Глен Хиршберг - Transitway

Benjamins, Bond-and-Blofeld, Milt and Julio, pinatas and Robin Hood bowls, Petra laughing…

Spinning so fast he almost twisted right off his feet, Ferdinand took two fast steps back the way he'd come. He was saying something, too, shouting, maybe just making sound, trying to cancel out the racket the way noise-blocking headphones supposedly did. His eyes had started to stream— from exhaust, just exhaust, it was probably healthier to hike across Bikini Island after a nuclear test than to spend fifteen minutes down here — and now he was singing. The Bond theme, the guitar bit, dung-de-de-dungdung-de-duh-duh.

There had been an up escalator, hadn't there? He hadn't noticed. Sweat broke out all over him, and without lowering his hands or stopping humming or opening his eyes any wider than he had to, he scurried back to the bottom of the shaft from which he'd descended, and yes, there it was, gliding silently up. The way out. Home. He took another step, and Q grabbed his shoulder from behind, turned him, and as he saw his friend's face once more, Ferdinand smiled a single, desperate smile, and said, "Petra."

Q's fingers tightened, dug hard into Ferdinand's skin. "What the fuck did you just say?"

Ignoring the pain — relishing it, really, so sharp, so undeniably there, the first time in so unspeakably long — Ferdinand reached up and touched Q's hand his with his own. "I said my wife's name." His eyes welled and overflowed. "My wife's name was Petra."

Around them, barking erupted again, louder this time, more distinct. When Ferdinand craned his neck, he saw his overhead reflection swarmed by thousands of flashes of color, as though set upon by sharks in a frenzy. He couldn't stay here. Not in this tunnel. Not one more second. And the fastest way out wasn't up, but straight. Onto the freeway. Ripping free of Q's hand, barely registering his friend's gaping, terrified face, Ferdinand flung himself forward.

Seconds later, he was doubled over gagging in the sunlight. Eventually, he felt blindly with his hand, found the mesh metal bench the city had thoughtfully provided to mark the bus stop, and sat down. For a long time, he concentrated on trying to breathe. Behind him, the sounds continued to swirl, rioting in their cavern. Petra. Nothing else. Just the name. And the certainty. Ferdinand felt tears mass in his eyes again, let them come, held on tight to the bench as the passing traffic rattled him.

Finally, Q emerged, too, stumbled to the bench, sat down. Another long minute passed before Ferdinand realized he was sobbing.

"Milt," Q said, through the fingers curtaining his face. "My son."

Which was right. Of course it was. For Christ's sake, when Julio had been very young there was no one on earth, not even Ferdinand and Petra, that Julio had wanted to see more than—

Julio.

DDDD, wailed the voices behind him. Dddddaaaahhh.

Half-screaming, now, as the wind of two massive trucks thundered over him, he looked down, one last time, at his hands.

Fist on top of fist. Batting position. Ferdinand surged fully awake in one headlong, convulsive rush.

The cookie on the ceiling of Space Mountain. The furniture in the guest room, which had never been a guest room. Bunk bed, plastered with L.A. Raiders stickers. Poster of Farrah in that hideous brown bathing suit upside down right next to the head of the top bunk, "So she's always looking right at me, and only at me, Pops." Bukowski on the bookshelves, which Ferdinand had railed against, hoping his disapproval would disguise at least some of his pride at his boy's discovery of such writing at the age of twelve.

His son's room. His son's room. Even through his own screams, he could hear Q's, took half a moment to wonder what he'd just remembered. Then Ferdinand was saying Julio's name again. Just the name, turning it in his mouth like a key in a lock, feeling it click, watching his whole life swing open.

Milt and Julio together. Striking each other out with the whiffle, demanding constantly to be left alone, to go off alone, go down town, take the bus…

"Oh, no," he said, and somehow, through the aching that gripped his entire frame like a vise, he sat up. "Oh, no."

They'd come here. Julio. Petra. Milt. All. Sooner or later. How long ago? How fucking long?

Right then, glancing to his right down the freeway, Ferdinand saw the bus. Giant, empty, shambling straight toward them. A year or two ago — it was almost funny, not funny at all, that he could remember this but not his family — Q had showed up outside Ferdinand's classroom door outraged, waving a newspaper. He'd waltzed right into Ferdinand's first-period class and brandished the paper at the students. "You don't exist," he'd practically shouted. "It's right here in the paper. You don't exist." The article he'd been waving had come from the Sunday Times, reporting on a City Council vote to remove the name South Central from all future maps of Los Angeles. Too many negative associations. And it hadn't ever been a real place, anyway. Had it? Not one you could fix a precise location to.

"One by one," Q croaked. He was all the way standing, now, staring at the bus, which crawled closer, towering over the traffic before it. Shepherding it.

"One by one," Ferdinand murmured back.

Everyone they'd cared about. Everyone they'd loved. Everyone around them. One by one, each for their own reasons, they'd glided down those escalators and stepped aboard the Transitway, which had swallowed not only them but the memory of them, wiping them clean out of history. Was this whole thing some unthinkable top secret city project, a logical extension of that Council vote? The runoff channel the city had needed for so many decades, to help it funnel the unnecessary and unseemly into the sea of oblivion?

Or maybe the desert had arisen at last from the distressed sand, reclaiming itself from the teeming creatures it couldn't possibly sustain.

Or was the Transitway a Transitway, after all, a service that simply shuttled riders elsewhere?

"Come on," Q said, grabbing Ferdinand's elbow and trying to tug him back toward the tunnel.

Ferdinand just opened his mouth, turned, and stared. "Come on? Where?"

"Anywhere. It's coming, you idiot. Run!"

"Run where?" Both of them were shouting. It was the only way to be heard. Behind them, the sounds in the tunnel seemed to have cohered into a rumbling, feline snarl. "Q, I'm going where the bus goes."

"It goes nowhere, man. Don't you get it?"

"It goes where they went. Where else would you want to be?"

"Right fucking here, dude. Where I can remember. Where I can grieve. You go cop out, I'm taking their lives back with me. Or their memories, anyway. I persevere, and I preserve. It's what I've been doing my whole life."

In the tunnel, the snarling intensified. When Ferdinand looked toward it, the light in there seemed to have dimmed. "Q," he said. "I'm not sure we actually have a choice."

"One way to find out."

Without another word or a goodbye glance, Q launched himself off the traffic island and ran straight for the tunnel. Ferdinand almost went after him, though whether to drag him back or follow he couldn't have said, then caught sight of the bus inching closer. All but here. He stopped, stared at it a second, looked back toward Q.

It was like watching a car back over one of those rows of angled spikes set up next to signs reading DO NOT BACK UP — SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE. At the mouth of the tunnel, Q took a little leap, and so he wasn't even touching the ground when his body shredded. It simply came apart in the air, in dozens of pieces, and Ferdinand fell to his knees screaming and weeping, but he couldn't close his eyes.