Ambient (11 page)

I dreamed of Avalon, and of myself; we sat in a
dark green gondola floating down Fifth Avenue,
through a fine mist that speckled our skin. An unseen boatman steered us. We stopped, drifting silently; Avalon speared fish in the water: shiny
bream, turbot and sea-robin, bass, blue, monk and weak. A crowd
on one of the high bridges between buildings above quietly applauded. She brought one wriggling to her mouth; bit off its head.
I dreamed.

When morning showed I arose, brushed off the soot and looked
through the window bars, pushing aside the old newspapers we
used as drapes. I was bonestiff, and felt I'd been starched. The
sky was overcast again; a glorious day were it to rain, though
then the streets would flood. The Serena-mild evening drizzle
that passed over, most days-helped; only on rainy days did the
air clear enough so that breathing didn't cause you to feel you
were participating in one of the more strenuous Olympic events.

"Light?" Enid murmured, rising slowly, as if from a swamp.
She shook her head; bits of foam drifted to the floor. "Time?"

"Ten. Rise and shine."

"Fuckall," she said, sitting up and lighting a cigarette before
her third breath left.

"Shine," I said, "Not whine."

Enid reached into the bed, extracted an old newspaper from
the mattress; torched it with her lighter and threw it at me. I
stomped it out. Suspecting further comment would pass unappreciated, I broke for the door and went down the hall. I examined
the locks on the front door, determined that no wanderers of the
late had tried to check in as we slept. I switched on the TVC; the
news was coming on. The screen filled with computer-coded blurs
and smears of color; after a moment it coalesced into the form of
an anchorperson. You couldn't tell any more whether the anchors
were real or not, it was all so smoothly assured.

For breakfast I rehydrated some seaweed and sauteed it with
parsnips in a margarine sauce; Margot had made off with much
of the food during the week, and so I made do. I popped a straw
into a box of Pepsi and drank it as I ate, and watched the news.
The anchor was midsentence as I upped the vol.

"-fierce fighting reported along the Zaire border. In Libya
victory was claimed-"

Enid emerged after so long, wearing a pair of my pants and a
tee on which were imprinted the words CULT FIGURE. She gargled with a new bottle of vodka. She drank as if someone might
steal it from her before she could pass out.

"Thirsty?" she asked, waving the bottle before me.

"Bite your own dog," I said, that morning feeling no desire
for alky.

"Out the wrong side you tumbled." She grimaced. "Too much
life too with it too soon. " She moved over to the stereo, banging
into the furniture as if playing dodgem-cars.

"If you'd deafen this early," I said, "might we hear tunes
recorded in a recognizable language?"

"Bloody bloody balls."

"-that killed the senator and six Health Department officials
during yesterday's Human Life Day celebration continues to reverberate-"

A roach scampered across the sofa arm, attempting to sidle by
me. I was reaching out to flick it when a stupendous roar boomed
through the apartment; for a second I thought a raid was going
under. The roach disappeared, as if vaporized. I looked over;
Enid hopped along with the music she'd turned on. At intervals
her motions reminded one of rhythmic movement.

"How does it kill the rats?" I shouted.

"Que?"

"That noise. Will the rats bleed to death or are they just sterilized by it?"

"-police say the bloody trail of the Ripper leads to this abandoned trailer parked on a Hackensack landfill-"

"Sounds as if they're pushing the singer's head through a Dispoz," I remarked; she smiled.

"I'm hearthappy. Margot gifted me last eve. With pleasure
pure and lilting smiles."

I
"-speaking from the Hall of Nixon in Zeiching-"

"She's so thoughtful," I said. "Where'd she dig it up?"

"Courtesy Grassy Knoll cassettes."

"Has this group a name?"

"Nad. The bassist was in Theory of Hell. Our hough they once
graced, begoneaday."

11
-stated in the Bull that only God can decide when children
are to die, and therefore, that child abuse centers in Switzerland
should be banned--
anned-"

"No workaday today?" she asked, her stomp unceasing.

"I'll need to leave around one or so," I said.

"To set sail your deeds over bitter water?"

"We'll be going to the estate."

"For two days gone?" she asked.

"Longer."

"-said the successful treatment of little Tamoor demonstrates-"

"What wind, then, shall stir your hair?" she asked, turning
down the stereo. "When the moon stares down in deadlight where
will you wait to gaze?"

"I'm not sure. Europe, probably. I think Leningrad."

"Your mind's set?" she asked. "No ho your art?"

"No ho," I said, "I told him I would."

"Actions decide. Words stick fast in lie's mire. Where will
your actions lead?"

"-in denial, the president said that all the cameras show is
what they chose to see-"

"Somewhere better, maybe."

"My suspicions wail and make wary, Seamus," she said. "I
eye you and I viz a puss long soaked in brine. You cleave yet to
speak?"

"It'd do no good."

"So you say. AO. Go as you list, then. I go as I. Margot and
me skim Brooklyn shores meantime, before Sunday service."

"Why?"

"To meet and greet. Your fear fools will tread us?"

"It's dangerous over there, Enid-"

"And my concern buys less for you?" she asked; she was
mad. "Off we each to the gone world. You viz my need. Blind
me as to yours. Fair's unfair, Seamus."

She was right. I still didn't want her to go to Brooklyn, though
she, and most Ambients, often did.

"You never tell me why you go," I said.

"For we'll ever return," she said. "Can you promise like truth?"

I shook my head. There were reasons that bridges and tunnels
to Long Island were sealed; reasons for mines to besprinkle the
East River, the Sound, and the ocean immediately south. Queens
and Brooklyn were treated as extensions of Long Island; the Army
was at war with Long Island, and Brooklyn was considered the
city of the dead. During the most troubled time of the Ebb, during
the Goblin Year, the government formed the Home Army from the old National Guard, sending troops wherever disturbed masses
needed minding. Long Island's citizen, not forgetting the accident some years earlier, proved not so keen about such assistance
as most people in most places thought it best to be. From Brooklyn, now, most of the terror groups operated as well, sending
forth citizens in night's dead to strike Manhattan again and again.
That anything remained in Brooklyn, or in Long Island-and much
did-caused illimitable annoyance to the Home Army. Fresh units
went in monthly; nightly bombing runs continued without cease.
The war had lasted fifteen years and would likely last fifteen more.

If Ambients were hooking into anything over there, none of
them-not even Enid-ever told me, so I suspected that they
weren't. But, after all, I wasn't an Ambient, and so wouldn't
have been told. I had a hunch why they went there, just the same,
and for whom they forever searched.

"You're right," I said.

"Tell all if you can," she said.

--looking for a short-term Manhattan loft, saying the energy
level here is fantastic, and that he can't wait-"

"I'll speak. Your advice'll be good to hear."

"Beat me," said Enid, sticking her elbow between the window bars and rubbing away dirt in a slow, sweeping motion. She
looked at the dark gray sky once her view was clear. "Rain away
all. Wash and be done."

"It's eleven A.M.," the anchor said, fixed and grinning. "Do
you know where your children are?"

"Shop with me, Seamus, before you away. Things we wish
will wait no more, whether you wait to use or not."

"All right."

We donned our ankle-length Krylar coats and, going downstairs, found Lester and Ruben hosing the club. Drains in the
floor let the water flow back into the tank, where it could be
refiltered. We told them we'd be traveling. Lester smiled (showing the glass stones in his broken front teeth), snared his dagger, and bounded up the stairs to keep guard. His enthusiasm was
infectious; I felt new lightness in my own step. Ruben and Lester
lived in a small space behind the club; it was more reasonable,
and cheaper, to give them that than to pay them salary-90 percent of which would have been lost to taxes, for by receiving
anything they would be considered to live in the midmen bracket,
and thus liable.

"Something I have for you, if you wish to skip light with such
jabbernowls. Kick memory and stir when we pass back."

"Beautiful day," I said as we pushed into the street, wondering what she had for me. A fourth-floor resident of the next-door
building dumped the contents of her chamberpot out the window,
missing us; she hurried off for more.

We moved uptown, toward Sloan's. The crowd wasn't bad;
we stepped from the sidewalk only to avoid mounds of rubble,
or where holes had been left, dug deep by scavengers of old pipe
and wire. Rats scurried with pigeons and sparrows amidst the feet
of the crowd. I held a scented cloth over my nose and mouth to
muffle the odors; Enid claimed to be used to it, but she smoked
so much that if she retained any sense of smell, it was entirely
atavistic. We were lucky, in one way, living here; Loisaida was
so full of Ambients, and in such disarray in comparison even with
other Twilight Zones, that the most hard-pressed boozhie wouldn't
approach. Our stores and our neighbors remained our own.

"So liptight and woeful," she said. "Such drawn eyes. Speak,
then. What concerns so?"

"I've worries about this," I said.

"Porque?"

"It's such a troubling plan that he has," I said. "Something's
off. "

"Plan's plain as I viz," she said. "Drop the golden oldie."

"What if it makes things worse?"

"For whom?"

"Me," I said. "Avalon. Everyone."

"How?"

"I don't know."

"Why beef doing the do? Your feature attraction, isn't it?"

"But the Old Man never did anything to me-"

"What has he done for you?" she asked.

We passed myriad vendors; those of the outback, not of the
city, might call them colorful. Their wares were spread along the
sidewalks, lying on rags and on yellowed newspapers. For barter
there were reckers of all kinds, knives, bolts of burlap and of
polyknit, pocket computers, battered furniture of worn wood and
split plastic, counterfeit lottery tickets, every size of battery, paste
jewelry, bathroom fixtures and good copper pipe, and and vid
cassettes, portraits of E painted on crisp black velveteen, and
back issues of National Geographic. In food stalls, and from
portable hibachis, others hawked fried things on sticks; clouds of
acrid smoke wafted from their grills as if from a crematorium.