Pasha Malla - People Park

People who weren’t quick and sharp infuriated her, inefficiency was the bane of any city. This was the reason she’d whittled her council in half her first term, why she’d cut the city districts to four, and now met only quarterly with representatives from each quadrant. The Mayor was methodical, which wasn’t the same as slow: methodical meant developing a methodology and then operating, swiftly. If life were a minefield, the Mayor reasoned, you informed yourself and blazed into it, never tiptoeing along in meek, weak terror. If your leg got blown off you hopped. And now with a shudder the Mayor thought of her own legs: if you lost both, apparently, you found someone else to push.

Connect me to the Temple, she said.

Diamond-Wood dialled, the handset purred, the Mayor imagined the NFLM line jangling unheeded on some desk, the men asleep in bunkbeds — kids playing firemen but with hairier feet.

The view swung around to People Park. On its north side, the Thunder Wheel looked like a rusty sawblade lodged halfway into a robustly frosted cake. Beneath it, damp with fog, the rides would be shrouded in tarpaulin. Island Amusements was scheduled to open that evening, yet how could it possibly in this?

She let the line ring a couple more times, hung up, ordered, Hit PAUSE.

The deck stopped turning. Everything was still.

Look, she said, pointing to the Thunder Wheel. What a beautiful thing. Do you love this city? I love this city. I was born at Old Mustela Hospital fifty-seven years ago and I’ve lived here all my life. You know how many times I’ve left in those fifty-seven years? None. Why would I leave? I’ve never been on an airplane. On a boat exactly once — the fireworks barge during the centenary celebrations. You don’t need to leave this place. So why get bent out of shape about being trapped here — where else would you rather be?

Silence from Diamond-Wood. The Mayor checked the phone again — nothing — handed the receiver to him, he deposited it into its console. Take off that tape, will you? she said. It’s like talking to a coma patient.

He did.

Better?

Yes, he said. Thanks.

Anyway where was I? Oh yes — trapped , bah. The idea of being trapped here, it’s like a child being trapped in a. . in a. . wherever children like to be. A store for children’s things. Games or what have you!

The Mayor could hear the anxiety rising in her voice. Like a child in an adultless land, she decided, and continued with rekindled vigour: And while these aren’t ideal circumstances, doesn’t it offer the potential to bring the city together? Maybe it’s exactly what we need to make us realize how lucky we are! So the bridge is gone, so what! Right?

Well, said Diamond-Wood, the power’s still out in the Zone —

Those people are used to struggling! If anyone can deal with a little hardship it’s them. Few people are aware of this, but I come from poverty.

Oh?

The Mayor peered over her shoulder at her aide: hunched upon his crutches, patchy stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, his uniform had the appearance of a rumpled paper bag. She looked away, continued: Touch green! Grew up in a trailerpark in what was then called South Bay. This was before the Lakeview projects. I was born in a house on wheels. Not literally, I was born at Old Mustela, but a trailer was where I spent the first few months of my life. So I think I know a little something about struggle . I understand people — rich, poor, young, old, fat, stupid — and that’s what makes for an effective leader in times of crisis: empathy.

The phone burbled to life.

Give it to me! she screamed, nearly falling off the dessert cart.

The High Gregories sat around the speakerphone in their underground conference chamber — Griggs, Wagstaffe, Magurk, Noodles. Bean stood at the portal that led up into the Temple, hands behind his back in the pose of niteclub bouncers. In an adjacent chamber, Favours was having his morning treatments administered by two Recruits in latex gloves and surgical masks. From another came whimpering — tears?

Bad news first? said Griggs, his voice as inert as the basement air.

Fine, said the Mayor.

No sign of him, said Wagstaffe.

None? said the Mayor. What is wrong with you people? What did you —

It’s nothing we can’t sort out, said Griggs.

And Island Amusements? said the Mayor. It’s expected to open —

Don’t get your gitch in a gotch, said Magurk. That’s the fuggin good news.

Everything’s all set, said Wagstaffe.

Everything? said the Mayor. I wouldn’t say —

Let’s meet here for a face-to-face, said Griggs. There’s a car waiting for you outside.

Now?

Now.

See you soon! said Wagstaffe cheerily, and the line went dead.

Griggs looked around the table. Anyone hungry?

Noodles nodded.

Bean, said Griggs, fetch us some flats. And wake B-Squad up. I’m sure the Mayor will want some answers from the dynamic duo meant to be keeping tabs on Raven.

SAM SLID BACK the cover from the peephole. The armoire was empty.

If you’re there say something okay, he said, and moved his ear to the door.

Silence. Sam touched his face. The scab was dry.

I know you’re in there okay, said Sam. I know you can make it look like you’re not. But you can’t go anywhere Raven. Sam tried the handles: the boards and chains and locks held fast. There’s no way out.

Sam placed an apple on the tray he’d affixed through a slot halfway up the door. You can have an apple for breakfast. If you want more I can get more.

He pushed it through, heard the dull thud of the apple falling, put his eye to the peephole. From the bare overhead bulb fanned a cone of yellow light that dwindled in the dark corners. Upon the armoire’s newspapered floor sat the apple, gleaming. There was no hint of movement from the shadows, darkness there and nothing more.

If the apple’s bruised I can bring you another one okay, said Sam. Or if you don’t like apples tell me what you like. I have juice. Or water. Or I could nuke you a meal.

Sam waited, eye at the peephole. Nothing.

The phone rang, the sudden burst of it a small explosion in the still room. Sam stood over the console. It alternated ringing and not — a tinny jangle, then silence, and the silence felt expectant, and Sam synchronized his breathing to it: inhale as the phone rang, and exhale between rings, not picking up because it would be the same voice, a deadened echo as though the call were coming from the bottom of the lake. Like speaking to his own drowned ghost.

The phone stopped ringing. The room waited. Then, from the armoire: scraping. Sam held his breath. A thump. And then something scrabbly and wet-sounding — the watery snap and crunch of a mouth biting hard with its teeth into an apple.

AT THE SOUND of fluttering Calum raises his head. Swooping down from above is a grey bird. A pigeon it seems at first but as it stills itself in the air with a slow backward beating of wings it might be a dove, though dirty or dusted with newsprint or ash, he thinks.

The bird, whatever it is, lights upon the railing of the pedestrian walkway, its claws curl around the metal bar, and tilting its head regards Calum with something evaluative or curious. He stares back. He feels cold. He laces his arms around his shins and pulls them close and wedges his chin between his knees. In the bird’s pinkish eyes glitters something suspicious, he thinks. It doesn’t trust him. It can’t be trusted.

Calum says, Go away. And the words again are eaten.