Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

“What the hell is this?” said Billy.

“Oh man,” said Zak, “it’s the old subway line; this is the mother lode for urban explorers.”

“Later,” said Billy; and then he called, “Wrobleski,” again, and once more there was only silence in reply. With infinite trepidation Billy led the way, taking the first determined yet dreaded half-step through the arch. He expected to be shot at; he expected worse, and then he heard his daughter’s voice.

“It’s okay, Dad, it’s over. Come get me.”

What could that mean? Still ready for the worst, Billy took a bold, reckless stride onto the subway platform and saw Carla standing just a few yards in front of him, her feet in a pool of liquid, her head drooping forward, the oversized miner’s helmet still on her head, its lamp glowing weakly. She seemed not so much calm as inanimate. Her face was pale and still, and it conveyed absolutely nothing.

“It’s all right now,” said Billy, trying to console himself as much as her, moving in for a moment that was supremely natural and supremely awkward. “I’m here.”

“Yes,” Carla said, her voice drained of feeling and, despite herself, pulling away from him.

“Where is he?” said Billy. “Where’s Wrobleski?”

“I don’t know,” said Carla. “I had my back to him.”

Billy Moore shone his flashlight up and down the bare station platform. He saw nothing. It was still and empty. There was no trace of Wrobleski, and he surely wasn’t a man to hide, to skulk in corners. Billy saw the tunnel entrances at either end of the platform. Yes, it was possible that Wrobleski had decided he could move more quickly without Carla, and had simply abandoned her and disappeared into one or another of those black mouths. If so, despite everything, Billy had no intention of pursuing him. Let the darkness swallow him.

Billy also saw the gaping sinkhole between the buckled rails. Was it conceivable that Wrobleski had decided to take the ultimate form of control and throw himself into the void? And the gunshot? Why that? A bullet in his own head before making the leap: the final anesthetic? Or something else, something that might almost be construed as compassionate — not so much a warning shot as a signal before he disappeared, the establishing of coordinates, a sound standing in for an x marking the spot.

“What did the bastard do to you?” said Billy.

With one long, skinny hand, Carla gestured over her shoulder to her own back.

Billy held her by the arms, tenderly turned her around, and raised her shirt again to reveal the bare skin of her back. It was blotched and inflamed. It wasn’t immediately possible to make out what Wrobleski had been up to — the marks were so shaky and imprecise — but it was clear that he hadn’t been drawing a map. Rather, Carla’s back seemed to be written on, signed with a single word, though around it were various blots and rashes, signs of hesitation, false starts. Zak, Marilyn, and Billy peered at the marks. Some decoding was required, and it took a while before they realized what Wrobleski had written there, a name: AKIM.

Now the earth began to tremble again, another underground explosion, not so far away this time, a slow crescendo that seemed to come from all directions at once. The fabric around them pulsed, shivered, and trickles of pulverized dirt shimmered down from the tiled ceiling directly above their heads. As they froze, stood perfectly still and silent, a cracking sound echoed from the darkness. It sounded organic, less the noise of masonry than of a great tree tearing at its roots. They turned in the direction of the sound, looked at what was now a long, narrow fissure in the station roof, like a cartoon drawing of forked lightning, with brown ooze seeping from the crack.

“Are we going to be able to get out of here?” Billy said.

“Sure,” said Marilyn, leading the way. “Just follow my butt.”

There is a psychological condition known as cartocacoethes, in which people see the whole world as nothing more than a series of maps. They look at clouds, rock formations, wallpaper patterns, the stains on a motel mattress, and they see examples of cartography. The puddle of blood looks like Africa, every high-heeled boot is Italy, a woman’s pubic triangle becomes the Mekong Delta, before or after deforestation.

Some say this is a form of pareidolia, a condition in which arbitrary pieces of information suddenly take on unwarranted significance in the sufferer’s mind. And this in itself may be considered a version of apophenia, seeing patterns and linkages in sets of essentially random data. Others say cartocacoethes is just a fancy word made up by map obsessives to glorify their own obsession. But perhaps we don’t need to be suffering from any pathology in order to feel the need for orientation, to long for a method by which we can locate our position in a universe of uncertainties. We read the map, we read the world, we chart environments and faces and bodies. We hope to know where we are. We hope to read a message, a meaning, to work out a direction and a course. Is that so unreasonable? You could also argue that if the world is nothing but a series of maps, it’s that much harder ever to be truly lost.

Zak Webster rearranged the items on his desk in Utopiates. The computer mouse suddenly looked like an oversymmetrical island, an antique steel ruler looked like a man-made isthmus, while the swirling patterns in the fake wood of the desk’s surface looked like contours, or isolines if you wanted to get technical. It was 6:30 on one of those shortening, restless, end of summer evenings, and he had no intention of closing the store. He was waiting for Ray McKinley to arrive. Zak had told Ray a few simple and plausible lies, chiefly that he’d found a new customer who was about ready to spend some serious money starting a collection, but the guy needed to be coaxed, to have his ego stroked by the boss. It happened often enough, and Ray McKinley was enough of a player to want to be involved in the game.

Ray arrived on time, wearing several layers of unmatched pastel linen and tasseled loafers without socks, looking like a man on a permanent vacation. If Zak had been trying to impress a new customer, he’d have worn something more formal, possibly tweedy, but maybe that was why Zak was just a shop assistant.

“What happened to your face this time?” said Ray. “Is that a rash or something?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of allergic to all kinds of things: cacti, dynamite, you name it.”

Ray was prepared to take it as a joke, and he didn’t need to understand his employees’ jokes.

“You look like crap anyway,” said Ray. “And this customer of yours is late.”

“Barely,” said Zak, looking at his watch. “Don’t worry. He’ll be here. He’s very reliable.”

There was already one customer in the store, in the back room, a woman in baggy pants and combat boots, a serious-looking camera slung over her shoulder, and her big dark eyes were looking out through ornate tortoiseshell glasses at an early map of America, one that had California depicted as an island, its northernmost part designated New Albion.

There was a newly framed item propped up on the floor, its face toward the side of Zak’s desk.

“What’s that?” Ray asked.

“A little something I picked up,” said Zak. “I thought you might like it. It’s not really a map, it’s more of a blueprint.”

Zak picked up the frame and turned it around so McKinley could see its design, its muted colors, its simple, schematized lines, that might be thought to look like an amoeba and its nucleus, or perhaps a fried egg. Ray made a wet noise deep in his throat to convey disgust, anger, contempt: a whole legend of resentments.