Full Spectrum 3 Part 44

And that was the year too of odd premonitions. Gliding against one another in the huge and glowing heart of those parties, listening to the distant sounds, watching the tongues of flame to the north and south of us, we would feel the thickening waters of remorse and morning apprehension, feel that slow, clamping stir in the gut which signaled our mortality. Smile as we might, commit ourselves as we could to the c.o.xswain, there were moments for all of us on those rooftops and later in the thick enclosures of our bedrooms when we saw another vision of the metropolis, when we struggled from dreams in which Polar Star had been obliterated, done in by its own sentimentality and manipulation, and we had nothing, nothing to stand between us and the disaster but the certainty and purity of our hearts. We had good hearts. We had been raised to be good people. We knew we were good. We knew that the others for whom Polar Star had been conceived were good also, and that was why we would no longer use that pejorative term, "undercla.s.s." We knew that our motives and theirs were confluent and benign, but we could not nonetheless keep that clamp from the gut, the fold from the unspeaking heart.

For we knew. We must have known. We could not forever shield our plans from our plans. But how we tried! We tried and tried. We were good people. We had the larger interests of the country at heart.

That was the year before the year in which the gunfire and the huge lights winked and blazed, roared and stumbled, the year before that time when parties became hopeless and we were forced to consider the unavailing manner of all options.

It was the time before that clangorous summer when Dora said to any of us who would listen, "We lied and lied, we talked our way around everything. We all knew, but we never said even to ourselves what Polar Star was." How could that be, though? How could we have known what Polar Star was? It was urban retrieval gone wrong, that was all, the best of motives, leading only to the worst of outcome. None of this had been planned. Desperate measures led to desperate responses, but this was not the c.o.xswain's original intention.

"Murderers," Dora said, "we're all killers, we set this up, we pulled this lousy job." But that was after the miscarriage and its pathetic aftermath, and by this time Dora was clearly not sane. It was possible to discount everything she said. It was, in fact, necessary to make that discount.

And so we did. We ignored her. We were polite, tolerant, we did not wish to ostracize, but at the same time we were firm. "Listen," we said, "we are decent, we are good, we are sensible people." Our voices were firm, our faces judicious and tolerant. "We had no choice, no control," we added. "Besides, the word 'undercla.s.s' remains out of our lexicon." And so it did. We were not pejorative. We were kind people. We had full awareness.

So we were good to Dora, as good as could be under the circ.u.mstances, and we protected her as best we could from her own self-destructiveness. We looked forward to the time when Polar Star would permit us to take down the gates and reclaim all of our city. Our city.

"Killers," Dora screamed. But the sculptor had left her, all of us, in exhaustion, had left her, really. She was almost impossible to tolerate, and no matter how great our ingestion of palliatives, she still appeared ugly.

Black Gla.s.s.

KAREN JOY FOWLER.

I.

t was a Wednesday afternoon in the Senate Bar. Schilling, the proprietor, stood behind the curved counter, stroking the shot gla.s.ses with a towel. Every part of the bar was reflected in the mirror wall behind him: the marble and black onyx floor, the oiled cherry-wood counter, the bra.s.s bar rail. A chandelier hung in the center of the ceiling. Rows of cut-gla.s.s decanters filled the shelves. Schilling ran his towel over their gla.s.s stoppers. In the corner, on the big screen, Cher danced and sang a song for the U.S. Navy. Schilling had the sound off.

There were three customers. Two sat together at a table near the door. They were businessmen. One of them smoked. Both of them drank.

Every time either of them picked up his gla.s.s and set it down again, he made a new wet ring on the table between them. They were careful to keep the spreadsheet out of the water.

The third customer, a college student, sat at the bar, drinking his way through an unexpected romance with a woman old enough to be his mother. He'd asked Schilling to bring him three drinks at once, three different drinks-a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, a s.e.x on the Beach, a Velvet Hammer. As a compromise, Schilling had brought him the b.l.o.o.d.y Mary and put in an MTV tape, picture only, out of deference to the businessmen and as a matter of personal preference.

A fourth man came into the Senate Bar from the street. A shaft of sunlight sprang into the room when the door opened and vanished when it closed. "Give me a drink," the man said to Schilling.

Schilling glanced at the man briefly as he polished the wood bar with his sleeve. "Get out of here."

"Give me a drink."

The man was dirty and dressed in several tattered layers, which still left a bare hole the size of a tennis ball above one knee. He was smoking the stubby end of a cigarette. It was not his cigarette; there was lipstick on the filter. He had retrieved this cigarette from the sidewalk outside the bar. "You pay your tab first," said Schilling.

"I don't have any money," said the man. Cher closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

"Where's my s.e.x on the Beach?" asked the boy.

"You're disturbing my customers," Schilling told the man at the door. "You're stinking up my bar." He reached under the counter for a bottle of gin.

"He gave me my first drink," the man at the door said to the boy at the bar. "I used to be just like you." He took two steps into the room, leaving two gritty footprints on the black onyx. "Finish what you started," he told Schilling.

"Get out," Schilling said.

The boy rolled a quarter down his nose and let it drop, catching it loudly in his empty b.l.o.o.d.y Mary gla.s.s. "Can I get another drink?" he asked. "Am I going to get another drink?"

A second shaft of sunlight appeared in the room, collided with the mirrored wall. Inside the sunlight, barely visible, Cher danced.

She turned her back. Schilling heard a woman scream, and then the Cher in the mirror broke into five pieces and fell behind the counter. The sunlight disappeared. "Madam," said Schilling, hardly breathing, in shock. A nightmare dressed in black stood at the door of his bar, a nightmare in the shape of an enormous postmenopausal woman. In one hand she held a hatchet. She reached into the bodice of her dress with the other and pulled out a large stone. She wore a bonnet with black ribbons.

"Glory be to G.o.d!" shouted the woman. "Peace on Earth! Goodwill to men!" She hit the big screen dead center with the rock. The screen cracked and smoked, made spitting noises, blackened. She took a step, swept the cigarette from the shabby man's mouth with one hand. "Don't poison the air with your filthy gases!" she said. Then she held her hatchet at the vertical. She charged into the bar, clearing the counter. Maraschino cherries and stuffed olives flew. "Madam!" said Schilling. He ducked.

"You purveyor and protector of obscenity!" the woman shouted. "Has your mother ever been in this place?" The boy at the bar slipped from his stool and ran for the rear door. In three steps the woman caught him. She picked him up by the neck of his sweater as if he were a kitten, throwing him to his knees. She knelt over him, singing. "Touch not, taste not, handle not. Drink will make the dark, dark blot." He struggled, and she let him go, calling after him, "Your mother did not raise you for this!" The back door slammed.

The businessmen had taken cover under their table. Schilling remained out of sight. The shabby man was gone. The woman began, methodically, with her hatchet to destroy the bar. She punctured the decorative keg behind the counter and then, apparently disappointed to find it empty, she brought her hatchet down on the counter, severing a spigot from one of the hoses. A fountain of soda exploded into the air. She broke the decanters. Pools of liquor flowed over the marble and onyx floor. The woman's bonnet slipped to the side of her head.

"That brandy costs seventy-five dollars," Schilling said.

"Broth of h.e.l.l," she answered. "Costs your soul." She gashed the cherry wood, smashed the mirrored wall. She climbed onto a stool and brought the chandelier down with a single stroke. Schilling peered over the bar. She threw a rock at him, hitting a bottle of bright green creme de menthe behind him.

He ducked out of sight again. "You'll pay for this," Schilling told her. "You'll account for every penny."

"You are Satan's bedfellow," she said. "You maker of drunkards and widows. You donkey-faced rum-soaked Republican rummy." She lifted the hundred-and-fifty-pound cash register from the counter and held it over her head. She began to sing again. "A dreadful foe is in our land, drive him out, oh, drive him out. Oh, end the monster's awful reign, drive him out, oh, drive him out." She threw the register at what remained of the big screen. It barely missed the tabletop that hid the businessmen and crashed onto the marble and onyx floor.

She worked for twenty minutes and stopped when there was nothing left to break. The woman stood at the door, straightening her bonnet, tightening the ribbons. "Until the joints close," she said, "the streets will run red with blood." She opened the door. Schilling crouched lower behind the bar. The businessmen cowered beneath the table. n.o.body saw her leave.

"The sun was in my eyes," Schilling explained to the police. "When she opened the door, the sunlight was so bright I lost sight of her."

"She came in screaming?" A man from the press was taking notes.

"Shrieking." The first businessman tried to read the reporter's notes, which were upside down from his point of view and cursory. He didn't enjoy talking to newsmen. When you dealt with the fourth estate, accuracy was your social responsibility. You could still be misquoted, of course. You wouldn't be the first.

"Kind of a screek," the second businessman offered.

"She's paying for everything," said Schilling. "Don't even ask me to be chivalrous."

"She was big," said the first businessman. "For a woman."

"She was enormous," said Schilling.

"She was as big as a football player," said the first businessman carefully.

"She was as big as a truck," said Schilling. He pointed with a shaky finger to the register. "She lifted it over her head like it was a feather duster or a pillow or something. You can write this down," he said. "You can quote me on this. We're talking about a very troubled, very big woman."

"I don't think it's such a good idea," the second businessman said.

"What's not a good idea?" asked the reporter.

"Women that size," said the second businessman.

"Just look what she did," said Schilling. Rage made his voice squeak. "Just look at my bar!"

Patrick Harris had been a DEA agent for eight years now. During those eight years, he had seen some action. He had been in Mexico and he had been in Panama and he had been in LA. He had been in one or two tight spots, but that didn't mean he couldn't help out with the dishes at home.

Harris knew he asked a lot of his wife. It couldn't be the easiest thing in the world, being married to a man who disappeared into Latin America for days at a time and might not even be able to get a message out that he was still alive. Harris could run a vacuum cleaner over a rug without feeling that he was doing his wife any favors. Harris could cook a meal from the very beginning, meaning the planning and the shopping and everything, without feeling that anyone needed to make a fuss about it.

He stood with the French bread and the Gruyere cheese and the imported Emmentaler Swiss in the nine-items-only-no-checks checkout line, wondering how he could use the tomatoes, which he hadn't planned to buy but were cheaper and redder than usual and had tempted him. The woman in front had twelve items. It didn't really irritate Harris. He was only sorry that it was so hard for some people to play by the rules.

While he waited for the three extra items to be tallied and worried in an ineffective, pleasant way over the tomatoes, he read through the headlines. Evidence of prehistoric alien cannibals had been found in Peruvian cave paintings, and a statue of Elvis had been found on Mars. A husband with bad breath had killed his wife merely by kissing her. A Miami bar had been destroyed by a sort of half woman/half gorilla. Harris saw the ill.u.s.tration before he read the story, an artist's rendering of Queen Kong in a black dress and bonnet. He looked at the picture again. He read the headline. One of his tomatoes spun from the counter to the floor. Harris stepped on it, squished it, and didn't even notice. He bought the paper.

He had never been in so much trouble in his life.

The doors were heavy and padlocked. A hummingbird dipped through the entryway twice, held for a moment over an out-of-season fuchsia, and disappeared. The largest of the MPs tried to shoulder the doors open. He tried three times, but the wood did not give. One of the women smashed through a window instead. Harris was the fifth person inside.

The soldiers searched for fugitives. They spun into the hallways, kicked in the doors. Harris found the dining room on the other side of some broken gla.s.s. The table was set with china and the flatware was gold. An interrupted meal consisted of rack of lamb, braised carrots, curried peach halves served on lettuce leaves. The food had been sitting on the china plates for at least twenty-four hours.

He started into the library, but one of the MPs called to him from farther back in the house. The MP's voice sounded self-consciously nervous. I'm still scared, the tone said. Aren't I silly?

Harris followed the voice down a hallway and through an open door.

The MP had her rifle slung over her back. In her hands she held a large statue of St. George, spear frozen over the neck of the dragon. The dragon was considerably smaller than St. George's horse.

Behind the MP, three stairs rose to an altar with red candles and white flowers and chicken feathers. The stairs were carpeted, and a supplicant could kneel or lie supine if the supplicant weren't too tall. The room itself was not carpeted. A black circle had been painted on the stone floor, with a red triangle inside. The four cardinal points of the compa.s.s were marked.

Harris looked east. The east wall was a wall of toads. Toad-shaped stones covered every inch of seven shelves, and the larger ones sat on the floor. The toads were all different: different colors, different sizes. Harris guessed there were four hundred, five hundred toads. "Why toads?" Harris asked. He stepped inside.

The MP shook her head and put the statue back on the altar. "s.h.i.t," she said, meaning nothing by it, merely making conversation. "Is this s.h.i.t for real?"

One of the smallest toads was carved of obsidian. Its eyes were a polished, gla.s.sy black; it was no bigger than Harris's thumbnail. It attracted him. Harris reached out. He hesitated briefly, then touched it. At that moment, somewhere in the room, an engine cycled on. Harris started at the sound, closed his hand convulsively over the toad. He looked at the MP, who gestured behind him.

The noise came from a freezer back by the door. It was a small freezer, not big enough to hold the body of an adult. A goat, maybe. A child. A head. Harris looked at the MP. "Groceries," he said.

"Stash," the MP suggested. This made opening the freezer Harris's job. Harris didn't think so. He would have stared the MP down if the MP had only looked at him. Harris watched to be sure the MP wasn't looking. He put the black toad in his pocket and went to open the freezer. He was simply not thinking about the toad. Otherwise he would never have taken it. Harris was DEA, and even when he was undercover he played by the rules. Taking the toad marked the beginning of a series of atypical transgressions. Harris was at a loss to explain them. It was not as though he wanted the toad.

The freezer worked laboriously. When Harris and his wife were first married, they'd had a noisy refrigerator like this. They would argue: arguments of adjustment, kitchen arguments as opposed to bedroom arguments, as vehement and pa.s.sionate as they were trivial. And the refrigerator would be a third voice, grumbling in dissatisfaction or croaking in disbelief. Sometimes it would make them laugh. Harris tried to resurrect these comfortable, pro-appliance kinds of feelings. He closed his eyes and raised the lid. He opened his eyes. The only thing inside the freezer was a stack of pictures.

Harris pushed the lid up until it caught. Some were actual photographs. There was a Polaroid of the General's wife seated in a lawn chair under a beach umbrella, a fat woman who'd left the marks of her nails on more than one of the General's mistresses. There were some Cubans, including Castro, and some Americans, Kissinger and Helms, pictures cut from magazines, but real photographs of the President and the ex-President. There was a fuzzy picture of two men shaking hands on the steps of a public building. Harris recognized one of the men as the Archbishop. The edges of every picture had been dipped in red wax.

He still had the toad in his pocket that night when he attended a party at the home of Senora Villejas. Many American officers were there. Senora Villejas greeted him at the door with a kiss and a whisper. "El General llego a la embajada con calzoncillos rojos." The General had turned up in the Vatican emba.s.sy wearing red underwear, she said. She spun away to see that the band had refreshment.

A toad in a hole, Harris thought. It was Christmas Eve. Harris arrived late, too late for the champagne but just in time for the mixed drinks. The band was ethnic and very chic. Harris could hear a concertina, a bobla, a woowoo, the triangle. They played a waltz.

"Have you heard the one about the b.i.t.c.h at the dog kennels?" one of the American captains asked him. The captain had a strawberry daiquiri; he stirred the strawberries with his straw.

"I have now," said Harris.

"Don't pull that s.h.i.t with me," the captain said. He drank. "You some kind of feminist? You got a whole lot of women working undercover in the DEA?"

Harris ignored him. He spotted Ruiz by the windows and made his way toward him. Some couples had started to dance in the open s.p.a.ce between Harris and Ruiz. Harris dodged through the dancers. A woman he had never seen before put a drink in his hand, alcoholic, but hot and spiced. "What am I drinking?" he asked Ruiz.

Ruiz shrugged. "You had a chance to call your wife?"

"This afternoon," said Harris. "I'm on my way home tomorrow. You?"

"South," said Ruiz. "What any of this s.h.i.t has to do with anything I do not know."

"It's a statement," said Harris. "At least it's a statement."

"It's an invasion," said Ruiz.

Well, of course there was that. Harris was sorry Ruiz was choosing to see it that way. "He collected toads," Harris offered, by way of changing the subject. "Stone toads."

"He collected yachts," Ruiz said. "The Macho I, the Macho II, and the Macho III. Don't ever tell me he had a problem in this area. And don't tell me he lacked imagination."

Harris took a sip of his drink. It stung his mouth. "Why toads?" His eyes were watering. He took a larger sip, drained the gla.s.s halfway.

"Maybe they were hollow," Ruiz said.

"No."

"Maybe just one was hollow and the others were all to hide the hollow one."

A young woman refreshed Harris's drink. "Que estoy bebiendo?" Harris asked the woman, who left without answering.

"Have some of mine," Ruiz said. He was drinking a margarita. He handed it to Harris. Harris turned the gla.s.s to a virginal part of the salt rim and sipped. He rotated the gla.s.s and sipped again. "Go ahead and finish it," said Ruiz. "I'll get another."

The music had begun to sound odd. A man stood in the middle of the dance floor. "I'll tell you who's coming here. I'll tell you who's coming here!" he shouted. He threw the contents of his drink into the rafters of the house. Others did the same. Harris laughed and drank his margarita instead. He started to say something to Ruiz, but Ruiz was gone. Ruiz had been gone for a long time.

The dancers began to stomp, and the high treble sound of the triangle reached too deeply into Harris's ears. It hurt. Harris could smell alcohol and herbs, drifting down from the roof. The drums and the stomping worked their way into his body. Something inside him was pounding to match them. Harris resisted finding out what. He pulled the little toad from his pocket. "Look what I have," he said to Ruiz, but Ruiz had gone; now Harris remembered, Ruiz had gone south to get a margarita. It was quite some time ago.

"In short, you were stoned out of your gourd," said Harris's superior.

"Now it gets a little blurred for a while," Harris told him. This was a lie, one of several lies. The story Harris was actually telling was far from complete. He had certainly not mentioned stealing the toad. And now he was not mentioning remembering a woman in an evening gown who smiled at him, holding out her hand. There were flowers in it. They bloomed. Everyone was dancing.

"My ears hurt," Harris told her. "Ants are crawling on me." He tried to brush them away, but his hands wouldn't move. She knelt and was still above him so he must have been on the ground. The flowers turned into a painted egg. "This is your brain on drugs," Harris said, laughing. She held it out to him, knowing he couldn't reach for it, teasing him.

"What do you want?" Her shoulders were bare; she answered the question as she asked it by breathing deeply so that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swelled at the neckline. "In your heart, what do you really want?"

Harris's soul detached from his body and floated away.

"I think I had a very narrow escape," Harris told his superior.

"It's a hazard of field work. Sometimes you draw suspicion to yourself by refusing. We know that." The tabloid Harris had purchased was spread out on the desk between Harris and his superior. His superior was adding a mustache to one of the cannibal aliens in the Peruvian cave painting. He blacked in the teeth. It pained Harris, who was not the sort of person to deface pictures and certainly not prehistoric pictures. "I appreciate your coming in, but I don't think I'm even inclined to report this. I mean, in your case, it wasn't even advertent. You were inadvertently drugged."

"I was poisoned," said Harris.

"What does it have to do with gorilla women?"