Глен Хиршберг - Transitway

Flung upward from the sidewalk at a 45-degree angle, a giant wing of glinting steel loomed like the wedged-open lid of a tank, shading the escalator that dropped prospective passengers out of the neighborhood into the maelstrom of the 110. Several of the stations along the route bore similar architectural flourishes, apparently meant to signal the arrival of a new prosperity to even the most scarred and embarrassing sections of Los Angeles. Even if all they really marked were the exits.

Shielding their eyes against the beams of glare shooting off the steel overhang, Ferdinand and Q crossed Adams against the light, neglecting even to check the traffic, since there wasn't any. The cramping sensation crept all the way into Ferdinand's shoulders, now, and his steps got even faster. The excitement he felt was oddly nostalgic. When had he last experienced anything like it? Years and years ago. Maybe when his mother took him on the one and only plane ride of his childhood… or that time —with Q — going on Space Mountain at Disneyland. On some Grad Night excursion as chaperones for the students, maybe. Had Florence-Normandie really taken students to Disneyland, once? They must have. Striding even faster, waving behind him at his friend, he passed into the shadows beneath the overhang, reached the top of the escalator, and his mouth fell open as the sound surged up the shaft to meet him.

He'd been standing there several seconds, gaping, when he realized Q was rugging on his arm and turned.

Q was staring down the escalator at the noise. Even Ferdinand's hips were cramping, now. Standing in that spot really was like being atop the caldera of a volcano bubbling toward eruption. Under their feet, the whole planet seemed to shudder as millions of tons of metal and rubber and cargo and drivers crawled and snarled and fought their way home or away from home along the so-called freeways. Even up here, the din bored into their ears, and not only their ears. Ferdinand could feel it drilling into the corners of his eyes and the top of his skull and the cartilage of his rib cage.

And then there was the exhaust, which he half-believed he could see rippling in the air at the bottom of the escalator. It didn't exactly float, any more than smog on the horizon did. It lapped, instead. Here at last was the man-made reservoir the people of L. A. had always dreamed of building, deep and renewable enough to sustain life in this city where nothing but desert tortoises and creosote should live. As long as the new inhabitants could drink and breathe carbon monoxide instead of water.

"Let's do it," he finally said. "Be like our own private limo once the bus comes."

"Got that right," Q half-shouted. "Don't see anyone else stupid enough to join us."

Ferdinand stepped onto the escalator, which whisked him silently down. He'd gone maybe fifty feet when the surging sound finally swept up and engulfed him. Jamming his palms against his ears, he half-turned, saw Q still poised at the top, not yet descending, and almost panicked. He didn't want to be down here alone, and somewhere in the onslaught of traffic noise the tunnel caught and magnified there were other sounds. From inside his head? A small child's laughter, and whistling— like a whiffle curving as it caught the air? — and something else, too. Ferdinand lifted his right-hand palm a tiny bit away from his ear, just-to check. Then he dropped his hands altogether.

That last sound, anyway, had come from the walls. A voice? Not exactly. An articulated breath? A consonant in the burbling, snarling torrent.

Dddd.

Hands at his sides, whole head ringing, Ferdinand glided down, watching Q recede out of sight. He could taste carbon monoxide slithering between his clenched teeth and down his windpipe. Just as he reached the bottom, he began to bounce up and down on his heels and opened his mouth, wanting to warn Q, shriek for him to go back. Then he just stood still, listening.

What he heard was roaring from the freeway, full of overtones, vibrating all the way down his bones. No laughter. No whistling. He was standing in a cylindrical concrete walkway, brightly lit. He couldn't see any tagging anywhere, just bright, cheerful colors winking off the walls and ceiling. So the city had continued pouring funds into keeping these places bright and clean and usable, even if they were deafening. Or else even the gangs wouldn't come down here.

The walls and ceiling were actually chrome, Ferdinand realized. The colors came from reflected sunlight shooting off the hoods and roofs of the thousand cars and trucks passing every minute out there, twenty feet ahead, where the tunnel opened onto broad daylight and the shelterless island of the Transitway station.

"My friend, the Sun — like all my friends

Inconstant, lovely, far away…"

Those were the words his father had used to propel himself north, through a silence all but unimaginable, now, to a promised land that had, in some ways, kept its promises. His father had never landed a job worthy of his education, but Ferdinand had. And now he stood here, using the same words just to propel himself onto a bus so he could go downtown. It was a mercy, he supposed, the way people's capacity for adventure seemed to decrease along with their opportunities for it.

"At least drowning's supposedly quiet," Q shouted as he stepped off the escalator and stood next to Ferdinand.

"What?" Ferdinand shouted back.

Instead of laughing, Q ducked, and Ferdinand did too, instinctively, as that hard Dddd he'd heard before erupted out of the ceiling like hail. When it stopped, both men straightened, glanced up the walls, and finally at each other. Ferdinand was surprised to find his hands at chest level, curled into fists, one on top of the other, as though cocking a bat. Milt. Julio. Milt. Playing Bond-and-Blofeld in the dark as the cookie flashed overhead, that's what they'd called that splotch-asteroid that appeared right as they topped Space Mountain's lone hill…

Sticking out a hand to steady himself against the wall, Ferdinand shook himself hard, felt whatever he'd been thinking fly to pieces. His fingers seemed to sink into the concrete. When he stumbled forward a step, he seemed to pass through strands of carbon monoxide hanging in mid-air like cobwebbing.

"You hear a dog?" Q yelled.

Ferdinand turned slowly, eyeing his friend.

Q shrugged. "For a second, swore I heard Benjamins."

"Listen hard enough down here, you'll hear anything you want to," Ferdinand said, but too quietly. Even he couldn't hear himself. "Benjamins?"

"My…" Q started. Then he just stood. Slowly, as though he were liquid, a shudder rippled over his still-massive shoulders.

"Q. You don't have a — "

"Got to cut down on the pre-noon Coronas don't I? Remind me, yeah?"

Ferdinand began to nod, and the shudder caught him, too. Because of the way Q said the dog's name. As though…

Then he heard barking. Stiffening, Ferdinand glanced fast toward the walls, blinking away the blinding streaks of color. When his vision cleared, he was looking up at a shiny reflection of himself upside down. A paunchy wannabe-gringo in a button-up shirt two sizes too big, floating bewildered in a sea of pavement. Why wouldn't there be dogs here? It was as good a place as any to shit and scavenge and wrestle for dominance with your friends and get run over and die.

Q, he noticed, was not looking. He was staring straight ahead. Slowly, he put his hand out, turned it over, as though awaiting a lick. And at that moment, Ferdinand thought he felt it, too. A trace of warm wetness across his palm, heavy golden paws on his chest, but there was nothing, nothing, never had been…

Yanking his hands up from his sides where they'd been dangling, Ferdinand realized that his ears were literally quivering against his head, trying to fold like evening primroses fleeing light. He jammed his palms to his temples once more. What he'd heard wasn't dogs, or Dddd, either. That was just the scrambled sense his brain was trying to make from the din.