The tower’s three stories, ten butts in diameter, which means–what, thinks Alder. Seventy-fiveish cigarettes a level? Seventy-five square, or hexagonal–whatever.
There’s enough carbon monoxide in this hallway to make passersby stumble. Unless that’s exhaustion: halfway through the reunion and they’re all lumped together to sleep, or sneaking off to not; she and Sid and Lacey smoke and stack.
What would five hundred kids who weren’t “gifted” do differently? Break more windows, she thinks. Maybe that’s why Alder and everyone are here: because even with the waste of their addictions, they have to build and build and build.
It’s a strange kind of anonymous intimacy, thinks Ishmael, like old-style confession, or purchased sex. They’ve got maybe two feet of space between them. They’re each engaged in a very private activity, each pretending he can’t hear.
There’s the contest of patience, too: who’s going to stand first? Ishmael was here earlier, but his opponent may not even know he’s competing. If Ishmael gives up, not only will the other man hear him cleaning himself, he could well walk out before Ishmael’s gone. The anonymity would shatter.
He settles down, puts elbows to knees and prepares for the long wait.
“You’ll see it when you close your eyes,” says Louis. “We’re almost there, cherie. Look.”
Ella’s eyes are a slice of iris. “La vie–” she whispers. “So–the scent–la vie–”
“One thing left,” says Louis. His voice is richer than shadows. “I promise to care for you. Heart and soul.”
Ella’s hands are spotted and callow. Her nightgown pools around her little form. “Yes,” she gasps. “Yes, Louis.”
She dies. Roses burst through her lips, her ribs, her sex. She arches to Louis’s laugh, a flare of trumpets–but shouldn’t they be silver?
Why, she barely wonders, are these brass?
“I didn’t really know him,” Verry says. “He was in my orientation group.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Pan looks five years older than he did a year ago. “There are maybe ten people here who believe–I mean, why a memorial?” He sighs. “The guy’s been dead six months, we graduated a year and a half ago…”
“But it’s so crowded!”
“Heh. That’s what I’m saying.” Pan pulls at his napkin. “We’re here to get lai–I shouldn’t make that inclusive. But.”
Verry sips again without actually drinking. She admits, privately, that she wouldn’t have come without losing that ten off her thighs.
Afternoons, he wakes to the smell of eggs and onion. The only way up to his squat above the restaurant is a fire escape; Garrison makes do without electricity, and washes furtively with their hose.
He buys lunch from the little blind cook, his only human contact. He’s said he avoids the front counter because he’s horribly disfigured (but really his face is still all over the news).
They have a ritual: Garrison knocks at the kitchen door, and she jokes about saving table scraps; he tells her she looks pretty today. She brings his check, his change, his prison food.
When it’s healthy, Twenty-One grows decoys, dull-eyed swaying humanoid figures that attach to a seat and sigh. The bus prefers adults–they’re meatier–but Jenkins would like the occasional kid.
At night, Jenkins coaxes the bus’s belly open and hauls out the remains of the day’s catch. Twenty-One’s gastric juices leave them white and clean, along with whatever plastic they were carrying: buttons and credit cards, condoms, phones. He throws all that away.
When Twenty-One is bedded down, Jenkins will be in his room, making patterns. Knucklebones to tell the future. Ribs to sing in the wind.
Adele’s pulse dropped to eighteen in the surgeon’s chair: the anesthesiologist had overcompensated (Adele’s hair is red). She never knew, except in nightmares.
“I wanted to keep the teeth,” she tells the doctor a week later. Her cheeks are finally receding.
“They were impacted,” the doctor replies, “the roots were wrapped around your jaw. There were only dust and fragments left. We had to use a tiny jackhammer to get them out. Pow!”
But the explanation doesn’t ease her dreams. How did it happen, and why, she wonders. What madness is there, hidden in her body, to teach bone to tangle?
Kay’s good at faking work, so when Houchens walks in she just lets him stand there. Especially when he coughs.
“Can I help you, Professor?” she says, finally.
“I wasn’t aware they had students in charge of the IT office,” he says.
She waits.
“Well. Uh.” He holds out a pathetic bag. “I think my… hard drive crashed. On my laptop. Can you fix it?”
“Not school property?”
He looks guilty. “I was hoping you could make an–”
“Yes.” Kay smiles. “Let’s talk about exceptions, shall we?” She stands, goes to the door, and locks it. Houchens is beginning to blush.
Brooklyn plays piano with his thumbs, like nobody plays anything: sideways, wrists loose, swing out and snap in 12/4. He’s grimacing, when Verry catches his face. He must be bruising the sides of his knuckles.
He moves quickly, but of course with two keys at a time he can’t play chords–until he leans in and stomps the sustain. The felts roar up, thunder like a kick drum. The chords leap out. He stops.
“No!” Verry can’t help saying. Brooklyn laughs a little in the mirror.
“Always a journeyman, never a proper,” he says. “Never a climax, always a tease.”