(Continued from the September 2020 issue of Exotic)
On the third day in town, J took some new turns around the neighborhood—the early autumn leaves swirling in the wind and crunching under his feet. The houses huddled in the shelter of trees and shrubs, afterthoughts to the landscape, rather than the focus. He imagined himself living in the homes as he walked by them, in another life, with things like dogs and kids. Maybe a broken swing hanging from a tree. Laughing relatives and holidays. A modest car, from which there was constant unloading; brown bags of groceries about to spill, bright pink plastic mall bags full of presents, squirming toddlers, as the alarm chirp and the doors click shut from a hands-full hip bump. Home from work, home from school, home from vacation. Porches designed for orange summer evenings, silence and crickets. An umber light humming from the windows. Sweet dreams.
Paper trash collected against the wire fences and wrinkled ivory ringed with a light brown of rot twisted among it. He couldn’t help but note the weak locks, open deadbolts and ancient windows set in crumbling wood as he walked past. Points of entry that would let out a little yelp at the moment of violation, the squeaks and scrapes of breaking and entering. First an arm or leg, silently, through the opening he had created, then the rest of his body, crouched among the ticking of clocks and humming of appliances, knuckles popping and blood thundering in his ears. Cool, smooth wood or soft carpet under his palms. The slow nudge of unlocked doors and light nasal breathing of sleepers on the other side—bagging outlines of items in the dark, while really robbing what could never be replaced, stealing their peace and owning their sense of quiet. Sometimes, leaving the door ajar as he left, so as to trouble their sleep in nights to come.
He ducked into a basement driveway and swung his bag down. Kneeling on his haunches, he pulled out the pint of Old Crow and his kit, deftly working up a fix while taking a long, hot pull from the bottle. As that fire settled into his chest and abdomen, he shot up. And, for a moment, there was a straight line out of the corners of his eyes, where each thought slid into place, as if he had removed the one piece that didn’t quite wedge with the others. Then, he was watching himself, looking back from a distant point and considering the path that had brought him here. A memory listing along the edges of sleep. He nodded off against a trashcan.
The cold jolted him up and he stood, stamping his feet in the dark, balling his fists deep in his pockets, before fumbling out a cigarette and looking over his shoulders. His head swam for a few seconds, as he lit up and small, sallow orbs of light danced in the smoke, before settling in as street lamps. A light rain began to mist and a breeze blew the leaves around him. He puffed while gathering his things and started walking, as if he had a destination. Long strides and shoulders hunched against the chill. As the night settled in, he accommodated himself to it, making himself either unseen or not worth looking at. He drifted through the dirt alleys and emerged occasionally onto the main road with a rhythm that placed him always out of the corner of the eye and on the tip of the tongue—only a vague description merely imagined in the first place. He noted the length and width of shadows and the muffled echoes of his steps. Faint voices joined in, as he approached the block of downtown. Coughs and laughs hung in the cold air like clouds of breath under the street lamps and he pulled a dirty red baseball cap onto his head before turning the corner into public. A slight buzz lingered, but he felt the need for something else—a high that had to be obtained, rather than one he could fix himself.
Several hours later (with pockets full of other people’s money), J found his way to the bus station and bought a ticket to the next city—settling himself in the very back seat, where the rank smell of urine from the tiny bathroom kept all other passengers at bay. He lay back and put his feet up, staring out the window at nothing that mattered, as the bus carried him somewhere else.
*
The business park was the perfect level of unassuming. Built several years prior, during the mania of economic growth, it was all sprawling cement walkways, glistening steel hand rails, castrated commissioned sculptures in iron and plaster in baffling poses, meant to reflect an Idea now degraded by rounds of approval into mere objects. Ghosts of projected clients walked hand-in-hand with the specters of potential office tenants. In the whole compound, J estimated perhaps three businesses held day-to-day activity here. Too big to start over, with just enough revenue to keep it operating. It was on the outside of town, far enough away that graffiti hadn’t crept in and attracted fences.
There were four four-story buildings in the complex. His camp was just a few blocks away, off the side of a desolate, two-lane highway, tucked out of sight, behind a crumbling cement divider. He had stumbled upon the complex while wandering, as he was prone to do when his minimum of needs were met. Fed, watered and with sunshine in a bag, he was surfing the first high of the day, when he found that his surroundings had shifted on him. The dust and pallid light of the highway had given way to a concrete tundra, fresh white parking lines and angled curbs opening on the four buildings spaced in an odd jigsaw pattern. He stopped, looking around and squinting in the bright cleanliness. He became aware of a new kind of silence and realized that it was the absence of crows. Slowly drawing out his pouch of tobacco, he rolled a cigarette, licking it shut and lighting it contemplatively. Somewhere distant, a car rolled by, unobtrusive and temporary. Some insects clicked. He decided to try the far building first and crossed over the black-and-white of the parking lot.
Two frosted glass doors made up the only entrance. Several rounds of the exterior yielded no other points of entry. J stood at the doors for a good minute, waiting for someone in a uniform to appear. No one did. He pulled open a door and stepped inside. Filtered air tickled his nostrils and skin. Thin commercial carpet in a deep blue stretched across the floor, where it met a lighter shade of blue in the painted walls. Across the room, a painting in a red frame hung in the center of the only door. J crossed to it. It was a simple picture looking down on a koi pond, with a single redfish encircled in the center, slender fins wisping away into the edges and fading into nothing. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He turned around and went back the way he came.
Standing at the train stop, he contemplated the complex. He smoked and contemplated some more. As he thought deeply about things, he saw a man crossing the vast parking lot toward him. As he came closer, J saw that he was surprisingly tall, like a highway sign up close. His suit was black with red pinstripes and his derby hat sat pulled over his forehead, a half grin unfolding from the shadow. He ambled toward J at an easy pace, with a patience as if the turn of the earth would bring him to wherever he wanted to go eventually. The autumn sun was bright, cold and seemed to grow more so with each of the man’s steps. When he finally arrived, he cocked his head and looked at J sideways, smiling.
"Smoke?" he asked.
J’s usual snide replies to the question all seemed juvenile. He handed the man a cigarette and flicked his lighter for him. The man took the cigarette in pale, bony fingers with long, pristine nails filed at the ends and leaned forward toward the flame. He took a drag and nodded a "thank you," as he exhaled smoke through his nostrils. Then he straightened and peered off at the stretch of paved nothingness, squinting his eyes and quietly smoking. J felt he should neither move along nor stay put and began to grow aware that this was one of those moments to which he should pay close attention. The man took a few drags and turned his gaze back on J.
"I don’t usually smoke," he said.
J nodded.
"You should probably get on a train, seeing as you’re waiting here."
J looked at the ground and then at the "arrival and departure" sign. He looked at the man in red and black and at the sky without birds. A train was in fact arriving in one minute. The man flicked the last of his cigarette into the wind and looked at J, nodding his thanks before jumping down onto the tracks and crossing, just in time for the train to miss him. J watched him fade into the horizon through the passing windows of the subway train coming to a stop.
The subway stopped several miles from the complex at the end of the line, its doors gliding open on nothing, neither welcoming nor dropping passengers off. J wondered if the train itself were conducted remotely and when he boarded, he was the only soul within miles. The route had wound underneath snaking freeway overpasses and through barbed wire construction zones, castles of cement with rivers of sand and gravel dug out beneath, the building projects never finished, workers digging trenches for the next shift to fill in again. Eventually, passengers would start stepping on and stepping off, with no notion of who sat in their seat before they boarded or who will sit in it after they disembark. There could have been a dragon at the stop before them. Perhaps, that’s why everyone on metro trains have that haunted look, relieved but skeptical, after sharing their space with a monster. This train could have been empty two stops ago, the train running its route with or without passengers, anyway—according to schedule. J walked away from the terminal and started his hunt for a train that was more his style, given a choice.
