Pasha Malla - People Park

Gip took his father’s hand. I know, Dad. Thanks.

The wild, panicked fervour that had the boy careening around the park all day had tightened into tenser, almost pensive anticipation. He seemed subdued, or at least focused, leaning there on the guardrail, eyes on the trunk from which Raven would appear at nine.

The sun went down, the crowd pressed in, Pearl and Elsie-Anne joined Kellogg and Gip at the barricades. Gazeboside Helpers flitted around, walkie-talkies crackling: Keep your positions and maintain order — B-Squad ready? — Silentium, Logica, Securitatem, Prudentia — Absolutely retain order . . The messages sputtered, all those bodies on the common disrupted the frequencies.

So, Gip, said Kellogg, any guesses what Raven’s going to do? — a question he’d asked since noon to no avail. Might there be clues in your book? Want Mummy to get it out of your bag?

It wouldn’t be in the Grammar , Dad, said Gip. As if!

No insights? Being his biggest fan and all?

Can’t you just wait? You’re so impatient. Gosh!

There’s something to be said for surprises, said Pearl, handing Gip the day’s final round of meds and a box of apple juice. No grape? he said, and Pearl said, They don’t have grape here, only this. He washed down the pills, Pearl stashed the container in Gip’s knapsack and dropped it at her feet. This is fun, she said. What a view! Thanks, Kellogg.

But Kellogg was distracted. At the back of the gazebo lurked one of the men in khaki, apart from the rest. Someone’s cameralight, scanning the stage, shone upon him momentarily: a skittish character with a facial abrasion — the man from earlier, the one who’d nearly crushed Elsie-Annie with an armful of lumber. Kellogg waved, the Helper saw him and shrunk into the shadows. Who’s that? said Pearl. He’s. . Kellogg began, but wasn’t sure what to say.

WHILE A YELLOWLINE train swept from City Centre into Parkside West Station, at the head of the southbound platform a lone traveller sat motionless with a duffelbag between his feet. Dressed in black from head to toe, face concealed in a balaclava, this person watched impassively as the train slowed and unleashed a pack of Jubilee merrymakers and then slid off, evacuated and empty, toward Bridge Station.

Once the crowd had cleared, two figures — one tall and thin, the other stocky and manic, both in leather — approached the seated man. After an exchange of shifty nods, some furtive looks up and down the platform, and a few minutes of contrived estrangement, amid a clatter and screech and a funnelcloud of trash swirling up from the tracks, the PA announced a Whitehall train, the movator started up, and the men assembled to board.

In the first car the trio took seats adjacent to but not exactly beside one another. Hissing, the train eased alongside the empty platform. Through its open doors came the noise from People Park, an oceanic murmur, lunar and tidal and ancient. Then the doors played their song and closed and the PA said, Next stop, City Centre. City Centre Station, next stop, and they were heading off south into the evening.

In a low voice Pop said, Thank you for adjoining me.

Tragedy shook his fist. Fuggin justice, man.

Will be θerved, added Havoc, spat, and smeared the jiggling wad into a wetspot with a generic black sneaker.

BEHIND THE GAZEBO, at the edge of Crocker Pond, B-Squad stood guard outside the boathouse. A light glowed inside this ersatz greenroom: prior to each show the illustrationist required an hour, alone, to prepare himself with visualizations.

So, said Starx, I’ve been meaning to tell you — that dream you said you have?

Olpert was confused.

That dream you told him . . Starx nodded at the boathouse.

Oh.

I have it too. Exactly the same. It was like you were telling him stuff from my own brain, Bailie. Superweird.

Well, said Olpert, that wasn’t really my dream. I think he. . put it there.

Whatever, right? I hate this shet about how dreams are supposed to reveal secrets. If you lie to yourself when you’re awake, who’s to say you don’t lie to yourself in your dreams? So your dream, my dream, who cares. It’s all made-up anyway, probably. Me, the only thing I like about dreams is they put me to sleep.

What do you mean?

I mean, if I lie there thinking about the day, or something that’s already happened, I can’t get to sleep. But as soon as I let my brain go off and make stuff up — fantasies or whatever — it shifts into dreams. Like I sort of dream myself to sleep. You?

I don’t know. Olpert looked away, looked back, opened his mouth, closed it, and looked away again.

Something on your mind, Bailie? You’ve been weird all day. Still hungover?

No, it’s just. I was. I don’t know.

Talk.

Okay, said Olpert. Okay, I was just thinking about something. Or I’ve been remembering something. Because of what happened last night, at the bar. With. . Debbie.

Yeah?

It’s a long story sort of.

What else are we going to do, twiddle each other’s dicks?

Olpert recoiled. Ew, no.

Then?

Okay, Olpert said, and sighed deeply, as if to refuel himself for what he was about to say. Then he spoke: When I was in fifth grade, a scientist came to our classroom. In, you know, one of those white coats? A real scientist. Anyway what he did was, and he probably did some other stuff first, some other experiments or told us some facts or something, but then he pulled a container out of his bag, a black medical bag, and he was very careful with it. It was that really cold stuff?

Dry ice.

No. A chemical, not nitrous oxide but. .

Starx waved his hand: whatever.

So he opens the container and the stuff inside is steaming, there’s fog coming out of it. Like a beaker in a mad scientist’s lab on TV, like a TV version of science. Or witchcraft.

Right.

Then he, the scientist, asks if anyone’s got a piece of fruit in their lunch. I put up my hand, and I don’t know why because everyone, right away, all the kids, started going, Olpert’s got fruit, Olpert’s got fruit .

Starx snorted: Fruit.

And the thing, this is the main thing, so pay attention, okay? The main thing is I’ve got a huge crush on the girl I sit behind, who’s in sixth grade, Katie Sharpe. I stare at her back all day long. Not even a crush, Starx. I love her. But back then that one year makes so much difference. Like she’s on the other side of a river and there’s no way across? But she has no idea I’m on the other side of the river, or there even is a river? I love Katie Sharpe and she has no idea I exist. The ground could fall away at my feet and I could get sucked into that river and drown and she’d — she’d have no idea.

Where is she now?

I don’t know, married probably. Probably happy. But anyway, now you know about Katie Sharpe. So she’s sitting in front of me and the scientist pulls out a pair of tongs and starts clacking them and goes, Okay, son, bring that fruit on up here, which was an apple.

Better than a banana.

So I took my apple up to him. And he takes the apple in his tongs and he does it all dramatic, he holds it up, he takes the apple and lifts it for the class to see, which is agonizing , Starx, especially because of Katie, and then he slowly dips the apple into the container where the fog is coming out of. And he holds it in there for a bit. And I’m just standing there the whole time, waiting for my apple back. Then he pulls the apple out.

How’d it look?

Maybe a bit white but otherwise the same. Then the scientist pulls a hammer, a little reflex hammer, out of his bag and hands it to me, and holds the apple in the tongs and he tells me to tap the apple with the hammer. So I do.