The Altonevers (22 page)

They're surrounded at all
times by footsteps of people they can't see, as any sound carries
for miles from its source through the narrows. This place is filled
with people dressed in a strange sort of nineteen seventies
fashions. Fur coats, gaudy jewelry, bell bottoms and big belts and
glasses are everywhere. They put cologne and perfume on themselves
like bathwater, and creep around, popping out of one window onto
the catwalks only to quickly disappear through another.
The walls open wider until they spread wide
enough to show the two a panoramic view of miles of open air of a
massive a cavern contrasting the suffocating paths they've been
squeezing their shoulders through.
Walled
by the colossal facades of excessive urbanization rising miles
high. Causing the air to pressurize and condense into a drizzle
while waiting for the city’s slowly rotating configuration to open
a path and allow it to drain through passageways. The atmosphere
and the people follow the same paths, the same yearly patterns,
changing so gradually one who gets used to taking a certain route,
can get stuck between the buildings without noticing how much
they've narrowed. There are thousands of these cavernous pockets
spread through the Alto, all growing and popping as the city slowly
rotates. The open space they’re staring at dwarfs the height of the
Grand Canyon.

“
What a beautiful thing to
see,” she says.

“
The rain?”

“
Sure, good eye weather
chaser,” she laughs.

“
I really do like the
weather.”

“
Why do you think it was
built like this?” she asks.

“
I dunno,” he answers, and
they continue along the terraces and walkways. Staying close to the
open air as long as they can, but often having to dive back into
the claustrophobic brick maze to keep moving. Each building has
halls and rooms just as the city itself has streets and structures.
A few hours later the configuration changes enough for a gap to pop
a cavern with a deafening supersonic boom blasting the wind a
hundred of miles per hour from one side of the city to the other.
Anna jumps up scared, almost falling over a metal handrail, and
Cider laughs, hanging at the waist over the same rail.

“
Hahaha keep it down,” he
laughs. A window slides open then another and another, more open
radially outward from the first opened window.

“
Yeah keep it down will
ya,” a voice yells.

“
Keep it down,” is shouted
in a domino effect from the first open window to each subsequent
window opened, then all briskly slam shut in the same radial order
they opened. He pulls her from the rail and brushes off her
shoulders, then licks his thumb as though to wipe a smudge from her
face like a child, she swats his hand away.

“
Stop it!” she shouts,
followed by a wave of “Shh’s,” then the chops of closing
windows.

“
You could've done that
sooner?” she whispers.

“
Naah,” he snickers and she
smacks his smoke from his lips.

“
Where are we going?” she
asks.

“
Rule number one when in a
new Alto, find a place to sleep. Preferably a place with a pillow,
right,” he says.

“
Yeah but where?” she
fusses, then the two stand idle, confused and directionless,
utterly lost.

“
We'll have to find a
place,” he says.

“
We've been walking for
hours, it's been all windows and walls the whole way. I haven’t
seen a store or anything since we got here.”

“
Beats that senseless green
desert right?”

“
Yeah but, I dunno. This
place is very...congested,” she says.

“
Hey! Hey! get outta the
street with that ruckus will ya,” a woman yells from a
window.

“
What?” Cider
asks.

“
Get out of the street
already, you’re a damn public nuisance,” another window
shouts.

“
You’re complaining about
us whispering when the winds are colliding way louder than we've
been talking,” he says.

“
Just keep it moving will
ya.”

“
Out of towner's,” another
woman shouts from another window, each of their shouts sparking a
radial cascade of shouting people and windows chopping
shut.

“
Down,” a mile away shouts
another.

“
It’s down three hundred
forty and up forty eight.” yells a man.

“
By down you mean?” she
asks.

“
Down you fools, now
forward, you, you imbeciles.”

“
Let's go,” she pulls his
sleeve. They come to an open terrace with trees and benches, and a
yellow music note humming like a streetlamp hanging next to an open
window.

“
There's a bed,” he says
sighing with relief.

“
How do you know
that?”

“
A versalis key is always
for a place to rest,” he says.

“
You mean a music note,”
she says.

“
Maybe where you’re from,
but that looks like a versalis key to me, and universally means a
place to rest your head. Either way it's an open window at this
point.”

“
I guess so,” she sighs.
The two cross the small open court passing the first living tree
she's seen in days, it’s even casting its own shadow she
thinks.

“
Ladies first,” he says
holding a yellow lace window curtain open for her. She's first to
see that it's actually quite spacious inside, with vaulted four
story lobby of a large four star hotel, though at least forty years
past its prime. The carpets are water stained and the walls are
spotted by moss. Dust coats everything but the clerk’s desk, and a
well polished call bell. It's unkempt she thinks, but clean as a
clinic compared to Mickey’s filthy little dwelling. Cider backs
through the window, nearly pulling the curtains down falling and
rolling to the floor.

“
You alright?” he asks,
facedown to the hardwood.

“
Yes, are you ? Mr.
dexterity,” she laughs.

“
Yes, thank you for
asking.”

“
Good, get up,” she nudges
his side with her sneaker.

“
Hey, don't kick me,” he
says.

“
I didn't, stop being a
baby.”

“
Oww,” he groans holding
his stomach, then rolling onto his side to face his
attacker.

“
Ohh I didn't kick you that
hard. Get up people are staring” she says.

“
Why? am I embarrassing
you” he asks.

“
You're laying on the floor
like a drunk.”

“
I'm usually one of those,”
he says.

“
Which is it today?” she
says. He jumps to his feet, lighting a smoke, but before he can
finish a drag the desk clerk sternly shouts “No
smoking!”

“
Oh hello,” he says moving
toward the desk girl entrenched behind a large brown
desk.

“
Put that out,” she
demands.

“
What?” He acts like he
can’t hear the blonde woman’s voice to steal a few more quick
puffs.

“
Out I said!” commands the
clerk.

“
US?” she asks.

“
No the smoke sir,” the
woman ignores Anna.

“
Oh this? okay,” he says,
dropping the butt in a water glass in the hand of an unknowing
patron reading a paper.

“
These are really nice
ceilings,” she says.

“
What’cha mean, it's the
same as all the halls and rooms through the lot of this place,” the
black clad caramel skinned desk clerk says coldly. Having small
blue eyes and a tilted bellhops cap opposite a big blonde braid,
and black painted thorn cornered lips smirking a frown at the both
of them.

“
The whole and in the Inn?”
she asks.

“
No, are you daft or
something, through the whole interior. Of the city,” the clerk says
after a few seconds of the three exchanging silent
blinks.

“
By interior you mean in
the streets or structures?” she asks. Cider nudges her, whispering
“Walk fast,” in her ear. “Never ask about how they
talk.”

“
Why?”

“
They may think that you’re
not from here, that your green and try to take some hue from you,”
he says.

“
No, a street is a catwalk,
a structure is a building,” the arrogant clerk says casting Anna a
look of confusion.

“
What's with this place
anyway?

“
Are you getting a room?”
the clerk cuts at the weary two. Anna looks to Cider and he says,
“yes.”

“
What’s with this place?”
Anna asks.

“
What do you mean? this
Inn’s fine for a tired head, like yours I see,” the clerk says
between chews of gum.

“
So how much,” Cider says
seductively, to tease the both of them, and each glaring at him for
different reasons.

“
How much ya got?” the
clerk asks with a hagglers grime.

“
What? right in front of
me?” Anna barks, her face boiling red, as Cider and the girl start
laughing.

“
Relax, for a room, I
wouldn’t touch him in any way anyway,” the clerk says.

“
I'd touch you,” he
laughs.

“
So what's the price?” Anna
asks.

“
I can tell you aren’t from
here. We barter here so it’s about what you have?”

“
What's accepted?” he
asks.

“
Anything we can auction.
If it's worth anything, and by the looks of you two,” the clerk
rolls her eyes.

“
What?” Anna scoffs,
already disliking the clerk's disposition.

“
You look...well weathered”
the clerk says. Giving Anna an odd sense of satisfaction, in that
she looks like she lives, that the girl must see them as more
adventurous then herself. As living closer to the cold, closer to
the bone.

“
I guess,” she
says.

“
Where do you sell it, the
stuff you get?” he asks.

“
Here, we keep most of the
stuff somewhere else.”

“
Just vague enough huh,” he
laughs. Anna pinches the lint from her pockets, that are otherwise
empty but for a half loaded handgun.

“
Oh yeah,” he says taking a
pillowcase from his belt line and pouring its contents onto the
counter, spilling out tens of ticking metal pocket and
wristwatches. Anna drops out of the clerk's view to pick up a few
watches that fell to the floor, then tossing them like coins
clinking onto the pile.

“
What are these?” why do
they have a sound?” the confused clerk asks.

“
Those are little clocks,
pocket and wristwatches, they’re very valuable,” Cider
says.

“
I don't know, never seen
anything like it,” she shakes her head.

“
You've never seen a watch?
a clock? how do you tell time? Wait how old are you?” Anna
asks.

“
Old, now you’re talking
gibberish. I’ll get a guy who could take a look at this, okay,” the
clerk says.

“
Sounds fair,” he
agrees.

“
Monswabba!” the girl
shouts down a vaulted hall.

“
It is a nice place for a
hole in the wall,” Anna says.

“
Thanks, I guess. I’m sure
your accommodations will be to your comfort,” the girl answers more
with her tone than her words.

“
I'm just glad it's not a
cathouse,” Anna teases him with her arms folded.

“
He takes you to cathouses,
huh?” the girl shrugs looking away, attempting to salt Anna's sore
spot.

“
It's not what you think,”
she scowls at the clerk.

“
What’s with you Carrots?”
he asks, unsure whether the girls condescending tone or flattering
his self that his flirting is fanning her flames.

“
We could stay somewhere
nicer for a change,” Anna sneers to Cider's male sense of providing
and the quality of the clerks inn.

“
Monswabba!” the girl
shouts cupping her mouth “Damn it Monswabba!!” she screams, and a
fork drops on a porcelain plate from behind a closed wooden door
half down the hall. That creaks opens a moment later for a stubby
fat man to emerge sloppily dressed in a opera singer's suit.
Without shoes or socks, and slobbering, with gray hair as a laurel
around his bald unpolished head. He's wiping crumbs from his mouth
and sweat from his forehead as the three watch his wobbling
approach.

“
What is it?” He grumbles
toward the desk girl.

“
This fella here needs a
price on these,” she points to Cider then to the ticking pile of
metal sprawled across her counter. The man wipes his hands down his
stomach, and puts on a taped up pair of glasses. Inspecting one
watch then another, and another.

“
Hmm interesting,” he
mumbles.

“
What is?” Cider
asks.

“
What are they?” he asks
spraying spittle onto the clerks finely creased uniform.

“
I thought you'd know, they
said satches,” the clerk says.