Maggie Helwig - Girls Fall Down

‘Oh,’ said Alex. ‘Do you mean in New York?’

The man shrugged. ‘The force of your will was helpless, sir,’ he said. ‘But this is what somebody told me who had a name tag that she wasn’t CIA. You can have something come into your head, but it’s up to you how you understand it to be. And this is where the analytical thinking comes in. For instance you might decide that it’s a problem of the force of your will, and if you tell yourself that people can’t fall out of the sky then they will stop doing it, but I haven’t found this to be very successful. Or you could decide that your job is catching people, but there’s the potential for harm if they’re falling very fast. It was all on the television, sir. I’m sure you remember.’

‘Yes, well, I think I know what you mean.’

‘Or you can decide that it’s an issue of enemies and take yourself in hand to eliminate them, which is very efficient in a way unless they get mad at you too, or someone comes and makes you sit in the white chair which could be very unfortunate. But that’s not the part that’s making the terrorists angry, sir. They’ve been trying to cause me harm because they’re upset that I have knowledge of the components. The components of the bodies, sir.’

How much of this, Alex wondered, can a street contain? How much, before it all breaks down?

‘The reassembly of the components isn’t a hopeful prospect,’ said the man. ‘And when blood comes out of the ears, there’s no possibility to survive. I’ve seen this in person. The components have been damaged on a wide basis.’

Alex looked at the man and frowned. ‘But you weren’t there, right?’ he asked. ‘I mean, in New York? This is something else you’re talking about?’

‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the man. ‘I know what you need to ask me, you want me to tell you that I was really there or else somebody just told me about it, and I’m not offended that you want to ask me that. That’s the way it is when people are talking, you need to ask certain questions, and when I answer them I always try to be honest.’ He scratched the skin on one hand. ‘But even when you see something with your own eyes, you don’t always know what it means until somebody tells you what happened, do you? You just don’t always know. So there was this noise, and this darkness. I can’t remember it all fairly well. But the government’s involved in my situation now. Things are looking up.’

‘Okay,’ said Alex. There was no more sense he could make from this, not now, there was nothing to do but accept what the man could give him. ‘I’m glad to hear that. I hope it goes well.’

‘We all do our best, sir. Things are looking up every day.’

‘Listen.’ On impulse, Alex reached into his pocket. ‘Could you do me one favour? I’m trying to find someone, could you look at his picture and tell me if you know him?’

‘Well, that would depend on your intentions, sir,’ said the man, his heavy face furrowing with concern. ‘For instance if you wanted to push him in front of a car, sir, I wouldn’t want to be involved with that.’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just his sister wants to talk to him.’

‘Is she going to be respectful of the systems, do you think?’

‘Yes. I think so.’ He held out the photo. ‘Have you seen him anywhere?’

The man studied the picture for a long time. ‘I couldn’t tell you at this moment, sir. There’s a possibility of some help. But I think I’ll need to make some enquiries with the government.’

‘Sure. You do that then.’

‘I’ll try to look into the matter for you, sir. That’s his sister? She’s a very pretty lady.’

‘Well. Yes. She is.’

‘Okay, sir, and thank you for the change. I’ll let you know if the situation is updated in any way.’

Sitting at a melamine table with Nicole and Kirsty after track practice, the girl picked at a plate of fries, the gravy salty and thick and hot. ‘But honest to God,’ Kirsty was saying, ‘you really, like, collapsed from a poison gas? ’Cause this is getting totally serious.’

‘I don’t know,’ said the girl, carefully licking a ribbon of gravy from her finger. ‘I guess. Yeah.’

‘I mean, because they keep saying it’s nothing, but you know there’s all kinds of people collapsing now, and if they’re all getting poisoned it could be like, you don’t know what’s going to happen in a week or two weeks or… ’

‘It’s stupid,’ said the girl. ‘Forget it. It’s probably just like, they have a problem with the pipes in the subway or something, they just don’t want to admit it so they blame the, you know, terrorists or somebody. That’s probably, that’s probably it.’ She knew that whatever she said would carry a particular authority, because she was the one who had fallen first; even Tasha would never have quite the same position, though Tasha had collapsed as well. Anyway, nobody really listened to Tasha to begin with. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

‘I just kind of think this is serious,’ said Nicole.

‘No,’ said the girl. ‘It’s stupid. It’s just stupid, okay?’ She pushed her hair back impatiently, the good tired ache in her muscles.

‘Sure.’ Nicole reached over and took a french fry from the girl’s plate. ‘We can definitely change the subject. It’s fine.’

It occurred to the girl that she could phone Zoe, but she knew that she wouldn’t, that she could never explain to Zoe what had happened, or what it had felt like, in that moment, to fall. She thought again about the woods at the back of the school grounds, the thicker woods deep in the ravines, about living out in the cold there, how dark it got.

‘That new science teacher? He’s a total babe,’ said Kirsty.

‘And that’s supposed to mean fucking what now?’

Alex bent over his contact sheets, biting his lip and trying hard not to listen to Chris and Susie, who were shouting at each other a foot away from him.

‘Look, don’t ask me, ask your boy toy Mike out there if you want to know. As if you really don’t know.’

That summer in 1989 the air was heavy with humidity, and the production room had somehow ceased to be public space, had turned into a heat-charged theatre for this escalating drama, everyone’s lives invaded by it. Alex could never be sure who he would find there or what would be happening, how long it would take to get an issue out and what would be torn or broken in the interim, Chris and Susie refined into their worst possible selves, insulting each other in front of the staff, staging petty battles, destroying small prized possessions. They had never seemed so close as they tore each other slowly to pieces, passionate and obsessive, no one else around them more than a stage prop. And even then they would go home together at sunrise, come back to the office for the next evening’s work. Return to their apartment, to whatever happened between them there.

Alex walked through it, quiet, an outsider, except that she would be there in his darkroom, she would touch him and lean on his shoulder and then suddenly leave; she would call him at midnight, meet him in a bar in the Market and tell him everything, and the next day he would be no one again.

He came to the office late at night, and he was in the parking lot, chaining up his bicycle, when he heard Susie-Paul crying in the darkness. He ran towards the sound, and saw the small outline of her, huddled by the wall, at the edge of the spill of a street light, barely visible.

‘Susie. Susie.’

She looked up, a streak of something dark and wet on her face, and a splayed mass at her feet. Lifted her hands. He saw the shine of the edge of a knife, a heavy liquid on her fingers.