A late-era rap song: boasts about wealth and luxury delivered with a grim wink over a distant, desolate beat that may have been played on trash cans.
“Rosy’s walkie is off. Should we check on him? It’s been two hours.”
A staticky fuzz begins to creep into the audio from the TVs, drowning out the rapper’s mournful fantasies.
“Where was the meeting? At the community center?”
I twist my neck to look at the nearest screen. The audio has been completely replaced by static and now the image begins to stutter—the rapper opens a briefcase; it’s full of money; he sets it on fire and warms his hands—the image goes black.
A howl of protest rises from everyone in the room. Someone throws a tumbler at the TV, misses, hits the liquor shelf. Whiskey and glass sprinkles the bar. But the screen remains black for only a few seconds. It flickers, there’s a loud pop, and a new image appears.
A grainy security camera feed, a fish-eye lens gazing down at a man in a white shirt tinkering with a large instrument panel. Another man in a white shirt is faintly visible in the shadows, and ‘Captain’ Timothy Balt stands between them, looking uncertain for the first time since I’ve known him.
“What is this place?” he says, glancing into the shadows around them. “How’d you know this was down here?”
The man at the panel notices something in front of him and his eyes dart up to the camera, the fish-eye lens warping his face into a bulbous horror. He pulls a cable out of a nearby jack and the image goes black again.
“What the hell’s going on . . . ?” Julie says.
A harsh squeal erupts from all the TVs, and while everyone covers their ears, something flashes on the screen. It’s there for barely a single frame, too brief for me to fully grasp, but my brain rings like a gong. I see the door again, its rusty metal corners poking out behind crumbling plaster. I hear the drone behind the door, the churning throb of sub-audible bass rumbling up from the basement, rattling the door in its frame, sending chips of plaster flying off like popcorn.
My eyes squeeze shut. My mind is dark and the image blinks in the shadows with maddening brevity, its contours just out of reach, teasing me. I feel my hand moving.
“R . . . ?”
I grab a martini glass and smash it against the bar. I grip the stem like a dagger.
“R! What the fuck!”
I hear the scrape of her stool as she jumps away from me. I’m frightening her. I was so sure I’d never frighten her again. Memories of airports and screams and smears of black blood fill my head as my hand moves.
Jagged concentric shapes. Angles swallowing angles. A grotesque mandala with nothing in its center.
I open my eyes.
I have carved a design—a logo—into the surface of the bar. Its deep lines cut through lovers’ initials.
The door rattles.
“Atvist,” my mouth says.
The door cracks open.
A TALL BUILDING. A dim room. An old man. A grin.
A briefcase. A plan. I hesitate. I accept.
I board a plane. I watch a screen. A nature show. A worm and a wasp. I watch. I recoil. I keep watching.
The worm burrows into the wasp. The worm seizes its brain. Tells it where to fly. Feeds on its guts. Builds a home out of its corpse. The worm is small, clever, twisted, mad. The worm wins. The worm knows no beauty, no pleasure, no purpose. The worm knows nothing but what it does. The worm wins and the worm feasts. Wasps, wolves, poets, presidents. The worm feasts.
“Trust me, kid.” Brown teeth. Spotted gums. A bony hand on my shoulder. “I know my business.”
? ? ?
“R!”
The sting of a slap. Frightened blue eyes searching for mine in the darkness. I slam the basement door shut and pull the Orchard back into view, and in all the shadowy fragments spinning through my mind, I see one clear imperative.
I shake Julie off me and I run.
“R, stop!”
I shove the heavy door open, knocking over two soldiers who topple back into the deck railing. Julie is in the doorway, calling to me, but I can’t stop. I run, stumbling, gripping the cables to keep from falling off the catwalk, slipping down the staircase and caroming off the walls, finally bursting out into the street. I feel my badly lubricated joints creaking, my stiff ligaments protesting as I push them into a sprint.
The surprising weight of the briefcase. The cold metal in my hands. The decision I insisted I hadn’t made.
I see the Armory door at the end of the street. Towers of metal and plywood loom over me like judges, but I’m so close. I can fix my mistake before anyone notices. I can—
A flash. A hammer of air.
I’m flying.
The moon glares down at me as I sail backward, arms spinning, a lazy summertime float down the river. Is this still your preferred position? the moon asks me. On your back and half-asleep, drifting away from the fight?