Hello, good to see you all, said the Mayor. Now let’s get this shet-show on the road.
His ducktape gag peeled aside, Diamond-Wood offered a few hastily rehearsed words about the arts, the importance of community, and how firmly the New Fraternal League of Men were dedicated to these things, though the High Gregories extended regrets at not being able to attend personally. To Loopy Diamond-Wood said, Thanks, most of all, to our artist laureate for this wonderful sculptural work to commemorate our park’s twenty-fifth anniversary —
At which Pop growled, That’s not the point of it, evil one!
Diamond-Wood retreated to scattered, tepid applause, slid behind the Mayor, and retaped his mouth. All eyes fell upon their civic leader. Of the two white sheets hiding secrets, it was clear which one they wanted removed. The Mayor gestured irritably at the sculpture. Do it now, for the love of green.
Loopy bowed. I give you. . the Lakeview. . Memorial!
But before her assistant could perform the big reveal the pigeons came flapping at her in a ragged formation. Overwhelmed, the assistant tripped, grasped at the white sheet, which whisked away — and there was nothing beneath it. No pedestal, no sculpture, no plaque. Only emptiness. It was as if the cover had been floating there all along, inflated by some internal wind.
What the fug kind of art is that? said the Mayor.
That’s not it, shrieked Loopy. My work’s been stolen! Someone’s stolen my work!
Disgrateful, said Pop, shaking his head. A complete and utterful disgrate.
Debbie giggled. Which met with scowls from all around.
Hardly the time for humours, Pop chided.
Her smile faded. If only Adine were here, she thought. Adine would find this funny, would supplement the scene with the perfect wiseacre crack to tip Debbie’s amusement into hysteria. But if there’d been a humorous moment it was gone. She stood there awkwardly while Loopy wailed and, stonefaced, Pop demanded a detectivial assembly!
A noise disrupted everything then — a whooshing, a squawk, faces swung skyward and fingers pointed. Through the space where the statue should have been flapped what appeared at first another pigeon, but swooping back up over the trees it caught the light, blazing white against the blue sky. Through his viewfinder the photographer watched it loft higher and higher, zoomed in, at last snapped a picture.
Was that? said Debbie.
Yeah, said the photographer, lowering his camera. One of Raven’s doves.
V
HROUGH HANDS cupped to the window Calum looked into the Room: lights off, benches up on tables, Debbie’s deskchair wheeled back from her workstation, tilted at an angle that suggested a swift and drastic escape. And despite the CLOSED FOR LONG WEEKEND sign it seemed inconceivable that Debbie wasn’t puttering around in the shadows. She was always here. He pounded on the door, shuffled back to the window, blocked the light, and looked again: nothing, just grey stillness.
Overhead a Yellowline train went clattering south. Calum looked up at the underside of the tracks, at the flashing shape of it moving along, and thought of the Hand — suspended in space, the train ziplining her along.
The cuts on his forehead, where the Hand’s shirtless friend or brother had smashed the tube, were drying into a scabby acne, his left eye remained swollen shut. Moving away from the window Calum avoided his reflection for fear of what he’d see: a monster. But a very weak monster, weak as a slave, who’d stumbled bleeding and delirious out of the silos into Whitehall, and now found himself here, outside the Room, the slave who’d escaped, found the world too big, and dragging his chains returned to the only place he belonged.
But that was not the whole story. When his final throw had landed harmlessly in the girl’s lap the silo had gone silent. Uh-oh, said the Hand, and a great crest of laughter rose up and came crashing down, Calum felt useless and stupid, dumbly confronted with what he hadn’t done. The shirtless guy in the welding mask grabbed the Hand by the hips and pulled her onto his lap and said, Gotta break that thing on your head, those are the rules.
The rules. In shame Calum collected the tube from the girl’s lap. She was chuckling. Her twin brother (were they twins?) was coming to on the floor, making soft groaning noises. She said, Nice shooting, and everyone found this very hilarious indeed.
Yeah, nice shooting, the guy said, lifted the Hand’s shirt, his fingers scurried spiderlike up inside.
Calum’s fingers closed around the tube. He stared into the girl’s dark sunglasses, at the suggestion of eyes in there — he sensed scorn. Let’s go, called the guy from the couch. Crack that thing on your face, he crooned, my sister here’s dying to see it. Another surge of laughter — and Calum wound up and smashed the tube across the girl’s face.
She wilted from the stool and lay there twitching on the floor. Half the tube remained in Calum’s hand, the other half shattered into craggy bits. He tossed it, a faint tinkle of glass followed by a thick, brooding silence. And then there was a rush, like a flock of crows unleashed from a rooftop, and Calum turned, and, led by the guy in the mask, a faceless mob was descending upon him.
Now, moving down the laneway beside the Room, his vision kept clouding over, he had to shake his head to clear it. He reached the water, made fists, bashed his knuckles together in a hollow knock of bone on bone. Out on the lake someone’s sailboat, a little white A, tacked across Kidd’s Harbour. Calum watched until it moved out of view, then he headed back out to F Street. After a few steps the world reeled and swam, he staggered, had to regain his balance on a parked car. Halfheartedly tried the door: locked. Farther along was a payphone, which he checked for quarters. One sat in the slot.
Calum tossed the coin in the air, guessed heads — tails — flipped it twice more before he got heads, then fed the phone. But who to call? Not Debbie, he only had the number of the Room, not Edie, not one of their friends, not his mother. Not the Hand.
The money clunked down and was lost. He jiggled the cradle, no luck, took a measured step back, stomped the phone as hard as he could, his sneaker fell off on the backswing. Sullenly he fetched it. His stomach gurgled. He felt dizzy and sick. He leaned against the wall.
Where was Debbie? Calum thought about how giving she tried to seem, how generous and caring, yet she maintained a safe distance: he didn’t even know where she lived. Who was she, really, this person who wanted everything from him, that he talk and share and trust her, for him to be better — and she believed this was generous, just to listen.
Calum headed south down F Street, his head humming a muffled, cloudy sort of tune, with nowhere to go and no one to see, and nothing to do with them when he got there.
AN ARTIST SPEAKS only with her hands, said Loopy, and displayed them: palms, then backs.
The Museum of Prosperity archivists stared.
Likeways, to exfabulate upon my hands, Pop said, laying them on the picnic table: My hands are my words. And my words are my hands. Therein lives the paradox.
The Mayor used her own hands to hide her face.
But back to this travestation, said Pop, and whom we can be sure is gullible.
The archivists met his knowing, shrewd look with equal bewilderment.
Do I have to spell it for you? The illustrationaire!
And to think these hands once sculpted his likeness, moaned Loopy.
Moreover! To think he has now, poof, into thinned air, envanished the only remaining relish of Lakeview Homes!
One of the archivists blinked. The other said, Relish?