Pasha Malla - People Park

Towing her sidekicks the Hand withdrew to the foyer. Footsteps headed downstairs.

Go see what she’s doing down there, whispered Edie.

Calum stared.

You know her better than any of us. Go!

The goblins sat at the top of the basement stairs, their whispers followed him down. The recroom’s open screendoor admitted an icy draft, the deck was dark, but the pool lights were on. Kneeling on the diving board was the Hand.

If you’re supposed to be checking up on me, she said, you’d better come out here.

He thought of Edie, of this house, of her parents. When he was over they talked to Edie as Calum’s interpreter or warden: And how does your friend do at school, etc., while a mute housekeeper served soup in bowls of bevelled glass. This was what he was now supposed to defend.

The Hand reclined on the diving board. Calum stood in the doorway: what might she do? Snow dusted the flagstones. The pool steamed. Deeper into the backyard was the tennis court, and beyond that, down the hill, Kidd’s Harbour, a fleet of pleasurecraft nudged about by waves.

Here’s a game, said the Hand. Find a star. Find one.

The sky was the broad back of something huge, turned away.

You can’t, can you? Because of all the lights. There’s too many lights here so there’s no stars. What’s the point of being up here if you can’t even see the night?

The Hand sat up and spat into the pool: a little raft of phlegm floated atop the water. This is your girlfriend’s house, right? The poor little rich girl? She sucks.

Careful, said Calum.

She snorted, moved to the edge of the board. Careful, she said. Careful’s nothing.

In a single, swift gesture she pulled her shirt over her head. Her shoes came off next, kicked onto the deck. And finally she stepped out of her jeans. The pool’s ghostly light shimmered over her body: parts were dark and then lit, parts were always light, parts were always dark. Calum looked over his shoulder, into the house. And back at the Hand.

Her mouth twitched at the corners. See? she said simply, and flopped into the pool with a splash. She surfaced, just a head, the water mangled the rest of her body into jagged indistinguishable shapes. This was tantalizing, if the waves settled it would all turn clear. Calum imagined diving in, swimming up, touching the smooth wet skin. He tensed, leaned forward on the balls of his feet, toward her —

Well, said the Hand, see you round.

Her legs kicked up and she dove. Calum waited, waited, the ripples stilled — and she didn’t come up. He moved poolside: the pool was empty. Giggling came from the house. The goblins rushed out cackling, scooped the Hand’s clothes off the deck, and tumbled in wild somersaults into the water. When the bubbles cleared they were gone too.

Later, when Edie and Calum went to bed they realized the brass doorknobs to the master bedroom were missing. I can’t believe you let that happen, she said, and rolled away. Overhead glowed the star-stickered ceiling of Edie’s room. He thought about the Hand’s body in the water, the slick shimmering gibberish of it, and tried to assemble the pieces into a naked whole.

Edie, he said, edging across the mattress, pressing against her. The replica galaxy shone down, dull and green. Hey, Calum murmured — nudging, grinding, stroking. Edie, hey. Edie? But she was either asleep or pretending.

LOOK, SAID CALUM, his voice coaxing, squeezing Edie’s hips. Look at these two appleheads, he said, and Edie sighed and looked: a couple, thirtyish, pushing a fancy stroller up the hill toward Orchard Parkway. Calum waited for Edie to ask what was so wrong with them. When she didn’t he said, I bet they don’t even do it. Edie let his words hang. He crossed his arms around her waist and pressed himself into her backside and said, Hey?

She wriggled away and left Calum holding air. Voices called from within the trees, their friends emerged, watches were tapped, they should go to school. School? said Calum. Come on, Edie. We could go back to my place, my ma’s at work all day. But Edie shook her head firmly. No way, Calum. You might not care about your future but I do. I want to graduate, thanks.

Their friends were moving up the path, behind the stroller couple, in pairs. Calum gazed across the common, at the stage where the famous magician had wowed everyone that morning, and he wondered how it felt to have so many people, together and all at once, say your name.

THE MONDAY after Edie’s party Calum awoke to his mother, Cora, leaning her head into his bedroom, eyes ringed with dark, voice a reedy crackle: Okay Cal, up you get, go to school. But he just lay there thinking. After a time his little brother Rupe appeared in the doorway. Ma said you have to take me to school. Take your fuggin self, said Calum, and went back to sleep.

That afternoon he walked up F Street, slushy and unplowed, through the Zone, past Blackacres Station, past the Room, into Whitehall, the factory district, and the ICTS Barns, where the trains went to sleep every night, unlaced sneakers flopping and soaked through to his socks. Past the Barns he entered the industrial district: abandoned warehouses, factories, plants, various Concerns no longer concerned with much, their gerundial purposes (Shipping, Receiving, etc.) painted onto pale splintering wood. At last he came to the massive concrete panpipes of the Favours Brothers silos, long decommissioned, where Calum ducked through a peeled-back section of chainlink. The loading dock was open. Inside was dark as a throat.

He peered into this blackness. There was no sign of the Hand or any of her people. But this was their way: invisible unless and until they wanted to be seen. Yet the gloom seemed to dance with firefly sparkles — dozens of eyes, catlike and glittering, watching him. .

Calum ran. Back through the fence, out of the docklands to the Piers. Here he hopped out along the blunt-headed stumps of a drowned jetty to the breakwater, the most western point in the city, and sat, heart hammering and dangling shoes refracted in the lake. The air smelled of wet wool and sewage. To the north was the mainland: tan-coloured fields, chalky cliffs, a gravel beach prodded and coaxed with waves — close enough to swim to, but Calum had never been.

HE REACHED FOR EDIE, to hold her, to hold on to anything. But her back was to him. He tapped her shoulder. A half-swivel of her neck: an acknowledgment of what he’d done, but not him.

What?

Nothing, said Calum.

Well are you coming? There was exasperation in Edie’s voice. You can’t skip, you’ve already been suspended. Calum?

The only people left in the park were the NFLM, hollering, taking down barricades, rolling up the welcome rug, collecting garbage on spiked sticks, their voices resonated as the woofs and hoots of animals.

One of the men splintered off from the group. He was coming over, crossing the common in a delicate mincing way. Calum said, Look at this guy, but Edie was moving up the hill to join the rest of their friends, waiting to go to school.

LOOK AT THOSE KIDS, said the one named Starx. Hey, partner — look.

Olpert Bailie stopped struggling with the guardrail. Teenagers loitered in the hillside orchard on the eastern edge of the common.

Go tell them to get the fug out of here.

Olpert blinked. Me?

Yeah you. You’re the security guard, right? Effortlessly Starx, a man-shaped monster, lifted a barricade into the back of the cube van, hopped up, hauled it alongside the others, and stuck his head out again into the daylight. Get going, he told Olpert. And quit being such a foreskin.

So Olpert went trembling across the swampy common, mud spattered his slacks. It was impossible to tell how many teenagers were gathered among the trees, they shifted in and out of the shadows, they made Olpert’s stomach jump and twist. The trains were always full of kids this age, they jostled him, they said things about him, it took such effort not to listen to what they were saying, if you met their eyes they had you.