a hat. I grinned.

“Thought you’d want to see these,” he said, passing me a cardboard box. “These were Gram’s family pictures, going way back. There’re some docs in there, too. I scanned some of ’em for the multimedia slideshow at the memorial.”

“There’s not going to be a dry eye in the house, is there?” I asked.

“Nope.”

We stood there, smiling and thinking of her. It was an uncomplicated moment. Nice.

And despite what was still to come that night—the funeral home, my screaming father and the lunatic stranger, the folded slip of paper that would be pressed into my sweating palms—I can honestly say that this moment with my brother was the last time I’ve remembered feeling carefree.

The rest has been darkness and madness and terrible.

The Selznick and Sons funeral home, like many in Manhattan, was on the ground floor of a multistoried apartment building. And like many other funeral homes in Manhattan, you’d never know it after stepping past the polished brass-and-glass doors. The interior featured soothing cream-colored walls, a politely ticking grandfather clock, gold-framed paintings of flowers, stained glass windows. The colors in the windows matched the furniture, which matched the drapes, which matched the carpet. They were all muted, reassuring shades, not distinct enough to attract attention. Stately, serene, invisible.

Lucas and I arrived just before 7 p.m. Rachael waited for us in the lobby.

I felt giddy as she walked toward us, then felt guilty for feeling giddy. I should’ve been thinking about Gram, somberly preparing myself for the service. But as those few seconds of her approach stretched into delicious slow motion, as Rachael’s hips rocked, as I gazed at her lips, I simply couldn’t pull my eyes off her. She’s a few inches taller than me, and God, did I like looking up to her.

Rachael. She’s the reason balladeers were born. At least that’s what I’ve told her, a thousand thousand times. She never gets tired of hearing it, though.

She wore an understated black dress and a matching long-sleeved sweater that hid the tattoos racing down her arms. The small tattoos on each of my wrists—the Chinese symbols for “courage” and “faith”—were covered by my dress shirt and jacket.

We clean up well, Lucas, Rachael, and me: today we were Opposite Day impostors, proudly displaying our Clark Kent alter egos for the AARP crowd. Rachael’s magenta hair and the hoops in her nose and eyebrow spoiled the image a bit.

“Hey,” she said, and gave me a quick hug. She kissed my cheek. “Right on time. You doing okay?”

I nodded. She smelled wonderful.

“Yo, Hochrot ,” Lucas said, a bit too loudly for my liking. I glanced around the hushed lobby. Solemn newcomers were stepping through the front doors. I gave Lucas a parental shhh . He took the hint.

“So tell me,” he whispered. “Have you fragged your kids today?”

Rachael rolled her eyes.

“They’re not ‘my’ kids, Lucas,” she said, her voice low. “They’re twerps on Xbox Live, screaming at their moms for chocolate milk. These guys, they can’t stand getting beat by a girl.”

“My geek goddess,” I said, sliding my arm around her waist. “Mortals, behold her mad ‘Onyx War 2’ skills.”

“Oh, poor Z,” she said. She glanced up at a magenta sliver of hair that had fallen into her face, and blew it aside with a quick puff. “Onyx War was last week. It’s Bloodwire now. This game’s codemonkeys built it just for me. It’s got the three Fs: First-person… fully destroyable environments… and flame-throwers . That stuff melts my heart every time.”