‘I’m sure it will be all right. Honestly.’
‘The Metropolitan said I could let him into the house again after a few years.’
Alex stood up. ‘I do have to go. I’m terribly sorry.’ He took a step backwards towards the door. ‘I’m sure the power won’t go off.’
‘Thank you,’ said the woman, her eyes filling again with tears. ‘It’s very kind of you to come to talk to me. It’s truly very kind. I’ll pray for you and your friend tonight.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex, and backed out the doorway, turning to move quickly down the corridor, and up the stairs in two long steps. The door opened from the inside, and he pushed the piece of wood back into place, not sure if he should do this or not but thinking somehow that it was better to leave everything as he had found it. The cold air was sharp against his skin, and he pulled on his cap and stood on Bathurst Street, taking deep breaths.
It would be a pathetic report to take back to Susie, but she hadn’t expected much from him anyway.
He turned onto College and walked back towards his apartment. A streetcar drove past, a small child pressing her face against the window in a comic grimace; the door of a café opened briefly, and he heard laughter, and the sound of an espresso machine. When he got to his block, he saw the man who was being held hostage by terrorists sitting in a doorway, and reached into his pocket for change.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the man, who had his arms wrapped around his legs, against the cold. ‘Would you happen to have… ’
‘Sure,’ said Alex, and gave him a handful of coins.
‘Thank you very much, sir. I wouldn’t ask, but… ’
‘It’s okay. I know.’ ‘It’s a bad situation, sir. They’re upset that I have the knowledge. They don’t want me to have the knowledge, about the people falling out of the air.’
Alex sighed and leaned against the bricks. For a minute he saw the whole city as one great cry for attention, and he thought that maybe people died on the street not from cold or heat or hunger but only because no one got enough attention. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Why were the people falling?’
‘Well,’ said the man, his eyes growing brighter. ‘That’s the part that we need to think about in an analytical way. Because sometimes things fall down, sir, and the force of your will can’t keep them standing. Because you remember how it was, sir. When the buildings were coming down.’
‘Oh,’ said Alex. ‘Do you mean in New York?’
The man shrugged. ‘The force of your will was helpless, sir,’ he said. ‘But this is what somebody told me who had a name tag that she wasn’t CIA. You can have something come into your head, but it’s up to you how you understand it to be. And this is where the analytical thinking comes in. For instance you might decide that it’s a problem of the force of your will, and if you tell yourself that people can’t fall out of the sky then they will stop doing it, but I haven’t found this to be very successful. Or you could decide that your job is catching people, but there’s the potential for harm if they’re falling very fast. It was all on the television, sir. I’m sure you remember.’
‘Yes, well, I think I know what you mean.’
‘Or you can decide that it’s an issue of enemies and take yourself in hand to eliminate them, which is very efficient in a way unless they get mad at you too, or someone comes and makes you sit in the white chair which could be very unfortunate. But that’s not the part that’s making the terrorists angry, sir. They’ve been trying to cause me harm because they’re upset that I have knowledge of the components. The components of the bodies, sir.’
How much of this, Alex wondered, can a street contain? How much, before it all breaks down?
‘The reassembly of the components isn’t a hopeful prospect,’ said the man. ‘And when blood comes out of the ears, there’s no possibility to survive. I’ve seen this in person. The components have been damaged on a wide basis.’
Alex looked at the man and frowned. ‘But you weren’t there, right?’ he asked. ‘I mean, in New York? This is something else you’re talking about?’
‘That’s all right, sir,’ said the man. ‘I know what you need to ask me, you want me to tell you that I was really there or else somebody just told me about it, and I’m not offended that you want to ask me that. That’s the way it is when people are talking, you need to ask certain questions, and when I answer them I always try to be honest.’ He scratched the skin on one hand. ‘But even when you see something with your own eyes, you don’t always know what it means until somebody tells you what happened, do you? You just don’t always know. So there was this noise, and this darkness. I can’t remember it all fairly well. But the government’s involved in my situation now. Things are looking up.’
‘Okay,’ said Alex. There was no more sense he could make from this, not now, there was nothing to do but accept what the man could give him. ‘I’m glad to hear that. I hope it goes well.’
‘We all do our best, sir. Things are looking up every day.’
‘Listen.’ On impulse, Alex reached into his pocket. ‘Could you do me one favour? I’m trying to find someone, could you look at his picture and tell me if you know him?’
‘Well, that would depend on your intentions, sir,’ said the man, his heavy face furrowing with concern. ‘For instance if you wanted to push him in front of a car, sir, I wouldn’t want to be involved with that.’
‘No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just his sister wants to talk to him.’
‘Is she going to be respectful of the systems, do you think?’
‘Yes. I think so.’ He held out the photo. ‘Have you seen him anywhere?’
The man studied the picture for a long time. ‘I couldn’t tell you at this moment, sir. There’s a possibility of some help. But I think I’ll need to make some enquiries with the government.’
‘Sure. You do that then.’
‘I’ll try to look into the matter for you, sir. That’s his sister? She’s a very pretty lady.’
‘Well. Yes. She is.’
‘Okay, sir, and thank you for the change. I’ll let you know if the situation is updated in any way.’
Sitting at a melamine table with Nicole and Kirsty after track practice, the girl picked at a plate of fries, the gravy salty and thick and hot. ‘But honest to God,’ Kirsty was saying, ‘you really, like, collapsed from a poison gas? ’Cause this is getting totally serious.’
‘I don’t know,’ said the girl, carefully licking a ribbon of gravy from her finger. ‘I guess. Yeah.’
‘I mean, because they keep saying it’s nothing, but you know there’s all kinds of people collapsing now, and if they’re all getting poisoned it could be like, you don’t know what’s going to happen in a week or two weeks or… ’
‘It’s stupid,’ said the girl. ‘Forget it. It’s probably just like, they have a problem with the pipes in the subway or something, they just don’t want to admit it so they blame the, you know, terrorists or somebody. That’s probably, that’s probably it.’ She knew that whatever she said would carry a particular authority, because she was the one who had fallen first; even Tasha would never have quite the same position, though Tasha had collapsed as well. Anyway, nobody really listened to Tasha to begin with. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
‘I just kind of think this is serious,’ said Nicole.
‘No,’ said the girl. ‘It’s stupid. It’s just stupid, okay?’ She pushed her hair back impatiently, the good tired ache in her muscles.
‘Sure.’ Nicole reached over and took a french fry from the girl’s plate. ‘We can definitely change the subject. It’s fine.’