Rooms are each Tomas to her, now, and doors are Kylies. She calls her left hand Chen, her right one Brandon, and the texture of the floor is Suzette. Her collection of baubles is Beauregard.
She doesn’t know where the names come from, but ever since that first scrap of paper they’ve been pouring into her. She tries to pour them, to apply them, just as fast. She wants the words for everything, but names are the only words she has.
She doesn’t know the need for food, but the need to name is a hunger. She calls the hunger Cosette.
Bart stoops on his way out the building, but there’s no headline to scan: the machine’s empty. Odd, he thinks–it’s pretty early in the day.
There’s nothing in the corner stand, or by the bus stop, and the shades are being pulled at the newsstand nearby. Bart’s getting annoyed with it all when he notices that everyone seems distracted, wandering, wearing identical vague frowns.
“Excuse me,” says a middle-aged Asian man, touching Bart’s shoulder. “Have you seen… the paper? Today?”
Bart’s teeth grate. “No,” he says, “in fact–”
But he’s already forgotten. “Unbelievable,” mutters the man, turning away. “Unbelievable.”
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
But when they get to the middle of the bridge there’s a piece missing, and worse: the other side is, somehow, about five feet off to the left.
Rob’s puzzled. “Earthquake?” he says. “But it looks like a clean break…”
“Stupidity,” cackles Darlene. “They each built their own side wrong and didn’t know until they got out here. ‘Friendly cities,’ hah! Only enemies can ever meet in the middle, I could have told them that.”
She jumps the diagonal easily–a jump she really shouldn’t be able to make–and strides on without looking back. Rob eyes the gap and swallows.
“Not boiling yet?” Kezbub asks. “Needs more salt.”
Gulbuth grunts and dumps some from the cast-iron shaker. There’s a high-pitched sound, like whistling, and the contents of the pot begin spreading away from its center. “Are they supposed to do that?” he asks, frowning over it.
“Stir it up a little,” advises Kezbub. “You don’t want them sticking to he sides.”
Soon, the whistling stops, and the pot is bubbling evenly. It smells delicious.
“Let’s see if they’re done.” Kezbub leans in again, spearing the water with one hooked claw, and flings a tiny pink body toward the icebox.
It sticks.
Carol rolls another tennis ball through the red trough, winds up and whips it at the wall. It smacks hard and rebounds, leaving an oblong mark with a clean ring between it and the splatter halo. Perfect. She, Kristoff and May are all covered with paint now–she’s glad they wore shower caps.
The house is new to them but older than their parents. How many times, Carol wonders, has it been painted, owned and stripped again? Who hung posters and paintings here? What did the children draw, on the walls of this room, when they were making it their own?
Maddy likes her new camera, and she’s filling it up tonight. She gets Gene yawning monstrously, J.P. wearing a tiny coat, and Annabelle and Vey flipping it like Johnny Cash. She sneaks a shot up Ruth’s skirt; Ruth laughs, smacks her upside the head and kisses her. It’s a good night.
She’s heading for the porch when suddenly there’s Kent. He looks bored, but the corners of his eyes say he’s just held together: a landslide on a leash. It’s painful to see. Maddy feels herself sober up.
“Been a bad day,” he mutters.
Maddy nods slowly, then takes his picture.
Melody can’t get her hair to tousle. It should be wild but balanced, abstract, a glossy composition. Her blonde tips are all off on the left, though, and she has no gloss. The last time her hair was glossy, she was ten, itching in an Easter dress at an interminable luncheon where the only drink was iced tea. She skinned her knee, a habit she still hasn’t lost, along with the hated baby cheek-fat that will probably be there forever. It’s solidifying, cured like concrete by the sullen dignity she learned nine Easters ago to carry her through the longest days.
What most people don’t know is that he’s not just down in the bore with a powder charge. It’d shred him, for one thing, and he wouldn’t go particularly far. Instead, he sits in a concave dish, which will be caught by the tapered rim and transfer its momentum to him on the way out.
Kirby adjusts his cape, making sure it’s not caught under his feet, and checks the helmet strap. It’s just about boomtime. The quiet three-beep countdown begins; he flexes his knees, gets his tongue out of his teeth and prepares his bowels for the majesty of flight.
Elliot’s watching the light from her room. He’s memorized it, fourth floor of the dorm, three from the right. He can’t help but quicken his step a little more, and remembers an old daydream: straight up the wall, so easy, scampering like Spider-Man through her window.
The stairs will do, though. He bounds up them in threes. Elliot’s breathing hard by the top, but it blends with the rush of reaching her door at last; he spills into a delighted smile, into the arms of a girl who smells like sun and looks like the best part of a bad movie.