Dead Souls (24 page)

I RUN FAST,
faster than the guard who pauses along the way, screaming at people to “
Get out, get out now
!
”
I hear the crackle of his walkie-talkie as I run up the stairs, the elevator that dings as the doors open to a small family, the mother carrying a newborn in a Björn and pushing a toddler in a stroller. The father of the brood clocks me, bloody, disheveled mess that I am, probably not sure whether he should be concerned on my behalf or if I'm the one who's dangerous.
Yes and yes
.

“Everyone out!” shouts the guard. “Everyone out now!”

Up the stairs, my legs and lungs burn but I push through it, the pain in my head is fierce, but I propel myself up, steadied by the handrail—Level 4, Level 3, Level 2. Tags here and there, a foreign, spray-painted language of one gang to another. Level 1.

Cold, bright air—I want to stop, take deep breaths, but there's no time, no time, so I run, my knees wobbly, my calves aching. Gold and orange streak across the dawning sky, which is marred only by a scattering of small clouds, like tossed pebbles. A security camera tracks me.

No time, no time.

So instead, I jump over the yellow rail that separates the parking structure from the sidewalk, keep running, and I get lots of looks now, everyone's head turns to watch the pale woman in yoga pants and a T-shirt, blood clumped in her hair, running barefoot. They give me space as I run by, as if I'm going to stop along the way and light into one of them.

If they knew what I knew, they'd be running too.

I sail past store windows, catching my panicked reflection.
It's so strange to be so damn visible, the center of everyone's attention. By now someone's probably made a call to the police—I run past an ATM machine and that camera will be recording me too. A digital trail. The pain at the base of my skull throbs like a metronome, and I find my strides start to sync with it, right left, right left,
throb throb
,
throb throb
.

I smile. I don't know why I do that. Maybe it's that famous runner's high, a false rush of endorphins landing around the fifth mile of a marathon, but there is a sense of relief, almost a sense of joy, because here I am, at the end of it. What will or won't happen will or won't happen. Not a light at the end of the tunnel perhaps, but the closest thing to closure I will ever get.

And the light, the light is so impossibly beautiful. It refracts across the glass of office buildings, imbues everything with an angelic touch. Christmas lights wrapped through the limbs of small, impeccably pruned trees still glow, storefronts sport Santa decals, intricately cut paper snowflakes. Montgomery Street smells like cold concrete, car exhaust, and pine needles. Someone's soaped
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
across the window for a children's clothing store.

Why is everything so beautiful just before it's gone forever?

“Hey! Hey you!”
I look back over my shoulder and see a cop holding a large walkie-talkie to his ear.
“Hey, stop!”

Oh, fuck it
. With so little left to lose, I decide to abandon the rest, so I pull my T-shirt up and over my head—shock on the face of a little girl holding her mother's hand at the crosswalk—feel the icy creep as I turn invisible—brief stop to yank off my yoga pants—and then I am truly, gloriously free. Free of
self, free of image, free of notice, or judgment. Free of the small, nagging demands of desire. I want nothing except to run.

And then there, standing on the corner of Commercial Street in front of the East West Bank is a tall, familiar figure next to a Linhof Technika that I would recognize anywhere, anytime.

I should be angry, furious, I should feel rage and hate but the damn truth of it is that I'm glad to see Alejandro.

A small crowd is gathered, watching the artiste at work. Alejandro, celebrity photographer with his iconic, radiant hair, wearing couture jeans that look sculptural, a red leather jacket. He chats up a large Midwestern tourist in drawstring shorts and a T-shirt,
I LEFT MY
♥
IN SAN FRANCISCO
. I slow down from a dead run to a jog, then to a brisk walk, breathing hard, each breath wonderfully, gloriously painful. Pain is a tool for clarity; I see that now. Suffering the only compass you'll ever need.

Of course Alejandro spots me and grins.
Beams
, is more like it. Like a proud papa.

“Fiona Dunn, stop where you are, that is just so, so . . . perfect.”

His crowd looks puzzled—
who is he talking to?
—but I stop. Not because I have to, but because if there's such a thing as karma, then we are karmicly connected. God how I've missed the sound of his voice.

There's a flash and I wonder if part of my soul has been pressed into his film, shadow and all, or if there truly is nothing there to be photographed at all anymore.

Then I hear the explosion behind me.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

T
ASTE OF BLOOD
and gravel in my mouth, an ache like every bone in my body has been fractured, and when I open my eyes, I think a fog has set in but it's dust and smoke hanging in the air. I can't hear a thing. Hard to move—my body warns me not to—but I'm not in a mood for listening to my body, so I turn onto my side, ignoring the black dizziness that threatens. Push myself up onto my knees. A little girl's shoe is half buried in rubble—pink with a My Little Pony leather appliqué,
Darlene
written on the sole in blue Sharpie.

Sirens are the first real sound I hear. Thin and distant.

I struggle to get up on my feet, and when I look down, I see my body covered with white, fine dust, and I can't tell whether I'm still invisible underneath. Curious, I hold up my right arm, brush off some of the dust. I can see straight through. I guess it makes sense, the fine particles acting like a kind of body paint, rendering my invisibility useless. I feel vulnerable and exposed—truly naked.

There are others in the haze of smoke, people standing bleary-eyed on the pavement, trying to absorb the last few mo
ments. Everything is coated in the same dust. Everything is camouflaged.

I feel something hard rolling around in my mouth, and I spit it out—the bloody tooth that came loose when I got clocked against the tub. This starts a coughing fit. I grab a bike rack to hold myself upright until it passes.

I don't think Alejandro even flinched
.

I turn to look behind me. A blazing plume of fire and black smoke consumes the Transamerica parking entrance, and a mushroom cloud of white smoke curls up toward the sky. Something beautiful and captivating about it, like a flower blossoming.

Why did I just think that?
It's not the right analogy; I should be feeling other things, thinking other things. Even the sight of a man's bloody face draped over a parking meter doesn't move me.

Am I dead? Is this hell?

I turn to look back to where Alejandro was standing and through the crowd of stunned, frozen zombies, I see another familiar form. Wavy, jet-black hair that reaches his shoulders, black denim, and cowboy boots. Clothes that are pristine, dust-free. Scratch. He walks like he's in another space or time that doesn't have much to do with the present situation, fast, but not in a hurry. A crying toddler makes the mistake of reaching out for him as he passes, and it's not that he ignores her; it's that she's so unimportant he doesn't see her in the first place.

I note the path he's on, look down the street and see Alejandro, also coated with dust, waiting farther down on a corner with his camera propped over his shoulder.

I cross the street to follow them.

DO THEY OR DON'T THEY
see me? There's no acknowledgement, but they don't seem to be in any particular hurry either, a strange bubble of calm in the midst of chaos. Two friends taking a casual morning stroll. I follow about a block and a half behind them. Shouts and cries as strangers guide strangers to a bench, to the curb—
Are you hurt? Did you see what happened?
—trying to staunch bleeding, wrapping jackets around the ones in shock, comforting each other. So many good Samaritans, people with pure hearts. Maybe I don't have one of those anymore, maybe the dark shadow has retreated inward and rotted it out. Even Justin, my love for him, feels remote, like a radio signal slowly losing its cohesion as it drifts off into space.

A fire engine screams by me, kicking up more dust in its trail. I wonder about the dust. If it's toxic. Probably is.

Up ahead, Scratch and Alejandro turn left on Columbus Avenue and then my heart does feel something—fear that I might lose them. So I walk faster.

I pass Mr. Bing's Cocktail Lounge and a wizened Asian man opens the door, peeks out, sees me, quickly closes the door. What do I look like, anyhow? I pause in front of the restaurant window that's merely cracked, not shattered, and catch my broken reflection. Nearly scare myself to death. Because that's what I look like—death warmed over, or so the saying goes. My naked form covered in dust looks feral, alien, but there's something else unobservable but strange. I step in, look closer.

My eyes are gone.

Just hollow, gray sockets where they should be. But of
course, my eyes are blinking, washing away the dust. Still it feels like my soul, who I am, is disappearing, and something else entirely is being born, taking its place.

When I look back up the street, I see Scratch and Alejandro have turned left again—all I get is a glimpse of Alejandro's camera before it disappears, so I cross the street and pick up the pace, past the Tosca Cafe, the Underground (
Rock 'n' Roll Posters, T-shirts, Jewelry & More
!
), to where Columbus splits with Broadway, bits of paper and ash floating through the air like snow.

And I don't even know why I'm following them. Anyone with the smallest hint of sense would just give up at this point, go home and take a nice warm shower, spend their last sane minutes with their loved ones before their favor is collected. The laptop is gone, my access to the Fealtee site is gone, and for the life of me I can't think of anything else to offer. But my legs keep moving, my lungs keep working, my heart keeps beating. The present keeps evaporating into the past, and the future comes as it will, displacing everything.

ST. PATRICK CHURCH
is closed for renovations, or so the sign says. Imposing metal scaffolding is propped against the front brick, Gothic-style facade, making it seem even shabbier compared to the glass and cement monolith of the Metreon across the street. A door to the left, below ground level, swings shut, catching my eye. The softest
click
. None of the people milling about Mission Street notice—they're too busy swapping stories, glued to their cell phones for more information. Some are coated with dust, others just brushed with it.

No one ever thinks the worst is yet to come. Always our greatest failing.

A young woman in nurse scrubs starts toward me, concern clouding her face, but once she sees me, the hollows where my eyes should be, she stops, suddenly afraid. Takes a nervous step back. Her companion of the moment, a skinny redheaded jogger in shorts and an old hoodie, pulls at her sleeve, points to her cell. The jogger wears sneakers with bright orange soles that look like NASA designed them. I'd call the color anitra.

No sign of Alejandro or Scratch as far as I can see up the hilly road ahead, which means the most likely scenario is that they went into the church, through the swinging door. Of course, this shoots down our favorite dead-soul theory, that Scratch hates churches. Maybe all this time Renata was right to scan the New Parish for him—maybe he was in the shadows all those Saturdays, knocking back Guinnesses and getting some other stooges drunk enough to sell their souls.

What else were we wrong about?

Everything, probably.

I remember Alejandro holding the door open for me at the New Parish the first time I went to a meeting. I was nervous, imagine,
nervous
about going. I still thought I was in the throes of the worst time of my life.

I paused before crossing the threshold. That Yankee intuition prickling.

“Don't
worry
so much, Fiona,” Alejandro said, with a characteristically warm, broad smile lighting his face. “In here, we are surrounded by the very things the devil cannot stand, bitter reminders of a loss he cannot bear. Here he will not come. Here we are safe from his interference.”

It still didn't feel right, but he just laughed. “Look . . . look above you.”

I did. It was the first time I saw the glow of the Virgin, radiating the light, laughter, and warmth from inside. It eased me somewhat.

Alejandro could tell. He placed a soft hand on my shoulder. “Would I lie to you under the Virgin herself?”

Maybe
. I thought it then, but I know it now.
Yes
.

Hopefully I'll have better luck under the gaze of Saint Patrick. I hear he's the one who can banish snakes.

I STEP PAST THE THRESHOLD
and into a small storeroom, dimly lit by long tubes of fluorescent bulbs—faintest smell of mildew. The lights flicker, on, then off, then on again.
Yes, Scratch is here
. The linoleum floors are nicely smooth under my feet compared to the debris-filled sidewalks outside, and even though the air isn't fresh, it's not filled with dust. I take a moment to breathe deeply. Shelves line the walls of the room, stacks and stacks of accordion files, old suitcases, dusty plastic containers, a leather bowling ball bag. In the corner sits a small statue of Mary, the kind you see in backyards, her nose and hands broken off, paint weathered away. Boxes labeled
Cavanagh Altar Bread
stacked on a pallet, fifty pounds each. Jesus pressed into small wafers—or not the body of Jesus yet, at this point he's just wheat and flour. The priest says words and then it turns into the body of Christ, and then people eat him.

I've always been curious, so I approach one that's open, pull out a small wafer marked with the cross, or an
X
, depending on how you hold it. It's lighter than I thought it would be, like it
could just float above my palm. I open my mouth, place it on my tongue. It tastes like paper, with the consistency of foam, and after a few strange moments it dissolves into a mush. I don't know what else to do, so I swallow. For luck, I guess.

Suddenly above me I hear the muffled sound of a whimper, followed by the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor. I get a rush of adrenaline—fight or flight, the oldest of instincts—but I'm so exhausted, so spent that I would rather know than wonder. I just want whatever is going to happen to happen.

For what I know might be the last time, I close my eyes, imagine my corporeal body reappearing. There is that icy creep again, but I'm blessed with an easy transition. When I open my eyes, I look down to my arm where I'd brushed the dust away, and I see my flesh again. Bloody, bruising, but there.

It's the only real home we ever know, our bodies. It feels good to be home again. But it's cold in the storeroom, and I start to shiver, so I grab an old priest's robe that's hanging from a hook on the back of the door, put it on. Too big, but it's warmer.

The lights flick off, then on again.

I've made mistakes—I realize that now. My own paranoia that first took me out of my apartment in the rain, made me doubt Justin, talk to a stranger in a bar. Trusting Alejandro just because he knew more than I did. Fucking Scratch to buy more time. And before that, being too scared of what might happen to seriously think about a future with Justin, or a real life. Trying to stay small, invisible, safe, all that worrying and fretting for nothing. Lying to everyone, including myself, framing it all within the context of saving Justin, my supposed deep and
abiding love for him, when really I was just lonely, and scared, and desperate to save my own skin.