mother’s when she had been handed some cryptic crayon drawing:
“I come up with these thematic blocks, and nobody out there ever catches onto them.” Uncle Twitch looked disconsolate. “No one recognizes subtext anymore. I work among philistines.”
Adrienne glanced at the two windows, long and narrow and overlooking the concrete dance floor like gunports in a fortress. Beneath them were makeshift shelves for the CD players, a tape deck, a turntable, a mixer, the amplifier. She looked for someplace safe to rest her glass but there was none.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe there’s no incentive to tell you.”
Twitch looked at her, open-mouthed and perfectly still, then nodded sharply. He reached up to seize a microphone and lever it down before his face. Flipped a switch and his voice cut in over the music like that of an angry prophet: “
“Subtle,” said Clay.
Cheers and jeers from the dance floor; from some unseen quarter most of a cup of draft beer came showering across one window, and Twitch cackled loudly. “
He settled, finally looked at Clay. Warmly, she noticed, a small smile creeping onto the corners of a mouth that looked given to smiling frequently, almost against its will.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he told Clay, lightly, though not without concern. For a moment Twitch looked as if he intended to hug him, then consciously forced it away, as if even an arm tossed about Clay’s shoulders for a few seconds would be too much, either feared or unwanted. Worse, it appeared mutually understood.
Here they lingered, the booth calm and cool, a hurricane’s eye in fragile isolation from the chaos just yards away. While Clay and Twitch conversed, she remained at one window, a staring face washed black and blue and purple, the colors of fresh bruises. She could watch with more removal than she could ever have summoned at one of the tables; out there a patron, in here an interloper who watched dancers that did not so much dance as spasm, less from celebration than the vaguest kind of rage. The music was well chosen here, the sound of a world grinding its children into grease to lubricate its machines. Here the defiant could stave off that fate awhile longer; or maybe they mocked it, or simply rehearsed the moment when they too would be fed struggling into the maw, like their parents before them. Or perhaps they worshiped it instead, without even realizing; gods took many forms, and the new ones were no less thirsty for blood than the forgotten ancient deities; they just waited until it was spilled in newer ways.
Clay decided to leave the booth long enough to return to the bar, and she decided against following, risking the impression she was dogging his every step.
“He told us,” said Twitch, soon.
“Excuse me?”
“About being a freak.”
Adrienne turned from the window. “That’s not the terminology I like to use.”
“I think
“And I don’t.”
Twitch nodded with appeasement — not worth arguing about. At once she found something endearing in his clumsy way of trying to steer out of this.
“He can be so honest about himself, in the strangest ways,” Twitch mused, hands moving restlessly over knobs and switches and sliders, as if they found comfort there. “Is it… is it dangerous for him?”
Adrienne sagged, hands in her pockets. “I can’t answer that. I wouldn’t if I could.”
“He thinks it is. Isn’t that all that matters?”
No, but that was most of it, so much so that there was no need to refute. Clay was back soon, spent a few more minutes in the booth before deciding to return to the table. She came along this time, eyes drawn to the reality screen in spite of herself, where a man sat placid and shaven-headed, eyes catatonic, while doctors probed into his opened skull; one cheek ticked as if jerked by a puppeteer.
At their table they found that Erin had left for the dance floor, while Nina sat holding a morosely stupefied Graham as he sagged against her side. His expression looked like something that someone had crumpled up and cast away. He might have been crying recently, or not; most certainly he was drunk beyond repair. And Nina, eyes full of pity, as if she was not sure what else she could feel… she held him, and kissed his forehead, and brushed the hair from his eyes when it fell there. Whatever she whispered into his ear was lost to the greater din.
Clay nudged Adrienne’s foot to get her attention.
“Told you, you’re not in Kansas anymore,” he said, and drew out a chair and sat heavily upon it, to wait… until, she supposed, the night ended.
Fifteen
Quincy Market was one of Boston’s main melting pots, and that was why Patrick Valentine loved it so. It was more than just the food, although that was incentive enough. Here, all the cuisines of the world converged, small counter stands packed along a gray stone hall that looked more suited to housing a wing of government. You could walk from end to end, side to side, slowly, taking time to breathe, to savor, and conduct a global tour via aromas alone.
Or you could sit and watch the passing humanity, and the world would come to you. He knew of no place else where he could see such diversity among those with whom he had to share the planet, and it always did him good to keep in touch this way, keep him mindful of why he was
Sometimes he indulged fervid old fantasies, imagining the break in the humdrum that he could bring to the herds who came to feed with firm belief that the day would be a day like all others. How many could he kill in, say, five minutes of forever? He was a man who knew weaponry, who had made it his business, and his hands seemed made to hold it. His fingers and palms fit machine-tooled steel as the hands of passionate men fit their lovers. With the compression of one index finger he could awaken them all from their walking comas, and bring home to them the truth of the world, and worlds beyond: All things tend toward entropy.
But not today; not ever. How he had managed to quell such impulses as a younger man remained elusive, but mystery augmented relief; surely some greater process had been at work to stay his trigger finger. Ignorant of his heritage then, and now wiser by extremes, he had a greater purpose, the best kind: one he had created for himself.
A Thursday afternoon; alone, then not. The man who joined Valentine at his table brought with him the scent of a shivering city and breath that smelled of cherry throat lozenges.
“Are you eating today?” Valentine asked him.
The man coughed into his fist and shook his head, eyes red and watery as he tried to smooth his graying, gale-blown hair. He owned, by many accounts, one of the finest minds in a city filled with exceptional minds, but publicly downplayed it well enough. Stanley Wyzkall may have been the director of applied research in MacNealy Biotech’s genetics division, but it was possible that rumors were true: His wife was in charge of his wardrobe.
“Something to drink, then?” Valentine asked, and Wyzkall told him a hot coffee would be nice. He left to patronize a Greek vendor, souvlaki for himself and coffee for them both. When he returned he found a fat manila envelope waiting on his side of the table, and it was just like Christmas, six weeks early.
“Hello, hello,” he said to the envelope, snatching it up. Papers spilled into his hand but gold dust could have been no more welcome. Medical profiles, psychological evaluations, MMPI results, subject’s history… enough to keep him engrossed for hours.
“Quite the unique extended family you’ve grouped about yourself.” Wyzkall honked his nose into a napkin before bringing the coffee to his lips, two-handed.
“And he actually consented to continued observation,” said Valentine, still scanning pages. He then crushed them to his chest in the closest thing to glee he could feel. “Maybe there
“Mmm. Possibly. But defined by a keen sense of the absurd, wouldn’t you say?”
