Metrophage

'We were dying,' she said quietly, almost whispering. 'I watched you staring out the window night after night like you were working on some puzzle, trying to put it together in your mind. Sumi fiddling with her circuit boards. We were all together, but we might as well have been on different continents.'

Jonny shrugged. 'Let's face it, we have to keep a little detached in our work to stay sane. Sometimes that spills over. But we can fix that.'

'But there's more than that,' said Ice. 'Have you ever heard of the Spectacle?'

'No.'

'It's a political theory. Groucho talks about it. He's kind of our leader around here. Says the Spectacle is the way the government keeps control. It sets up these mysterious and complex systems like restrictions on medical service, the Committee, it makes the Arabs and the Alpha Rats into icons of evil. That way, it keeps us isolated and makes us feel like we don't have any control over our own lives.'

'And you think the three of us got eaten up by the Spectacle?'

'Yeah,' said Ice. 'Do you understand what I'm saying? '

As Jonny he sat up, Ice rolled off his lap and lay down beside him. 'I understand it's all very easy to argue in the abstract,' he said.

'Talking politics is a good way to avoid what really hurts.'

Ice looked at her hands, lines of tension deepening around her eyes. 'I was sick,' she said. 'I didn't love you. I didn't love Sumi. I was hollow and dead and there was nothing inside me but dust and dry bones. I don't think you want to understand.'

'That's not true.' Jonny reached under her shirt and rubbed the small of her back. 'We're back together; that's what counts. We'll get Sumi and work the rest of it out.'

'For what it's worth, I'm sorry,' Ice said.

'So am I. I wish I'd seen you needed help back at the old place.'

Ice smiling guardedly, and rested her hand on his stomach.

Under her fingers, Jonny became aware of the steady rhythm of his own breathing. He groped for something to say to ease the tension, but nothing came to him. 'We kept your stupid Samba tapes,' he offered finally. That made her laugh. Jonny broke up, too, and they lay on the futon giggling like idiots until she pulled him to her.

He bent to her breasts, pulling her shirt off over her head, finding her penny-colored nipples with his tongue. Ice arched her back, tugging off her pants and tossing them away, cupping his testicles on the return motion. She pushed Jonny onto his back, rubbing herself along the shaft of his erect penis. When she lowered herself upon him, he held her for a moment, struck again by a cold deja vu, needing to confirm for himself the reality of her presence, the flesh that held him. She gave a little grunt as he entered her; her face eased of tension for the first time since he had woken.

They moved slowly at first, drawing out each thrust (damp friction), the motion resolving itself at the moment of greatest tension, and beginning again. He came quickly, unexpectedly, and she, a moment later.

They lay there, clinging to each other damply, unwilling and unable to do anything else. Jonny traced the outline of her shoulder blades with his fingers. She closed her eyes, her feathery breath coming cool across his chest.

Later he asked, 'So what do we do about getting Sumi?'

Ice sat up, wiping sweat from her eyes. 'We talk to Groucho and see if he has any ideas.'

'You called him 'your leader'? I didn't think anarquistas had leaders.'

'Every group has leaders,' Ice said evenly. 'What the Croakers shun are rulers.'

'Shun. Jesus, you really are one of them, aren't you?'

'I really am,' she said somewhat wickedly.

'What would your poor mother think?'

'My mama was a Hollywood whore and so was yours.' Ice rolled off the bed onto her feet and clapped her hands. 'Come on, you have to move around or you're going to get stiff.'

When Jonny stood up, he caught his reflection in the aluminum housing of a portable CT scanner. 'I look like a goddam mummy,' he said.

'You look fine. Let's see how you walk.'

Standing, Jonny found his balance shot by the combination of long sleep and drugs. With his arm around Ice's shoulder, he made it around the room a few times, his legs feeling stronger with each circuit. However, he was aware of not yet thinking straight. There was something he had to do. Twenty hours sleep was a long time.

'How long had he wandered in the sewers? What time is it?' he asked.

'About four in the afternoon.' said Ice, glancing at her watch.

'What day?'

'Wednesday.'

Jonny concentrated, trying to force the fog from his brain. He counted backwards; the numbers stumbled by. Eventually, the answer seemed right, or at least close enough. 'Six hours,' he said.

'Six hours what?'

'In six hours Colonel Zamora declares open season on me.'

Ice handed him a set of green nylon overalls with the Pemex logo stenciled on the back. Under the breast pocket was a small hole surrounded by a suggestive rust-colored stain.

'Welcome to the club,' she said.

Ice lead him through three levels of absolute darkness, through crawl spaces damp with leakage from underground pipes, up frozen escalators and an elevator shaft where they stood on a section of heavy wire mesh barely a half-meter square and were lifted slowly by a retrofit electric dumb waiter. At the top of the shaft Jonny was engulfed in stars. A three hundred and sixty degree panorama of open space swung slowly around him, illuminating the tile walls with solar flares and star fire. It was like nothing he had ever seen sober.

He said, 'I'm seeing this, right? This isn't just brain damage or something?'

'Don't worry,' said Ice. Some lunatic dragged a Zeiss projector from the planetarium and reassembled it down here. We got it hooked to a satellite dish top-side. Pulls down signals from some old NASA probe. You know, Jonny…'

Ice took his hand and lead him to the edge of a subway platform, then down onto the tracks. '…things get a little strange here sometimes. I mean, we're all dedicated anarquistas, but we're also artists. Some of us more than others.'

'You an artist, too?' asked Jonny.

Ice shrugged. Only where stars marked her face could Jonny see her, her dark features blending evenly with the black of space.

'I'm not a painter or a sculptor, if that's what you mean. Art here means more than that. It's a way of looking at the world; a state of mind. I just don't want you to make any quick judgments about these people.'

'You afraid I might not like your revolution?'

'You work very hard at being cynical, I know that. But what we're doing down here means something. It's not just revolution we're after. It's political alchemy.'

'What does that mean?'

'We're out to change the world.'

Jonny scratched at his injured shoulder. 'Sounds great,' he said. 'Just hope I have the shoes to go with it.'

As they moved beyond the star fields, they were plunged back into darkness. Ice pulled Jonny to one side of the tracks and said, 'Don't step on any wires. Some of 'em are dummies. Cables hooked up to vacuum alarms.' Jonny was impressed with the sureness of Ice's moves in the dark tunnels. Whatever she had been doing with the Croakers for the last year had revitalized her. Jonny thought back on the last months he and Ice and Sumi had lived together. It was just as Ice described it. Stasis. The long, slow surrender of emotions to habit. Things could be different now, he thought. He reached for her shoulder in the darkness, and felt her hand close around his. Up ahead, there was light on the tracks.

'This is it,' said Ice evenly. But Jonny could see she was trying to contain her excitement. 'Your gonna love this. We're right on the edge of the clinic.'

Voices echoed around the edges of the tunnel, blending to become a single voice whispering in a language Jonny could not understand. As they approached the light, the sound deepened, was joined by the astringent smell