"Well, thank you," he said.
"Bye," they said.
Link's gaze bored into the spot between his shoulder blades the whole
way to the end of the block.
#
The back-alleys of Kensington were a maze of coach houses, fences, dead
ends and narrow doorways. Kids who knew their secrets played ball-hockey
nearly undisturbed by cars, junkies turned them into reeking pissoirs,
homeless people dossed down in the lees of their low, crazy-angled
buildings, teenagers came and necked around corners.
But Alan knew their secrets. He'd seen the aerial maps, and he'd
clambered their length and breadth and height with Kurt, checking sight
lines for his network, sticking virtual pushpins into the map on his
screen where he thought he could get some real benefit out of an access
point.
So once he reached Kensington Avenue, he slipped behind a Guyanese patty
stand and stepped through a wooden gate and began to make his way to the
back of Kurt's place. Cautiously.
From behind, the riot of colors and the ramshackle signs and subculture
of Kensington was revealed as a superfice, a skin stretched over
slightly daggy brick two-stories with tiny yards and tumbledown
garages. From behind, he could be walking the back ways of any anonymous
housing development, a no-personality greyzone of nothing and no one.
The sun went behind a cloud and the whole scene turned into something
monochromatic, a black-and-white clip from an old home movie.
Carefully, he proceeded. Carefully, slipping from doorway to doorway,
slipping up the alleyway to the next, to the corner that led to the
alley that led to Kurt's. Carefully, listening, watching.
And he managed to sneak up on Krishna and Davey, and he knew that for
once, he'd be in the position to throw the rocks.
Krishna sat with his back against the cinderblock wall near Kurt's back
door, knees and hands splayed, head down in a posture of
supplication. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, which he nervously
shifted from corner to corner, like a soggy toothpick. Behind him,
standing atop the dented and scabrous garbage cans, Dumont.
He rested his head on his folded arms, which he rested on the sill, and
he stood on tiptoe to see in the window.
"I'm hungry," Krishna said. "I want to go get some food. Can I go and
get food and come back?"
"Quiet," Dewayne said. "Not another fucking word, you sack of shit." He
said it quietly in a neutral tone that was belied by his words. He
settled his head back on his folded forearms like a babe settling its
head in a bosom and looked back through the window. "Ah," he said, like
he had taken a drink.
Krishna climbed slowly to his feet and stood off a pace or two, staring
at Drew. He reached into the pocket of his old bomber jacket and found a
lighter and flicked it nervously a couple times.
"Don't you light that cigarette," Davey said. "Don't you dare."
"How long are we going to be here?" Krishna's whine was utterly devoid
of his customary swagger.
"What kind of person is he?" Davey said. "What kind of person is he? He
is in love with my brother, looks at him with cow-eyes when he sees him,
hangs on his words like a love-struck girl." He laughed nastily. "Like
*your* love-struck girl, like she looks at him.
"I wonder if he's had her yet. Do you think he has?"
"I don't care," Krishna said petulantly, and levered himself to his
feet. He began to pace and Alan hastily backed himself into the doorway
he'd been hiding in. "She's mine, no matter who she's fucking. I *own*
her."
"Look at that," Darrel said. "Look at him talking to them, his little
army, like a general giving them a pep talk. He got that from my
brother, I'm sure. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of manipulators
who run other people's lives."
Alan's stomach clenched in on itself, and his butt and thighs ached
suddenly, like he'd been running hard. He thought about his protégés
with their shops and their young employees, learning the trade from them
as they'd learned it from him. How long had Don been watching him?
"When are we going to do it?" Krishna spat out his cigarette and shook
another out of his pack and stuck it in his mouth.
"Don't light it," Drew said. "We're going to do it when I say it's time
to do it. You have to watch first -- watching is the most important
part. It's how you find out what needs doing and to whom. It's how you
find out where you can do the most damage."
"I know what needs doing," Krishna said. "We can just go in there and
trash the place and fuck him up. That'd suit me just fine. Send the
right message, too."
Danny hopped down off the trash can abruptly and Krishna froze in his
paces at the dry rasp of hard blackened skin on the pavement. Davey
walked toward him in a bowlegged, splay-hipped gait that was more a
scuttle than a walk, the motion of some inhuman creature not accustomed
to two legs.
"Have you ever watched your kind, ever? Do you understand them, even a
little? Just because you managed to get a little power over one of my
people, you think you understand it all. You don't. That one in there is
bone-loyal to my brother. If you vandalized his little shop, he'd just
go to my brother for protection and end up more loyal and more. Please
stop thinking you know anything, it'll make it much easier for us to get
along."
Krishna stiffened. "I know things," he said.
"Your pathetic little birdie girl is *nothing*," Davey said. He stumped
over to Krishna, stood almost on his toes, looking up at him. Krishna
took an involuntary step backward. "A little one-off, a changeling
without clan or magic of any kind."
Krishna stuck his balled fists into the pockets of his space-age
future-sarcastic jacket. "I know something about *you*," he said. "About
*your* kind."
"Oh, yes?" Davey's tone was low, dangerous.
"I know how to recognize you, even when you're passing for normal. I
know how to spot you in a crowd, in a second." He smiled. "You've been
watching my kind all your life, but I've been watching your kind for all
of *mine*. I've seen you on the subway and running corner stores,
teaching in classrooms and driving to work."
Davey smiled then, showing blackened stumps. "Yes, you can, you
certainly can." He reached out one small, delicate hand and stroked the
inside of Krishna's wrist. "You're very clever that way, you are."
Krishna closed his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose, as though
in pain or ecstasy. "That's a good skill to have."
They stood there for a moment while Davey slowly trailed his fingertips
over Krishna's wrist. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Krishna's thumb and
wrenched it far back. Krishna dropped abruptly to his knees, squeaking
in pain.
"You can spot my kind, but you know nothing about us. You *are* nothing,
do you understand me?" Krishna nodded slowly. Alan felt a sympathetic
ache in his thumb and a sympathetic grin on his face at the sight of
Krishna knelt down and made to acquiesce. "You understand me?" Krishna
nodded again.
Davey released him and he climbed slowly to his feet. Davey took his
wrist again, gently. "Let's get you something to eat," he said.
Before Alan knew it, they were nearly upon him, walking back down the
alley straight toward his hiding place. Blood roared in his ears and he
pressed his back up against the doorway. They were only a step or two
away, and after a couple of indiscreetly loud panting gasps, he clamped
his lips shut and held his breath.
There was no way they could miss him. He pressed his back harder against
the door, and it abruptly swung open and a cold hand wrapped itself
around his bicep and pulled his through into a darkened, oil- and
must-smelling garage.
He tripped over his own heel and started to go over, but a pair of hands
caught him and settled him gently to the floor.
"Quiet," came a hoarse whisper in a voice he could not place.
And then he knew who his rescuer was. He stood up silently and gave
Billy a long hug. He was as skinny as death.
#
Trey's phone number was still current in the video store's
database, so she called him.
"Hey, Trey," she said. "It's Lara."
"Lara, heeeeeeyyyy," he said, in a tone that left no doubt that
he was picturing her panties. "Sorry, your bro ain't here."
"Want to take me out to dinner tonight?"
The silence on the other end of the line made her want to laugh,
but she bit her lip and rolled her eyes and amused the girl
browsing the chop-socky epics and visibly eavesdropping.
"Trey?"
"Lara, uh, yes, I'd love to, sure. Is this like a group thing
or..."
"No, Trey, I thought I'd keep this between the two of us. I'll
be at the store until six -- meet me here?"
"Yeah, okay. Okay! Sure. I'll see you tonight."
#
Brad was so thin he looked like a corpse. He was still tall, though, and
his hair and beard were grown out into long, bad-smelling straggles of
knot and grime. In the half-light of the garage, he had the instantly
identifiable silhouette of a street person.
He gathered Adam up in a hug that reeked of piss and booze, a hug like a
bundle of twigs in his arms.
"I love you," he whispered.
Andrew backed away and held him at arm's length. His skin had gone to
deep creases lined with soot, his eyes filmed with something that looked
like pond scum.
"Brady. What are you doing here?"
He held a finger up to his lips, then opened the door again onto the
now-empty alley. Alan peered the way that Davey and Krishna had gone,
just in time to see them turn a distant corner.
"Give it another minute," Blake said, drawing the door nearly closed
again. A moment later, they heard another door open and then Kurt's
chain-draped boots jangled past, headed the other way. They listened to
them recede, and then Brian swung the door wide again.
"It's okay now," he said.
They stepped out into the sunlight and Bert started to walk slowly
away. Alan caught up with him and Bert took his arm with long bony
fingers, leaning on him. He had a slight limp.
"Where have you been?" Alan asked when they had gone halfway home
through deft, confident turnings led by Blake.
"Watching you," he said. "Of course. When I came to the city, I worked
out at the racetrack for a week and made enough money to live off of for
a couple months, and avoided the tough guys who watched me winning and
waited to catch me alone at the streetcar stop. I made enough and then I
went to watch you.
"I knew where you were, of course. Always knew where you were. I could
see you whenever I closed my eyes. I knew when you opened your shops and
I went by at night and in the busy parts of the day so that I could get
a better sense of them. I kept an eye on you, Alan, watched over you. I
had to get close enough to smell you and hear you and see you, though,
it wasn't enough to see you in my mind.
"Because I had to know the *why*. I could see the *what*, but I had to
know the *why* -- why were you opening your stores? Why were you saying
the things you said? I had to get close enough because from the outside,
it's impossible to tell if you're winking because you've got a secret,
or if you've got dust in your eye, or if you're making fun of someone
who's winking, or if you're trying out a wink to see how it might feel
later.
"It's been four years I've been watching you when I could, going back to
the track for more when I ran out of money, and you know what? I know
what you're doing."
Alan nodded. "Yeah," he said.
"You're watching. You're doing what I'm doing. You're watching them to
figure out what they're doing."
Alvin nodded. "Yeah," he said.
"You don't know any more about the world than I do."
Albert nodded. "Yeah," he said.
Billy shook his head and leaned more heavily on Alan's arm. "I want a
drink," he said.
"I've got some vodka in the freezer," Alan said.
"I'll take some of the Irish whiskey on the sideboard in the living
room."
Adam looked at him sharply and he shrugged and smiled an apologetic
smile. "I've been watching," he said.
They crossed the park together and Buddy stopped to look hard at the
fountain. "That's where he took Edward, right? I saw that."
"Yeah," Alvin said. "Do you know where he is now?"
"Yeah," Billy said. "Gone."
"Yeah," Adam said. "Yeah."
They started walking now, Billy's limp more pronounced.
"What's with your leg?"
"My foot. I lost a couple toes last year to frostbite and never got them
looked at properly." He reeked of piss and booze.
"They didn't...grow back?"
Bradley shook his head. "They didn't," he said. "Not mine. Hello,
Krishna," he said.
Alan looked to his neighbors' porch. Krishna stood there, stock still,
against the wall.
"Friend of yours, huh?" Krishna said. "Boyfriend?"
"He offered me a bottle of wine if I let him take me home," Bradley
said. "Best offer I had all week. Wanna make it a threesome? An *'ow you
say* 'mange ma twat?'"
Krishna contorted his face into an elaborate sneer. "Puke," he said.
"Bye, Krishna," Buddy said. Alan put his key into the lock and let them
in.
Blaine made a hobbling beeline for the sideboard and picked up the Jim
Beam Apollo 8 commemorative decanter that Adam kept full of Bushmills
1608 and poured himself a tall glass of it. He drank it back in two
swallows, then rolled his tongue around in his mouth with his eyes
closed while he breathed out the fumes.
"I have been thinking about that bottle ever since you bought it," he
said. "This stuff is legendary. God, that's good. I mean, that's fucking
magical."
"It's good," Andrew said. "You can have more if you want."
"Yeah," Burke said, and poured out another drink. He carried it and the
decanter to the sofa and settled into it. "Nice sofa," he said. "Nice
living room. Nice house. Not very normal, though."
"No," Andrew said. "I'm not fitting in very well."
"I fit in great." He drank back another glug of whiskey and poured out
another twenty dollars' worth. "Just great, it's the truth. I'm totally
invisible and indistinguishable. I've been sleeping at the Scott Mission
for six months now and no one has given me a second glance. They can't
even steal my stuff, because when they try, when they come for my shoes
or my food in the night, I'm always awake and watching them and just
shaking my head."
The whole living room stank of whiskey fumes with an ammoniac
tinge. "What if I find you some clothes and a towel?"
"Would I clean myself up? Would I get rid of this protective coloration
and become visible again?" He drank more, breathed out the fumes. "Sure,
why not. Why not. Time to be visible. You've seen me, Krishna's seen
me. Davey's gonna see me. Least I got to see them first."
And so he let his older brother lead him by the hand upstairs to the
bathroom with its damp-swollen paperbacks and framed kitsch-art
potty-training cartoons. And so he let his brother put him under the
stinging hot shower and shampoo his hair and scrub him vigorously with a
back brush, sluicing off the ground-in grime of the streets -- though
the calous pads on his hands remained as dark with soot as the feet of
an alleycat. And so he let his older brother wash the stumps of his toes
where the skin was just a waxy pucker of scar, like belly buttons, which
neither of them had.
And so he let his brother trim away his beard, first with scissors and
then with an electric razor, and so he let his brother brush out his
long hair and tie it back with an elastic taken from around a bunch of
broccoli in the vegetable crisper.
And so, by the time the work was done and he was dressed in too-big
clothes that hung over his sunken chest and spindly legs like a tent, he
was quite sober and quite clean and quite different.
"You look fine," Adam said, as Brent fingered his chin and watched the
reflection in the full-length mirror on the door of Alan's study. "You
look great."
"I look conspicuous. Visible. Used to be that eyes just slid off of
me. Now they'll come to rest on me, if only for a few seconds."
Andy nodded. "Sure, that's right. You know, being invisible isn't the
same as being normal. Normal people are visible."
"Yeah," Brad said, nodding miserably. He pawed again at the smooth
hollows of his cheeks.
"You can stay in here," Alan said, gesturing at his study. The desk and
his laptop and his little beginning of a story sat in the middle of the
room, surrounded by a litter of access points in various stages of
repair and printed literature full of optimistic, nontechnical
explanations of ParasiteNet. "I'll move all that stuff out."
"Yeah," Billy said. "You should. Just put it in the basement in
boxes. I've been watching you screw around with that wireless stuff and
you know, it's not real normal, either. It's pretty desperately
weird. Danny's right -- that Kurt guy, following you around, like he's
in love with you. That's not normal." He flushed, and his hands were in
fists. "Christ, Adam, you're living in this goddamned museum and nailing
those stupid science-fair projects to the sides of buildings. You've got
this comet tail of druggy kids following you around, buying dope with
the money they make off of the work they do for you. You're not just
visible, you're *strobing*, and you're so weird even *I* get the
crawlies around you."
His bare feet slapped the shining cool wood as he paced the room, lame
foot making a different sound from the good one.
Andy looked out the window at the green maple-keys rattling in the
wind. "They're buying drugs?"
Benny snorted. "You're bankrolling weekly heroin parties at two
warehouses on Oxford, and three raves a month down on Liberty Street."
He looked up at the ceiling. "Mimi's awake now," he said. "Better
introduce me."
Mimi kept her own schedule, mostly nocturnal, padding quietly around his
house while he slept, coming silently to bed after he rose, while he was
in the bathroom. She hadn't spoken a word to him in more than a week,
and he had said nothing to her. But for the snores and the warmth of the
bed when he lay down and the morning dishes in the sink, she might not
have been living with him at all. But for his constant awareness of her
presence in his house and but for the shirts with cut-away backs in the
laundry hamper, he might be living all on his own.
But for the knife that he found under the mattress, compass set into the
handle, serrated edge glinting, he might have forgotten those wings,
which drooped near to the floor now.
Footsteps crossing between the master bedroom and the bathroom. Pausing
at the top of the stairs. A soft cough.
"Alan?"
"It's okay, Mimi," he said.
She came down in a pair of his boxer shorts, with the topsheet
complicatedly draped over her chest in a way that left her wings
free. Their tips touched the ground.
"This is my brother Bentley," Adam said. "I told you about him."
"You can see the future," she said reproachfully.
"You have wings," he said.
She held out her hand and he shook it.
"I want breakfast," she said.
"Sounds good to me," Brent said.