Pasha Malla - People Park

The crowd scattered, the air grew cold. Kellogg shivered as he hustled the family up the path out of the common. Along the way Gip kept silent as he was recognized and accosted: You were the boy onstage, how’d he do it? Pearl got snippy with one family who suggested Gip had been in on the trick and was now responsible for explanations. Leave my son alone, Pearl snapped, sweeping him under her arm while Kellogg shrugged and chuckled in a diplomatic way, he hoped.

At their campsite Pearl said, It’s too cold for camping, my kids are not freezing to death in a tent tonight, and herded them onto Harry’s backseats. Car sleepover, yelled Kellogg, fun! and grinned into the minivan. Gip gazed back blankly, his face emptied of life. What an amazing night! Kellogg roared, and Pearl said, Hush now, get the sleeping bags, you’re letting the cold in.

He headed to the tent feeling unsettled. The night had been amazing — hadn’t it? To think Gip had been centrestage alongside his idol for the whole miraculous thing, a dream fulfilled, before thousands of witnesses. Though why did the boy now seem so numb? The night struck Kellogg as a jewel — sparkling, perfect, yet flawed when tilted to the light. Worse: with some ghastly embryo fossilized inside.

Outside the tent Kellogg shivered, bedding heaped in his arms. Across the site, inside Harry, was his family, they couldn’t see anything beyond the lit-up interior of the minivan. He watched Pearl blow her nose, excavate her nostrils, inspect what she found, and ball the tissue in her fist. The campground was quiet, everyone was going to sleep. The air felt wintry and thin.

And now, the next morning, winter had arrived. Kellogg turned the keys in the ignition, the engine growled and the fans came on with a blast of cold air. And yet still no one woke: cocooned within sleeping bags Elsie-Anne and Gip slept soundly, Pearl leaned against the frosted window, a little ellipsis of clear glass where her breath melted the ice.

Kellogg had to pee. He slid out of the minivan quietly, eased the door shut. A half-inch of snow covered the ground. In the fog floated dark forms that might have been trees, he aimed in their general direction, shivering, and as he zipped back up from the neighbouring site an engine came coughing to life. The red squares of taillights appeared. Holy, said a voice, can’t see anything out here.

Another voice responded — quieter, murmuring, followed by the pneumatic wheeze of an opening car trunk. Kellogg moved toward the lights and voices, the squeak and crunch of snow and gravel under his feet. The trunk closed with a whump.

At the neighbouring campsite forms materialized from the mist: a young man, a green hatchback, a camping stove, blue flames wobbled around a tin pot. The car idled and chugged exhaust, the door hung open, and in the passenger seat a young woman flipped through a mess of static on the radio.

Morning, said Kellogg. Some fog.

The man — more of a boy, a fist-shaped medallion dangled from his neck — nodded down at the burner. I’m trying to make coffee.

Not going so hot? Heh.

Kellogg’s joke went unheralded. The girl joined them. The radio’s like, dead, she said.

The boy pulled the lid of the pot, revealing water as flat as glass.

My family’s sleeping a few spots over, said Kellogg. We were camping, but —

Weird, said the girl. Look at the snow! Yesterday was so nice, then, bang, winter, just like that. You ever seen snow and fog at the same time? And this shet with the bridge —

What’s the um, shet with the bridge? said Kellogg.

They’re still blocking off the PPT and Topside, said the boy. I went for a walk up there this morning and a Helper-guy told me — the bridge is just gone.

What, still?

Yeah. I mean, it can’t be gone , said the girl. How are we supposed to get out? We had camping plans this weekend, we aren’t even supposed to be here.

Our stupid dorm’s being fumigated, so.

And now there’s no way off the island.

Could be worse places to be though? said Kellogg.

You’re not from here?

My wife is. Originally. We’re here on vacation. That was my son onstage last night!

We didn’t watch the show, said the boy with pride.

And the magician? Maybe when he turns back up he’ll fix —

The girl said, Do you know how much money they spent to bring that guy here?

No, said Kellogg. How much?

She looked blankly at her boyfriend, who offered nothing. Lots, she said. Money they could have used for more important things.

Such as?

Housing programs.

For?

People.

Gotcha, said Kellogg.

This water, said the boy, it’s just not boiling.

What I’m saying is, said Kellogg, maybe the trick’s not over.

I mean, they’ve got to do something, said the girl. She looked forcefully and with disappointment at Kellogg, implicating him in this they .

They will, he said.

From the fog a voice called, Kell?

He excused himself, discovered Pearl on her knees in Harry’s backseat rooting through a mess of wrappers and juiceboxes and snot-wadded facial tissues. The kids were awake, blanketed to their chins and shivering.

Pearl stepped out, took Kellogg by the elbow. I can’t find them, she whispered.

Can’t find what?

His meds, she said. I can’t find Gip’s meds.

THE FOG FIT snug as a lid over the island, dying at its edges in raggedy wisps. As the view from Podesta Tower rotated east the Mayor, torso still estranged from the lower half of her body, was faced with People Park: the common was a bowl of milk overflowing into the city. Fog scudded along the streets and up the sides of buildings, thick all the way to the water in every direction.

The deck rotated: Fort Stone, Li’l Browntown, Bebrog, Greenwood Gardens, the Institute’s campus knuckled into the island’s southeastern corner — all of it hidden under a melancholy lather. To the south, Perint’s Cove was also lost in fog, the Islet didn’t exist.

To the west the fog spilled through downtown, connected in ropy sinews to the low-slung clouds concealing the office towers’ tops, lapped up Mount Mustela right to the Necropolis, in LOT ignored and bounded over and through the gates of the Mews, engulfed Knock Street, threaded into UOT and Blackacres, the tenements swathed, the power still out, in the northwest corner of the island Whitehall was invisible too. And on the westside, as with the east, the fog stopped at the water. As if, thought the Mayor, a wall had gone up around the island.

Now she looked north: where Guardian Bridge had been was only absence. Across the Narrows, the mainland, was fogless and clear, not a wisp reached its shores. NFLM patrols clustered at either end of Topside Drive and at the opening of the People Park Throughline, into which snaked a trail of cars. That morning a queue had begun forming of commuters waiting for the bridge to reopen — or reappear.

Though this she couldn’t see, and only knew from the memo Griggs had faxed over at dawn. The gist: At four a.m. some hysteric had broken through the barricade screaming, Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors! and tried to sprint out over the Narrows. There’d been no cartoonish moment of the guy suspended in space, he’d just plummeted straight into the river. The current had been particularly swift and Luckily , reported the NFLM, there were no witnesses , and the story had been swept away with him.

Phone, said the Mayor, and Diamond-Wood passed her the handset, retreated, the cord connected them umbilically. The Mayor coiled it around her finger, let it sproing back and dangle slackly, listened to the steady bleat of the dialtone. She liked when expecting a call to ambush the person phoning, to pick up before it rang and disorient them, to always have the upperhand.