Pasha Malla - People Park

Starx drummed the steering wheel. What do I want? Quite a question. I mean —

Nevermind! Raven was gleeful, bouncing around in the backseat. You and your fellow citizens are in for a visionary performance! Such a people of longing! Now, let’s go.

Sure, said Starx, backing the car onto Topside Drive.

Mr. Bailie, please, activate your radio device. There are certain preparatory measures that I require. And then, my friends, all will be revealed.

What’s that then? You wanna give us a little sneak preview?

Ah, Mr. Starx, you impatient rogue! I’ll tell you only this: the people of this city strike me as wanting to wall up infinity. And you’re afraid to look on the other side of that wall.

Gotcha, said Starx.

Olpert checked the rearview: Raven was swivelled in the backseat, watching Guardian Bridge recede from view. So you’re going to show us, said Olpert, what?

Raven turned, caught Olpert’s eyes in the mirror, and held them. Why, he said, what you have always known to be true, Mr. Bailie. Only the truth. And nothing more.

WITH THE TV chattering Adine tried her brother again — no response. She flicked channels, ended up back at In the Know . In her telejournalist’s cadence, that exaggerated lilt only spoken on TV, Lanyess was amping the night’s festivities. With We-TV eyes on every corner of the island, she cooed, Cinecity is going to be the place to be. And don’t forget Saturday night’s premiere of All in Together Now — the movie made by you , for us .

These vocal undulations faded into sinewaves, a boring music that had little to do with words. Adine’s thoughts drifted to Debbie: she imagined her now arriving at some dim brown apartment that smelled perennially of stew. Around the dining table would be a bunch of sloppy moccasin’d creatives who subjected each new arrival to hugs, one of them would stroke Debbie’s hair. The food: waterlogged salads and congealed sludgy putties flavoured with great ladles of cumin. And for flouting the rigour of cookbooks these ungodly repasts entitled Debbie’s friends to an unearned, manic pride.

Oh, and the eye contact — incessant and creepy, and palpable behind every unblinking stare was a brain instructing: eye contact, eye contact . Like having dinner with a roomful of those portraits that seemed always to be watching you. Everyone was doing great , each self-celebratory anecdote was met with weirdly vicarious joy. Or, in the rare case of a grievance, a spectacular show of empathy — chests were clutched as though stabbed, then came the hand-pats and aphorisms: Well you’re safe now — You’re good though you know that right? — You are special, you are loved.

These people confused bohemianism for authenticity, homeliness for inner beauty, prolonged, distraught embraces for a communion of souls. And this blind faith in one another stitched their collective mediocrity into a tapestry of the somehow unique, the debatably valuable, the dubiously good. It all spoke to a shared hunger to believe they were loved, they were good, they were surrounded by good. And so when Debbie came home from these dinners Adine had to read the sated look in her eyes as a false light.

Though it was this hunger that Adine had first found attractive, and then fallen in love with. Debbie kissed with a passion approaching fury. In the middle of the night if Adine, overcome with some licentious urge, nudged her out of sleep, she was ready, right away, as though she’d been awake the whole time waiting for it. Her life seemed spent anticipating intimacy — at any chance to be loved, her whole soul sparked and blazed.

Sometimes this was nice. Sometimes it was what Adine wanted too, what she needed even. But quickly Adine learned that Debbie was like this with everyone , and their intimacy started to feel cheap. Just once, she wanted Debbie to say, Not now. Or: Ew your breath is gross. It never mattered if Adine’s breath was gross or she had a little shred of food in her teeth or if Debbie was in the middle of something — a shower, making dinner, work. She returned Adine’s kisses without hesitation, stopped only when Adine pulled away, and even then in her face burned a pleading look, craving more.

She never seemed to feel the frustration or invasion that Adine felt, sometimes, when Debbie snatched her hand or worked a knee between her thighs and Adine’s mind was doing its own thing — contentedly, necessarily alone. Depending on her mood Adine would either ease away or bark, Not now. Rejected, Debbie would wilt a bit and Adine’s frustration would dwindle into guilt, and back to anger for being made to feel guilty, so she’d kiss Debbie with quiet resentment sizzling through her body, and the kiss would feel empty — yet Debbie would still be going for it, all ardour and tongue.

There was something sad about Debbie’s hunger, something desperate and grasping and tragically lonely, lonelier even than being alone. What if she were alone? Without Adine, what would she do? Throw herself into the arms of anyone? Those slipshod hysterical people at her potluck — they’d be there for her, always — and come away smelling of unessential oils? Fine, thought Adine. If that was what she’d rather, a great unwashed orgy of moaning ravenous kisses, a stewy kind of love, then she could have it.

Here was Jeremiah, the judder of him hopping up onto the couch. Adine reached across the cushions to pet her cat, though she couldn’t find him, sensed maybe he was avoiding her hand. On TV some Institute kids were arguing about which bars poured the best cider — though of course their city comprised only the southeast corner of the island, plus maybe the Dredge, one daring young man suggested a spot in Bebrog and was mocked. Adine sprawled onto her stomach, called, Jer? grasped, snapped, clicked her tongue. From somewhere came a faint mewling. But her fingers swept empty air.

THE ARMOIRE WAS six feet tall, baroque and quadrupedal, its legs curled into calligraphic hooves, fronted with a pair of doors whose mirrors had long fallen off. Sam set to cleaning it out — a pair of dusty shoes, the bar from which four coathangers hung, a stray sock, he put everything in a shoebox. On the armoire’s floor he laid an inch of yellow newsprint and a blanket, with a pillow at one end this made a decent bed. Next he drilled a hole in the top and dangled a bare bulb inside, ran it through an eyehook in the ceiling to an outlet by his bed. The light would just stay on, he figured, until bedtime. This is what they did in prison, yet this wasn’t a prison. More a guestroom.

Next he sawed a rectangular hole at chest height in the door, laid runners so a drawer could be inserted to pass his guest essentials and messages. When this was accomplished Sam felt quite pleased with himself, how easily the drawer slid in and out, with a compartment for food and drinks. Above it he drilled a peephole, and looking in he felt proud, it really was like a little bedroom.

Collecting his tools he secured the outside, hammering two-by-fours over the doors, wrapping the whole thing in heavy chains, then produced the combination lock the boy had magically reopened, slid it in place, pinched it shut, and twisted the dial. Sam tried the doors. Solid. No escape. Yet the boy’s words echoed: He always gets free . .

The last stage was making the image. Sam got out the unused drawing pad and pencils that Adine had given him many, many birthdays ago — You were such a good artist as a kid, she’d said, you should do stuff. Finally he had something worthwhile to draw, though this picture needed to look as close as possible to the real thing, so Sam was careful and precise — the shadows, the woodgrain, the doorhandles’ coppery gleam. .