People, all looking pretty normal (to me, at any rate), move along the wide sidewalk. Many carry bags and satchels of various kinds-paper, plastic, cloth. I even see bags from major department stores-Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus. Some folks wheel shopping carts full of stuff.
Huh. Maybe in Chicago the bag ladies have taken over.
Someone in a particular hurry shoves past me, pinballing me into Enid. I experience a moment of claustrophobia. It’s been months since I’ve been part of a street scene. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.
“The city that wouldn’t die,” I murmur.
“That’s my Chicago,” says Enid.
“This place is awfully well-kept for a postapocalyptic urban zone,” observes Colleen.
She’s right. Among the relatively untwisted wreckage of civilization, the pedal-cabs travel surprisingly garbage-free streets to deliver surprisingly well-dressed passengers to shops that seem to be open for business. A number of them have patched windows, but no glass litters the sidewalks as it does outside the Bubble. The whole place is squeaky clean by postapocalypse standards.
“No one’s armed, either,” Colleen notes. “At least not as far as I can see.”
We’ve been visible since we stepped from the mists of Jackson Street, and no two people react to the sight of us in the same way. Some lower their heads, avert their eyes, shy out of our path. Others stare us down, boldly and speculatively, and make no move to give us a wider berth. I find I can predict who will react in a particular way by what they wear and how they move. Not so different from the world we left behind.
Polarities. There are those who scurry or shuffle as if apologizing to the sidewalk. Their clothing suggests they have shopped in thrift stores or Dumpsters. These are the package-carriers, the cart-pushers. Street people. I know them. I am them. In this city, too, they are the shy ones. Seeming to exist in a parallel universe, they see not and are not seen.
Then there are those who appear stunningly mundane, average, untouched. There is nothing shy about them. They own the pavement; they command it. The others weave around them, follow behind them, beg their pardon.
“I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but people are definitely checking out Magritte.” Colleen has forsaken her usual position at rear guard to slip between Cal and me as we make our way down the block. “A guy in a turban just slunk by whispering prayers and shielding his face, and I’ve seen at least three people cross themselves or clutch at something around their necks when they see her.”
We stop in the middle of the block and watch ourselves being watched. Colleen is right. People are checking out Magritte. Staring at Magritte, and finding her noteworthy. I glance around, claustrophobic again. In the semidarkness of a doorway a man in a suit-looking both at home and out of place at once-is studying us intently. Studying her.
Panic rises in my throat.
Cal looks down at our grunter Sacajawea and asks, “Is there something you want to tell us, Howard?”
The little guy blinks up at Cal through his mirrored shades. “Like what?”
“Like, do these people consider Magritte a deity, or a demon, or what?”
“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” I whisper, tensing to run.
Colleen catches my arm in a steel grip. “Chill, Goldman.”
Before I can “chill,” whistles cut the air behind us, letting out bleat after persistent bleat. I have images of policemen on black and white skateboards in pursuit of us gatecrashers. Everyone else draws back from the center of the sidewalk at the first tweet, but we flock dead center like a bunch of domestic turkeys awaiting the hatchet.
Belatedly, we scatter, too. I grab Magritte and thrust her into the shelter of a wide archway before we are run down by three roller-bladers in Day-Glo spandex, knee pads, and helmets. Each wears a collection of fanny packs and a backpack, carries a baseball bat, and clutches a metal police whistle between his teeth. In a skirl of sound and a swirl of wind they are gone, flying ahead of us down the block. Our fellow travelers move back onto the sidewalk and continue their sojourns.
I take a deep breath and loosen my hold on Magritte, if only a little.
She peeks over my shoulder at the retreating couriers. “You okay?” The curve of her mouth suggests she is fighting the urge to laugh at me.
Before I can answer, another voice intrudes: “Is that your deva?”
“Day-vuh,” he says, and I wonder which one of us he’s mistaken for a Hindu deity. I turn, shielding Magritte with my body. It’s the Suit.
“Excuse me?”
He nods through me at Maggie. “The deva, she yours?” “Yeah, I’m his,” says Magritte. “Fuck off.” Her voice is harder, colder, more acidic than I’ve ever heard it.
The suit seems amused. “You taking her in?”
Taking her in. I’m Clueless Joe, here. “No.”
“Really? That’s quite a mouth she’s got. Could be a real annoyance after a while. Interested in selling?”
Okay. Something less than a deity, then. “Fuck off,” I say, and haul Magritte back out onto the sidewalk where the others have already collected.
“Let’s get the hell off this street,” I tell them. “Now.”
I start down Wells again at warp speed, Magritte moving in harmony. When I finally slow down a bit, Cal catches up to me and pushes me into a defunct bus stop kiosk. The rest of the crew crowds in around us. Howard dives under the bench.
“What happened back there?” Cal asks.
I want to pace, but there’s no room in the cramped quarters. I settle for shifting from one foot to the other and tapping out a rhythmic tattoo on the handle of my machete. “A suit just tried to buy Magritte off me.”
“Oh, jeez,” Colleen mutters, eyes on my face. “He’s losing it.”
Maggie leaps to my defense. “No he’s not. This guy asked if Goldie was taking me in, whatever the hell that meant. Then he tried to buy me.”
Colleen grimaces, glances at Doc, then almost meets my eyes. “Sorry, Goldie,” she mumbles, and slips to one end of the kiosk to watch the traffic flow by.
“Taking her in,” Cal repeats. “Maybe he was just asking if you meant to keep her, take care of her.”
“No, no. That wasn’t it. We’d already established that she was my flare.”
“It pissed me off,” says Magritte. “What, do I have a damned For Rent sign on my forehead?”
Cal glances up and down the street. “Okay, well, that gives us a little insight into the place. Apparently, some people are commodities here.”
“Some things never change,” says Magritte.
I ask, “Enid, do you think feedback would be a problem in here?”
He shoots me a startled glance. “Nobody’s threatened Maggie. That guy’s probably just doing business as usual. Maybe he’s a pimp.”
Maggie shakes her head. “I know pimps. He seemed more like a stockbroker.”
I glance back up the street. “Yeah, well, the stockbroker is following us. Can we blow this bus stop?”
“Let’s,” Cal says, and prods Howie out from under the bench.
Our pace isn’t brisk enough to keep the suit from overtaking us and putting himself in our path. “You didn’t wait to hear my offer,” he tells me, smiling. “I can be very generous.”
“Really? Well, I can be very violent. Please take no for an answer.” I lay a hand on my machete.
He seems not to take me seriously. “I can get all kinds of swag,” he says. “Jewelry, twenty-four karat gold, precious stones. Fresh water? I can get you fresh, clean water. And fruit.”
“She’s not for sale,” says Colleen, stepping out from behind me to face the suit. Her crossbow is aimed at his heart. “What part of this very basic concept don’t you get, mister?”
Her, he takes seriously. He stiffens, eyes the weapon, and steps back a pace, but he doesn’t give up. “She’s useless to you. Your friend here said he wasn’t planning to redeem her, so I thought perhaps…”