Urban: No. 1, the first chapter in a new eight-part serial mini-series, follows the lives of the inhabitants of the four towers, the remnants of the Deluge, the water that takes things away. Everyone needs something to do, even when the world is gone.
————
THE GSBURNE GAZETTE
Vol. 14, No. 1
The Way Things Are
I open my eyes, remembering exactly as much as I need to.
I turn off my alarm clock. It has not yet gone off. The time is 6:29 a.m.
I get out of bed. My pants and shirt are waiting for me on the back of the chair. Once I finish showering and brushing my teeth, I put them on. My curtains are closed. I cannot find my tie. I open my door, grabbing my bag as I leave.
The hotel hallway is well-carpeted–such strange stars and shapes in the burgundy fibers–yet it is poorly lit. Some of the bulbs are faded. Some of the bulbs of the chandeliers have burnt out entirely. In the regularly spaced intervals where the light cannot quite reach, mirrors stand on each side of the corridor and spawn in one another their own perpendicular hallways, baseboards receding into catacombs of infinite jade shadow.
At the near end of the hallway, a window frames a dozen other thin windows across the street, those of the neighboring skyscraper. In turn, those windows offer a fragment reflection of the tall brick edifice of the Hotel Perianth.
At the far end of the hallway, another window barely restrains the azure fog of the distant, aquatic bleak.
The hallway is long. The elevator is at the far end. There are no stairs connected to this level, except for the rusted fire escapes.
The hallway is silent. I find this comforting.
The windows are softly shaking, and the chandeliers sway like slow pendulums. I find this less comforting.
It is cold.
I know that the air, the fragrance of the hotel, smells like roses.
I do not know what a rose is.
Perhaps that is for the best.
***
The elevator’s folding gate rattles leisurely open to the hotel lobby. The elevator can take me no lower, can no longer go down safely to the parking garage, my intended destination.
The laminate floors shine. The fireplace crackles, although I do not feel its heat. The bar and the restaurant are empty, swollen with all the gravity that large empty rooms possess, like the feeling of looking down into a well, expecting your own image staring back at you, and finding only a deeper abyss beneath the water’s surface.
“Good morning,” Carlton chirps, standing up behind his concierge desk. Carlton owns the Hotel Perianth, yet he is also its only staff member. He is the manager. He is the bellhop. He is the janitor. He is the receptionist. He is the electrician. He is the housekeeper. He is the concierge.
Everyone needs something to do.
He is enough. No one ever checks into the Hotel Perianth.
No one ever needs to check out either, unless there is an accident. For instance, an elevator malfunction. If only I could make myself believe it was a malfunction.
“Good morning, Carlton,” I answer.
My cheeks are slightly warm now, though I am no closer to the fire. Unable to think of anything else to say, I spin away from him, away from the glass revolving door, towards the stairs.
The three-sided stairwell is remarkably duller than the golden lobby, and remarkably less ornate. Above me, the checkered metal steps twist and connect to every floor unto the fourteenth, except for the third, my own; there is a landing, there is even a door frame, but there is no door. I do not know why this is so, but I imagine that it is for the best. Below me, the remaining two flights connect to the basement, and then at last to the parking garage. The air is stale and dry and smells like paint, and it hurts my head.
I walk down the steps and into the cavern of lined floors and concrete posts. As I step from ridged metal to coarse asphalt, I feel the grinding shift in texture through my shoes. The air is colder now, but fresher. Though underground, the ramp to the street opens the space to a slight breeze. Everything is almost bright in the breached morning, except for the water, the ever-dark water, the water that overruns the lower half of the garage, the water that swells above the elevator doors, the water that clings.
I do not go near the water.
I approach my car, the only car in the lot, situated in the highest possible spot, the uppermost point.
I wonder sometimes if my car feels lonely down here, alone.
The engine kicks, prances, and putters. The radio breeds only static, so I turn it off. The gas tank is nearly empty.
Pulling out onto the main road, windows rolled down, I am already looking for parking. The offices in Ferule 210 are just across the street, hardly a walk at all, but my car is lonely and the streets are full of other cars. Perhaps, this time, I will be able to leave mine up here in the unbroken daylight. Perhaps, this time, I will be able to leave it up here, and it will not be alone.
Yet circling the office building, my hopes proved too true: the street is full of other cars. Too many for my own. There are no open parking spots.
There are only parked cars.
There are no other drivers in sight.
And there are not enough drivers here for the dozens of cars left along the street.
I do not attempt to circle the other four buildings. I already know what I will find: the grey, cubic hatchback beneath the torn flag, the red pickup truck next to the second bench, the white convertible parked askew, taking up a spot and a half, to name just a few. I know them all. I know that all of the spots in Gsburne Block are full. My car creeps back to the garage of the Hotel Perianth, and I can almost believe, as I pull it back into its original spot, that its engine is purring a little more quietly, a little more wearily, a little more lifelessly.
I know that my car must be lonely down here, but I wonder if my car fears the water as much as I do. I know that my car has no mind with which to think, no eyes with which to see, no heart with pulse to quicken, but the water is coming. We all know that much.
“Walking it is,” I utter to no one.
Between the stairs up to the lobby and the ramp up to the street, I choose the former. When I find myself back in the crackling hall, Carlton is still standing behind the concierge desk, almost exactly where I left him.
He is looking at me. I shrug. “There wasn’t any other parking,” I offer briskly, stumbling over my words, definitely blushing this time, though perhaps not just from my automotive embarrassment.
“There never is,” he says, smiling.
It feels like he is always smiling. It feels like the world could be ending, and he would still be smiling at me.
I appreciate his smile.
“There never is,” I repeat, finding no other words to say, spinning around to the revolving door, wheeling through.
***
The street is mostly quiet. I find this comforting.
The street is not silent; I can faintly hear the distant song crying between the four towers. I find this less comforting, but I can do nothing to stop it.
According to my watch, which I let run fast, it is 7:01 a.m. I still have enough time to take my time, to amble upon the sidewalk towards the Crossroads and consider the mystery of the squares of dirt. At periodic intervals, patches of earth disrupt the concrete uniformity of the pavement, and the soil inside is broken up by the cavities of hollow tubules, empty vessels, as though some knotted thing was not merely pulled up from the ground but withdrawn without the disturbance of its imprint. I cannot imagine what these things could have possibly been, these inhabitants of soil and grating. There are many such imprints here, vacant residues.
The street is no longer as quiet as it was before. Above the breeze, above the faint song, a rumble and a purr approach. I recognize the sound. I skip over the grated dirt to the curb and into the empty road, and, just as quickly, a yellow cab tears around the corner of Third Street.
No one ever needs a taxi to go anywhere anymore, but I wave it down.
Ilana swerves to the other side of the road and pulls up alongside me. Absorbing the momentum of her sudden stop, she practically throws herself out of the driver door. She leaves the cab running. The exhaust pipe puffs rolling steam and stained breath into the blue-grey air. “The usual today?”
I nod as she pulls open the trunk, but she does not see me nod. “The usual?” she repeats.
“Yes.”
I hear the grinding, the whistling. I lean against the door, watching her work the machines, the buttons and dials, through the tinted windows.
No one ever needs a taxi to go anywhere anymore, but Ilana used to be a taxi driver, and everyone needs something to do with their time.
Finally, she offers me a heavy travel mug. I switch my briefcase in my hands and take it from her. The coffee is warm. It smells pleasantly bitter.
No one ever needs a taxi to go anywhere anymore, but everyone will always need a café, a watering hole, a joint, a tea room, even if it goes around on four wheels. The more wheels, the better.
“Two units,” she declares.
“I’m sorry,” I answer. “I don’t have any credit right now.”
“That’s fine. But you’re running up quite a tab.”
“Buy a newspaper, and we’ll be even.”
“Publish good news, and I will. Publish anything at all, and I’ll think about it. But that still won’t make us even.”
“How much do I owe you now?”
“About two-hundred-and-twenty units total. And I intend to collect.”
“It’s just never an easy economy for journalists, is it?” I shrug, crossing towards Ferule 210. “Well, when you feel compelled to make your collection, you know where I live.”
“That mean I can take your laptop?” she yells behind me.
I do not answer. The banter is pleasant, if routine. I always wish that I had more to say to her, but I can never think of the words until afterwards. I can never remember them either. I hear the car door open and close, and the rumble and purr recede and turn down another corner, immediately onto Fifth Street.
I check my watch: 7:10 a.m. Time to run. Time to reach the other side of the Crossroads. Time to jump over the storm sewer, the drain bristling with hundreds of dangling fishhooks, the drains where water runs and it never rains. Time to run past the fire hydrant buried in a mound of earth, past the smashed-open ATM, past the bike rack full of bikes, bikes with flat, ragged tires. There are no bikers in the streets.
And there are not enough bikers anymore for the dozens of bikes rusting in their racks.
The front door of Ferule 210 squeaks as I drag it open. I sprint through the lofty, modern lobby–which is to say that it looks like a bank–towards the nearest elevator.
Once inside, I press three buttons: five, eight, and twelve.
The elevator doors close.
Five: a background of stacked chairs and musical equipment, a puzzle of desks crammed together at crooked angles, a long table in the foreground.
Two people sit at opposite ends of the central table.
The first, Alexa Thompson, is holding onto a thin stack of papers, scribbling notes into the margins, keeping rhythm with her index finger, tapping her left foot at the same time, raising and lowering her eyebrows according to whatever is on the page, rocking her head back and forth at intervals.
The second is Michael Thompson–Alexa’s husband–a man wearing thick headphones, sitting in front of a computer rested atop a hefty audio interface.
Everyone needs something to do. Together, the pair make music, some of the only surviving human melodies. She sings. He edits.
“Hi,” I offer.
Both of them wave, without looking up. They say nothing.
Sitting at a desk barely visible through the elevator doors, Penn and Finn, the Thompson’s young twin boys, turn and stare at me. One holds a sharp pen. The other holds a crayon. Their identical pastel shirts look like they have been cut in half, then sewn back together.
“Hi,” I pipe up again, in the twins’ direction.
They wave. They say nothing. They turn back to whatever they are drawing.
Everyone needs something to do here, in that which remains. Even children need something to do.
The elevator doors close.
Eight: a floor emptied of all desks, of all cubicles, though certainly not empty. Reams-worth of papers hang upon rows of clotheslines that span the entire floor. If one were to compare any two adjacent sheets at a momentary first glance, one might imagine that the sketches drafted upon them were perfectly identical, though one’s imagination would be proven wrong at a second glance. Scanning from one end of a row to the other, one’s eyes would soon begin to detect the minor shifts and changes, the minor distortions that, all run together, might create a sort of life.
On those hanging pages, a figure flourishes a pointed rod, and, from an ignition of colorful sparks and brandished effusions, a skyscraper surges upwards out of the loose ground.
Everyone needs something to do, and A.A. does something beautiful, almost magical.
They are not out amongst the rows of drawings, though I see a light on in the window of their office, a light that distinguishes the purple script painted on the glass: A.A. Karume, Roto-Dendron Animation. For a moment, I consider getting out to stop in and say hello, but my watch says 7:15 a.m. and I should not stay longer.
There is no sign of their son Elmore either.
The elevator doors close.
Twelve: I get out here, into a small room with white leather furniture and blank posters. There is no one at the reception desk. This does not surprise me. I pass freely through the open threshold into the bullpen.
It is silent.
It is still.
This is the home of The Gsburne Gazette: The Voice of Gsburne Block, or at least that is what has been written on the sign. The word “Block” sits above the crossed-out word “Quarter.” I made this correction myself.
I traverse the grey carpet to my desk, just a meter or so off from the center of the room. My watch tells me that it is 7:17 a.m. Right on time.
I do not sit down.
I continue moving. I go to the window that overlooks Third Street; I never feel compelled to look out the opposite window above Fifth Street, for there is nothing worth seeing there. I do not want to see what is out there. So I look down to the road full of cars but no drivers, the sidewalk with bikes but no bikers, but a slight, stray movement catches my eye.
A figure stands in front of one of the pillars of the Corolla Investments Obelisk, and scarlet issues forth from their hands. It is Elmore, spray-painting something on the pillar.
Edgar will not be pleased.
Perhaps that is a good thing. I smile.
I cannot see what the scarlet forms.
***
Everyone needs something to do.
Carlton runs a hotel. Ilana makes coffee for the residents. The Thompsons makes music. A.A. Karume animates cartoons. The children have their own imaginations and ambitions.
I have always been a journalist.
I am the only employee of The Gsburne Gazette.
I am the editor. I am the photographer. I am the reporter. I am the printer. I am a source.
I am the photographer, though I cannot find a camera anywhere, and there are vacant places in which I neither hope to find one nor wish to look.
I was not always the only employee of The Gsburne Gazette. I once had co-workers, and I once had a partner. I try not to think about them. I find that it is almost all-too-easy not to think about them, no matter how hard I sometimes strive to remember. Sometimes, I can almost remember them, but only in the same way that one sees animals in passing clouds or a map in the stains at the bottom of a used coffee cup.
I have always been a journalist, but I am a journalist without a world, and, without a world, no one needs a journalist anymore. I am not sure if there are any stories left to tell.
I do not need to look at my computer screen to see the headline, unchanged and unchanging, the headline that, at one time, I had used only as a placeholder title. I do not need to look at my computer to see that the faux headline is the only thing on the page.
Perhaps it is not a placeholder anymore: THE WAY THINGS ARE.
I do not want to think about the way things are.
I try not to think about the fact that the photographs propped up in frames on so many other desks are either faded or blank. I try not to think about the fact that every single piece of paper, on every desk in the office except mine, is blank.
I try not to think about the emptiness.
I try not to think about the desk opposite mine.
I try not to think about the fact that half of the photograph on my own desk is missing.
I try.
I fail.
Perhaps that is for the best.
But it is still silent.
And it is still still.
***
I order lunch at the Green Apple, the lounge of the Hotel Perianth. It consists of an egg salad sandwich and a dill pickle. It costs me thirty cents.
I pay with a quarter and a nickel that I dig out of my coat pocket and place them on the bar.
The face on the quarter is George Washington’s. I do not know who that is.
The face on the nickel is not Thomas Jefferson’s. I do not know whose it is. I do not know who Thomas Jefferson is.
Perhaps that is for the best.
The sandwich and dill pickle are on the counter in front of me, though no one has brought them to me.
There is no one around.
I eat lunch alone. The pickle crunches between my teeth. The vinegar brine burns my dry lips.
***
I look at my watch. The time reads 2:40 p.m. I get up from my desk, and the page I am working on is still blank, except for the headline. It is not that I did not try writing: it is that every line I have written so far lives only a few moments before it is erased. It is that, to my eyes, most of the lines hold no words at all, only meaning, if even that.
The time reads 2:41 p.m. It is almost time. I go to the elevator, descend to the lobby, cross the street, enter the lobby of the Obelisk.
The Obelisk’s atrium, in keeping with the antiquity of the marker from which the building derives its name, looks almost like the interior of an ancient temple–which is to say that it looks like a wholesale ancient temple, exactly how someone would imagine an ancient temple to look if they had learned about one only by hearsay, the idea of a temple without any actual counterpart–though there is something of a Neo-Gothic cathedral to it as well. Immense blocks and columns, of several shades of stone, interrupt the echo of the high, vaulted ceiling, an ornate patina of unrecognizable patterns. Broken monitors hang off the sides of every block. Broken stone–some larger fragments, others fine as dust–piles up around the columns, away from the central paths where shoes tread and feet stomp. I kick one of the fragments on the margins over, one with a circle stamped into its face.
Like many ancient temples–though, come to think of it, I cannot recall having ever seen any ancient temples myself–the room is not without its occupants, not without its art: statues barely bodies–not merely stone bodies, no, for these statues are bodies barely solid, barely whole, resisting flesh, resisting softness too, only jointed sharpness, as though someone took crooked geometric forms and crammed them together into a passingly humanoid silhouette; almost like a mannequin, almost like their faces are mountain faces–crags, not features.
I cannot recall the last time I saw a mountain.
Mustered from the stone, willing or not, these beings have risen, have emerged, not so much carved as battered. One of the statues remains unfinished, the level stone rising around its waist. I think that they are beautiful. I think that they are irreplaceable.
In this less-than-ancient, ancient place, Dahlia, the once and present landlord of Sepal Apartments, makes statues from the unused, otherwise useless stone. Although inhuman, these bodies still manage to make this chosen sanctuary feel a little less empty. Everybody needs something to do, and Dahlia has chosen to make us company.
Between the blocks and columns, I see the center, the circle of folding chairs. A.A. comes up alongside me, them walking more briskly than my meander. “Have you seen Elmore?” they ask.
“Yes, earlier. Not for a few hours though.”
“Edgar’s going to be pissed,” A.A. observes, not really needing to be more specific. He is not wrong.
“I thought the exact same thing.” A.A. looks worried. “Please don’t sweat it. I’m sure that El’ll be here soon, and, as for Ed,” I say, leaning in closer, “he can fuck off.”
We reach our respective chairs, A.A. two to the left from me. The others trickle in. Carlton sits to my right, right next to me.
Herman Leslie sits to my left. Herman is an old man, and I do not think that I have ever seen him wearing anything less than a solid three layers, his withered, overworked hands and unbuttoned sleeves gaping from beneath a cardigan and a second jacket. He works as an interior designer. He is the one who is willing to venture into the vacant rooms to see what remains, to see what things might have some value to us, remaining. He is the only one.
Everyone needs something to do.
Last week, he offered me a new lamp, a cheese grater, a piggy bank without eyes, and a small painting of a streetlamp. I did not take them.
The time reads 2:47 p.m. The twelve chairs are full: myself, Herman, A.A., Elmore, Alexa, Finn, Penn, Michael, Dahlia, Edgar, Ilana, Carlton. All of us are here. We are the only ones here. We are the only ones left.
Meeting has begun.
“Call to order!” Dahlia resounds, snapping her fingers twice. Her hands look dry; her fingers are bright red, probably from working with the stone. “The rooms?”
“The doors are silent,” we answer, nearly in unison. We have gotten quite good at it.
We know that we are, every one of us, lying, but we have gotten quite good at that too.
“Anything else to report?”
I see him already. Edgar “You Can Call Me Ed” Nielsen, a man who ties his ties too tight, is sitting on the edge of his seat, his voice moving before his tongue can even form words. “Uh, I believe that we all noticed the message that Elmore left out front for us. Would he care to explain further what exactly he is trying to do and why, why he chose to say it by ruining the outside of one of our buildings?”
Elmore shakes his head no, but he also chooses to say, to punctuate it, “No.”
Ed smiles, though it is not a real smile. It is teeth. “Then, you won’t mind washing it off?”
“No. I’m not gonna do that. I, I worked hard on it.”
“I know that I don’t speak for everyone, but I don’t think that matters. I don’t want to think about the question. And I’m sure that I’m not the only one.”
“Question?”
“In the middle. Under the drawing of the bridge and that, wedge, thing.”
“Oh, that one.”
“Yes.”
“You’d rather ignore it?”
“I want it gone.”
“I don’t think it’s hurting anyone, Ed. Just let the kid leave it up,” Ilana sighs, hugging her arms to her chest.
Ed does not take his eyes off of Elmore. “That’s not true. This is not the first time that he’s done something like this. Vandalized our community property. Ours! Without discussing it with all of us. Are we going to let him get away with it twice?”
Elwood says nothing. A.A. looks more worried than he does, though I think there is also something more than worry. There’s something of despair in their eyebrows, something fainter of defiance and courage in their eyes.
I hear Carlton speak, though I do not look in his direction. It would be awkward to turn my neck that far. But I wish that I was looking at him. “As I recall, Elwood’s first works were not vandalism. They were corrections. That we all should have made, already.”
“This is not the time to moralize about that,” Ed spit, forcing out his words. “You refuse to listen to me. To what I’m actually saying, you never do, but I don’t want to talk about that again.” He points out, through the columns, towards the entrance. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about that! And none of us do!”
Dahlia snaps three times. “That’s enough. We spent three Meetings on a similar topic. Precedent was set. The point is moot. As for the current offense, if it offends you, Ed, then don’t look at it. Okay?”
“I think it’s fucking ugly,” Ed mutters under his breath.
A.A. stands up now, nervousness becoming something else definite. “Don’t you dare say that! Don’t you dare say that!” Elmore reaches for their arm and guides them back down again. “Don’t you dare insult my son!”
The room falls silent.
Michael stands, looking to each of us, individually. Finally, he speaks. “Everyone needs something to do.”
“Everything needs something to do,” we all murmur.
Everyone needs something to do.
Michael returns to his seat.
The argument is over.
One of the television screens, one of the ones hanging low to the ground, though its cords are still linked, and its block remains untouched, comes to life for a moment, an image that emerges from flurried pixels of static snow. I can only see the image on the screen in its reflection on the ground: it is of something metal, and horizontal, and slotted, and there is some kind of symbol in the middle. It is the front of some vehicle rushing forward. A car. The grill of a car. The screen cuts out and cracks, the cables severing, the screen hanging only by its metal extender. Ilana turns to look at the shattered thing, though not for long. She is the only one to acknowledge the sound in any way, though she says nothing. I do not believe that anyone else noticed the image on the monitor. If they did, they are not going to admit it.
“Anything else to report?” Dahlia resumes.
We say nothing.
Two snaps break out. “Meeting adjourned.”
Gradually, some of us stand up. Carlton stands with me. I finally look at him. “Well, bye. Seeya later,” is all I say, as I let go of my chair and, waving, walk backwards towards the main doors.
When I get outside, I stop and shake my head. That is when I finally decide to look at it. The time reads 3:01 p.m. I should go. But I decide to really look at it.
On a wide pillar, there is the wedge-thing, though I do not recognize the wedge-thing, and there is the bridge, and there are clouds, and there are eyes, and there is a stone face with wings, and there are other shapes of liquid bevels, and there are some painted words too, a question:
WHAT HAPPENED
TO
FOURTH STREET?
And there is no answer.
And there is no Fourth Street either.
Perhaps that is for the best.
***
I do not look at my watch, but the time reads 7:02 p.m. Though never quite visible through the blue fog, the sun has sunk beneath the equally invisible horizon. The office is dark, except for my single lamp. I leave the bulb burning, like an empty theatre’s ghost light and with much the same intention: to appease spirits, bodiless, formless, lost, unseen.
For the sixth time that day, I get into the elevator.
The floor grumbles and shakes, shudders as it sinks. The lobby button is flashing; all the buttons are flashing, and the elevator lights start to do the same overhead. I do not feel the elevator moving anymore. My ankles feel cold. Then, everything goes dark.
My knees grow cold. I cannot feel the elevator moving, though splintered shadows lapse across the thin gap between the doors.
My waist grows cold, and now it is gushing its way into my chest, pressing down on my lungs. I have forgotten how to breathe. The buttons start flickering again, random bursts of light in the metal casing, like the blinking eyes of a cartoon cat, like the many mouths of some snapping monster, like the flashing bulb of a camera.
I cannot move.
I am the photographer now, though I cannot find a camera anywhere, and there are vacant places in which I neither hope to find one nor wish to look.
I was not always the photographer.
The elevator doors open.
I stumble, half-fall out.
The elevator doors close.
I do not stop moving. I must not let myself stop moving. For the sixth time that day, I cross the lobby. I exit.
It is colder outside than it was before. Most of the streetlights are on, though not all. Some bulbs have given up. One bulb, at the other end of Wolfram Road near Second Street–Fifth Street behind me, Third right in front of me, Second beyond:
there is no fourth street,
why is there no Fourth Street?
what happened to Fourth Street?
WHAT HAPPENED
TO
FOURTH STREET?
–pulses intermittently. Is it trying to tell me something?
I do not stop moving.
And I can hear the faint song weep between the trembling husks of the four towers. I am hungry, and I am still cold and getting colder, but I decide–and I always do–to go for a walk. My legs tread to the edge of Wolfram, between and beyond the shadow of the Obelisk and the apartments. I keep to the pavement, for in the darkness I know that at least this one grey strip should prove solid.
I do not stop moving.
I can hear the low song echo off the sides of glass and brick and steel and stone, sounding from every direction but within. The song: the sound, it sounds like if wind had lungs of its own, if wind could breathe like us.
I reach the end of the road, and there is little else: asphalt, the opposite sidewalk with edges crumbling away like a sandy shore, and then oblivion and fog–a fog that still retains its blue hue, even when daylight dwindles to night. I step carefully across to that shore of crumbling edges, and beneath it I think I see, I begin to see, the surface, the darkness that might have looked like just another road, like a mere extension or reflection of the adjacent street; like a road, it is only a few inches below the lip of the sidewalk, yet, unlike a road, it rolls and ripples and ricochets. It goes on forever; it comes back forever. Mist and spray spit up towards me as the depths collide with the concrete coast, almost as though the water is trying to overrun the land, almost as though it is trying to make contact, throwing itself forth in froth to meet me.
I do not touch the water, the water that reaches, the water that clings, the water that takes things away.
I do not touch the water.
I do not let the water touch me.
I follow the perimeter of the coast, tracing the rest of Second Street. And at times, the ground feels like it might give way, like the slabs could crack and split and plunge into this ocean of unknown breadth and depth and distance at any moment, and I with them. My steps feel like they strike hollow.
More than ever, I hear the song, the warped sound. I think that I hear it in the swells. I think that I hear it in the unseen currents. I think that I hear it in the fog. I think that I hear it. I think that I hear it elsewhere. It does not feel so distant anymore, not like it’s coming from something or somewhere outside myself. It feels like it’s already between my ears.
Sometimes, I like to pretend that the sound is the sound of whales.
I do not know what a whale sounds like. I do not know what a whale looks like.
Perhaps that is for the best.
But I miss knowing.
Reaching the corner, I turn onto Pantaleon Drive, just another strand of narrow land along the adjacent abyss. Towards the middle, I see a distant figure moving towards me. I recognize the profile: bulking creases around the shoulders, from a third jacket. Herman has decided to go for a walk too.
“Good evening!” I yell to him.
“Is it?”
“I hope so!”
We say nothing for a while, as we draw steadily closer. Neither of us quickens or slows our pace.
“I was hoping that I might run into you,” he says, now well within earshot. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“I can hardly remember the last time I did either.”
“It shouldn’t be hard for someone as, let’s just say, as advanced in years as I am, but I’m afraid of what I might forget.”
“Yeah.”
We meet each other on the path. Immediately, he reaches out and takes me by the hand, and I feel him press something rigid and rectangular into my palm. When he lets go, I look at it. It is a peculiarly hoary pocket knife, its grey handle dulled and dense with scratches.
“Why?” I ask.
“I want you to have it.”
I cradle it with both hands, keeping it poised on my fingertips, not yet willing to accept it fully into my grasp. “Where did you get it?”
“It’s mine.”
“Why?” I ask again, but the word is different, and it nearly catches in my throat. Before, the monosyllabic question had emerged from the mystery of why he was giving it to me. Now, somehow without any real alteration, the same single word held within itself the new burden of why he was giving it to me.
He smirks, or maybe it is a grimace. He sighs. “Not all of us are going to get out of this. You know that. At least not whole.”
“Why would you say something like that?”
He turns to the water. “You understand. You know it’s true.”
“Why?” I ask him, starting to sound more like an echo than a person, and already knowing the answer. I want the answer. I want to hear him say it.
“Because you remember Joyce.”
I nod. I hold onto the name. I hold onto the knife more firmly, until I deliver it into my coat pocket. “Thank you,” I finally murmur, regarding more than just the knife, though before I know it, before I can speak back the name to him, before I can turn that movement of my heart and grief into a word, I find myself changing the subject. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“The knife or the name?”
“The song.”
Herman steps back. His lips tighten, and his wrinkles tighten around them. I watch him tilt his head a little more. Finally, he answers, “I can’t hear anything.”
I cannot tell if he is lying.
I cannot tell him what the song sounds like either, that it reminds me of a whale’s hum or a tune about rainbows to which I have forgotten the words.
“I can’t hear it,” he insists. “I never could.” He shakes his head. He mutters, moving again, passing me by, “have a good one.”
I resume my walk, but I hear him yell behind me, distant, like a confession, “I don’t think I’m going to get out of this!” I can hardly hear him above the song. “I know that I’m not!”
I do not stop moving, not even for his confession.
I do not touch the water.
I do not let the water touch me.
No one remembers themselves without the Deluge, the water that quenches both everything and nothing, everyone and no one.
No one remembers the world beyond the Deluge, the water that washes all things away, that ends all roads, that coils round our refuge of four towers and tightens. No one remembers if there ever even was a world beyond the Deluge.
No one remembers the time before the Deluge. No one remembers when there were more of us than twelve. No one remembers how we found our way to Gsburne Block, the last safe place. No one remembers the name of the city that Gsburne Block was once a part of, nor the people whom we left behind, nor the people who left us.
No one remembers the time before the Deluge, the water that cannot possibly be water, not mere water.
No one needs to remember. No one chooses to remember.
Perhaps that is for the best.
WHAT HAPPENED
TO FOURTH STREET?
And what happened to the world?
No one will admit it.
***
My plate is full. I am not entirely certain what I am eating, and there is no one to ask, for no one brought it to me. It was there.
I decided to eat a late dinner at The Black Raven, the premier restaurant of the Hotel Perianth. It is the only public place to dine at besides the lounge–and the diner at the Crossroads has long been boarded up, though I can still sometimes hear the jukebox crooning inside–and I wanted something more substantial than tapas or a sandwich.
I cut into the main block of food, the metal edge of my knife squeaking against the ceramic beneath; it comes apart like some kind of meat, a more fibrous meat, and beneath the grey sauce there are grill marks. It smells almost a little salty. I know that it is not beef, or not what I imagine beef to be. It could be chicken. I will assume that it is chicken. I choose not to guess much about the mash next to it, covered in some kind of red dust, nor do I question the tender, green disks scattered around the rim of my dish.
I taste the meat. It is a little sour, a little smoky. Above all, it is warm. It is what it needs to be.
I sit and chew, breathing out through my nose. I do not know what to think about, nothing but the kitchen door and the back of the restaurant–ahead of me, a large painting of a knight upon some inhuman creature with four legs–so I choose to think about the way the flame of the candle dances upon the wick. I wish that I knew how to dance like that, to burn like that. I wish that I had someone to dance like that with, to burn like that with.
It approaches like the frantic ringing of a dull bell. I turn, and my smile is met by another. Carlton holds his own plate, the fork and knife rattling against the surface. He is coming my way.
“Mind if I sit here?” he asks, pointing an elbow at the open seat across from me.
“Sure. I mean, no. Or, uh, I don’t mind.”
He sets down his plate. “Let me grab my drink real quick.”
“Sure.”
He returns with a shallow glass of wine.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
I take another bite of the meat that might be chicken.
“So, how was the rest of your day?”
“Normal. Yours?”
“Normal’s good. Mine was as busy as ever. Lots to maintain around the premises, as you know. Polishing all the mirrors, mopping all the floors, arranging the vases.” He cuts through the same sort of fibrous grey meat. If I did not know better, I might have thought that it was identical to my own, not just the same meal, not just the same plating, the same basic arrangement, but the same meal. A perfect copy. But I know better.
“How do you like it?” he asks through a mouthful, pointing firmly with his fork.
“It’s really good.”
“I spent all afternoon making it.” He is beaming with pride, genuine pride. I look down at the mash with greater attention, reshaping it, shaving the edges, but its grainy texture resists my molding. I do not see how he could have made it; when I returned, he was in the lobby, behind the concierge table, almost exactly where I left him at the start of the day. I never saw him enter or exit the kitchen.
No one brought it to me. It was there.
Carlton breaks the silence where I should have responded, “it’s halibut.” I do not know what halibut is, but I assume that it is a kind of chicken.
“Where did you get it from?” I put down my fork.
“It was my mother’s recipe. I could give it to you sometime.”
“Where did you get the ingredients?”
“We already had them. The fridges are full of all kinds of things I don’t even know how to use!”
But no one brought it to me.
He rests his hands on the table. “Did you write anything new today?”
“I tried. I couldn’t.”
He moves his right hand further towards mine, but stops, patting the table. The candle on the table lingers at the same low height, but I feel myself growing warmer. “Maybe take a break from reading. Find something else to read.”
“There is nothing else to read.”
“Then try writing something different. Interview one of us.”
“I could interview you.”
“Yes. Yes, you could. Or you could always try writing fiction. Write anything. Anything you need to write.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.” He withdraws his hand, rubbing it against his chin. “Is it just harder now, without-,” he begins, but I interrupt him.
“Please don’t worry about it.”
“Look, I know that I don’t remember her, but maybe actually talking about her, and what she meant to you, will help.” I open my mouth. “But I don’t know.”
“Maybe someday. Not tonight, Carlton. Thank you. Let’s talk about something else.”
And so we talk about something else, something other than the food. Or the scarlet question. Or the water, the water that takes lives. Or malfunctioning elevators. We laugh. As always, he smiles.
Our plates are empty.
“Meet me in room 707,” he whispers, though there is no one else at any of the other candle-lit tables who might hear him. “Once you’re finished with your doors.”
***
The knock goes unanswered, and, not slowing down, I move onto the next door.
Another knock, another silence, another door. Another knock, another silence, another door. Another knock, another silence, another door, until I am finished with every door on the floor, and every floor between the basement and the sixth. In the neighboring buildings, the others are doing the same. In the Hotel Perianth, Carlton is my partner; he’s checking every door from the seventh to the top. We do this every single night.
We must. Everyone needs something to do, and we need to do this.
Another knock, another door.
Sometimes after I knock on a door, I can imagine that I hear the faintest whisper of movement from inside the room. I pretend that, behind that relatively thin slab, there are parties happening, or two children, siblings, jumping on the bed, or an older couple watching television in their pajamas, one of them falling asleep less than ten minutes into the show. Behind the basement door, I imagine that there is an elaborate show buzzing and brimming, wafting smoke and red dresses and red nails. I almost find the thought comforting.
Yet sometimes I am not convinced that I am imagining the sound behind a door after all. Sometimes I am not always able to convince myself. And I find this less comforting.
Nor am I the only one to have heard movement inside an empty room.
The first time, Alexa was checking the doors on the sixth floor of Sepal. The hallways have an L shape, and, when she passed around the inner corner of the L, she heard behind her an insistent thumping.
In apartment 7E, someone was knocking from the inside.
Almost immediately, twelve of us–I remember twelve of us–gathered outside the apartment. None of us had the key, not even Dahlia, though she was the landlord. For nearly an hour, Herman tried to pick the lock without any luck; he was less experienced back then, though he still insists that the pins resisted him, that they not only refused to budge but seemed to chew and grate away at his nimble picks, snapping them off in the keyhole.
The first time, we had no other option against the relentless knocks: we knocked down the door, cracked the room open like an egg, torn across and asunder like the lid of a can of tomato soup.
The first time, the knocking did not stop when the door was removed from its hinges, left prostrate in the entrance. The knocking survived. We stepped over the door and passed through the empty threshold. As we did, the source of the sound switched directions. Whereas it had always been coming from inside the room, now it seemed to have moved behind us, like it came from the hallway. Yet as we went to follow it, filtering into the corridor, the sound receded back into the room, remaining ever ahead of us, ever behind us. The back-and-forth continued until, divided on either side of the doorway, some of us could hardly bear to realize the truth: the knocking was coming from the door itself, like the door had a heart, like the door had a heartbeat, like beneath its heavy wooden shell was throbbing flesh.
Nor did the knocking stop when Ed, yelling furiously and grabbing a hold of a fire extinguisher in the corridor, as Finn cried behind his father and Penn looked on with wide eyes, spent hours and hours smashing the door down into scraps and splinters. The former architect thrashed the thing, desperate to kill the sound. No, not even then did the knocking stop. The beat only ceased when we finally threw the fragments of the door off the edge of the block into the water, the water that washes all things away, the water that embraces all voices in its infinite gullet.
The second time, when Dahlia heard a scream from a maintenance closet on the third floor of the Obelisk, Herman managed to unlock the door. On the other side, there was no one there. On the other side, the far wall looked like it had been melted, bulging like the amorphous sediment that oozes inside deep caves.
And it has happened more than twice. It has happened to all of us.
We have never caught whoever might be inside these rooms.
We have never caught whatever might be inside these rooms.
Perhaps that is for the best.
Yet sometimes, a fear manages to break in upon my own: will whatever is inside someday catch us?
Another knock, another door, and this time Carlton answers it.
***
Room 707 looks nearly identical to mine: the same layout, the same furniture, the same broken doorstop. Carlton and I sit at opposite ends of the admittedly small couch, watching an episode of some old black-and-white show, a grainy episode about a group of people stuck together aboard a plane, which they think might be about to crash.
I do not know why we are sitting so far apart, but in dim moments I look at him, at his upright quiff of sandy hair and at the locks that have broken free, hanging down, pointing between his firm, glacial eyes and, even further down, to his lips.
I know that I wish that we were closer together.
He gasps, his lips parting, and I turn back to the show. A woman has stabbed one of her fellow passengers with a pen, the pen that that same passenger had offered to her when the episode started.
I do not touch Carlton.
He does not touch me.
Perhaps that is for the best.
I cannot tell if that is for the best.
***
I return to my room. Maybe someday I will check out of Room 313–one day, I will leave this place–but not tonight.
I take off my shirt and pants, hanging them over the back of the chair.
Through the sheer curtains, I check the constellations of that ever-reliable urban zodiac impressed upon the face of the borough, and all is exactly as it should be: the faintest glimmer of my ghost light on the twelfth floor of Ferule, above A.A.’s red lights on the eighth, and, only visible if I press my face up against the chilly glass, Ed’s radiant floodlights at the very top floor of the Obelisk, and the brass ruddiness of Alexa and Michael’s family room lamps on the sixth floor of Sepal, and the few other familiar vertexes of illuminated windows. I find this comforting.
All is exactly as it has always been.
All else is dim and empty. There is no life through the other gaps and panes.
Though I am certain there are enough lost lives to fill every room.
I climb into bed.
I am not certain if I will be able to fall asleep.
Perhaps that is for the best.
I close my eyes.
