Amparo rolled herself into a tight ball of attention. “This is it, coming up now.”
Don Hershey rolled on, voice-over:
It avails not time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river….
The camera panned past conglomerations of smiling, gesturing, chattering people, filing into the boat, pausing now and then to pick out details—a hand picking nervously at a cuff, a yellow scarf lifting in a breeze and falling, a particular face.
Amparo’s.
“There I am! There!” Amparo screamed.
The camera lingered. She stood at the railing, smiling a dreamy smile that none of them watching could recognize. As Don Hershey lowered his volume and asked:
What is then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Amparo regarded, and the camera regarded, the moving surface of the water.
Shrimp’s heart splattered like a bag of garbage dropped to the street from a high rooftop. Envy spilled out through her every vein. Amparo was so beautiful, so young and so damnably beautiful, she wanted to die.
Part II: Talk
12. The Bedroom (2026)
In cross section the building was a swastika with the arms revolving counterclockwise, the Aztec direction. 1812, the Hansons’ apartment, was located halfway along the inner forearm of the swastika’s northwest limb, so that its windows commanded an uninterrupted view of several degrees southwestwards across the roofs of the lower buildings as far as the windowless, megalithic masses of the Cooper Union complex. Above: blue sky and roving clouds, jet trails and smoke wreathing up from the chimneys of 320 and 328. However one had to be right at the window to enjoy this vista. From the bed Shrimp could see only a uniformity of yellow brick and windows variegated with different kinds of curtains, shades, and blinds. May—and from two until almost six, when she needed it most, there was direct, yellow sunlight. It was the only advantage of living so near the top. On warm days the window would be opened a crack and a breeze would enter to ruffle the curtains. Lifting and falling, like the shallow erratic breathing of an asthmatic, billowing, collapsing, the curtains became, as anything watched intently enough will, the story of her life. Did any of those other curtains, shades, or blinds conceal a sadder story? Ah, she doubted it.
But sad as it was, life was also irrepressibly comic, and the curtains caught that too. They were a mild, elaborate joke between Mrs. Hanson and her daughter. The material was a sheer spun chintz in sappy ice cream colors patterned with sprigs and garlands of genitalia, his and hers, raspberry, lemon, and peach. A present from January, some ages ago. Loyally Shrimp had brought it home for her mother to make her a pajama suit from, but Mrs. Hanson, without overtly disapproving, had never got round to the job.
Then, while Shrimp was in the hospital, Mrs. Hanson had made the material up into a pair of curtains and hung them in their bedroom as homecoming surprise and peace offering. Shrimp had to admit that the chintz had met its just reward.
Shrimp seemed content to float through each day without goals or ideas, just watching the cunts and cocks wafted by the breeze and whatever other infinitesimal events the empty room presented her with. Teevee annoyed her, books bored her, and she had nothing to say to visitors. Williken brought her a jigsaw puzzle, which she worked on on an upside-down dresser drawer, but once the border was assembled she found that the drawer, through it had been measured in advance, was an inch too short. Surrendering with a sigh, she swept the pieces back in the box. In every way her convalescence was inexplicable and calm.
Then one day there was a tapping at the door. She said, prophetically, “Come in.” And January came in, wet with rain and breathless from the stairs. It was a surprise. January’s address on the West Coast had been a well-kept secret.
Even so, it wasn’t a large enough surprise. But then what is?
“Jan!”
“Hi. I came yesterday too, but your mother said you were asleep. I guess I should have waited, but I didn’t know whether—”
“Take off your coat. You’re all wet.”
January came far enough into the room to be able to close the door, but she didn’t approach the bed and she didn’t take off her coat.
“How did you happen to— ”
“Your sister mentioned it to Jerry, and Jerry phoned me up. I couldn’t come right away though, I didn’t have the money. Your mother says you’re all right now, basically.”
“Oh, I’m fine. It wasn’t the operation, you know. That was as routine as taking out a wisdom tooth. But impatient me couldn’t stay in bed and so—” She laughed (always bearing in mind that life is comic too) and made a feeble joke. “I can now, though. Quite patiently.”
January crinkled her eyebrows. All yesterday, and all the way downtown today, all the way up the stairs, feelings of tenderness and concern had tumbled about in her like clothes in a dryer. But now, face to face with Shrimp and seeing her try the same old ploys, she could feel nothing but resentment and the beginnings of anger, as though only hours had intervened since that last awful meal two years before. A Betty Crocker sausage and potatoes.
“I’m glad you came.” Shrimp said half-heartedly.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
The anger vanished and guilt came glinting up at the window of the dryer. “The operation, was it for—Was it because of what I said about having children?”
“I don’t know, January. My reasons, when I look back, are still confused. Surely I must have been influenced by things you said. Morally I had no right to bear children.”
“No, it was me who had no right. Dictating to you that way. Because of my principles! I see it now.”
“Well.” Shrimp took a sip from the water glass. It was a heavenly refreshment. “It goes deeper than politics. After all, I wasn’t in any immediate danger of adding to the population, was I? My quota was filled. It was a ridiculous, melodramatic gesture, as Dr. Mesic was the first—”
January had shrugged off her raincoat and walked nearer the bed—She was wearing the nurse’s uniform Shrimp had bought for her how many years ago. She bulged everywhere.
“Remember?” January said.
Shrimp nodded. She didn’t have the heart to tell her that she didn’t feel sexy. Or ashamed. Or anything. The horror show of Bellevue had taken it out of her—feeling, sex, and all.
January slipped her fingers under Shrimp’s wrist to take her pulse. “It’s slow,” she observed.
Shrimp pulled her hand away. “I don’t want to play games.”
January began to cry.
13. Shrimp, in Bed (2026)
“You know?
“I’d like to see it working again, the way it was meant to. That may sound like less than the whole revolution, but it’s something that I can do, that I can try for. Right? Because a building is like … It’s a symbol of the life you lead inside it.
“One elevator, one elevator in working order and not even all day long necessarily. Maybe just an hour in the morning and an hour in the early evening, when there’s power to spare. What a difference it would make for people like us here at the top. Think back to all the times you decided not to come up to see me because of these stairs. Or all the times I stayed in. That’s no way to live. But it’s the older people who suffer most. My mother, I’ll bet she doesn’t get down to the street once a week nowadays, and Lottie’s almost as bad. It’s me and Mickey who have to get the mail, the groceries, everything else, and that’s not fair to us. Is it?