Path of Smoke (23 page)

Nobody chose normal, if they could help it. The park was a bloody gift that tore her every night in its jaws, and she loved it, she welcomed it, because the pain meant that she was alive. She'd wept over Gandalf's death, over the Red Wedding, over the pile of bones that fantasy left behind. For years, she'd tried to explain it to everyone, but so few understood what it was like to ride a luck dragon, to lose yourself in the sacrifice of a brave white hole, to chase Tenar through the dust-choked halls of Atuan, searching for your name.

The park was real magic, and that was about pain. It left marks. It wasn't all in her head, because these people understood. That was what made it so seductive. It made more sense than all of her favorite authors, more sense than grad school, more sense than the desire that she'd felt in fits and starts for one person, then another. Those midnight collisions, fueled by alcohol and the sting of hope that so quickly dissolved beneath the sunlight. Those diurnal mistakes that you were supposed to make, over and over, not because you'd one day get it right, but because life was all digressions and apostrophes. You ventured out onto the edge of the dash, staring at that blank space beneath you, not knowing if you were going to make it. Everything you'd learned was supposed to guide you, but it only left you with a knapsack full of bullshit transitions and sadly glimmering footnotes. There was no forward. Only sideways.

She looked at Carl. He used to burn with confidence, but lately he'd been more like a long-suffering bulb that needed changing. There were dark circles under his eyes, and if she squinted, she could almost see a single white hair in his beard. What had the park shown him? Why did he keep coming back? She was beginning to doubt that she really knew anything about her friends, these stations of grace, who followed her around with their thin arms outstretched.

Ingrid was watching her.
Tell us what to do,
she thought.
You're the only real adult among us.
But her mortgage and the toys that littered her house, like baroque pearls, didn't make her any wiser. She was equally disoriented.

But there was also something curious in her expression. That shock of amity that drew you to someone, reaching across the gap to pull you in, so unexpectedly. It might be as simple as a shared sin, or as complicated as a fear that you both honored, when you were alone and the veil dropped. That moment when someone undressed before you. It wasn't just about the primeval thrill of attraction, which made a cuckold of your brain and all its plans. It was the voice that cut through the fog, the ordinary little way in which you realized that you were sharing the world. You weren't the only confused one, dragging your groceries and loves and dark thoughts behind you.

Maybe this digression would lead her somewhere. All she had to do was stay alive long enough, and avoid the black page.

“We should call Sam,” she said. “Maybe she wants to meet us.”

“Not if she's smart,” Carl replied. “This night has gone postal. I wouldn't blame her if she finally bailed on us.”

She dialed Sam's number. It rang, but there was no answer. Maybe she'd turned the ringer off. Maybe she and Paul were hooking up. Either way, it seemed as if their strategy night was over. Sam was the only member of their company who didn't seem entirely bound up in the world of the park. In spite of her mother's position as a known artifex, she treated it as a kind of part-time job. What was her secret? How did she keep herself from thinking about it, day and night, like they did? It was like going to a party and meeting that group of students who were unnaturally well adjusted. They talked about their families, their dream vacations, the renovations to their bathrooms. They didn't pass out in the library after eating nothing but a bag of Wheat Thins for six hours.

The park ran in her family, but what did that mean? Perhaps its closeness was what made it possible to avoid, like a surreal Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn't like heroin to her, because she'd grown up with it. Was that common? Had Naucrate always been a citizen, or did she find a way to smuggle her daughter in? Thinking about it made Shelby realize that they knew almost nothing about Sam, or her shadow. Andrew had been a tablet under lamplight, his script easy to read, but Sam's life had a pumiced cover.

Shelby realized that she'd been standing with her phone in her hand, saying nothing, for what must have been a full minute. Carl was frowning at her, while Ingrid looked away, as you did when you wanted to avoid an uncomfortable reality.

“I don't know what to do,” Shelby admitted. “Tomorrow, Latona is going to make some kind of sketchy pact with the silenoi. Who knows—maybe my supervisor will be there. We've got no real plan, aside from running in and yelling,
Hey, feel like killing us?
Even with the help of Felix and Drauca, we don't stand much of a chance. And we don't even know if Sam's with us or just humoring us.”

Carl nodded. “Good summary.”

“Don't you have anything useful to add?”

“Not really. However—” He patted his bag. “I do have three cans of pilsner left in here. It used to be a six-pack, but things got real back at the club.”

“You've been carrying those around the whole time?”

“I always have contingency beverages.”

Ingrid put an arm around her. “This night—like my car—is officially a write-off. Let's take a walk and then go to bed.”

Together?

The word very nearly escaped her lips. But she managed to just grin and nod, without embarrassing herself. Real heroes probably wouldn't have ended the night with three cans of pilsner, but they weren't real heroes, after all. They were students following their most basic instinct: to ramble while drinking.

Carl distributed the beer, and they walked down Broad Street. All the brightly colored stores and restaurants were asleep for the night. A few lights gleamed in the second-story apartments, but most people were dreaming, or absent. The shawarma restaurant by the bus depot was still open. Carl couldn't resist the spinning tower of meat, so they waited outside while he ordered them food. Shelby realized that beer and falafel weren't a charming couple, but she had a weakness for the pickled radish. Carl observed that if hobbits had embraced nightclub culture, they would have called this meal “second supper.” Ingrid chortled at that. Shelby liked the rough texture of her laugh. She was beginning to see what Ingrid shared with Fel—the slender thread that linked their shadows. A laugh, a wink, a flash of temper. They weren't the same, of course, but they might have shared a family tree.

They walked through the ghostly downtown core. The bank buildings were glass mausoleums, their sharp angles chipping the moonlight. The windows of the SGI tower burned like gold damascene: something risen from an age-old hoard. Night buses made their pilgrimage toward the loop on Twelfth Street. A man played the saxophone on the corner of Scarth, and his sweet notes followed them as they crossed at the light. A few people were smoking by the flowerpots, and farther down the street, they could hear laughter and shouting from the patio at O'Hanlon's. The Canada Life building soared above it all, casting its neon glow over the length of Victoria Park. They strolled past the light sabers, watching them shift from green to electric purple, until they'd cycled through every Jedi possibility.

There was a stage across from the park where intrepid couples took salsa lessons. On alternate days, a collective yoga group met to practice stretching on the green. It all seemed terribly active. Shelby figured that climbing the stairs in the library was enough to get her blood moving. Any type of yoga made her feel as if she were revisiting the Canada Fitness Test, which had taught her that she had the flexibility of a bronze statue.
Take the participation card and run.
That had always been her motto.

Carl climbed onto the stage and lit a roach. It took a few tries, because he kept swearing and burning his fingers. Ingrid had to lend him a bobby pin, but finally he got it going. They passed it around, a pug-nosed little joint that threatened to go out at any moment. Ingrid took a discreet puff and then gave it to Shelby.

She coughed. “This smells like the inside of your bag.”

“It's all I've got.”

They sat with their legs dangling off the stage. Red, blue, green. The light sabers flickered through the spectrum, until they suddenly flashed bone-white. A metallic sculpture loomed above them, but nobody could figure out what it was supposed to be. Shelby thought it might be the giant fart living under the bed in
Good Families Don't
. Carl said it looked more like an imperial star destroyer. Ingrid declared it abstract, which prompted a long sigh from the others.

“That's like calling it a text,” Carl said. “You lose.”

“Isn't everything a text?” Shelby asked. “At least that's what Derrida says. Every text has an edge, and we're supposed to, like—I don't know—live on it, or something?”

“How do we fit?”

“We make ourselves really small, like
The Borrowers
.”

He cackled. “What if it's an e-book? Where's the edge?”

“Up your ass.”

Carl spread his arms. “Quick. What's everyone's favorite bullshit, made-up academic word that doesn't mean anything?”

They all considered the question for a moment. Then they answered in one voice:

“Problematize!”

“Criticality!”

“Chronotrigger!”

Shelby laughed. “That's a video game.”

“Shit,” Carl said. “I meant
chronotope
.”

“I think I may have used
problematize
when I was at the bank,” Shelby replied. “So I'm not blameless in this scenario.”

“Do you think other people make fun of their calling?” Ingrid asked.

Carl made a face. “You're such an education student.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I hate it when people describe teaching as a calling, like someone handed them a stone tablet or Excalibur or something. It's a profession, sure, and it's not for everyone—but the fact that you can put a syllabus together isn't some kind of miracle. We're all just hanging on by the skin of our teeth.”

“That's deeply motivating,” Ingrid said.

“You're welcome.” Carl stood up. “Besides. We need more dancing. There are studies, you know, about teaching and movement. Something called a kinesphere. I don't know what the fuck that is, but it sounds like something wicked from
Dune
.”

He turned the volume up on his phone and set it on the stage. A moment later, they were waltzing to Leonard Cohen. Carl swayed on his own, while Shelby and Ingrid danced together, skirting the edge of the platform. When the song changed to “Everybody Knows,” they all sang in unison, crying out that the dice were loaded.
The basilissa wins all.
Fate moves as it must. Even
Beowulf
was right about that. It didn't matter what world you were in. There was what you wanted, and then there was the din of the wheel.

They changed partners. Ingrid laughed in surprise as Carl spun her around. Then he fell off the stage, and everyone knew that it was time to go.

The moon invited them to take the long way home. They walked back down Broad Street and dropped off Carl at his apartment. Love Selection was humming with activity. There was always a sale going on. Ingrid was bemused by the fact that they played classical music. There was something oddly inviting about the well-lit store, where you could browse for silicone toys while listening to a Naxos sampler. It reminded her of that woodcut image of women shopping for dildos in the seventeenth century.

“We should meet first thing tomorrow morning,” Shelby said. “We don't have much time to go over this plan.”

“I thought we didn't have a plan,” Carl said.

“I'm calling it a proto-plan.”

“How about Frodo-plan? Those always end with volcanoes.”

“Go to bed.”

He hugged both of them good night and then made his way upstairs. Shelby waited until she saw the light in his apartment turn on. Then she looked at Ingrid.

“So.”

Ingrid smiled. “Should I problematize your
so
?”

“I'm not sure that it has an argument.”

“I think the Dodger might still be open,” Ingrid said. “Want to grab a tea?”

“They sell tea?”

“Not happily. But it's on the menu. We could get it to go.”

They walked down Osler Street. The old fire station cast a peeling shadow over them. People were crowded onto the Dodger's small patio, smoking and drinking martinis. A band was playing inside, but nobody seemed to be paying attention. They were all huddled around tables, yelling into each other's ears. Ingrid made her way past the crush of people. The bartender actually seemed relieved by her request. All she had to do was add hot water. Shelby watched Ingrid making small talk. She couldn't hear anything, but she could read their expressions. The bartender smiled. They weren't flirting, exactly. It was more like two frayed wires, connecting momentarily. A small flash of kindness in a place where most people were intent on self-fashioning.

Ingrid handed her the tea. “I hope peppermint is okay. It's all they had.”

Shelby hated peppermint. “It's great,” she said. “Thank you.”

They crossed the street. There was a small park on the other side. You couldn't even really call it a park. The city had built it to memorialize a fire, but now it was overgrown, surrendering to its own wildness. Grass and weeds poked through a strange metal structure, and purple flowers made a kind of margin around the dust and gravel.

Shelby sat on a chunk of stone. She held her cup in both hands, absorbing the warmth. Ingrid sat down next to her. Grasshoppers leapt like popcorn at their feet. The sounds of the bar were fuzzy across the street. She couldn't quite look at Ingrid, so she looked at the moon, instead. Pollution had turned it amber. The sky had no limits, and she felt as if she could see forever, along the whole length of starless black prairie. Somewhere, there might be a galaxy in which she had the courage to take what she wanted.