Weatherhead Page 18

  So, what’s the frequency of Weatherhead?

  She only looked down. It was her. This was patently obvious. Her dominion over them all, over him was something far, far deeper than mere beatings and lashes—no, they had to be part of her song, her martyrless symphony—he cursed himself for having forgotten her heartbeat. He’d gathered the pieces of it up once. Did he really think he could do it again?

  It depends, she answered hesitantly, today it is—she consulted the chart on her left arm—D. It tends to fluctuate between D and D# minor.

  He didn’t get it. Maggie Mechaine had never been musical. Pitches were to be hit, not sung. But was there any rhyme or reason to Weatherhead? You look a lot like my wife. The charade made him risk this. She didn’t react. She was either playing along or—it wasn’t actually her. Funny thing is—was—she was about as musical as your hat. Take your hat off.

  “No way,” her hands left his biceps where they’d dug and clamped down on the beret. Her hips, however, did not stop their overture.

  All have songs of a kind. Some are jarring marches, discordant black songs—some are what we call lilylilts or sprungstring, guillotunes or bruisicals—all for the four tones of Love—

  She’d titled her head up slightly. The bottom of her chin—he found himself wondering. Her hat slipped off. She was suddenly the office nobody, but just for an instant.

  And what’s yours? He slid his hand into her shirt and pressed two fingertips to the bare skin over her heart.

  Her eyelashes fluttered and her breath hitched. A m-major, now—

  He stared down at the red sea part of her hair, that white line where prophets could escape down the back of her neck. Then the moment was lost. She snatched his hand away from her breast and twisted his wrist and with a cry, he bent to the side with her. Dammit—

  He couldn’t help crying, You’re afraid of me, why?

  Abyss and smudge, she spat at him, herself once more. My children died in a blizzard in a kingdom far from here. Exposed to ice that cut your eyes and the frost that burned your breath, made it boil away into flakes before you could even get it out. Don’t talk to me about fear. In that land where I came from, people drink fear with dinner. She pressed down on his wrist and arm. He was on his knees now, again, in her thrall, where he belonged. How could he have thought she’d ever have opened up to him, remembered anything? Beast.

  In Weatherhead, everything functions according to my whimsy. The drivers for instance. They must be at certain times at certain places. I have—a chart—a chart somewhere, she looked confused on a sudden, where did I put it— for routes and crashes and collisions.

  Just let me go and I’ll leave you be—please—

  He looked up at her: he had chosen to stay—now only she could let him leave. She was dressed as she always was, in her grey and grey tunic, vest, coat, and trousers, dirty and mean and low, low down. She’d just been a nurse a moment before—

  All in this city lies white in my lap. Even the nurses. Sickness and cure—it’s all the same to me. I have no end and no beginning here. She released him. Together they walked outside as if nothing had happened. She rolled up her sleeve and ran her finger over the notes there, mouthing them soundlessly to herself. E flat. Pitch low—Magnus—

  He couldn’t hear the rest.

  Finally she cried, A lover’s pitch!

  That’s what I’ve heard. Best to just nod and agree, he decided, for now. But he hailed his tiny victory, the tiny chink he pretended he’d made in there. He squinted at the sign on the door. She saw this and nodded. You’re wondering about the symbol? What do you think? An arrogant letter ‘a’? A pretty girl’s eye and lash? Some people think it’s sperm—what do you think?

  (21 Down) I am the Thickness of Bees.

  Her face was orange from the magma separating them.

  The smell of roses brought him there to this place of chemical weddings. It was a foundry or forge of some kind where he found her holding court that morning. A blistered placard hung askew on the simple metal door read: “Ashfall”. Inside, around a central pit were ranged twenty or thirty people. They were all holding balloons. It took him a moment to spot her—the glare from the slag in the pit turned everyone orange and white but then he saw movement in the front row facing him and he saw her. She was wearing a long welder’s apron and mask. The latter was tipped back on her greasy, spiky hair. Her smart trim professionalism of the day before had been traded for the grime and smear of industry. But what—

  She saw him and nodded. She was poling and probing the slag with a long, blackened oar while the others watched, rapt. The air was thick and smashed the lungs in. She was addressing the assembled in a low voice, but he couldn’t make out her words over the roar of the machinery in this place. He approached the flaring pit and shouldered his way into the crowd, peering down inside. She was saying,

  Many things arouse the senses. Shamans, for one. Man’s purple apostrophe. Woman’s illiterate comma and its vapors. She knelt down. Christ, he leapt forward, she’s gonna get burned alive—but she snapped her hand back and tapped him on the brow with the end of her oar and he reeled back into the soot. Everyone clapped. She smiled and tilted her head to acknowledge their gushing admiration and went on, We must absolve all these things of blame, though. Who hasn’t sought solace in the alphabet’s warm clutches? Why! This fellow here—and she indicated him, cradling his head in agony just behind her—this fellow, new to Weatherhead, even he seeks sanctuary in speculations in maths and words—‘names’ they call them in lands beyond our fair city—miscalculations and misspellings both of what lies behind our deserted faces. See—before he could leap up again to stop her she sank her hand down into the magma.

  Everyone gasped and moved back, fearful of the rage that pain gave her. She laughed, laughed so hard the welder’s mask slipped off her oily almost-black-then hair and landed on his foot. Then her eyes narrowed and the growl caught up to the rest of her—See. What you call heat, what you call fire—she lifted a cupped hand, unharmed, out of the slag. It dripped down between her fingers—I call misplaced optimism. She flung aside the burning blob and wiped her hand on her apron. She stood up. You who would see me burn—in. She looked around the crowd. No one moved or said anything. He was still just behind her, staring at the opposite row of people between her legs. None of you, she went on, may translate death into language. None of you. She looked back at him then. So, those who wished my hand to ash—dive in. It did me no harm. But I do not blasphemy the lie. Do you?

  To his horror, one by one, some in silence, some with horrific, piercing screams, they threw themselves into the pit. As each person did, the balloons they were holding were released and drifted lazily up away from their melting former owners and bobbed about in a cluster against the black roof.

  He clambered to his feet, head still drum from her love-tap and roared at the side of her face. She ignored him, eyes aflare, reflecting the thrashings in the orange at her feet. Then, You ask why and how could I but you are a greater fool than I thought. There are no heliums in Weatherhead, haven’t been for years—

  Then how do they float, he found himself asking, lowering his fists.

  She knelt down again and stroked the roil of the molten. They had balloons in their pockets, too, but not inflated. It was not only a test of fealty—who would see me burn this hand— She turned her hand over, letting slag course through the cracks on the back of her hand—it was a test of lightness. Which balloon would float? If it’d been the one in the pocket, they would’ve been saved from blasphemy.

  He was lost. But those were empty. There’s no way they could’ve been saved.

  The lie here is death. I don’t pretend to it. I don’t pervert it with further lies. Thus, the lie of the fire does me no harm. I do not blasphemy the lie of the thing. I accept it for what it is, which is what it isn’t. The same principle applies to the balloons. Would they had accepted the lie of the empty lightness, then they would’ve floated up, not down.
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br />   He pointed at the ceiling. Why did those ones float, then? What’s in them?

  Why, you’re dimmer than dim! Lies, of course! They keep us aloft. You of all people should know that. They didn’t accept the lie like I did. I see the lies in everything, even you, stranger. The fire is a lie and so is emptiness, lightness, and death. The balloons they carried with them, which had in them, mind you, various expressions of happiness and sadness, for variety’s sake, though this didn’t weigh in on the final result, were lies.

  You’re out of your fucking mind, he snapped.

  No. I’m out of yours.

  Someone burst through the door, interrupting the madness. Her eyes went to the voice without looking, her head stayed down. There’s been a breakout at the zoo! came from her elbow.

  Her grin wolf leapt up out of her bitter rum face. She turned it up to him. He involuntarily took a step back. You’re registered now, I heard. She leaned the oar against her left arm, pushed up her sleeve and squinted at the writing on her arm. From the skin on her arm he could see she’d been glued back together at some point. He felt ill. D flat major. She thrust the oar at the fawning specter next to her and walked a few paces away. She cleared her throat and sang gruffly to herself for a minute or two. Run the hunt with me now that we’re in tune. I can deputize you.

  Sure, was all he could muster. There was a zoo in Weatherhead? Maybe that was where they kept all the children. There were no children in Weatherhead.

  She cried with joy, Come! We can run the beasts together!

  And they did. They outflanked fears and traced their indelicate way in every direction through the city and infinite misdirection disguised from him the true names of the beasts penned in Weatherhead’s zoo. Throughout the long, dusty day, he never actually saw them, though she, racing on all fours, filthy hair trailing behind her tossing head, shot glances down parallel alleys calling out to him to veer left and right and they’d be sure to cut them off, so, go, prey, climb up through the city turned on its edge, make your claim against Melville and if he didn’t know any better he’d say something red or re-red had spawned back behind his throat for no matter how much his arms and legs burned, no matter how much he wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into the flank or backside of the phantom roaring back at him—Faster! Faster! Faster!—he knew that all things are united. There was an indecipherable hunger that drove him, projecting intuitions back onto something imprecise, a page that curled under fire—what was that that had been drawn on it? Were his fingers black from pencil scrum or the asphalts of the streets as they chased the beasts of Weatherhead?

  Their clothes were actors shed as the tragedy commenced, cast cast off , all bone broke to her pattern and he was committed to follow suit, tearing at the false skin—she rose up for a moment, throwing her hand out, There! and they darted left, dashing over crates and debris towards the dream of walking like men that dogged them so, but, try as he might, he could neither see nor spy any beasts and felt the effort futile enough that he doubted he could tease a single globe of spit out to throw at her back. When she saw him slackening, she screamed, Chase! Committed to the very idea of the lie of this hunt, he obeyed, drawing even despite his screeching limbs, running alongside her upright, but as the hours passed and he became less certain as to their prey or their likelihood of ever catching it, he went down on his hands and feet, like she did.

  Of what she spoke as they tore through the city, he could never remember. She was the destroyer, she insisted. When they chanced through crowds, she’d reach out and slash at the faces of her people, then point these injuries out when they passed the marred face again an hour or two later. The beasts had been there, she cautioned, they must be close. She nodded to herself. He hung his head, no longer watching their course, seeing their beaten prints of hours before passing beneath him, eying the dust and filth caught in the mesh of his chest and pubis, the same-soled tire tracks that dogged their trail. She galloped sidelong, watching the nearby streets. They had, she informed him, managed to corral most of the beasts into one of the denser, more demolished sections of the city, with less opportunity for escape.

  No feast before the hunt, she grinned evilly back at him, eyes flashing with a madness that would eat dogshit. On and on and on they ran. Sometimes he could hear her above the rush and rapids of his hitching, heaving breath. He thought she was discussing the beasts, describing the quality of their hides, their sweetmeats—his head swam. They only paused once, shortly after she declared the beasts contained, so she could lap at her reflection in a muddy puddle and then they were off again, the sole source of warmth in them not blood, but hunger, for on her cracked and pale body now streaked with cuts and dusts, there was only a dream of blood and cages: the privileges of living under her rule did not extend to the beasts, she told him as they leapt from wall to wall down a narrow, disused street, and all the beasts would receive now for their pains would be the blessing of her teeth pulling at the bony elastic of their faces.

  He chased the lie chasing the lie. Who was she anyway? She looked familiar. Why wouldn’t she make it rain? It’d feel nice to just stand, snout up, and wash off all this city. This sort of dangling dream made him imagine a god’s-eye view of her buttocks bucking against him and he shook himself out of his feral reverie. Pain swished like a skirt against his thighs.

  By early evening, he realized that they were chasing themselves. She’d stopped, sniffing at a welder’s apron that looked familiar even to him. Here, she motioned him over with a flick of her paw, one of them dropped this. She had long ago stripped naked for the chase, he thought, her chapped and cracked skin had goaded him all day, just ahead of him, ripple and curse. He was naked, too, he realized. And which who was he?

  He crawled over, exhausted and slumped forward into the dust. His knees were torn, knees bloodied, his hands riddled with gravel and splinters. He poked at the discarded clothes. These—these are yours, he panted.

  Suddenly, she seized him by his hair and jerked his face up. Do you understand now? We are lies.

  Yes, I understand—just, please—can we stop? We can’t catch them—

  You are thirsty. She forced his mouth open and leaned over him spitting into his mouth. She clamped his jaw shut. You’re right. We’ll never catch up to them. She looked up, studying the dying day. Try as you might, beasts have guardian elements. They have—

  She never saw the truck coming at her. She was standing over him, looming over him lying wracked and spit-shin in the street. It must’ve been following them, waiting for them to finally stop, for it aced around a corner and, spotting them there, roared into velocity. He, who had just momentarily lost his center of definition, saw it approach through the pale keyhole between her naked legs and the magnitude of this cheap annihilation filled him with horror. He lurched forward, slinging his arms around her knees, face buried in her unspeakables and threw her with all of his might out of the path of chrome. He closed his eyes and waited to feel like Maggie Mechaine but—

  All was still, and then she started laughing. She laughed and laughed and laughed, leaning forward on her skinned, chafed knees like Maggie Mechaine always did. He opened one eye. The truck’s bumper was mere inches from his skull. The lights were on but the engine’s tumult had ceased. He climbed awkwardly to his feet. She was gasping with hilarity, putting a hand out to lean on the truck’s hood, her other to her busting gut. Between eye—ha hahaha—and intention—hahaha!—there is only one thing: terror! She turned and leaned back against the truck, convulsing with gaiety. He laid his hand on the hood. Was the engine still warm? Had there been a truck? Or was it a phantasm, a lie, like the beasts? No—it was quite real. It was also quite empty.

  She held her hand over her mouth, unable to contain her giggles, and put her head next to his, peering into the cab. Trucks won’t drive themselves, she said.

  ⧜

  He knew this kind of ebullient terror to be true. There’d been uneasy dew on her brow and upper lip all week. He could s
ee it through the mesh of the screen, saw it darken the pores of the divider between them when she pressed her ghastly face to it. This window looked out onto the lake. She looked ill, clammy, more so because of the wide white strain of a rictus smile pulled taut across the bottom of her face.

  He got to his feet. “What’s wrong?” He abandoned his tackle. Last he’d left her, she’d been inside reading, he thought. They’d been in this place for almost a real, whole week, sharing a cabin with a couple he worked with, he homicide and over pouring with murder, she narcotics and over pouring with chemistry. All of this conspired against Maggie Mechaine and her overpowering atmospheres.

  “We should never have come here,” she whispered. She haunted the window frame, first her face, then both her hands pressed against the screen. There was dew on her palms, too. It left little handprints next to the two arcs made by her face. Alarmed, he put his nose and hands against hers. With only a thin veneer of holey fabric separating their respective existences, he felt her shakes.

  “Jesus, Mags—“ he shook his head and pushed the door open, “c’mon—“

  Twenty minutes later, she drew a crawl of fog across the lake, thicker than view and she arrested panic, spiritually downwind from her tormentors in the cabin. She nodded at him sagely from her end of the canoe as if she’d just expounded something profound when in fact all she’d done was show him how much salvation she could fit between her cheeks. How wide is wide enough for the stupid squirrel that collects fog for winter? She’d tried, he knew, tried to temper herself to half-lit tallow beating its pathetic beacon out over what was left of her sorry, pathetic freedoms—she’d even snuck off into the woods the first few times, but she’d returned red-eyed, stuttering and with the worst poison ivy he’d ever seen covering her feet and shins. So he’d taken to rowing her out to the middle of the lake or a nearby cove so she could powder puff her face and lungs.