Pasha Malla - People Park

Guess that’s it for us then, said Tragedy, lighting a wilted Redapple.

Some halfhearted goodbyes were offered (Θolidarity, proposed Havoc unconvincingly, and passed around a fist-bump) and he and Tragedy, swapping the cigarette between drags, took the path down into the common, past an elderly man caning his way up the Crocker Pond Slipway to Parkside West Station.

The students hung around. Debbie wished she’d been more like them in her twenties: all secondhand alpaca and shy, dreamy ideals. Instead she’d been an athlete.

Thanks for coming, guys, she said.

We saw the posters on campus, said the girl, at the Institute.

We didn’t know anything, said her boyfriend, about this. Before.

But we’re glad we could come.

The boy shuffled, his girlfriend nudged him. He spoke: We wanted to tell you, though, we’re leaving town. Tomorrow. We won’t be around for the rest of the weekend.

It’s just, we’re going camping. Back home.

Can you tell Mr. Street we’re sorry?

Oh, that’s okay, said Debbie, feeling flattered. Just nice you came out today, right? And have a nice time camping, that’ll be fun for you guys.

Yeah, we feel bad is all. There aren’t a lot of people out.

Most kids we’re in school with are happy to just party at the Dredge till they’re sick.

And watch themselves after on TV.

We’ll totally be up for whatever when we’re back. With the um, Movement.

We’re just a little worried.

What about? said Debbie.

The boy and girl exchanged looks. We’ve heard Mr. Street tends to —

Kick people out. Of the Movement. For disappointing him?

Like almost everyone?

Yeah, sighed Debbie, that happens. We’re currently in a rebuilding phase.

A second pigeon joined the first: an elderly couple, grey and waiting.

Hey, said the girl. We heard you’re writing a book about him?

Debbie laughed — a sharp, awkward bark. Well it started as a script but my boss didn’t want it. I mean, you can’t really capture Pop Street in a four-minute segment.

That was for Isa Lanyess? You write for In the Know , right?

Not that we watch it, clarified the boy.

Yeah, said Debbie, though I only do occasional stuff now, got to pay the bills, right? Mostly I run a program in Blackacres, for neighbourhood kids. Out of the Room?

The students stared back. Were they judging her? What was their judgment?

She plunged ahead: But yeah, I have all these notes about Pop and the Homes and everything, and someone should write about this stuff, it’s just so hard making it all come together, right? We should get a cider. I could tell you more about it, about the book.

We’ve got class.

We would though, totally. Otherwise.

Oh I didn’t mean now, ha. A bit early for drinks! Just sometime, anytime — whenever! You guys should give me your number. So we can stay in touch. About Movement stuff.

The girl said, Not sure I’ve got a pen, and dug around in her knapsack: no pen.

From the houseboat, the birds cooed in chorus, ruffled their wings. Their poop was an eggy froth baking in the sunlight.

Debbie said, Okay, off with you then, get to school. She tried to sound light, but it came out hurried, dismissive. And when they left, Debbie felt abandoned — and embarrassed, she still hadn’t gotten their names. The students were heading the same direction as her, toward Parkside West Station, but she hung back, didn’t want to sidle up alongside them after saying goodbye. It’d seem too desperate, even pathetic, and too much like pursuit.

YELLOWLINING WESTBOUND on a packed train Debbie got out her notebook. On the first page were a few attempts at a prologue: For twenty-five years Pop Street has been camped out behind his old store in a stoicsteadfast protest against People Park, living out of the houseboat he used to keep at the Bay Junction piers, the ceiling so low the man has developed a permanent hunch . . Or: For most islanders, People Park is a place we only associate with joy: it’s where our kids go to daycamp, where we go on dates for picnics, enjoy the Summer Concert Series at the gazebo — but for one widely misunderstood former resident of Lakeview Homes, it’s a monument to forgetting, and a place that embodies everything that is wrong about this city . . Or: What is justice?

Though like many of her teammates she’d majored in Communications at the Institute, Debbie had never considered a career in journalism, the accountability made her nervous. But when Isa Lanyess, a star from the pre-Y’s era of the Island Maroons, saw her We-TV fixture, In the Know , become the island’s preeminent news source, she hired a few ballers who weren’t turning pro to write her scripts. I’m the Face of this thing, Lanyess told them, so think of yourselves as my makeup artists. And what’s a makeup artist’s job? To make the face look good. And also? To make their own work invisible. All anyone should see is my face.

It was a job. For a year Debbie churned out reports on local goings-on with the mechanical proficiency of a windup clock, yet failed to find satisfaction hearing her words spoken on TV by someone else. But the meeting with Pop left her feeling forced to the edge of her own life: she stood there peering down into it, blank and bottomless. When she’d returned to Isa Lanyess’s downtown office, Debbie suggested a piece about the Homes might be more interesting than one on Pop’s Things.

Lanyess gave Debbie a withering look. People don’t care about that guy, she said. Unless he’s Mr. Ademus. Is he? No, right? Mr. Ademus and the Things are hot . So how the fug did Pop Street, who’s never been lukewarm by anyone’s measure, become the guy’s dealer? That’s what people want to know. So that’s , are you listening, what you, who I hired, write about. Not some fat loser living in a trailer who can’t forget the past.

I just thought there was a bigger story here, said Debbie. Right?

Wrong, said Lanyess. I brought you on here because you struck me as a hard worker, someone who knew how to be part of a team. Was I mistaken?

Debbie had stood there, fists clenched, heart pounding. Lanyess had a way of speaking to her that made her feel not only indebted, but small and young. Like a scolded child, in hateful silence you could only wait until it was over, she told Adine that night, drinking ciders on their couch.

Fug Lanyess, said Adine. Fug that show. I mean, props to Pop Street for making bank selling it, but trash nailed together into funny shapes? That’s art now? I guess, according to the superdooshes of this dumb town who buy it up like it’s gold.

Debbie tipped back her cider. He can’t be making much, she said. The guy’s the closest thing this town’s got to an ascetic.

Is he? Whatever he is, he’s just like, off. Even when me and Sam were kids our mum didn’t let us go to his store alone. The Human Polyp, we called him. That’s what he’s holding on to? He needs to let go of Lakeview Homes, everyone else has.

But, started Debbie — and stopped herself.

What does he even want ?

Restribution, Debbie said automatically, and Adine rolled her eyes, wrangled Jeremiah into her lap, and buried her nose in his fur.

Now, on the train, Debbie leafed through her notebook, and felt she was closer to a real reason — and the person himself, the two were linked. In her notebook were dozens of Pop’s attempts at aphorisms: If you’ve an advantage, do it , e.g., and People come in a multitudany of kinds, but we’ve all got the same heart .

In a way Pop had thrown Debbie’s life into relief. To live as he did, a living protest, one had to forgo everything else — social mores, relationships, basic hygiene. His dedication made Debbie feel flaky and capricious. So she’d begun attending his rallies, not as a journalist but as a participant, committed to the Movement, even fancied herself his second-in-command. Though there always lurked the danger of being banished, often for random, arbitrary, and baffling reasons. Most recently Pop had expelled three of Debbie’s friends for Insufficient restritubutive doctrination . Requests for clarification had been ignored.