William Vollmann - The Atlas

To the ancient ones who lived behind horse-headed gates, people like him and her would have been appalling. Those two thought themselves at home everywhere, and so they had no home. Long before Magic Mountain the greasy-gray air had begun to smell like burning tires. Three patrol cars sped past. Through his window he saw ape of those skeletal-trailered trucks used to haul racks of new automobiles to the dealers' lots; it was carrying nothing but police cars. He and she both had sore throats by the time they passed the Pico Canyon exit. The air smeared itself more and more thickly over the mountains ahead. To the east, no mountains could even be seen. She drove rapidly. They continued to descend. His eyes began to water. I've never seen it this bad, she said. They passed another car. The driver was looking where the road led and shaking his head. Two men in the next car were gesturing to one another.

He had a terrible headache. Ahead, the air was a featureless curtain, opaque and purplish-gray. The hills nearby were paradoxically clear, their greenery standing out on the chalky eroded walls. It is always like that in a fog; the very clarity of one's immediate surroundings points up the obscurity ahead.

The sun was large, pale yellow and soft in the turbid sky.

She clenched the steering wheel. — Do you think they burned Uncle's store?

I don't know. I hope not. I like your uncle.

They were close enough to see the black smoke now. Another patrol car screamed past.

Later they were at a dinner in the expensive hills where the smell of burning was not so bad. A white woman said: You know. I was a student at Kent State. I was there when the National Guard shot Allison Krause and those other students. I saw it! I saw the blood! I breathed it all in. .

Somebody was coughing.

And I–I knew the pigs were the enemy, the woman said. No question about it. They were the pigs. And tonight, well, tonight I'm thinking that the police are protecting me. Thank God the police are standing between me and the enemy! And I'm trying to understand what changed. Because I don't feel that I'm any different; the police sure aren't any different—

His throat ached. He said: Doyou mean that the blacks are your enemy?

She put down her wineglass and he thought that she might cry. She said: Yes, they are. It's not fair that I have all the nice things I have and they have nothing. I understand that, I really do. Once I had black friends. But I'm afraid. And I hate them because they make me afraid. And that truck driver, the way they dragged him owt and beat him half to death. .

Another guest had come in quietly from the pool while they were talking, and he was black.

The black man said: So you've hated me for a week. I've hated you for half a thousand years. Nothing personal.

My friends, my friends! cried the host, waving his hands. Don't listen to what you're both saying; it's just the stress and this awful air. .

The long weary pushbroom whose dark bristles were as kinky as pubic hairs dragged itself attached to a man's ami and hand. It was very late. Two children sat drinking sodas and playing with straws and crying out: What's your name? — When the man's toil brought him near enough, they shouted their question at him in shrill excited voices. — Get Up Mess is my name, the man responded. That's what they call me. You make a mess and they call me get up mess. — The next man sat chewing gum and resting on the sides of his feet. — What's your name? called the little ones. — Sir, the man replied, his eyes shining like the cross on the chain around his neck.

Now it was ten-o'-clock in this tiled cave like an immense toilet, and the buses pulsed outside, and now it was eleven-o'-clock, and then it was midnight. The two children snored with their mouths open. Their mother's eyes closed slowly, and then a security guard came and shook her shoulder. The guard left the children alone. The buses all seemed to be either absent, gone, or out of sight. Half-asleep people queued or leaned. Only the escalators moved, winding remorselessly up and down like the treads of some monstrous tank turned turtle. A man fell asleep on the silver coast between escalators.

Not tonight, a ticket agent was saying to a sad man. Not unless you want to sleep in the terminal in Hartford.

Finally light burst out at the side of a bus outside, and it sped away. Then in the darkness another bus came speeding, and he who waited and watched knew that she was on it, but then it kept speeding and was gone. A man sagged against the wall, curling his fingers against the side of his head, and slept.

Then suddenly another long bus angled in and upflung its sidehatch to unchoke itself of suitcases which were taken like medicine into the hands of people who then gave themselves to the emptiness between escalator railings and were accordingly transfigured, decapitated, unbreasted, waistcut, kneesplit, anklesliced and then gone, leaving not even the soles of their shoes behind.

Another bus swam rapidly by, so that his heart rose and fell again.

He saw a sleeping woman who resembled her blurrily. The security guard shook her, and she woke and looked into his eyes.

What's your name? he said on impulse.

Sweetheart. You wanna date? What's your name?

Gonorrhea, he said.

You sound like my type, the woman laughed. Let's go.

The security guard was still there, so he said: And what's your name, sir?

Fuck You, said the security guard.

Oh, said the woman. I guess he's my type, too. At least that's what all the men do to me.

He took her hand and they went out. — What's your name? he said to the taxi driver.

Go To Hell, the driver said, and he stepped on the gas and sped them straight there. .

In that street the Thai criers wore suits and ties. They looked at me in contempt or else they said: Japanese only! or they shouted: Members only!

How can I become a member? I said. How can I become Japanese?

But to this they had no answer.

At last I found a manager who led me upstairs personally. His place had been open for only two weeks. He could not afford to exclude me.

It was nothing but a long narrow lounge without windows. There were not even any girls at first, not until they brought in Ting.

She was dressed in a kimono and she spoke English like a Japanese. When she haltingly sang a karaoke love-song, she sang wirging .

Oh, are you a virgin? I said.

Nit noy . Little bit.

The woman on the other side of me, more experienced, probably sent to encourage and spy on Ting (who had been there only a week), laughed, patted her own rear and said: Me virgin here.

Every time I said something to Ting that she did not understand, the manager interpreted for her because he sat right across from me in the darkness and devoured us. Now and then he'd announce: She want you to kiss her! and say something to Ting and then that beautifully expressionless face would approach mine, after which Ting would arise to bring a napkin with which to wipe her lipstick off my mouth. The manager asked what I would like to eat from the Japanese restaurant which he just happened to own upstairs, and by some fine serendipity he had a menu with him, so I asked Ting to order and with the manager's help she chose the most expensive foods to chop-stick into my mouth. Betweenwhiles she sang solemnly into the microphone. I came to hate that dark place where the manager worked so hard at listening and Ting had to sing those country songs and love-songs over and over like hymns. The manager asked if I wanted another Johnnie Walker, and I said I'd finish the one I had first, so he motioned to Ting, and she picked up my glass and gulped it. — Good girl. — She still had sweetened colored water in her glass. I said I'd wait for her to finish that, so the manager gestured and she gulped it, too. Then the manager brought me another Johnnie Walker. I said to myself: This girl is so sad and trapped and needs my help; let me rescue her. .