Part 9 (2/2)

'I'm not really sure yet.'

Half a mile later, she parks the moped in the roadside dirt and takes his hand and leads him down a littered path to an unmistakable Gay Paris landmark. The Swinging Bridge. An old-style narrow cable affair with a rotting wooden deck hanging thirty feet over the rus.h.i.+ng creek below. It got its name because it swings in a good wind, and moans, and creaks as you step lightly across. Tales of young s.e.x and death abound. Just before they get to it Lionel steps on a beer can and the sudden metal noise underfoot freaks him out.

'It's okay,' says the girl, his hand in hers. 'It's just a piece of trash some moron left.'

Halfway across the fabled span she halts their advance saying, 'Wait.'

'Wait for what? We better get across this crazy f.u.c.ker thing before something happens.'

'Just listen.'

'I knew a kid who got caught between the boards one time and-'

'Shhhh. Please. Just listen.'

'Listen for what?'

'Nothing in particular. Just sounds. Just life.'

Thirty seconds later he says, 'I hear you breathing.'

'Lucky for me. What else?'

The boy lifts his face, black shades gleaming off the water in the noonday sun.

'The creek,' he says. 'It's really moving.'

'Can you see it in your head?'

'Yes.'

'Good,' smiles Gloria. 'That makes me happy.'

They stand here awhile. The bridge rocks gently, called to life by their movements, the slightest change in posture. This creekwater runs to the Hudson. The Hudson runs to the sea.

'Gloria?'

'What?'

'I think I hear my heart.'

Ten minutes later they're sitting side by side at the water's edge, their socks and boots on the stones, their pale feet in the cold stream. The sycamore seeds we call helicopters falling and spinning down into the current to dance away. They sit in silence. Then the fire whistle blows noon, its reliable and distant wail a built-in comfort to the boy. Twelve times it cries, the last one trailing off.

'We gotta get her out of there,' says Gloria.

'Who?'

'Bea Two-Feathers.'

'Jailbreak?'

'I'm not sure yet.'

'Gloria?'

'Yeah?'

'I got your back.'

'Ditto kiddo.'

Tracy makes a noise like a hurt dolphin and her drum-tight eyelids quiver, her hair flung wild on the pillow. She's dreaming of home. The plastic music box in her tiny bedroom at Dad's trailer with the perverted elf on top that twirls to the narcotic tempo of 'O Night Divine' when she winds it up. Maybe songs aren't meant to be kept in boxes. And maybe girls aren't either. A balmy wind comes into the room through a crack in the window, silent from the Gulf of Mexico, and through the wall she hears the TV say, 'Seven out of ten Americans believe in some form of extra-terrestrial life.' Then the TV says, 'An Orlando mother drowns her four-year-old in a bathtub to protect a secret.' Then later it says, 'New study finds excess body fat linked to growing number of new cancer cases in this country. Obesity: trend or plague?' Daddy can't sleep. When he can't sleep that's when he comes in my room.

Now she wakes in the loft, every ceiling fan spinning, the restless drone they make like locusts in the last days.

Where's Ross? she thinks, studying the big waterbed. He was right here when I fell asleep.

Throwing aside the blanket and getting to her naked feet, she tiptoes towards the kitchen to get a drink of water. Wait. What's that? She stops and rubs her sleepy eyes and stares dumbfounded at the thing that stands before her. It's shaped like a person. An empty milk gallon for a head. Thin metal and melted plastic fused and manipulated, everything bent and skewed towards one deliberate end; to conjure this figure, to bring it to life.

'Ross?' she calls, the hesitation in her voice a new thing. She turns and looks to the bathroom door. It's wide open. No water running. 'Ross, are you in there?'

No answer. The ceiling fans whir. The numbers on the digital clock by the bed are green. So is this girl come chasing fame. Turning back to the figure born overnight, she eyes its construction, its tortured posture, its parts.

Hmm, that's weird, she muses. Where have I seen all this stuff before?

Then it clicks. These are the steel shelves and hard plastic trays that belong to the refrigerator, the innards of the big icebox humming there against the wall.

Tracy looks around the loft one more time for her host. Then she heads for the fridge, skirting around the warped sculpture leaning in her path with a quick and athletic hop as if she fears the thing might somehow reach out and grab her.

When she opens the refrigerator door she's met with a bitter steam. And what she finds inside nearly makes her collapse, a hot wave through her brain, a sickness in her gut.

'What are you doing in there?' she says, her voice shaky. 'Why are you in there, Ross?'

And for the rest of her life she'll not forget the naked man's voice, nor his fetal pose, nor the look on his bluish face as it turned to address her, the rest of him Polaroid-still.

'Mom? A fire's coming. It starts in the forest. There's a G.o.d for these things. Didn't you know that? I know because I've seen his hooves. And how nimbly he steps. I used to choose the things he'd dance to. I used to say who'll sing and who'll not sing. But never mind that. How are you? Why were you gone so long? It's okay. I'm just happy you're here. Shhhhh. No time to waste. A forest fire is blind. And like all blind things it thrashes at the world. Firemen. Helicopters. I watch it eat them alive. Watch it spill into the freeway. Crackle in the dry trees. It eats through a skysc.r.a.per. It blows though a baby carriage. I can't know how it starts. Only that it's headed this way. And I burn. And I crackle and p.i.s.s. I built a decoy while you slept. Quiet as a mouse. And came in here to hide where it's cool. Maybe I'll be okay here. If you really love me you'll close the door.'

Down in the street her eyes hunt for any kind of sign that will lead her to a bus stop, bus station. Halfway across Rose Avenue she hears Bebop's recorder blowing, faint at first but closer as she goes. A tune to get girls out of boxes. A tune to lure out every rat.

When she spies him swaying down by the coffee shop, the blue recorder to his lips, the tie-dyed turban towering atop his head, a faint smile graces her mouth. Craning her neck, Tracy lifts a hand and waves goodbye to the junky like a country-bound orphan might a new city friend. She doesn't wait for him to wave back. Just turns away and keeps walking, fast as her lily-white legs will go.

Down on Rose a bald kid lights a cigarette with a match. Further on two seagulls fight over half a burger on the pavement and a woman weeps into a cell phone, her make-up running down between the corners of her mouth. And in rolls the sea. Out rolls the sea.

All through the night it rained. A fitful and violent downpour that kept Gloria drifting in and out of sleep, huddled in her unplugged electric blanket on the couch. The kind of rain that makes you feel lucky to have a roof over your head, and four walls, where the strange kinetic dervish of water and wind outside can't get you, can't hurt you.

Then she hears a crash and turns her head from its hiding place in a crease between the cus.h.i.+ons. Peering out the window she sees the hard rain still slanting down, and the big blue tarp that shelters the flea market blowing awry in the grey light before sunrise.

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