The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (14 page)

I heard Rhinoceros’s sonic boom rock the building. The show was still on. My brother stood across the street from me, shivering, as it started to rain.
 

José María held his hand to his throat, and he smiled each time he spoke.

“I can talk,” he said.

I felt tears welling up behind my eyes, but I fought them back. A deep sense of confusion was washing over me now, and I felt slightly dizzy. So much time had melted inside that world of darkness
.
I turned around to face the building looming over me. The glass of the Aragon Ballroom doors looked as innocent and inert as ever.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” I said.

“Clara, did you also
see
what I saw back there…back
through there?”

“Shared hallucination, right?” I said.
 

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, glad you said that. Me neither.”

José María pulled up his hoodie over his head, and he sank his hands in his pockets. This meant he wanted something.
 

“Do you think it’s too late to go buy a T-shirt? If I get this one, my collection will be complete.”

“You are unbelievable. We just popped out of—what?—Hell? And you want to buy a T-shirt.”

“Retail therapy,
reina
. It will make me feel better.”

I could see the long tunnel of the Aragon’s lower level through the streaked glass.

“No way. No way at all. We’re leaving,” I said. “Everything is different now.”

“But we made it out alive, you see? We’re okay!” José María said.

“Talk to me. Dad will be here to pick you up shortly. You saw that dog creature?”

José María nodded.

“And the way it made music, the way the sound allowed us to sort of see in the dark?”

“It was a world made of every shade of black. I saw it too,” José Maria said.

My brother lit a cigarette, and we took tiny steps against the wind that whipped through Broadway. I figured we’d walk a few blocks until we got to Little Vietnam. Something about the pho shops and families huddled over the bowls made me feel more comfortable than standing in the presence of the Aragon. The concert hall felt like a mountain in this stretch of Broadway, and the last mountain I had seen had been black, so black, the home of a creature who spewed bell tones from himself….

“Did we die?” I said.

“You still don’t get it? You know, for being in college, you are the dumbest person I know,” José María said. “This is what Dad tried to tell you about. We peeked into Mictlán.”

“So… we should be dead.”

“No, no, no, stupid. Not dead. All we saw was a tiny glimpse. Just the gate,” he said.

“That’s what the creature called it, a gate.”

“Exactly. I mean, who else would be guarding it but Xolotl? ”

The word escaped José María’s lips like an elongated
,
wet whisper.
Show-low-tuhl.
 

He knows the thing’s name.

“It was most terrible thing I’ve ever seen,” I said.

“I dunno; I thought it was pretty cool myself. He meets dead souls at the gate and he takes them, you know, down there.”

“He told me his name. I don’t supposed you heard him say it?” I said.
 

José María shook his head.
 

“I heard nothing.”

“Me
,
neither. Not until he shared his blood with me. Then I could hear what he said.”

“That was fucking cool, Clara,” José María said. I thought about shaking him by the shoulders to rattle some sense into him.

How can that be cool?

“The name was long, full of syllables and musical notes. Maybe it sounded like Xolotl, the more I think about it.”

“So
,
you could hear
everything
down there?” José María said.

“Only after he cut me and rubbed his blood on the cut,” I said.

We reached the corner of Argyle and Broadway, and my head pounded with fresh pain. My stomach churned, and I felt nausea rise up my body.

“I think I need some time to think about what happened,” I said.

“Why not talk about it right now?”

“You’re unbelievable; you know that? You just came out of that place fresh as a daisy? Didn’t you just feel all that despair, that rot down there? Didn’t you smell all those dead people?”

“Yeah, but, like, whatever. Get over yourself.”

How quickly this little shit made me angry. It was real skill.

“What will our parents think?” I said.

“Sooner or later, you’ll have to ask Mom and Dad.”

“I don’t know how you find all this time to try to be a smartass.” I said. “And put out that damn thing. You’re gonna get cancer.”

My words made me pause. Would cancer claim my brother, like the cancer that I saw, heard and felt inside the man who died on his couch in the stench of the marigold? Why would I wish cancer on my brother? And why did I say those words? After the vile things I saw in that kingdom of darkness, words seemed to matter a bit more.
 

X said, “You must be careful what sound you make, with body and with your mind. Even in your breathing, your music announces you.”

I glanced up Broadway, and I spotted my father’s Honda racing down the street. Behind us, I heard sirens blaring, and an eerie quiet flooded the streets.

The car pulled up, and my brother hopped in. My father lowered the window and I peered in. My father layered a thick sweater under his jean jacket and wrapped his neck in several coils of his wool scarf. I got ready to tell him a million lies, to create a smokescreen he could never see through. He didn’t know how happy I was to see him, but I needed time to unpack what I had experienced.

“How was the show?” he said.

“Sick,” shouted José María from the back. “So sick!”

How is he so fearless?

“Come on, get in the car. It’s cold.”

We fielded questions about Rhinoceros, and we skipped over the near scuffle in the pit as we told it. My father had no idea. During the drive up Broadway, nothing broke the eye contact that José María and I held through the vanity mirror. I pretended to check my makeup, and he and I held our gaze. I kept my mouth shut, and José María knew I’d beat his ass if he said anything. This time
,
he held the information in.

I had no idea how I was ever going to tell my father about what happened. In doing so, I would admit that he had been right all along about Mictlán.

And if he was right about that, he might also be right about things like the OLF.

The OLF. The thoughts about my real life with the OLF popped back into my head, and I was grateful.

We crossed the intersection at Sheridan, and I remembered I was supposed to host a meeting the next morning for the OLF. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I still felt sick to my stomach from the journey to the dark, but I wasn’t going to let anyone down.
 

I popped the door handle as hard as I could when we arrived in front of my dorm. I glanced back at my brother one last time, and I said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Don’t sleep in.”

“Never sleep again,” José María said. “Scout’s honor.”
 

He held his hand up, showing me how he crossed his fingers.

“Wait a minute there,” my father said. “You’re not leaving without giving me a time to pick you up tomorrow.”

“What?” I said. Pain throbbed in the base of my neck. “I have an OLF meeting tomorrow. We’re marching next week.”

“You really don’t read your mother’s texts, do you?” my father said. “I don’t care about your meeting. Your aunt Minerva will be expecting you at her house.”

“The baby—”

“Yes, early again. They sent her home today, and that means we can go visit them tomorrow. I’ll pick you up right here at two p.m. Don’t be late.”

José María shook like a marionette in the back seat. He laughed without a single worry.

“See you tomorrow,
reinaaaaa
!”

I crept into my bunk that night, and I tossed and turned, afraid of dreams. Thankfully, none came. Eventually, I slept, but just for a handful of hours.

The next morning, I washed my unease away with four cups of coffee with lots of sugar, lots of cream. The OLF meeting locations were never decided until two hours before, when we each got a message sent through IRC.

Ever since the Millennium Riot, we no longer used university buildings to meet. Coffee shops were also out of the question, thanks to their high visibility and open Wi-Fi networks. Instead
,
we chose old diners. The greasier
,
the better. Today, we were told to go to the Golden Nugget on Lawrence Avenue, and we filed in in batches. No meeting could ever be larger than about six to eight members. This also helped keep a low profile.

Most of us were students, some were not.

We filed in around the circular booth, and we poured maple syrup over flapjacks.
 

The taste of those fluffy cakes and the thick butter that dripped from their edges was heavenly. It was a drastic extreme, the opposite of Mictlán
,
in fact, and I wanted the taste of those flapjacks to last forever. I couldn’t tell anyone how much I appreciated every element of the real world. The most mundane things had become rich and beautiful.

Our meeting kicked off.

Mercy, a lesbian queer activist, the oldest of our group, took a seat across the table from me. She brought two others with her: Julian, and Mauricia. I represented the university, though by now, our numbers had dwindled to a mere fifteen on campus. Today, only three of us attended. Myself, Dennis Cho and Kayla Onayemi. There was no texting, no checking in allowed at these meetings.
 

“There’s more sanctions coming from the feds,” Mercy said. “Those new checkpoints on Lakeshore Drive and the Eisenhower Expressway, they’re not just for DUIs.”

“They’re scanning the driver’s licenses,” said Julian, Mercy’s trans boyfriend. “It’s a registry.”

I felt completely lost in this new information. My head was sticky and tangled with other thoughts. I needed to separate them, but thoughts about Mictlán were winning.
 

(
But Clara, you know you didn’t dream about the creature X)

(He was real)

(José María knew the creature’s name)

(Xolotl, he who guards the gate)

(Black skin and black eyes and black pus)

But I did my best to focus.
 

“What kind of registry?” I said.

“The kind you would expect. Just adds to every bit of data on those they think are part of OLF, Anonymous, or any group that came before it,” Mercy said. She shifted in her seat and gave a slight nod. Immediately
,
Mauricia passed the individually packaged tubs of jelly to Mercy.

Kayla, who sat in the economics lecture hall next to me many times, leaned forward into the circular table. She was barely passing her classes, but she was loyal to the group.

“There’s not much to it,” she said. “They just take any data they can - Facebook check-ins, store receipts, checkpoints
on Lakeshore Drive, and they crunch the data. They make models. The models let them predict if any of us are likely to show certain behaviors in the future.”

“You mean that they want to know if we’re likely to attend protests or to become violent at protests,” I said.

“This is some pre-cog shit,” Julian added. “Like a Phillip K. Dick book.”

“No, too science
-
fictional,” Mercy said, cutting everyone off. “It’s just market research. That was my job for ten years. I know.”

Mercy’s soft voice belied the authority she had.

“How old are you
,
anyway?” I said. Mercy didn’t look older than twenty-eight. Her skin was blemish
-
free, smooth as stone.

“Forty
-
two,” she said.

I felt out of my depth suddenly. OLF was a decentralized movement, one in which we could all have a voice, a chance to say our piece. But I still admired those who put in lots of time to lead the movement. Suddenly, Mercy seemed to command more than dibs on grape jelly. She had real experience.

“Clara, you grew up in Little Village, right?” said Mercy. Her amber eyes appraised me like a jungle cat in the dark.

“Sure,” I said. “My mom and dad still live there.”

“It’s exactly those people who should be joining our next event,” she said.

“I agree,” I said. “But we need everyone. The unemployed. The African
-
Americans. Everyone.”

“One group at a time, that’s how we get there,” Mercy said. “Systematic.”

“There’s another event planned?” Dennis said. Dennis had come up from nothing—he had been born on a boat coming over from Korea literally on his way to the US, and he absorbed information like a sponge. I could see him work out dates and interlocking thoughts in his mind as Mercy continued.

“The Millennium Riot was just the beginning,” Mercy said. “If the city responded with force—deadly force—then we retaliate by coming back stronger.”

“Actually, it’s still unclear who shot first—” Dennis said.