Olpert didn’t move. Time passed, the phone began ringing again, the room pitched and reeled. He concocted scenarios with this Debbie: a phone number, a date, a kiss, a whole life together, and every night ended with their heads on the same pillow and Olpert whispering, Goodnight, Debbie, I love you. And her saying it back.
From the real world came a clatter. The phone had stopped ringing — Pete had it to his ear screaming, What the fug? What!
Olpert blinked. Okay, he said.
Who’s that on the phone then, Pete, said Starx.
Okay, I said, said Olpert. I’ll do it.
His cheek was stuck to the bar, he had to peel himself off. Eyes bleary and bloodshot, Olpert wavered on his stool, buffeted by a secret wind.
That’s it, Bailie. Starx lifted his cider in salute. Live, it’s time for you to live.
Olpert searched his partner’s big face for mockery. But Starx, though flushed a ripe-cherry purple, looked stoic, even sincere.
Easy, Bailie. You look like you’re about to kiss me. It’s only our first date.
Sorry, sorry. .
No, that’s the spirit. Just, you know, direct it over there.
Olpert swung off the stool, stepped down. The room carouselled around him. Starx gave him a push that sent him staggering toward the corner booth. He reached for something, a chair maybe, to steady himself, it toppled. He came closer, his mouth began to form the words he was meant to say — simple words spoken all the time: Can I have your phone number. Because that was all you needed, a number, to begin.
Debbie was a person-shaped blur, Olpert’s stomach churned, then heaved with a more troubling sort of violence. Oh no, he said, and felt Debbie watching him as he stumbled past to the men’s, her eyes full of revulsion — or, worse, pity. Hands pressed to either wall he shimmied down the hallway as a miner down a mineshaft, face tightening as vomit threatened at the back of his throat.
He swung through the door: the toilet was occupied. Olpert rattled the handle and a woman said, Take it easy. He staggered and fell against the sink, slid to a sitting position on the tiles. The stall door opened and he had a view of jeans and sneakers and from somewhere above them a female voice was demanding angry questions Olpert didn’t understand and couldn’t answer because here it came, surging and gurgly and sour, a hot spray down his uniform, all over the women’s bathroom floor.
IX
TS FINAL S FLICKERING, the STREET’S MILK & THINGS sign lit the parking lot in a milky pallor. The store’s lights were off. Debbie tried the door, found it locked, cupped her hands to the glass, and looked inside. Pop sat behind the counter, the great mound of him motionless in the dark. His hands were not madly gesticulating, no invectives poured from his mouth, no perspiration darkened his poncho. He seemed sad and hunched, a shadow of himself. She’d never seen him like this.
Debbie knocked. He looked up. Fear flashed in his eyes. She waved. The look faded, he nodded and came around to let her in.
Mr. Street, hi, sorry, said Debbie, trying to steel the boozy slur from her voice. I rushed here as quick as I could.
I dilated your phone number, I spoke to someone —
Adine.
— whom told me of your presence at this drinking bar. After localizing the number I called recurrently, and called. Ultimately upon the midnight hour a man responds, and thence you are. Should I have slept in my store, what of the Movement then?
Mr. Street, sorry. I would’ve come quicker if I’d known —
They took my house. After a quartered century hencefrom, they took my house.
I know. I know.
The men who took it — I lend you insurance, was I younger. . With his hand Pop made the chopping motion of a cheese slicer.
We should try to catch the last train. Do you have stuff?
He held up a plastic bag. It seemed to be filled with candy.
Pop locked up and led Debbie around back. Where the houseboat had been a handpainted LAKEVIEW HOMES RESTRIBUTION MOVEMENT placard lay in the gravel, which Pop collected and stroked as a sad dad might a photo of his lost child. My domicidal return can be petitioned on Monday, he said. After this Jubilee has transposed.
This is so unacceptable. I’ve got a friend who’s a lawyer —
They are desirous for my eradification. Sincerely! For I am the lone recalcitrant of history, of what presupposed what is. I’m the sole one who cares anymore.
Debbie, following Pop down the path into People Park, said, Well.
Lark! I’m the sole one.
Are we supposed to be in the park after midnight? I thought there were Helpers —
They can’t tell me whence to be or not be, said Pop.
Okay, said Debbie, swaying down the path behind him, still drunk.
They bulldoze my home and then sagefully proclaim this park better? Bah. To whom did they consult among us, the populace, the impersonatory people? This Mayor cares about people as the eagle of malignancy cares about the earth from which it plucks the worm of hope — the earth this worm has toiled, stay mindful.
I will, said Debbie.
The night sky had clouded over, the moon glowed dully behind a smoky scrim. Debbie followed Pop into the lightless common — a vast pool of spilled ink.
This here, he said, was the beginning of the alley behind F-Block, I impersonated unit F-802. All the way aghast this hill were backyards. Of course it was planified then also, there was no hill. Perhaps difficult to visualize from here.
I think Adine’s family was in Block H, said Debbie. That was near your shop, right?
But Pop was on the move again, heading around Crocker Pond to the Slipway, which they’d climb to Parkside West Station. At the boathouse he stopped to catch his breath. The clouds parted: a perfect full moon splashed little crags of silver upon the pond.
You okay?
He nodded, produced a blowholish grunt. Atop the hill the train station glowed like a spaceship. See, you see? He gestured vaguely with his bag of candy, gasping. Thence was my place. You see?
Do you mean when you had your boat in Crocker Pond or —
They made me move from the pond! Claiming that upon my own property would be an endurable arraignment! And now the squab has come home to roast.
I know, but was your house near here too? Sorry, I’m just confused.
The hawk, he whispered, and grinned. I’d forgotten about him, what was his name, what did we call him? The walls were so thin that if you heard mice you couldn’t be sure if they were from next door or your own unit. And if you had mice there was a hawk, someone had tamed a hawk. This man brought his hawk to your house and you would go out and come back and the mice would be gone, all of them. But what was his name?
The man’s?
No, said Pop. The hawk’s.
He had grown so lucid. He even breathed more easily — but he snorted and wheeled. Lark, why am I pontificating this story? About a hawk! Not exactly utilitary.
It’s a great story. Our cat Jeremiah’s useless with mice. He —
Cats, bah.
Clouds slid over the moon.
Climbing the slipway, between gasps Pop muttered, Stories are just stories.
I thought it was nice. Crazy maybe, a hawk let loose indoors —
Nice and crazy maybe is not utilitary.
Well it’s just nice to hear a story that’s not about how dangerous it was here. In the Homes, I mean. You hear about the violence —
Pop grunted. You entreat me of violence? Of course there was violence. Whence is there not? But is it not just as violent to force citizens from their homes? To uproot us like so many roots from the soil, with the spade of unjustice?