dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
This story was written for the Magic In America challenge, in which the idea was to create a story embodying a uniquely kind of American magic as opposed to the more familiar traditional European witches/spells/vampire kinds of things. I'll tell you right now that it's not erotic. It was supposed to be when I started out, but it just didn;t turn out that way.
At 8000 words it's pretty long, and I apologize for that. To atone for the length, I've cut it into 2 posts. If I've done my job right, you'll want to read to the end, but if not, I'd still like opinions on what you've read.
Thanks in advance,
---dr.M.
The Keeper of the Streets
The clouds over the lake rose up like bunched knuckles in the dark winter sky, like a fist full of snow. There would be something cold and wet falling from the sky before the night was over, and Lia reminded herself to keep an eye on Peter and leave when he did. She didn’t want to be out in the sleet on Michigan Avenue at one in the morning looking for a cab, not in this outfit.
The very thought gave her chills, and the thin yet elegant gown she wore didn’t help. She finished her lipstick and adjusted her scarf so that it hung just right off her shoulders. Mark was right: she did have beautiful shoulders and a lovely neck, and the rhinestone necklace and her upswept hair showed them off just right. The gown was perfect too: a smooth expanse of burgundy satin that followed the curves of her body so closely that the smooth rolls of her abs were subtly visible. Not a trace of fat on her. And not a stitch on underneath either. The points of her nipples were just visible, and she liked it that way; sharp little points: weapons of battle in Lia’s unceasing war for supremacy.
Whoever that bitch was who was trying to make time with Peter Bessinger was about to find out that Lia Callison had brains to go with this beauty, and claws too.
“Too much wine! Too much wine!” Candy Moser pushed into the lady’s room, fanning herself with her hand.
Candy had a weight problem and so was no competition for Lia, therefore they were friends, or close enough.
“God, is this a view?” Candy asked, going over to the large windows overlooking the lake. “If this is the view from the lady’s room, can you imagine what the condos must be like?”
“To die for,” Lia said. “Jason’s on the 33rd floor. Jason Grippman? Looking west, of course, over the city itself. That’s really the best view. Looking east you only get to see the water.”
“But those clouds!”
“Mmm.” Lia ran her gloss over her lips. “Yes, I suppose they’re nice. If you’re a meteorologist.”
Lia dropped her lipstick into her bag and turned to Candy.
“Who’s that girl talking to Peter B? The redhead? Green dress? Boob job?”
Candy came over to the sink and ran her hands under the electric faucet. She wet her hands in the sharp spray and patted her face.
“I think that’s Claudia something. Something Irish. O’whosis or something. She’s on the speaker committee. A junior partner at Ferris. She’ll be working with Peter when he goes over there. You know he’s already tended his resignation at Denton-Langer.”
“Of course I know. Senior partner and all that. Taking his city contracts with him too.”
Candy looked at Lia with a spectator’s admiration for a pro at work. “And did you hear about the bonus they’re giving him? Pretty much just buying him away from Denton. He’s rolling in it now. Probably the highest paid architect in the city for not being a full partner.”
“Project facilitator, Candy,” Lia corrected. “And don’t be gauche. What’s his interest in her?”
Candy pulled down some paper towels and patted her face dry. “Darling, I have no idea. But you know Peter’s involved with Polly. He’s taken.”
Candy stopped drying her face as the thought hit her. She looked up at Lia.
“Lia, you wouldn’t!”
Lia smiled and shook her head. “Darling, I’m in PR, remember? I’m always looking for new clients. I’m networking. That’s all. Just spreading sunshine and good cheer wherever I go.”
“A regular Tinkerbell, that’s you.”
A sudden squall of wind struck the big windows with a muffled boom, followed by the sizzling sound of frozen sleet blasting against the windows.
“Oh God!” Candy said. “Here it comes! We’re really in for it now!”
~ ~ ~
Deespite her plans, at one o’clock in the morning, Lia Callison was indeed huddled inside the loccy of the Adonondack building, looking out onto Wabash Avenue beneath the El tracks and waiting for her cab. Her plan to follow Peter Bessinger out when he left and innocently ask him for a ride fell through when she missed the elevator, and by the time she got down to the lobby he was gone. Too embarrassed to go back up to the dinner, she called for a cab on her cell and waited.
Sleet and snow blew by outside in nearly horizontal streaks, and the wind moaning through the revolving door was strong enough to set it spinning in slow, ghostly circles. Right outside the revolving door, a mesh trashcan had been overturned by the wind and garbage spilled out onto the side walk. The lighter papers had been scattered by the wind long before, but a plastic bag the size of a football sat forlornly in the wind, it’s corners flapping and contents spilling out in a most disconcerting manner.
For some time now, Lia had been staring across the street at a figure huddled in a doorway, so rigid and still that it had taken her a long time to decide whether it was really a person or not, and it was only when she saw one arm reach out of the shadows to pull a battered shopping cart closer that she realized it was a homeless person: a man, from the size of him, big, as shapeless as a gravestone. She paid him no attention until the thought occurred to her that, although she could barely see him, he could clearly see her standing in the lighted lobby, and from that point on she couldn’t keep her eyes from him, glancing nervously across the snow-swept street and trying to figure out what he was doing there.
She wasn’t exactly afraid. She’d lived in this city for the last nine years and had never once been robbed or broken into or even threatened. It was more that she didn’t want to have to think about him: about where he’d go on a night like this and where he’d sleep.
But there were shelters for people like him, weren’t there? She knew, because her company had handled some of the flyer work for the city-run shelters on a pro bono basis. There were shelters that provided them with a hot meal and a clean place to sleep and all you had to do was show up there. No doubt he’d go to one once the wind let up a little, and if he didn’t, well, that was his concern and none of her business.
But still he didn’t move, and she was quite sure now she could feel his eyes on her. She wasn’t frightened, she wasn’t worried, but there was something she felt he wanted from her, and the feeling nagged at her.
Wabash Avenue is the eastern boundary of the Loop, and the elevated tracks run right overhead and provide some shelter from the snow and the seeking wind off the lake. But on this night the tall buildings served only to channel the winds right down its length, setting up a howling gale on the frozen sidewalk. The snow and frozen sleet went flying horizontally down the artificial canyon, and it was a night that could only be described as cruel.
There was no traffic to speak of. It was a Tuesday night and so there were no cabs. When Lia saw the familiar yellow taxi nose in at the curb and sound his horn she sighed with relief and headed towards the door, her heels clicking loudly on the wet marble floor of the lobby.
The man made his move at the same time, stepping from his shelter and crossing the street towards her, his hands stuffed grimly into his pockets.
“Oh Great!” she thought as she leaned her weight against the revolving door. “A handout!”
She opened her purse and looked for some small bills, pressing the revolving door with her back. As soon as she hit the street the wind took her coat and her scarf in its teeth and yanked at her, and the sleet cut her like knives, knocking the breath from her body and bringing tears to her eyes. She had time to notice that the plastic bag from the trashcan was a bag of frozen French fries. There was a burnt, fist-sized hole in the middle and the fries were spilling out, mashed and mangled. It struck her as odd thing to find in a public trashcan, and then she turned her back to the wind and rummaged in her purse looking for something to give the man as a handout.
He was just stepping onto the curb and there was no doubt that he was heading for her. Now she could just glimpse him through her watery eyes and see the mound of overcoats he wore, the long scraggly beard, the stocking cap full of holes.
“Don’t take that cab,” he said.
Lia paid no attention. She found two dollars in her purse and held them out towards him as if they were a shield. The wind bent them back around her fist.
“Don’t get in that cab,” he said again. “It ain’t safe.”
The cab driver slid over and opened the back passenger door and looked at her expectantly. He was wearing shirt sleeves. She could feel and even smell the taxicab warmth coming out from the back seat.
“Don’t get in that cab, lady! I’m warning you!” He reached out, ignoring the money she offered and grabbing her arm.
“Are you crazy? Let go of me!”
The bum had taken a grip on her coat and began tugging, pulling her down the street. He was surprisingly strong and she was stumbling trying to keep up, but Lia was stubborn too and she dug her heels into the icey sidewalk and pulled free of his grasp.
Down at the end of the block not fifty feet beyond the cab, a big city salt truck turned onto Wabash, going unusually fast for such a bad night. Its yellow warning light was flashing, and salt was spraying from the back hopper as he fishtailed onto the avenue. The bum took her arm again. Her purse was in her other hand and she couldn’t make him let go. He kept pulling her away from the cab.
“Let go of me you crazy son of a bitch! I’ll scream!”
There was a deep rumble and a shower of sparks as an El train squealed by overhead, a metallic thunder that shook the ground. Through her tear-dimmed eyes, Lia looked down past the cab and saw the salt truck skidding out of control, sliding through the intersection and shuddering as the driver pumped the hydraulic brakes and frantically spun the wheel. The big tires locked and the whole huge thing started skidding down the street at a sickening angle, its yellow caution light still slapping her in the face like a countdown timer or the strobing light of a stop-action movie. She clearly saw the cab driver’s face as he looked in his rearview mirror, the salt truck driver dim through the dark windshield bracing his hands on the wheel, the spray of salt bouncing off the car hoods, and then the side of the heavy truck slid into the taxi, lifted the back end up and pushed it into a huge SUV in front of it. Car alarms wailed and lights started to flash, and the front of the cab lifted the SUV in some obscene mimicry of automotive sex. Lia saw every detail as the cab collapsed on itself like an aluminum can, like a slow motion movie of a crash-dummy test, the hood popping up, the windshield shattering, the fenders springing like accordions, the sheet metal collapsing with a pitiful, horrifying sound. The radiator ruptured and sent a jet of steam into the frozen air as if in manic celebration.
“Come on, come on,” the bum yelled above the wind. “You’ve got to get out of here! Come on!”
He yanked her stumbling across the slippery street even as she heard the residual pop and clank of falling metal and the hoarse sound of an avalanche of rock salt spilling from the side of the ruptured truck and burying the cab. Then there was just the violated sound of the SUV’s alarm and the vicious howl of the wind through the El tracks.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh my God!” she wailed.
“There’s nothing you can do. Nothing! Now come on!”
He pulled her along and Lia stumbled after him, her new heels slipping on the hard ice and packed snow. All she could think about was that the cab driver was dead, maybe the truck driver too, and that had she been in that cab she’d be dead too, with blood all over her beautiful dress and her new shoes.
He dragged her around the corner and down a concrete stairway. She thought it was the subway, but no: it descended down to Lower Wacker drive, the weird subterranean roadway that ran beneath the Loop and was used for deliveries and freight traffic, a haven for the homeless and anyone looking for some sort of shelter.
“Stop! Where are you taking me? What the fuck is this?”
“I saved your fucking life, that’s what this is. You owe me.”
Now that she was out of the howling wind and driving sleet, Lia was able to think better, and she was alarmed.
“Do you want money? Is that it? I can give you what I have.” She opened her purse and rummaged for her cash.
He turned his face to her and Lia had a look at him for the first time. It was the typical homeless face-- the wide cheeks, cold-reddened nose, coarse skin – but the eyes were gray and clear and surprisingly deep.
“Don’t you know happened?” he asked. “Weren’t you just up on the street with me?”
A gust of wind howled down the staircase and Lia stood there as the snow swirled around them. She was suddenly cold and she realized how inadequate her outfit was. The layers of coats he wore must be three inches thick. He didn’t seem cold at all.
“How did you know?” she asked him. “Why did you tell me not to get into that cab?”
He turned and walked down a few steps, then turned to her. “How badly do you want to know?”
He started walking again and Lia followed him.
“Well look, you saved my life,” she said. “Maybe I can help you. I know a lot of people. You need money or a job or something?”
She peered into the darkness of lower Wacker and made a face. “Do you live down here?”
“I live all over,” he said. “And no, you can’t help me. You don’t have anything I want.”
They were at the foot of the stairs now, and Lia looked around. To either side, concrete loading docks stretched away as far as she could see lit by garish yellow sodium vapor lights which seemed to give a greenish cast to everything. She could look down this side of Wacker but the view to the other side was impeded by a forest of massive columns holding up the roadway above their heads. There were lane markers and sawhorses with blinking warning lights all over, a maze of traffic signals with not a car in sight. The place smelled of diesel fumes and wet concrete. It was dirty, cold, and smelly.
She noticed some movement in the shadows of the cold concrete walls. It might have been a trick of her eyes: when she looked directly at them they stopped, but the movement started again at the periphery of her vision.
Lia felt a jolt of nauseating fear.
“Oh my God are those rats!? Are those rats? There’s rats down here! Those are rats, aren’t they?”
She’d jumped next to him and clutched his coat; his ancient, filthy coat. He smelled like cold cement and ashes.
“Some of them maybe are,” he said calmly. “Some of them’s something else.”
“I’m getting out of here! I’m getting out of here right now, goddamnit!”
The bum took his arm back from her and looked at her disdainfully.
“Ain’t none of them gonna hurt you. They’s our eyes and ears down here. They saved your precious ass tonight.”
“They are rats, aren’t they? Oh my God!”
He ignored her. His eyes seemed to be looking right through her in a way that made her shiver.
“You’re too freaked out,” he said. “You’re no use to anyone. Just go up them stairs if it bothers you so much. You come back to me when you’re ready.”
He was already moving away from her, moving into the shadows, so swaddled in coats that she couldn’t even see his feet move. He seemed to be floating back into the general griminess, the dirty gray of his coat merging with the color of the concrete and shadows. She started to follow and then caught herself. What was she doing? She looked down at her shoes, her beautiful shoes, and ran up the stairs, stopping when she was halfway up. She turned back uncertainly.
“Well thank you,” she called after him. “Whoever you are. You saved my life.”
She saw him raise a hand in acknowledgement but he didn’t turn around. His voice came echoing off the concrete walls.
“Lia,” he said, “You don’t know the half of it.”
She ran up the icy stairs, bracing herself for the fist of the wind as she emerged from the shelter of the underground, and it wasn’t till she was back up on the windy street that she realized he’d called her by name.
She huddled in a doorway and called Candy on her cell to come pick her up. Candy was reluctant to leave the party, but there was no way in hell Lia was taking another cab, ever, and the wild fear in her voice frightened her friend. She told Candy nothing about what had happened, only that she’d been unable to get a cab and was stranded on the street and freezing.
At home in her condo she locked the doors and turned on all the lights. She showered, turning the water up as hot as she could stand it, and stood under the spray till her skin felt raw, the she put on her terry robe and wrapped a towel around her head, poured some wine and went into her living room.
He had called her “Lady”: that must be it. In her state of upset she had mis-heard. It happened all the time with her name, which sounded like so many words. As to the thing he had said about her coming back when she was ready, well, the man was clearly insane. AFter all, most homeless people had something wrong with them anyhow: why else would they be homeless?
The wind rattled her windows and the snow was thick, but down below, eight flights down in the relative calm of the lee side of her building, she thought she saw a shape standing in a doorway. It was hard to be sure in the dark and the blowing snow, but slowly the conviction grew, and it didn’t come from her eyes. She could feel it inside, something about the way he stood, a kind of weight she could feel from. She told herself it was silly, that all homeless men looked alike -- walking piles of rags – but there was no fooling herself. It was him. By the time she finished her wine there was no doubt in her mind.
She didn’t know how he’d managed to find her building or how he’d gotten there so quickly, but she was frightened now, and she wished there was someone she could call. She took an Ambien and poured more wine. She watched TV until she found the remote slipping from her fingers, and when next she looked out the window he was gone. She stumbled into the bedroom and fell asleep.
The next morning was gray and blustery still, with plumes of snow blowing off the roofs of buildings and the streets black with ice. The first thing she did was go to the window and look for him but the doorway was empty. Later however, after she’d showered and dressed and was pulling the Lexus onto the street from her garage, he was back, and there was no doubt this time.
He stood there in the doorway by the same ragged shopping cart, neither looking at her or away from her, seemingly a part of the street. She wasn’t frightened any more. Lia didn’t frighten easily, and now that she’d calmed down and it was daytime, she felt something more akin to curiosity. The cabby’s death hung in the back of her mind like a stubborn nightmare, tingeing everything with a feel of foreboding, and she knew that the man in the street was the key to understanding it. Yet she couldn’t see how she could possibly approach him now. The whole episode seemed like a dream.
She was distracted at work and not herself. She took lunch in her office and watched the local news on her office TV. Everything was about the storm: power outages, highway disasters. The death of the cabbie was mentioned and there was footage of the smashed cab lying amidst the torrent of salt, surrounded by the flashing lights of the rescue vehicles. Lia sat with her spoon of yogurt posed by her lips and felt a wave of nausea engulf her as she watched the steaming breath of the reporter standing in front of the wreck: a terrible wave of fear at the ugliness of brutal death made her turn from the TV and stare at the gray blankness outside her window as fear climbed up her spine and raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
She threw herself into her work. She made calls, she talked to her aids. She refused to let herself think about it, but it wouldn’t go away. By the time she left it was dark, and by then her fear had been replaced by a stubborn need to find the homeless man and find out what he knew.
She didn’t have far to look. When she came to the building across the street from her apartment, there he was, standing in the doorway where she’d seen him last night. She pulled up to the curb and opened the power window on the passenger side and leaned over.
But there must be some mistake. The man who stepped out of the shadows was a business man in a black wool coat with a trim mustache and salt-and-pepper hair. She stared at him through the open window and he stared back and smiled, and in that instant she knew in the pit of her stomach that there was no mistake. It was the same man, the same eyes. She could see that he recognized her too.
She fought down a surge of sudden panic. “What is this?” she asked.
“May I get in? I’m not dressed for this weather. Not like last night.”
“Who are you?”
He reached a gloved hand inside the window, unlocked the passenger door and got in. The leather seat sighed under his weight.
“Who the fuck are you?” Lia was confused, but she wasn’t quite afraid.
He strapped the seat belt across his chest and gestured with his head as a car behind her sounded its horn.
“I suggest you drive,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything as we go.”
Lia pulled her eyes from his face as the car behind her honked again. She focused her eyes on the street and pulled away from the curb, her hands rigid on the wheel.
“My name’s Bosun,” he said, closing the window. “And yes, I’m the man who saved your life last night.”
“What? Were you slumming or something? Where’s your shopping cart?”
He smiled, showing even, white teeth. “It’s safe. Waiting for me when I get back. You work at Benrus, right? Benrus and Steele, the PR company that handles things for Ferris?”
Lia glanced at him sharply. “Who told you that?” she demanded. “How did you know my name last night? Just who the fuck are you?”
“Turn here,” he said. “I want to go down to the Loop. I want to show you something.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. Not until you answer my questions.” She wanted to pull over, but the curbs were lined with cars and traffic was thick. There was no choice but to keep driving.
“Okay. Who am I? I’m what you call a homeless person. A bum. I’m one of those people you never notice. That’s okay though. We like it that way. Unfortunately, you have some information I need, so I had to make myself visible to you.”
“Look at the way you’re dressed. You don’t look homeless to me.”
“I can make myself look like whatever I want. I’m not what you think.”
The smart comment died on her lips as out of the corner of her eye, Lia saw him suddenly change from his neat, businesslike self into that scraggly bum from the streets. His coat went from coal black to dirty ash-gray; his hair grew long and colorless and the very smell of him changed. It was only for an instant, like a trick of the light, and then he was back to what he’d been, but it was real. The scent of the homeless man remained.
Lia gasped and bit her tongue in fright. She instinctively jerked the wheel to the side and slammed on the brakes, almost hitting a parked car. Horns behind her blared
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that? What did you just do?”
“Drive, Lia,” he said calmly. “The Loop.”
He was back in his businessman persona, and Lia clenched her jaw tight against her rising panic and stared straight ahead, hands in a death grip on the wheel.
“What are you? Some sort of magic show or something? What was that?”
“Listen to me Lia,” he said deliberately. “You are a sane and intelligent woman and you live in a sane and intelligent world, but things are not what you imagine. I’ll tell you this once, because I’ve learned through experience that once is either enough or it’s entirely too much, so take it as you will.
“This city is alive. Literally. It’s a living organism. It has thoughts and feelings, it has a metabolism, it grows and it changes, and it is aware. That’s the most important thing: that it’s aware. It’s aware of everything, and things go on here in the streets that most people can’t even imagine. The people who live here are like little cells in a body, each with his or her special purpose, and none of them know it. There are only a few of us who know, and I’m one of them.”
At 8000 words it's pretty long, and I apologize for that. To atone for the length, I've cut it into 2 posts. If I've done my job right, you'll want to read to the end, but if not, I'd still like opinions on what you've read.
Thanks in advance,
---dr.M.
The Keeper of the Streets
The clouds over the lake rose up like bunched knuckles in the dark winter sky, like a fist full of snow. There would be something cold and wet falling from the sky before the night was over, and Lia reminded herself to keep an eye on Peter and leave when he did. She didn’t want to be out in the sleet on Michigan Avenue at one in the morning looking for a cab, not in this outfit.
The very thought gave her chills, and the thin yet elegant gown she wore didn’t help. She finished her lipstick and adjusted her scarf so that it hung just right off her shoulders. Mark was right: she did have beautiful shoulders and a lovely neck, and the rhinestone necklace and her upswept hair showed them off just right. The gown was perfect too: a smooth expanse of burgundy satin that followed the curves of her body so closely that the smooth rolls of her abs were subtly visible. Not a trace of fat on her. And not a stitch on underneath either. The points of her nipples were just visible, and she liked it that way; sharp little points: weapons of battle in Lia’s unceasing war for supremacy.
Whoever that bitch was who was trying to make time with Peter Bessinger was about to find out that Lia Callison had brains to go with this beauty, and claws too.
“Too much wine! Too much wine!” Candy Moser pushed into the lady’s room, fanning herself with her hand.
Candy had a weight problem and so was no competition for Lia, therefore they were friends, or close enough.
“God, is this a view?” Candy asked, going over to the large windows overlooking the lake. “If this is the view from the lady’s room, can you imagine what the condos must be like?”
“To die for,” Lia said. “Jason’s on the 33rd floor. Jason Grippman? Looking west, of course, over the city itself. That’s really the best view. Looking east you only get to see the water.”
“But those clouds!”
“Mmm.” Lia ran her gloss over her lips. “Yes, I suppose they’re nice. If you’re a meteorologist.”
Lia dropped her lipstick into her bag and turned to Candy.
“Who’s that girl talking to Peter B? The redhead? Green dress? Boob job?”
Candy came over to the sink and ran her hands under the electric faucet. She wet her hands in the sharp spray and patted her face.
“I think that’s Claudia something. Something Irish. O’whosis or something. She’s on the speaker committee. A junior partner at Ferris. She’ll be working with Peter when he goes over there. You know he’s already tended his resignation at Denton-Langer.”
“Of course I know. Senior partner and all that. Taking his city contracts with him too.”
Candy looked at Lia with a spectator’s admiration for a pro at work. “And did you hear about the bonus they’re giving him? Pretty much just buying him away from Denton. He’s rolling in it now. Probably the highest paid architect in the city for not being a full partner.”
“Project facilitator, Candy,” Lia corrected. “And don’t be gauche. What’s his interest in her?”
Candy pulled down some paper towels and patted her face dry. “Darling, I have no idea. But you know Peter’s involved with Polly. He’s taken.”
Candy stopped drying her face as the thought hit her. She looked up at Lia.
“Lia, you wouldn’t!”
Lia smiled and shook her head. “Darling, I’m in PR, remember? I’m always looking for new clients. I’m networking. That’s all. Just spreading sunshine and good cheer wherever I go.”
“A regular Tinkerbell, that’s you.”
A sudden squall of wind struck the big windows with a muffled boom, followed by the sizzling sound of frozen sleet blasting against the windows.
“Oh God!” Candy said. “Here it comes! We’re really in for it now!”
~ ~ ~
Deespite her plans, at one o’clock in the morning, Lia Callison was indeed huddled inside the loccy of the Adonondack building, looking out onto Wabash Avenue beneath the El tracks and waiting for her cab. Her plan to follow Peter Bessinger out when he left and innocently ask him for a ride fell through when she missed the elevator, and by the time she got down to the lobby he was gone. Too embarrassed to go back up to the dinner, she called for a cab on her cell and waited.
Sleet and snow blew by outside in nearly horizontal streaks, and the wind moaning through the revolving door was strong enough to set it spinning in slow, ghostly circles. Right outside the revolving door, a mesh trashcan had been overturned by the wind and garbage spilled out onto the side walk. The lighter papers had been scattered by the wind long before, but a plastic bag the size of a football sat forlornly in the wind, it’s corners flapping and contents spilling out in a most disconcerting manner.
For some time now, Lia had been staring across the street at a figure huddled in a doorway, so rigid and still that it had taken her a long time to decide whether it was really a person or not, and it was only when she saw one arm reach out of the shadows to pull a battered shopping cart closer that she realized it was a homeless person: a man, from the size of him, big, as shapeless as a gravestone. She paid him no attention until the thought occurred to her that, although she could barely see him, he could clearly see her standing in the lighted lobby, and from that point on she couldn’t keep her eyes from him, glancing nervously across the snow-swept street and trying to figure out what he was doing there.
She wasn’t exactly afraid. She’d lived in this city for the last nine years and had never once been robbed or broken into or even threatened. It was more that she didn’t want to have to think about him: about where he’d go on a night like this and where he’d sleep.
But there were shelters for people like him, weren’t there? She knew, because her company had handled some of the flyer work for the city-run shelters on a pro bono basis. There were shelters that provided them with a hot meal and a clean place to sleep and all you had to do was show up there. No doubt he’d go to one once the wind let up a little, and if he didn’t, well, that was his concern and none of her business.
But still he didn’t move, and she was quite sure now she could feel his eyes on her. She wasn’t frightened, she wasn’t worried, but there was something she felt he wanted from her, and the feeling nagged at her.
Wabash Avenue is the eastern boundary of the Loop, and the elevated tracks run right overhead and provide some shelter from the snow and the seeking wind off the lake. But on this night the tall buildings served only to channel the winds right down its length, setting up a howling gale on the frozen sidewalk. The snow and frozen sleet went flying horizontally down the artificial canyon, and it was a night that could only be described as cruel.
There was no traffic to speak of. It was a Tuesday night and so there were no cabs. When Lia saw the familiar yellow taxi nose in at the curb and sound his horn she sighed with relief and headed towards the door, her heels clicking loudly on the wet marble floor of the lobby.
The man made his move at the same time, stepping from his shelter and crossing the street towards her, his hands stuffed grimly into his pockets.
“Oh Great!” she thought as she leaned her weight against the revolving door. “A handout!”
She opened her purse and looked for some small bills, pressing the revolving door with her back. As soon as she hit the street the wind took her coat and her scarf in its teeth and yanked at her, and the sleet cut her like knives, knocking the breath from her body and bringing tears to her eyes. She had time to notice that the plastic bag from the trashcan was a bag of frozen French fries. There was a burnt, fist-sized hole in the middle and the fries were spilling out, mashed and mangled. It struck her as odd thing to find in a public trashcan, and then she turned her back to the wind and rummaged in her purse looking for something to give the man as a handout.
He was just stepping onto the curb and there was no doubt that he was heading for her. Now she could just glimpse him through her watery eyes and see the mound of overcoats he wore, the long scraggly beard, the stocking cap full of holes.
“Don’t take that cab,” he said.
Lia paid no attention. She found two dollars in her purse and held them out towards him as if they were a shield. The wind bent them back around her fist.
“Don’t get in that cab,” he said again. “It ain’t safe.”
The cab driver slid over and opened the back passenger door and looked at her expectantly. He was wearing shirt sleeves. She could feel and even smell the taxicab warmth coming out from the back seat.
“Don’t get in that cab, lady! I’m warning you!” He reached out, ignoring the money she offered and grabbing her arm.
“Are you crazy? Let go of me!”
The bum had taken a grip on her coat and began tugging, pulling her down the street. He was surprisingly strong and she was stumbling trying to keep up, but Lia was stubborn too and she dug her heels into the icey sidewalk and pulled free of his grasp.
Down at the end of the block not fifty feet beyond the cab, a big city salt truck turned onto Wabash, going unusually fast for such a bad night. Its yellow warning light was flashing, and salt was spraying from the back hopper as he fishtailed onto the avenue. The bum took her arm again. Her purse was in her other hand and she couldn’t make him let go. He kept pulling her away from the cab.
“Let go of me you crazy son of a bitch! I’ll scream!”
There was a deep rumble and a shower of sparks as an El train squealed by overhead, a metallic thunder that shook the ground. Through her tear-dimmed eyes, Lia looked down past the cab and saw the salt truck skidding out of control, sliding through the intersection and shuddering as the driver pumped the hydraulic brakes and frantically spun the wheel. The big tires locked and the whole huge thing started skidding down the street at a sickening angle, its yellow caution light still slapping her in the face like a countdown timer or the strobing light of a stop-action movie. She clearly saw the cab driver’s face as he looked in his rearview mirror, the salt truck driver dim through the dark windshield bracing his hands on the wheel, the spray of salt bouncing off the car hoods, and then the side of the heavy truck slid into the taxi, lifted the back end up and pushed it into a huge SUV in front of it. Car alarms wailed and lights started to flash, and the front of the cab lifted the SUV in some obscene mimicry of automotive sex. Lia saw every detail as the cab collapsed on itself like an aluminum can, like a slow motion movie of a crash-dummy test, the hood popping up, the windshield shattering, the fenders springing like accordions, the sheet metal collapsing with a pitiful, horrifying sound. The radiator ruptured and sent a jet of steam into the frozen air as if in manic celebration.
“Come on, come on,” the bum yelled above the wind. “You’ve got to get out of here! Come on!”
He yanked her stumbling across the slippery street even as she heard the residual pop and clank of falling metal and the hoarse sound of an avalanche of rock salt spilling from the side of the ruptured truck and burying the cab. Then there was just the violated sound of the SUV’s alarm and the vicious howl of the wind through the El tracks.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh my God!” she wailed.
“There’s nothing you can do. Nothing! Now come on!”
He pulled her along and Lia stumbled after him, her new heels slipping on the hard ice and packed snow. All she could think about was that the cab driver was dead, maybe the truck driver too, and that had she been in that cab she’d be dead too, with blood all over her beautiful dress and her new shoes.
He dragged her around the corner and down a concrete stairway. She thought it was the subway, but no: it descended down to Lower Wacker drive, the weird subterranean roadway that ran beneath the Loop and was used for deliveries and freight traffic, a haven for the homeless and anyone looking for some sort of shelter.
“Stop! Where are you taking me? What the fuck is this?”
“I saved your fucking life, that’s what this is. You owe me.”
Now that she was out of the howling wind and driving sleet, Lia was able to think better, and she was alarmed.
“Do you want money? Is that it? I can give you what I have.” She opened her purse and rummaged for her cash.
He turned his face to her and Lia had a look at him for the first time. It was the typical homeless face-- the wide cheeks, cold-reddened nose, coarse skin – but the eyes were gray and clear and surprisingly deep.
“Don’t you know happened?” he asked. “Weren’t you just up on the street with me?”
A gust of wind howled down the staircase and Lia stood there as the snow swirled around them. She was suddenly cold and she realized how inadequate her outfit was. The layers of coats he wore must be three inches thick. He didn’t seem cold at all.
“How did you know?” she asked him. “Why did you tell me not to get into that cab?”
He turned and walked down a few steps, then turned to her. “How badly do you want to know?”
He started walking again and Lia followed him.
“Well look, you saved my life,” she said. “Maybe I can help you. I know a lot of people. You need money or a job or something?”
She peered into the darkness of lower Wacker and made a face. “Do you live down here?”
“I live all over,” he said. “And no, you can’t help me. You don’t have anything I want.”
They were at the foot of the stairs now, and Lia looked around. To either side, concrete loading docks stretched away as far as she could see lit by garish yellow sodium vapor lights which seemed to give a greenish cast to everything. She could look down this side of Wacker but the view to the other side was impeded by a forest of massive columns holding up the roadway above their heads. There were lane markers and sawhorses with blinking warning lights all over, a maze of traffic signals with not a car in sight. The place smelled of diesel fumes and wet concrete. It was dirty, cold, and smelly.
She noticed some movement in the shadows of the cold concrete walls. It might have been a trick of her eyes: when she looked directly at them they stopped, but the movement started again at the periphery of her vision.
Lia felt a jolt of nauseating fear.
“Oh my God are those rats!? Are those rats? There’s rats down here! Those are rats, aren’t they?”
She’d jumped next to him and clutched his coat; his ancient, filthy coat. He smelled like cold cement and ashes.
“Some of them maybe are,” he said calmly. “Some of them’s something else.”
“I’m getting out of here! I’m getting out of here right now, goddamnit!”
The bum took his arm back from her and looked at her disdainfully.
“Ain’t none of them gonna hurt you. They’s our eyes and ears down here. They saved your precious ass tonight.”
“They are rats, aren’t they? Oh my God!”
He ignored her. His eyes seemed to be looking right through her in a way that made her shiver.
“You’re too freaked out,” he said. “You’re no use to anyone. Just go up them stairs if it bothers you so much. You come back to me when you’re ready.”
He was already moving away from her, moving into the shadows, so swaddled in coats that she couldn’t even see his feet move. He seemed to be floating back into the general griminess, the dirty gray of his coat merging with the color of the concrete and shadows. She started to follow and then caught herself. What was she doing? She looked down at her shoes, her beautiful shoes, and ran up the stairs, stopping when she was halfway up. She turned back uncertainly.
“Well thank you,” she called after him. “Whoever you are. You saved my life.”
She saw him raise a hand in acknowledgement but he didn’t turn around. His voice came echoing off the concrete walls.
“Lia,” he said, “You don’t know the half of it.”
She ran up the icy stairs, bracing herself for the fist of the wind as she emerged from the shelter of the underground, and it wasn’t till she was back up on the windy street that she realized he’d called her by name.
She huddled in a doorway and called Candy on her cell to come pick her up. Candy was reluctant to leave the party, but there was no way in hell Lia was taking another cab, ever, and the wild fear in her voice frightened her friend. She told Candy nothing about what had happened, only that she’d been unable to get a cab and was stranded on the street and freezing.
At home in her condo she locked the doors and turned on all the lights. She showered, turning the water up as hot as she could stand it, and stood under the spray till her skin felt raw, the she put on her terry robe and wrapped a towel around her head, poured some wine and went into her living room.
He had called her “Lady”: that must be it. In her state of upset she had mis-heard. It happened all the time with her name, which sounded like so many words. As to the thing he had said about her coming back when she was ready, well, the man was clearly insane. AFter all, most homeless people had something wrong with them anyhow: why else would they be homeless?
The wind rattled her windows and the snow was thick, but down below, eight flights down in the relative calm of the lee side of her building, she thought she saw a shape standing in a doorway. It was hard to be sure in the dark and the blowing snow, but slowly the conviction grew, and it didn’t come from her eyes. She could feel it inside, something about the way he stood, a kind of weight she could feel from. She told herself it was silly, that all homeless men looked alike -- walking piles of rags – but there was no fooling herself. It was him. By the time she finished her wine there was no doubt in her mind.
She didn’t know how he’d managed to find her building or how he’d gotten there so quickly, but she was frightened now, and she wished there was someone she could call. She took an Ambien and poured more wine. She watched TV until she found the remote slipping from her fingers, and when next she looked out the window he was gone. She stumbled into the bedroom and fell asleep.
The next morning was gray and blustery still, with plumes of snow blowing off the roofs of buildings and the streets black with ice. The first thing she did was go to the window and look for him but the doorway was empty. Later however, after she’d showered and dressed and was pulling the Lexus onto the street from her garage, he was back, and there was no doubt this time.
He stood there in the doorway by the same ragged shopping cart, neither looking at her or away from her, seemingly a part of the street. She wasn’t frightened any more. Lia didn’t frighten easily, and now that she’d calmed down and it was daytime, she felt something more akin to curiosity. The cabby’s death hung in the back of her mind like a stubborn nightmare, tingeing everything with a feel of foreboding, and she knew that the man in the street was the key to understanding it. Yet she couldn’t see how she could possibly approach him now. The whole episode seemed like a dream.
She was distracted at work and not herself. She took lunch in her office and watched the local news on her office TV. Everything was about the storm: power outages, highway disasters. The death of the cabbie was mentioned and there was footage of the smashed cab lying amidst the torrent of salt, surrounded by the flashing lights of the rescue vehicles. Lia sat with her spoon of yogurt posed by her lips and felt a wave of nausea engulf her as she watched the steaming breath of the reporter standing in front of the wreck: a terrible wave of fear at the ugliness of brutal death made her turn from the TV and stare at the gray blankness outside her window as fear climbed up her spine and raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
She threw herself into her work. She made calls, she talked to her aids. She refused to let herself think about it, but it wouldn’t go away. By the time she left it was dark, and by then her fear had been replaced by a stubborn need to find the homeless man and find out what he knew.
She didn’t have far to look. When she came to the building across the street from her apartment, there he was, standing in the doorway where she’d seen him last night. She pulled up to the curb and opened the power window on the passenger side and leaned over.
But there must be some mistake. The man who stepped out of the shadows was a business man in a black wool coat with a trim mustache and salt-and-pepper hair. She stared at him through the open window and he stared back and smiled, and in that instant she knew in the pit of her stomach that there was no mistake. It was the same man, the same eyes. She could see that he recognized her too.
She fought down a surge of sudden panic. “What is this?” she asked.
“May I get in? I’m not dressed for this weather. Not like last night.”
“Who are you?”
He reached a gloved hand inside the window, unlocked the passenger door and got in. The leather seat sighed under his weight.
“Who the fuck are you?” Lia was confused, but she wasn’t quite afraid.
He strapped the seat belt across his chest and gestured with his head as a car behind her sounded its horn.
“I suggest you drive,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything as we go.”
Lia pulled her eyes from his face as the car behind her honked again. She focused her eyes on the street and pulled away from the curb, her hands rigid on the wheel.
“My name’s Bosun,” he said, closing the window. “And yes, I’m the man who saved your life last night.”
“What? Were you slumming or something? Where’s your shopping cart?”
He smiled, showing even, white teeth. “It’s safe. Waiting for me when I get back. You work at Benrus, right? Benrus and Steele, the PR company that handles things for Ferris?”
Lia glanced at him sharply. “Who told you that?” she demanded. “How did you know my name last night? Just who the fuck are you?”
“Turn here,” he said. “I want to go down to the Loop. I want to show you something.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. Not until you answer my questions.” She wanted to pull over, but the curbs were lined with cars and traffic was thick. There was no choice but to keep driving.
“Okay. Who am I? I’m what you call a homeless person. A bum. I’m one of those people you never notice. That’s okay though. We like it that way. Unfortunately, you have some information I need, so I had to make myself visible to you.”
“Look at the way you’re dressed. You don’t look homeless to me.”
“I can make myself look like whatever I want. I’m not what you think.”
The smart comment died on her lips as out of the corner of her eye, Lia saw him suddenly change from his neat, businesslike self into that scraggly bum from the streets. His coat went from coal black to dirty ash-gray; his hair grew long and colorless and the very smell of him changed. It was only for an instant, like a trick of the light, and then he was back to what he’d been, but it was real. The scent of the homeless man remained.
Lia gasped and bit her tongue in fright. She instinctively jerked the wheel to the side and slammed on the brakes, almost hitting a parked car. Horns behind her blared
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that? What did you just do?”
“Drive, Lia,” he said calmly. “The Loop.”
He was back in his businessman persona, and Lia clenched her jaw tight against her rising panic and stared straight ahead, hands in a death grip on the wheel.
“What are you? Some sort of magic show or something? What was that?”
“Listen to me Lia,” he said deliberately. “You are a sane and intelligent woman and you live in a sane and intelligent world, but things are not what you imagine. I’ll tell you this once, because I’ve learned through experience that once is either enough or it’s entirely too much, so take it as you will.
“This city is alive. Literally. It’s a living organism. It has thoughts and feelings, it has a metabolism, it grows and it changes, and it is aware. That’s the most important thing: that it’s aware. It’s aware of everything, and things go on here in the streets that most people can’t even imagine. The people who live here are like little cells in a body, each with his or her special purpose, and none of them know it. There are only a few of us who know, and I’m one of them.”
PERIOD) when she looked directly at them(COMMA) they stopped,(PERIOD) but (THEN) the movement started(OMIT “STARTED” ADD “WOULD START”) again at the periphery of her vision.
