Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

people closest to the wall. The light was already dimming in my hands, probably after hours of zigzags and figure eights. Just my luck, I thought—

Then I saw a head of shiny black curls directly below me; I might not have been sure except for the shiny blond head with her.

“Quinn!” I screamed.

She and Martin looked up at me along with at least thirty other people. Quinn was surprised, as if she had forgotten I was even here. Martin’s expression was a mix of dismay and vague puzzlement. He didn’t recognize me, I realized.

“Quinn, we have to go home now!” I hollered.

She made an annoyed face before turning away to argue with Martin. He wasn’t having any: He kept interrupting her and gesturing at me, all the while shaking his head emphatically. No, no, a thousand times no.

“Quinn, he said no; now let’s go home!” My throat was getting raw. I had to get down. But how? I tried to talk to the people around me to ask them to help me down, lower me down or something, but no one was listening now. They’d just hug me or kiss me and go on dancing or cheering. I crouched down, trying to estimate by sight how long the drop would be if I were to hang by my hands and let my feet dangle. Too far not to get hurt, I decided. Assuming I actually could have dangled my own body weight by my hands for longer than an eighth of a second.

Martin gestured at me again—no, not me, the wall—and pushed Quinn back a couple of feet. She tried to move toward him, but the people directly behind her grabbed her and held her back. Not roughly, but firmly, so that she could barely move. Were all those people with Martin? Who were they? I couldn’t see their faces very well at this angle but some of them had the same shade of blond hair.

Martin’s family? Then they’d gotten through from East Berlin. Or some of them had gotten through and they were here at the wall waiting for the rest? But why here? Why not at one of the actual gates, where people were coming through on foot or in their cars so the West Berliners could pound dents into them?

All at once there was an incredibly loud buzzing whine that startled me so much I nearly fell. Several feet to my right, I saw a fountain of sparks—another power saw. The hell with rubble; grab some power tools and cut yourself a whole panel. People on top of the wall and below were cheering. Except for Martin and the people with him, I saw; they actually looked scared.

Quinn was still struggling to get free. Martin seemed to be telling the people who had her to hold her tighter. Then he turned to face the wall and put both hands on the stone.

I could actually hear my sister screaming above the power saw as Martin moved closer to the wall in tiny, shuffling steps. The angle made it impossible to see what he was doing; for that matter, I couldn’t even see him anymore. There was no way to lean forward without taking a header off the top. I lay down on my stomach so I could see what was directly below me.

The people holding Quinn hadn’t moved, and Quinn still twisted in their grip, but I couldn’t see Martin. I inched forward, scanning the people on either side of the spot where he had been standing, but he wasn’t among them. And the spot where he had been remained clear: No one crowded in, almost as if an unseen barrier were keeping them back.

Quinn lifted her tearful face to look at me. I was trying to think of something to say to her, when Martin came through the wall.

The actual movement itself seemed so normal that I almost ignored it. Then I did what I can only describe as a mental double take. By that time, Martin was standing in front of the wall embracing an older woman shaking as she sobbed in his arms.

They came through the wall. They came through the Berlin Wall. Except, I remembered, some people had trouble getting through the wall. Some people got stuck.…

My rational mind was telling me I was tripping on the atmosphere, jet lag, beer, and possibly something my beer had been spiked with. But my rational mind was very small and very, very far away. What I was seeing told me that I had to get Quinn out of the way before she screwed things up.

“Quinn!” I bellowed. “We have to leave! We’re in the way!”

Martin, the woman who I figured was his mother, and everyone else looked up at me. I got up and moved down several feet, trying to show them in sign language what I wanted to do. Even finally getting some help from the people up on the wall with me, however, I couldn’t get close enough to the ground to jump without hurting myself. Then a few of the people holding Quinn gave her over briefly to Martin, who tolerated her clinging to him for the time it took for them to catch me. Still, it wasn’t fun: the fall knocked the breath out of me.

Martin’s people probably were family; close up, the resemblance was very strong. They didn’t have much English but enough to make it clear that I had to catch my breath quickly and take my sister away. I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to do that, considering it had taken four of them to hang on to her, all of whom looked a lot stronger than I was. But I guess all the struggling had tired her out. I didn’t need much help to peel her off Martin, and once I got her back into the thick of the crowd, she wouldn’t be able to push her way through them to get back to Martin.

“Thank you,” he said to me in a voice that was somehow both formal and warm. “It takes all of us to will it. I can’t take her, too. We’d never get out, we’d die in there. I’m sorry, Quinn, I am.” He bent to kiss her. “Go. This isn’t for you.”

“No, I can help,” Quinn wailed. I turned her around, grabbed her waist, and pushed her into the crowd ahead of me. “Jean, don’t, I love him—”

“Just stay out of it,” I growled, wincing at the growing soreness in my throat. I’d been shouting so much I was going to lose my voice. “This isn’t your fight. Not this part.”

“You saw it, though, right?” She twisted out of my grip and turned to face me. “You saw; now you know!”

“Yeah, I saw, I know, and tomorrow I’ll fall out of bed and it’ll all be a dream. Cliché ending, but if it works, it works. Let’s go.”

“No, I want to be there for him, I want to help! I want to be part of it!” Quinn tried to push past me, but I’d been right: She had no strength left now.

“You can’t,” I rasped. “You’re not part of it, you can’t be, you never could have been. They’re them and we’re us.”

“But he showed me—”

“His mistake. People make mistakes when they think they’re all alone.”

“That’s not it—”

“Quinn! That is it. Now we have to let him get the rest of his family out.” The image of the woman I’d seen chipping pieces out of the wall popped into my mind, tossing some pieces away, keeping others, kissing them before she put them in her bag. Because she couldn’t get her own people out? Why not?

Because they had died in there. The answer came unbidden and with a certainty I couldn’t justify. I shoved the thought aside, telling myself that when I woke up tomorrow, I’d have forgotten all about it

“I can help!” she insisted, trying to lunge past me again.

“You can’t!” I pushed her back hard. “You don’t belong with them; you’re not special, you have no place in any unseen world; you’re like me and the rest of our family. Get used to it!”

She looked at me like I’d slapped her.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, feeling equally stung by her reaction. “It’s hell being ordinary, but that’s the human condition.”

All the fight went out of her then, and she let me take her back to the Am Zoo.

The next morning I paid the horrendous bill and we flew back to the United States. Quinn wouldn’t talk to me for most of the trip home, which didn’t bother me much. I was too busy sleeping. The more time I could spend unconscious after that, the less real it seemed and the saner I felt.

Quinn eventually started speaking to me again but never about that night in Berlin. From time to time, I’ve been tempted to bring it up but I know that would just be asking for trouble.

I’m much more curious about what happened with Martin and his family—if he got them all out, where they are now. I’m pretty sure Quinn never heard anything from him. I don’t know for certain but I’d bet money that she